Raw Intel

Panels, seminars, conferences, reports, speeches, and emotion do not build a navy. Even shipyards do not build a navy. In the American system of government, if you want a navy you have to go up to Capitol Hill and get Congress to fund it. Without money, everything else is just a PDF. What is the state of play in bringing the argument for sea power to Congress? Returning to the Midrats Podcast just in time for the Senate’s August recess will be Brent Sadler, CAPT, USN (Ret.). You can join us LIVE today from 5-6 PM Eastern at this link. If you can’t make the live show, check the Substack later Sunday for all the podcast links and make us part of your commute listen. Brent i…

British radar maker Blighter is pushing for more sales in Central and Eastern Europe, showcasing its border and low-altitude air surveillance radars this week at the MSPO defense exhibition in Kielce, Poland. The company builds ground-based radars that use electronic scanning array antennas rather than the mechanically rotating dishes found on older radar systems, letting […]View the full article

Ukrainian ground robots ran more than 16,600 supply and evacuation missions in June, the highest monthly total since the Defense Ministry began tracking the numbers in January, and the pace shows no sign of slowing as Kyiv pushes to get soldiers off the most exposed roads to the front. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the […]View the full article

Taiwan’s Coast Guard used a water cannon on a Chinese fishing boat that refused to leave waters near Dongsha Island in the South China Sea, then warned its crew they would be arrested and their boat seized before finally towing it out of the area. The Coast Guard Administration said its Dongsha-Nansha Branch spotted an […]View the full article

A Ukrainian armored vehicle maker has built more than 600 BTR-4 troop carriers since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, working through repeated missile strikes on the country’s defense industry. The Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau, known as KhKBM, disclosed the production figure to a Militarnyi correspondent at the MSPO defense exhibition in Kielce, Poland. The […]View the full article

Thermopylae Aerospace, a California-based interceptor drone startup launched in June 2025 by a young Ukrainian engineer, said it completed a successful end-to-end demonstration of its SPART interceptor at Edwards Air Force Base, briefing senior Air Force Test Center leadership on the system during the “Game of Drones 26-2” event in mid-July. “At 412th Test Wing, […]View the full article

An unmanned fighter jet just fired a live air-to-air missile at a target over the California desert, and a human sitting somewhere else gave the order to pull the trigger. The Department of the Air Force confirmed that a YFQ-44A Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the service’s designation for a new class of autonomous fighter drones built […]View the full article

Avidrone Aerospace said this week it will develop a new version of Katana, the single-rotor helicopter drone that won the top prize at DARPA’s Lift Challenge earlier this month in Dayton, Ohio. Katana carried a 51-kilogram (112.4-pound) payload aboard a 13.3-kilogram (29.3-pound) airframe, producing an official payload-to-aircraft-weight ratio of 3.84 to 1, Avidrone said. The […]View the full article

Somewhere on the flight deck of a future U.S. aircraft carrier, a jet could be preparing to launch into contested airspace nearly 1,900 kilometers (1,151 miles) away, refuel itself mid-flight if needed, evade enemy threats, and strike a target, all without a single pilot strapped inside the cockpit. That’s the future the U.S. Navy just […]View the full article

MizarVision, a Chinese satellite imagery firm, released additional overhead images showing what it identified as elements of the U.S. Army’s Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile system positioned at Kanoya Air Base, a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force installation in Kagoshima Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu. The Typhon system is not a single missile but a […]View the full article

Ukraine’s government collapsed and a new ballistic missile flew successfully on the very same day, a coincidence the country’s outgoing defense chief made sure nobody missed. Mykhailo Fedorov, who stepped down as Ukraine’s Minister of Defense this week after just seven months in the post, announced that Ukraine conducted a successful test of a domestically […]View the full article

We’re going to stick with the theme we started yesterday…the fight now. Today, something unique and special is taking place. I am hoping video will be uploaded later. If so, I will update the post. Via Mike Schuler at gCaptain: Two Military Sealift Command ships have earned the Presidential Unit Citation (PUC) for the first time in the command’s 77-year history, recognizing the civilian-crewed vessels for their role supporting the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group during Operation Epic Fury. Military Sealift Command announced Tuesday that fleet replenishment oiler USNS Kanawha (T-AO 196) and dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS William McLean (T-AKE 12) received the prest…

Chinese state television has aired the first semi-official acknowledgment of the country’s massive intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields in a documentary marking the 99th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army. The program, produced by China’s national broadcaster CCTV, features an army engineer describing years of work building what he calls “houses for missiles” in the […]View the full article

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) introduced HYPNOSIS, a navigation warfare system built to counter large numbers of drones and other satellite-guided aerial threats by scrambling the navigation signals those weapons depend on to find their targets, rather than physically shooting them down. Most modern drones, including the cheap, mass-produced one-way attack drones that have become a […]View the full article

Nishati Power Technologies announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued it Patent No. 12,671,257, covering hybrid power generation technology built specifically to solve that problem for troops operating far from any power grid. The issue Nishati’s patent addresses sounds technical, but it plays out as a very physical headache for soldiers in the […]View the full article

Government forces in Yemen have hit Houthi positions with a series of airstrikes around the port city of Mocha and the nearby town of Dhubab, with Saudi aircraft flying in support, according to Yemeni army media. Both towns sit on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow chokepoint that ships […]View the full article

SummarySal discusses election integrity, military deployments, naval readiness, and current political issues affecting the military and national security. Chapters00:00:Introduction and overview of election integrity and military topics 02:07: Florida’s election system reform and its impact on confidence 04:02: The state of U.S. Navy deployments and fleet … Read more View the full article

Ukraine’s Defense Forces have added the Alexa Spatium, a jet-powered drone built to intercept small aerial, ground, and surface targets, to their arsenal, according to a Ukrainian defense outlet on Aug. 21. The turbojet-powered aircraft was developed by Ukrainian engineers specifically to counter fast, low-flying threats in combat conditions. Its primary targets are Russia’s Shahed-type […]View the full article

The Pentagon’s Space Systems Command awarded Rocket Lab USA a $266 million contract for suborbital launch services, according to a Department of War contract announcement, covering 12 confirmed launches with an option for six more, all to be conducted from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska, through the end of 2028. The contract […]View the full article

Ukraine held what organizers described as the world’s first military parade composed entirely of unmanned systems on August 24, 2026, marking the country’s Independence Day with a display of ground, naval, and aerial drones instead of traditional manned formations. Dozens of ground robotic systems moved down Kyiv’s main street, built for logistics, reconnaissance, and combat […]View the full article