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U.S. Marines on a remote Pacific island just proved they can shoot down cruise missiles using a weapon system built around the same technology that has protected Israeli cities from rocket attacks for over a decade. Marines from III Marine Expeditionary Force successfully fired the Medium-Range Intercept Capability, or MRIC, system on June 30 during […]View the full article

The U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division posted a sources sought notice on July 9 seeking companies capable of building a deployable cleaning system to remove what officials call “clutch sludge” from the F-35B’s short takeoff and vertical landing lift fan clutch cooling system, with responses due within just seven business days, by July […]View the full article

If nuclear war ever broke out and every ground-based command center went dark, a fleet of aging jets built on a 1960s airliner design would still be able to relay the launch order, and the U.S. Navy just opened bidding on a decade-long contract to keep those planes flying. The Naval Air Systems Command posted […]View the full article

The Pentagon just opened the door for private companies to pitch prototype hypersonic weapons capable of flying more than five times the speed of sound, releasing a formal Request for Solutions on July 9 that gives industry until August 10 to respond. The opportunity, titled Next Generation Hypersonics for the Department of War, runs through […]View the full article

The company that helped supply Ukraine’s front lines with cheap, mass-produced attack drones just announced it is racing to build the exact opposite: a drone built specifically to hunt and kill other drones. Neros Technologies posted a video on July 10 showing early testing of what the company calls Bandit, a counter-unmanned aircraft system, or […]View the full article

A shoulder-fired missile streaking toward a military cargo plane has mere seconds to find its target, and the U.S. Air Force has paid $60.4 million to make sure the aircraft sees it coming even faster. Northrop Grumman won a $60,438,241 contract to develop an enhanced sensor called the Optical Detection and Identification Node, or ODIN, […]View the full article

Türkiye has reportedly sold its Russian-made S-400 air defense system to a Gulf state, according to Hürriyet columnist Abdülkadir Selvi, whose report ties the transaction directly to Türkiye’s yearslong effort to escape American sanctions and potentially reopen the door to purchasing F-35 fighter jets. Selvi wrote that the sale had been finalized after last-minute details […]View the full article

For decades, only two American companies could build the powerful solid rocket motors that launch the Pentagon’s biggest missiles into the sky, and the Missile Defense Agency just handed nearly $11 million to a New Mexico firm trying to break that monopoly wide open. X-Bow Launch Systems, based in Albuquerque, won a competitive $10,981,581 contract […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy awarded Norwegian defense manufacturer Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace a contract modification worth roughly $50.3 million on July 2 to buy more launcher missile modules for what the Pentagon calls its “over-the-horizon weapons system,” the hardware behind a Marine Corps program that lets troops sink enemy warships from land without ever putting a […]View the full article

Once a bad theory is adopted because it makes sense to one cohort (GOFOs who went to a two-week MBA camp) and is encouraged by others (influential civilian companies looking for another income stream), at the expense of what the first cohort should have been focused on but is an unpopular topic (winning wars), it spreads and develops its inertia. Even when one area discovers the theory does not survive contact with reality, other areas carry on because, well, going along is easier than admitting error and changing. When the maintenance CONOPS for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) came out in the mid-00s with its reliance on civilian contractors and OEMs being responsible for maintenance that, on a normal ship, is done by the ship's company—many of us warned that it would not work. The miasma of arrogance that characterized the Age of Transformation™ would not hear of it, as you would not be able to make the manning CONOPS slide work if the maintenance CONOPS didn’t paper over the gaping holes. The Cult of Efficiency™ was in its ascendancy, while the Church of the Combat Effective™ were driven into basements, meeting in hushed tones. After over a decade and a half of everyone suffering through a series of senior leaders making farcical excuses, a half decade ago, Big Navy started to (officially) accept the reality that it was all vanity. Eventually the truth came out, as in the below from 2021, and a slightly better solution was found—though more work needs to be done. The Navy is beginning to implement contracting approaches for LCS maintenance in order to help mitigate schedule risk, while taking steps to avoid it in the future. GAO found in the 18 LCS maintenance delivery orders it reviewed that the Navy had to contract for more repair work than originally planned, increasing the risk to completing LCS maintenance on schedule. A majority of this unplanned work occurred because the Navy did not fully understand the ship's condition before starting maintenance. The Navy has begun taking steps to systematically collect and analyze maintenance data to determine the causes of unplanned work, which could help it more accurately plan for maintenance. The Navy has also recently begun applying some contracting approaches to more quickly incorporate unplanned work and mitigate the schedule risk, such as (1) setting a price for low-dollar value unplanned work to save negotiation time and (2) procuring some materials directly instead of waiting for contractors to do so. Such measures will be important to control cost and schedule risks as additional LCS enter the fleet in the coming years. Other similar vanities of that era are being corrected. The rebirth of SIMA is another example of positive change, but as mentioned earlier, more work needs to be done. This 'outsource it to the civilian sector—it briefs really well' mentality wasn’t just limited to the LCS program. Make no mistake, this was never about making a more combat effective Navy, no, this was always about feeding the Potomac Flotilla's warped priorities and industry's grasping business models. The Marines are suffering under the same mindlessness: The Marine Corps is facing “significant” challenges keeping some of its most important weapons in working order, because Marines too often must rely on contractors for equipment upkeep, the service’s second-ranking general recently wrote to a Senate panel. Gen. Bradford Gering, the Marine Corps assistant commandant, described for the Armed Services Committee cases involving several high-profile military systems — including parts for communications terminals and for armored vehicles — that Marines sometimes wait months for contractors to fix, when Marines could complete the repair in days or even hours for a fraction of the price if they controlled the data. … Warren and Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., have championed a so-called right-to-repair provision in the fiscal 2027 NDAA that would give the military services more control over the data they need to maintain their systems more rapidly than they do today and at lower cost. Their provision would expand the military’s access to repair materials, hold accountable companies that falsely assert restrictions and permit the military to contract with companies other than the original system manufacturers to perform repairs in wartime and contingency operations. If “right to repair” rings a bell, it is because a parallel fight is taking place against John Deere—one of the agriculture industry’s “Primes.” This is a bipartisan effort, as it should be. Civilian and uniformed leaders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on down have supported shifting control over data rights from industry to the government to increase competition, reduce prices and ensure troops can fix their equipment on the battlefield. The department has begun to make some changes along those lines but many lawmakers believe a statutory change is required. Warren and Sheehy wrote Armed Services leaders in May to summarize the armed forces’ support for their measure. However, it has its opponents. Rep. Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., the House Armed Services Committee chairman, has been sympathetic to the industry’s concerns. Late last year, the defense contractors successfully killed a right-to-repair proposal in the final negotiations over the fiscal 2026 NDAA. The issue is shaping up to be one of the big defense fights looming in the coming months, as lawmakers hope the NDAA can be enacted for the 66th consecutive year. It needs to be fixed, as we cannot fight wars like this. Because the Marine Corps is reliant on contractors to fix certain systems as a result of data restrictions, Marines have to wait too long and pay too much to fix several of their most important pieces of equipment, Gering said. One such system, he said, is the Amphibious Combat Vehicle program, which fields armored vehicles that can operate on both the water and land. Gering cited a panel in the driver’s compartment of the amphibious vehicle where key system controls are located. The panel “costs $3,040.88 to replace and takes approximately eight months for the repair via support from a secondary repairables exchange contract,” he said. “With access to an original part, however, the repair cycle could be reduced to less than one month — a trained Marine could repair this component in approximately four hours.” … Another key system affected are the masts that hold antennas for Mobile User Objective System terminals. These terminals link Marines who are on foot or in vehicles to communications satellites, providing the troops with smartphone-like voice and data connections to command posts that are beyond the line of sight. Marines were able to develop their own replacement mast that can be built for $10 in 10 hours, whereas a replacement mast from the original manufacturer “could cost up to $5,644.37 and take more than seven months to deliver,” Gering said — adding that the Marine Corps’ mast is “more durable than the original version.” This is a good fight…one that we never should have to fight…but a good one. BZ to all making this push. 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

A Greek Air Force fighter pilot pulled off a landing gear failure Thursday afternoon that could have ended very differently, bringing an F-16 down on its belly at Zakynthos airport after the jet’s wheels refused to extend during a routine training flight. The Hellenic Air Force confirmed the emergency landing occurred around 1:45 p.m. local […]View the full article

Poland’s spending on drones and counter-drone systems has grown 260-fold in under three years, reaching roughly $6.9 billion (26 billion zloty) this year alone, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk announced at a production line unveiling in Sochaczewa, according to Interia. Tomczyk made the announcement Thursday while touring the new manufacturing facility of Hornet-Polskie Drony, […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy released photos showing divers entering Dry Dock 2 as the attack submarine USS Illinois (SSN-786) prepared to undock at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility on June 24, 2026, marking the completion of a scheduled maintenance period for one of the fleet’s most closely watched Virginia-class boats. Open-source trackers monitoring […]View the full article

The scientists and technicians who build America’s newest nuclear bomb just finished a critical manufacturing step three months ahead of schedule, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced, marking another milestone in what officials describe as one of the fastest nuclear weapons development efforts since the Cold War. NNSA said its Y-12 […]View the full article

MITS Capital, an American-Ukrainian investment group, announced on July 9 that it has invested in Dropla Tech, a Danish-Ukrainian defense technology company whose flagship system detects landmines, improvised explosive devices, and ambush drones in real time, though neither company disclosed the deal size or Dropla Tech’s current valuation. Dropla Tech’s core technology, called Blue Eyes […]View the full article

Türkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced an additional $24 billion in funding for Türkiye’s Steel Dome air and missile defense project during the opening session of the NATO Summit in Ankara, according to Turkish defense outlet Ulusavunma. “We have taken measures to raise the ratio of our defense spending to 3.5 percent by 2030,” Erdoğan […]View the full article

Russian state-aligned outlet Izvestia has confirmed that Russian military units operating on the front have received T-72B3A tanks equipped with an upgraded version of the Arena-M active protection system, and that crews are now undergoing additional training before the vehicles are sent to support assault groups attacking fortified Ukrainian positions. Arena-M belongs to a category […]View the full article

Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec announced the delivery of a new batch of Su-30SM2 Flanker-C multirole fighters and Su-34 Fullback fighter-bombers to the Russian military, according to a statement from the manufacturer, framing the handover as part of an ongoing effort to modernize a combat aircraft fleet that open-source trackers say has absorbed dozens of […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force jet meant to finally retire a training aircraft older than most of the pilots flying it is running years behind schedule, even as the service quietly started shopping for companies to upgrade the replacement before it has fully entered service. The Air Force posted a notice on July 8 seeking companies […]View the full article

A British firm building uncrewed patrol boats for NATO navies just crossed the billion-dollar valuation mark, with Kraken Technology Group announcing the close of a $175 million Series B funding round on July 9 that values the company at $1 billion. The round, led by Digital Transformation Capital Partners, or DTCP, arrives less than a […]View the full article

The Belgian government announced plans to acquire the Norwegian-built NASAMS air defense system, according to a press release from manufacturer Kongsberg, signing a cooperation agreement with the Netherlands at the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, that would bring 10 NASAMS batteries into Belgian service as the centerpiece of the country’s first serious rebuild of its […]View the full article

NATO has handed three American and European tech companies the chance to reshape how the alliance’s 32 member nations talk to each other during a real air war, awarding contracts to Anduril, Palantir, and French firm Athea SAS on July 7 as part of a competition to build the software backbone for the alliance’s next-generation […]View the full article

German engineering firm RENK just locked in more than $308 million in future business keeping one of Europe’s newest tracked infantry vehicles actually moving, extending its transmission supply agreement with Rheinmetall for the KF41 Lynx on July 9. The expanded framework agreement, worth more than €270 million ($308.72 million) including options, covers the supply of […]View the full article

A soldier crewing an Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle spots a target through swirling dust or pitch darkness using a sighting system built decades ago, and the Army just committed nearly $56 million to keep engineers refining that system for years to come. DRS Network & Imaging Systems, a subsidiary of Leonardo DRS based in Melbourne, […]View the full article

Leidos received a contract modification worth roughly $27.2 million on behalf of USSOCOM to buy what the military calls All Up Rounds, meaning fully assembled, ready-to-fire missiles rather than components or prototypes, for the AGM-190A Havoc Spear Small Cruise Missile program, with the work centered in Huntsville, Alabama, and expected to run through February 2029. […]View the full article