Raw Intel

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

Russian officials say a volunteer air defense unit in Kursk Region shot down a Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile using machine-gun fire during an overnight attack this weekend, an unusual claim for a weapon Russia has typically engaged with surface-to-air missile systems. Kursk Region Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein said the intercept happened overnight Saturday into Sunday, […]View the full article

Shipbuilders at BAE Systems Australia laid the keel of NUSHIP Hunter on August 24, 2026, marking the formal start of hull assembly on the first ship in Australia’s Hunter class frigate program. The ceremony took place at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in South Australia. Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy and Chief of Navy Vice […]View the full article

The European Commission approved €6.1 billion ($7.12 billion) in new defense procurement funding for Ukraine on August 24, 2026, the same day Ukraine marked its Independence Day. The money covers air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition and radars. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tied the timing directly to the war. “On Ukraine’s Independence […]View the full article

For me, it is funny but serious that the phrase I started saying in 2019 that we were going to keep building Arleigh Burke DDGs “until the crack of doom” has turned into prophecy. With the anticipated death of DDG(X) and FFG-62, the Burkes are about the only game in town. That fact naturally flows into a point we have raised here and on the Midrats Podcast for the last couple of decades: How are we going to conduct repair and maintenance under combat conditions should we find ourselves in a fight west of the International Date Line? Well, we’ve got the perfect intersection of both issues for the next episode of Midrats. This RAND Report from May caught my eye: The Arle…

A Ford F-250 that can drive itself carried a shotgun-armed drone-killing turret onto a live-fire range at Fort Bragg on August 18, 2026, the latest test in a U.S. Army program built to get engineers out of the blast radius during breaching operations. The vehicle, tested at Range 63 as part of Project Sandhills 2.0, […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has awarded Zone 5 Technologies a $65 million contract to build a maritime strike variant of its AGM-188 Rusty Dagger cruise missile under a new program aimed at fielding low-cost precision weapons for the U.S. and its allies. The award is an Other Transaction Agreement, a contracting mechanism the Pentagon uses to […]View the full article

Kongsberg has signed a contract worth NOK 1.1 billion, about $118.4 million, to supply additional PROTECTOR RS4 Remote Weapon Systems to General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada for the Canadian Army’s Armoured Combat Support Vehicle program. The Norwegian defense company said the deal is a follow-on order building on previous RS4 deliveries for the same program. Kongsberg […]View the full article

Supacat has opened a new production facility at its headquarters in Devon, England, naming the building after company co-founder Nick Jones. The British vehicle manufacturer said Maj. Gen. Chris King cut the ribbon at the opening, which the company described as marking the launch of a facility expansion. Supacat did not disclose the size of […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory has completed technical acceptance of the first Ancillary Surface Craft prototype, moving the roughly 150-foot vessel into a new phase of testing at Quantico, Virginia, the laboratory said in a release. The ASC is a roll-on/roll-off landing craft designed to carry personnel, equipment, and fuel directly onto unimproved shorelines, […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has awarded Accrete a contract to deliver an artificial intelligence platform designed to track and analyze narratives across social media, broadcast outlets, and messaging platforms in near real time. The contract covers Argus for Cognitive Advantage, a system built on Accrete’s Knowledge Engine platform. Accrete describes Knowledge Engines as tools that […]View the full article

Houthi media released footage this week showing a Rajum quadcopter dropping a munition onto a Royal Saudi Land Forces M1A2S Abrams main battle tank at a forward position in Marib, Yemen, followed by an explosion and a fire that engulfed the vehicle. The video has not been independently verified, and neither the Saudi-led coalition nor […]View the full article