Raw Intel

I have an affection for all the ships I have been on, and the Big E is one of my girls. I like to keep an eye on her. She’s the ship that keeps on giving, in a lot of ways. I am quite sure that when the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) was laid down during the Eisenhower Administration just 13 years after the end of WWII, someone had to have thought, “How are they going to deal with all the radioactive bits when they decommission her in the next century?” I’d place a pretty good bet that in hushed tones, the general response was, “We’ll be dead by then. That will be someone else’s problem.” Maybe not. Back then they probably thought we’d do something responsible like, “Oh, they’ll…

I won’t lie, I really wanted the successor to the Grumman Iron Works, Northrop Grumman, to get the award…just to have that legacy back on the flight deck…but…I am not emperor. Boeing it is, …the Department of War announces a contract awarded by the U.S. Navy to Boeing for the Sixth-Generation F/A-XX Strike Fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. The contract is valued at more than $20B for the full-scale development phase. The contract procures multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing. Boeing already has the USAF’s F-47 contract…so I will assume there will be a fair bit of commonality. Perhaps a sim…

You go to war with the weapons your government gives you, not the weapons you wish you had. The key as a leader is how you employ what you have against the enemy. I give you the Imperial Austrian triple-decker wooden battleship, Kaiser. Yes the AUSTRIAN Navy, again. Why her for Fullbore? Well, the year was 1866 and this wooden warship held her own in the first major naval battle in Europe between ships of iron and steam and the Italian Navy at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence. Sure, she was outdated and Fleet Admiral Wilhelm Freiherr von Tegetthoff was only 39, but the battle was a glorious effort for a navy that had only a little more th…

German drone maker STARK and Thales Australia have agreed to fit STARK’s Cascade loitering munition to the Bushmaster armored vehicle, giving the Australian-built truck a launcher for one-way attack drones that the company says can hit targets up to 100 km (62 miles) away. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding on Oct. 7 […]View the full article

Hanwha Aerospace and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems flew the Mojave short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) drone from a South Korean Army airfield, landed it on a tank maneuver route, and flew it back again during a demonstration at the 2026 Defense Drone Technology Exhibition in Pocheon. The maneuver was meant to show the aircraft can operate from short, […]View the full article

The Air Force Research Laboratory has added $16.4 million to a Castelion Corp. contract for developing a low-cost, mass-producible long-range strike weapon, the latest in a rapid series of government awards backing the company’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile. The modification brings the total value of this particular contract to $37.2 million, up from $20.9 million. Work […]View the full article

Before an F-35 fighter jet can land at a new base and start flying real missions, someone has to build the entire support system around it first: spare parts stocked on shelves, specialized tools laid out, technicians trained, and computer systems wired into the global network that keeps the jet running. That unglamorous but essential […]View the full article

GM Defense won a $697.7 million modification to its Infantry Squad Vehicle contract with the U.S. Army, funding engineering changes to the vehicle’s five-seat cargo variant, the Department of War announced Sept. 21. The modification, designated P00053, brings the total value of the underlying contract to $915.6 million. The Warren, Michigan-based company was the only […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy’s new submarine-launched nuclear warhead, the W93, has moved into full-scale development, the first U.S. nuclear warhead and reentry body program started in nearly 40 years. The Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs office said the W93 and its Mk7 reentry body, the cone-shaped shell that carries the warhead back through the atmosphere to its […]View the full article

The British Army is looking for new ways to power its troops in the field, offering £2.45 million ($3.26 million) to companies that can develop better batteries, faster chargers and quieter alternatives to the diesel generators units rely on today. UK Defence Innovation, the Ministry of Defence’s innovation arm, launched the Tactical Power Challenge on […]View the full article

TOTE Services has signed a contract with the U.S. Maritime Administration to manage construction of a new missile-tracking ship for the Missile Defense Agency, and has subcontracted Hanwha Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia to build it. The first ship is scheduled for delivery in 2030. The vessel is the first of the Missile Range Instrumentation Vessel […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has updated LOADOUT, its software for requesting and tracking military cargo and troop movements, with changes drawn from lessons of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. campaign against Iran that began in February. The Army’s Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee, Virginia, which develops the system, said the latest upgrades respond to […]View the full article

Cody Aerospace & Defence, a British company founded in February, has unveiled its first product, the Badger Mk1 ground-launched strike missile, along with plans for a factory to build it and a goal of replenishing stockpiles in under a year. The company announced the missile at the Apex Europe defense show in London this week. […]View the full article

Footage said to be from Libya shows dozens of Turkish-made BMC AMAZON 4×4 armored vehicles in service with Libyan elite units, fitted with remote-controlled weapon stations and jamming systems, according to Turkish defense analyst Ahmet Alemdar, who shared the images on X. Alemdar described the vehicles as being operated by “elite units” but did not […]View the full article

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded K & K Industries a $13.6 million contract to build a weapons release system storage facility at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, part of the base’s preparation to host the B-21 Raider stealth bomber. The Windsor, Missouri-based company’s firm-fixed-price award brings the project’s total value to $14,993,485. Three […]View the full article

Shield AI has released new details on how its Hivemind autonomy software steered two Taiwanese uncrewed boats through a joint patrol off southern Taiwan, fusing radar and ship-tracking data into a single picture and switching the pair from patrol to escort duty without an operator directing each move. The U.S. company described the July demonstration […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has activated a new sustainment brigade for the 11th Airborne Division in Alaska, giving the Arctic-focused division its own formation to keep troops supplied and supported in some of the harshest conditions the U.S. military operates in. The 11th Airborne Division Sustainment Brigade (Arctic) uncased its colors on Oct. 16, 2026, at […]View the full article

Russia has fired a guided missile from its attack helicopters off a truck, using a new ground launcher called Izdeliye 347, or “Product 347,” against mock artillery positions during its Tsentr-2026 exercise. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Oct. 2 that the system carries a modified version of the LMUR light multipurpose guided missile and […]View the full article

I mentioned @Schizointel’s graphic from last month on the last UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, and it keeps popping into my mind. Only the paying subscribers get access to the UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, so I thought I’d bring it to the Substack, chat about it a bit, and then perhaps it will get out of my head. Probably not, because it is one of the best representations of a regular topic of ours here: we have too small of a Navy. It is also a good representation of what it takes to conduct a blockade and deal with the threat of the once-3rd-rate and now-4th-rate-power of Iran and her proxies. So, here it is. How many ships do you need? Today, let’s just look at our Aegis ships…

The U.S. Navy has ordered the first production run of a new long-range radio system designed to keep ships and units communicating even when satellites are jammed or unavailable. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Lakehurst, New Jersey, awarded MaXentric Technologies a $9.6 million firm-fixed-price order for 12 low-rate initial production kits of the […]View the full article