Raw Intel

SummaryIn this episode, Sal discusses recent congressional testimonies by Navy leaders, the MQ-25 Stingray, and the realities of directed energy weapons on ships. He emphasizes learning from past military delays, the importance of technological progress, and the significance of understanding bureaucratic growth through Parkinson’s Law. Show LinksActing S… Read more 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…

Smart Shooter, the Israeli defense company that has turned AI-guided fire control into one of the most rapidly adopted infantry technologies of the past five years, signed a new contract with Israel’s Ministry of Defense on May 20 to supply SMASH Hopper lightweight remote-controlled weapon stations valued at approximately NIS 6.7 million ($1.8 million), with […]View the full article

Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation confirmed the new Su-57 prototype’s maiden flight, with test pilot and Hero of Russia Sergei Bogdan at the controls in a sortie described by officials as proceeding normally in accordance with its test plan. Denis Manturov, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister, announced the milestone, describing the aircraft as a platform combining […]View the full article

American Rheinmetall recently brought the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s operators at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia through a week-long training course on the Fieldranger Remotely Controlled Weapon Station, culminating in day and night live-fire exercises against realistic mission scenarios. The training, which drew participants from both Fleet Marine Force combat units and the Supporting Establishment […]View the full article

Latvia has signed a multi-year framework agreement with Origin Robotics to secure a continuous supply of BLAZE autonomous interceptor drones, and structured the deal so other European nations can plug directly into it without running their own procurement from scratch. The Latvian Cabinet of Ministers approved the first contract under the framework on April 21, […]View the full article

Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A Talon Blue autonomous combat aircraft completed its first taxi test on May 14 at Mojave, California, moving under its own power for the first time and bringing the Air Force’s third designated drone wingman prototype within striking distance of its first flight. Crane Aerospace and Electronics, part of Connecticut-based Crane Company, supplied […]View the full article

GE Aerospace has secured a U.S. Air Force contract to advance the preliminary design of its GE426 engine, a propulsion system built specifically for the medium-thrust class of autonomous combat aircraft the Air Force is developing to operate alongside crewed fighters. The award marks the next development milestone for a program that passed its concept […]View the full article

A German autonomous systems company has demonstrated what it claims is the world’s first fully automatic drone launch and recovery system capable of operating from a moving vessel without any human intervention, and unveiled the commercial product at the Combined Naval Event in Farnborough, United Kingdom. CiS, a European developer of autonomous aerial systems, announced […]View the full article

AimLock and FN America unveiled a joint counter-drone weapon system at SOF Week 2026 in Tampa on May 19, combining AimLock’s artificial intelligence targeting technology with one of the most widely deployed remote weapon stations in the Western military market to create a system capable of detecting, tracking, and automatically calculating firing solutions against small […]View the full article

Taiwan’s state defense research institute publicly unveiled its next-generation anti-armor rocket, showing off a weapon significantly more capable than what Taiwanese infantry currently carry and explicitly designed to counter the armored vehicles a Chinese amphibious invasion force would land on Taiwan’s beaches. The National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, known as NCSIST and the […]View the full article

BAE Systems built an armored vehicle with drone-killing capabilities in ten months and put it in front of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, for training — without waiting for a government contract to fund it. The AMPV-30, a version of the U.S. Army’s Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle fitted with a 30mm cannon and a radar system […]View the full article

We need to talk about an unpleasant subject. I briefly mentioned it last week, and talked about it a little on the latest Midrats Podcast, but that is enough fiddling around the topic. Time to man up and address the topic head-on. I think the DDG(X) program is a dead program walking. There could be an error, as there was with BBG-1 vs. BBGN-1 in the chart, but let’s look again at the latest Shipbuilding Plan. There is no DDG(X) in the plan…just Arleigh Burke DDGs being built, as the Salamander says, until the crack of doom. In the Shipbuilding Plan, it is mentioned only once in this paragraph. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG 51) is the most capable s…

A Romanian Air Force F-16 patrolling Baltic skies under NATO’s air policing mission shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone over southern Estonia on May 19, marking the first time NATO fighters have actively intercepted and destroyed a drone over the Baltic states rather than simply scrambling to track one. The incident unfolded around midday, with […]View the full article

The U.S. State Department approved a potential $236 million sale of AGM-184 Joint Strike Missiles to the Belgian government on May 18, clearing the path for Brussels to arm its growing fleet of F-35A fighter jets with a weapon specifically designed to strike ships and hardened targets from well outside the range of enemy air […]View the full article

The U.S. State Department approved a potential $3 billion sale of 24 MH-60R Seahawk naval helicopters to South Korea on May 18, doubling Seoul’s fleet of the American-built submarine hunters just weeks after the country’s navy put its first two Seahawks into operational service. The MH-60R Seahawk, built by Sikorsky and supported through Lockheed Martin […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has handed a $40 million contract to World Wide Technology, a St. Louis-based technology firm, to build an artificial intelligence-powered Security Operations Center — essentially a high-tech nerve center that will monitor the service’s networks around the clock for cyber intrusions, attacks, and threats. The award, announced May 18 and running […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin walked away from May 18 with an $879 million weapons contract, and this one has nothing to do with building new jets. The Naval Air Systems Command handed the Fort Worth defense giant a production order covering the missile launchers, bomb racks, gun systems, wing pylons, and adapter hardware that physically attach weapons […]View the full article

I wanted to start this week out with a hearty Bravo Zulu to the Ford Carrier Strike Group, but we started yesterday’s Midrats Podcast with that, and did a good job with it. So, if you’d like, give the episode a listen when you get a chance, but today I want to instead review the military balance sheet on our operations against Iran over the last few months. In the Ford Strike Group’s Presidential Unit Citation, some stats were put on the table: 125 Iranian warships destroyed 207 TLAM launched from 9 surface platforms 1,700 sorties hitting 700 targets We’re still conducting a blockade. Still trying to negotiate with a dead-ender government. The question is, what have we a…

REGENT Craft has demonstrated the ability to charge its Seaglider vessels entirely away from established port infrastructure, completing a milestone test in partnership with Schneider Electric and World4Solar that the company says unlocks distributed maritime operations in austere and remote environments where conventional charging networks do not exist. The demonstration validated a three-component charging architecture […]View the full article