Russian military exercises near NATO borders follow the recent incursion of Russian drones into the airspace of Poland and Romania, further stoking tensions with the West. On Sunday, Russia released images of its launch of a 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missile from a frigate in the Barents Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, near NATO borders. The launch comes against a backdrop of rising tensions with the West, just days after several Russian drones violated the airspace of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries Poland and Romania. The Zircon test is part of the Zapad 2025 joint maneuvers with Belarus, a week of military exercises aimed at assessing defensive and coordination capabilities between the two allied countries. It also serves to show that Russia's military force has not lost its strength, despite heavy losses more than three years after the start of the invasion of Ukraine .

Veteran and former intel officer Don Bramer joined Fox & Friends First to discuss his reaction to Trump tapping Keith Kellogg to be his Ukraine-Russia envoy and the Biden admin working with the Trump team on peace in the Middle East. Following an overnight missile and drone attack by Russia targeting Ukraine's key energy infrastructure, Russian President Vladimir Putin now says that government buildings in Kyiv could be targeted next using a new hypersonic missile that could also potentially reach the U.S. Russian attacks have not so far struck "decision-making centers" in the Ukrainian capital as Kyiv is heavily protected by air defenses. But Putin says Russia's Oreshnik hypersonic missile, which it fired for the first time at a Ukrainian city last week, is incapable of being intercepted. Russia fired the Oreshnik at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Nov. 21, striking a weapons production plant. This was in retaliation against Ukrainian strikes on a Russian military facility in Bryansk two days earlier with U.S. made long-range missiles called ATACMS, after President Biden had given Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy permission to do so.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., joins'Fox News Live' to react to the United States Air Force's unveiling of its new B-21 raider stealth bomber, named'The Raider' for Jimmy Doolittle's famous bombing raid on Japan in WW2. With the launch of the Air Force's hypersonic missile off the coast of California earlier this month, the Navy's development of water-based drones over the summer and the recent unveiling of the B-21 Raiders, the U.S. military has made major technological advancements over the past year. The military unveiled the U.S. Air Force B-21 Raider in Palmdale, California. The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than three decades. In an email to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson confirmed the Air Force would transition its three-bomber fleet to a two-bomber fleet of B-21s and modernized B-52s.

Hypersonic represents a new frontier of missile warfare: fast, stealthy, and unpredictable in flight. The U.S. recently tested a prototype that puts it in a race with China and Russia to claim a capability that adds another layer of uncertainty to geopolitical competition, not least because of the complex computational systems on which hypersonic weapons rely. Put simply, the assumptions of conventional missile warfare – that incoming attacks can be tracked and intercepted, and a proportionate response be weighed – don't transfer easily to hypersonic weapons because they are so fast and stealthy. That means a greater reliance on artificial intelligence to track and respond, raising ethical questions about how such systems are programmed. Even if it's not all dictated by AI, "there is going to be an awful lot of automation and that kind of decision chain to deal with these kinds of systems," says Douglas Barrie, a military aerospace analyst in London.

A new federal commission on artificial intelligence is being led by Democrats. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (AI), a federally appointed commission, held its first meeting Monday chaired by former Google executive and billionaire Eric Schmidt, a major donor and informal adviser to former President Barack Obama. The commission's vice chairman is Robert Work, who was deputy defense secretary in the Obama administration. Additionally, the AI commission has hired as a staff member Ylli Bajraktari, a former National Security Council staff member under Mr. Obama. Mr. Bajraktari also was a former aide to Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Recently, analysts have argued that emerging technologies with military applications may undermine nuclear stability (see here, here, and here), but the logic of these arguments is debatable and overlooks a more straightforward reason why new technology might cause nuclear conflict: by upending the existing balance of power among nuclear-armed states. This latter concern is more probable and dangerous and demands an immediate policy response. For more than 70 years, the world has avoided major power conflict, and many attribute this era of peace to nuclear weapons. In situations of mutually assured destruction (MAD), neither side has an incentive to start a conflict because doing so will only result in its own annihilation. The key to this model of deterrence is the maintenance of secure second-strike capabilities--the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating counterattack.