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What a great weekend for a good old fashioned Midrats Podcast Maritime Melee! Petty domestic political posturing has decided to broach a whole series of our favorite subjects for the last 17 years: carrier shortages, neglect of our auxiliaries in our Combat Logistics Force, leadership at sea, ships adrift…enough for a whole series of shows, but Mark and I promise to keep today’s show to an hour. Join us LIVE from 5--6 PM this Sunday at this link. Jump in the live show chat and share your observations or direct a question to us. DON’T MISS IT! If you’re reading this after the show, check back on the Substack page late Sunday or right before your Monday commute, and we’ll have all the podcast links up so you can catch the fun. No spin. No silly political posturing. Just clear-eyed discussion of the issues, decades in the making…if they’re really issues at all. 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

The U.S. Coast Guard is seeking companies capable of converting new C-130J transport aircraft into HC-130J surveillance planes, part of a program that will eventually cover 28 Coast Guard aircraft and 12 more for Customs and Border Protection. The Coast Guard’s Office of Aviation Acquisition posted a request for information on August 14, asking industry […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force is buying Chinese-made DJI drones for a Wyoming nuclear missile base, using the foreign aircraft as stand-ins for the kind of drones security forces there are training to detect and shoot down. The 90th Contracting Squadron posted a combined synopsis and solicitation on August 14 seeking a small business vendor to […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has opened a Sources Sought notice for production of the T901-GE-900 turboshaft engine, the next-generation powerplant set to replace the T700 series across the service’s Black Hawk and Apache helicopter fleets. The notice, posted August 14 by the Army’s Aviation Turbine Engines Project Office, asks industry to identify companies capable of executing […]View the full article

Andreas Rupprecht, a researcher who tracks Chinese military aviation, published a photograph he says shows what is likely the first clear image of a J-10CE fighter jet belonging to the Uzbekistan Air Force. “Likely the first clear(er) image of an Uzbekistan Air Force J-10CE,” Rupprecht wrote. Uzbekistan has reportedly agreed to purchase 24 J-10CE fighters […]View the full article

A Spanish F-18 fighter jet flying NATO air policing duty shot down a drone that crossed into Romanian airspace early Sunday, marking the fourth drone Romania has shot down this year, the country’s Ministry of National Defence said. Romanian radar systems detected the aircraft entering national airspace at 4:44 a.m. local time, arriving from neighboring […]View the full article

Russia’s A-50U airborne early warning aircraft function as “flying quarterbacks” for its air defense network, and Moscow has no near-term way to replace the ones it has lost, defense researcher Michael Bohnert wrote in a recent analysis of the fleet. Bohnert said the aircraft’s value comes down to line of sight and the curvature of […]View the full article

OM Defence Systems demonstrates X7 counter-drone interceptor across NATO trials, shifting engagements from FPV pilots to operator-supervised autonomy. UK-based OM Defence Systems is demonstrating the X7 drone interceptor to NATO and British military users and using each event to capture customer requirements, as it moves the counter-drone engagement out of the hands of FPV pilots […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing a $75 million modification to buy initial spare parts for two VC-25B aircraft, the in-development replacement for the current Air Force One fleet. The modification brings the cumulative value of the underlying contract to $4.49 billion, up from $4.42 billion. The modification, listed as P00187 to contract FA8625-16-C-6599, […]View the full article

Boeing has been awarded a $636.1 million modification to its ongoing contract to repair and supply components for the U.S. Army’s AH-64 Apache helicopter fleet, according to a Department of War contract announcement. The modification pushes the cumulative value of the underlying contract past $1.1 billion. The modification, listed as PZ0022 to contract W58RGZ-24-C-0028, covers […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded a $10 billion contract with a potential 26-year term to overhaul how it trains new helicopter pilots, shifting initial flight instruction at Fort Rucker, Alabama, to a contractor-owned, contractor-operated model. M1 Support Services L.P., based in Denton, Texas, won the firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, beating out 10 other bidders after the […]View the full article

AM General has been awarded a new indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to build High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles for the Army, with this initial action valued at $82.2 million against a cumulative ceiling of up to $754.6 million, the Department of War announced Aug. 13. Work locations and funding will be determined with each individual order […]View the full article

Airbus Helicopters Inc. has been awarded a $115.4 million contract to build up to 12 more UH-72B Lakota helicopters for the U.S. Army, the Department of War announced Aug. 14. The contract covers the helicopters themselves, designated the MBB-BK 117 D3, along with jettisonable cockpit doors, air conditioning system installation, engine inlet barrier filters and […]View the full article

Researchers at Monash University have published a capacity maturity model for assessing how prepared a country is to defend itself against disinformation campaigns, backed by a 103-page white paper that lays out the reasoning behind it in far more depth than the university’s public summary of the project disclosed. The model and white paper were […]View the full article

Thermopylae Aerospace, a California-based interceptor drone startup launched in June 2025 by a young Ukrainian engineer, said it completed a successful end-to-end demonstration of its SPART interceptor at Edwards Air Force Base, briefing senior Air Force Test Center leadership on the system during the “Game of Drones 26-2” event in mid-July. “At 412th Test Wing, […]View the full article

UFORCE, the London-headquartered maker of Ukraine’s Magura naval drones, is touting a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian air defenses in Crimea as evidence for its pitch to the Pentagon, days before the deadline for a Defense Innovation Unit prize challenge seeking naval drones that can launch their own aircraft. Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency, GUR, […]View the full article

Ukrainian long-range strikes hit an industrial site in Samara, Russia, overnight into Aug. 15, triggering a regional air raid alert and a series of explosions residents reported hearing across the city, according to Russian officials and Ukrainian open-source monitoring of the aftermath. Samara region governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev confirmed that a missile struck an industrial enterprise […]View the full article

A drone found washed up on a UK beach turned out to be a Skyhammer interceptor built by Cambridge Aerospace, the British startup that closed a $300 million funding round at a $3.4 billion valuation earlier this month, according to a Reddit thread and a subsequent technical breakdown posted on social media by UAV engineer […]View the full article

U.S. defense giant Northrop Grumman unveiled Raid Hunter on Aug. 11, a 50mm gun-based air defense system built to counter cruise missiles and drone swarms at short range around military bases and other critical sites. The system pairs the company’s XM913 Bushmaster III chain gun with newly developed precision-guided 50mm ammunition and a networked system […]View the full article

Quit? That is what other people do. I wonder how well he is known in his own nation. It really doesn’t matter, I think. Anyone who has worn the uniform should be able to look to this officer and simply say, “stud.” Naval aviator and all.. Via TheDailyMail; Japan declared war on Germany and (Oberleutnant Gunther) Pluschow flew in a single-seat Rumpler Taube plane to neutral China while under heavy fire from the Royal Navy. He obtained a false passport in the name of E.F McGarvin and boarded the SS Mongolia which left Shanghai to San Francisco on December 5, 1914. He travelled across neutral America and obtained another false passport that proclaimed him to be Swiss national Ernst Smith. In February 1915 he sailed from New York to British controlled Gibraltar on an Italian passenger steamer. He talked his way past a Royal Naval officer but was caught out by the suspicious interpreter. Along with other captured Germans, Pluschow was shipped to Plymouth and then on to the PoW camp at Donington Hall, where he arrived in May 1915. On July 4 he and fellow prisoner Oskar Trefftz broke out by climbing over two 9ft barbed wire fences, before changing clothes and walking 15 miles to Derby where they caught a train to London. By the next morning the men’s escape was featured in the Daily Sketch newspaper with both names and descriptions of the pair. They went their separate ways but Trefftz was recaptured at Millwall Docks. Realising he had to alter his appearance, Pluschow removed his smart tie and handed his coat in at the cloakroom at Blackfriars station. As he handed the garment over the attendant asked him ‘What name is it?’ Without thinking Pluschow replied in German ‘meinen’ (mine). Luckily, the attendant wasn’t paying attention and wrote ‘Mr Mine’ on the receipt. The German then used scraped-up coal dust, boot polish and Vaseline to change his fair hair to greasy black and covered himself in soot to make him appear as a dock worker. He wandered around the docks and on July 7 he overheard a conversation about a Dutch ship due in at Tilbury. He caught a train to the Essex port ... He later swum into the Thames in a bid to reach a rowing boat to take him out to the moored ship but the current was too strong and he was washed ashore exhausted. He then spent four more days and nights making several attempts to row to the vessel before he was able to climb up a thick mooring rope and stow away in a lifeboat. When the vessel, the Prinses Juliana, docked at Flushing in Holland, he melted into the crowd of passengers before sneaking out through a door marked private. He was challenged by a Dutch policeman on the train from Flushing to Germany and, fortuitously, was allowed to carry on his journey despite having no identity papers. The only German POW from WWI to escape and make it home. He died in 1931 at age 44 while exploring in Chile. Of note, he wrote a book of his adventures: The Adventures of the Aviator from Tsingtao: My Experiences on Three Continents 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’s Security Service (SBU) says its Alfa special operations unit is running what the agency calls a unique operation to isolate an entire stretch of front-line territory, using a category of strike drones it calls “middle-strike” to cut Russian supply routes. Over the past month, SBU special operations fighters destroyed or damaged nearly 2,400 Russian […]View the full article

German ARX Robotics and its Ukrainian manufacturing partner Roboneers have delivered 30 unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine’s Defense Forces, equipping a single regiment to run logistics, casualty evacuation and ammunition resupply missions with unmanned systems at the same time, the German company said. The regiment is now operating the vehicles across multiple mission types simultaneously, […]View the full article

Avidrone Aerospace said this week it will develop a new version of Katana, the single-rotor helicopter drone that won the top prize at DARPA’s Lift Challenge earlier this month in Dayton, Ohio. Katana carried a 51-kilogram (112.4-pound) payload aboard a 13.3-kilogram (29.3-pound) airframe, producing an official payload-to-aircraft-weight ratio of 3.84 to 1, Avidrone said. The […]View the full article

Oshkosh Defense and the Marine Corps’ Marine Depot Maintenance Command manufactured an identical, approved replacement part for a Marine Corps heavy truck at two separate production sites, one in Japan and one in Georgia, using the same secure digital blueprint during Exercise Valiant Shield 2026, the company said in a release. Oshkosh Defense, an Oshkosh […]View the full article

Most are familiar with the rolling train wreck of missed opportunities, bad theory, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, and destroyed careers that the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) left in its wake…and still does. Many of us remember the mission set it was supposed to meet compared to the shambolic grabassery it transmogrified into. Looking back at the sales pitch by the ascendant transformationalists just makes you sick to your stomach what they did to Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and Captain Wayne Hughes’ concept. We also remember the mission set of the recently decommissioned-without-relief Cyclone Class Patrol ships and why we had them—with the added side-benefit of the LT/LCDR command opportunity that, with the departure of our MIW ships as well, is now gone. The requirements are still here. We can see them in the Persian Gulf today, but sadly we still have an unbalanced fleet with nothing on the low-end. I remain convinced it was a great error not to have replaced the 330-ton PC with…something. Even at the last minute, we could have extended the 4-ship production of the 600-ton Ambassador MK III missile boats that we built for Egypt. These ships were built in Pascagoula by VT Halter Marine, managed by NAVSEA…all American, and she came ready to party with: 8 × RGM-84 Boeing Harpoon SSM Block 1G in 2 quad canister launchers 1 × OTO Melara Mk 75 76 mm/62 Super Rapid DP gun 1 × Mk 31 Mod 3 RIM-116 RAM (21 missiles) 1 × Raytheon Mk 15 Mod 21 Phalanx (Block 1B) 20 mm Phalanx CIWS 2 × deck-mounted 7.62 mm M60 machine guns[1] She’s easy on the eyes too. I’ll put something else on the table for you, roughly the same size as the Ambassador MK III, the 680-ton Falaj 3-class patrol boat whose Hull 1 hit the water 18 months ago. She’s ready too. Leonardo 76mm OTO Super Rapid gun equipped with the STRALES guided ammunition system eight-cell vertical launch system loaded with MBDA VL MICA surface-to-air missiles 21-cell Raytheon Mk 49 launcher for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) four MM40 Exocet Block 3C anti-ship missiles two 12-cell Low-cost Guided Imaging Rocket (LOGIR) guided rocket launchers two Electro Optic Systems (EOS) R400-M 30mm remote weapon stations She’s easy on the eyes as well. Yes, there are those who argue that the U.S. Navy has no use for such small ships. Frankly, I’m tired of arguing with them. They are wrong. Call them small corvettes or “heavily armed OPV”…or better yet the Salamander-approved “Sloop of War”…does not matter. It is a gapping hole in our fleet design. Imagine the surface warfare leaders we would build if they were able to earn a Lieutenant command in one of these. Since we first started talking with Jerry Hendrix about this 17 years ago, it has made complete sense…but alas, we’re on the losing end of the argument. Imagine having a couple of these working with our Arleigh Burke DDG in the latest operations against Iran? It sells itself. 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