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I wanted to start this week out with a hearty Bravo Zulu to the Ford Carrier Strike Group, but we started yesterday’s Midrats Podcast with that, and did a good job with it. So, if you’d like, give the episode a listen when you get a chance, but today I want to instead review the military balance sheet on our operations against Iran over the last few months. In the Ford Strike Group’s Presidential Unit Citation, some stats were put on the table: 125 Iranian warships destroyed 207 TLAM launched from 9 surface platforms 1,700 sorties hitting 700 targets We’re still conducting a blockade. Still trying to negotiate with a dead-ender government. The question is, what have we achieved with the expenditure of time, money and lives? I am using the written testimony to Congress of Admiral Cooper, USN—Commander, U.S. Central Command—for the below. He has the best information, so it is a solid place to base the discussion. In less than 40 days of major combat operations, USCENTCOM forces systematically dismantled what Iran spent four decades and tens of billions of dollars building. The capabilities on which the regime relied to threaten our forces, coerce our partners, and project power across the region have been substantially degraded. … Iran can no longer reliably arm or resupply Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, or militia groups in Iraq with advanced weapons. … We damaged or destroyed over 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone, and naval defense industrial base. More than 1,450 strikes on weapons manufacturing facilities set the regime’s ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones back by years. The factories and technical workforce that produced Iran’s ballistic missiles, long-range attack drones, and naval platforms have been degraded to the point that Iran cannot replace its lost capabilities in the near term. … In the air domain, Iran’s air and air defense forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant. Before OEF, the Iranian Air Force flew between 30 and 100 sorties each day. Today that number is zero. We destroyed or rendered non-mission-capable Iran’s fixed-wing airfields, hangars, fuel storage, and munitions stockpiles, and we knocked out 82 percent of its air defense missile systems along with the radar and command architecture that tied them together. At sea, we destroyed 161 vessels in total across 16 classes of warships, effectively crippling the regime’s ability to operate. We eliminated more than 90 percent of Iran’s once-massive inventory of over 8,000 naval mines, with more than 700 airstrikes on Iranian naval mine targets. In sum, Iran’s navy can no longer claim to be a maritime power, and it cannot project into the Gulf of Oman or the Indian Ocean. Iran retains nuisance capability – harassment, low-end drone and rocket attacks, and residual proxy support – but it no longer possesses the means to threaten major regional operations or to deter U.S. freedom of action in the air or maritime domains. As I have stated from the beginning: I support a punitive expedition and can live with the goals outlined by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff early on. In my preferred COA, we would have already decoupled…but facts on the ground change. I’ll repeat again what I have said often when we step into conflicts: war is a dark room. Once you step into it, you really don’t know what is waiting for you. We’re in it now, and at this stage—having taken away the Islamic Republic’s conventional heft and ability to maintain her proxies—we have to deal with the secondary effects—getting the free flow of goods at market prices out of the Strait of Hormuz choke point…while keeping pressure on the Islamic Republic. We are trying to find some agreement with the forces ruling the Islamic Republic that seem content to destroy Iran as long as they rule over the rubble, and impoverish everyone else as long as it helps support goal #1. They are more than happy to do that, just like they were happy threatening anyone with a nuclear weapon once they got it. This is a theocratic government hoping to bring about the end of the world. They are not rational actors in a conventional sense. Where we are now is something beyond a punitive expedition. Something that is starting to show characteristics somewhere between Western intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s and Libya in the 2010s. Not sure how to describe it. We can always step back a bit to the fundamentals of a punitive expedition if we cannot make better progress in our talks. From a military point of view, a core aspect of punitive expedition is that you leave the door open for additional attack should bad behavior continue. We have bad behavior continuing, so we have yet to declare victory and go home. That is a choice, and even if we declare victory and go home now, we will probably have to return later as long as the same cadre runs the Islamic Republic. In Cooper’s statement, he gives hints that he sees the same thing. …Iran cannot replace its lost capabilities in the near term. Iran retains nuisance capability … So, should the Islamic Republic retain its characteristics, expect that it will rebuild its ability to threaten its neighbors, as it always has. Not in the near term. We mowed the grass very short, but in the medium and long term, expect it to grow back. While it grows back, it will still show up to make trouble. Policy makers need to accept that unless they decide they are willing to make a long operation out of this. Not something I would recommend. The Islamic Republic is in a more weakened position than it has ever been due to the efforts of the U.S. and Israel. Its neighbors are now comfortable confronting them on their own if needed, and have grown closer to both the U.S. and Israel in the process. That is good. Iran and its proxies are even more isolated and weaker than they were before, but there will need to be “return visits” to keep them that way. The bombings will continue until behavior improves, so to speak. We should be OK with that. I am. We just don’t need to re-create another Operation Southern Watch. Some of the Smartest People in the Room™ will try to steer us in that direction. They should be ignored. Iran right now is not focused on supporting war via proxies across the globe. They are focused on the survival of the Islamic Republic. That in itself is progress. 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

REGENT Craft has demonstrated the ability to charge its Seaglider vessels entirely away from established port infrastructure, completing a milestone test in partnership with Schneider Electric and World4Solar that the company says unlocks distributed maritime operations in austere and remote environments where conventional charging networks do not exist. The demonstration validated a three-component charging architecture […]View the full article

A Czech drone company with Ukrainian roots has signed a contract to supply reconnaissance unmanned aerial systems to U.S. Army units stationed in Europe, the company announced, marking what appears to be the first confirmed international defense export contract for U&C UAS and placing a European-manufactured ISR drone into American military service on the continent […]View the full article

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has relaunched its search for a precision strike loitering munition under a new program name, issuing a fresh request for information in May 2026 under the designation Project INSTIGATOR, a renamed and restructured version of the Medium Range Precision Strike program that the MOD has been developing since late 2024 with […]View the full article

Ukraine has cleared its first domestically developed guided aerial bomb for combat use, with Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announcing that the weapon has completed all required testing and an initial experimental batch has already been procured by the Ministry of Defense, with pilots currently training on combat scenarios using the new munition. The bomb was […]View the full article

Japan’s Ministry of Defense has released a comprehensive briefing document outlining its space domain defense buildup, revealing a sweeping expansion of military space capabilities that includes a dedicated Space Operations Group growing to 880 personnel, a space defense budget that has surged more than threefold since 2022, and an ambitious program to field satellites capable […]View the full article

Japan’s government is moving to deploy early warning radar-equipped drones over the Pacific Ocean as part of a significant expansion of its surveillance and deterrence posture against China, with the MQ-9B SeaGuardian emerging as the leading candidate platform for a capability that Tokyo considers essential to closing what defense planners have described as a surveillance […]View the full article

Blockades, 11-month deployments, and building plans…a full plate for a Midrats Free for All. We go LIVE at 5 PM Eastern this Sunday. You can join us at this link. If you are reading this after the show, check the Substack later Sunday night for the podcast upload. 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 two-seat variant of Russia’s Su-57 fifth-generation stealth fighter has been photographed conducting ground taxi trials, with Russian military aviation blogger Ilya Tumanov, who operates the widely followed Fighterbomber Telegram channel, confirming the aircraft’s existence on May 16 and describing it as a new two-seat modification of the Felon that completed ground runs as part […]View the full article

Ukrainian drone forces have struck a Russian naval vessel in the Caspian Sea for at least the third time in recent months, publishing footage on May 17 showing a Fire Point FP-1 attack drone successfully locating and hitting a Project 10410 Svetlyak-class patrol boat in the port area of Kaspiisk, Dagestan, more than 1,500 kilometers […]View the full article

South Korean-based Hanwha Aerospace and Estonian robotics company Milrem Robotics signed a teaming agreement at the BSDA 2026 defense exhibition in Bucharest to jointly pursue Romania’s unmanned ground vehicle program, combining Korean wheeled unmanned platform experience with Milrem’s combat-proven tracked UGV technology in a bid to capture one of Eastern Europe’s most strategically significant ground […]View the full article

A British uncrewed aircraft developer has completed ground trials of its CAPSTONE unmanned system with air-to-surface missile simulators, its chief executive announced, while simultaneously operating as a teaming partner with BAE Systems on the British Army’s Project NYX loyal wingman competition. Justin Tooth, Chief Executive Officer of Certo Aerospace, disclosed the missile integration testing in […]View the full article

A U.S. drone company has secured its first international defense contract, winning an order from the Royal Australian Navy to supply Transwing vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft systems for maritime distributed logistics operations, with deliveries of the initial P4 variant scheduled for spring 2026. PteroDynamics Inc., a California-based developer of autonomous VTOL aircraft, announced […]View the full article

A U.S. defense startup is bringing a next-generation counter-drone system to SOF Week 2026 in Tampa that takes a fundamentally different approach to the close-in drone threat: instead of aiming at incoming targets, it keeps multiple barrels constantly rotating through a full hemisphere, eliminating the aiming delay that makes conventional single-barrel systems vulnerable to fast-moving […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is searching for missiles that cost less than $1 million each, issuing a formal request for information on May 15, 2026, that lays out one of the most explicit cost-driven weapons procurement challenges the service has publicly articulated. The Army’s Capability Program Executive for Defensive Fires, operating through the Rapid Capabilities and […]View the full article

The Syrian cargo aircraft that flight-tracking data and Russian media suggest carried Bashar al-Assad and regime officials out of Damascus on the night his government collapsed has returned to Syria, landing at Damascus International Airport on May 14, 2026, after sitting idle at Russia’s Hmeimim Air Base for more than a year and a half. […]View the full article

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone strikes on Moscow in the war’s history overnight into May 17, sending more than 130 unmanned aerial vehicles into the Russian capital and surrounding region, triggering fires at an electronics manufacturing facility and a major oil refinery, forcing all four of Moscow’s major airports to suspend flight operations, […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin has secured a $61 million U.S. Army contract to develop and demonstrate two of the most consequential near-term upgrades to the Patriot air defense system: a containerized missile launcher and a hemispherical guidance device that eliminates one of Patriot’s most significant tactical limitations, the inability to engage threats approaching from outside a fixed […]View the full article

General Dynamics Land Systems has secured a $229.6 million contract to produce 50 Stryker Double V-Hull (DVH) A1 armored vehicles for the U.S. Army, continuing a production line that has delivered one of the service’s most combat-proven wheeled infantry platforms through more than two decades of operational use across multiple theaters. Army Contracting Command at […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a $325.5 million contract to develop a high-altitude long-endurance drone specifically designed to collect test data from high-speed weapons systems, filling a capability gap that has slowed the Pentagon’s ability to evaluate hypersonic and other advanced high-speed programs at the pace that competition with China and Russia demands. […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin has secured a $991 million contract to produce electronic warfare upgrade kits for 432 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters across three U.S. military services and a substantial international customer base, in one of the largest single F-35 modernization awards in the program’s history. The Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Maryland, issued the […]View the full article

Ondas Holdings has unveiled a new robotic ground system called Iron-Wave, a modular unmanned platform designed to integrate multiple robotic units under centralized control and extend military and security operations into contested environments with a reduced operator footprint, the company announced on its official social media account. Ondas Holdings is an American technology holding company […]View the full article

HII, one of only two nuclear-capable shipyards in the United States and the sole builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, has delivered two autonomous surface vessels to the U.S. Marine Corps under a Defense Innovation Unit contract, completing sea testing that validated the ROMULUS-25’s advanced autonomous capabilities in an operational maritime environment, the company announced May […]View the full article

American and Nigerian forces have killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described by President Donald Trump as the second-in-command of ISIS globally, in a joint operation conducted overnight, the president announced via his personal social media account and confirmed through the official White House channel. Trump announced the operation in a post from his social account, stating that […]View the full article

A British aerospace startup that had positioned itself as a potential future replacement for the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows display team has collapsed into administration, citing sustained cashflow pressure caused by repeated delays to the UK Defence Investment Plan and geopolitical factors affecting its funding sources. Aeralis Limited, the developer of a modular light […]View the full article