All Activity

The Javelin Joint Venture delivered the first Lightweight Command Launch Units to the U.S. Army, putting a next-generation launcher into soldiers’ hands that offers twice the target detection and recognition range of the unit it replaces while cutting weight by 25 percent and size by 30 percent. The delivery, announced from Tucson, Arizona where Raytheon […]View the full article

Thales completed the first successful test firings of its new X-Fire multiple rocket launcher, confirming that France is moving at serious pace toward a sovereign long-range strike capability that does not depend on foreign ammunition for its core operational function. The system, developed jointly with French vehicle manufacturer Soframe and mounted on an agile 8×8 […]View the full article

Beretta Defense Technologies will unveil a new remote-controlled weapon station for counter-drone operations at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris next month, bringing to the exhibition a platform that mounts eight Benelli Drone Guardian shotgun systems on a single automated turret capable of tracking and engaging drone targets without requiring an operator to physically aim the weapon. […]View the full article

Three American defense companies have been selected to compete in the Phase II qualifier of the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program in June 2026 at Camp Grayling, Michigan, putting them in contention for a share of a program that aims to deliver more than 300,000 drones to U.S. forces by 2027 under a total budget of […]View the full article

Teledyne FLIR Defense announced a major upgrade to its Rogue 1 loitering munition at SOF Week in Tampa, doubling the system’s operating range to more than 12 miles and adding an anti-armor warhead that uses shaped charge jet technology to defeat more heavily protected targets than the original platform could engage. The Rogue 1 Block […]View the full article

Teledyne FLIR Defense unveiled a new throwable reconnaissance robot at SOF Week in Tampa that shares a common controller with the company’s Black Hornet 4 nano-drone, allowing a single soldier to operate both a ground robot and an aerial drone without switching equipment or relearning workflows. The FirstLook 125, announced at the special operations conference […]View the full article

So, half a decade after we started the program to design our next oiler, all we have is this circa-1998 MS Paint graphic. We have what we have. Let’s look at where it started. The TAOL program (referred to in some documents as the NGLS or Next-Generation Medium Logistics Ship program) was initiated in the Navy’s FY2021 budget submission. The program envisages building a new class of CLF ships (or a family of CLF ship designs) that would be smaller and individually less expensive to procure than the Navy’s current CLF ships. Figure 1 shows a sketch of a Navy notional TAOL design concept. The Navy states that the TAOL is planned to be, “a new class of ships to augment the traditional Combat Logistics Force (CLF) to enable refueling, rearming, and resupply of Naval assets— afloat and ashore—near contested environments via ship-to-ship operations and ship-to port operations in support of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE), and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). Augmenting the traditional CLF, NGLS will provide a flexible, responsive platform to move fuel, personnel, equipment, and supplies between ships, advanced bases, ports, and dispersed nodes of the seabase; sustaining afloat (Surface Action Group) and ashore (Expeditionary Advanced Base) requirements.” The theory behind the T-AOL program is that future logistics requirements will shift toward a “smaller, more numerous” fleet to support dispersed operations, and sees it operating in littoral areas and contested environments, offering a smaller, more flexible, and more responsive logistical platform compared to existing large tankers. The “existing large tankers”—there’s the rub—we’ll get to that in a minute. That is the theory of the case for T-AOL. Sounds about right for the thinking of 2020/21. Place and time is important. Does it really reflect what recent combat operations tell us we need to “complement” existing tankers? The Maritime Gods of the Copybook Headings have had a field day since this concept became an official program—especially when it comes to the centrality of an effective auxiliary fleet to support a fighting fleet forward. The Red Hills fuel crisis in Hawaii makes getting the volume of fuel needed in the Pacific to support combat operations much more difficult. Real world, not theoretical, combat operations in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf have proven that even third and fourth-rate naval powers can send the full-spectrum threat—from low-and-slow attack drones to anti-ship ballistic missiles—to any ship that gets inside its envelope. Poorly defended or inadequately escorted ships that wander close to shore are little more than floating monuments to arrogance. Access to safe and close logistics hubs and ready access for foreign ports cannot be assumed. Other nations may not share our national interests, nor have secure facilities outside the range of the enemy’s precision long-range fires. Our strike groups need to take their supplies with them, and in contested environments, the units will be many and the demands will outstrip the supply for everything from fuel to weapons. Putting all your goods in one basket is a risk, but you have to have baskets that can carry what you need. LOCE and EABO are not looking as good as they briefed half a decade ago. The case for molding the USMC and CLF around them at the expense of other missions is wearing very thin in the face of the reality of combat that we have all seen unfold since they were put forward. When will the T-AOL show up? Released earlier this month, the 2027 Shipbuilding Plan is our best datapoint as to the progress of the program, but besides having a “1” in the FY31 column, nothing more is mentioned. The program has shifted to the right, again. By the time they appear, will they still be the sole answer to our most pressing challenge when it comes to getting beans, bullets, and fuel to the fight? How many WorldWars lengths of time will it take for this program to serve the fleet? It’s looking like at least four at this point from when the program started. As the world’s largest navy continues to experiment and innovate with short development cycles, we continue to demonstrate why we are the world’s second largest navy. This is an auxiliary, a small one at that, not a nuclear submarine. Look what previous generations did with completely new systems in radically new platforms no one even thought of a decade earlier. They did it with slide rules. Back to the now. A lot has happened in the maritime world since 2021 that should inform how we structure the CLF. Do we need small capacity oilers? Sure, I can see that. It sure does distribute risk where you get close. Ships will be hit. They will be sunk. But you have to get across the planet first before you get close. Can we assume that the “Light” part means they will have a substantially smaller capacity and will carry it into the fight much slower? We do have one oiler in production, that has its own problems, but its in production. Generally known as the John Lewis class oiler, it is referred to as the T-AO 205 class oiler in the plan. The T-AO 205 class oiler is the replacement class for the current fleet of Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO 187) class oilers, which are reaching the end of service life. T-AO 205 class oilers will be the primary refuel asset to Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) and other afloat forces and will provide vital Navy intra-theater replenishment capabilities. These capabilities enable credible logistics support for global presence and wartime missions. These ships are produced by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, CA. The first five T-AO 205s (hulls 205-209) have delivered with T-AO 210 planned to deliver in the summer of 2026. 31Navy plans to procure 20 of these ships. The 2024 block buy contract created opportunity to deliver remaining ships ahead of the planned delivery schedule with significant cost savings for Navy as well provide GD NASSCO’s industrial base with a stable workload through FY35. The 205’s carry 162,000 barrels of oil at 20 knots. How much will the “Light” carry? How fast? 100,000? 120,000? 80,000? 18 knots, 20 knots? Of course, we don’t know any of this a half-decade after the start of the program because we continue to use an ossified and accretion-encumbered system to design and build ships that has failed us over and over during the last three decades. We continue the failed policies and procedures of the past, and yet expect different results. Even worse, like LCS, we continue to shape our fleet by chasing the shadows of fleeting fashions and trends ungrounded in sound military experience, but instead by personality, exciting “pick me” theorists, and by some leaders’ desire to be seen as visionary people. Not solid stewards of maritime power, but “transformational visionaries”. Meanwhile in a parallel but very real universe, the world continues to demonstrate what is needed. We continue to ignore the clear requirement as we demand our carriers and surface combatants race from one hemisphere to another. The WWII and Cold War generations got it right: we need fast and big to feed the fleet on the high seas. It isn’t an “either/or” but an “and”. This year, from the Caribbean to the Arabian Sea, those who needed the US Navy to go wherever they needed to be appreciated the value that came from the Supply Class AOE/T-AOE. We only have two left. Fast combat support ships were envisioned the last time the US Navy faced a serious challenge on the high seas. That concept was reinforced by proper understanding of what would be required should we have to fight the Soviet Union. Too many have forgotten that in the Jesus Jones Era. Those same demands for global power projection, learned through experience in WWII and the Cold War, are back with the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China Though an atom-powered CVN can outrace a fast combat support ship, she is the only thing we have that can keep up with our conventionally powered escorts when they need to be the firstest with the mostest, all while carrying 177,000 barrels of oil at a top speed of 25 knots, along with ammo and dry stores. Are the T-AOLs really the only answer to what the 2030s Navy needs, or are they General Berger oilers running on bureaucratic inertia? Again, I can—if I squint—see a case for them, but only as part of the answer, not the future’s foundation, and unquestionably not what the big fight will demand. Regardless, it is something we won’t even see until over a decade after it was the glimmer in OPNAV’s eye. History is back, and she has unfinished business for all of us. Build the T-AOL, sure…but we need a new AOE class, sooner rather than later. And yes, I called it an AOE and not a T-AOE for a reason. 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 Netherlands sent more than 60 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks to Ukraine, dispatching them by rail for use by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force Command, the branch of the Ukrainian military that operates the country’s drone forces and has become one of the most consequential fighting formations in the war against Russia. The Dutch Ministry of […]View the full article

A French startup’s experimental cargo drone lifted off the ground for the first time in Le Havre, confirming that a pressurized textile wing, an inflatable structure replacing the conventional rigid skin and internal ribs of a standard aircraft, generates enough aerodynamic lift to fly a real aircraft in real weather conditions. Celeste Ecoflyers announced the […]View the full article

An Israeli satellite company announced on May 26 that its RUNNER satellite can now detect and track moving objects from orbit around the clock, including at night, a capability the company describes as the first of its kind in persistent space-based surveillance. ImageSat International said the new capability uses onboard artificial intelligence to autonomously detect, […]View the full article

More than a thousand patients in war-torn Ukraine completed nearly nine thousand sessions of mixed reality therapy across 47 organizations over six months, a new study released May 26 shows, providing the most detailed real-world evidence yet that immersive headset-based mental health tools can function at scale inside an active conflict zone’s care infrastructure. The […]View the full article

Elbit Systems crossed a milestone it has never reached before, reporting a record order backlog exceeding $30 billion for the first time in the Israeli defense company’s history, as first-quarter 2026 revenues hit $2.19 billion and the company announced a separate $1.4 billion European modernization contract on the same day. The results, published May 26 […]View the full article

Israeli defense electronics giant Elbit Systems announced on May 26 that it has secured a $1.4 billion contract from an undisclosed European customer to modernize that country’s military across multiple capability domains over the next five years, one of the largest single defense contracts the company has publicly announced. The customer’s identity remains confidential, but […]View the full article

Russia’s state defense conglomerate Rostec unveiled a new short-range air defense system called the ZAK-30 Tsitadel at the First International Security Forum, presenting a 30mm autocannon platform designed to destroy drones using programmable proximity-fuzed shrapnel shells that detonate at a calculated point along the target’s flight path rather than requiring a direct hit. The system, […]View the full article

The U.S. Department of War’s use of artificial intelligence has exploded by 1,775 percent over the past year, jumping from roughly 80,000 users to approximately 1.5 million across a workforce of more than 3 million personnel, the department’s top technology official disclosed at a special operations conference in Tampa, Florida. Emil Michael, undersecretary of war […]View the full article

Chinese state television has aired footage of a new armored troop transport vehicle conducting high-altitude driving exercises on the Tibetan Plateau, offering the clearest public look yet at what appears to be a purpose-built solution to one of the People’s Liberation Army’s most persistent logistical problems: how to move infantry safely across one of the […]View the full article

Building a military boat traditionally requires molds, fiberglass layup, skilled labor, a fixed factory, and weeks of production time. A Hawaii-based startup called Voltage Vessels is working to replace that entire process with a 3D printer, a spool of basalt-reinforced thermoplastic, and a digital file that can be sent anywhere in the Indo-Pacific and printed […]View the full article

New photographs of China’s experimental sea-skimming aircraft known as the “Bohai Sea Monster” have emerged online, and this time they reveal something that earlier images did not: four external weapons pylons mounted under the wings, strongly suggesting the craft is being developed with a combat role in mind, not just as a transport. The new […]View the full article

Britain’s most powerful tank is getting closer to frontline service, with Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land confirming that Challenger 3 development trials are advancing through a series of battlefield mission serials that are testing the upgraded vehicle under conditions representative of real operational use. The tests, confirmed by RBSL, cover cross-country mobility, road running, gunnery equipment […]View the full article

On May 22, the Heavy Vehicles Factory in Avadi, a city outside Chennai in southern India, rolled out the 1,000th T-90 Bhishma main battle tank built on Indian soil, completing a production run that began with Russian blueprints and foreign components two decades ago and ends with a tank that is roughly 80 percent Indian […]View the full article

Stealth technology has always been the exclusive domain of billion-dollar defense programs and classified government laboratories, built into aircraft through years of engineering work and applied through precision manufacturing processes that cost more per square meter than most countries spend on entire weapon systems. A Turkish startup is now claiming it solved the core problem […]View the full article

Ukrainian paratroopers operating Italian-supplied B1 Centauro wheeled tank destroyers say the vehicle shoots straighter than anything they have used before and can reach 105 kilometers per hour on a road, but its armor will not stop a heavy machine gun round from the side and would be shredded by the shaped-charge warheads packed into the […]View the full article

A South Korean submarine completed the longest voyage in the history of South Korea’s submarine force, crossing 14,000 kilometers of open Pacific Ocean to dock at a Canadian naval base, and the timing was not accidental. Canada is weeks away from one of the most consequential military procurement decisions in its modern history, and Seoul […]View the full article

Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi flew to Chitose Air Base in Hokkaido on May 23 to watch his pilots rehearse one of the most demanding routine missions in the Japanese military: launching fighter jets on emergency intercept against Russian military aircraft approaching the country’s airspace. After the drill, standing before reporters at the northernmost major […]View the full article

Russia fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at the Kyiv region for the first time on the night of May 23-24, 2026, striking an industrial zone near Bila Tserkva, a city of 200,000 people sitting just 80 kilometers south of the Ukrainian capital. The launch was confirmed by Yurii Ihnat, head of communications for the Ukrainian […]View the full article