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The U.S. Navy has paid Boeing $16.7 million to plan the shutdown of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler production lines, including a full inventory of the government-owned tools and equipment used to build the jets. The firm-fixed-price order, placed by Naval Air Systems Command against an existing Boeing ordering agreement, covers planning, analysis, […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has ordered another $123.4 million worth of Lionfish small underwater drones from HII, exercising contract options for more vehicles, support equipment and related gear, the U.S. Department of War announced. Naval Sea Systems Command awarded the firm-fixed-price modification to HII’s Unmanned Systems business on Sept. 24. Nearly all of the work, 99%, […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded 10 companies counter-drone contracts with a combined ceiling of $4.15 billion, lining up commercial radars, cameras, jammers and weapons to detect and defeat hostile drones, the U.S. Department of War announced. Seven companies received ceilings of $500 million each: Allen Control Systems of Austin, Texas; Digital Force Technologies of San […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has picked Boeing to build F/A-XX, its first sixth-generation carrier-based strike fighter, choosing the company over Northrop Grumman and awarding a development contract valued at more than $20 billion. The U.S. Department of War announced the award on Sept. 29. The contract covers the full-scale development phase and buys multiple test aircraft […]View the full article

Mack Defense will display a hybrid-electric heavy tractor it built for the U.S. Army’s Common Tactical Truck program at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., Oct. 12-14. The truck is Mack’s on-road entry for the program and is designed to replace older highway haulers such as the M915 Line […]View the full article

BAE Systems’ new identification friend or foe system for the F-16 has been certified by the U.S. Department of War, clearing it for use on U.S. Air Force fighters, the company said Sept. 29. The AN/APX-127(V)1 Combined Interrogator Transponder received AIMS certification, the approval that shows an identification system meets U.S. and NATO standards and […]View the full article

Argentina’s armed forces have formally taken on their first IWI ARAD 5 and ARAD 7 rifles from Israel, the start of a program to replace the FN FAL and M-16 rifles now carried by troops in all three services. Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Carlos Presti presided over the Sept. 29 ceremony after the Joint Staff […]View the full article

The Pentagon’s counter-drone task force has awarded Israeli company Smart Shooter a contract worth up to $150 million for its SMASH rifle sights, which help soldiers shoot down small drones with their regular service weapons. The U.S. Department of War’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401, known as JIATF-401, announced the three-year award on Sept. 29, […]View the full article

Ukraine’s F-16 pilots have shot down more than 3,150 Russian aerial targets, including 666 cruise missiles and about 2,500 drones, the commander of Ukraine’s Air Force said during a meeting with Lockheed Martin. Lt. Gen. Anatolii Kryvonozhko gave the figures when a Ukrainian Air Force delegation he led met with representatives of the U.S. company, […]View the full article

A Russian Tu-95MS strategic bomber crashed in the Amur region of Russia’s Far East on Sept. 29, killing six of the seven crew members on board. The bomber went down near the village of Krasnoyarovo after an engine failure during takeoff, according to sources in the Russian military. The sole survivor was taken to hospital. […]View the full article

I have an affection for all the ships I have been on, and the Big E is one of my girls. I like to keep an eye on her. She’s the ship that keeps on giving, in a lot of ways. I am quite sure that when the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) was laid down during the Eisenhower Administration just 13 years after the end of WWII, someone had to have thought, “How are they going to deal with all the radioactive bits when they decommission her in the next century?” I’d place a pretty good bet that in hushed tones, the general response was, “We’ll be dead by then. That will be someone else’s problem.” Maybe not. Back then they probably thought we’d do something responsible like, “Oh, they’ll just encase them in glass and then dump them at the bottom of the most isolated and stable part of the ocean floor, or deep in some cave in Nevada. Don’t worry, it isn’t like they’ll just put them in a metal box and stack them all together out in the open in CONUS. It will be fine.” Oops. We are just a few months shy of a decade removed from the Big E’s decommissioning, and her hulk is still haunting Pier 2 in Newport News. There she is, at the top of the post. So far, it appears that the lawyers have been doing the most work. Via Luis Reyes at AutoNotion, The fuel, at least, is long gone. More than 1,000 shipbuilders defueled all eight reactors in a job that ran from 2013 to late 2017, and what’s left behind is low-level radioactive structure. Even so, Navy documents say the hull could still hold more than 8,000 tons of hazardous or radioactive waste. The contract took two tries and a federal judgeHere’s where it gets messy. The Navy first handed NorthStar this job in May 2025, for $536.7 million. Then HII ShipCycle filed a protest. HII is the parent company of Newport News Shipbuilding, which means the outfit that built the Enterprise, defueled it, and has it tied up at its own pier also wanted the contract to destroy it. Frankly, you can’t blame them for trying to keep the whole life cycle in house. HII’s complaint said the government’s online bid portal glitched on deadline day and shut its offer out. In February 2026, Judge Philip Hadji of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims sided with HII, called the contracting officer’s handling of the situation “arbitrary and capricious,” and ordered the Navy to rerun the competition. The ruling pointed out that HII’s proposal came in roughly $100 million below NorthStar’s. NorthStar appealed, the Navy reopened the bidding anyway, and everyone got to submit fresh offers. The do-over changed the price. NorthStar won again on July 15, this time at $418.5 million, about $118 million less than its own first bid. It wasn’t free, though: the finish line moved from November 2029 to September 2030. For those doing the math, that is 13 years after her decommissioning in 2017. That really doesn’t tell the full story, as she was deactivated five years earlier, in 2012. They still have not announced when they are going to tow the old girl—18 years after she was of any real use to the fleet. Unlike our other CVN, which have only two, the one-off Enterprise had eight reactors and all the glowing bits that go with it. Navy documents say the hull could still hold more than 8,000 tons of hazardous or radioactive waste. I was going to make a snarky comment about all the asbestos I personally took with me when I left, mostly in my lungs and clothing, but a different topic for a different day. The glowing bits have a long journey to the eastern deserts of Washington. Here’s her glowy-bits’ new neighborhood. Trench 94, with all the other Navy nuclear waste we don’t have the institutional bravery and vision to find a more secure and permanent home for. This is what we consider the final resting place? Really? One day, just pile sand over it and hope for the best? I hope we get better and faster at this. USS Nimitz (CVN 68) is not that far behind. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

The U.S. Navy is paying Raytheon up to $30.2 million to line up additional suppliers for key parts of the AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile, including the cooling engine for its heat-seeking sensor and its warhead components. The undefinitized contract modification, announced by the U.S. Department of War, covers engineering work to qualify new manufacturing sources […]View the full article

The United States will supply the Philippine Coast Guard with three secondhand King Air 350 turboprop aircraft, two of them fitted with surveillance sensors, under a $39.6 million contract that finalizes a deal the two countries signed in February. The U.S. Department of War announced the firm-fixed-price award to Technology Service Corp., a small business […]View the full article

The Pentagon has ordered another $52.3 million worth of L3Harris proximity fuzes that turn laser-guided APKWS rockets into drone killers, more than doubling the value of a fuze contract signed just four months ago. The firm-fixed-price modification, announced by the U.S. Department of War, adds to a contract the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded Honeywell Aerospace $25.6 million to keep developing a small, radiation-hardened gyroscope accurate enough for “strategic” use, the class of navigation sensor that has to work in space and survive the effects of a nuclear environment. The cost-plus-fixed-fee contract covers what the Pentagon calls the compact strategic gyroscope […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded balloon maker Aerostar a $64.4 million contract to quickly build a prototype for an urgent high-altitude balloon requirement under a project called Swamp Gas. The contract covers development of a “minimum viable product” prototype, meaning an early working version with just enough capability to be tested and used, to […]View the full article

Russia plans to spend a record 17.1 trillion rubles ($201 billion) on its military in 2027, while its budget deficit this year is now expected to reach double the government’s earlier forecast, according to government documents seen by Reuters. The defense figure is about 27% higher than the 13.5 trillion rubles Moscow had previously penciled […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Raytheon a multi-year contract worth up to $20.7 billion to build AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, a deal the company says will push production of the weapon to record levels. The award, announced Sept. 25 by the U.S. Department of War, covers complete missiles, spare guidance sections and related work, and […]View the full article

President Donald Trump on Monday denied discussing U.S. weapons sales to China with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a day after his ambassador to Beijing said Trump had floated the idea, though Trump added that China would “probably like to buy” American arms. Trump was asked by reporters about comments by David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador […]View the full article

Denmark’s armed forces have taken delivery of nine unmanned ground vehicles built by Dropla, a Danish company founded by Ukrainians, to train drone operators, including conscripts, at the country’s military drone center. Denmark’s defense procurement agency, known by its Danish initials FMI, bought the Dropla 4×4 vehicles for the Danish Defence Drone Center, the agency […]View the full article

The CIA has restored the helicopter that carried the first American team into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, repainting it in the camouflage it wore in 2001 to mark the 25th anniversary of the mission. The Russian-designed helicopter sits on the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It flew a seven-man CIA team, […]View the full article

Ukrainian missile maker Fire Point has changed the published specifications of its FP-7.x anti-ballistic interceptor, now listing a combined infrared and radar seeker for the weapon instead of the infrared-only seeker it described earlier. The company posted an updated specification card for the missile on X, which it calls the FP-7.x Freyja interceptor. In August, […]View the full article

Redwire has now delivered more than 300 of its Penguin reconnaissance drones to Ukraine, the company said, and the version flying there today climbs much higher than the aircraft first sent in 2022 so that Russian FPV attack drones have a harder time reaching it. The U.S. space and defense company disclosed the figure in […]View the full article

Liminal Industries, a U.S. startup building unmanned ground vehicles meant to be produced and fielded in large numbers, has advanced to the second phase of the GroundBreaker 1 competition and will demonstrate its DUEL-V vehicle to U.S. military evaluators in North Dakota next month. The company announced Sept. 28 that its Phase I submission passed […]View the full article

It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Japan’s yet-unnamed cruiser, the ASEV. I put my thoughts down about it 18 months ago. You can click here to review if you wish. Like I said to more than one person, “So, the Japanese are going to get the CG(X) we should have already in the fleet?” Well, now the Italians are making me green with envy too. Europe’s Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) has issued a €3.7 billion ($4.2 billion) contract for the production of two Italian Navy DDX destroyers to the Orizzonte Sistemi Navali (OSN) joint venture, made up of local firms Fincantieri and Leonardo. “The DDX programme is set to redefine the Italian Navy’s capability profile in the field of air and missile defence through a significant generational leap” at both a platform and combat systems level, said the two manufacturers in a joint statement today. … The DDX measures 180 meters (590.5 feet) long and features a 13,500-tonne (14,881.2-ton) displacement, in addition to a range in excess of 4,000 nautical miles, according to the joint statement. The statement added that the surface ship will provide an “unprecedented” integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) “capability against missile, ballistic and hypersonic threats” courtesy of a SADOC 5 C5I system, a digital S-band AESA radar and MBDA-made weapons. In line with a first quarter financial results and a business outlook update, Fincantieri indicated in May that it expected to seal near-term orders worth around €5 billion, including the DDX deal. The shipbuilder noted then that two units from the Italian Navy’s Joint Maritime Mission System (J3MS) program would be contracted within months. Beyond domestic business, the firm “plans to finalize major contracts with several foreign navies both for the supply of surface vessels, including FREMM frigates, and for the provision of services in the Middle East and other key geographic areas,” reads the Q1 summary. Back in my post last year, I included this handy comparison that included the South Korean cruiser (and yes, I know they are calling these destroyers, but my Aunt Fanny, these are cruisers) and the Arleigh Burke Flight III for comparison. I’ve added in the Italian ship. (NB: depending on sources, numbers can vary slightly, and the comparison below includes the ASEV’s higher displacement). I don’t want this to degenerate into a discussion about BBGN and the mothballing of the DDG(X) program. No. On a very serious note I want to point again to a marker I put down years ago: NAVSEA and our entire military shipbuilding infrastructure have yet to produce an effective surface warship design since the Cold War ended three decades ago. We have a whole series of outright failures like LCS, DDG-1000, FFG-62, and programs that never left the PPT like CG(X) and DDG(X). Other nations with significantly smaller bureaucracies and industries out-think, out-manage, and out-lead our Navy when it comes to the design-build corner of maritime power. We have great weapons. Superior electronics. But they’re all being shoe-horned and spot-welded onto designs two generations old. A fix is supposed to be in. Let’s hope it is. However, we won’t really know until we have more new ships being built, and the only new clean-sheet design with funding, BBGN, is displacing water. Years. It will take years. Until then, well, Arleigh Burkes until the crack of doom, and we can watch other nations do what we were once world leaders in. Has anyone been held accountable? Has a name-and-shame story been told that lets the American people know the who and why? Why not? We know the who and why of the Ford Pinto. We know the who and why of the DC-10. We know the who and why of AMC. …but still. Here we are. Where is our Navy’s Richard Feynman? Feynman is one of your humble blogger’s heroes. He’s the one who famously demonstrated how the cold compromised the Challenger’s O-rings and helped explain why the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up. That is what we need. Again, reform is great. Perhaps some of the changes we have recently made will bear fruit—but that will be for nothing if we do not have a clear, blunt, and open discussion about how this nation’s greatest gift from prior generations—its Navy—was allowed to drift into serial incompetence and bureaucratic self-indulgence. If we do not pull out the truth and hold it up to the light for all to see, then the system and the people in it will drift back to their prior state; the dog will return to its vomit. Until then, congrats to our Italian and Japanese allies. Take whatever number you are planning to build and double it. Make no mistake, it will increase your nation’s security, your collective security with your allies, and I will bet good money that one day if the balloon goes up the U.S. Navy will come begging for you to help escort our CVN and ESG. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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