Raw Intel

For me, it is funny but serious that the phrase I started saying in 2019 that we were going to keep building Arleigh Burke DDGs “until the crack of doom” has turned into prophecy. With the anticipated death of DDG(X) and FFG-62, the Burkes are about the only game in town. That fact naturally flows into a point we have raised here and on the Midrats Podcast for the last couple of decades: How are we going to conduct repair and maintenance under combat conditions should we find ourselves in a fight west of the International Date Line? Well, we’ve got the perfect intersection of both issues for the next episode of Midrats. This RAND Report from May caught my eye: The Arle…

Vladimir Putin told the world’s press agency chiefs this week that Russia’s Su-57 fighter is the best combat aircraft on the planet. Independent analysts and the jet’s own production record tell a more complicated story. Putin made the claim at a meeting with leaders of major international news agencies organized by TASS, Russia’s state news […]View the full article

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone offensives of the war overnight into June 6, sending more than 400 unmanned aircraft deep into Russian territory and striking targets that included a naval weapons depot near Saint Petersburg, an oil refinery in Siberia, a port in Russian-occupied Mariupol, and munitions warehouses in the Leningrad region. Russia’s […]View the full article

It is far past time to pick up the conversation point we last visited back in September: AUKUS. Just to refresh everyone on my position that I’ve held since this program was announced a half-decade ago: this is one of the most important military and diplomatic initiatives of this century. There are a host of reasons we discuss this on a regular basis. They are also why I have been emphatic that it not only must work, but must come online as early as possible. Australia is one of our most critical allies. She is one of our most reliable allies. She occupies one of the most strategic positions in the world. Our greatest adversary—and hers—are aggressively attempting to subd…

A California drone maker best known for supplying Ukraine’s secretive kamikaze drone fleet has landed another $88.1 million in orders to deliver long-range precision strike systems. AEVEX Corp., a Solana Beach, California-based defense technology company, announced on July 28, 2026, that it secured new production orders totaling $88.1 million to deliver long-range precision strike capabilities […]View the full article

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions announced on July 28, 2026, that construction of its Indiana Payload Integration Facility for Hypersonic Systems in Crane, Indiana, has been completed ahead of schedule. The $50 million facility, spanning 68,000 square feet (6,317 sq m), is purpose-built for rapid, affordable preparation of experimental payloads, the sensors, guidance systems, and […]View the full article

A North Korean missile unit has begun moving into western Russia and could eventually field 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers aimed at Ukraine, Reuters reported, citing an official at Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, the country’s military spy agency also known as GUR. Andrii Cherniak, a spokesman for the agency, told Reuters that Russia […]View the full article

Swedish fighter jets launched twice in a single Friday to intercept Russian military aircraft operating near Swedish airspace over the Baltic Sea, in what Stockholm’s top military commander described as a serious pattern of Russian behavior threatening both territorial integrity and NATO alliance security. The Swedish Armed Forces confirmed on June 13, 2026 that its […]View the full article

The decades-long slide into near irrelevance of the industry that led to our victory in WWII—our shipbuilding overmatch over the Axis powers—continues to receive more attention over the last couple of years. We have been “appreciating the problem” for as long as I’ve been blogg’n, and it has been a regular topic of The Long Game series we started at the OG Blog in 2004. There is a critical mass of “problem appreciation” that is beginning to resonate across the maritime sphere, but everyone is still waiting for concrete—pun intended—action. It won’t happen overnight, but one does want to see real progress. I am optimistic, but the task is as great as the generational negle…

Once a bad theory is adopted because it makes sense to one cohort (GOFOs who went to a two-week MBA camp) and is encouraged by others (influential civilian companies looking for another income stream), at the expense of what the first cohort should have been focused on but is an unpopular topic (winning wars), it spreads and develops its inertia. Even when one area discovers the theory does not survive contact with reality, other areas carry on because, well, going along is easier than admitting error and changing. When the maintenance CONOPS for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) came out in the mid-00s with its reliance on civilian contractors and OEMs being responsible for…

Shield AI, the San Diego-based defense technology company that has been supplying AI piloting software to U.S. military aircraft since 2019, is showcasing X-BAT at Eurosatory 2026. Eurosatory 2026, a major international defence and security exhibition held in Paris from June 15-19, gives Shield AI one of its most prominent European stages yet for a […]View the full article

So, half a decade after we started the program to design our next oiler, all we have is this circa-1998 MS Paint graphic. We have what we have. Let’s look at where it started. The TAOL program (referred to in some documents as the NGLS or Next-Generation Medium Logistics Ship program) was initiated in the Navy’s FY2021 budget submission. The program envisages building a new class of CLF ships (or a family of CLF ship designs) that would be smaller and individually less expensive to procure than the Navy’s current CLF ships. Figure 1 shows a sketch of a Navy notional TAOL design concept. The Navy states that the TAOL is planned to be, “a new class of ships to augment the …

Russia appears to have modified its most advanced attack helicopter with new electronic warfare equipment, and the changes visible in recently released Russian military footage suggest the Mi-28NM is being adapted to counter the drone threat that has fundamentally reshaped the battlefield over Ukraine. Israeli defense analyst Guy Plopsky, who closely tracks Russian military aviation […]View the full article

A coalition of European and Ukrainian defense companies launched Dronetex at Odense Airport in Denmark, presenting a set of integrated air defense and counter-drone technologies that its members describe not as future concepts but as systems already operating in real-world conditions, including on active frontlines in Ukraine. The event, organized in partnership with Rasmussen Global, […]View the full article

A $48.5 million contract awarded to L3Harris to produce proximity fuzes for the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System is the latest signal that the U.S. military has found its answer to the drone swarm problem, and is now scaling that answer as fast as American manufacturing can deliver it. The Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a five-year contract to produce the M1147 Advanced Multi-Purpose round, a single 120 mm (4.7 in) tank cartridge that replaces four separate legacy munitions carried by M1 Abrams crews and gives tank commanders the ability to switch between three different detonation modes depending on what they are shooting […]View the full article

Satellite images showing a stealth fighter-shaped object at a former Chinese airport turn out to depict a fire-fighting trainer mock-up, according to Chinese aerospace analyst Andreas Rupprecht. Rupprecht made the assessment in an August 25 post on X, sharing images that show Chinese military firefighters conducting a live training exercise around the mock-up, including one […]View the full article

Something big and mysterious rolled down a Japanese road late last week, and the internet is obsessed with figuring out what it is. A user on X posting under the name Yuzu snapped photos of a tracked military vehicle riding on a flatbed truck at night, completely wrapped in a yellow tarp. You could still […]View the full article

The Pentagon is seeking to buy dozens of autonomous cargo boats to resupply U.S. Army units scattered across the Pacific islands in any future conflict with China, Naval News reported, citing a Defense Innovation Unit solicitation that calls for sea drones capable of delivering shipping containers through some of the most contested waters on earth […]View the full article

A torpedo-tube-launched robot built to secretly plant mines from American submarines just got another $14 million push toward becoming operational, as the U.S. Navy exercises new contract options with General Dynamics Mission Systems to keep developing the system. The Navy Sea Systems Command awarded the Massachusetts-based defense contractor a modification worth roughly $13.97 million on […]View the full article