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As we like to point out, if you pay proper attention, small and medium-sized wars will show you what works, what doesn’t, and probably what you will need should war come your way at some point in the future on a larger scale. Prior to WWI, you had the Boer Wars. Prior to WWII, you had the Spanish Civil War. Right now, we are blessed—or cursed, depending on your focus—with a flood of lessons in the offensive use and defense against swarms of the many, affordable, and massed long-range attack drones, cruise missiles, and conventional ballistic missiles. The Russo-Ukrainian War since 2022 and the U.S.-Israeli conflict against Iran and her proxies since the Hamas invasion of Israel in October 2023 are sending clear signals on what the war in the second quarter of the 21st century demands. There was a minority opinion for decades that there was a missing capability/capacity gap, but it was tut-tut’d away by The Smartest People in the Room™. The War Gods of the Copybook Headings have proven TSPITR’s™ (pronounced ‘T-spit-ter’) peacetime theories wrong. Actual war has shown an insatiable appetite for three simple requirements: Range Scalability Affordability We have Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM). They are great, but they are few, expensive, and a challenge to scale. Same with our other exquisite weapons such as ATACMS, PrSM, etc…but that is what we have at hand. That is what we bought, and we have not bought/cannot buy enough. Bad thing about that is, once you use up those, your only other option is to deliver weapons via manned systems up close and personal, with all the dangers that come with it. Not every target needs a TLAM/ATACMS/PrSM, etc. …and when you have to rack-and-stack your target set, some targets don’t make the cut simply because you only have so many weapons to send downrange at a time. In a contested air environment with a modern air defense system—as we will have to deal with against the People Republic of China—then a certain percentage of your few-and-expensive weapons will never make it to their target. How do you address the issues in the above two paragraphs? We’ve discussed the Shahed/LUCAS “flying lawnmower” here earlier this year. A couple of months ago we touched on another attention getter, Ukraine’s FP-5 Flamingo and what it brings for the Ukrainians: Accuracy. Affordable, scalable accuracy. Where is America’s Flamingo, or something close to it, given that we can only make so many of our exquisite weapons? Well, we seem to have our own version on the way…and we’re bringing Israel and Germany along for the show. US defence contractor Covenant plans to set up a production facility for long-range cruise missiles in the German state of Saxony, the company said on Wednesday. “We will be producing roughly 1,000 in our first year and then scaling to 5,000,” Covenant chief Abigail Denburg said, outlining the company’s “target for annual production.” Covenant also operates a production facility in Texas to supply the US armed forces, as well as a location in Israel. “Covenant’s facility in northern Israel supports engineering and manufacturing, and the company draws heavily on Israeli defence tech talent,” the Jerusalem Post reported. According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “a foreign cargo aircraft” picked up equipment in Israel ahead of a secret weapons test in Morocco last month. Production of the Anthem cruise missile for European customers is to begin next year at the German facility to be set up near Leipzig. It isn’t as large in size or warhead as the Flamingo, but it can carry a 200-kilogram warhead with precision, while offering a reported range of 1,500 kilometers. Some of the specifics vary depending on the source, but here’s the 85% solution for comparison. That storage and handling aspect is critical… and, in a way, sexy. To mass fires, you need mass…sustainable and suitable for storage and ease of maintenance. The team at Covenant seems to have done the right thinking. The TLAM carries a 450-kilogram warhead and can carry that a bit further, but not all that much further. NAVAIR says each TLAM costs $3.64 million, while the Anthem is supposed to be less than a million (though land and not sea-based). You win wars with a high-low mix. We need a low-mix, and many of our allies cannot afford all that many “high”. Just like we pointed out last week in the anti-ballistic missile arena, our allies need to get in this game. They have work to do there, but Anthem gets them in the game of affordable and scalable deep strike. Its missile, called Anthem, is a ground-launched cruise missile carrying a payload of more than 200 kilograms (441 pounds). In a fight, it would be used in high volumes to work alongside other long-range missiles like the 1,000-mile (1,609 kilometers) range Tomahawk cruise missile produced by RTX’s Raytheon unit and the 600-mile Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER). Nice additional tool in the toolbox…and, yes, it works in all sorts of ways west of the International Date Line. Anthem is powered by a solid rocket motor for takeoff and a heavy-fuel jet engine for cruise flight. Covenant says it has flown the missile more than 200 times over the past year in tests. Executives said the missile was built with an eye toward the Pacific. “We were designed for the China fight,” said Covenant President Abby Denburg. Taiwan, call your office. They have already answered some of my follow-on questions. Covenant said it deliberately avoided sole-source suppliers, lining up three solid-rocket-motor providers with a fourth in the works, and locking in long-term agreements for more than 4,000 jet engines over the next two years. The company’s Dallas plant, spanning 105,000 square feet (9,754 square meters), opens on Wednesday and is expected to reach full-rate production of 5,000 missiles a year. Covenant operates a similar-sized facility in Saxony, Germany, which will also have a 5,000-unit-per-year capacity. A smaller site in northern Israel will make 2,000 units a year. Just as an oh-by-the-way thought, it shares the external engine with the Flamingo, just underneath, different to most cruise missiles we are used to seeing. There has to be a good engineering/cost reason for this. If you know it, share in comments. One of the best operationalizations of the requirements at the top of the post that I’ve seen manifested about Flamingo/Anthem in spoken form comes from Covenant’s President and Chief Growth Officer, Abby Denberg. Might as well go to the top. As a side note, I can see why they recruited her. She is an exceptional talent. She adds a bit more in this interview. Cost, for small and large militaries, matters. Yes, there are tradeoffs, but the folks at Missile Matters outline a perfect example. Estonia, for example, was approved between 2022 and 2025 to purchase up to 200 ATACMS short-range ballistic missiles. It could afford three to four times as many low-cost cruise missiles of the types discussed here, yielding a deeper arsenal that could also reach into Russia’s strategic depth rather than being confined to frontline targets. To be clear, ATACMS’ ability to service time-sensitive targets is a quality in itself that states may want regardless of arsenal depth. But depth is a quality of its own, and one that was previously beyond Estonia and most of its small-state peers. This may change soon. This appears fairly turnkey, especially with 200+ flights already complete. There will be no black-pilling. Good things are happening. 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

Lockheed Martin is building four more of its newest combat drones, the company announced September 14, doubling down on a program that’s still more than a year away from ever leaving the ground. The news came from the company’s secretive Skunk Works division, following a major Air Force conference near Washington, D.C., where Skunk Works also […]View the full article

Open-source analysts say wreckage from a short-range ballistic missile turned up in northern Yemen this week, and they believe it points to a weapon type Saudi Arabia has never been confirmed to use before. The debris, identified as the booster stage of a Chinese-made DF-15A, was found in the Raghwan district of Marib Governorate, according […]View the full article

A U.S. Navy warship built to carry Marines ashore just wrapped up a stop at one of America’s most important Pacific outposts. USS San Diego (LPD 22), an amphibious transport dock, departed Naval Base Guam on September 12, 2026, after transiting Apra Harbor during what the Navy described as routine operations in the U.S. 7th […]View the full article

The Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Wing formally welcomed the F-35A Lightning II to Barnes Air National Guard Base on September 13, 2026, marking the aircraft’s arrival after a transition process that began more than three years ago. The ceremony drew Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, military officials and representatives from Kenya and Paraguay, whose […]View the full article

The littoral combat ship USS St. Louis (LCS 19) left Naval Station Mayport on September 13 to take over U.S. Northern Command’s mission patrolling waters near the U.S. southern border, the U.S. Navy said. The ship relieves USS Cooperstown (LCS 23), which returned to Mayport on August 31 after a four-month deployment to the region. […]View the full article

An Eitan wheeled armored personnel carrier fitted with Hetz Dorban, an Israeli-developed hard-kill active protection system, was photographed during a recent training exercise, according to images published on the Israel Defense Forces’ website in August 2026. The system is marketed internationally under its commercial name, Iron Fist, by Elbit Systems. Hetz Dorban uses radar and […]View the full article

Retired Gen. David Petraeus said the Russian drone that struck a train near Ukraine’s border with Poland on September 13 was a jet-powered version of Russia’s Geran/Shahed attack drone, adding a detail Ukrainian officials had not specified in their own statements on the strike. Petraeus, a former CIA director and retired four-star U.S. Army general, […]View the full article

Photos published by military observer Massimo Frantarelli show a Russian Navy corvette in Kronstadt painted to resemble a waterfront building, with outlines suggesting windows and doors on its hull, alongside netting rigged over the deck to blunt drone strikes. The image, credited to M. Mishin and dated August 22, shows the ship at the Leningrad […]View the full article

A Russian satellite built to maneuver alongside and inspect other countries’ spacecraft up close fell back to Earth on September 12, but the object that came down may not have been the real satellite, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks satellite activity. The satellite, Kosmos-2558, launched from […]View the full article

Not totally new info but interesting in combination. https://www.edrmagazine.eu/pas-2025-schiebel-presented-updated-specifications-of-the-camcopter-s-300-uav https://lockheedmartinau.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=2429&item=122701

Under heavy cloud cover, Russia fired a massive barrage of Geran-2 attack drones, the Russian-built version of Iran’s Shahed-136, at western Ukraine early Sunday. The Ukrainian General Staff said Russia launched 863 drones at Ukraine over the previous 24 hours, one of the largest barrages of the war. French open-source analyst Clément Molin wrote on […]View the full article

A long-endurance surveillance drone built by Maryland-based Platform Aerospace was spotted taking off from a Jordanian air base used by U.S. forces on September 13, 2026, according to flight-tracking data shared by an open-source intelligence account. The MenchOsint described it as the first known sighting of the aircraft, known as Vanilla, operating from Jordan. The […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck a Russian chemical plant in Volgograd overnight on September 10-11, 2026, using FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missiles, according to Fire Point, the Ukrainian company that manufactures the weapon. Fire Point said the missiles hit their target directly and sparked a large fire at the facility. The target, Volgogradpromproekt, is a specialty chemicals […]View the full article

The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $140 million sale of four UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters to Argentina, a deal that would give the Argentine Army its first Black Hawks. The approval, notified to Congress on September 10, 2026, follows through on a purchase Argentine officials confirmed earlier this year. The package includes the […]View the full article

A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III landed at Camp Davis South, part of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, marking the first time the heavy-lift aircraft has touched down there in more than 20 years. The roughly 140-ton jet, longer than half a football field, landed alongside Canadian C-130 transports to support […]View the full article

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has finished dismantling the SM-1 nuclear power plant at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the Army’s first nuclear reactor and the first facility in the country to send nuclear-generated electricity into the commercial power grid. The Corps’ Baltimore District completed the last field work this year, closing out a project that […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is testing two rival versions of a new digital command network by putting them in the hands of soldiers in two active-duty divisions at once, and the service’s testing command says it can now judge how each performs within one to two weeks of a field exercise ending, down from the months […]View the full article

The U.S. Coast Guard held a ceremony at Air Station Sacramento, California, marking delivery of the station’s first HC-130J Super Hercules, the aircraft that will eventually replace its smaller C-27J Spartan patrol planes. Vice Adm. Joseph Buzzella, commander of U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area, presided over the event. “This is a monumental step forward for […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Navy said one of its Sargan-3000 uncrewed surface vessels destroyed a Russian drone boat in the Black Sea, describing the engagement as the first battle in history between two uncrewed naval vessels. The Navy said its Defense Intelligence partners spotted the Russian craft before the Sargan-3000 closed in and destroyed it using a remote-controlled […]View the full article

Russia’s state-owned tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod has delivered another batch of T-90M “Proryv” and T-72B3M tanks to the Russian Army, the company said, timed to coincide with Russia’s Tank Crew Day. As with previous shipments, Uralvagonzavod did not disclose how many tanks were included in the batch or where they are headed. The company said the […]View the full article

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration has awarded a $161 million Strategic Breakthrough contract to Antares, a California nuclear startup, to advance a reactor design meant to power spacecraft. The company describes it as the largest Department of War award to date focused specifically on […]View the full article

ELVO, Greece’s main military vehicle manufacturer, has shown off the first Mercedes G-Class “jeeps” modernized under a new refit program built to extend the life of the Greek Army’s aging vehicle fleet rather than replace it outright. The vehicles being upgraded are roughly 30 years old. ELVO is fitting a new engine and automatic transmission, […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has selected Fort Benning, Georgia, as one of five military bases that will host nuclear microreactors under a new Pentagon energy resilience initiative called the Janus Program, Army officials announced August 26, 2026. Fort Benning will pair with California-based Radiant Industries to install three of the company’s one-megawatt Kaleidos microreactors, adding a […]View the full article

Russia’s war against Ukraine has turned unmanned aircraft from a supporting capability into one of the central elements of modern battlefield operations. It has also forced drone manufacturers to confront a problem that peacetime testing cannot fully reproduce: how to keep an aircraft useful when tactics, electronic warfare threats and operational requirements can change within […]View the full article