Raw Intel

The U.S. Navy is looking for companies that can help it build a new torpedo that aircraft and drones could launch from far away to hit enemy submarines, according to a notice posted publicly this week. The Naval Air Systems Command, working on behalf of the Navy’s Strike Weapons Program Office, is calling the effort […]View the full article

Americas Northrop Grumman won an $11.4 million contract modification for the exercise of Options Two, Three and Four of the Minuteman III Launch Control Center Block Upgrade production program. The LGM-30G Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, is an element of the nation’s strategic deterrent forces under the control of the Air Force Global Strike Command. Work will take place in Utah. Estimated completion date is July 17, 2023. The US Marine Corps is now able to download data from an airborne RQ-4 unmanned aerial vehicle after verifying the capability during a field exercise held at Bouge, North Carolina last month. The 2nd Intelligence Battalion of the…

As the D-Day invasion was ongoing, the German Navy sortied what they could to try to drive the allies back across the channel. The most feared were the French based U-boats. Please read the whole thing, but here is a nice summary of one of the under-told stories of WWII, Coastal Command. On night. One crew. Two U-boats. Fullbore. “G-George” droned on through the night. Men drank coffee from thermos flasks, kept the chatter to a minimum, scanned the endless sea and began to feel the numbing weariness set in that came with these long over-water patrols. But adrenalin shot through their bloodstreams like amphetamine just after 2 a.m. when Foster announced on the intercom…

It is amazing that our nation - one so reliant on ocean trade and whose energy security is so reliant on the arctic - should have such a quote about it as below. This came out in February...but came up in my digging around on a related topic. The nation's first sea-going heavy icebreaker in more than 45 years will be named Sentinel -- a nod to its predecessors as well as future missions in the polar regions, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz said Thursday. We have been at peace at sea for so long, unchallenged for so long, I think we have forgotten what is needed to fight a sustained war at sea. Ships cannot be built overnight. Industrial capacity can take years …

Americas The US Air Force has received a new E-11A aircraft with a battlefield airborne communications node (BACN) payload at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia. The plane will be integrated into the air force’s 430th Expeditionary Electronic Communications Squadron, the “Black Wolves,” which supports combat communications. The BACN’s “WiFi in the sky” capability allows the E-11A to function similarly to a low-Earth satellite, maintaining aerial command and control capabilities for airborne and ground units. Colombia has selected the French defense firm Nexter’s Caesar 6×6 self-propelled howitzer for its military, according to Spanish defense news website Infodefensa. …

Americas Mercury Mission Systems won a $16.8 million modification, which exercises an option to procure 48 data transfer units and 121 high-definition video recorders for retrofit on F/A-18C-F Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircrafts in support of Small Business Innovation Research Phase III topic N102-0129 titled, “Automatic Real-Time, Reconfigurable Interface Generalization Hardware Multiprotocol Data Recorder”. Work […]View the full article

Americas The US Coast Guard has taken delivery of its 57th Sentinel-class fast response cutter from Bollinger Shipyards in Key West, Florida. The USCGC Florence Finch (WPC-1157) is part of a US Department of Defense effort begun in 2008 to replace the service’s Island class commissioned in the 1980s. WPC-1157 will sail as the second of three Sentinel ships to be homeported in Sector Columbia River, a coast guard division responsible for security, maritime law enforcement, environmental protection, and rescue along the Oregon Coast. Top Aces Inc., a leading provider of advanced adversary air (ADAIR) training, has successfully completed its first training mission in Canada …

Americas The US Navy is paying BAE Systems $70 million to improve their Mk 45 ship guns. This includes $47 million they agreed to earlier, plus $23.5 million more just added. The improved guns will be able to fire stronger bullets, making them 50% more powerful. BAE will do this work at their factory in Louisville, Kentucky, and finish by the end of 2028. The US Air Force is testing small, 3D-printed parts called microvanes on their big C-17 cargo planes. These microvanes are thin, blade-like pieces about 4 inches wide and 16 inches long. By putting many of these blades on the plane, they change the plane’s aerdynamic profile. This helps the plane fly more smoothly, using…

Russia has begun using a new jet-powered variant of the Iranian-designed Shahed drone in large-scale attacks against Ukraine, including a wave of strikes targeting the capital, Kyiv. According to the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi, the drone—identified as the Shahed-238 and rebranded by Russia as the “Geran-3”—was employed during combined missile and UAV attacks on the […] The post Jet-powered kamikaze drones target Kyiv in overnight assault first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Milrem Robotics, a leading Estonian developer of robotics and autonomous systems, will provide Ukraine with the largest fleet of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) it has ever received, as part of a donation from a European government. In a statement, Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics, said: “The cooperation between our governments and leading defence industry […] The post Ukraine to receive record THeMIS drone fleet first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

The UK Royal Air Force (RAF) has signed a multi-year enterprise agreement with ST Engineering Antycip to expand its use of advanced simulation technology. The agreement builds on a long-standing collaboration between the RAF and Antycip, Europe’s leading provider of simulation and virtual training solutions. It brings the company’s simulation expertise and the MAK ONE […] The post UK Royal Air Force to build unified synthetic training network with Antycip first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Japan’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that it scrambled fighter jets after detecting a Russian military aircraft flying over the Sea of Japan on October 25. The flight, carried out by an IL-20 reconnaissance aircraft, prompted a rapid response from Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force amid ongoing monitoring of foreign military activity near Japanese waters. According […]View the full article

The United States Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a new contract worth up to $100 million to provide long-term support for the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) Subsystem, a key component in the service’s effort to field new strike capabilities against defended targets. According to the contract announcement, the award is a ceiling $100,000,000 cost-reimbursement, […]View the full article

The UK Ministry of Defence has confirmed that manufacturing of the Challenger 3 main battle tank will not begin on a fixed timetable and will proceed only after performance trials are successfully completed, according to recent parliamentary disclosures. UK Defence Journal has reported that, in written answers to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, defence minister Luke […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Amazon Web Services a $581.3 million contract to provide cloud services for the Air Force’s Cloud One program, according to a contract announcement released this week. The contract was issued by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts, and covers the delivery of […]View the full article

Ukrainian startup Qirim Technology has launched production of segmented airless wheels designed for installation on wheeled drones and military engineering vehicles, the company announced as it began supplying the new systems to Ukrainian military units. The wheels are currently being transferred to frontline formations free of charge through volunteer-funded support organized by the manufacturer. According […]View the full article

The United States Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based unmanned tanker program missed its originally scheduled Milestone C decision after production delays, test-asset delays, and concerns that the available data were not suitable to support the move into the next acquisition phase, according to the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test and Evaluation annual report. The report states that […]View the full article

The U.S. Army awarded a contract to German drone distributor DRONIVO GmbH on April 2, 2026, for 15 EAGLE NXT eBee VISION small unmanned aerial systems, six ground control stations, and a pilot training package to equip the 2nd Cavalry Regiment ahead of the Saber Strike 26 exercise. The contract, valued at €870,810 — approximately […]View the full article

French-supplied CAESAR self-propelled artillery systems appeared publicly for the first time in Armenia during rehearsals for the country’s Republic Day parade, scheduled for May 28 in central Yerevan, signaling a concrete and visible shift in Armenian military hardware away from its traditional Russian-origin inventory. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had previously announced that the government […]View the full article

A maritime drone of the type used in the war in Ukraine self-detonated Friday morning inside the civilian port of Constanța, Romania’s largest Black Sea harbor, after authorities discovered the device at berth 78 and began working to neutralize it. The explosion occurred at approximately 10:30 a.m., roughly four and a half hours after the […]View the full article