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Show LinksOperation Economic Outcast is a recipe for success against Iran, Richard Goldberg USS Abraham Lincoln Commander Dan Keeler arrives in Pattaya, Thailand U.S. Navy Ships deployed in Iran conflict graphic, @Schizointel The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, Rick Atkinson Germany says Russia behind Leipzig airport drone attack S… Read more View the full article

Over the course of the last 18 months or so, you’d have to have been at an extended ibogaine, psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT retreat not to suffer through the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes as the Department of War moves to a resize and align the American General Officer and Flag Officer (GOFO) cadre. It is nothing like what is going on in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC isn’t a nation at war, even a low-boil war—so what is going on there isn’t all that germane when looking at what is going on in the U.S. What is the next large-ish power that is at war? Russia. How are things looking with their GOFO cadre? Lucky for us, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) put out last month a study just on that. Everyone should take a moment to add to their Labor Day reading list CNA’s The Future of Russia’s Military Elite Promotions, Careers, and Advancement in the Russian Senior Officer Corps. The lead author is a regular guest of the Midrats Podcast, Dmitry Gorenburg, so you know it’s good. This paragraph from the second page of the executive summary caught my attention: Commanders are demoted, but bureaucrats are arrested. Most commanders are removed from their position, some retire, and others shifted to other commands. Meanwhile, MOD bureaucrats are likely to be not only removed from their position but also arrested and prosecuted. The few cases of operational commanders being placed under arrest are highly heterogeneous, with no clear pattern. So, when a military operation goes sideways, accountability is focused at the top, and not just those operationally forward—but those charged with supporting the fight in the rear? Huh. In our expanded definition, we categorize three types of officials: military elites with command positions, military elites in the MOD bureaucracy, and civilian elites in the MOD bureaucracy or MOD-aligned industrial complex. We derived four findings from this dataset: • Most removals of military elites in command positions are dismissals from their post or retirement (whether natural or forced) rather than arrests. Military elites who have been arrested are almost uniformly MOD bureaucrats with military ranks. • Most civilian upper tier elites captured in the dataset are associated with the May 2024 removal of Sergei Shoigu from his longstanding position as minister of defense. Some of these elites were dismissed or shuffled around to new positions; others have been arrested. The process of removing Shoigu-affiliated elites continued well into 2025. • The vast majority of public, upper tier elite removals occurred in 2024, immediately after the reshuffle. These removals were a mix of dismissals and arrests for corruption. • The majority of the general officers who were dismissed are at the colonel general or general of the Army rank, which suggests that they held key operational commands and reflects potential punishment for poor wartime performance. … Until 2024, nearly all removals were dismissals from command positions.60 These dismissals occurred in a steady stream after the initial failure of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring and summer 2022 and across the first half of 2023, as depicted in Figure 8. Command removals in 2022 and 2023 were associated largely with perceived poor wartime performance, although barring a public statement, we cannot conclusively verify each individual removal. This ambiguity is one reason why we capture all removals regardless of assessed or reported motivation. Here’s what happened in 2024. The year 2024 began with a small number of dismissals in the winter and spring (primarily from command positions). One notable example is Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, the CinC of the Russian Navy. His removal is difficult to characterize; he was approaching retirement age but may also have been removed for the poor performance of the Black Sea Fleet.68 The major wave of removals occurred in the period immediately before, during, and after the May 2024 cabinet reshuffle. During this reshuffle, Shoigu was removed from his position, and many of the members of his network within the MOD were either similarly removed from their positions or arrested under corruption charges.69 In Appendix E: Removals Summary Table, we provide a list of all removals in the dataset who are affiliated with Shoigu. The part of Shoigu’s patronal network that has been targeted in wartime purges is somewhat amorphous but has been widely reported on in Russian media.70 The network represents the accumulation of loyalists spread throughout the MOD bureaucracy in particular over Shoigu’s tenure as minister, which lasted more than a decade.71 Among its highest status victims so far have been the civilian MOD bureaucrats Ruslan Tsalikov, First Deputy Minister of Defense (removed June 2024, arrested March 2026); Timur Ivanov, Deputy Minister of Defense for Construction (arrested April 2024); and General of the Army Pavel Popov, Deputy Minister of Defense for Innovation Research (removed June 2024, arrested August 2024). The purge consisted primarily of deputy ministers and personal aides to Shoigu, although Russian commentators claim that the 2025 removal of General of the Army Oleg Salyukov, former CinC of the ground forces and Deputy Commander of the Joint Group of Forces in Ukraine, was due to his association with Shoigu. After Salyukov’s removal, he retired and was sent to the Security Council, which Shoigu now chairs.72 Because Salyukov was close to retirement, whether this should be considered political removal or natural retirement is difficult to determine. How many senior leaders have we let go for poor battlefield performance since 2001? How many have been otherwise invited to pursue excellence elsewhere prior to their PRD? It would be real interesting to see a U.S. version of this chart for GOFO since 2001. …then show the number of Field Grade (O4-06) relieved for cause over the same period. Don’t snicker about the arrested numbers. I know of at least one U.S. four-star removed and then arrested…the former Vice Chief of Naval Operations was arrested on federal bribery and conspiracy charges in 2024. The report has 166 pages of discussion not just of how the Russians clean house of their GOFO, but also of some patterns in their awards and promotions—but the part on GOFO accountability is what got my attention. Worth a read…a lot will sound very familiar to you…and there is some good insight that might explain some of the underperformance of the Russian military since 2022. Especially their short command tours reminds me of some of the problems we had in Vietnam that we repeated in GWOT. Russian military culture is very different from the American military culture, but there is a not-insignificant degree of overlap to the point that there is value in reading about it. If nothing, they are closer to the U.S. than the PRC. Highly recommended. h/t S.Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. 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Swiss manufacturer ANAVIA completed on-site customer acceptance of six HT-100 Naval unmanned helicopters purchased by the Angolan Navy, the company said, following individual flight tests and sign-offs for each aircraft delivered. The acceptance was conducted jointly with ADSB, a partner involved in the delivery. ANAVIA said each of the six aircraft underwent its own flight […]View the full article

American Rheinmetall has won a $710,000 subcontract from Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to produce machined components for the MCT-30 turret used on the U.S. Marine Corps’ ACV-30, the amphibious combat vehicle variant equipped with a medium-caliber gun. The work will be performed at American Rheinmetall’s Lapeer and Lansing, Michigan facilities, with deliveries scheduled throughout 2026 […]View the full article

General Dynamics Land Systems has teamed up with Ford Motor Company and Ricardo to compete for the UK Ministry of Defence’s Light Mobility Vehicle program, the companies announced. The team’s proposal is built on the Ford Ranger platform, which General Dynamics UK described as Europe’s best-selling pickup truck for 11 consecutive years. “Combining the strengths […]View the full article

Russia’s state defense conglomerate Rostec is marketing an export version of its Zubr short-range counter-drone system, called Bizon, to potential customers in Egypt, according to a statement from the company’s High Precision Systems holding. The system, designated TKB-1167 and developed by High Precision Systems, is armed with 7.62mm PKT machine guns and designed to engage […]View the full article

A Russian Aerospace Forces Mi-8 helicopter crashed onto a highway on Sakhalin Island on September 2, coming to rest on its side in a roadside ditch after what the pro-Russian military Telegram channel Fighterbomber described as a complete loss of power from fuel exhaustion in both engines. Video and photographs of the incident show the […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Navy said it destroyed a Russian uncrewed surface vessel near Snake Island in the Black Sea on Tuesday, according to Militarnyi. Footage released alongside the announcement shows the drone boat being struck by a precision munition dropped from an unmanned aerial vehicle after being detected. The vessel caught fire and detonated following the strike. […]View the full article

South Korea’s Navy has selected GE Aerospace to supply gas turbine engines for its next-generation KDDX destroyer program, with GE Marine set to deliver 12 LM2500+G4 engines to power six ships, the company said. Each destroyer will carry two LM2500+G4 engines, integrated into a full electric propulsion configuration. GE Aerospace said the setup is intended […]View the full article

A senior U.S. Army acquisition delegation toured Hanwha Aerospace’s production facilities in Changwon, South Korea, on August 26 to review the company’s manufacturing capabilities across artillery, rocket systems and other land defense platforms. The delegation was led by Brent G. Ingraham, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. The visit included a […]View the full article

The German Navy successfully completed a dual firing trial of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Naval LORA ballistic missile, launching the weapon from an operational German vessel and hitting its target with precision in both test scenarios, IAI said. The trial was conducted as part of the German Navy’s Operational Experimentation program, known as OPEX, a testing […]View the full article

General Dynamics Land Systems released the first publicly available photo of its Wolf XM30 prototype in transit this week, showing the vehicle wrapped entirely in a black tarp and strapped to a flatbed trailer. The image follows the company’s confirmation that it delivered the prototype to the U.S. Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, on […]View the full article

First of all, let’s set the stage a bit here. Back in March of this year, the following was announced to the world. The War Department has launched a task force to ensure the curriculum at its institutions of higher learning is structured to build warfighters rather than social justice warriors, said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “At the Department of War, we have a duty to ensure that our professional military education develops real leaders, warfighters who dominate into the future,” Hegseth said. “We’re committed to making our own senior service colleges maintain the highest of standards, that those places align with President [Donald J.] Trump’s commitment to the American people [and] that our military will remain the strongest in history.” … "This task force will have 90 days to assess whether our senior service colleges ... are actually effective," Hegseth said. "They are going to identify any deficiencies and make sure they're focused on core national security issues. We want military leaders who are critical thinkers, that have studied the principles on which our founding fathers established this republic and that are educated and prepared to win wars." … Under the direction of the undersecretary of war for personnel and readiness, the Senior Service College Task Force will review the War Department's senior service college educational standards in advance of the 2026-27 academic year. The task force will assess institutional effectiveness by identifying deficiencies in standards and evaluating the colleges' alignment with the National Defense Strategy. It will also review the curriculum. Fairly straightforward. Get a group together in March, 90 days gets you to mid-June. Doesn’t say who is on it, but I don’t see where anyone asked. You can assume that these would be idea people, politically aligned with the present administration, who know which end of the tube the round comes out of, and are not insiders to academia. I can see how you would want to keep the commission members in the background while they do their work. However, I do know that they were not wearing masks as they went about their business. I don’t see the big deal. Monday evening, we got a shrug. Click the above to get the full quote from the good Under Secretary. Perfect tone. Why did he feel the need to put this out? Well, late Sunday afternoon, Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp published in WaPo, Pentagon secretly installs military influencers in civilian roles. I know most of the time the writers don’t have a say in the titles of their articles, but … really people. What breathless drama click-baity stuff…but it got people reading. This was a small group of people looking at the senior war colleges. This isn’t Seven Days in May. As I started to read Dan & Tara’s article, this was when I started to see where this whole thing is going to get kind of fun anyway. Dan has better things to do than read my stuff on a regular basis, but we have had pleasant exchanges on X for almost a decade. Tara and I have been mutuals on X for at least half a decade and have always had pleasant exchanges as well. I do my best to read their stuff when I see it, as it is always worth the time. They’re solid professionals on the Pentagon beat, but, really. I don’t think this is their finest hour, especially considering some of the topics in the previous administration that were not covered at all. I fully realize that one cannot cover everything, but it isn’t like news is quiet this August in the international arena. Perhaps this was pushed by their editor? I don’t know. It’s a bit of a hash, and in the background you can hear a little axe grinding over the Late Unpleasantness. The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and corroborating material. At least some of the influencers have been assigned to civilian roles that could lead to changes in policy, the people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Just because an official announcement does not go out doesn’t make anything a great secret. I’ve known people who have been put on this commission or that commission during both (R) and (D) administrations who no one knew they were doing it until a final report came out, or you happened to see them at the end of a table. Enlighten me otherwise, but I don’t see anything nefarious here. Additionally, in 2026 if you are an idea person and do not have any type of online presence where you bounce your ideas off the ether and yell into the void—then you are a rather unique bird, and I’m not sure you are what the cool kids call a “change agent”. Welcome to the second quarter of the 21st century. Neither the Pentagon nor those involved have disclosed the government roles despite the Trump administration’s claims that they are running the most transparent Defense Department ever. Those involved include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, people familiar with the matter said. Pentagon records reviewed by The Washington Post show that both have active official government email addresses as of this past week and are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The email addresses include a “.civ” suffix, meaning they are labeled as civilian employees, rather than as military personnel or contractors. Shrug. This is where it gets even more fun. Rob and I have been mutuals on X for a minute or two, and Kurt and I have not only been mutuals for years, we’ve broken bread, had some drinks, and I’ve had the distinct honor of meeting his wife (who is a saint and a hoot. He married WAY up.) Yes, I know people IRL. It happens. So, now I have one mutual vs. two mutuals. The problems with our war colleges are not new. Heck, we’ve been discussing them here and over at the OG blog for the better part of two decades. We knew a panel had been put together. I’m not all that happy that once again the Navy does not have a seat at the table, but, well, here we are—again. I started laughing at the next pull quote as: The below was done to spark competitive conflict between three Bull O6s (Ret.), or… …it wasn’t intentional, but will have the impact anyway. I don’t care what someone may say: all idea people on X are measuring follower count because we are all barely hidden needy attention hounds. (also, follow @cdrsalamander if you do not already). Both served for decades in uniform and, since retiring, have turned from the military to conservative commentary. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, while Schlichter has nearly 620,000. Another retired Army colonel and influencer, Thomas Anderson, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year with a “.civ” email address and assigned to Tata’s office, according to people familiar with the matter and records reviewed by The Post. An attorney, he writes online under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers on X. He was no longer listed in Pentagon records late this past week, the people familiar with the issue said. Thomas, Tom, CV, or whatever we call him after a few gin and tonics, and I are also mutuals on X. Now it’s 1 v. 3. Rob, Shipmate, you need to up your game. I know you have almost 3X as many followers as I do on X, but Kurt has lapped you five times and Thomas almost three. Get to work. If you ain’t first, you’re last. It just gets funnier. Sources, people…sources. The assignments for all three have not previously been reported. Questions have been raised online about influencers’ connections with the Pentagon, including in an article last week by the Bulwark. … Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and Air Force veteran, posted that it appears the Pentagon “is using your tax dollars to hire influencers on X to put out partisan talking points.” “How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government, and Donald Trump, and the Republican Party ... are actually special government employees?” said Kinzinger. Bulwark and Kinzinger? What, someone from MSNOW and the little lady from Code Pink wasn’t available? OK, now we get to the point. Maness, Schlichter and Anderson appeared on behalf of the Pentagon’s Senior Service College Task Force at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in May, two people familiar with the visit said. The task force was organized in the spring with the goal of rooting out ideology deemed “toxic” or “woke,” Hegseth said in March. This really should have been earlier in the article. Again, this is nothing new…at all. Regardless of what some people who have lived too long inside a commute of DC may think, there was a huge problem with “Woke 1.0” at our war colleges and service academies. Then we go to the point where—as a former N1-manpower bubba for a spell—I had a flashback that brought about an eye-twitch and a need to go PT to get it out of my system. The individuals are assigned as either “special government employees” or “highly qualified experts,” people familiar with the issue said. Schlichter appears in a government database with an “HQE” designation after his name, according to material reviewed by The Post. SGEs are limited by law to working no more than 130 days in any 365-day period. Those with HQE status can work full- or part-time, with or without compensation, according to government guidance on the issue released in 2023. It was not clear what financial agreements were reached with Maness, Schlichter and Anderson, and when each of their assignments began. I’m convinced some manpower/admin weenie fed this story to WaPo. Only that type of staff person finds this stuff even remotely interesting. For some reason—was there a word count that had to be reached?—Dan and Tara started to make this into a grab-bag of issues…strangely involving more of my X mutuals. Tata’s team has taken on a number of culture-war issues, including scrutinizing war colleges for “woke” ideology and reviewing how the Biden administration adopted covid vaccine mandates for U.S. troops. And their counterparts in the Obama and Biden administrations didn’t address “culture war” issues? I’m sorry, but everyone is allowed to play this game. Then there’s the tell. Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and Army National Guard officer, has attempted to reshape the public discourse about Pentagon affairs. Last year, he imposed new restrictions on Pentagon press corps members that forced dozens of journalists out of the building and later introduced a new, primarily right-wing press corps to replace them. I’m sorry…I warned my friends in the Pentagon press corps not to play chicken on this topic. They played a game and lost. They shouldn’t stay mad about it; it bleeds into their reporting. The increased attention on the Pentagon’s influence efforts comes after another conservative influencer, Jennica Pounds, accused a State Department official this month on social media of attempting to entrap her into publishing government secrets. Pounds, writing under the pen name DataRepublican, posted text messages online that showed the official approached Pounds with documents to publish and tout as a journalistic scoop. Jennica is another mutual of mine. Now it is 1 vs. 4 on my X-mutuals. She has addressed this topic herself. Give it a read, I can’t improve on it. Back to the main topic, in case you were wondering about money… After initial publication of this story, Anderson said on social media on Sunday night that he was asked to join the task force after he published an article in February recommending changes to the war colleges. Anderson said he was a special government employee through July 26 with work “exclusively limited” to the task force. “At no time have I ever received any compensation of any kind from any government source of any kind for anything I write or have ever written on X or in any magazine or other source,” Anderson wrote. Again, I had to giggle at the description of something so benign as wet water. Volunteers helping the government improve something that—if you judge the results of the last three decades—is not quite hitting on all cylinders. While in Carlisle task force members met with students and professors over a number of days and asked questions about the performance of leaders like Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the people familiar with the visit said. Some students were uncertain how candid they should be and whether there would be negative consequences if administration officials did not like the answers, this person said. The other person familiar with the visit said the task force members had concerns about the syllabus for a class focused on how military officers communicate with Congress. Then the authors dove into some of the opinion pieces Rob and Kurt have penned over the years…like opinion people do. If you want to challenge an ossified, defensive, and not-quite-fit-for-purpose-entity, you have to bring in people who are willing to challenge, ask uncomfortable questions, and put their perspective on the table for others to agree with, critique, improve, or throw away. If you are only getting quiet, consensus types, then you will simply continue to do the same thing and make the same errors that got you to this suboptimal position. Speaking of people who ask uncomfortable questions, Another military influencer, John Konrad, also defended Pounds while noting he had discussions with the administration this spring about becoming a special government employee at the Pentagon. Konrad, a former member of the U.S. Merchant Marine and founder of the maritime website gCaptain, said that the Pentagon sought him out for a role and he later felt “ghosted.” Now we’re 1 vs. 5 on X-mutuals. John and I have been communicating for almost two decades at this point. We know each other IRL, and most recently played Statler and Waldorf at the Surface Navy Association gaggle earlier this year. But wait…can we get to 1 vs. 6? The Pentagon also brought on Jerry Dunleavy, a journalist with the conservative Just the News, to assist Hegseth’s team with an ongoing review of the fall of Afghanistan. The Pentagon disclosed Dunleavy’s involvement in May. As for Dunleavy, listen to his August 2023 and November 2024 visits to the Midrats Podcast and buy his book. Kurt over at Townhall put out a good response to all this. Once WaPo published, a bunch of other outlets picked it up, regurgitating the original regurgitation. Oh well. I do appreciate that the regime media has now acknowledged me as an important conservative influencer. I got 300 or so new followers for @KurtSchlichter. Thanks for the validation, jerks. For those of you who missed this non-story, which would be most of you, on Sunday, WaPo decided that the fact that the Department of War (DOW) hired three retired colonels to investigate and report on the status of the military’s war colleges is a major scandal of epic proportions. Move over, Watergate! Guys who served their country continue to do so! The article claims “they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration,” which is true to the extent that we agree with the Secretary of War; it’s funny how they whitewash leftist critics as “those who scrutinize the Trump administration.” We were lambasting lefty haters before this gig; we’ll be doing it after, only now validated by WaPo as key conservative voices. The article’s implication was that we were somehow being paid to tweet DOW talking points, which is false. But it had the predictable effect on the predictable dummies of X, who obediently morphed from screaming that I am a “Zionist Jew lover” and “Epstein protector” to a “fed.” It was all an IQ test, and a lot of people failed. The article in question is titled “Pentagon Secretly Installs Military Influencers In Civilian Roles.” But even the title is a lie. No one was secretly installed in anything. We were asked to do a very specific job within our military and civilian wheelhouses, and we did it. We didn’t make it about us, which is apparently an alien concept in D.C. Read it all…and so he doesn’t get mad that I told you to buy Jerry’s book, check out Kurt’s offerings as well. So, did we actually learn anything from this article from Dan and Tara? I don’t think so, though they did prompt Tata to put out a statement inside a day later. I get the point they are making, but there is nothing more partisan about this Pentagon’s appointment habits than those of any other administration. There is no such thing as a “non-partisan” person in DC—including in the defense arena. Those who are open about their opinions are by nature partisans. Those whose political opinions are unknown are well-trained partisans. You can do good work with both, but the former are always more comfortable to be around than the later. Well, that’s my view of the goings-on around the DC natsec community. It was just amazing to watch such a great collection of my mutuals get their time in the barrel together…and come out the other side just fine. I’m not saying this Pentagon is a Salamander Enterprises operation…but it has that vibe. I’ll take it. As for Dan and Tara, they have a hard job, but I don’t think this added more light than heat…but it did raise the profile of the review of the senior service colleges. I look forward to their report. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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A fire destroyed a two-story warehouse building in Lublin, Poland, Sunday afternoon, gutting facilities owned by JFG Composites, a subcontractor to Leonardo’s PZL-Świdnik helicopter plant, according to Polish outlet Defence24. The fire broke out around 2:00 p.m. local time on Kasprowicza Street and spread through the building’s warehouse and office sections, PAP reported, according to […]View the full article

Ukraine’s National Guard just started fielding a robot roughly the size of a Humvee, built to haul ammunition into combat zones so soldiers don’t have to. Four units of Ukraine’s National Guard have received the first batch of Protector ground robotic complexes, part of a 100-unit contract funded by the German government, the National Guard […]View the full article

Naval Group signed a contract in Stockholm on Monday to build four defense and intervention frigates for the Royal Swedish Navy, less than four months after Sweden announced its selection of the French-designed FDI class. The signing took place in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Mikael Granholm, […]View the full article

A Swedish composites manufacturer just flew a boat that doesn’t touch the water. Aston Harald Composite completed the first test flight of an unmanned hydrofoil vessel called GhostFoiler in the waters of Stockholm last week, weaving among ferries and recreational boats in the city’s archipelago. The company said the craft performed well for a first […]View the full article

Ukrainian company Drone Fight Group has deployed an HMMWV, known popularly as “Humvee”, converted into a remotely operated vehicle using its Kaban system, delivering three units to Ukrainian military formations, the company said. The vehicles went to the 3rd Army Corps, the 429th Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment “Achilles” and the 49th Brigade of Ukraine’s Armed […]View the full article

RENK Group inaugurated three new machining centers at its Rheine, Germany facility Monday, part of a plan to more than triple the company’s annual transmission output by 2030, the company said. RENK aims to grow production at its headquarters in Augsburg to exceed 2,000 transmission units per year by 2030. The company has been transferring […]View the full article

Tata Advanced Systems Limited and the Javelin Joint Venture, a partnership between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, signed a memorandum of understanding to co-produce the Javelin All Up Round missile in India, the companies announced Sunday. Under the agreement, Tata Advanced Systems and the joint venture, known as JJV, will explore setting up a final assembly […]View the full article

Polish fighter jets intercepted a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea on Monday, roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Łeba on Poland’s coast, Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said. “Russia has once again tested our deterrence and air defense systems,” Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote. “Before noon, 30 km […]View the full article

Remember back in January the very confusing story about the conflict between Anthropic and the Department of War? Well, at the end of last week, it broke back into the news. A U.S. judge on Thursday permanently blocked the Pentagon’s “supply-chain risk” designation against Anthropic, ending a months-long standoff over military access to the company’s frontier AI models. The dispute began early this year when the Pentagon pressed Anthropic to remove safety guardrails from Claude, a demand ​that escalated into a blacklisting and triggered lawsuits and federal agency bans. I’m not going to go into a lot of the details that are floating out there. It gets real complicated, real fast—and in places conflicts with other reports. At best, most are second-hand or third-hand reports, circular reports, or the standard issue partisan positioning. Firsthand reports from either side are few—especially about the specific details. The above Reuters report is not that helpful, though it does supply a good timeline. This CNN report isn’t much better. A federal judge ruled the Pentagon’s decision to label AI company Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk’ violated the law and ordered the designation be removed Thursday evening. Judge Rita Lin wrote that while the military should have wide latitude to decide which companies to work with, its actions against Anthropic “constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment” and that the company “was denied the pre-deprivation process required under the Fifth Amendment.” The Department of Defense’s quarrel with Anthropic began earlier this year after the company refused to remove internal safety guardrails that would prevent the military from using its Claude AI model in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Anthropic argued its models were not reliable enough to be used for such purposes. Part of the problem is that most of the reporting usually focuses on very vague technical issues that are only quasi-germane to the issue at hand, or are play-by-play legal reporting. They are not useful from a military utility point of view. Almost everyone here looks at things through a national security lens, so I can think of few people better to speak our language than Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering (USW(R&E)) Emil Michael. The good folks at the Ruthless Podcast have an exceptionally interesting interview with Michael that you should give it a full listen, but let’s focus on the Anthropic issue. Once I heard what had happened from his perspective, the issues became much clearer to me. When you look at it from a military operations perspective, the decision became unavoidable. You just can’t operate inside the constraints and restraints Anthropic insisted on. If you just want to listen to the audio, go to the bottom of the post, I have the video of the interview there which provides an insider’s view of the Pentagon’s fight with Anthropic over AI. If you’d rather see the transcript, here you go. Emphasis is mine. Ruthless: …in your line of work, about why there was this massive uprising and problem with that situation. Anything you can— Michael: Yeah. So this is because of the Biden executive order they’re talking about, where they tried to really constrain AI so they could control it. They had this rule that said if you use more than X teraflops of compute, you’re going to be regulated. Ruthless: So crazy. Michael: You’re like, okay, well then people are just going to use less compute and we’re going to lose to China, or whatever other ridiculous thing they had.But there was the chosen one company that helped them write that executive order. Ruthless: Really? Michael: Yes. Ruthless; So they were trying to box in every EA person who were just like a menace, essentially. They didn’t bank on somebody like this showing up who actually knows. They’re like, ah shit, he knows the secret. Michael: They were anointed as a winner. So where did they deploy first in the U.S. government? The Department of War and the intelligence community. What do they want to do? They want to control the system of government we have. They want to give it to machine god.I got the AI portfolio six months into the job. I open it up like, let me read the contracts here. I’m a former lawyer—or I went to law school, I didn’t practice law. Let me see what this says. They’re like, you can’t use AI for battlefield management. I was like, what does that mean? You can’t use AI to defend yourself from a missile attack. What? You can’t use our AI—25 pages of restrictions. Indulge me as I break in here, as this really hit home. I almost got an eye-twitch flashing back to having to deal with all obscene “National Caveats” for troop contributing nations during my tour at ISAF in Kabul. Part of my responsibilities was to plan around these restrictions. “We have 2,500 ISAF forces in that district, but only 100 of them from nation X can be used for combat missions. Nations Y & Z that make up most of the force do not permit their forces to leave the gate.” Back to the interview. Ruthless: Imagine just writing that on a page with a straight face. With a straight face. Michael: Yeah. And I was like, this can’t be right. Maybe someone didn’t read this contract. The Biden administration. Maybe someone didn’t read it. Ruthless: It’s an onion contract. Michael: So I called them in and I was like, okay guys, this has got to change. We’ll use it lawfully—all lawful purposes—but it’s artificial general intelligence. You don’t tell me where I can fly a plane to. We decide that when we buy a plane from Boeing or Lockheed. And they’re like, well, we think these are our moral values. We have our own constitution. It’s called the Claude constitution. It’s like, okay, but those aren’t corporate values. No, it’s our constitution. What about our Constitution? Ruthless: We got one too. Michael: Turns out there’s the Constitution, and everything else. And then they were so out to lunch. I’d say, okay, help me understand this. Let’s say I have a drone swarm coming against a military base. There are a thousand soldiers sleeping there. And I use AI to discriminate what’s a decoy and what’s not, and to point a laser at shooting it down. They’re like, huh, I think we could work on that. I was like, okay. How about a Chinese hypersonic missile going Mach 5 or above? I’ve got two minutes to take it down from space. So there’s a guy with a joystick who could do this.And they’re like, call me.I was like, well, call you when? Just give me a call. We’ll work it out. Did you miss the two-minute window?And they denied this afterwards, but I was like, I have 20 people in the room listening. There were former soldiers there who were about to lose it. Going crazy. And so this was the way it went. You’re damn straight they were about to come unglued. Most of those guys were GWOT vets. We know stupid restrictions that make their way from the faculty lounge to your mission. And then Secretary Hegseth is like, okay, you’ve got to stop messing around. We’re single-threaded on this one vendor at the time, so I need time to get other vendors in the door.He just calls them in. He says, I give you guys a week to work it out. And Thursday before the Friday deadline, they’re like, we’re pulling out. Trump’s a dictator. Elon’s a Stalin. Sam Altman’s Hitler. These guys are trying to destroy the world. Ruthless: Partisan messaging. Michael: Yes. There was no component of policy. I was like, we’re being—we could be unsafe. I was like, well, the law is the law. We have a democratic system. Laws get passed by Congress. The executive signs them. If I agree to use your system lawfully, what else do you want? They want to create their own law, their own standards. There you go. DoW was spot on in keeping Anthropic away from national defense. That would be as if Northrup Grumman demanded that it gets a vote on how our B-2 bombers can be used. Nope. The courts can say what they want, but they cannot force the U.S. military to use an untrusted vendor. I assume this ruling from last week will run up the judicial chain. 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

A fire broke out overnight Sunday at a WB Electronics facility in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, adding another name to a growing list of European defense manufacturers hit by fires, explosions and suspected sabotage in 2026. The blaze started shortly after midnight in the plant’s assembly department, according to Radio Kielce, which cited a spokeswoman for local […]View the full article

Israel and Greece signed a defense export agreement worth approximately €3 billion ($3.5 billion) Monday, under which Israel will build Greece a multi-layered air defense array combining several Israeli-made systems, according to a statement from Israel’s Ministry of Defense. The deal, known in Greece as “Achilles Shield,” is the largest defense export agreement in the […]View the full article

At some point in the next decade, a historian is going to look at the first quarter of the 21st century from the perspective of the national security establishment and the blessings it had as it rose to global power status, and will publish the foundational reference book for those trying to understand that moment in time. Its primary rivals distracted and drained themselves in unnecessary quixotic quasi-imperial police actions, one in Central and Southwest Asia (U.S.A.), the other bled itself white attempting to reconstruct at least part of its predecessor’s empire (Russia). All the while, its economy grew, its diplomatic influence expanded, and its military became an impressive, if untested, colossus. Yes, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had its problems and setbacks: demographic collapse, massive debt, economic fragility, and poor messaging—but so did its greatest competitors. In 2026, while most have been focused on the Iranian-Israeli-American conflict and the Russo-Ukrainian War rooted in unsolved issues from the end of the 20th century, the PRC continues its march forward into the future. Returning to the Midrats Podcast today from 5-6 PM Eastern to discuss will be Dean Cheng. You can join us LIVE at this link, or if you are reading this after the show, check back to this Substack page later Sunday night for the podcast upload links. We’ll dive into: Chinese mobilization/military-civil fusion activities. Chinese space actions, including delays to their lander for the lunar south pole. Chinese political warfare, including efforts against US AI/data centers Chinese worries about Japan Possible lessons learned by the Chinese from the Ukraine war Dean is a Non-resident Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and Non-resident Fellow, George Washington University Space Policy Institute. He recently retired after 14 years with the Heritage Foundation, where he was a senior research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs, and wrote on various aspects of Chinese foreign and defense policy. Prior to joining the Heritage Foundation, he was a senior analyst with the China Studies Division (previously, Project Asia) at CNA from 2001-2009. Before joining CNA, he was a senior analyst with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) from 1996-2001. From 1993-1995, he was an analyst with the US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment in the International Security and Space Division, where he studied the Chinese defense industrial complex. He is the author of the book Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations (NY: Praeger Publishing, 2016), as well as a number of papers and book chapters examining various aspects of Chinese security affairs. 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