Raw Intel

A U.S. Navy warship named for a medic who threw his own body over a wounded Marine to absorb a grenade blast just took its first public step toward joining the fleet, breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across its bow in a Maine shipyard on Saturday. The U.S. Navy christened its fifth Flight III […]View the full article

Rheinmetall has unveiled a warship built to outgun vessels twice its size, betting that a mid-sized frigate packed with the same missile defense technology found on America’s largest destroyers can win over navies looking to modernize without breaking their budgets. Rheinmetall, the German defense manufacturer, revealed the GMF 140, a next-generation guided missile frigate measuring […]View the full article

A helmet factory in northern Poland has spent its first year of operation shipping more than 90,000 ballistic helmets to NATO allies, and the company behind it says that pace confirms a bet made three years ago is finally paying off. Galvion, a designer and manufacturer of soldier head protection, power systems, and integrated soldier […]View the full article

A Romanian robotics company says it has built a single platform that can fight wildfires, work construction sites, and operate as a counter-drone defense system, all from the same modular chassis. Maximus Labs Romania, alongside its manufacturing arm Maximus Lab, describes the Max1 as a modular unmanned ground vehicle capable of switching between operational roles […]View the full article

Ukraine’s military has shown a homemade air defense system built by bolting American anti-tank missiles onto a Rada radar and welding the whole thing to a Dutch army truck. Ukraine’s 302nd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade publicly displayed a new mobile variant of the STASH short-range air defense system in an official video, mounting the launcher on […]View the full article

I can think of few 18-month periods where shipbuilding, the merchant marine, and the importance of a strong maritime sector in the U.S. has been a more active topic. Near the center of this conversation—or at least a few paragraphs in—is a long-time friend of the show, Dr. Sal Mercogliano. He joins the Midrats Podcast today from 5-6 PM Eastern. Join us live at this link if you can, but if you miss it, refresh this page later Sunday night and the podcast links will be up. Sal is the Chair of the Department of History, Criminal Justice and Political Science at Campbell University; a former merchant mariner; and a contributor to USNI Proceedings, Sea History, Naval History, …

An autonomous warship that didn’t exist a year ago is now running sea trials around the clock, seven days a week, and the company behind it says that grueling schedule is deliberate proof the vessel can survive conditions no engineer would choose. Saronic Technologies said its Marauder medium unmanned surface vessel has entered full on-water […]View the full article

The Pentagon has agreed to lend a small Texas drone company up to $820 million, a bet that fixing a handful of tiny, unglamorous parts could unlock America’s entire drone manufacturing pipeline. The U.S. Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million to Performance Drone Works, […]View the full article

A German reconnaissance drone flying over Ukraine has got a new paint job and a rearward-facing camera, and both changes trace directly back to a threat that barely existed a couple of years ago, other drones built specifically to hunt reconnaissance aircraft out of the sky. Quantum Systems, a German drone manufacturer based in Gilching, […]View the full article

Investigators have found a second impact crater from a North Korean ballistic missile fired at Ukraine, and the distance between that crater and the ruins of a family home that killed six people tells its own story about how these weapons actually behave once they leave the launch pad. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian president’s commissioner […]View the full article

A second prototype of France’s next military helicopter just left the ground for the first time, and it did so wearing an all-black paint job that makes the aircraft look considerably more menacing than the calm, ambulance-style rescue helicopters most people associate with the civilian version. Airbus Helicopters announced that Prototype 2 of the military […]View the full article

An aging French-built fighter jet has got a serious upgrade, and the company behind it wants the world to see exactly how far a decades-old airframe can stretch when paired with modern guided weapons. EDGE Group, the UAE’s state-owned defense conglomerate, published photos showing its Thunder (P-32 variant) precision-guided munitions mounted on a Mirage 2000 […]View the full article

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions announced on July 28, 2026, that construction of its Indiana Payload Integration Facility for Hypersonic Systems in Crane, Indiana, has been completed ahead of schedule. The $50 million facility, spanning 68,000 square feet (6,317 sq m), is purpose-built for rapid, affordable preparation of experimental payloads, the sensors, guidance systems, and […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers integrated the Picatinny Common Lethality Integration Kit onto the C100 drone during Project Convergence Capstone 6, a large-scale Army technology experiment held at Fort Irwin, California, that allows the Army, joint force, and multinational partners to test emerging capabilities and collect data supporting the service’s broader modernization push, according to the Army’s […]View the full article

British paratroopers has spent 96 hours firing anti-tank missiles from the Canadian prairie while riding electric bikes into position, testing whether an aircraft-portable e-bike can genuinely replace the boots-on-the-ground tactics paratroopers have relied on since World War II, the British Army reported. The Anti-Tank Platoon of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, known as 2 PARA, […]View the full article

At some point in the post-WWII era, someone looked over at that quiet, unassuming man and thought, “He’s just a banker.” Really? Picture in your mind a British officer from WWII. This man, John Cruickshank, is almost right from central casting Just a junior officer flying a slow seaplane out of the Shetland Islands, taking his crew north. Just another patrol. Flying Officer Cruickshank was twenty-four years old when he piloted a Consolidated Catalina anti-submarine flying boat from Sullom Voe on 17 July 1944 on a patrol north into the Norwegian Sea. The objective was to protect the British Home Fleet as it returned from the unsuccessful Operation Mascot raid on the German…

A British-made uncrewed helicopter has flown faster than 100 miles per hour while carrying real cargo, and the company behind it says that single test run marks the opening move in a summer packed with flight trials meant to prove the aircraft is ready for military logistics work. Certo Aerospace, a UK aerospace company developing […]View the full article

An electric cargo drone that did not exist ten weeks ago just spent days flying nonstop supply runs for one of the U.S. Army’s biggest technology experiments, hauling everything from field rations to medical gear into locations a traditional cargo plane could never reach. Pyka, an autonomous aviation company based in Alameda, California, announced this […]View the full article

Turkish Aerospace Industries, known by its Turkish acronym TUSAŞ, released new footage showing the KAAN P1 fighter jet prototype successfully conducting powered taxi tests, confirming the aircraft has moved into ground testing ahead of its first flight. KAAN is Türkiye’s fifth-generation stealth fighter program, a homegrown effort launched after the United States removed Türkiye from […]View the full article

The U.S. Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon office tasked with pulling commercial technology into military use faster than traditional defense contracting normally allows, announced that it completed a successful unmanned stores separation flight test with Hermeus, an Atlanta-based hypersonic aircraft company, as part of the DIU’s Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities program, known as […]View the full article