All Activity

Two cavalry scouts sat inside a brand-new armored vehicle atop a hill at Fort Hood, Texas, watching a sky full of drones do reconnaissance work that used to take an hour and now takes minutes, according to a report by Gina Cavallaro, Senior Staff Writer for the Association of the U.S. Army, published July 31, […]View the full article

A Lithuanian drone maker has given its battle-tested reconnaissance aircraft a built-in early warning system against the exact threat that has been shooting down surveillance drones across Eastern Europe’s front lines, and the company says every unit rolling off its production line already has the upgrade installed. Unmanned Defense Systems, a Vilnius-based defense technology company […]View the full article

The modern battlefield no longer belongs solely to armor thickness and engine power. Drones circle overhead, electronic warfare degrades communications, and sensor networks feed commanders more data than any single operator can process in real time. Against that backdrop, two companies from opposite ends of the defense technology spectrum are betting that the next leap […]View the full article

A company that has spent nearly two decades building bulletproof pickup cars for warlords, mining companies, and armies across 60 countries has revealed its new robot, and it wants that robot doing everything from scouting minefields to hauling ammunition without a soldier ever climbing inside. United Arab Emirates-based TAG Dynamics, an armored vehicle manufacturer established […]View the full article

Ukraine’s homemade ballistic missile is close enough to its first flight that its own maker won’t say when, in an exclusive interview with The War Zone, Fire Point CEO Iryna Terekh revealed the company is now casting the engine for its FP-9 ballistic missile, a weapon designed to reach Moscow, and expects a test launch […]View the full article

The inevitable started last week. The U.S. Navy has begun retiring its first of four Ohio class guided missile submarines, with the USS Georgia scheduled to be officially inactivated on July 31 following its return to Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay. The retirement marks the beginning of the end for the world’s most heavily armed tactical submarines, which were designed to carry 154 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles. Their withdrawal from service is particularly notable due to a lack of a similarly heavily armed replacement for the vessels. Originally commissioned in 1984 as ballistic missile submarines to carry strategic nuclear weapons, the four ships were converted into a guided missile submarine during the 2000s to allow them to contribute to conventional war efforts. That is the rub—the VLS tubes. At a time when people are considering deploying missile barges because we knowingly undercapitalized our fleet for a Pacific fight, we are decommissioning our largest method of getting long-range precision strike in theater in mass. The very real-world experiences from Ukraine to Iran have finally forced even the most blind to see that modern warfare is neither short nor thrifty with long-range precision weapons. The Navy and its TLAM are a cornerstone to our ability to project power ashore with precision and mass. Those 154 VLS tubes carried by each of the four converted Ohios are/were essential to any CONOPS involving the People’s Republic of China in WESTPAC. The sunset of the Ohio SSGN sub-class isn’t a surprise to anyone, but those arguing for wartime effectiveness lost out time and time again to those chasing the illusion of efficiency and shifting future-risk to someone else’s PCS cycle in the “out-years.” Well Shipmate, the out-years are now. As far back as 2012, we’ve tried to remind everyone about the importance of what an SSGN brings to the table. In my perfect world, we would accept some risk on the SSBN numbers side for a few years to do the right thing along the lines of what I proposed in 2019 for the Columbia Class SSBN: Part of me would rather see 8 SSBN and 2-4 SSGN from the design, but that is just me. Those SSGN bring a lot of punch forward when needed ... and flexibility. In 2023, I put a little more detail to Plan Salamander—with a desire for even more SSGN than what I thought we needed pre-Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022. I emphasize again, on bended knee, we need a SSGN version of the Columbia SSBN and the order needs to be SSBN, SSGN, SSBN, SSGN, SSBN, SSGN, SSBN, SSGN, SSBN, SSGN, SSBN, SSGN, SSBN, SSBN, etc. I’ll accept temp risk on SSBN side #s wise, we need SSGN more. That would have given us a 16x7=112 with a full-TLAM load-out in the vertical tubes alone. Well, that wasn’t/isn’t going to happen, the nuclear autists scared everyone away by screeching, “Nuclear deterrent! Eleventy!!!” at 190 decibels. However…have you ever wanted something so bad that you start seeing any place that it might be plausible? At the end of last year, it was clear that with the next Block V Virginia SSN, someone was trying to do for SSGN what the Super Hornet guys did with the F/A-18. Get what you can, not what you want. Well, I’m not saying I manifested this designation change back in December of last year…but…if we are not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, then let’s call it. On Monday, we decided to change “glad” to a peppier “happy”—something that was hinted at back in May. Today, the Department of the Navy announced a decisive step to sharpen its competitive edge, reclassifying nineteen planned Virginia Class submarines equipped with the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) as guided missile submarines (SSGN). This pivotal shift clearly differentiates these advanced platforms from traditional Virginia Class fast attack submarines (SSNs), signaling a leap forward in undersea warfighting capability, lethal combat power, and global deterrence. This is truth in advertising, and brings us back to what SSGNs were at the start. Our first SSGN were really four SSGs and one SSGN of the Regulus boats of the 1950s and early 1960s. They were for land attack. The Soviet Union had dedicated SSG/SSGN during the Cold War that had dual land and surface attack role, but we got out of the game except for a handful of torpedo tube launched TLAM and the dozen VLS tubes in the Flight II and Flight III Los Angelas Class SSN and after the Cold War, the Block 1-IV Virginia Class SSN. Desert Storm broke the seal on conventional TLAM use, and that realization helped get us back in the SSGN business once the opportunity presented itself with the Ohio conversions. With those heading into history, we’ll have to make due with the Block V. What is a Block V Virginian SSN? The Block V at 460 feet is a beast. 82% the length of a Columbia SSBN (and Ohio SSBN, they’re the same length at 560 feet), and 22% longer than the previous VA Blocks. The sexy they bring to the game is the possibility of exchanging 28 TLAM for 12 Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missiles. American SSNs are just beasts. We no longer have nimble boats once the still-not-that-nimble-at-362 feet remaining Los Angelas Class SSN decommission. With the Block V, we won’t get our 154 VLS of the Ohio SSGN, nor my theoretical Columbia Class SSGN-mod’s 112 VLS. Nope, if we leave the Conventional Prompt Strike missiles on the beach, we’ll get 40 TLAM. TLAM that will be used for land attack…back to where SSGN’s got their start. Then again, with the Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM) Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST) variant returning, that also gives you a 40 MST stream attack…which will ruin any surface officer’s day. One final bitter note before I completely let go of the SSGN variant of the Columbia-class SSBN: those 16 missile tubes on the SSBN when converted to conventional SSGN would give you 16 x 3 = 48 CPS missiles. Just saying. For reference, the Russian Yasen Class SSGN can carry 32 missiles for attacks at sea or ashore. We should take what we can get. That low-point in 2029-30…it is really just criminal…but there it is. Those who are long retired made decisions that made their tour easy resulting in today’s reality that those who came after them would have to deal with the problem—but here we are. Cut steel and get to work. NB: Yes, there are torpedo tube launched Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM), but for the sake of this article, we won’t be counting them.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

A defense think tank is telling the British government to reverse a decision it already made twice, warning that four of the Army’s armored infantry battalions are about to be left without any working vehicle at all, the UK Defence Journal reported, citing a new policy paper from the 878 Institute. The paper, titled Britain’s […]View the full article

A U.S. Army initiative wants ordinary infantry soldiers carrying nothing more than a backpack to be able to spot a tank down the road and simply send a drone to destroy it, and that vision just moved through another round of testing in the Arizona desert. Yuma Proving Ground is conducting risk reduction testing of […]View the full article

Yuma Proving Ground, the U.S. Army’s massive desert test range in southwestern Arizona, successfully supported a full-scale, live-fire hypersonic warhead test using a cannon-based test system, establishing what officials describe as a critical new testing capability for modern national security programs, according to a report published in The Outpost, Yuma Proving Ground’s official publication, on […]View the full article

The Pentagon’s top policy official has spent a week meeting with defense leaders from Germany, Britain, Italy, and Romania, laying the groundwork for a review that could reshape how many American troops stay in Europe and who actually pays for the continent’s defense going forward. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby detailed that […]View the full article

A U.S. Marine Corps amphibious vehicle that can swim ashore from a warship still can’t stop a hobby-store drone from watching it do it, and the Marines just confirmed the fix, and the company they intend to buy it from, without opening the job to competition. The Marine Corps’ Program Manager Advanced Amphibious Assault, part […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has told drone makers it wants a battlefield scout small enough to fold into a backpack-sized case, tough enough to carry a lethal weapon, and versatile enough to deliver two pints of blood to a wounded soldier. The U.S. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal issued a Call for Solutions on August […]View the full article

A construction company has won a $37.6 million contract to build a facility so secure it needs its own classification category, part of a sprawling effort to turn a small Arkansas Air National Guard base into an international training hub for the world’s most advanced fighter jet. BL Harbert International LLC, based in Birmingham, Alabama, […]View the full article

One of the great things about today’s information environment in national security is the vast number of voices out there. I know for some this is a frustration—because they desire more control or are simply too lazy to want many choices—but it is by far a net positive. It was not too long ago that there were but a few regular voices out there that could be found only on a few publications or outlets. It was very hard for new voices to get ideas out there, and established experience was provided to you, not vetted through the marketplace of ideas. It was also much harder to push back against bad ideas or compromised institutions. It was easier to silence voices simply because there were few places they could be heard. Barriers, gates, agendas…it was not a great time for the marketplace of ideas. There are still some of these problems, but it is but a shadow of what it once was. As opposed to having someone else curate your information diet for you from a limited selection, you can instead set things up yourself with a broad spectrum of choices. I make sure to read broadly. I find reading from people you disagree with to be helpful in honing your own ideas, or even—for the smart and well meaning people I disagree with—you can find common ground or even realize that, hey, not all their ideas are that bad. One of the people I force myself to read is David A. Deptula, Lt Gen, USAF (Ret.) and now dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. As one would assume given his professional background and present paying gig, he is a strong advocate for airpower in general, and the USAF in particular. He’s had me roll my eyes now and then, and tilt my head more than once, but he also has me nodding my head in respect when he makes a good point. I passed on reading this the first time it came across my scan, but gave it a try on my second. I’m glad I did. Over at Forbes about a week and a half ago he put out an article titled, Stop Judging Airpower Against Missions It Was Never Assigned, that was of the “good-David” variety. You can feel his justified frustration about the nature of a lot of the discussion about the ongoing operations against Iran. Partisans on both sides are doing what you would expect. People keep trying to spot-weld their long-standing hobbyhorses to it. Most frustrating, however, is the weaponized ignorance and just poor professional practice by those you’d expect better of. Deptula is being patient here, doing exactly what one does when you see disorganized grabassary…you go back to basics. Staying in his lane, he wants to lay down the fundamentals of airpower…and I have to say, it is an exceptional master class for this purpose. Let’s dive into a bit. No serious modern airpower professional argues that bombing, by itself, can solve every military and political problem. Nor does any competent strategist contend that land, sea, air, space, or cyber capabilities should be employed by themselves, independently of the others. Modern warfare is not a contest to determine which military service can claim supremacy. It is the disciplined application of the military capabilities best suited to achieve clearly defined political objectives. The useful inquiry is not whether aircraft can independently deliver every conceivable form of victory. It is whether the choice made by military and political leaders is appropriate to the objectives defined by political leaders. That distinction matters because different objectives require fundamentally different military contributions. We’ve spent the last 85 years refining what airpower can and cannot do. The above paragraph is just about perfect. It isn’t airpower supremacist nor is it dismissive. It is balanced and in line with experience. A campaign designed to replace Iran’s government and assume responsibility for the country would require a major ground component and a far broader political project. Airpower could not occupy Iran, police its cities, or administer its population. Neither could naval, cyber, or space power. Even a successful ground invasion would not guarantee a satisfactory outcome unless political leaders had a credible plan for the post-invasion governance and order. Those advocating a regime change in Iran have to explain why the U.S. should deploy enough ground power to take a nation of 90 million. Of course, they cannot—and even if they could—the U.S. people would not support it. I don’t know any of us who had experience on the ground in the last quarter century from Afghanistan to Iraq who could sell that point. You can do some things with airpower alone, just like you can do some things with seapower alone, but you cannot change a government. That requires, at its core, a young man standing on a street corner with a weapon saying, “This is now ours. Not yours.” Specifically toward Iran, what does the U.S. want? Let’s go back to what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine, USAF, made it quite clear on March 10: what the goals of the operation were. 1. Destroy missiles/drones 2. Destroy navy 3. Destroy military and industrial base I have written some about this conflict here, but most of my commentary has been on the UNCLAS Read Board Podcast. Regardless of everything else that has bobbed and weaved around this operation…if we would just stick to Caine’s Three, we’ll be fine. Try to do more? Not recommended. In summary, this conflict has gone on much longer than I would have wanted, but at its core, I cannot complain about punishing the Iranian government and the IRGC the way they have. Thousands of young men and women of my generation were killed by them during GWOT, tens of thousands injured. They were more than deserving of a punitive expedition for that reason alone, but to buy more time for the international community to address their nuclear program and take the teeth out of their proxies? Just underlines the case for making the rubble bounce. These recent commentary arguments collapse every military objective into one crude test: Did the adversary’s government surrender, collapse, or disappear? If not, they seem to believe, the military campaign is a failure. By that standard, virtually every use of force short of total conquest will be unsuccessful by definition. Such a measure ignores the fact that nations frequently employ military power for limited purposes: deterrence, denial, degradation, disruption, coercion, containment, protection, or to buy time and diplomatic leverage. … If victory is defined exclusively as seizing territory or overthrowing a government, then ground forces will inevitably appear to be the only force capable of delivering it. But defining success as occupation does not prove that occupation is the appropriate political objective. Land forces are indispensable when leaders decide that seizure and control of territory, protection of populations, defeat of enemy formations in close combat, or occupation and administration of another country is the necessary course of action. Even as these remain essential military functions, they are not the purpose of every military campaign. The mission should determine the force—not the other way around. Exactly correct. I could be on David’s planning staff. My core planning team could work with this. Exceptionally solid. History also demonstrates that aerospace power can produce decisive strategic effects when assigned objectives suited to its capabilities. A little too Effects-Based Operations-ish (I am a hardshell to an extreme Conditions Based Planning adherent), but I’ll allow it. Success should be assessed by the change imposed on the adversary’s behavior and capacity, not by a tally of weapons released or aimpoints hit or “fires” imposed. The below is a very good elevator speech on Joint, best given to those who are new to the game or poorly experienced/educated in the profession of arms. As a matter of fact, if someone can memorize the below and deliver it with a Transatlantic Accent, then they should be awarded JPME I on the spot. Joint operations do not require artificial symmetry among the services or an identical share of responsibility for each component. Nor must a land force provide the final act in every campaign simply to validate the effort as joint. Jointness means employing the capabilities most appropriate to the mission in the right quantities at the right places and in the correct sequence. Sometimes land forces will dominate. Sometimes naval forces will. In other circumstances, airpower will carry the principal load. Cyber and space capabilities may be central to all of them. The optimal combination will vary according to the adversary, geography, political objective, available forces, acceptable risk, and desired end state. The purpose of joint operations is not to protect service equities. It is to maximize strategic effectiveness. The appropriate force package is the one that delivers the required result with the least exposure, casualties, and escalation risk. … No military domain possesses an inherent ability to turn tactical accomplishment into political success. Airpower cannot govern a hostile population. Naval power cannot occupy a capital. Land power cannot guarantee political legitimacy. Space and/or Cyber operations cannot by themselves compel every adversary. Even a fully optimized and integrated joint military force cannot rescue an incoherent strategy. The more productive debate is over the political result being sought, the feasibility of that result, and the combination of diplomatic, economic, informational, and military tools most likely to secure it without disproportionate cost. Political purpose—not service preference—must govern military campaign design. Foundational. Too many people are trying to operate at a high strategic level without a baseline understanding of the basics. Well done, General Deptula. Well done. 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

A Russian satellite network built to rival Starlink has quietly reached a threshold Ukrainian defense officials have been dreading, providing at least two reliable windows of connectivity over Ukrainian territory every single day, each lasting more than an hour, Militarnyi reported, citing satellite communications expert Volodymyr Stepanets. The system, called Rassvet, is being built by […]View the full article

A rocket booster that has flown to space and back seven times carried a classified American spy satellite into orbit before dawn last week, the latest and least publicized entry in a launch campaign the National Reconnaissance Office has been quietly running at a pace unlike anything the agency has attempted before. SpaceX launched the […]View the full article

A U.S. Navy warship named for a medic who threw his own body over a wounded Marine to absorb a grenade blast just took its first public step toward joining the fleet, breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across its bow in a Maine shipyard on Saturday. The U.S. Navy christened its fifth Flight III […]View the full article

Rheinmetall has unveiled a warship built to outgun vessels twice its size, betting that a mid-sized frigate packed with the same missile defense technology found on America’s largest destroyers can win over navies looking to modernize without breaking their budgets. Rheinmetall, the German defense manufacturer, revealed the GMF 140, a next-generation guided missile frigate measuring […]View the full article

A helmet factory in northern Poland has spent its first year of operation shipping more than 90,000 ballistic helmets to NATO allies, and the company behind it says that pace confirms a bet made three years ago is finally paying off. Galvion, a designer and manufacturer of soldier head protection, power systems, and integrated soldier […]View the full article

A Romanian robotics company says it has built a single platform that can fight wildfires, work construction sites, and operate as a counter-drone defense system, all from the same modular chassis. Maximus Labs Romania, alongside its manufacturing arm Maximus Lab, describes the Max1 as a modular unmanned ground vehicle capable of switching between operational roles […]View the full article

Ukraine’s military has shown a homemade air defense system built by bolting American anti-tank missiles onto a Rada radar and welding the whole thing to a Dutch army truck. Ukraine’s 302nd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade publicly displayed a new mobile variant of the STASH short-range air defense system in an official video, mounting the launcher on […]View the full article

I can think of few 18-month periods where shipbuilding, the merchant marine, and the importance of a strong maritime sector in the U.S. has been a more active topic. Near the center of this conversation—or at least a few paragraphs in—is a long-time friend of the show, Dr. Sal Mercogliano. He joins the Midrats Podcast today from 5-6 PM Eastern. Join us live at this link if you can, but if you miss it, refresh this page later Sunday night and the podcast links will be up. Sal is the Chair of the Department of History, Criminal Justice and Political Science at Campbell University; a former merchant mariner; and a contributor to USNI Proceedings, Sea History, Naval History, and gCaptain. He is also the host of the YouTube channel, What’s Going on With Shipping. 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

An autonomous warship that didn’t exist a year ago is now running sea trials around the clock, seven days a week, and the company behind it says that grueling schedule is deliberate proof the vessel can survive conditions no engineer would choose. Saronic Technologies said its Marauder medium unmanned surface vessel has entered full on-water […]View the full article

The Pentagon has agreed to lend a small Texas drone company up to $820 million, a bet that fixing a handful of tiny, unglamorous parts could unlock America’s entire drone manufacturing pipeline. The U.S. Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million to Performance Drone Works, […]View the full article

A German reconnaissance drone flying over Ukraine has got a new paint job and a rearward-facing camera, and both changes trace directly back to a threat that barely existed a couple of years ago, other drones built specifically to hunt reconnaissance aircraft out of the sky. Quantum Systems, a German drone manufacturer based in Gilching, […]View the full article