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Türkiye will receive the first two of 12 C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft it is buying from the UK in December, once maintenance on them is finished in Britain, the Turkish Defense Ministry said on Oct. 1, with the rest of the former Royal Air Force aircraft to follow in stages. The ministry also said […]View the full article

A previously unseen version of Russia’s jet-powered Shahed attack drone has appeared in Ukraine fitted with whisker-like rods on its nose, a modification that Ukrainian volunteer Serhii Sternenko says is designed to detonate the warhead on contact with high-voltage power lines. Sternenko, a Ukrainian volunteer and activist who runs one of the country’s largest drone […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has hired BAE Systems to work out how pulsed lasers could be used for military missions and how to pair solid-state lasers with beam control systems the U.S. Air Force already has, under a contract worth up to $19.7 million. The cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, for a program called Laser Utilization […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has awarded British-owned MSI Defence Systems a $197 million contract for 30mm deck gun mounts and the electro-optical sights that aim them, the weapons the service is fitting to its warships to shoot down small drones and fast attack boats. The firm-fixed-price contract, issued by Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has ordered 32 recovery versions of its Amphibious Combat Vehicle from BAE Systems, the armored repair-and-tow vehicles that will haul broken-down or damaged ACVs off the battlefield and fix them in the field. Marine Corps Systems Command awarded BAE Systems a $230.1 million firm-fixed-price modification on Oct. 1 to exercise options […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded BAE Systems a $146.7 million contract for 40 sets of the electronic warfare suite that protects the F-15EX Eagle II, covering jets in the fighter’s seventh and eighth production lots. The sole-source contract, announced by the Department of War, buys 40 production hardware sets of the Eagle Passive/Active Warning […]View the full article

Russia’s state defense conglomerate Rostec says three of its newest jet-powered strike drones, the S-71M, S-71K and Dan-T, can now do the job of cruise missiles at a fraction of the cost, and that all three are already being used against Ukraine. Rostec made the claims in comments to the Russian Defense Ministry newspaper Krasnaya […]View the full article

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has put Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in charge of Project Meridian, a 120-day Pentagon study of where future wars will be fought and what weapons the U.S. military will need to win them. Hegseth announced the project on Sept. 30 during his […]View the full article

Finnish satellite company ICEYE and telecommunications group Nokia will jointly develop broadband satellite communications systems that governments can own and run themselves, with the first satellites expected to launch in 2028, the two companies said on Oct. 1. The systems will use satellites in low Earth orbit, a few hundred kilometers above the surface, to […]View the full article

The U.S. Department of War has ordered 14,000 attack drones and explosive payloads from California drone maker Neros after the company finished near the top of both events in the Pentagon’s latest Drone Dominance competition, a deal Neros values at more than $100 million. Neros announced the order on Sept. 30 and said it had […]View the full article

Sweden will send JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets back into NATO’s air defense mission over Poland from October, where they will help protect the hub in the country’s southeast that funnels military and civilian aid into Ukraine, Defense Minister Pål Jonson said on Sept. 30. Most of the aircraft will fly from bases in Sweden, […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force is looking for a system that warns F-15EX Eagle II crews when a missile has been fired at them, and it wants one that is already proven on other military aircraft so it can be fitted to the new fighter quickly. The F-15 program office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, […]View the full article

M-Fly, a Kyiv-based company that builds stabilized cameras and laser guidance systems for military drones, has raised a new funding round led by MITS Capital to expand production as orders from Ukraine and NATO countries grow. Existing investors MITS Capital and Freedom Fund backed the round, joined by Norwegian defense-focused venture firm Gardar and a […]View the full article

Astroscale UK, the British arm of the Japanese company building spacecraft to clear junk from orbit, has earned an international information security certification as it prepares a planned debris removal mission and a defense program for the UK Ministry of Defence. The company said on Sept. 30 that it achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification after an […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab has added $5 million to its work with REGENT Craft on the Seaglider, an electric craft that skims just above the water, bringing the total value of the partnership to $19.25 million, the Rhode Island company said on Sept. 30. The new money funds a fourth phase with six […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has picked five winners in a competition to test how commercial humanoid robots could be used by the military, including a two-legged robot called Alex that is built to take hits and carries ballistic protection. The Army announced the xTechHumanoid winners on Sept. 11, two days after nine finalists demonstrated their technology […]View the full article

I won’t lie, I really wanted the successor to the Grumman Iron Works, Northrop Grumman, to get the award…just to have that legacy back on the flight deck…but…I am not emperor. Boeing it is, …the Department of War announces a contract awarded by the U.S. Navy to Boeing for the Sixth-Generation F/A-XX Strike Fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. The contract is valued at more than $20B for the full-scale development phase. The contract procures multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing. Boeing already has the USAF’s F-47 contract…so I will assume there will be a fair bit of commonality. Perhaps a similar path to how the YF-17 became the F/A-18? We’ll see, won’t we? Based on the fuzzy image Boeing put out at the top of the post, it appears to be tailless…dare I say, a flying wing. I’m not as concerned with aesthetics as I am with robustness at sea and being designed for the requirements of a carrier-based fighter (…and yes, get rid of the F/A and just use F) Everyone here knows some of my baseline requirements for F/A-XX, in order of importance: Range: The Pacific’s vastness demands range from you, but that vastness also grants you more security. Range give you safety and flexiblity. Numbers: We have to build a lot of them and be able to scale if needed. That means the right compromise between cutting edge and practical production. The next Great Pacific War will not be measured in weeks or months, but years. We will have significant battlefield losses. Capacity: Carry a lot of fuel and a lot of weapons. In summary…and you know where this is going…it has to be a heavy fighter. I will make the assumption that the A-model will be single seat…but there are a whole host of missions (which we have a F/A-18E and F)—especially with the integration of collaborative combat drones—that make a two seat heavy fighter an additional tool in the airwing toolbag that you will need. This next line gives me a bit of hope. Following this contact award announcement, Boeing will deliver the platform to augment and eventually replace legacy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers beginning in the 2030s, and operate alongside the F-35C. EA-XX should be a two seater…so the engineering will have to be done anyway. The aviation version of the transformationalists will enlist the accountants and the drone-autists to try to force an all single-seat fleet, but that would be a mistake. They might get support from those who read more military fiction than understand military practice, so there will be an ongoing argument that hopefully isn’t engineered into a fait accompli. Again, we’ll see. The important thing is we can now move forward to prototype testing and eventual production. Chop chop. History is impatient. Meanwhile…we still don’t know a lot…but we can guess. Over on YouTube, BingoFuel put this out three days ago. Nice overview of why the future is tailless. 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

The U.S. Army has picked five companies to build competing prototypes of a new Precision Strike Missile that can be fired from a HIMARS truck and hit moving ships and relocatable land targets 1,000 km (620 miles) or more away. Anduril, Castelion, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Mach Industries and RTX each received a […]View the full article

The Kremlin said on Sept. 30 that Russia’s official policy documents provide for a nuclear response if NATO countries try to blockade Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea wedged between Poland and Lithuania. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian diplomats were reminding “hotheads in Europe” of those documents after what he described as […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy will buy 10 of Saronic’s Marauder autonomous ships, a 55-meter (180-foot) uncrewed vessel built in Louisiana, after the ship passed at-sea testing under the service’s new Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel program. Saronic announced the production award on Sept. 30, a day after the U.S. Navy said it had given production agreements for […]View the full article

Raytheon has won a $247.1 million contract to build, upgrade and overhaul Phalanx close-in weapon systems for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, covering the shipboard gun, its land-based counterpart and the missile-armed SeaRAM, the U.S. Department of War announced. Naval Air Systems Command awarded the firm-fixed-price contract to the RTX business without competition. It […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has paid Boeing $16.7 million to plan the shutdown of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler production lines, including a full inventory of the government-owned tools and equipment used to build the jets. The firm-fixed-price order, placed by Naval Air Systems Command against an existing Boeing ordering agreement, covers planning, analysis, […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has ordered another $123.4 million worth of Lionfish small underwater drones from HII, exercising contract options for more vehicles, support equipment and related gear, the U.S. Department of War announced. Naval Sea Systems Command awarded the firm-fixed-price modification to HII’s Unmanned Systems business on Sept. 24. Nearly all of the work, 99%, […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded 10 companies counter-drone contracts with a combined ceiling of $4.15 billion, lining up commercial radars, cameras, jammers and weapons to detect and defeat hostile drones, the U.S. Department of War announced. Seven companies received ceilings of $500 million each: Allen Control Systems of Austin, Texas; Digital Force Technologies of San […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has picked Boeing to build F/A-XX, its first sixth-generation carrier-based strike fighter, choosing the company over Northrop Grumman and awarding a development contract valued at more than $20 billion. The U.S. Department of War announced the award on Sept. 29. The contract covers the full-scale development phase and buys multiple test aircraft […]View the full article