Raw Intel

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

Ukraine’s Defense Forces destroyed a Russian S-400 air defense launcher in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast on Sept. 17, using FP-1 drones, according to Fire Point, the Ukrainian company that builds the drone. Fire Point said the launcher had been modified by Russian forces to strike ground targets and had previously been used against Kyiv. The company […]View the full article

Advanced Navigation, an Australian navigation technology company, has signed an $18.5 million deal to supply inertial navigation systems for Kongsberg’s PROTECTOR counter-drone platforms, the company said Sept. 22. The systems are bound for Poland, where Kongsberg is delivering 18 counter-drone batteries under a contract worth roughly NOK 16 billion, or about $1.5 billion, with Poland’s […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy is paying Raytheon up to $30.2 million to line up additional suppliers for key parts of the AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile, including the cooling engine for its heat-seeking sensor and its warhead components. The undefinitized contract modification, announced by the U.S. Department of War, covers engineering work to qualify new manufacturing sources […]View the full article

President Donald Trump on Monday denied discussing U.S. weapons sales to China with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a day after his ambassador to Beijing said Trump had floated the idea, though Trump added that China would “probably like to buy” American arms. Trump was asked by reporters about comments by David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has hired BAE Systems to work out how pulsed lasers could be used for military missions and how to pair solid-state lasers with beam control systems the U.S. Air Force already has, under a contract worth up to $19.7 million. The cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, for a program called Laser Utilization […]View the full article

Forterra says well over a thousand missions in Ukraine have shaped how it builds autonomous ground vehicles, from coping with jamming and mud to keeping them running under constant threat from Russian drones. The company develops autonomy systems for military vehicles. Its Lancer is a Polaris Ranger 1500 utility vehicle fitted with Forterra’s AutoDrive self-driving […]View the full article

South Korea put its Cheongwang laser weapons on public display for its 78th Armed Forces Day on Oct. 1, showing two new prototypes for the first time, but a live demonstration of the system already in service ran into trouble before the laser burned two target drones out of the sky. The new hardware included […]View the full article

AM General is building a next-generation Humvee around a new 250-horsepower diesel engine, giving the four-decade-old military truck more power and better fuel economy. The Indiana-based company said on LinkedIn that the new vehicle uses a 6.5-liter engine with common rail direct injection, an electronically controlled fuel system that delivers more precise injection than older […]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

Turkish defense electronics maker ASELSAN has shown its GÖKALP interceptor drone destroying a target drone in mid-air by flying straight into it, in a live demonstration at the company’s Oğulbey Technology Base in Ankara. In the test, ASELSAN’s AURA radar picked up the incoming target drone and passed tracking data in real time to a […]View the full article

When Americans think about admirals in the Pacific in WWII, names like Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey spring to mind. You cannot fully understand the war in the Pacific if you don’t also look at the leaders on the Japanese side—men like Yamamoto, Kurita, and Nagumo. On this week’s Midrats Podcast, we’re going to dive into the story of Admiral Yamamoto with our guest, Ronald Drabkin. We’ll tap into his research that led up to his next book, Admiral Yamamoto: The Gripping Story of the Legendary Japanese Naval Commander Who Planned and Executed the Pearl Harbor Attack. We go live at 5 p.m. Eastern. You can join us live at this link and contribute your thoughts in the show cha…

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Leidos an $85 million ceiling contract for digital design tools meant to help engineer future aircraft, the second company in as many days to win a spot under the same research program that Anduril Industries joined a day earlier. The Air Force Research Laboratory made the award to Leidos, […]View the full article

BAE Systems said it has delivered two AMPV 30 prototypes armed with Kongsberg’s Medium Caliber Turret to a U.S. Army Transformation in Contact 2.0 unit, funding the six-month development effort itself with $17 million in internal research money. The company disclosed the delivery in a Sept. 22 release, though the vehicles reached the Army’s 1st […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded Leonardo Electronics US $30.1 million to keep developing a way to combine the light from many small semiconductor lasers into a single, more powerful beam, the U.S. Department of War announced. The modification to an existing research contract covers work to develop, study and scale up the power emitted in […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force is looking for a contractor to replace an aging encryption unit on its E-3G AWACS radar planes after the manufacturer warned it can no longer keep up with changing National Security Agency security requirements, according to a sources-sought notice posted Sept. 25 on the federal contracting website. The part, known as […]View the full article

South Korea’s arms procurement agency has asked Türkiye whether it can buy the Turkish PD170 drone engine, a powerplant already flying on some of the world’s most combat-tested drones, as Korean military drone programs suffer a string of public crashes. Turkish Aerospace Industries, or TAI, recently received an inquiry from South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program […]View the full article

Russia plans to spend a record 17.1 trillion rubles ($201 billion) on its military in 2027, while its budget deficit this year is now expected to reach double the government’s earlier forecast, according to government documents seen by Reuters. The defense figure is about 27% higher than the 13.5 trillion rubles Moscow had previously penciled […]View the full article

Türkiye will receive the first two of 12 C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft it is buying from the UK in December, once maintenance on them is finished in Britain, the Turkish Defense Ministry said on Oct. 1, with the rest of the former Royal Air Force aircraft to follow in stages. The ministry also said […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded BAE Systems a $146.7 million contract for 40 sets of the electronic warfare suite that protects the F-15EX Eagle II, covering jets in the fighter’s seventh and eighth production lots. The sole-source contract, announced by the Department of War, buys 40 production hardware sets of the Eagle Passive/Active Warning […]View the full article