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An Israeli defense company just shipped its 1,000th version of a gun system that has become one of the most common ways navies around the world shoot down small boats and drones without putting a sailor’s life on the line to do it. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Israeli state-owned defense contractor, announced the delivery […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has closed the book on one of its most consequential and controversial aircraft programs in decades, taking delivery of the final MV-22B Osprey after nearly two decades of production, the V-22 Joint Program Office reported July 28, 2026, in a story by Neil Lobeda. The milestone, marked in Amarillo, Texas, where […]View the full article

The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit recently fielded the Light Marine Air-Defense Integrated System, known as LMADIS, and immediately began working it into underway training aboard the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island off the California coast, Staff Sgt. Michael Virtue reported for the 13th MEU. Marines assigned to the 3rd Low Altitude Air Defense […]View the full article

A sensor company that has spent 45 years building infrared cameras for the military just landed a piece of one of the Pentagon’s biggest new homeland defense contracts, supplying the eyes for a system built to spot drones before they ever reach American soil. Teledyne FLIR Defense, a division of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, announced July […]View the full article

The Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Alabama, increased its live kinetic engagements, meaning exercises where students actually fly a drone armed with a real explosive payload against a target rather than practicing in simulation, from five to 12 per class, according to Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Gatta, the course manager. Gatta and […]View the full article

The U.S. military has signed on for its first-ever bilateral artificial intelligence unit with a Middle Eastern partner, a Tampa-based command confirmed Tuesday, betting that shared access to AI tools can speed up how fast American and Emirati forces detect threats across one of the world’s most volatile regions. U.S. Central Command announced an agreement […]View the full article

A California drone maker best known for supplying Ukraine’s secretive kamikaze drone fleet has landed another $88.1 million in orders to deliver long-range precision strike systems. AEVEX Corp., a Solana Beach, California-based defense technology company, announced on July 28, 2026, that it secured new production orders totaling $88.1 million to deliver long-range precision strike capabilities […]View the full article

The Russian United Shipbuilding Corporation’s Sevmash shipyard held a ceremony to move the multi-purpose nuclear-powered submarine Ulyanovsk out of its construction hall, marking the completion of the vessel’s slipway construction phase, according to a statement from the shipyard. Ulyanovsk is the sixth submarine built in Russia’s modernized Yasen-M class, known formally as Project 885M, a […]View the full article

Strategic bombing campaign theory has only been with us for a century. People are still arguing everything from the utility of B-17s over Germany, B-29s over Japan, or B-52s over Vietnam, but the theory has always held promise for those who are trying to find a way to achieve from the air what would otherwise be outsourced to a long bloody slog paved with the bodies of young men in the mud. Books are filled with the results—hundreds of thousands of civilians burned alive, starved, or crushed under rubble to take out one railroad junction moving soldiers and supplies, a ballbearing factory seen as the key to war production, mining the approaches to a port bringing in food, or simply to “bring the war home” and humiliate an opponent’s leadership in front of its people. In some cases, the mass destruction was the goal, but usually it was just collateral damage trying to play the odds that something critical would be hit given the weapons of the time. Accuracy. That was the issue—accuracy, or lack of it. Compensate for inaccuracy with volume. The Germans brought a new twist to the theory with the V-1 cruise missile and V-2 Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM), but again, besides bringing terror, the inaccuracy of both weapons limited real practical utility. With the atomic bomb, accuracy was not important…but if you go nuclear, even if you win, you lose. In the decades following WWII, we’ve seen the evolution of rocket artillery—something that has been with us for centuries—towards the ballistic missile arena. A perfect example of this is the U.S. HIMARS, which can fire everything from MLRS rockets through GMLRS to the SRBMs we know as ATACMS and PrSM. The Russo-Ukrainian War has normalized the use of not just the SRBM, but the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) by the Russians. The Ukrainians have been limited to what few ATACMS they’ve received and the use restrictions that come with them. To compensate for their lack of ballistic missiles, the Ukrainians leveraged their ability to produce the slow, small warhead, but effective, series of drones to strike Russia at range. Recently, the large and long-range FP-2 Flamingo cruise missile has opened up even more of Russia to attack. Produced domestically, they don’t have limitations and produced in volume they can start to make significant effects. Let’s back up a bit. What do we have now that did not exist 80 or even a decade ago? Accuracy. Affordable, scalable accuracy. First tier nations could fly a cruise missile through your office window, or drop a missile down your chimney, but that was a national asset—complicated to build, required a vast infrastructure to support, and outrageous amounts of money to deploy. Miniaturization and advances in computing and navigation options have dropped those barriers. You no longer have to block out the sun with bombers and kill hundreds of thousands to disrupt industry and logistics in the deep fight—you just need range and precision. Now what Ukraine needs are weapons at scale to do with ballistic missiles what we have watched them do this year with their drones and Flamingo cruise missiles. The key here is not that ballistic missiles will replace the broad spectrum of drones and cruise missiles they produce domestically, but that they will add to it. More tools in the weaponeering toolbox. Diversity in weapons is hated by the Cult of Efficiency at peace, but are loved by those wanting effectiveness at war. It multiplies your effectiveness at the same time making it more difficult for your opponent to defend against your strikes. As such, should New Year’s 2027 find this war still ongoing, the Russians will have an additional challenge to contend with. Ukraine could launch its first strikes on Moscow using domestically developed ballistic missiles as early as this autumn, according to Denys Shtilerman, owner and chief designer of defense company Fire Point. Speaking in an interview with journalist Dmitry Gordon, published July 27, Shtilerman said the company is in the final stage of testing a new missile system. Once test launches are completed, the missiles could begin being used against targets inside Russia. … The company plans to manufacture between 10 and 20 missiles for test launches, with production potentially increasing to dozens of units once the weapon receives official codification and procurement approval. Fire Point is one of Ukraine’s largest defense contractors, producing the FP-1 long-range strike drones and FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles. The company announced the development of its FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missile projects in September 2025. The first test launch of the FP-7 was shown in February. The missile is reportedly designed to strike targets at distances of up to 250–300 kilometers, while the larger FP-9 is expected to have a range of up to 850 kilometers. The challenge will be to launch as close to Russia as possible to reach the most targets. My assumption would be that the Ukrainians will use the modified flatbed trailer Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) system they use with the FP-5 Flamingo. Ungainly, not ideal, but affordable and already proven. Downside is that they are easy to find, hard to hide, and limited to the roads you can take them on. For much of the year, I would also assume they would be limited to paved roads. I’ll let the pros figure that out, but as always, let’s go to the map room and put some geography to those numbers. If you wanted to get as close as possible to the Russian heartland that runs from Moscow to St. Petersburg, you’d want to get your launch site as close as possible. For planning purposes, let’s pick the forested openings around Benzyky. Where would that get you? To start with, most people are familiar with the ATACMS and PrSM mentioned at the top of the post. In open source, generally you have a range of 300 km (Carolina blue) and 500 km (Duke blue). The FP-7 will get you 250 km (NC State red) and maybe more. The FP-9 will get you out to 850 km (Clemson orange). If instead you wanted to use these weapons elsewhere, just move around. Always have a good toolbox…and one note to put in your Future-Risk folder: Assuming Ukraine can finish this war to her rough advantage with independence, she will have a few challenges. Expunge the culture of corruption. Rebuild her economy. Make babies. In this scenario, she will have some of the most combat proven and affordable weapons systems out there in production. To meet #2, she has to leverage every competitive advantage she has to generate income and support well paying jobs. She will be selling her weapons to whoever has the hard cash to buy them. Just put that tidbit in your folder. 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

An unmanned fighter jet built to fly and fight alongside human pilots has left the sterile confines of a test range and flown its first real-world combat exercise in the Nevada desert, according to a release from Air Force Warfare Center Public Affairs published July 27, 2026. The exercise, conducted at Creech Air Force Base […]View the full article

A Calgary startup has built a missile that weighs about as much as a housecat, and it might end up deciding whether a $100,000 drone attack on a power plant succeeds or fails. North Vector Dynamics, a Canadian defense technology company based in Calgary, posted on social media on July 27, 2026, introducing the CM-70, […]View the full article

DRS Network and Imaging Systems LLC, based in Melbourne, Florida, has been awarded a $55.7 million contract to provide engineering services for the Improved Bradley Acquisition Subsystem, known as IBAS, the sighting, targeting and missile control system that lets Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews spot, track and engage enemy targets, according to a federal contract award […]View the full article

Patriot missile batteries have a blind spot, a literal gap in their radar coverage that an enemy missile or drone could exploit simply by approaching from the wrong direction, and the U.S. Army has committed another $347.5 million to closing it for good. Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, based in Grand Prairie, Texas, has […]View the full article

RTX Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney Military Engines division in East Hartford, Connecticut, has been awarded a $54 million order to perform engineering work on the F135, the engine that powers every version of the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, according to the contract announcement. The order, issued under a fixed-price incentive structure that rewards the […]View the full article

The nuclear missiles sitting in underground silos across the American heartland run on hardware that is more than five decades old, and keeping the parts flowing to maintain them received a $12 million boost in software support. Carahsoft, a government technology reseller based in Reston, Virginia, has been awarded a firm-fixed-price contract worth up to […]View the full article

A defense manufacturer in the middle of Nebraska farm country has landed a $33.9 million contract to build the outer shells of bombs engineered to kill fewer bystanders, a niche corner of American weapons-making that reflects one of the hardest problems in modern warfare: how to strike an enemy hiding among civilians without leveling the […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has put another $17.1 million behind a laser weapon designed to burn incoming drones and missiles out of the sky before they ever reach a warship, and the contractor building it isn’t the company that started the job. Attalon Inc., a defense technology firm based in Murrieta, California, has been awarded a […]View the full article

And both the email and board notifications came thru that you'd replied. (The reason for doing the post to test email notifications).

Thanks for sharing, that's rather more intimidating than our rabbits.

Robotics company Target Arm Inc. said this week that its drone launch and recovery system has been integrated with unmanned ground vehicles built by HDT Global, a manufacturer of rugged robotic platforms used in military and industrial settings. The company announced the integration on social media on July 27, 2026. The combination pairs HDT Global’s […]View the full article

A rifle that decides, mid-trigger-pull, when to let the round go, not the shooter, is now fielded or in procurement across an estimated 10 to 15 European countries, according to Israel Weapon Industries (IWI). The system, called ARBEL, does not detect drones or aim the weapon. It does one thing: it controls the timing of […]View the full article

Axon Vision, an Israeli defense technology company based in Tel Aviv, announced Monday that it has teamed up with ParaZero Technologies, an Israeli firm based in Kfar Saba, to build an integrated counter-drone system aimed at protecting critical infrastructure sites where blowing an incoming drone out of the sky simply isn’t an option. The new […]View the full article

The Swedish defense company announced Monday that it has received an order for two GlobalEye airborne early warning and control aircraft from an undisclosed country in the Middle East, a deal valued at roughly $1 billion. Deliveries are scheduled for 2030, and beyond that, Saab isn’t saying much. The company cited the sensitive nature of […]View the full article

NATO leaders wrapped up their summit in Ankara, Turkey, in July 2026 having announced more than $50 billion in new defense procurement deals, covering everything from precision strike weapons to air and missile defense systems, according to the alliance’s own summit declaration. Alongside that headline figure, member states also committed to a five-year, $40 billion […]View the full article

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on July 27, 2026, setting a new authorized size for the Russian Armed Forces at 2,426,130 personnel, of which 1,535,000 are uniformed troops, according to the text of the decree published on Russia’s official legal information portal, pravo.gov.ru. The order, numbered Decree 526, formally amends a 2004 decree that […]View the full article