Raw Intel

The AC-130J Ghostrider is one of the most heavily armed aircraft in the U.S. military, a modified cargo plane converted into a gunship that circles slowly overhead and rains down precision fire on ground targets. It carries a 30 mm cannon, a 105 mm howitzer, and a mix of guided bombs and missiles, all controlled […]View the full article

Poland may be preparing to buy around a dozen Airbus A400M Atlas heavy transport aircraft through the European Union’s SAFE defense financing mechanism, according to Polish defense analyst Jarosław Wolski, who cited unnamed sources in an August 25 post on X. Wolski wrote that the numbers he has heard range from 8 to 15 aircraft, […]View the full article

Sen. Richard Blumenthal toured a Ukrainian drone production line in Kyiv and said the country is manufacturing “thousands” of attack drones every day, offering a rare on-the-record look from a sitting U.S. lawmaker at the scale of Ukraine’s wartime drone industry. Blumenthal named the company as SkyFall, a Ukrainian defense technology firm, in a post […]View the full article

Satellite images showing a stealth fighter-shaped object at a former Chinese airport turn out to depict a fire-fighting trainer mock-up, according to Chinese aerospace analyst Andreas Rupprecht. Rupprecht made the assessment in an August 25 post on X, sharing images that show Chinese military firefighters conducting a live training exercise around the mock-up, including one […]View the full article

Austria’s Bundesheer received its first modernized Ulan infantry fighting vehicle and Leopard 2A4 tank at a handover ceremony in Großmittel on August 25, Austria’s Ministry of Defense announced. Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner attended the event. The modernization program is part of a broader force-development plan the ministry calls Aufbauplan ÖBH 2032+. Work on the armored […]View the full article

CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow for meetings on August 25, CBS News reported, citing multiple sources. The trip explains the previously unexplained flight of a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III that landed at Vnukovo International Airport near Moscow that morning after departing Riga, Latvia. The Kremlin said it had “no information” about […]View the full article

Russia’s Baltic Fleet has fitted several of its warships with improvised netting and irregular camouflage patterns as makeshift protection against drone strikes, according to footage circulating from a recent fleet exercise. The images show at least three vessels equipped with different combinations of netting, deformation-pattern paint and other visual countermeasures on their bridges, radar housings […]View the full article

The general director of a Russian state-backed drone development center was arrested and jailed on fraud charges, according to Russian outlets reporting August 25. Yevgeny Grigoryev, head of the TulaDrone Research and Production Center, was detained in Tula and ordered held for two months by a court on August 14, according to the local outlets […]View the full article

The U.S. Army awarded General Dynamics Land Systems a $54,281,616 contract to provide sustainment support for the Stryker vehicle fleet, the Department of War announced August 24. The cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract covers field-level maintenance, field service representative support and fielding activities. The contract specifically applies when interactive electronic technical manuals and logistics products have not […]View the full article

The U.S. Army awarded Hardwire LLC a $99 million contract to develop advanced processing methods for metallic armor, the Department of War announced August 24. The contract runs through Phase III of the Small Business Innovative Research program and has an estimated completion date of August 23, 2031. Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, […]View the full article

Earlier this year, I got a quick brief on the upscaled version of Saildrone’s surface unmanned system, which has a solid dozen years of proven performance at sea. I will admit, I was not fully sold when the program first started with the 7-meter Explorer’s deployment to CENTCOM a half dozen years ago, but they’ve proven their utility. Now, let me put some figures in front of you: Displacement: 457 metric tons Length: 53 meters Speed: 20 knots That sounds like a pretty big drone, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. That is a WWII-era PC-461-class submarine chaser. There’s your reference point in size, and from my seat, mission. What are the figures for Saildrone’s Spectre? Displac…

Ukraine’s Independence Day parade in Kyiv on August 24 included a new naval drone, the MV11, from the Ukrainian company UFORCE. It is the largest vessel yet built in the company’s MAGURA family, an unmanned surface vessel line credited with helping push Russia’s Black Sea Fleet back from Ukrainian waters. The parade marked the first […]View the full article

Rows of black, Shahed-shaped airframes stretch across a production floor in newly released footage marking Ukraine’s Independence Day, offering the clearest public look yet at how many Behemoth “mid-range” one-way attack drones the country is now building at once. The video shows dozens of the drones mounted on wooden and metal stands, wingtip to wingtip, […]View the full article

Back during the previous Cold War, we knew that range was life. We had a heavy fighter in the F-14 built around a beast (for its day) of an air-to-air missile, the AIM-54C Phoenix with its 99.4 nautical mile (nm) range. A few years ago, we found a stopgap with a modified SM-6 called the AIM-174B Gunslinger, but it wasn’t quite what we needed in the long term—though it did get us 150+ nm. Via Carter Johnson at Naval News: The U.S. Navy’s newest air-to-air missile, the AIM-424 Malice…is capable of hitting targets over 250 nautical miles (463 kilometers) away, leveraging a 13.5″ diameter and aerodynamic profile that appears to have been built for range. That range would exce…

Ukraine held what organizers described as the world’s first military parade composed entirely of unmanned systems on August 24, 2026, marking the country’s Independence Day with a display of ground, naval, and aerial drones instead of traditional manned formations. Dozens of ground robotic systems moved down Kyiv’s main street, built for logistics, reconnaissance, and combat […]View the full article

Europe’s defense industry has faced a growing series of fires, explosions and deliberate attacks in 2026, many of them affecting companies that manufacture weapons, ammunition, drones or other equipment for Ukraine. Western intelligence sources increasingly view the incidents as part of a Russian campaign intended to disrupt military supply chains, intimidate manufacturers and test how […]View the full article

French drone maker Cavok UAS is developing a containerized launch system designed to deploy swarms of its Skydart5 interceptor drones, an effort flagged by Counter Unmanned Systems on X after Cavok UAS described the concept. Cavok UAS, based in Sainte-Menehould in France’s Marne region, posted a schematic image of the dispenser alongside a description of […]View the full article

The Royal Navy’s Dreadnought-class submarines share a missile compartment design, a nuclear propulsion technology exchange, and the same missile as the U.S. Navy’s Columbia class, according to a Congressional Research Service assessment cited by the UK Defence Journal. Both submarine programs are now past the point of no return. All four British boats, HMS Dreadnought, […]View the full article

Austal USA delivered LCU 1710 to the U.S. Navy on August 14, 2026, the first vessel completed under the Navy’s LCU 1700-class program and the first steel-hulled ship the shipbuilder has ever delivered to the service. Austal USA, based in Mobile, Alabama, has built its Navy business primarily on aluminum vessels, including Independence-variant littoral combat […]View the full article

Ukraine has mounted interceptor drone launchers on a Mi-8 helicopter, with footage of the system shown in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Independence Day address, Militarnyi reported. The footage shows an interceptor launching from beneath one of the helicopter’s hardpoints, using simple metal launch rails mounted under the airframe. The drone is likely controlled either from inside […]View the full article