All Activity

Researchers at Monash University have published a capacity maturity model for assessing how prepared a country is to defend itself against disinformation campaigns, backed by a 103-page white paper that lays out the reasoning behind it in far more depth than the university’s public summary of the project disclosed. The model and white paper were […]View the full article

Thermopylae Aerospace, a California-based interceptor drone startup launched in June 2025 by a young Ukrainian engineer, said it completed a successful end-to-end demonstration of its SPART interceptor at Edwards Air Force Base, briefing senior Air Force Test Center leadership on the system during the “Game of Drones 26-2” event in mid-July. “At 412th Test Wing, […]View the full article

UFORCE, the London-headquartered maker of Ukraine’s Magura naval drones, is touting a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian air defenses in Crimea as evidence for its pitch to the Pentagon, days before the deadline for a Defense Innovation Unit prize challenge seeking naval drones that can launch their own aircraft. Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency, GUR, […]View the full article

Ukrainian long-range strikes hit an industrial site in Samara, Russia, overnight into Aug. 15, triggering a regional air raid alert and a series of explosions residents reported hearing across the city, according to Russian officials and Ukrainian open-source monitoring of the aftermath. Samara region governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev confirmed that a missile struck an industrial enterprise […]View the full article

A drone found washed up on a UK beach turned out to be a Skyhammer interceptor built by Cambridge Aerospace, the British startup that closed a $300 million funding round at a $3.4 billion valuation earlier this month, according to a Reddit thread and a subsequent technical breakdown posted on social media by UAV engineer […]View the full article

U.S. defense giant Northrop Grumman unveiled Raid Hunter on Aug. 11, a 50mm gun-based air defense system built to counter cruise missiles and drone swarms at short range around military bases and other critical sites. The system pairs the company’s XM913 Bushmaster III chain gun with newly developed precision-guided 50mm ammunition and a networked system […]View the full article

Quit? That is what other people do. I wonder how well he is known in his own nation. It really doesn’t matter, I think. Anyone who has worn the uniform should be able to look to this officer and simply say, “stud.” Naval aviator and all.. Via TheDailyMail; Japan declared war on Germany and (Oberleutnant Gunther) Pluschow flew in a single-seat Rumpler Taube plane to neutral China while under heavy fire from the Royal Navy. He obtained a false passport in the name of E.F McGarvin and boarded the SS Mongolia which left Shanghai to San Francisco on December 5, 1914. He travelled across neutral America and obtained another false passport that proclaimed him to be Swiss national Ernst Smith. In February 1915 he sailed from New York to British controlled Gibraltar on an Italian passenger steamer. He talked his way past a Royal Naval officer but was caught out by the suspicious interpreter. Along with other captured Germans, Pluschow was shipped to Plymouth and then on to the PoW camp at Donington Hall, where he arrived in May 1915. On July 4 he and fellow prisoner Oskar Trefftz broke out by climbing over two 9ft barbed wire fences, before changing clothes and walking 15 miles to Derby where they caught a train to London. By the next morning the men’s escape was featured in the Daily Sketch newspaper with both names and descriptions of the pair. They went their separate ways but Trefftz was recaptured at Millwall Docks. Realising he had to alter his appearance, Pluschow removed his smart tie and handed his coat in at the cloakroom at Blackfriars station. As he handed the garment over the attendant asked him ‘What name is it?’ Without thinking Pluschow replied in German ‘meinen’ (mine). Luckily, the attendant wasn’t paying attention and wrote ‘Mr Mine’ on the receipt. The German then used scraped-up coal dust, boot polish and Vaseline to change his fair hair to greasy black and covered himself in soot to make him appear as a dock worker. He wandered around the docks and on July 7 he overheard a conversation about a Dutch ship due in at Tilbury. He caught a train to the Essex port ... He later swum into the Thames in a bid to reach a rowing boat to take him out to the moored ship but the current was too strong and he was washed ashore exhausted. He then spent four more days and nights making several attempts to row to the vessel before he was able to climb up a thick mooring rope and stow away in a lifeboat. When the vessel, the Prinses Juliana, docked at Flushing in Holland, he melted into the crowd of passengers before sneaking out through a door marked private. He was challenged by a Dutch policeman on the train from Flushing to Germany and, fortuitously, was allowed to carry on his journey despite having no identity papers. The only German POW from WWI to escape and make it home. He died in 1931 at age 44 while exploring in Chile. Of note, he wrote a book of his adventures: The Adventures of the Aviator from Tsingtao: My Experiences on Three Continents 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

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) says its Alfa special operations unit is running what the agency calls a unique operation to isolate an entire stretch of front-line territory, using a category of strike drones it calls “middle-strike” to cut Russian supply routes. Over the past month, SBU special operations fighters destroyed or damaged nearly 2,400 Russian […]View the full article

German ARX Robotics and its Ukrainian manufacturing partner Roboneers have delivered 30 unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine’s Defense Forces, equipping a single regiment to run logistics, casualty evacuation and ammunition resupply missions with unmanned systems at the same time, the German company said. The regiment is now operating the vehicles across multiple mission types simultaneously, […]View the full article

Avidrone Aerospace said this week it will develop a new version of Katana, the single-rotor helicopter drone that won the top prize at DARPA’s Lift Challenge earlier this month in Dayton, Ohio. Katana carried a 51-kilogram (112.4-pound) payload aboard a 13.3-kilogram (29.3-pound) airframe, producing an official payload-to-aircraft-weight ratio of 3.84 to 1, Avidrone said. The […]View the full article

Oshkosh Defense and the Marine Corps’ Marine Depot Maintenance Command manufactured an identical, approved replacement part for a Marine Corps heavy truck at two separate production sites, one in Japan and one in Georgia, using the same secure digital blueprint during Exercise Valiant Shield 2026, the company said in a release. Oshkosh Defense, an Oshkosh […]View the full article

Most are familiar with the rolling train wreck of missed opportunities, bad theory, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, and destroyed careers that the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) left in its wake…and still does. Many of us remember the mission set it was supposed to meet compared to the shambolic grabassery it transmogrified into. Looking back at the sales pitch by the ascendant transformationalists just makes you sick to your stomach what they did to Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and Captain Wayne Hughes’ concept. We also remember the mission set of the recently decommissioned-without-relief Cyclone Class Patrol ships and why we had them—with the added side-benefit of the LT/LCDR command opportunity that, with the departure of our MIW ships as well, is now gone. The requirements are still here. We can see them in the Persian Gulf today, but sadly we still have an unbalanced fleet with nothing on the low-end. I remain convinced it was a great error not to have replaced the 330-ton PC with…something. Even at the last minute, we could have extended the 4-ship production of the 600-ton Ambassador MK III missile boats that we built for Egypt. These ships were built in Pascagoula by VT Halter Marine, managed by NAVSEA…all American, and she came ready to party with: 8 × RGM-84 Boeing Harpoon SSM Block 1G in 2 quad canister launchers 1 × OTO Melara Mk 75 76 mm/62 Super Rapid DP gun 1 × Mk 31 Mod 3 RIM-116 RAM (21 missiles) 1 × Raytheon Mk 15 Mod 21 Phalanx (Block 1B) 20 mm Phalanx CIWS 2 × deck-mounted 7.62 mm M60 machine guns[1] She’s easy on the eyes too. I’ll put something else on the table for you, roughly the same size as the Ambassador MK III, the 680-ton Falaj 3-class patrol boat whose Hull 1 hit the water 18 months ago. She’s ready too. Leonardo 76mm OTO Super Rapid gun equipped with the STRALES guided ammunition system eight-cell vertical launch system loaded with MBDA VL MICA surface-to-air missiles 21-cell Raytheon Mk 49 launcher for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) four MM40 Exocet Block 3C anti-ship missiles two 12-cell Low-cost Guided Imaging Rocket (LOGIR) guided rocket launchers two Electro Optic Systems (EOS) R400-M 30mm remote weapon stations She’s easy on the eyes as well. Yes, there are those who argue that the U.S. Navy has no use for such small ships. Frankly, I’m tired of arguing with them. They are wrong. Call them small corvettes or “heavily armed OPV”…or better yet the Salamander-approved “Sloop of War”…does not matter. It is a gapping hole in our fleet design. Imagine the surface warfare leaders we would build if they were able to earn a Lieutenant command in one of these. Since we first started talking with Jerry Hendrix about this 17 years ago, it has made complete sense…but alas, we’re on the losing end of the argument. Imagine having a couple of these working with our Arleigh Burke DDG in the latest operations against Iran? It sells itself. 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

Leonardo DRS said its SGT STOUT M-SHORAD air defense system successfully defeated small drone threats during a government test, adding a capability the system was not originally built to handle. The company said the system defeated Group 1-2 unmanned aircraft, the military’s classification for small, low-altitude drones, during a U.S. government test event. SGT STOUT […]View the full article

Ukraine’s General Staff said Ukrainian forces struck the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk overnight on August 12, 2026, damaging four Russian warships in what it described as a joint operation by Ukraine’s Defense Forces. The General Staff identified the damaged vessels as the frigates Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen, both Project 11356 ships, the Project […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy awarded BAE Systems a $149.8 million contract to overhaul USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship that turned back from deployment in 2024 after a rudder failure just 10 days out of port. BAE Systems Maritime Solutions in San Diego will perform the maintenance, modernization and repair work during a fiscal 2027 selected […]View the full article

I am of the last cohort of military officers who grew up training for nuclear war expected at any moment. By the time I had been on this planet less than 25 years, I was cleared, if ordered, to deliver nuclear weapons—so were thousands of us. From frigates to submarines to helicopters, pointy nosed jets and prop engined patrol aircraft—our Navy was thick with nuclear weapons. As a junior officer, it was just another PQS book, another exercise, another inspection, another qualification. No big deal. Well, it was a big deal. I saw a grown man cry over an inspection as a JO. In hindsight, it was actually kind of amazing how we just lived with those things on a hair-trigger alert—us and the Soviets. Though we got close to a few times, no one started a war no one would win because they misread something benign or vague. We both fought not insignificant wars with conventional weapons against each other’s proxies, but managed to keep a cool head in charge of the Big Board. We were both good and lucky…but we are also human. With that humanity comes a gloriously complicated set of error prone systems, thought processes, and just plain incompetence that cannot be engineered out of anything we have our hands in. There will always be wars—but wars don’t have to be existential to our species nor the nations that wage them. In WWII, all sides were equipped with chemical weapons to the gills, but no one used them…though some lobbied for their use. As a closet optimist, I am also confident that even at the extremes—in the right conditions and in the right context—every nation wants to ensure that if the ultimate kind of war gets started, it will get started on purpose. With the technology to deliver nuclear weapons anywhere on the globe in under an hour expanding and the number of space-faring nations expanding at the same pace—it only makes sense that good-faith nations should do all they reasonably can, while maintaining national sovereignty, to ensure, as best they can, that no one mistakes the harmless for the nightmare. In that light, the below note will, if we are lucky, be the first step to bringing in more nations and—perhaps—making a more substantial agreement. Perhaps a treaty? Of course, the usual transnational blobish suspects will try to expand the mandate and expand the verbiage for no other reason than that is their nature, but that would be a mistake. If anyone offers to make or call it “comprehensive”, invite them to invest their finite time in other projects. I hope smart people in hard jobs will see if we can get something simple, direct, and clear along these lines—and get it done before the end of the decade. t would be a good exercise in international cooperation, if nothing else. That isn’t a bad thing, and this is low-hanging fruit. Look at the 40 nations listed in the note below. Give or take, these are your S-tier nations. Remember them. Of course, some important names are missing: India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, and Russia. Heck, throw in Brazil so once again we can see the B.R.I.C. construct is for malign actors on the world stage. It is a shame we don’t see Argentina here. Their leadership in South America would have been significantly boosted had they signed on. Ditto Chile. I would hope they were asked. This is a good step. Do not underestimate its importance…even in the busy world we have. And yes, I fully accept that this is slightly off frequency from a regular message here: the last six years have normalized the use of conventionally armed ballistic missiles at war. Especially as subsonic cruise missiles such as the Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM) and SS-N-27 Sizzler lose their efficacy in well-defended airspace, ballistic and trans/hypersonic missiles will become the new standard. However, the direction is correct. Conventionally armed ICBM have not joined the chat…yet…and the U.S. plans to fire the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missile from Block V Virginia Class SSGN that could technically be called an SLBM…but these are things that talented diplomats can work out at the table. The goal is to get everyone to the table before someone does or thinks something stupid, and there won’t be a Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov to save us all. Side note: This is the first time that I have seen the construct, “Philippines (the)”. Is this new? In know that construct is a database/listing convention, but please tell me this is not a new standard of referring to the country in ordinary prose. Awkward and unprofessional looking as it appears that no one senior properly edited the note. 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 boat built to carry a 70-ton battle tank through the surf rolled off an assembly line in Vancouver, Washington, and the U.S. Army is counting down to delivery this fall. Vigor Marine Group unveiled the USAV Craney Island, the second Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) built under a program designed to replace the Army’s aging […]View the full article

Two of America’s biggest defense manufacturers teamed up to solve a problem that has quietly threatened to undercut the Pentagon’s entire hypersonic weapons push, the country’s struggle to actually build these weapons fast enough once the engineering work is done. Lockheed Martin and Albany Engineered Composites, a segment of Albany International Corp., announced a teaming […]View the full article

The U.S. Army’s search for a replacement to one of its most iconic armored vehicles is entering a make-or-break phase, and a nationwide network of American factories is racing to prove its design deserves the job. American Rheinmetall announced that its Lynx XM30 infantry fighting vehicle prototype is approaching delivery to the Army, a milestone […]View the full article

A robotic combat vehicle that can drive itself 280 miles while charging drones, powering radar and running a portable command post has rolled through a demonstration in the Utah desert for a room full of government, defense and technology leaders. Hypercraft, a Provo, Utah-based autonomous vehicle company, showed off its Razorback unmanned ground vehicle at […]View the full article

Hromadske, the Ukrainian outlet, published an exclusive video report embedded with soldiers from Ukraine’s 19th Rocket Artillery Brigade “Svyata Varvara,” one of the first Ukrainian units to receive the American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System back in 2022, documenting the launch process from the crew’s perspective for the first time in this level of detail. […]View the full article

An unmanned aircraft equipped with a microwave retroreflector, a device that bounces radar signals back with the strength of an object roughly twenty times its actual size, is designed to make one radar blip look like a genuine incoming strike drone. That aircraft, called Spectr, is built by OM Defence Systems, a UK based defense […]View the full article

The Defense Logistics Agency, the Pentagon office responsible for keeping military equipment supplied with everything from fuel to spare parts, published a notice on August 11 seeking manufacturers capable of building a replacement electric control panel for the B-1B Lancer, a swing-wing bomber that has served as a backbone of American long-range strike capability since […]View the full article

A team of engineers have proved that a helicopter design older than most of their grandparents can still out-fly the strangest, most futuristic drone shapes engineers could dream up. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s advanced research arm known for funding technologies that eventually reshape entire industries, announced that its Lift Challenge had […]View the full article

Soldiers from two of the U.S. Army’s most closely watched combat divisions spent a week at an Alabama training range flying different drones head to head, then got to pick which ones actually make it into their units, according to a report from the Army’s Capability Program Executive Aviation. The evaluation, held at Clarke Range […]View the full article