Raw Intel

Germany’s military is preparing to become one of the largest owners of a satellite fleet on the planet, second only to Elon Musk’s Starlink, with plans to put as many as 1,200 satellites into orbit by 2030 as part of a sweeping bet that future wars will be won or lost based on who controls […]View the full article

A fire broke out at the fuel storage area of Borisoglebsk military airfield in Russia’s Voronezh region overnight on July 8, following a drone attack that also struck other targets across the region and left residents reporting numerous explosions, according to video footage shared by the OSINT community Exilenova+. The footage appears to show flames […]View the full article

For nearly seven decades, American presidents tried and failed to get European allies to spend anywhere close to what the United States spends on its own defense, and NATO’s Secretary General says that changed on Donald Trump’s watch. Speaking to reporters ahead of the alliance’s summit in Ankara, Türkiye, Mark Rutte gave Trump direct credit […]View the full article

A ceasefire that ended a war three weeks ago collapsed within hours on Tuesday, after gunfire and explosions started flying between the United States and Iran again, and President Donald Trump stood in front of reporters at a NATO summit and simply declared it dead. The immediate spark was a string of attacks on commercial […]View the full article

As the NATO Summit is ongoing, I think it is time for me and my American readers to have an adult conversation with each other, like adults. Calm, short, and to the point. If you have honored me with your visits for very long, you will know that for over two decades I have been pointing out the disgraceful level of free-riding our allies in NATO made a habit of. I saw it in person in its worst ways as a NATO staff officer in Europe and Afghanistan, as I wrote about it at the time. Since I returned home, I have returned to the subject on a regular basis. It would be an understatement to say that I have been exceptionally pleased to hear the argument brought to a wider aud…

Picture a robot you could carry up a flight of stairs, remotely towing a military truck that outweighs a fully loaded school bus, and doing it without breaking a wheel. That is the scene an American robotics company says it captured on video from a recent U.S. Army demonstration, and if the footage holds up, […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Army Aviation command plans to retire its Soviet-designed helicopter fleet in favor of American-made UH-60 Black Hawks, Brigadier General Pavlo Bardakov, commander of Army Aviation under Ukraine’s Ground Forces Command, told LIGA.net in an interview published last week. Bardakov said the shift away from Ukraine’s existing Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters has become unavoidable, because […]View the full article

A steady flow of American personnel moving in and out of Wuhan Camp in Longtan, Taoyuan, some driving civilian rental cars and others on foot, has drawn renewed attention to the scale of the U.S. military’s ongoing special operations presence in Taiwan, according to a report circulating from United Daily News (UDN) article and amplified […]View the full article

A Chinese Navy submarine fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean on Monday, and Tokyo says it “strongly urged” Beijing to call off the test beforehand, the Japan Times reported. The launch, carried out with a mock warhead rather than a live one, hit its intended impact zone according to China’s state-run Xinhua […]View the full article

Is it a good idea to start the week with a nightmare? Of course it is. All the cool kids like to talk about the “cyber domain” and the “digital battlespace.” Heck, we try to be cool ourselves here now and then…but there is something we don’t appreciate as much as we should. We know that in 2026 we do not have enough strategic sealift nor enough strategic airlift to move what we need to move if we should find ourselves in a fight west of the International Date Line. Heck, we’re not that sure we can even do a much easier lift to Europe should things get sporty there for more than a punitive expedition. During the latest Iran conflict, we did kind of smoke check our airlift …

Robert Brovdi, the Ukrainian commander known by his call sign Madyar who leads the country’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said on social media that his units destroyed two launchers belonging to Russia’s S-400 Triumf long-range air defense system, along with a Nebo-U early-warning radar. It is worth noting that one of the S-400 launchers was destroyed […]View the full article

Photographs and video circulating on social media appear to show a Russian Su-57 stealth fighter trying, and failing, to stop Ukrainian strike drones from reaching Russia’s largest oil refinery on July 6, 2026, a claim that, if confirmed, would mark a rare and embarrassing operational failure for one of Russia’s scarcest and most advanced combat […]View the full article

A Ukrainian robotics company released video footage of its heavy unmanned ground vehicle crossing a plowed field at speed, visual proof that a machine built to haul two tons of ammunition, food, or wounded soldiers can actually handle the kind of broken, rough terrain that would stop a human-driven truck cold. Ukrainian developer VATAG posted […]View the full article

A Russian surveillance plane flew dangerously close to Britain’s flagship aircraft carrier and dropped a swarm of underwater listening devices nearby before ignoring repeated radio calls, forcing two fighter jets to scramble and chase it away. The UK Ministry of Defence confirmed that while operating in the Norwegian Sea as part of Operation Firecrest, the […]View the full article

A South Korean Marine unit sent a robot on four legs walking point ahead of its own troops during a live combat exercise last week, a small but telling sign of how the country’s military is trying to solve a problem that has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with demographics. The […]View the full article

A Polish aircraft repair plant that has spent decades overhauling aging Soviet-era jets is about to start building brand-new American cruise missiles instead. Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 2, a Bydgoszcz-based facility that operates under Poland’s state-owned defense conglomerate Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, known as PGZ, signed an agreement paving the way for the assembly and production […]View the full article

Ukraine’s air force failed to shoot down a single Russian ballistic missile during a massive overnight bombardment of Kyiv on July 6, 2026, a gap in the country’s defenses that officials directly attributed to a critical shortage of interceptor missiles for the Patriot air defense system, Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported, citing the Air Force’s own […]View the full article

Russia has lost another attack helicopter in Africa, this time to Tuareg rebel fighters in Mali rather than to the war in Ukraine that has already cost Moscow dozens of similar aircraft. The Azawad Liberation Front, a Tuareg-led rebel coalition known by its French acronym FLA, claimed its fighters shot down a Mi-24P, a Soviet-designed […]View the full article

Albania has become the third country in the world to buy Turkey’s domestically built BORAN howitzer, signing a contract with Turkish state manufacturer MKE just days before NATO leaders gather in Ankara for this year’s summit, defense outlet Ulusavunma reported. The deal covers six BORAN 105mm towed howitzers along with an undisclosed quantity of ammunition, […]View the full article

Japan’s military has apparently been flying a helicopter modification nobody outside a small circle of aviation watchers knew existed, until a Japanese photographer caught the aircraft airborne and posted the images online. A user posting under the handle nobita0114 published photographs on X showing a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force UH-2 utility helicopter in flight fitted […]View the full article