Raw Intel

The Spanish Army has received its first Aracne counter-drone systems, delivered to the 71st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, which serves as the army’s lead unit for defending against drones. The army announced the delivery on Oct. 8. The system is built to detect drones, identify them and choose a response, and the regiment has already completed […]View the full article

The Netherlands will buy more CV90 infantry fighting vehicles, additional bridge-laying tanks, a replacement for its unreliable Kodiak combat engineer vehicle, and new tracked support and heavy recovery vehicles from Germany’s FFG, Dutch State Secretary for Defense Derk Boswijk told parliament in a letter on Oct. 26, the Dutch Ministry of Defense said. The ministry […]View the full article

If you have an interest in the history of Russian shipbuilding, you'll find this page remarkably interesting. View the full article

While working on the orchard at my Dacha/bolthole this weekend, acreage so far off the grid I can't even get broadcast TV unless I get a 20' tower, I had a little revelation when thinking about a video I saw last week. What is one of the breathless reasons we seem to have disgorged so much intellectual, professional, political, and real capital on LCS over the last decade? What is the panic button ... ah yes; "the swarm." Sure, you hear MIW and ASW wishfull chattering of "make it work" about; but the swarm is the driver. The fear of a bunch of expendable guys in small expendable boats with unguided weapons or suicide packages attacking ships in relatively confin…

Note: I was originally planning on publishing a series of articles this week on the large-deck aircraft carrier's doctrinal roles, but I'm shifting that to next week as I need a little more time to make final edits. As a result, I'm moving up my series analyzing the DF-21 arsenal. Both series touch on my theme for the first part of this month: the implications of guided munitions inventory management and producibility. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) arsenal’s traditional primary role is supporting theater nuclear deterrence. China’s first generation DF-3 series (NATO Designation CSS-2) MRBMs were tasked with h…

Americas The US Navy seeks to upgrade its fleet of autonomous underwater sensor gliders, devices used to provide data to attack submarines. The system would improve the current Littoral Battlespace Sensing Glider, which generally deploy from oceanographic survey ships and would measure water conditions in areas to help fleet operational planning or hunt enemy submarines. The request of proposals was announced this week. The new LBS-G drone will be expected to operate for 90 days at a time, dive to 657 feet, spend much of its time at the bottom of the sea, surface when it needs to transmit data to a satellite and take water samples every two seconds. The first of 17 B-1B …

M1126, post-IED (click to view full) Under current plans, the 8×8 wheeled Stryker armored vehicle will be the future backbone of 8 US Army and 1 National Guard medium armored brigades. The 5th Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis, WA was the first Stryker unit sent to Afghanistan, deployed in the summer of 2009 as part of a troop level increase. The brigade was equipped with 350 Stryker vehicles. In the first few months of deployment, they lost 21 soldiers, with 40 more wounded, to IED land mines. The losses prompted the Army to examine modifications to their Stryker vehicles, in order to make them more resistant to land mines. One result is the Stryker hull redesign, creat…

Will someone please save us from our experts? Question everyone. Defer to no one. If you have learned nothing the last two decades, at least know this; our elite aren’t. Our best institutions do not produce the best product. Credentialism is the last refuge of the incompetent. You have to assume these are well meaning people, but building off of yesterday’s post – let this week be a lesson to everyone that our self-selecting elites are like the Bourbons, “They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” I’m not sure I can do more but quote from the latest article in FP by By Charli Carpenter, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of Huma…

Americas Raytheon Intelligence and Space won a $34.2 million order by the US Navy, which of the ethernet expansion devices and the platform data server in support of integration of the MV-22 Helmet Mounted Display/Degraded Visual Environment program aboard V-22, and establish a baseline for a common software interface for integration of future capabilities on all V-22 platforms. Work will take place in Indiana and California. Estimated completion will be in July 2027. Lockheed Martin rolled out the first F-16 Block 70/72 aircraft this week from its Greenville, South Carolina, production line. The fighter completed final assembly, checkout, and painting at Greenville on N…

Americas Northrop Grumman won a $387.5 million definitized contract action for Global Hawk (RQ-4) aircraft sustainment. The contract provides for contractor logistics support services. The locations of performance are Sacheon Air Base, Republic of Korea; Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea; Misawa Air Base, Japan; Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy; and San Diego, California; and […]View the full article

Russian forces have used a newly developed guided aerial bomb for the first time in a strike against Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials. The attack, carried out by a Su-34 bomber, hit civilian targets in the city of Kharkiv with two UMPB-5 precision-guided munitions fired from approximately 100 kilometers away. The strike, launched from near […] The post Russia tests new bomb in strike on Ukrainian city first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

NATO last month, to absolutely no fanfare, published a revision to the Alliance Maritime Strategy. Don’t feel bad if you’re finding out about it first here—you’re not alone. You can search NATO’s website, but you can’t find it—at least I couldn’t. Head over to my friends at NATO’s Maritime Command in Northwood, nothing there either. If it weren’t for the friendly hippies at Human Rights at Sea, we wouldn’t have the copy you can download here. I’m not sure who is responsible for action in para 2, but Shipmate…it’s been a month. This is a solid, compact briefing document that we should be handing out like pamphlets at the church door on Sunday. Someone needs a closed door c…

Sweden is preparing to export up to 150 of its domestically built Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine under a new long-term defense cooperation framework, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced Wednesday. Following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Linköping, Kristersson said that Sweden is committed to “exploring all the possibilities in providing Ukraine […] The post Ukraine begins talks for 100+ Gripen fighter jets first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

ARX Robotics has confirmed a major order from Ukraine for its GEREON-series unmanned ground systems, a move that will establish what the company describes as “the world’s largest networked military robotics fleet.” The announcement was made on November 18, 2025, from the company’s headquarters in Munich. According to ARX Robotics, the contract includes the delivery […]View the full article

Ukraine has paused additional orders of HX-2 strike drones from German defense technology firm Helsing after the systems showed technical problems during frontline testing, according to Bloomberg. The decision follows field trials conducted by Ukraine’s 14th Regiment, a unit specializing in unmanned aerial systems, where the HX-2 experienced repeated difficulties during launch and operation. The […]View the full article

The Bangladesh Army has received a new batch of Chinese-made VT-5 light tanks, expanding its fleet after previously fielding one regiment equipped with 44 vehicles, according to reports from Bangladeshi media and regional defense observers. The delivery represents the latest confirmed reinforcement of Bangladesh’s armored forces and follows earlier sightings of VT-5 tanks photographed during […]View the full article

Palantir’s Shyam Sankar continues to offer some of the clearest and most precise ideas on how we need to shift our mindset if we want to set the foundation for the next big war. I’m not going to ask too much of your time today. Nope, just a bit over a minute to ponder Shyam’s four Sputnik moments. The 1 minute and 19 seconds is an incredibly powerful boil-down of what should drive a lot of our thinking. Really, we should already be well down the road in acting on it. Here’s the video that starts the bit I’d like folks to ponder on today starting at the 41:05 moment, but if you have time on your commute, give the full interview from the Hudson Institute’s 11 March upload a…

Radiance Technologies has been awarded a minimum $149,6 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to upgrade infrastructure and instrumentation at the Reagan Test Range, the Department of War announced. The sole-source contract runs for five years with no option periods and carries a performance completion date of April 10, 2031. Defense Logistics Agency Aviation at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers in Lithuania are training with an unmanned ground vehicle to evacuate casualties from the battlefield, as part of a live exercise that is simultaneously testing counter-drone systems, AI-enabled command networks, and robotic ground platforms across a month-long series of linked drills. Soldiers assigned to 2d Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment, practiced medical evacuation […]View the full article

Every GPS signal on the battlefield is a vulnerability waiting to be exploited, and Russia, China, and Iran have all demonstrated the willingness to exploit it. DARPA just announced it is going to solve that problem from the inside out, by building a navigation sensor so precise that it no longer needs GPS to know […]View the full article