Raw Intel

Australia has fired a live missile from a prototype ground-based air defense system for the first time, hitting a cruise missile target at the remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia and marking the debut pairing of an Australian-made radar with the U.S. Navy’s Aegis Combat System. The Department of Defence in Canberra announced the […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin has been tapped by the U.S. Department of War to build the most powerful laser weapon ever packed into a shipping container, a 500-kilowatt system designed to knock cruise missiles and drone swarms out of the sky before they reach American forces or the homeland. The Bethesda, Maryland-based defense giant announced the award […]View the full article

U.S. Marines on a remote Pacific island just proved they can shoot down cruise missiles using a weapon system built around the same technology that has protected Israeli cities from rocket attacks for over a decade. Marines from III Marine Expeditionary Force successfully fired the Medium-Range Intercept Capability, or MRIC, system on June 30 during […]View the full article

The U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division posted a sources sought notice on July 9 seeking companies capable of building a deployable cleaning system to remove what officials call “clutch sludge” from the F-35B’s short takeoff and vertical landing lift fan clutch cooling system, with responses due within just seven business days, by July […]View the full article

If nuclear war ever broke out and every ground-based command center went dark, a fleet of aging jets built on a 1960s airliner design would still be able to relay the launch order, and the U.S. Navy just opened bidding on a decade-long contract to keep those planes flying. The Naval Air Systems Command posted […]View the full article

The Pentagon just opened the door for private companies to pitch prototype hypersonic weapons capable of flying more than five times the speed of sound, releasing a formal Request for Solutions on July 9 that gives industry until August 10 to respond. The opportunity, titled Next Generation Hypersonics for the Department of War, runs through […]View the full article

The company that helped supply Ukraine’s front lines with cheap, mass-produced attack drones just announced it is racing to build the exact opposite: a drone built specifically to hunt and kill other drones. Neros Technologies posted a video on July 10 showing early testing of what the company calls Bandit, a counter-unmanned aircraft system, or […]View the full article

A shoulder-fired missile streaking toward a military cargo plane has mere seconds to find its target, and the U.S. Air Force has paid $60.4 million to make sure the aircraft sees it coming even faster. Northrop Grumman won a $60,438,241 contract to develop an enhanced sensor called the Optical Detection and Identification Node, or ODIN, […]View the full article

Türkiye has reportedly sold its Russian-made S-400 air defense system to a Gulf state, according to Hürriyet columnist Abdülkadir Selvi, whose report ties the transaction directly to Türkiye’s yearslong effort to escape American sanctions and potentially reopen the door to purchasing F-35 fighter jets. Selvi wrote that the sale had been finalized after last-minute details […]View the full article

For decades, only two American companies could build the powerful solid rocket motors that launch the Pentagon’s biggest missiles into the sky, and the Missile Defense Agency just handed nearly $11 million to a New Mexico firm trying to break that monopoly wide open. X-Bow Launch Systems, based in Albuquerque, won a competitive $10,981,581 contract […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy awarded Norwegian defense manufacturer Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace a contract modification worth roughly $50.3 million on July 2 to buy more launcher missile modules for what the Pentagon calls its “over-the-horizon weapons system,” the hardware behind a Marine Corps program that lets troops sink enemy warships from land without ever putting a […]View the full article

Once a bad theory is adopted because it makes sense to one cohort (GOFOs who went to a two-week MBA camp) and is encouraged by others (influential civilian companies looking for another income stream), at the expense of what the first cohort should have been focused on but is an unpopular topic (winning wars), it spreads and develops its inertia. Even when one area discovers the theory does not survive contact with reality, other areas carry on because, well, going along is easier than admitting error and changing. When the maintenance CONOPS for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) came out in the mid-00s with its reliance on civilian contractors and OEMs being responsible for…

A Greek Air Force fighter pilot pulled off a landing gear failure Thursday afternoon that could have ended very differently, bringing an F-16 down on its belly at Zakynthos airport after the jet’s wheels refused to extend during a routine training flight. The Hellenic Air Force confirmed the emergency landing occurred around 1:45 p.m. local […]View the full article

Poland’s spending on drones and counter-drone systems has grown 260-fold in under three years, reaching roughly $6.9 billion (26 billion zloty) this year alone, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk announced at a production line unveiling in Sochaczewa, according to Interia. Tomczyk made the announcement Thursday while touring the new manufacturing facility of Hornet-Polskie Drony, […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy released photos showing divers entering Dry Dock 2 as the attack submarine USS Illinois (SSN-786) prepared to undock at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility on June 24, 2026, marking the completion of a scheduled maintenance period for one of the fleet’s most closely watched Virginia-class boats. Open-source trackers monitoring […]View the full article

The scientists and technicians who build America’s newest nuclear bomb just finished a critical manufacturing step three months ahead of schedule, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced, marking another milestone in what officials describe as one of the fastest nuclear weapons development efforts since the Cold War. NNSA said its Y-12 […]View the full article

MITS Capital, an American-Ukrainian investment group, announced on July 9 that it has invested in Dropla Tech, a Danish-Ukrainian defense technology company whose flagship system detects landmines, improvised explosive devices, and ambush drones in real time, though neither company disclosed the deal size or Dropla Tech’s current valuation. Dropla Tech’s core technology, called Blue Eyes […]View the full article

Türkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced an additional $24 billion in funding for Türkiye’s Steel Dome air and missile defense project during the opening session of the NATO Summit in Ankara, according to Turkish defense outlet Ulusavunma. “We have taken measures to raise the ratio of our defense spending to 3.5 percent by 2030,” Erdoğan […]View the full article

Russian state-aligned outlet Izvestia has confirmed that Russian military units operating on the front have received T-72B3A tanks equipped with an upgraded version of the Arena-M active protection system, and that crews are now undergoing additional training before the vehicles are sent to support assault groups attacking fortified Ukrainian positions. Arena-M belongs to a category […]View the full article

Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec announced the delivery of a new batch of Su-30SM2 Flanker-C multirole fighters and Su-34 Fullback fighter-bombers to the Russian military, according to a statement from the manufacturer, framing the handover as part of an ongoing effort to modernize a combat aircraft fleet that open-source trackers say has absorbed dozens of […]View the full article