Raw Intel

A Cold War-era tank first fielded in 1965 is about to get a new brain, a new gun system, and a new purpose on one of the most dangerous battlefields in the world. Defense analyst Jeff, writing for Defense Archives on Monday, reported that a Cockerill spokesperson confirmed to him at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris […]View the full article

The vehicle that Finnish defense company Patria and German transmission manufacturer RENK Group unveiled at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris on Monday is designed to go where commanders decide it should go and do what they need it to do without putting a single soldier in harm’s way to make that happen, because nobody sits inside […]View the full article

Thirty-six tank-busting rounds, a 105mm cannon, three crew members, and a vehicle light enough to fly aboard an Airbus A400M military transport. That is what John Cockerill Defense and Arquus brought to Eurosatory 2026 in Paris when they pulled the covers off the FENRIS, a wheeled fire support vehicle designed to fill the gap that […]View the full article

A supersonic bomber that Russia uses to launch cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities came down in a field near the Siberian city of Svirsk on Monday, adding another hull to a list of losses that the Kremlin can ill afford and has no practical way to replenish. Russia’s Aerospace Forces confirmed that a Tu-22M3 long-range […]View the full article

Nobody has to be inside it, and that is entirely the point, because on today’s battlefield a crewed turret is a target and the soldier behind the gun is the first to die when it gets hit. At Eurosatory 2026, the defense trade show running this week in Paris, Germany’s Rheinmetall unveiled the CT-025 20, […]View the full article

Russia sank the original Henichesk in 2022, striking the minesweeper with cruise missiles launched from occupied Crimea while it was covering the withdrawal of special forces troops near the Kinburn Spit, and on Monday Ukraine got the name back in the only way that matters at sea: on the bow of a warship flying the […]View the full article

Back in the first week of May, we had the second edition in what has become a series about what options exist on the table to get additional weapons on ships: Yes, Reality Demands More Guns, Larger Guns, Everywhere. It was a follow-up to March’s Up-arm the Fleet? With What? A principal concern I have was outlined in a previous article in November 2024, Arm the Auxiliaries. If you are new to the issue, give the above a read and then come back. In addition to the primary concern, the secondary concern is our existing ships that are already armed, but do not have the best mix of weapons to address the new reality—the many cheap, unsophisticated, but deadly swarming threats n…

Shield AI, the San Diego-based defense technology company that has been supplying AI piloting software to U.S. military aircraft since 2019, is showcasing X-BAT at Eurosatory 2026. Eurosatory 2026, a major international defence and security exhibition held in Paris from June 15-19, gives Shield AI one of its most prominent European stages yet for a […]View the full article

It has been a bit more than six years since then Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David Berger, USMC, initiated what became known as Force Design 2030 (now just known as Force Design). What followed was a controversial change to the structure of the United States Marine Corps intended to address the challenge posed by the People's Republic of China in the western Pacific. Now more than halfway to the original 2030 target, and informed by events from Ukraine and Southwest Asia since 2020, both long-standing critics of the design and other voices are readdressing the changes—and the critique—to see if it remains the right path. Joining the Midrats Podcast this Sunday…

Somewhere in a desert exercise or an Arctic field camp, a U.S. Navy microbiologist or hospital corpsman can now pull out a portable DNA sequencer, run a sample, and identify harmful pathogens in less than 30 minutes and provide data that can help detect unknown or potentially genetically modified biological threats. The U.S. Naval Research […]View the full article

Flying a military helicopter in combat means managing a constant stream of radio chatter from multiple sources simultaneously, often while navigating at low altitude, coordinating with other aircraft, and making time-sensitive tactical decisions. For decades, U.S. Army aviation pilots have handled all of that through a single mono audio channel in their headsets, meaning every […]View the full article

Michigan National Guard soldiers loaded a HIMARS rocket artillery launcher onto a C-130J transport aircraft in Michigan and flew it more than 3,200 km (2,000 miles) to the California desert, where they executed simulated precision strikes before extracting, completing a long-range joint Army-Air National Guard HIRAIN training event as part of the Army’s premier combat […]View the full article

A nuclear-powered attack submarine completed its scheduled maintenance period at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard nearly a month ahead of schedule, handing the U.S. Pacific Fleet a combat-ready boat 29 days earlier than planned at a moment when undersea readiness in the Indo-Pacific has become one of the Navy’s most closely watched metrics. USS Colorado, a […]View the full article

A submarine squadron that the U.S. Navy decommissioned fourteen years ago has been reestablished, this time not in Hawaii where it once operated but at a Royal Australian Navy base near Perth, in one of the most concrete steps yet taken to turn the AUKUS security pact from a diplomatic agreement into a working military […]View the full article

A swarm of autonomous boats operated by U.S. Army soldiers spread across a Philippine waterway during Exercise Salaknib 2026, screening a military cargo ship and relaying real-time surveillance data to commanders ashore as American and Philippine forces conducted a combined maritime security demonstration in Casiguran Sound in the northern Philippines. The mission showcased how U.S. […]View the full article

Soldiers from a Michigan Army National Guard unit spent June 10, 2026 at Camp Grayling firing one of the most iconic heavy machine guns in American military history through a brand-new optic system that no other unit in the entire U.S. Army had fielded before them. The 126th Theater Public Affairs Support Element, a Michigan […]View the full article

In what Air Force officials described as the earliest such integration in modern test history, an operational test pilot flew the B-21 Raider alongside a developmental test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California, signaling that America’s next-generation nuclear bomber is transitioning from proving it can fly to proving it can fight. The flight […]View the full article

A factory in Louisiana is producing armored vehicles for Ukraine for the first time, as Textron Systems announced that full vehicle builds of the Mobile Strike Force Vehicle have begun at its Slidell manufacturing facility. The $163.4 million contract is funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative via the Foreign Military Sales mechanism, covering 65 […]View the full article

A matte-black Mitsubishi Delica D:5 minivan bearing no license plates, no unit markings, and a rooftop loaded with cameras, sensors, antennas, and a loudspeaker was photographed operating near Japan’s largest Ground Self-Defense Force live-fire exercise in Shizuoka Prefecture on June 7, 2026, according to Japanese military photo journalist Masaya Takewaka, writing for Transport News. The […]View the full article

Two of Europe’s largest defense companies are about to put their first jointly developed main battle tank on public display, revealing a new chapter in European armored warfare that has been building since the Italian Army decided its aging Ariete tank could no longer carry the weight of the country’s ground combat ambitions. Leonardo Rheinmetall […]View the full article