Raw Intel

General Dynamics showed up to Modern Day Marine 2026 with three business units, two booth numbers, and enough hardware to stock a small army — from a next-generation 8×8 reconnaissance vehicle with a 30mm cannon to an assault bridge mounted on an unmanned ground vehicle scheduled to begin testing in July. The company’s presence at […]View the full article

Two unmanned systems companies have combined GPS-denied mapping with radiation detection in a single integrated package — giving CBRN teams the ability to see inside contaminated spaces in three dimensions, in real time, without sending a person in. Emesent and Teledyne FLIR Defense announced a partnership that puts Emesent’s Hovermap LiDAR payload onto Teledyne FLIR’s […]View the full article

Textron Systems and its subsidiary Howe & Howe pulled the wraps off a new unmanned ground vehicle at Modern Day Marine on April 28, 2026 — a wheeled robotic platform built specifically around the Marine Corps’ vision of how autonomous systems should fight alongside its existing armored fleet. The vehicle is called the RIPSAW M1, […]View the full article

A NASCAR team just rolled a six-wheeled military platform onto the Modern Day Marine show floor — and it already has a Lockheed Martin missile test on its resume. Richard Childress Racing Enterprises, LLC, known across motorsport as the organization behind one of NASCAR’s most storied racing programs, brought its 6-Wheeled Adaptable Platform to Modern […]View the full article

Patriot3, a Virginia-based small business that has spent years building specialized equipment for special operations forces and law enforcement worldwide, brought its full maritime and ground operations portfolio to Modern Day Marine this week — sharing a booth with Canadian sensor specialist Shark Marine Technologies and putting some of its most ambitious platforms in front […]View the full article

American Rheinmetall brought a full slate of unmanned systems and next-generation squad weapon systems to Modern Day Marine. The centerpiece of the display is Rheinmetall’s Mission Master Silent Partner Hotel, designated MMSP-H, a fully autonomous ground vehicle that operates on land and water. The platform carries 2,200 pounds of payload on land and 880 pounds […]View the full article

Two separate contracts awarded within days of each other are pouring more than $163 million into the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll — the remote Pacific range where the U.S. military tests ballistic missiles, tracks reentry vehicles, and validates the interceptors designed to shoot them down. The more recent award, dated April 27, 2026, […]View the full article

Japan’s Defense Minister met with the team behind one of the country’s more unconventional defense startups — a company building military drones out of cardboard — and the conversation signals where Tokyo thinks its unmanned future is headed. Shinjiro Koizumi, Japan’s Minister of Defense, held a meeting with representatives of Air Kamui, a startup that […]View the full article

Finnish-made Sisu GTP 4×4 armored vehicles have appeared in the inventory of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, a development that raises immediate questions about how they got there — because Finland has never publicly announced transferring them. Ukrainian military historian Andriy Kharuk first reported the appearance of the Sisu GTP 4×4 in Ukrainian Special Operations Forces […]View the full article

Spain unveiled the industrial blueprint for its next generation of fighter pilot training on April 28, 2026, as an Airbus-led consortium presented the full programme structure for the Spanish Air and Space Force’s new Integrated Combat Training System — a contract awarded in December 2025 that will retire the country’s aging F-5 fleet and replace […]View the full article

It is well past time that we had a frigate SITREP, specifically the gray-hulled version of the Legend-class Cutter we are going to build for our Navy. No reason to rehash my concerns and assumptions—click the frigate hypertext above if you need to catch up, but…let me just say…though I’m glad she’s on the way and we’ll find good use for her, I hope Flight I is a short run. I know hope is not a plan, but back in December, I had this little bit of hope: I suspect that already there is work being done on a Flight II, which will incorporate the multi-mission capability of the patrol frigate proposed over a dozen years ago … While looking over the FY27 budget request, it appea…

Last week we started things off with a discussion of the 18 battle force and 16 non-battle force ships. Let’s look back at that. It may have taken nine years, but there was a post of mine from 2017 that finally got a smile: On the list of "unsexy but important" are many items from icebreakers, to command ships, to hospital ships, that every POM cycle get left on the cutting room floor by the gaggle of cats chasing laser pointers we have in charge of building our fleet. When you look at the list from last Monday and the news from last summer about icebreakers, we seemed to have one ship that still is not getting the investment it needs—command ships. We’re running out of t…

Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate has published a detailed technical breakdown of a previously obscure Russian cruise missile developed specifically for the Su-57 stealth fighter, revealing not only the weapon’s architecture and capabilities but the extensive network of foreign components — American, Chinese, Swiss, Japanese, German, Taiwanese, and Irish — that made it possible to build. […]View the full article

Elbit Systems inaugurated a new unmanned aerial systems production facility in Chitila, Romania on April 27, 2026 — and marked the occasion by flying the Watchkeeper XR over Romanian skies for the first time, turning a ribbon-cutting into a live capability demonstration for Romanian government and military officials watching from the ground. The Chitila facility […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy commissioned its newest fast-attack submarine, USS Idaho, at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut on April 25, 2026 — adding a boat built for undersea warfare, surveillance, and special operations to a fleet that its leadership describes as operating forward every hour of every day. The ceremony at Groton brought […]View the full article

Oshkosh Defense is rolling two significant platforms onto the Modern Day Marine exhibition floor this week — including an autonomous ground vehicle armed with anti-ship missiles that represents one of the Marine Corps’ most consequential doctrinal shifts in a generation. The company will exhibit at Modern Day Marine from April 28 through 30, 2026, showcasing […]View the full article

SummaryThis episode features Dr. Colin Dueck, with Mark and Sal, discussing the historical and strategic importance of U.S. policy towards Latin America, the evolution of the Monroe Doctrine, and current challenges and opportunities in the hemisphere. Discussion is centered on how U.S. foreign policy can shape the future of the region amid great power competition. You can listen at this link, subscribe to the podcast, or listen via the Spotify widget below. Show LinksWhy the Monroe Doctrine Still Matters, Colin Dueck Dr. Colin Dueck’s AEI page China’s Growing Influence in Latin America, Council on Foreign Relations Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America The b…

A California defense startup brought its football-sized throw-and-fly drone to a NATO base in Romania and walked away with what its CEO described as massive interest from more than 500 senior military representatives — a significant moment for a company that formally unveiled its STUD system less than a month ago and is already racing […]View the full article

A California company better known for building antennas that connect aircraft to satellites has quietly entered one of the most competitive markets in defense — and at the U.S. Army’s recent Cross Domain Fires Concept Focused Warfighting Experiment, its mobile High Power Microwave system showed up mounted on a pickup truck, cued by Echodyne’s EchoShield […]View the full article

A Russian military helicopter went down near Wabaria in the Gao region of Mali on April 25, confirmed by Russian sources, as fighters from the Azawad Liberation Front and al-Qaeda-linked JNIM launched the largest coordinated offensive in the country in years — striking simultaneously at the capital Bamako, the military stronghold of Kati, and the […]View the full article