Raw Intel

A sprawling Cuban intelligence facility just 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Florida coast has completed construction of a powerful new antenna array capable of intercepting and tracking American military communications across the southeastern United States and the Caribbean, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported on June 18, 2026. Satellite imagery analyzed by […]View the full article

Hanwha Aerospace, the South Korean defense giant behind one of the most combat-credible rocket artillery systems currently in service, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French defense technology company Thales on June 17, 2026, at Eurosatory 2026, the biennial land warfare exhibition held at Paris Nord Villepinte. The agreement commits the two companies to integrating […]View the full article

Germany is about to become the production floor for the largest unmanned ground vehicle order ever placed in Europe, and the robots heading to the front line were designed and battle-tested in Ukraine before a single one rolls off a German assembly line. Quantum Systems, a Munich-based deep-tech defense company, and Tencore, a leading Ukrainian […]View the full article

Editor’s note: Robert Brüll is the founder and CEO of FibreCoat, a materials technology company that supplies lightweight, electrically conductive fibers used in defense, space, and industrial applications. He writes here in a personal capacity. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the editorial position of The Defence Blog. At the time […]View the full article

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, the Navy’s primary in-house science and technology arm, confirmed they successfully demonstrated a laser system that does both jobs without missing a beat, wirelessly transmitting power across long distances and then shifting into a defensive posture against drones, a dual-use capability the lab says could reshape how troops […]View the full article

Finland’s Minister of Defence, Antti Häkkänen, authorized the Finnish Defence Forces Logistics Command on June 18 to purchase additional GBU-53 Small Diameter Bomb II glide bombs from the United States, adding to a stockpile that will arm the country’s incoming fleet of F-35A stealth fighters with a weapon few air forces in the world currently […]View the full article

DroneShield and Defenture have signed a memorandum of understanding to combine the Australian company’s counter-drone hardware, software, command-and-control, and operational support with Defenture’s tactical vehicle platforms, including the GRF and Mammoth, betting that the pairing will give NATO armies the kind of mobile drone defense they have been scrambling to buy as cheap unmanned aircraft […]View the full article

Words matter. Clarity matters. Consistency matters. I don’t think anyone has been happy with how we describe “drones”, “unmanned”, or the cringy reactionary-woke “uncrewed” phraseology. Don’t even get me started with the “kamikaze drone” and other such kludges. OK, I may be nine months late to the game, but it appears we may be moving past the awkward and tiresome, “Do we call it unmanned, uncrewed, or something else that starts with a ‘u’? I’m tired of being yelled at.” stage. Have you noticed something seeping into the…drone?…space recently? From what I can tell—and if you can find earlier official uses please let us know in comments—what brought this acronym to the fr…

Top Flight Aerostructures, a Georgia parts manufacturer, won two indefinite-delivery contracts from the Defense Logistics Agency to build wing components for the B-1 bomber fleet. One contract has a maximum value of $53.1 million for trailing edges, the other up to $23.4 million for wing tips, with completion dates in mid-June 2029. Both awards came […]View the full article

A Maryland company wants to build something nobody’s ever actually flown: a working gas station in orbit, and the Department of War is now paying for it. Quantum Space announced a contract through the Pentagon’s Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund to demonstrate a fuel depot spacecraft, built on its Ranger platform, that can refuel other […]View the full article

Somewhere beneath the ocean’s surface, a submarine the U.S. Navy can’t see is the threat that keeps American admirals awake at night, and the weapon built to find it just received continued funding to keep its sensors sharp. According to a June 17 contract notice, the Navy awarded General Dynamics Mission Systems a $116.6 million […]View the full article

Ukraine’s most demanding combat laboratory just produced two more weapons that a Greek defense company wants to sell to the rest of the world. Paramount Industries Innovation Systems Greece and Ukrainian defense technology firm MAC HUB announced an expansion of their strategic partnership at the Eurosatory defense exhibition in Paris, extending a relationship that previously […]View the full article

The U.S. Army ordered 8,936 DAGIR-V1 laser systems to support the M7 rifle’s fire-control program, and the company building them happens to be a family-owned business that got its start making night vision gear five decades ago. B.E. Meyers & Co., a Redmond, Washington manufacturer, announced it has been awarded a contract to deliver the […]View the full article

A Russian drone struck an apartment building in Galați, Romania, in May 2026, and the incident has become a flashpoint in a broader story about a vulnerability the European defense industry has been racing to address. Separate reporting has linked some stray-drone incidents across the region to heavy electronic warfare, including GPS spoofing and jamming, […]View the full article

A Czech jet trainer that traces its lineage back to the Cold War just broke into two new continents in the same week, and the company behind it says its factory floor is now booked solid into 2027. AERO Vodochody AEROSPACE signed two new contracts for its L-39 Skyfox aircraft, one with a customer in […]View the full article

SummarySal discusses recent geopolitical developments including Iran’s negotiations, US military operations, UK military decline, Ukraine’s resilience, and global strategic shifts. This episode offers insights into current international security dynamics and future implications. Chapters00:00 Introduction and Context of the Iranian Conflict 02:55 Goals an… Read more View the full article

Alloy Surfaces Company, based in Aston, Pennsylvania, was awarded a $300 million modification on June 12, according to a latest contract notice, covering continued production of a family of infrared decoy flares used to protect American military aircraft from missiles that track heat instead of radar. The new funding brings the total value of the […]View the full article

Europe’s biggest missile maker has agreed to help Ukraine build a successor to the weapon that sank Russia’s cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet. MBDA signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukrainian defense company LUCH at Eurosatory in Paris on June 16, 2026, agreeing to jointly pursue what both companies call disruptive […]View the full article

A tank that first rolled off a French production line in the 1960s just showed up at Eurosatory with no crew inside it and a robot turret on top, and the company behind the conversion wants it to represent something bigger than a single old tank getting a second life. S2M Equipment and KNDS France […]View the full article

Portugal is doubling down on a bet it made just a year ago: that the best way to watch its own coastline and territory is to own the satellites doing the watching, rather than renting someone else’s. ICEYE, the Finnish company that operates the world’s largest synthetic aperture radar satellite constellation, announced that CTI Aeroespacial, […]View the full article