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China and Russia sent military intelligence aircraft toward Japan on four consecutive days this week, prompting the Japan Air Self-Defense Force to scramble fighters each day, as two Chinese Y-9 aircraft crossed the gap between Okinawa and Miyako-jima into the Pacific on Oct. 20 and 21 and Russian IL-20 aircraft flew over the Sea of […]View the full article

Kadena Air Base in Okinawa will bar all vehicles made by Chinese electric carmaker BYD from entering the installation starting Oct. 26 over concerns that the cars could expose sensitive military information, Kangnam Times reported. The ban covers privately owned cars as well as contractor vehicles, taxis, delivery vans and other commercial vehicles. The 18th […]View the full article

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said on Oct. 19 that the basic policy governing how the Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces use artificial intelligence needs to be reviewed, telling lawmakers that AI development has moved faster than the 2024 guidelines can handle, the Nikkei reported. “I feel there is a need to review […]View the full article

China and South Korea completed a 10-day joint maritime law enforcement patrol in the Yellow Sea fishing zone the two countries share under their bilateral fisheries agreement, with the China Coast Guard ship Changshan and the South Korean fisheries guidance vessel Mugunghwa 42 sailing together. Over more than 210 hours at sea and more than […]View the full article

China’s Liaoning carrier group has carried out its second far-seas training deployment to the Western Pacific this year, a decade after the carrier’s first such voyage in 2016, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Oct. 24, describing the ship’s path over those 10 years as a three-step climb from training ship to combat ship to […]View the full article

China’s 48th naval escort task force returned to a military port in Qingdao on Oct. 23 after 378 days away, the longest deployment in the history of the Chinese navy’s anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia, China’s Ministry of National Defense said. The task force, made up of the […]View the full article

The Turkish Naval Forces used HAVELSAN’s Barkan unmanned ground vehicle to support amphibious raid and urban warfare training and then to evacuate simulated wounded personnel during TURNAs-2026, the service’s unmanned maritime systems exercise under way in the Gulf of Antalya and the eastern Mediterranean from Oct. 19 to 27, the Naval Forces Command said. The […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers in Germany are training with AZAK’s S26 unmanned ground vehicle. On Oct. 21, troops from 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment used the robot to evacuate a casualty during a platoon situational training exercise at Grafenwoehr Training Area, the first field use of the system by the Vilseck-based regiment since it began receiving […]View the full article

Turkish Aerospace’s Aksungur long-endurance drone has completed its mission with Aselsan’s aselBUOY 100P underwater acoustic listening system during the Turkish Naval Forces’ TURNAs-2026 unmanned maritime systems exercise, the company announced on X on Oct. 24, adding a new capability to the drone’s set of maritime missions. “With this integration, which offers an important capability for […]View the full article

About 30 of Poland’s South Korean-built K2 tanks are sitting in military workshops with various faults, most of them at the army base in Braniewo in the country’s northeast, Radio ZET reported, and some of the damage involves the engines of a fleet that has grown to more than 200 tanks delivered so far. The […]View the full article

Spanish defense company EM&E Group used remote weapon stations on armored vehicles and a jamming-equipped ground robot to detect and shoot down several drones during the Spanish military’s ATLAS 26 counter-drone exercise this week at the Médano del Loro firing range in Huelva, in southwestern Spain. The exercise was led by Spain’s Chief of the […]View the full article

Two more F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters arrived in Finland on Oct. 23, 2026, landing at the Lapland Air Wing in Rovaniemi at 5:56 p.m. and bringing the number of Finnish F-35s in the country to four, the Finnish Defence Forces said. The jets, JF-509 and JF-511, made up Finland’s second F-35 delivery. JF-509 left […]View the full article

L3Harris Technologies has received a three-year contract worth up to $60 million to develop a long-range, maneuverable missile for the U.S. Army that is designed to shoot down small and medium drones at greater distances than today’s interceptors. The company announced the award on Oct. 23, 2026, under the Xtended Range Counter-sUAS Missile program run […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has published new details of its $20.7 billion contract with Raytheon for AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, confirming that the sole-source deal covers seven production lots and will keep the Tucson, Arizona, production line busy until mid-2033. An award notice posted on the federal contracting site on Oct. 23, 2026, shows the […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has added $2.4 billion to Fluor Marine Propulsion’s contract to run naval nuclear propulsion work at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory, the network of government labs that designs and supports the reactors powering every U.S. Navy submarine and aircraft carrier. Naval Sea Systems Command awarded the $2,409,077,590 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification on Sept. 24, 2026, […]View the full article

The Royal Canadian Air Force has taken delivery of its first two CF-35A stealth fighters, the Canadian version of the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, the service announced. The jets will stay at Luke, a major U.S. Air Force training base for F-35 pilots from the United States […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin has received a $114.6 million order to redesign two key navigation systems on the F-35 Lightning II, the GPS electronic unit and the NAV100 inertial navigation system, replacing electronic parts that are going out of production so the stealth fighter can keep rolling off the line. The cost-plus-fixed-fee order, announced on Oct. 23, […]View the full article

Ukraine has joined a NATO procurement partnership that lets Ukrainian defense companies bid for contracts issued by the alliance’s main buying agency, the NATO Support and Procurement Agency announced on Oct. 22, 2026. Ukraine is now the seventh member of the agency’s Security Cooperation Support Partnership, alongside Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and […]View the full article

A missile strike likely hit the Proton plant in the Russian city of Orel, a manufacturer of optoelectronic equipment whose components are used in Russia’s Iskander-M ballistic missiles, Pantsir-S1 air defense systems and Kh-71 cruise missiles, according to the monitoring channel Exilenova+. Local authorities declared an aviation and missile danger alert in Orel during the […]View the full article

British defense technology company Stratonex Defence Technologies is developing a range of unmanned ground vehicles, tactical drones, counter-drone systems and military mobility platforms, with a focus on reducing the exposure of personnel to battlefield threats. The company’s VARAN unmanned ground vehicle is among its central projects. The platform has undergone initial mobility and remote-control testing, […]View the full article

When will fate call you? What will you do? Will you take action on your own, or wait for someone to tell you to act? Remember the first terrorist attack at the shopping mall in Kenya back in 2013? Well, in 2019 there was another, when a member of the British SAS probably saved hundreds because…it was the right thing to do to run towards the gunfire. I give you a man known by his nom de guerre: Christian Craighead, The Attack: On the afternoon of January 15, 2019, five Al-Shabaab militants stormed the DusitD2 hotel and shopping complex using suicide bombings, grenades, and automatic rifles, killing 21 civilians and 1 General Service Unit (GSU) officer. The Man: Stationed in Kenya to train local forces, Craighead was off-duty when he learned of the attack from a friend. He drove to the scene in his pickup truck armed with combat gear, a rifle, and a pistol. The Moment: Entering the complex initially on his own—and later coordinating with Kenyan police, security units, and allied personnel—he helped evacuate hundreds of civilians, cleared buildings floor-by-floor, and engaged the gunmen through a multi-hour standoff. Aftermath & Honors: Craighead was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (CGC) by the British military for his bravery. Of note, go to the 25-minute mark of the video below to hear how he was received in the USA in 2019…and look at what his own nation is doing to him...just because he wants to write a book about what was seen by everyone as it took place. For some reason, the UK government hates its best. On top of going after geriatric SAS on trumped-up charges related to decades old “Troubles” issues, and now this. Mrs Justice Steyn has today refused Mr Craighead (a pseudonym) permission to publish a memoir that covers that Incident. As a member of the UKSF, Mr Craighead signed a contract which provides that he cannot publish such a memoir without Express Prior Authorisation in Writing (“EPAW”). He sought EPAW to publish a memoir that described the Incident, on the grounds that the Incident – and his role in it – were widely known and discussed in the public domain (including in extensive media coverage at the time). He relied, in support of that argument, on the fact that he was actively encouraged to speak about the Incident by his superiors, including to 640 teenage army recruits. During the course of the hearing the Secretary of State accepted that it was not appropriate to maintain the ordinary Neither Confirm Nor Deny position in relation to the Incident and accepted that Mr Craighead could state that he was the individual involved in it. The Secretary of State accepted that the claim was arguable but submitted that publication would be harmful to the operational effectiveness of UKSF. In particular he argued that publication would harm morale and would damage relations between the UKSF and other states. Mrs Justice Steyn found that, by virtue of signing the contract, Mr Craighead had qualified his Article 10 rights in two respects: first, he had to seek permission to publish (this was agreed); second the weight to be lent to his Article 10 rights, when considering the lawfulness of any refusal to publish, was diminished. Given the gravity of the harm that the Secretary of State argued would follow from publication, the Judge found that a “precautionary approach” was justified: the decision to refuse permission to publish was a proportionate interference with Mr Craighead’s freedom of expression. The hearing was held in private because of the sensitivity attaching to the Secretary of State’s evidence. As well as the open judgment, the Judge prepared a Confidential Schedule addressing matters that could not be addressed in public. FFS…there is nothing classified about what he did. It was all open source. This stinks of bureaucratic mindlessness and spite. That is from 2023, and it still has not been approved for publication in the UK. The MoD claims that Craighead’s book contains an alleged breach of a confidentiality contract that he had freely signed on joining the UK’s special forces. An interim injunction was issued this month, with government barristers returning to the high court on Thursday to ask for it to be extended until the legal claim is resolved. Oliver Sanders KC, for the MoD, told the court in London the claim that Craighead had breached the contract was “straightforward and really unarguable”. The book has been published in the US but Sanders said that this was not relevant because “the only reason it is available overseas is through the defendant’s own wrongdoing”. The good news is the USA fought for its independence from the UK, so his book, One Man In: The Explosive Firsthand Account of the Lone Special-Ops Commando Who Fought Off a Major Terrorist Attack in Kenya, was published here last month. Craighead, however, is still under considerable legal jeopardy for publishing it. His American publisher, Simon & Schuster, is largely protected. America’s First Amendment protections and a law called the SPEECH Act make foreign libel judgments or censorship orders (like a British MOD injunction) unenforceable in US courts unless they pass strict American constitutional standards. Freedom wins. Is Craighead in the UK now, or has he moved over here? What will happen to him should he return to the UK? No idea…but what I do know is that the SAS develops unique men. In Kenya and against bureaucratic pig-headedness and envy—Fullbore. h/t W.This Substack is reader-supported. 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Denmark will buy Anthem ground-launched cruise missiles from U.S. defense company Covenant Industries, giving the Danish military its first land-based option for striking targets deep inside enemy territory, the Danish Ministry of Defense announced on Oct. 22, 2026. The ministry said the purchase is meant to strengthen Denmark’s national and collective deterrence, describing the new […]View the full article

A drone strike sank a merchant ship carrying Ukrainian and Azerbaijani sailors off Romania’s Black Sea coast on Oct. 23, 2026, killing one crew member and leaving three missing, prompting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to condemn what she called another Russian escalation in the Black Sea. The Comoros-flagged Khoryv sent a distress […]View the full article

Denmark has rushed more than 50,000 rounds of 20 mm ammunition to Ukraine for the cannons on its F-16 fighter jets, and Ukrainian pilots are already firing them at Russia’s jet-powered Shahed-type attack drones, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Oct. 23, 2026. The ministry announced the delivery on X, saying Denmark sent the rounds on […]View the full article

Red Cat Holdings’ maritime division, Blue Ops, has opened orders for two new uncrewed surface vessels, an 18-foot boat built for reconnaissance and one-way attack missions and a 39-foot vessel already in low-rate production, as part of a new B-Series lineup named after each boat’s length. The company announced the family on Oct. 22, 2026. […]View the full article