Raw Intel

You simply cannot buy PR like this. For the last couple of days, I’ve had a big smile on my face for the good people from Saronic. Bravo Zulu fellas. Bravo Zulu. Via Brandi Vincent at Defense Scoop: The American military deployed an autonomous Corsair maritime drone built by Saronic to find and recover two soldiers who were stranded near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday after their Army AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed during a patrol operation, U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told DefenseScoop. The confirmation of this unique rescue mission comes as military tensions are surging in the Middle East amid the United States-Iran conflict. It marks the U.S. …

Ukraine struck a Russian defense electronics factory for the second time in five weeks on Tuesday, hitting the same Cheboksary facility with domestically developed Flamingo cruise missiles, demonstrating both the growing reach of Ukrainian long-range weapons and the persistent vulnerability of Russian military industry to attacks that Moscow’s air defenses cannot reliably stop. The target […]View the full article

Norway’s largest defense company has completed the acquisition of a California missile startup that makes interceptors and strike weapons designed to be produced by the thousands rather than the dozens, bringing a proven American mass-munitions manufacturer into the European defense industrial base at a moment when NATO is scrambling to close the gap between its […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded a $2.3 billion contract to keep its largest joint ammunition storage depot running for the next two decades, a commitment that reflects just how central Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada has become to the military’s ability to store, maintain, and destroy the munitions that underpin American and allied combat power. […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin $154 million to begin purchasing the long-lead components needed to build 11 F-35 stealth fighters for a foreign government whose identity the Pentagon has not disclosed, adding another batch of the world’s most widely sold combat aircraft to an order book that spans more than a dozen nations. […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy is moving to extend and expand its contract with Raytheon for engineering support on the ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer, the electronic attack system being developed for the EA-18G Growler, the carrier-based aircraft the Navy relies on to blind and disrupt enemy radar and communications before and during strike operations. The Naval Air […]View the full article

Diehl Defence has developed a new generation of its compact mobile air defense system and unveiled it on the eve of the ILA Berlin Air Show. The German defense company announced the IRIS-T SLS MK 4 on June 9, the day before ILA Berlin opens its doors to the defense industry. The fourth-generation version of […]View the full article

Britain’s long-troubled Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicle is being put back into trials under tightly controlled conditions as the Ministry of Defence pursues a two-phase plan to deliver a fixed version of the program, the UK Defence Journal reported. Minister Luke Pollard set out the approach in a written answer to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, who […]View the full article

A defense startup building large autonomous drone swarms has selected one of aviation’s most battle-tested turboprop engines to power its aircraft, pairing a sixty-year-old powerplant with next-generation swarm technology in a bet that proven reliability at scale matters as much as cutting-edge innovation. Swarm Aero, an Oxnard, California-based developer of large UAV swarms, operates an […]View the full article

A U.S. defense startup has been selected by the Defense Innovation Unit, a Department of War organization focused on accelerating commercial technology into military use, to advance an autonomous close-in weapon system designed to reduce aiming latency in close-in counter-drone engagements, moving into Phase II testing in front of Department of War evaluators this month. […]View the full article

Raytheon, an RTX business, is investing $100 million to expand its Portsmouth, Rhode Island, facility, accelerating production and testing of two of the most in-demand air defense systems in the world as governments across NATO and beyond race to bolster protection against ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, and increasingly sophisticated aerial threats. The investment, announced June […]View the full article

Both in comments here, social media, and a variety of SEPCOR, Monday’s post on AUKUS got a lot more interest than I thought it did. That makes for a happy Salamander, as it is clear that along the broad spectrum of the navalist and Five Eyes community, the importance of this project is well understood and supported. In a way, I feel like I cheated an opportunity, so let’s assign some reading to everyone, pull out some interesting tidbits from the reading, and maybe slap a moonbat or two while we’re at it. Here is the syllabus for today’s Substack. I’ll quote from various places…and yes, it is another opportunity to thank the good people doing the hard work at the Congres…

Sudan’s military appears to have used a Turkish-made HİSAR-A surface-to-air missile during an attempt to repel a drone attack over Khartoum, offering open-source evidence that Turkish-made HİSAR-A air defense missiles may be in use by the Sudanese Armed Forces. Rich Tedd, an OSINT analyst who tracks military hardware through imagery and wreckage identification, published photographs […]View the full article

Two U.S. Army soldiers were pulled from the waters off the coast of Oman on June 8 after their helicopter went down during a patrol mission, rescued within two hours by a joint American force that scrambled across multiple military branches to reach them. U.S. Central Command, the military headquarters overseeing American operations across the […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has placed a follow-on order for Israeli-made AI-powered rifle scopes that allow Marines to engage small drones with standard rifles fitted with SMASH fire control systems, awarding a contract worth up to $5.8 million to Smart Shooter. Smart Shooter, an Israeli defense technology company specializing in fire control systems, announced the […]View the full article

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief has approved a formal development concept for the country’s rocket forces and artillery through 2030, setting out a blueprint that prioritizes domestic weapons production, targets strike capability reaching 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles), and commits to phasing out Soviet-era artillery systems that can no longer be repaired or modernized. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of […]View the full article

The Ukrainian startup behind the autonomous Shahed interceptor system announced this week by Ukraine’s Defense Minister has a name, a price tag, and a detailed technical story: MaXon Systems, a Kyiv-based defense technology company, built an interceptor drone that kills Shaheds on autopilot for approximately $3,500 per unit, Defender Media reported in an exclusive interview […]View the full article

An Israeli drone manufacturer whose production facility was struck by an Iranian ballistic missile just two months ago has announced that its G3 reconnaissance drone platform completed operational readiness and training activities with unnamed security organizations over the past two weeks, with photographs showing the aircraft carrying blurred external payloads that were obscured, apparently for […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers recently trained alongside the Wild Goose robotic ground vehicle, a small unmanned platform designed to carry heavy weapons, ammunition, and casualties across terrain that wheeled vehicles cannot reach, according to an announcement from American Rheinmetall, the American subsidiary of the German defense giant. The training, conducted over several days in partnership with […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force awarded a $4 billion contract on June 8, to keep its training bases running for the next decade, selecting 19 companies to provide everything from aircraft maintenance and fire services to IT support, grounds keeping, and human resources across eleven Air Education and Training Command installations, including several of the Air […]View the full article