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Anduril Industries has unveiled Steelfin, a family of surface-to-air interceptor missiles designed to shoot down cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles at a fraction of the cost of today’s interceptors, with flight tests set to begin next year. The company announced Steelfin on Oct. 12, the first day of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual […]View the full article

Six Turkish military drones flew into Greek-claimed airspace over the Aegean Sea on Oct. 10, Greece’s Hellenic National Defense General Staff said, the latest in a run of near-daily incidents this month. The Greek military recorded eight infringements of air traffic rules inside the Athens Flight Information Region and five violations of Greek national airspace […]View the full article

Rental cars used by Norway’s Home Guard during a large exercise in September recorded video of soldiers, their routes and the codes they typed into military gates, according to a soldier who took part, Norwegian business daily Dagens Næringsliv reported. The cars were rented by the Norwegian Armed Forces from Hertz in Norway, which belongs […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has received its first Mobile Tactical Cannon, a wheeled 155 mm howitzer built by Hanwha Defense USA that the service is testing as a replacement for the towed M777, less than a year after it first asked industry for proposals. Brig. Gen. Robert “RJ” Mikesh Jr., the Army’s portfolio management executive for […]View the full article

Korea Aerospace Industries has flown its FA-50 light combat aircraft in formation with a jet-powered drone for the first time, a test the company says is the first real manned-unmanned formation flight in South Korea. The flight took place on Oct. 8 over the sea south of Goheung, in South Jeolla Province, KAI said on […]View the full article

Airbus and Kratos have flown the Valkyrie uncrewed combat aircraft in Europe for the first time, a step toward offering Germany a drone wingman for its Eurofighters by 2029. The flight, announced on Oct. 12, took place at a test site in northern Europe that the companies did not name. Airbus Defence and Space CEO […]View the full article

Leidos has picked X-Bow Systems, a New Mexico rocket motor maker, to develop and build the booster motors for the U.S. Army’s Low-Cost Containerized Munition, a ground-launched cruise missile the Pentagon wants to buy in large numbers. X-Bow announced the selection on Oct. 12 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington. […]View the full article

When Americans think about admirals in the Pacific in WWII, names like Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey spring to mind. You cannot fully understand the war in the Pacific if you don’t also look at the leaders on the Japanese side—men like Yamamoto, Kurita, and Nagumo. On this week’s Midrats Podcast, we’re going to dive into the story of Admiral Yamamoto with our guest, Ronald Drabkin. We’ll tap into his research that led up to his next book, Admiral Yamamoto: The Gripping Story of the Legendary Japanese Naval Commander Who Planned and Executed the Pearl Harbor Attack. We go live at 5 p.m. Eastern. You can join us live at this link and contribute your thoughts in the show chat while you’re there. If you’re reading this after the show, check the Substack later Sunday evening for the podcast audio upload. Ronald Drabkin is a popular author of books on World War II and espionage history. He initially learned Japanese while attending a Japanese University, before starting a career at Intel and other high tech companies. He learned as an adult that his father had worked in counterintelligence for the US military. Curiosity about his father’s work drove him to do research that resulted in his first papers and book on Japanese naval intelligence. He noted that the romanticized American view of Admiral Yamamoto as a “reluctant warrior” didn’t seem accurate. Furthermore, no new biography of Yamamoto had been published in a very long time, and substantial new information was available in Japan. He has spent the last three years researching Yamamoto’s life across Japan and has even met and heard stories from Yamamoto’s family and some of his admirals, such as Kurita and Nagumo. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Share Leave a comment View the full article

Israel Aerospace Industries will show a new radar carried by a small tethered balloon at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington this week, aimed at giving ground forces a mobile, elevated view of low-flying drones, aircraft and other targets. The system, called POINT@AIR, puts an active electronically scanned array radar on […]View the full article

Cody Aerospace & Defence, a British company founded in February, has unveiled its first product, the Badger Mk1 ground-launched strike missile, along with plans for a factory to build it and a goal of replenishing stockpiles in under a year. The company announced the missile at the Apex Europe defense show in London this week. […]View the full article

China’s Communist Party leadership and the State Council have issued new guidelines laying out 19 measures to speed up breakthroughs in core technologies, expand the use of artificial intelligence across industry and make the country more self-reliant in science and technology, state news agency Xinhua reported on Oct. 9. The guidelines are built around what […]View the full article

South Korea’s military has concluded that North Korean troops deliberately planted the land mines that wounded three South Korean soldiers inside the Demilitarized Zone last month, and it has removed the remaining mines, but President Lee Jae Myung’s description of the blast as an “unfortunate accident” has drawn sharp criticism at home. The explosion happened […]View the full article

U.S. Army air defense crews in Germany fired live rounds at aerial targets alongside AH-64 Apache attack helicopters during Operation Skyfall II, an exercise built around sharing drone-tracking data between ground radars and aircraft. The training took place on Oct. 5 at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Bavaria, according to U.S. Army photos released from the […]View the full article

The Australian Army has received a second batch of HIMARS rocket launchers from the United States, two years earlier than planned and about a year after the first batch arrived, Australia’s Department of Defence said. The new launchers are going to the long-range fires regiment of the Army’s 10th Fires Brigade, based in Adelaide. Defence […]View the full article

A U.S. fighter jet struck and disabled a Panama-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman on Oct. 10 after its crew ignored repeated warnings and tried to break the American naval blockade of Iran, U.S. Central Command said. The jet hit the stern of the M/V Ocean Molica, also known as the Arika Sun, […]View the full article

The third prototype of Russia’s Yak-130M, an upgraded version of the Yak-130 jet trainer reworked to carry radar and guided weapons, has made its first flight, Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation said. The aircraft, carrying side number 137, took off from the Irkutsk Aviation Plant in Siberia with Yakovlev test pilots Oleg Mutovin and Alexander Guskov […]View the full article

A German environmental and human rights group has urged European leaders not to weaken sanctions on Russian energy after President Donald Trump announced a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin for Russia to supply diesel fuel to the United States and global markets, a week before a new U.S. sanctions law on Russia reaches its […]View the full article

Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jets have completed a short deployment to Latvia’s Lielvārde Air Base, where they helped guard the country’s airspace around its parliamentary elections, Latvian Defense Minister Raivis Melnis said on Oct. 9. Melnis visited the Turkish unit at the base on Friday to thank it for the deployment. The Latvian Ministry […]View the full article

A Ukrainian drone has destroyed a Russian Pantsir air defense system on top of a “Flakturm,” one of the purpose-built anti-aircraft towers Russia has been putting up to stop Ukrainian drones, according to new footage released by the Security Service of Ukraine’s Alpha special operations unit. The video shows the strike on the elevated platform, […]View the full article

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries launched Japan’s newest attack submarine, Shogei, at its Kobe shipyard on Oct. 8, the seventh boat of the Taigei class built for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. The 3,000-ton diesel-electric submarine was named and floated out in a ceremony at the yard in Kobe’s Hyogo Ward. MHI will now complete outfitting of […]View the full article

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi lodged a strong protest with Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, on Oct. 9 over the arrest of a U.S. Marine on suspicion of robbing and killing a woman on Okinawa. The two met at Japan’s Ministry of Defense in Tokyo during Paparo’s visit, the ministry said. Koizumi […]View the full article

Japan’s Ministry of Defense has signed a contract to buy interceptor drones from Ukrainian manufacturer SkyFall, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said, making Japan one of the first countries outside Europe to order Ukrainian drones built to shoot down Russian attack drones. Koizumi announced the deal at a press briefing but did not say which SkyFall […]View the full article

Turkish defense electronics maker ASELSAN has shown its GÖKALP interceptor drone destroying a target drone in mid-air by flying straight into it, in a live demonstration at the company’s Oğulbey Technology Base in Ankara. In the test, ASELSAN’s AURA radar picked up the incoming target drone and passed tracking data in real time to a […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy plans to have Boeing redesign parts of the computer that controls weapons and external stores on its F/A-18 and EA-18G fleet, after concluding that the current unit can no longer be supported because key components are no longer available. Naval Air Systems Command’s PMA-265, the program office for the F/A-18 Super Hornet […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has asked defense companies for feedback on how it plans to structure a future contract for its Gun Weapon Systems program, the engineering effort behind the guns mounted on its warships. Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in Virginia posted the request for information on Oct. 9. It asks potential vendors to […]View the full article