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The AC-130J Ghostrider is one of the most heavily armed aircraft in the U.S. military, a modified cargo plane converted into a gunship that circles slowly overhead and rains down precision fire on ground targets. It carries a 30 mm cannon, a 105 mm howitzer, and a mix of guided bombs and missiles, all controlled […]View the full article

Poland may be preparing to buy around a dozen Airbus A400M Atlas heavy transport aircraft through the European Union’s SAFE defense financing mechanism, according to Polish defense analyst Jarosław Wolski, who cited unnamed sources in an August 25 post on X. Wolski wrote that the numbers he has heard range from 8 to 15 aircraft, […]View the full article

Sen. Richard Blumenthal toured a Ukrainian drone production line in Kyiv and said the country is manufacturing “thousands” of attack drones every day, offering a rare on-the-record look from a sitting U.S. lawmaker at the scale of Ukraine’s wartime drone industry. Blumenthal named the company as SkyFall, a Ukrainian defense technology firm, in a post […]View the full article

Satellite images showing a stealth fighter-shaped object at a former Chinese airport turn out to depict a fire-fighting trainer mock-up, according to Chinese aerospace analyst Andreas Rupprecht. Rupprecht made the assessment in an August 25 post on X, sharing images that show Chinese military firefighters conducting a live training exercise around the mock-up, including one […]View the full article

Austria’s Bundesheer received its first modernized Ulan infantry fighting vehicle and Leopard 2A4 tank at a handover ceremony in Großmittel on August 25, Austria’s Ministry of Defense announced. Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner attended the event. The modernization program is part of a broader force-development plan the ministry calls Aufbauplan ÖBH 2032+. Work on the armored […]View the full article

CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow for meetings on August 25, CBS News reported, citing multiple sources. The trip explains the previously unexplained flight of a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III that landed at Vnukovo International Airport near Moscow that morning after departing Riga, Latvia. The Kremlin said it had “no information” about […]View the full article

Russia’s Baltic Fleet has fitted several of its warships with improvised netting and irregular camouflage patterns as makeshift protection against drone strikes, according to footage circulating from a recent fleet exercise. The images show at least three vessels equipped with different combinations of netting, deformation-pattern paint and other visual countermeasures on their bridges, radar housings […]View the full article

The general director of a Russian state-backed drone development center was arrested and jailed on fraud charges, according to Russian outlets reporting August 25. Yevgeny Grigoryev, head of the TulaDrone Research and Production Center, was detained in Tula and ordered held for two months by a court on August 14, according to the local outlets […]View the full article

The U.S. Army awarded General Dynamics Land Systems a $54,281,616 contract to provide sustainment support for the Stryker vehicle fleet, the Department of War announced August 24. The cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract covers field-level maintenance, field service representative support and fielding activities. The contract specifically applies when interactive electronic technical manuals and logistics products have not […]View the full article

The U.S. Army awarded Hardwire LLC a $99 million contract to develop advanced processing methods for metallic armor, the Department of War announced August 24. The contract runs through Phase III of the Small Business Innovative Research program and has an estimated completion date of August 23, 2031. Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, […]View the full article

Earlier this year, I got a quick brief on the upscaled version of Saildrone’s surface unmanned system, which has a solid dozen years of proven performance at sea. I will admit, I was not fully sold when the program first started with the 7-meter Explorer’s deployment to CENTCOM a half dozen years ago, but they’ve proven their utility. Now, let me put some figures in front of you: Displacement: 457 metric tons Length: 53 meters Speed: 20 knots That sounds like a pretty big drone, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. That is a WWII-era PC-461-class submarine chaser. There’s your reference point in size, and from my seat, mission. What are the figures for Saildrone’s Spectre? Displacement: 250 metric tons Length: 52 meters Speed: 30 knots A lot lighter, but the Spectre does not carry weapons and does not have to house and sustain a crew of 65. What do they propose to do with it? It can be configured for a variety of missions, but anti-submarine warfare is what caught my eye. Saildrone is also working with Thales to integrate the Combined Active Passive Towed Array Sonar-4 (CAPTAS) Variable Depth Sonar on Spectre. This project expands on previous Office of Naval Research-funded work, integrating Thales Australia’s BlueSentry array on the Saildrone Surveyor. CAPTAS is the tail they are planning to put on the truncated FFG-62 frigates. They are making a compact version for drones like the Spectre. Saildrone has already played around with Thales Australia’s BlueSentry array and the TB29 thin-lined towed array, so this looks to be low-risk—though I have my usual concerns about security/reachback/bandwidth/fidelity loss…but these can be—and from what I’ve been able to glean in open-source, mitigagted. Now, if you have not already thought of SURTASS and T-AGOS…then shame on you. Now, CAPTAS on a drone may not be as “special” as what SURTASS and T-AGOS bring to the game…and we don’t need to go into those details on this net…however…FF(X) Flight I does not have a 21st-century ASW capability. The oceans are big. The Russian submarines are few but sporty. The People’s Republic of China’s submarines are not as sporty but are many. The challenges and requirements Jerry Hendrix and friends outlined in 2017 still apply…and can be transposed to other areas of the world. ASW is a numbers game. The oceans are big. More ‘good’ tails in the water pretty soon beat a few ‘perfect’ tails that may or may not be available at some point in the out-years. Yes, they’re unarmed, but I’m not all that worried about the “attack” part of the locate-track-attack chain. We have decades of multi-platform ASW prosecutions, with one dissimilar unit handing off contact or directing an attack on a target based on information gained from another. Our friend Mr.T’sHaircut can do it in his sleep. The Maritime Gods of the Copybook Headings gave us and our allies the P-8A Poseidon for a reason. The Spectre hulls are being built by our friends at Fincantieri Marinette Marine up north, and the composite wing by American Magic Services in Pensacola, so we have a good blue-gray combo. This is good. Let’s get a half-dozen in the water sooner rather than later. Get them to VACAPS, mark off some waterspace, and challenge the geeks from Groton to try to transit from point-A to point-B. Place bets. It’s all for fun and freedom…let’s see what they can do. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Leave a comment Share View the full article

Ukraine’s Independence Day parade in Kyiv on August 24 included a new naval drone, the MV11, from the Ukrainian company UFORCE. It is the largest vessel yet built in the company’s MAGURA family, an unmanned surface vessel line credited with helping push Russia’s Black Sea Fleet back from Ukrainian waters. The parade marked the first […]View the full article

Rows of black, Shahed-shaped airframes stretch across a production floor in newly released footage marking Ukraine’s Independence Day, offering the clearest public look yet at how many Behemoth “mid-range” one-way attack drones the country is now building at once. The video shows dozens of the drones mounted on wooden and metal stands, wingtip to wingtip, […]View the full article

AIM-424 “Malice” Very Long-Range Air-To-Air Missile Emerges From The Shadows (Updated) (The War Zone)

Back during the previous Cold War, we knew that range was life. We had a heavy fighter in the F-14 built around a beast (for its day) of an air-to-air missile, the AIM-54C Phoenix with its 99.4 nautical mile (nm) range. A few years ago, we found a stopgap with a modified SM-6 called the AIM-174B Gunslinger, but it wasn’t quite what we needed in the long term—though it did get us 150+ nm. Via Carter Johnson at Naval News: The U.S. Navy’s newest air-to-air missile, the AIM-424 Malice…is capable of hitting targets over 250 nautical miles (463 kilometers) away, leveraging a 13.5″ diameter and aerodynamic profile that appears to have been built for range. That range would exceed estimates of all currently known Chinese air-to-air missiles that have widely been recognized as major threats to U.S. airpower in the Pacific. …and it has a proper name we can call it: “Malice”. Excellent. The Navy’s official announcement couldn’t help itself. “The Department of the Navy is developing the AIM-424 Long Range Air-to-Air Missile (LRAAM), a next-generation missile intended to strengthen fleet defense and maintain a decisive air-domain overmatch against advanced threats. Also known as Malice, the LRAAM directly supports the Department’s contribution to integrated deterrence by increasing range, lethality, and combat effectiveness for Marine and Naval Aviation forces that are defending our fleets, our interests, and our homeland. Further details regarding specific capabilities and deployment timelines remain classified to protect operational security.” Bleh. Too many Bullsh1t Bingo words. And threw in an unpronounceable acronym. Someone keep the engineers away from communicating with humans, please. Here’s the real sexy part. The broad range of aircraft include the U.S. Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47 and the U.S. Navy’s F-35C, F/A-18, and potentially the F/A-XX. At least one captive-carry flight test was disclosed in the Navy’s image release, dating back to April 2026. A fit test on an F-35 appears to have been conducted earlier this month in August. Internal carry, as per the pic. Of course, I’m getting a bit greedy. I’d like to know if it has—in theory, of course—an anti-satellite capability. Can it be configured as an anti-radiation missile for SEAD? Can we adjust its programming so it can be used in an anti-surface mode? I know, I know. Patience…patience… 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

Ukraine held what organizers described as the world’s first military parade composed entirely of unmanned systems on August 24, 2026, marking the country’s Independence Day with a display of ground, naval, and aerial drones instead of traditional manned formations. Dozens of ground robotic systems moved down Kyiv’s main street, built for logistics, reconnaissance, and combat […]View the full article

Europe’s defense industry has faced a growing series of fires, explosions and deliberate attacks in 2026, many of them affecting companies that manufacture weapons, ammunition, drones or other equipment for Ukraine. Western intelligence sources increasingly view the incidents as part of a Russian campaign intended to disrupt military supply chains, intimidate manufacturers and test how […]View the full article

French drone maker Cavok UAS is developing a containerized launch system designed to deploy swarms of its Skydart5 interceptor drones, an effort flagged by Counter Unmanned Systems on X after Cavok UAS described the concept. Cavok UAS, based in Sainte-Menehould in France’s Marne region, posted a schematic image of the dispenser alongside a description of […]View the full article

The Royal Navy’s Dreadnought-class submarines share a missile compartment design, a nuclear propulsion technology exchange, and the same missile as the U.S. Navy’s Columbia class, according to a Congressional Research Service assessment cited by the UK Defence Journal. Both submarine programs are now past the point of no return. All four British boats, HMS Dreadnought, […]View the full article

Austal USA delivered LCU 1710 to the U.S. Navy on August 14, 2026, the first vessel completed under the Navy’s LCU 1700-class program and the first steel-hulled ship the shipbuilder has ever delivered to the service. Austal USA, based in Mobile, Alabama, has built its Navy business primarily on aluminum vessels, including Independence-variant littoral combat […]View the full article

Ukraine has mounted interceptor drone launchers on a Mi-8 helicopter, with footage of the system shown in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Independence Day address, Militarnyi reported. The footage shows an interceptor launching from beneath one of the helicopter’s hardpoints, using simple metal launch rails mounted under the airframe. The drone is likely controlled either from inside […]View the full article

Russian officials say a volunteer air defense unit in Kursk Region shot down a Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile using machine-gun fire during an overnight attack this weekend, an unusual claim for a weapon Russia has typically engaged with surface-to-air missile systems. Kursk Region Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein said the intercept happened overnight Saturday into Sunday, […]View the full article

Shipbuilders at BAE Systems Australia laid the keel of NUSHIP Hunter on August 24, 2026, marking the formal start of hull assembly on the first ship in Australia’s Hunter class frigate program. The ceremony took place at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in South Australia. Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy and Chief of Navy Vice […]View the full article

The European Commission approved €6.1 billion ($7.12 billion) in new defense procurement funding for Ukraine on August 24, 2026, the same day Ukraine marked its Independence Day. The money covers air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition and radars. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tied the timing directly to the war. “On Ukraine’s Independence […]View the full article

For me, it is funny but serious that the phrase I started saying in 2019 that we were going to keep building Arleigh Burke DDGs “until the crack of doom” has turned into prophecy. With the anticipated death of DDG(X) and FFG-62, the Burkes are about the only game in town. That fact naturally flows into a point we have raised here and on the Midrats Podcast for the last couple of decades: How are we going to conduct repair and maintenance under combat conditions should we find ourselves in a fight west of the International Date Line? Well, we’ve got the perfect intersection of both issues for the next episode of Midrats. This RAND Report from May caught my eye: The Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyer, commonly known as a DDG-51, is the primary surface combatant vessel of the U.S. Navy. These ships—designed to operate in contested environments—are likely to sustain widespread battle damage from diverse attacks should a conflict develop in the Indo-Pacific region. The prevalent nature of this damage would give rise to the greatest demand for ship repair that the Navy has experienced since World War II. To evaluate requirements for and potential issues with a significant demand for salvaging and repairing battle-damaged destroyers, the authors conducted a tabletop exercise on August 13–14, 2025, with participants from the United States and allied nations in the Indo-Pacific. The participants were split into four groups, and each group represented U.S. and allied stakeholders who would be involved in the repairs. The report is titled, Battle Damage Repair for Arleigh Burke–Class Destroyers: Tabletop Exercise Results. Our guest is one of the authors of the report, Bradley Martin. You can listen at this link, or via the Spotify widget below. Bradley Martin is a senior policy researcher at RAND. He retired from the Navy as a surface warfare Captain after 30 years of service, including four command tours. In addition to his operational tours, Martin served on the staff of U.S. Forces Japan, on the OPNAV staff as an operations analyst, and, most recently, as the Navy coordinator for participation in Joint Staff and OSD requirements and resources forums. His subspecialties included operations research, operational logistics, and strategic planning. His work at RAND focuses on Navy force structure and capabilities, supply chain security and resilience, and national security strategy. Prior to joining the Navy, he achieved a doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan, while working as a research assistant for the Correlates of War Project. Show LinksBattle Damage Repair for Arleigh Burke–Class Destroyers Repair CFT Brief for JTEG Forum on “Expeditionary Repair” CDR Erich C. Schwarz, USN, July 2022 SummaryIn this episode, we explore the insights from a recent tabletop exercise on naval repair capabilities and strategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific, featuring Captain Brad Martin. We discuss the importance of organic repair assets, the vulnerabilities of fixed bases, and the need for adaptable logistics in wartime scenarios. Chapters00:00: Introduction to the tabletop exercise and its significance 04:02: What makes a successful tabletop exercise and team composition 09:01: Key findings: surprises and vulnerabilities in naval repair 15:03: The importance of organic repair capabilities and their current gaps 21:03: Lessons from history: Cold War to modern challenges 27:11: The impact of logistics, parts, and industrial base on wartime readiness 34:01: Geopolitical considerations and the role of partner nations 40:09: The need for mobile, flexible repair assets in contested environments 50:05: Concluding thoughts: preparing for a prolonged conflict 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