Raw Intel

The transition from Dassault’s Mirage 2000 fighter jet to the Rafale is accelerating worldwide as nations phase out older fleets in favor of the French company’s most advanced multirole aircraft, Dassault Aviation CEO Éric Trappier told French lawmakers on September 24. Speaking before the National Assembly, Trappier highlighted that several countries — including India, Qatar, […] The post Dassault chief: Customers want Rafale first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Textron Aviation is promoting its AT-6 Wolverine as a purpose-built aircraft to counter long-range one-way attack drones, such as the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, which have been used extensively in Ukraine, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. These drones, launched in large numbers, have challenged the effectiveness and economics of existing air defense systems. Military forces in both Ukraine […] The post Textron pitches AT-6 Wolverine as drone interceptor first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

General Electric has received a contract valued at $9.7 million for the procurement of initial provisioning spares and consumables for the F110-GE-129 engine. The U.S. Air Force Lifecycle Management Center awarded the contract on November 18, 2025. According to the Department of War, the contract supports a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) requirement for the Bulgarian […]View the full article

Airbus Helicopters says it has reached a new stage in the Tiger Mid Life Upgrade (MLU) program with the activation of a full-scale ground test facility designed to reduce risk ahead of flight testing planned for 2026. According to a statement from Airbus Helicopters, the newly activated “Helicopter 0” test bed reproduces the complete Tiger […]View the full article

The Italian Army has received its first new-generation SAMP/T NG and GRIFO air defense systems, marking the initial deployment of Italy’s modernized layered air and missile defense architecture, the defense outlet Militarnyi reported on Friday. The handover includes the first SAMP/T NG (New Generation) medium- and long-range air defense systems as well as GRIFO short-range […]View the full article

The United States Marine Corps has decided to retain the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle for its close combat formations rather than adopt the Army’s M7 Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle, a Marine Corps spokesperson confirmed to Task & Purpose. “The Marine Corps will retain the M27 for our close combat formations as it best aligns […]View the full article

In the first week of this year, I made my feeling about the unfortunate Greenland kerfuffle clear, so no need to replow that field. I also have a love/frustration relationship with the Danes. As we tried to fill the CJSOR for ISAF in the 00s, the unending nightmare was having to say, “Well, that is nice…but what are the national caveats?” At least for the first decade of the war, if you saw GBR, AUS, NLD, CAN, EST, DNK on that CJSOR line, you could take a bit of a breath as you knew there would be very few national caveats that would make their utility much different than a U.S. unit. Other nations…not so much. Denmark and Estonia were, in essence, interchangeable with …

The Royal Australian Navy has formally established and named the Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit — known as MASU — a dedicated command structure built to develop, integrate, and operationally employ a new generation of uncrewed maritime platforms. The unit’s activation marks one of the most concrete organizational steps the Navy has taken toward embedding autonomous […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Celebra Tech has integrated its Tryzub laser system into a mobile counter-drone platform capable of engaging targets from FPV drones to reconnaissance unmanned aircraft, the company told Militarny. The Tryzub (the Ukrainian word for trident) was first publicly mentioned in December 2024 by Vadym Sukharevsky, the first commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. Since […]View the full article

Ukraine’s 146th Separate Repair and Restoration Regiment published photographs of a Soviet-era BMP infantry fighting vehicle fitted with a Spanish GUARDIAN 30 remote weapon station. The photographs, posted to the regiment’s official social media page, show a standard BMP hull carrying the GUARDIAN 30 turret in place of the original conical Soviet turret that the […]View the full article

The U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally watched American laser weapons and high-power microwave systems destroy targets at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on June 23, 2026, in what Laser Wars, the defense technology publication that broke the story, described as the first publicly known instance of a sitting U.S. […]View the full article

AM General, the South Bend, Indiana manufacturer that has built the Humvee since the 1980s, was awarded a $98.7 million contract modification, according to a Department of War contract announcement, adding to an existing agreement for various models of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, commonly known as the Humvee. The modification pushes the total […]View the full article

POLARIS Spaceplanes has flown its COBRA prototype for the first time, covering more than 20 km in what the German company described as a smooth flight. The German aerospace firm announced the milestone in a social media post, saying additional test flights are planned in the coming months and that video footage would follow in […]View the full article

Tejas LCA (click to view full) GE’s F414 turbofan engine will power Tejas Mk2. (Oct 1/10) India’s fighter strength has been declining in recent years, as the MiG-21s that form the largest component of its fleet are lost in crashes, or retired due to age and wear. Some MiG-21s are being modernized to MiG-21 ‘Bison’ configuration, while other current fighter types are undergoing modernization programs in order to maintain the fighter force until replacements can arrive. On which note, an ongoing tender has Russian, French, American, Swedish and European manufacturers dueling for the MMRCA, a multi-billion dollar, 126+ plane light-medium fighter sale. This still leav…

British participation in the Libya operation makes comments like this even more on point: It’s not just the Harriers and HMS Ark Royal. The loss of the Nimrod R1 patrol aircraft and the cancellation of the Nimrod MRA4 maritime patrol aircraft will make British participation in operations like the Libya NFZ much more difficult. That wouldn’t be such a problem were it not clear that the UK was very interested in participating in such operations. View the full article

A little different DivThu today. I’m not going to cover a specific outrage or Orwellian program, no, something different but more important. Consider this a war warning. Firstly, I need to repeat something for my Trump supporters here; until the Summer of 2020, he completely failed in this area. As people are policy, he failed in that he did not appoint people who understood what was going on in the larger culture. He finally caught on to what was going on and acted, specifically on Critical Race Theory, but that was him. He quickly saw what it was and took action. He needed dozens to hundreds of political appointees to see the problem and act on their own as he did, b…

Americas Lockheed Martin Space won a $128.7 million contract to support the integration of the Trident II (D5) Missile and Reentry Subsystems into the Common Missile Compartment (CMC) for the US/United Kingdom Columbia/Dreadnought Submarine construction programs. The Trident II D-5 is a three-stage, solid propellant, inertially guided FBM with a range of more than 4,000 nautical miles (4,600 statute miles or 7,360 km). Work will take place in Florida, Colorado, California, Utah and Tennessee. Estimated completion date is February 28, 2027. According to the US Navy, Sailors aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg are among the first to test a stress-mitigation in…

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $191.2 million contract modification for the US and United Kingdom to provide strategic weapon system Trident SSI Increment 8 production of inertial navigation systems and associated inertial spares for the Ohio and Columbia ballistic missile submarine shallow water submersible platforms for the fleet ballistic missile program. The Trident II D5 is the latest generation of the USN’s submarine-launched fleet ballistic missiles. First deployed in 1990, the Trident II D5 missile is currently onboard the US Ohio Class and UK RN Vanguard Class submarines. Work will take place in Ohio, California, New York and Virginia. Estimated completion date i…

Americas The F-15E has a new bunker buster added to its arsenal, the GBU-72 Advanced 5K Penetrator. The new weapon was tested at the Eglin Air Force Base range by the 96th Test Wing. A joint-direct-attack-munition (JDAM) tail kit from a GBU-31 was modified so that it would fit and guide the 5,000-pound weapon. The first weapons load, flight and release took place on July 23. The Strike Eagle’s existing bunker busting weapon is the laser-guided GBU-28. According to Defense News, the US Army and Lockheed Martin have worked out a way to accelerate the delivery of the latest variant of Sentinel air and missile defense radar by six months. At the AUSA 2021 annual conference o…

Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan managed to bring the national security eyeballs back to the Western Pacific after half a year in Eastern Europe. The People’s Republic of China has not been distracted by the Russo-Ukrainian War any more than she was with our two decades distraction in Central and Southwest Asia. She remains focused on two things: - Pushing America to her side of the Pacific. - Establish herself as the primary regional and then global power. Where does China stand today, and where is she heading for the rest of the decade? We have a great guest this Sunday at 3pm Eastern to dive in to these and related topics, James E. Fanell, Captain, USN (Ret.) Jim concl…