Raw Intel

X-Bow Systems unveiled Buckler, a flight-tested interceptor built to shoot down Group 3 drones at supersonic speeds, with the company pricing the weapon below $100,000 per unit, a fraction of what traditional air defense missiles cost to defeat the exact same kind of threat. Group 3 drones sit in the middle of the military’s five-tier […]View the full article

Photos released by a U.S. Army unit this week appear to show America’s newest hypersonic missile system training somewhere in the Pacific, and one open-source analyst believes he has pinned down exactly where. The X account 笑脸男人, tracking military hardware sightings under the handle @lfx160219, said the U.S. Army may have deployed its Dark Eagle […]View the full article

Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jets have completed a short deployment to Latvia’s Lielvārde Air Base, where they helped guard the country’s airspace around its parliamentary elections, Latvian Defense Minister Raivis Melnis said on Oct. 9. Melnis visited the Turkish unit at the base on Friday to thank it for the deployment. The Latvian Ministry […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has awarded Zone 5 Technologies a $65 million contract to build a maritime strike variant of its AGM-188 Rusty Dagger cruise missile under a new program aimed at fielding low-cost precision weapons for the U.S. and its allies. The award is an Other Transaction Agreement, a contracting mechanism the Pentagon uses to […]View the full article

A congressman whose own military career started at Fort Campbell has had four of his ideas written into the bill that funds and governs the entire U.S. military for the next year. Rep. Matt Van Epps, a Tennessee Republican representing the state’s 7th District, announced Wednesday that four of his amendments were included in the […]View the full article

Back during the previous Cold War, we knew that range was life. We had a heavy fighter in the F-14 built around a beast (for its day) of an air-to-air missile, the AIM-54C Phoenix with its 99.4 nautical mile (nm) range. A few years ago, we found a stopgap with a modified SM-6 called the AIM-174B Gunslinger, but it wasn’t quite what we needed in the long term—though it did get us 150+ nm. Via Carter Johnson at Naval News: The U.S. Navy’s newest air-to-air missile, the AIM-424 Malice…is capable of hitting targets over 250 nautical miles (463 kilometers) away, leveraging a 13.5″ diameter and aerodynamic profile that appears to have been built for range. That range would exce…

France’s next long-range strike weapon might get its first real trial on Ukraine’s front line against Russian forces. According to French Aid to Europe, citing an anonymous source, prototypes of THUNDART, the system set to become the French Army’s future deep-strike capability, are expected to be tested in Ukraine. “According to an anonymous source, prototypes […]View the full article

Poland signed a $4.83 billion contract with Sweden’s Saab on June 29, 2026, for three A26 Blekinge-class submarines under its long-running Orka program, completing seven months of tense negotiations that at several points threatened to collapse over industrial offset demands, and delivering NATO its most significant Baltic Sea undersea capability expansion since the Cold War. […]View the full article

A North Carolina Air National Guard unit, part of the U.S. military’s part-time reserve force, wants to give its people the ability to quietly fly themselves into places a helicopter would get shot down trying to reach, and the shopping list it just published reads less like a defense contract and more like gear for […]View the full article

The U.S. Army awarded General Dynamics Land Systems a $54,281,616 contract to provide sustainment support for the Stryker vehicle fleet, the Department of War announced August 24. The cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract covers field-level maintenance, field service representative support and fielding activities. The contract specifically applies when interactive electronic technical manuals and logistics products have not […]View the full article

An electric motor smaller than a coffee mug might decide whether America’s drone army flies during the next crisis, and the U.S. Army has placed a nearly $80 million bet on building that motor at home instead of buying it from a country Pentagon planners increasingly view as an adversary. The Department of War announced […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has ordered another $51 million worth of Switchblade 600 loitering munitions from AeroVironment, the company announced Wednesday. The delivery order covers additional Switchblade 600 Block 2 systems and also includes Switchblade 600 Block 1 systems tied to a Foreign Military Sale for an unnamed U.S. ally. It was issued under the Army’s […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has added $876.4 million to L3Harris Technologies’ contract for the Next Generation Jammer Low Band, a radar-jamming pod for the EA-18G Growler electronic attack jet flown by the U.S. Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force, the U.S. Department of War announced. The award is a modification to the $587.4 million contract […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy’s Harpoon Coastal Defense System successfully launched a Harpoon missile from land and struck a target vessel in near-shore waters during a two-day test in late July at Point Mugu Sea Range, California, the Navy said. The event, designated Developmental Test 1, brought together the Strike Weapons Program Office known as PMX-201, the […]View the full article

American Rheinmetall has won a $710,000 subcontract from Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to produce machined components for the MCT-30 turret used on the U.S. Marine Corps’ ACV-30, the amphibious combat vehicle variant equipped with a medium-caliber gun. The work will be performed at American Rheinmetall’s Lapeer and Lansing, Michigan facilities, with deliveries scheduled throughout 2026 […]View the full article

A South Korean tank crew scrambled out of their vehicle and ran for safety early Thursday after flames broke out inside one of the military’s frontline main battle tanks during a live-fire training exercise just a few miles from North Korea, though officials confirmed nobody was hurt. A K1E1 tank operated by South Korea’s Army […]View the full article

An Israeli drone maker best known for building some of the quietest tactical aircraft in the sky is now pouring fresh money into scaling up how many of them it can actually build, ramping up serial production at home while pushing into new markets across Europe and Asia, Israel Defense reported in an article by […]View the full article

A West Point cadet has spent three weeks helping Army engineers solve a math problem that could determine how many enemy drones an American air defense system can shoot down before it runs out of ammunition. Cadet Alex Anteen, a member of the U.S. Military Academy’s class of 2028, worked alongside scientists at the Army’s […]View the full article

Russia’s prized “unstoppable” hypersonic missile has gone dark, and Ukrainian military intelligence says Moscow pulled the plug on purpose to feed a different weapon entirely. Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate, known by its Ukrainian acronym HUR, told the outlet RBC-Ukraine that Russia halted production of its Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile back […]View the full article

A pre-revenue air taxi startup has bought its way into the defense drone business, and Boeing is the one that sold it the keys. Archer Aviation, the Silicon Valley company racing to put electric flying taxis over American cities, announced Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire three Boeing subsidiaries in a […]View the full article