Raw Intel

The British military’s newest helicopter fleet finally has an engine, closing a question that even reporters covering the program in real time couldn’t get UK officials to answer for months. GE Aerospace announced July 14 that Leonardo selected its CT7-2E1 engine to power all 23 AW149 helicopters being built for the UK Ministry of Defence’s […]View the full article

Hromadske, the Ukrainian outlet, published an exclusive video report embedded with soldiers from Ukraine’s 19th Rocket Artillery Brigade “Svyata Varvara,” one of the first Ukrainian units to receive the American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System back in 2022, documenting the launch process from the crew’s perspective for the first time in this level of detail. […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded Global Military Products a $12.9 million contract to integrate its Scorpion Light 81mm mobile mortar system onto the Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle-Utility platforms. The company announced the award on September 3, 2026, under the Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium’s Other Transaction Authority framework. The deal covers pairing the Tampa-based […]View the full article

A Russian T-90M tank used its Arena-M active protection system to shoot down attacking drones during the Tsentr-2026 strategic exercise, in a staged attack on a tank column at the Chebarkul training range in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. In the demonstration, several types of drones, including fixed-wing models and standard first-person-view (FPV) quadcopter drones, simulated a […]View the full article

Ukraine has joined a NATO procurement partnership that lets Ukrainian defense companies bid for contracts issued by the alliance’s main buying agency, the NATO Support and Procurement Agency announced on Oct. 22, 2026. Ukraine is now the seventh member of the agency’s Security Cooperation Support Partnership, alongside Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and […]View the full article

We have all seen this brief every decade or so for decades. You can almost use the same sales pitch as before, just move the clauses around. We know what is wanted - but it is hard. Instead of saying that, we try to trick everyone in to thinking there is a new idea out there. There isn't ... and every time "we" pretend there is, we lose more credibility. The latest example from the, “This is Why DOD Can’t Have Nice Things” is the superbly mockable “Joint All-Domain Command and Control" (JADC2) concept. It is almost insulting in that is seems to be written by people who either themselves don’t know what has been going on in this area for the last few decades, or they …

Over the weekend I saw a few people commenting on Max Hastings's latest over at Bloomberg, American Universities Declare War on Military History. I couldn't help but laugh at times the shock - SHOCK - some showed when reading it. My take is, "Where have you been?" Yet in centers of learning across North America, the study of the past in general, and of wars in particular, is in spectacular eclipse. History now accounts for a smaller share of undergraduate degrees than at any time since 1950. Whereas in 1970, 6% of American male and 5% of female students were history majors, the respective percentages are now less than 2% and less than 1%, respectively. Fredrik Lo…

Americas Boeing won an $18.9 million order, which provides for the production and delivery of 48 automatic backup oxygen system retrofit kits for the T-45 aircraft, to include installation tooling, engineering reach back, spares and support equipment. The T-45A Goshawk is a tandem-seat, carrier capable, jet trainer whose mission is to train Navy and Marine Corps pilots. Work will take place in Texas and Missouri. Expected completion is in September 2022. Sikorsky won a $25.8 million deal for the repair/overhaul of the refueling probes on the HH-60G helicopter. The HH-60G Pave Hawk is the US Air Force’s primary combat search and rescue helicopter used by Air Force special…

Our military failures of the last half century have not been at the Tactical or for that matter the Operational level. They have been failures at the Strategic and POL/MIL levels, We have to accept that there is something wrong with not just who we select as our senior uniformed and civilian leaders, but how we educate them, and how we designed the system they work in. For today's post, let's just touch on one segment of the education portion; our war colleges. As our war colleges started to focus less on their part in the practice of war and instead pursued the pleasures and practices of colleges, our military has been less successful at war and have adopted some of the …

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-72_M51_zMsk/VodCoy1QaYI/AAAAAAAAKoo/9NX16NSlvdk/s320/migkill-014b.jpgI first ran this FbF right after a great man passed in 2016 and I feel bad it took so long for me to cover Mugs. Read the whole thing, but here is a lead in to the video below;Former Navy Capt. Ronald E. "Mugs" McKeown, a decorated fighter pilot who was the first commanding officer of the elite Top Gun academy, died Nov. 21 in a Hillcrest care facility. The cause was complications associated with Parkinson’s disease. He was 76. Mr. McKeown, whose boxing prowess earned him the nickname "Mugs," was chosen to command the newly commissioned Navy Fighter Weapons School, popularly k…

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $22.6 million contract modification, which adds scope to procure 22 Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System shipsets for Distributed Aperture System for Technology Refresh-3 developmental and operational testing, Block 4 testing, the Electromagnetic Environmental Effects aircraft, and a spare sensor set provision in support of F-35 Lightning II next generation capabilities. Work will take place in Texas. Estimated completion will be by July 2023. MH Systems won a $24.7 million deal for the purchase of aircraft painters manpower support. This contract provides for the augmentation of 402d Aircraft Maintenance Group organic forces for dep…

In the very serious and expensive game of national defense, words matter. Even more than words, published documents with the President or Cabinet Secretaries' signatures are the source code of what our government will do as a matter of effort and expenditure. They are the "Ref. A." and regardless of their readability or subjective goodness, they require serious understanding and careful reading. Readers could not ask for a better mind to look at the most recent National Defense Strategy than our friend and occasional guest poster, Bryan McGrath. Refresh your drink of choice and dive in to his overview below. Bryan, over to you. Following close on the heels of the Bid…

Americas Boeing won a $30.4 million modification, which exercises an option to procure eight P-8A aircraft mechanisms as ancillary equipment in support of P-8A production aircraft. Work will take place in Washington. Estimated completion will be in January 2026. The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) has contracted Textron to develop a non-towed mine sweeping payload […]View the full article

Americas Longbow won a $156.4 million deal for procurement of Apache Attack Helicopter Fire Control Radar and other support hardware and auxiliary services. Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida; and Linthicum Heights, Maryland, with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2027. The Apache attack helicopter is a combat proven aircraft manufactured by American […]View the full article

Americas The US Navy has introduced a tethered capability to accelerate experiments for tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Called the Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Experimentation Payload System (TULEPS), the solution supports the evaluation of drone software and mission equipment under real-world conditions. Users can attach the machine’s cord directly to a generic UAV airframe without requiring flight authorizations, under all weather conditions, and with various power payloads for endurance trials. The Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has contracted six small businesses to expedite the construction of Virginia-class submarines. The $5-billion Maritim…

The British Army announced that its Boxer armored vehicle has successfully completed a Javelin integration trial, marking what it described as a major step toward providing its forces with the ability to fire the anti-tank missile from under armor. According to the Army, “Earlier this year, Boxer successfully completed its Javelin integration trial! This achievement […] The post British Boxer successfully fires Javelin missile first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Russia’s efforts to modernize its airborne early warning and control aircraft have hit a pause, as United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) delays a decision on launching serial production of its A-50 radar planes. The announcement was made by Sergey Korotkov, general designer and deputy general director of UAC, in an interview with TASS. According to Korotkov, […] The post Russia to delay production of A-50 radar plane first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Let’s return to a topic we covered in a FbF last month: the U-Boat war in the Caribbean. Not just the Caribbean, U-Boats in the Gulf of America (nee Mexico). From a strictly professional point of view, you have to tip your hat to the men of the German U-boat fleet. They didn’t have the great fleet boats like we did - no, not even close. But what they did with what they had ... it is still amazing. In the summer of 1942, U-166 patrolled the Gulf of Mexico in searches for a new victim. Steamer Robert E. Lee appeared 70 kilometers from the Mississippi mouth on July 30. The passenger carrier of 5184 tons displacement was going from Trinidad escorted with a PC-566 cruiser. The…

KNL has received a new order from the Finnish Defence Forces for CNHF radios, software features, and software maintenance services, a contract valued at EUR 2 million ($2.3 million). The company said the order follows a larger EUR 15 million ($17.4 million) joint procurement placed in August by the Finnish Defence Forces and Sweden’s FMV […]View the full article

The Royal Thai Air Force has carried out precision airstrikes against Cambodian military targets along the Thai-Cambodian border, using fighter aircraft to strike what were described as ammunition storage facilities, according to reports from both Thai and Cambodian sources. According to information circulating from Thai military-linked accounts, the strikes occurred at approximately 4:00 p.m. local […]View the full article