Raw Intel

Estonia took delivery of its first medium-range air defense missile system on June 22, 2026, when the Estonian Air Defence Wing received the IRIS-T SLM at Ämari Air Base, giving a NATO member that shares a 294-kilometer (183-mile) border with Russia the ability to engage aircraft, cruise missiles, and helicopters at ranges and altitudes that […]View the full article

Dutch soldiers are training with anti-drone tunnels, the netted covered routes first developed by Ukrainian forces to shield vehicles from kamikaze drone strikes, after the Netherlands became one of the first NATO armies to integrate Ukrainian battlefield lessons directly into its largest military exercise in twenty years, Eindhovens Dagblad reported from the field in northern […]View the full article

If I am ever invited into someone’s personal study, office, or library—especially someone who puts themselves forward as a national security type—one of the things I not-so-subtly look for is maps, charts, or better yet, a globe. Yes, I will judge you. It matters. I have seen exceptionally credentialed and powerful uniformed and civilian leadership here and in Europe have an almost comical ignorance of the world in which they hold access to levers of almost unimaginable power. From a complete disinterest bordering on criminal unawareness of the bottom topography of the Baltic and Taiwan Strait, to not knowing where the Cape of Good Hope is, or even what a Great Circle Rou…

Ukraine is turning to the global labor market to fill its infantry ranks, with Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announcing, that the government will license private recruitment companies to sign up foreign nationals for the Ukrainian Defense Forces, paying those firms approximately $7,400 per recruit they bring in while offering the soldiers themselves monthly salaries of […]View the full article

Cheap, mass-produced Ukrainian long-range one-way attack drones are breaking through one of the most expensive air defense networks ever assembled, with a 20 to 30 percent penetration rate that is proving sufficient to systematically dismantle Russia’s oil refining industry and degrade its military logistics, a Ukrainian officer with direct command experience in the deep-strike drone […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has hired four civilian cargo ships capable of driving military vehicles directly onto beaches and island piers without fixed port infrastructure, chartering them for operations out of Naha, Japan, starting July 30, 2026, in a $37 million contract that tells a precise story about how seriously American military planners are taking the […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has hired four civilian cargo ships capable of driving military vehicles directly onto beaches and island piers without fixed port infrastructure, chartering them for operations out of Naha, Japan, starting July 30, 2026, in a $37 million contract that tells a precise story about how seriously American military planners are taking the […]View the full article

The aircraft the U.S. Navy relies on to hunt submarines and track enemy ships across millions of square miles of open ocean is getting smarter, faster, and harder to evade, after Boeing received a $121 million contract to upgrade nine P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to the most advanced configuration yet fielded, with six of […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is getting more hypersonic missiles, after the Navy awarded Lockheed Martin Space an $83 million contract modification on June 22, 2026, to procure additional All-Up Rounds under the Conventional Prompt Strike program satisfying Army requirements, with nearly the entire contract value funded by Army missile procurement appropriations and work running through June […]View the full article

The U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa, Japan, can now sink enemy warships from land and shoot down drones from the back of a truck, after the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment formally received both the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System and the Marine Air Defense Integrated System in June 2026, completing the weapons fielding that transforms […]View the full article

All six truck-mounted launchers belonging to the U.S. Army’s only THAAD battery in South Korea have returned to their home base in Seongju County, ending a three-month deployment to Osan Air Base that sparked months of speculation about whether Washington was stripping the Korean Peninsula of missile defenses to support its military campaign against Iran, […]View the full article

A Russian military-affiliated Telegram channel claims Ukraine used U.S.-supplied AGM-188 Rusty Dagger cruise missiles to strike the Sborka semiconductor plant in Voronezh, a claim that, if confirmed, would represent the first documented combat use of a weapon system the United States designed from scratch specifically to give Ukraine a mass-producible long-range strike capability at a […]View the full article

A simply outstanding summary of the state of play in the re-vitalization of—and in parts re-imagining of—defense production capabilities can be found in an article in the June 5, 2026 Investors Business Daily, above the fold on page 1, by Harrison Miller and Paolo Confino. The White House is seeking expanded manufacturing commitments from defense contractors, is pressing automakers to convert spare production capacity to defense, and is urging NATO partners to supplement weapons production. The Trump administration aims not simply to rebuild stockpiles depleted by the war against Iran. It wants to revamp large segments of the traditional military industrial complex. Unlik…

Ukraine appears to have struck one of the more obscure but consequential nodes in Russia’s weapons manufacturing chain, hitting the Sborka plant in Voronezh, a facility that Ukrainian military intelligence identifies as a supplier of specialized semiconductor components to three of Russia’s most operationally significant weapons programs: the Kh-101 cruise missile, the Iskander-K ballistic missile […]View the full article

Australia has sold its most closely guarded surveillance secret to Canada in a $2.5 billion deal signed on June 22, 2026, that marks the first international export of the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar technology and the largest single defense export in Australian history, giving Canada a system capable of detecting aircraft and ships approaching from thousands […]View the full article

A South Korean defense company that was barely known outside Asia a decade ago has received the kind of financial endorsement that opens doors in the international capital markets, after S&P Global Ratings assigned Hanwha Aerospace an ‘A-‘ long-term issuer credit rating with a stable outlook on June 22, 2026, placing the maker of the […]View the full article

Training photographs circulating from a Ukrainian Special Operations Forces unit show what appears to be a large-format acoustic hailing device mounted on top of a tactical vehicle, a system that analysts assessing the images tentatively identify as consistent with the LRAD 1950XL-RT manufactured by California-based defense technology company Genasys. The images represent the first observed […]View the full article

A photograph making the rounds among Russian military analysts shows the Russian Navy’s latest answer to Ukraine’s growing drone threat at sea: a thin green mesh net, the kind more commonly found on garden trellises or insect screens, draped over the superstructure of a 40-year-old landing ship tasked with escorting a cargo vessel through the […]View the full article

Ukraine’s drone interceptor crews cannot reliably chase down Russia’s new jet-powered attack drones because their aircraft simply are not fast enough to catch them before their batteries run out, a frontline Ukrainian air defense commander has revealed in an interview to Militarnyi. The commander, who goes by the call sign “Ramzes” and leads the anti-drone […]View the full article

An Indian-made artillery gun is now in the running to equip the U.S. Army, after AM General, the Michigan-based military vehicle maker best known for building the Humvee, signed a strategic partnership with India’s Kalyani Strategic Systems Limited at the Eurosatory defense exposition in Paris on June 18, 2026, and immediately submitted a joint proposal […]View the full article