Justin Katz is a staff reporter for Breaking Defense covering the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, the defense industrial base and the congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon.

He has broken news on major Pentagon acquisitions such as the 2019 purchase of two Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, the ongoing recapitalization of the surge sealift fleet and developments in the trilateral security pact known as AUKUS. His longform stories have covered the state of the shipbuilding industrial base, the military’s ongoing embrace of unmanned systems and the Navy’s struggles with its ship maintenance backlog.

Katz began studying journalism in 2011 during his first year of college and has never strayed from the field. He began his career in journalism as a community reporter less than two weeks after graduating from Flagler College in May 2015 and started covering the military in August 2017 for Inside Defense. Following a brief hiatus for the cybersecurity beat in 2020, Katz recommitted to covering the Pentagon and international militaries for Breaking Defense in July 2021.

He's a native of Long Island, NY, is mildly obsessed with the Rubik’s Cube and is a self-proclaimed “pun enthusiast.”