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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-30/aukus-announcement-to-develop-undersea-vehicles/106741398?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

The U.S. Army is nearly doubling its investment in its primary short-range air defense system for fiscal year 2027, requesting $461 million for the Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense program, known as M-SHORAD, up from $296 million the previous year, as the service races to rebuild air defense capabilities it dismantled two decades ago and now […]View the full article

Poland signed a contract for 146 more of its domestically built infantry fighting vehicles, expanding a rearmament program that has become one of the most significant ground force modernization efforts in NATO Europe, with a deal worth approximately 7.5 billion Polish zloty, equivalent to roughly $2.07 billion at current exchange rates, funded through Poland’s SAFE […]View the full article

French Rafale fighters scrambled from Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania to intercept two Russian Su-30SM fighters that entered Baltic airspace without a flight plan, with France’s Armed Forces General Staff publishing footage of the intercept and confirming the alert launched on very short notice. The post from the official French military described the aircraft entering […]View the full article

Armenian Su-30SM fighter jets flew over Yerevan’s Republic Square on May 28, 2026, carrying what open-source analysts identified as Iranian-made precision-guided glide bombs, presenting the clearest public evidence yet that Armenia has armed its Russian-built fighters with weapons from Tehran rather than Moscow, resolving a procurement scandal that had dogged the aircraft since their arrival […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has opened an industry search for a new mission computer for its F-16 fleet, a move aimed at replacing aging avionics hardware that limits future upgrades to one of the service’s most widely used fighter aircraft. The program it is kicking off could define what the F-16 Fighting Falcon can do […]View the full article

Every GPS signal on the battlefield is a vulnerability waiting to be exploited, and Russia, China, and Iran have all demonstrated the willingness to exploit it. DARPA just announced it is going to solve that problem from the inside out, by building a navigation sensor so precise that it no longer needs GPS to know […]View the full article

A $48.5 million contract awarded to L3Harris to produce proximity fuzes for the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System is the latest signal that the U.S. military has found its answer to the drone swarm problem, and is now scaling that answer as fast as American manufacturing can deliver it. The Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps is expanding the fleet of unmanned missile-launching trucks that can hide on a Pacific island and sink Chinese warships, with a $70.6 million contract to Oshkosh Defense announced this week for additional ROGUE-Fires carriers that form the ground portion of the Corps’ most consequential new weapons system. Marine Corps Systems Command, […]View the full article

Ukrainian strike drones hit two Russian Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft on the ground at Taganrog military airfield on the night of May 29-30, 2026, with video released by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces showing the aircraft catching fire after multiple direct hits, marking the latest in a sustained campaign to destroy Russian military aviation assets far […]View the full article

Russia’s Uralvagonzavod concern publicly unveiled for the first time a prototype of the DT-3PM light articulated tracked all-terrain vehicle at the Gas. Oil. Technologies exhibition in Ufa, presenting a dual-use platform that its developers describe as equally suited for Arctic military operations and civilian industrial work in some of the world’s most remote and hostile […]View the full article

The top American general in South Korea described the Korean Peninsula as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s perspective, and China’s embassy in Seoul responded by publicly telling him he had crossed the line, injecting a pointed diplomatic confrontation into a week already complicated by the broader state of U.S.-China relations. General […]View the full article

Russian Su-57 stealth fighters have resumed high-tempo cruise missile operations along nearly the entire length of the Ukrainian front, with Ukrainian air raid monitoring services recording more than ten confirmed launch events during May alone, a pace of operations that had been significantly curtailed following a Ukrainian drone strike deep inside Russia earlier this spring. […]View the full article

I’m not sure another nation has the same underlying concern for prisoners of war (POWs) that Americans do. I don’t think anyone else has a POW/MIA flag flying all over the place, even if we don’t have any POWs. As everyone was reminded this spring, we will go to incredible ends to stop our people from being taken prisoner if we have to. We will try to rescue them if we can. Perhaps it is the legacy of the British prison ships of the Revolutionary War, the nightmares of the American Civil War camps, or the memory of how our POWs were treated in Vietnam and Korea. In WWII’s European Theater, conditions were rough, but they were not so bad that we couldn’t make a comedy series out of it—but there was nothing that could be made light of American POWs in the Pacific Theater. Unimaginable horror—though we tried. While we all like to focus on the big naval battles and island hopping in the last year in the Pacific theater, we were also grinding our way through The Philippines. On the islands, thousands of Americans languished in Japanese prison camps. Many were survivors of the Bataan death march at the start of the war. Starved, tortured, executed for sport—used for slave labor. As the American armies advanced, word spread that the Japanese were executing POWs who were no longer useful, or simply to prevent them from being liberated. The 6th Ranger Battalion and Alamo Scouts had been itching to get into the fight. The Filipino guerrillas have been at it for years. They decided to make a plan. They did. That is how we got the Great Raid on Cabanatuan. …nearly 150 Americans were executed by their Japanese captors on December 14, 1944 at the Puerto Princesa Prison Camp on the island of Palawan. An air raid warning was sounded so that the inmates would enter slit-trench and log-and-earth covered air-raid shelters, and there doused with gasoline and burned alive.[64] One of the survivors, PFC Eugene Nielsen, recounted his tale to U.S. Army Intelligence on January 7, 1945.[65] Two days later, MacArthur’s forces landed on Luzon and began a rapid advance towards the capital, Manila.[66] Major Robert Lapham, the American USAFFE senior guerrilla chief, and another guerrilla leader, Captain Juan Pajota, had considered freeing the prisoners within the camp,[67] but feared logistical issues with hiding and caring for the prisoners.[68] An earlier plan had been proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Anderson, leader of the guerrillas near the camp. He suggested that the guerrillas would secure the prisoners, escort them 50 miles (80 km) to Dibut Bay, and transport them using 30 submarines. The plan was denied approval as MacArthur feared the Japanese would catch up with the fleeing prisoners and kill them all.[14] In addition, the Navy did not have the required submarines, especially with MacArthur’s upcoming invasion of Luzon.[67] On January 26, 1945, Lapham traveled from his location near the prison camp to Sixth Army headquarters, 30 miles (48 km) away.[69] He proposed to Lieutenant General Walter Krueger‘s intelligence chief Colonel Horton White that a rescue attempt be made to liberate the estimated 500 POWs at the Cabanatuan prison camp before the Japanese possibly killed them all.[69] Lapham estimated Japanese forces to include 100–300 soldiers within the camp, 1,000 across the Cabu River northeast of the camp, and possibly around 5,000 within Cabanatuan.[69] Pictures of the camp were also available, as planes had taken surveillance images as recently as January 19.[70] White estimated that the I Corps would not reach Cabanatuan until January 31 or February 1, and that if any rescue attempt were to be made, it would have to be on January 29.[71] White reported the details to Krueger, who gave the order for the rescue attempt. Warfare History Network has a great summary of the operation that is worth the read, but if you can, take the time to watch The Operations Room video below. Amazing that this is not more well known. There is a great memorial where the camp used to be. Very well done. UPDATE: We have the best comment section in the business! It was pointed out that, yes, in 2021 there was a movie made out of it called, The Great Raid. 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

More than a dozen countries are now waiting in line to buy the rocket artillery system that rewrote the rules of the war in Ukraine, and the U.S. Army just signed a contract to make sure all of them can keep it running. A $180 million award announced May 28 will put Lockheed Martin in […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has begun fielding its most heavily armed amphibious vehicle, a tracked fighting machine that can swim from a ship in open ocean, roll onto a hostile beach under fire, and engage enemy targets with a 30mm automatic cannon at ranges that far exceed anything the Corps’ previous amphibious platforms could match. […]View the full article

Canada unveiled a new self-propelled artillery system at its premier defense exhibition this week that can fire a 155mm shell while moving at speed, reload automatically without a gunner exposed outside the vehicle, and hit targets up to 70 km (43 miles) away, all operated by a crew of three from inside an armored hull […]View the full article

A Canadian armored vehicle manufacturer unveiled an image of a new mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle at CANSEC 2026 in Ottawa, revealing the full technical specifications of the Admiral MRAP, a jointly developed platform built in partnership with South African defense firm Panzer following Roshel’s acquisition of the KF411 MRAP design in 2024. The Admiral represents […]View the full article

A Canadian armored vehicle manufacturer and a Singaporean defense engineering giant unveiled a joint concept at Canada’s premier defense exhibition that could fundamentally change how infantry units deliver indirect fire: a light pickup truck carrying a fully automated mortar system that two soldiers can deploy in 15 seconds and stow just as fast before driving […]View the full article

A coalition of European and Ukrainian defense companies launched Dronetex at Odense Airport in Denmark, presenting a set of integrated air defense and counter-drone technologies that its members describe not as future concepts but as systems already operating in real-world conditions, including on active frontlines in Ukraine. The event, organized in partnership with Rasmussen Global, […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is pumping $20 million into expanding AeroVironment’s Huntsville, Alabama facility to accelerate production of Freedom Eagle-1, a new low-cost interceptor missile designed to shoot down drones and aircraft at a price point that makes defending against mass aerial attacks economically viable for the first time. The $20.2 million government investment, announced May […]View the full article

As opposed to taking this moment to celebrate, once again, the success of Italian-Americans in the face of widespread discrimination, it appears the signal went out to dirty up General Christopher LaNeve, USA, acting Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and by all appearances should be nominated to take that position, pending Senate confirmation. This isn’t something done by some rando anon typing away on X or Substack, but in the pages of The Wall Street Journal by a serious journalist we’ve known for a long time, Lara Seligman and her co-author who, no offense, I don’t know from Adam’s off-ox, Dan Lyon. If you are not familiar with the good General, Lara & Dan’s article can give you the details, but that is not what I find interesting. What I want to find out is what the miasma soaked opposition has to throw at him. Let’s focus on that. You have to start with the title. Right away, this won’t be a bunch of hagiography. This, literally, had me laughing to the point Mrs. Salamander demanded to know what I found so funny. She did not agree, but I digress. The use of “Hardline” is interesting. Generally speaking in American English, the opposite of “Hardline” would be “Moderate, Flexible, or Accommodating“. If you let your googlefu guide you, this the type of result you find: Moderate Four-Star General: Colin Powell, USA. Flexible Four-Star General: Nothing. All I get is reference to the Zwilling Four Star Flexible Boning Knife. Seriously, that was the top return. Accommodating Four-Star General: Nothing. It does not exist. It was stupid to ask, but for my readers, anything. It is also funny how, “…close to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth…” is a resistance twofer: Not self-described Secretary of War, but the passive aggressive “Congress has to change…” stylebook requirement of Secretary of Defense. The use of “Pete Hegseth” in order to set the reader’s mind right as they proceed to the fainting couch that the mere mentioning of his name gives All the Right People™ the vapors. Now for the charge sheet in the main body. Two years before Gen. Christopher LaNeve found himself in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s inner circle, he was a division commander known for strictly enforcing the rules, banning cellphones during physical training and insisting that troops use only military-issued gear. It was the kind of hard-line approach that didn’t endear LaNeve to the rank-and-file at the 82nd Airborne Division, many of whom booed when he appeared at the All-American Week events during his last year as commander, according to current and former members of the unit. Ummm…I think “…strictly enforcing rules…” is pretty much an officer’s job, especially in garrison. Why the other two items are even up for debate is silly. To describe either as, “hard-line” is more of an indictment of the rest of the Army more than it is of LaNeve. We’ll return to the All-American Week incident in a bit. I think we know which (R) Senators these are. Some Republicans have signaled privately that they aren’t sure he’s the right fit for the job, according to people familiar with the internal deliberations. They are going to have to make their case in public. I don’t think they can make the sale. Yes, there are some Senators leaving office this year by choice, or after being defeated in primaries by Trump-backed challengers, but these are not the types who would use an appointment to Chief of Staff of the Army as a way to strike back at the President. Wait…some may be. We’ll see. When reading the following, all I could think of is Generals Pershing, Marshall, Patton, and Eisenhower laughing: LaNeve is less experienced than most of his predecessors: He has been a four-star general for only three months, since Feb. 6 when he was confirmed as vice chief of the Army. Most chiefs serve at least 18 months in a four-star role before assuming the top position. NB: yes, I know, the rank issues, but AI can’t generate five-stars properly President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose Marshall as Army Chief of Staff over thirty-three more senior generals. That was not a one-off. The big Louisiana Maneuvers, staged in August and September 1941, served as a proving ground for Marshall’s officers. Only 11 of the 42 generals who commanded a division, a corps, or an army in the maneuvers would go on to command in combat. Just one of the prewar army’s senior generals, Walter Krueger, would be given a top command in World War II. His “plucking board” was legendary. One of the best, if not the best, Chief of Naval Operations (the Navy version of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army) was Admiral Arleigh Burke. Then President Eisenhower picked up on his habits from WWII in selecting Burke: When President Dwight D. Eisenhower selected Arleigh Burke as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in 1955, Burke was a two-star Rear Admiral. In a highly unusual move, he was promoted directly to four-star Admiral, bypassing 92 active-duty flag officers who were senior to him on the Navy Register. This is also a silly critique. Unlike many in the Army’s top ranks, LaNeve didn’t attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Instead, he received his commission as an infantry officer through the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at the University of Arizona in 1990. …and the point is? The present Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle, USN, is the graduate of a public university, North Carolina State University, and wasn’t even in NROTC. He is a graduate of Officer Candidate School. The critique that might get the most attention—generally because it involves the bi-partisan triggering of, But LaNeve’s rise wasn’t without controversy. In 2021, he was serving as a one-star general on the Army staff when a group of pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol. As the Army’s director of operations, readiness and mobilization, LaNeve was the liaison between the Army and the National Guard, according to current and former officials. The Defense Department’s inspector general found no wrongdoing by department or Army officials. The watchdog found the actions taken by the Defense Department in response to the Jan. 6 riots were “reasonable in light of the circumstances that existed on that day.” But less than a month later, a 36-page memo by a lawyer for the District of Columbia National Guard at the time alleged that top officials, including LaNeve, covered up an hourslong delay in the Army’s riot response. The memo, by Col. Earl Matthews, who is now the Pentagon’s general counsel under Hegseth, insisted that LaNeve and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, the director of the Army staff, lied. “Piatt and LaNeve literally changed facts and recollections overnight. The end product, a revisionist tract worthy of the best Stalinist or North Korea propagandist, was close hold,” Matthews wrote. The connections here are exceptionally complicated and will be covered in detail by others. If you want to know how complicated it is, note the connection to Matthews mentioned above, where he is now, and then just do a name search to read the appropriate passages in that 36-page memo. If it were that bad, then LaNeve would not have been promoted from a one-star to a two-star and then a three-star under President Biden. That’s my take. Back to what makes a “hardline” general. Later, as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, LaNeve developed a reputation as a stickler for rules that many of his own troops deemed old-fashioned, including gear restrictions and the cellphone ban during morning physical training, according to Army officials and current and former members of the unit who served under LaNeve. So, a modern general is happy with you playing Candy Crush during PT and wearing that worn out t-shirt you wife keeps trying to throw away? OK. Run with that critique, if you wish. What about the booing at All-American Week? During the unit’s annual All-American Week festivities, LaNeve also banned the longstanding tradition of veterans tossing cans of beer at the soldiers running in formation, and ordered military police units along the route to patrol for alcohol, the people said. LaNeve saw the practice as a safety issue, according to the Army officials. Again, this is more of an indictment of other Army generals than it is of LaNeve. Next slide. Now that the bold-faced items to trigger the left are complete, we have an attempt to get the right in a huff. At the same time, LaNeve was perceived by some of his subordinates to be pushing Biden-era policies that Trump and Hegseth have decried as “woke,” such as allowing preferred pronouns and training on transgender identity and diversity initiatives, although much of that rhetoric was disregarded at lower levels of command. In June 2023, he signed a memo commemorating “pride month,” according to the letter. “We appreciate the contributions of the LGBTQ+ Paratroopers and understand that inequity and discrimination undermine diversity’s strategic advantage and our core mission,” according to the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by WSJ. U.S. and Army officials defended LaNeve’s decision to sign the memo, explaining that the previous administration demanded he do so. You don’t even want to know all the paperwork I had to do in support of every diversity-related item you can think of in the course of my active duty career. I am sure I have printed out my body weight of paper alone submitting nominations for all the sectarian affinity group awards. You know, the “Outstanding Watchstander of the Year” award by the Left-Handed Lisping Lithuanian Navigators Association, etc. They are lawful orders. You execute them. Some with more enthusiasm than others, but you do them. Sticklers for rules do that, dontchaknow. Who would find this problematic and unattractive in a General? LaNeve later endeared himself to Hegseth with his work ethic, direct approach to problems and his ability to provide an experienced military perspective, officials said. OK, I did find one real bad thing. Last year, LaNeve was a strong supporter of the Pentagon chief’s controversial September move to end shaving waivers for almost all troops, according to one of the officials. I support the return to allowing beards, so I non-concur on this point. Worth torpedoing a Senate confirmation? Probably not. Since he became Pentagon chief last year, Hegseth has fired or sidelined at least eight senior Army generals, including George. LaNeve became the main beneficiary of these changes, as some of those pushed out cleared a path for his rise. Again, this is a bad thing? I like the guy already, you don’t have to keep trying to make me like him more. A lot of us think the decimal point should be moved over one here, and the same in the other services. At the end of the day, a Commander in Chief is allowed to pick his most senior officers. “Gen. LaNeve is precisely the kind of leader the U.S. Army needs right now. He’s decisive, focused on strengthening our Army, and not interested in playing politics in Washington. He is a back-to-basics, no politics, no-nonsense General—exactly what President Trump expects,” Hegseth said. There is not enough “there-there” to get in the way of confirmation, but the Senate in an election year is its own creature. As a side-note: LaNeve has a son and a daughter who are both serving in the Army. He has skin in the game. That means something when it comes to when we decide to send our men and women into harm’s way. 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

Sweden announced on May 28 that it will donate 16 Gripen C/D fighter jets to Ukraine and enable the purchase of up to 20 newer Gripen E/F aircraft funded through a 2.5 billion euro ($2.90 billion) EU loan, with long-term ambitions to deliver between 100 and 150 Gripen aircraft to Kyiv and training of Ukrainian […]View the full article

Ukrainian investigators have published their findings from the wreckage of a nuclear-capable Russian ballistic missile that struck an industrial zone near Bila Tserkva on the night of May 23-24, and what they found inside the debris tells a story that undercuts several of the claims Moscow has built around its most heavily promoted weapon. Russia […]View the full article

Armenia publicly displayed Iranian-made air defense systems at its Republic Day parade in Yerevan on May 28, confirming that Tehran has made its first known weapons export of the Majid AD-08 short-range missile system to a foreign military. Around four Majid AD-08 systems were spotted by open-source analysts during parade rehearsals in Yerevan’s Republic Square […]View the full article