Raw Intel

Paramount and India’s Kalyani Strategic Systems Limited unveiled a new 4×4 light armored modular vehicle (LAMV) called the Mbada at the Africa Aerospace and Defence exhibition in Pretoria on Sept. 17, marking the vehicle’s first public showing at an international defense show. The Mbada is built as a modular platform that customers can configure for […]View the full article

Finland’s first two F-35A fighter jets landed at the Lapland Air Wing in Rovaniemi on Sept. 18, opening the operational phase of a 64-jet purchase meant to replace the Finnish Air Force’s aging F/A-18 Hornet fleet. The two aircraft, tail numbers JF-510 and JF-512, left Lockheed Martin’s factory in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 15 […]View the full article

After a two-week availability period, the Midrats Podcast is back! SummaryIn this episode, we explore current geopolitical tensions, military readiness, and strategic challenges facing the US and its allies, emphasizing the importance of preparedness and international cooperation. You can listen at this link or via the Spotify widget below. Show LinksRussian restrictions on Estonia’s borders Curfew on Russia’s Border with Estonia, Holger Roonemaa on Substack Great Circle ballistic arcs over Greenland Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren Operation Red Sea Regatta Shipfinder Hormuz Tracker Hormuz Strait Monitor Strait of Ti…

Combat medics from Ukraine’s 1st Separate Medical Battalion traveled to Sweden last week to share their experience evacuating wounded soldiers under drone threat, meeting with medical personnel from the Swedish Armed Forces’ Life Guards regiment, according to a Life Guards post and a LinkedIn account from the Ukrainian company that built the ground robot involved […]View the full article

The U.S. Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps evaluated a drone mothership built by Modalic during Scarlet Dragon 26-3, an experimentation exercise held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in mid-September. The aircraft, called the Autonomous Swarm Mothership, launched smaller drones in flight as soldiers tested whether the network could track the parent aircraft, separate its daughter drones, […]View the full article

Oshen, a UK maritime technology company based in Plymouth, is testing what it calls the first “acoustic picket line” built from small robotic sailboats at REPMUS26, a monthlong multinational maritime robotics exercise underway in Portugal. The company has deployed six of its C-Star sailboats, each about 1.2 meters (4 feet) long and fitted with a […]View the full article

In our 21st century minds, it is easy to forget that 250 years ago, residents of the 13 Colonies had only a vague concept of themselves as ‘Americans’ and of America as a nation. They were, before anything, residents of their colony/state. Indeed, in less than a century, this concept had become so strong that it was one of the issues over which we fought our Civil War. Any yet, just over a month after the 13 Colonies declared their independence, at the southern end of Long Island in New York, a few hundred men from Maryland and Delaware, part of an Army led by a Virginian fighting in a revolution started by New Englanders stood in front of a massive host of British and Ge…

If you are an old NATO hand, you are very familiar with the struggle to fill the Combined Joint Statement of Requirements (CJSOR), which is where you try to find the actual military units to fill the requirements of your Operational Plans (troops-to-task). Once you finally get some troop-contributing nation (and yes, this is a bunch of land-centric verbiage, but welcome to NATO) to pony up for a specific line, you then have to review the National Caveats that will come with the offer. More often than not, we would be better off not having them arrive at all. A few real world reasons: They can come with so many restrictions (our company of security personnel cannot condu…

Japanese radar satellite company Synspective has signed a contract with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch two of its StriX satellites on Japan’s H3 rocket in 2027, moving part of a constellation that feeds imagery to Japan’s Ministry of Defense onto a domestic launcher for the first time. The company announced the agreement Sept. 18. The […]View the full article

British startup Cambridge Aerospace plans to build its low-cost drone interceptor missiles in Japan and offer them to Japan’s Ministry of Defense, with each round priced at several million yen, or tens of thousands of dollars, the Nikkei business daily reported. The company’s interceptors cost tens of times less than conventional air defense missiles, and […]View the full article

U.S. Space Command held the third of four wargames with commercial space companies on Sept. 23, this time focused on spacecraft that operate outside the orbits most satellites use today, including very low Earth orbit and the space between Earth and the Moon. The tabletop exercise, part of a series called APOLLO INSIGHT, brought military […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has paid Boeing $16.7 million to plan the shutdown of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler production lines, including a full inventory of the government-owned tools and equipment used to build the jets. The firm-fixed-price order, placed by Naval Air Systems Command against an existing Boeing ordering agreement, covers planning, analysis, […]View the full article

Mack Defense will display a hybrid-electric heavy tractor it built for the U.S. Army’s Common Tactical Truck program at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., Oct. 12-14. The truck is Mack’s on-road entry for the program and is designed to replace older highway haulers such as the M915 Line […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has ordered 32 recovery versions of its Amphibious Combat Vehicle from BAE Systems, the armored repair-and-tow vehicles that will haul broken-down or damaged ACVs off the battlefield and fix them in the field. Marine Corps Systems Command awarded BAE Systems a $230.1 million firm-fixed-price modification on Oct. 1 to exercise options […]View the full article

Poland’s military and Border Guard are now using an artificial intelligence system to watch the country’s border with Belarus, pulling feeds from cameras, drones and other sensors into one picture and flagging activity that needs a human’s attention. Poland’s Operational Command said the system, called Inteligentna Granica, or Intelligent Border, is now working as part […]View the full article

The first photo of Leonardo’s Hystrix 40 ADS, a land-based counter-drone gun built around the Italian company’s Marlin 40 naval turret, has appeared online, showing the system during testing. The image was posted on X by the account A-129 Mangusta, which said it was sent by a follower and showed the system recently undergoing tests. […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is testing two rival versions of a new digital command network by putting them in the hands of soldiers in two active-duty divisions at once, and the service’s testing command says it can now judge how each performs within one to two weeks of a field exercise ending, down from the months […]View the full article

Latvia’s armed forces have taken delivery of their first Hunter infantry fighting vehicle, a tracked armored vehicle based on General Dynamics European Land Systems’ ASCOD design, about 20 months after the country signed its first contract. The vehicle was handed over on Oct. 7 in the presence of Defense Minister Raivis Melnis, and GDELS said […]View the full article

A counter-drone startup tested a low-cost interceptor missile at Yuma Proving Ground this month, loading it into an eight-shot launcher during a homeland-defense experiment involving U.S. Northern Command, NORAD and the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401. Perseus Defense, a company that went through Y Combinator’s 2025 batch, said each Mk-III interceptor it fired cost […]View the full article

The U.S. Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps evaluated a dual-mode flying buggy called the SkyRunner during Scarlet Dragon 26-3, an experimentation exercise held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Sept. 16. Soldiers tested the vehicle’s ability to shift between driving and flying in austere conditions at Holland Drop Zone. The SkyRunner pairs an off-road buggy chassis […]View the full article