Raw Intel

Those who follow me on X know what is coming up. It predates by years the Russo-Ukrainian War for reasons we will dive into later. We are surrounded by error, but specifically here, the habit of NATO, Eurocrats, earnest North Americans, politicians, military personnel, media, and civilians trying to sound serious in the national security arena, constantly looking towards Russia in the east and calling it NATO’s eastern flank. I’m sorry, I don’t care how many times you say it, it simply isn’t. It is NATO’s eastern front. After an exchange earlier this month with The Economist’s (and Midrats Podcast alumnus) Defence Editor Shashank Joshi, I decided I needed to put this out…

China may be exploring its own version of the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program, according to footage that recently surfaced on the Chinese social media platform Douyin (TikTok). The video shows a weapons collector examining what appears to be a Chinese experimental 6.8×50mm armor-piercing cartridge with a tungsten carbide core. While there […] The post China explores small arms upgrade with 6.8mm round first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress conducted a coordinated transit with two Navy warships—USS Gettysburg and USS Stockdale—during a joint, multi-domain operation in the Caribbean Sea on November 13, 2025. According to the U.S. Navy, the strategic bomber flew overhead as the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64) and the Arleigh Burke-class guided […]View the full article

Finland has authorized the procurement of AIM-120D-3 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) from the United States, a move aimed at equipping the country’s incoming F-35A fighters and aligning Finland’s air combat capabilities with those of its closest allies. According to a press release from Finland’s Ministry of Defence dated December 12, 2025, Minister of […]View the full article

The French Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade presented new combat systems shaped by battlefield lessons from the war in Ukraine during an Innovation Day held on January 15, 2026, in Bitche, highlighting France’s effort to rapidly adapt its ground forces to modern high-intensity warfare. The event focused on technologies developed by brigade regiments over nearly two […]View the full article

A Russian missile strike destroyed a production line for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Feb. 14 during a briefing on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Zelenskyy said the attack targeted a major manufacturing facility connected to the domestically developed long-range missile program, temporarily disrupting production at a time when […]View the full article

The Polish Armed Forces have launched a training cycle for operators of the AS-3 MEROPS drone interceptor, marking the next phase in Poland’s effort to expand capabilities for countering aerial threats. Initial training activities were conducted at military training areas in Lipa and at the Central Air Force Training Range Ustka. The training program is […]View the full article

The French Navy has ordered five additional CAMCOPTER S-100 unmanned aerial systems under its naval unmanned aviation program, expanding its existing fleet and deepening the service’s long-running use of shipborne rotary-wing drones across multiple vessel classes. The order was placed through France’s defense procurement and technology agency, the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), with Naval […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin, Seagate Space, and Firefly Aerospace have announced a three-way strategic collaboration to develop sea-based launch capabilities for national security missions, a partnership that brings together a defense prime with decades of missile heritage, an offshore launch platform operator, and a commercial rocket company whose Alpha vehicle has been carving out a role in […]View the full article

I’m not sure another nation has the same underlying concern for prisoners of war (POWs) that Americans do. I don’t think anyone else has a POW/MIA flag flying all over the place, even if we don’t have any POWs. As everyone was reminded this spring, we will go to incredible ends to stop our people from being taken prisoner if we have to. We will try to rescue them if we can. Perhaps it is the legacy of the British prison ships of the Revolutionary War, the nightmares of the American Civil War camps, or the memory of how our POWs were treated in Vietnam and Korea. In WWII’s European Theater, conditions were rough, but they were not so bad that we couldn’t make a comedy seri…

Somewhere in a Russian drone factory, an engineer looked at a satellite-jamming crisis that has cost the Kremlin countless drones and countless rubles, and solved it with the same tool Boy Scouts use to find their way out of the woods. A Ukrainian radio technology specialist says Russia has started bolting a basic magnetic compass […]View the full article

Germany’s first F-35A, designated MG-01, has moved into Aircraft Final Finishes at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, production facility, where it will receive paint and a stealth coating before continuing toward delivery to the Luftwaffe, the company said Monday. The aircraft entered final assembly in March, when its wing, forward, center and aft fuselage sections […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin is building four more of its newest combat drones, the company announced September 14, doubling down on a program that’s still more than a year away from ever leaving the ground. The news came from the company’s secretive Skunk Works division, following a major Air Force conference near Washington, D.C., where Skunk Works also […]View the full article

The Florida National Guard fed drone video, unmanned boat data and troop positions from a training exercise at Camp Blanding, Florida, to U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs and to Joint Task Force-National Capital Region in the Washington area, where commanders viewed the information remotely. The link-up was part of Drone Crucible 26.3, which ran […]View the full article

Americas The Navy contracted Raytheon Missiles $ Defense with a $24.8 million modification for procurement of fiscal 2021 Navy Standard Missile-2 intermediate level provisioned items ordered spares; and to exercise one-year options for fiscal 2021 Standard Missile-2 and Standard Missile-6 repairs and maintenance. The SM-2 is the U.S Navy’s primary surface-to-air defense weapon and is part of the AEGIS Weapon System along Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke Class destroyers. The SM-6, also known as RIM-174, is a ship-launched extended range variant of the anti-air and anti-surface interceptor missile developed by Raytheon Company. It is also a key part of the AEGI…

R.K. Lembke has an article over at Small Wars Journal that had me nodding my head in agreement on the subject more than any I have read in a long time. Regular readers of CDR Salamander will see many of the issues we've raised here over they years, but Lembke's presentation, tying them in together while providing sound and well documented quotes from the start, is simply a powerhouse. I spent half a decade of my active duty life on, and for a few months, in Afghanistan. A wee bit early on at the Tactical, but most as a staff weenie on the in-theater Operational and Strategic levels at USA and NATO commands from Bush43 through to the first year of the Obama administratio…

...we have better start planning to fight the marathon. Now that we are contested at sea, we are setting ourselves up to be unable to return ships to the fight. Details from the GAO's latest over at USNIBlog. Give it a read and wake up. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=yIl2AUoC8zA http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=qj6IDK7rITs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKgL8FL2X5o:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKgL8FL2X5o:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKgL8FL2X5o:V_sGLiPBpWU http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKg…

Ah, yes, The Terrible 20s. What if you had the leadership and malaise of the Carter Administration mixed in with the budgetary pressures of the Clinton Administration ... with a little bit of Biden Administration special sauce mixed in? We're not even a year in to the Biden Admin still at the start of the 20s...so you know this was coming. Via Joe Gould at DefenseNews; House progressives will have a few chances to hold down the defense budget this week, but it’s going to be an uphill fight. The House is set to vote this week on two Democratic amendments to cut the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act’s $740 billion top line. One would reduce it by roughly 10 …

More than a few times the last month I have found myself referring to the Sailors of the FITZGERALD and McCain. I've dug in to the archives from the summer of 2017 to look again at some of the things I wrote while things were fresh. This week, let's look back to AUG 2017 when I first wrote this. There can be only one FbF today, nothing else comes close. The supplemental preliminary inquiry into the collision involving the USS FITZGERALD (DDG 62) and the ACX CRYSTAL from 17 JUN of this year is out. The report is dated 11 AUG 17. You can get it from the SECNAV's site here, or read the whole thing posted below. I wanted to pull one extended quote from it for your review. I…

The People's Republic of China does not have to aggressively take our status as the premier world power. It appears that we are willingly giving it to them, sooner more than later. As a maritime and aerospace power, especially when it comes to the challenge west of Wake, if you want to understand how serious our nation's national security nomenklatura is toward the clear threat to the place previous generations died by the hundreds of thousands to place us in the last century - just look at what we are spending our money on. Megan Eckstein over at DefenseNews has the summary for everyone. It isn't pleasant reading, especially for those who have their eyes on the world aro…