Raw Intel

Kazakhstan has taken delivery of its second Airbus A400M Atlas heavy military transport aircraft, completing a two-plane order the Central Asian country placed in 2021, the Kazakh Defense Ministry said on Nov. 2. The aircraft flew from Airbus’ A400M final assembly line in Seville, Spain, to Almaty, where it joins the Air Defense Forces, Kazakhstan’s […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy’s top officer, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, got a close look at Blackbeard, the new air-launched hypersonic strike missile that the Navy is preparing to arm its F/A-18E/F Super Hornets with, during a visit to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland on Oct. 28, the U.S. Navy said. Caudle […]View the full article

The U.S. military has deployed high-energy laser weapons around President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a counter-drone shield set up at the request of the Secret Service, a military spokesperson told the directed-energy news outlet Laser Wars. Laser Wars identified one of them in an Oct. 31 photo as […]View the full article

Auriga Space, a California company building electromagnetic launch technology, wants to fix one of the slowest steps in developing American hypersonic weapons: testing their materials and parts on the ground. Instead of a rocket-powered sled racing down steel rails, its Prometheus accelerator uses an electric linear motor to push a magnetically levitated test article through […]View the full article

Counter-drone missile maker Perseus Defense has released video of one of its small, low-cost interceptors climbing into the sky and hitting a hovering multirotor drone, which the company’s chief executive described as the first time an “attritable” missile has shot down a drone. Jason Cornelius, co-founder and CEO of the Texas-based company, posted the eight-second […]View the full article

Two Polish defense companies have agreed to work together on the wheeled chassis for 155mm self-propelled howitzers that Poland plans to build under license from Ukraine. PK MIL, part of the PONAR Wadowice group, and SZCZĘŚNIAK Pojazdy Specjalne of Bielsko-Biała signed a memorandum of understanding to select and adapt chassis for the systems, the companies […]View the full article

Japanese satellite-servicing company Astroscale and German space firm OHB have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore working together on technology to protect satellites and other infrastructure in orbit, with a focus on linking Astroscale’s British subsidiary with OHB in Germany. The two companies announced the agreement on Oct. 28 at the German Embassy in […]View the full article

Poland has delivered more Rosomak 8×8 armored vehicles armed with the ZSSW-30 unmanned turret and Spike anti-tank missiles to the Land Forces Training Ground Center in Poznań, where they will be used to train soldiers from mechanized units, the country’s Armament Agency said on social media. The agency said the delivery is the next stage […]View the full article

Norway’s air force has deployed NASAMS air defense sensors to Kirkenes, near the Russian border, to detect drones that drift off course into Norwegian airspace, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense said in a press release. The ministry is also sending more than 30 soldiers to reinforce the Garrison of Sør-Varanger, the army unit that guards […]View the full article

Saronic has put a second Marauder autonomous ship in the water at its shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana, and the vessel is now running under its own power, company CEO Dino Mavrookas said in a post on Nov. 3. He said the second hull took 8% fewer labor hours to build than the first. “That’ll continue […]View the full article

I decided a few weeks ago to take a bit of my own medicine. I needed to take a spell and return to the fundamentals. That means, of course, to lean over on the bookcase. Last month I finished a return to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. This week, I’m diving back into the work of WWI veteran and one of the premier military historians of the mid-20th century, Captain Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, KCB, GBR A — Strategy: Second Revised Edition. As the quote at the top of the page makes clear, Hart was not a man stuck in the past. He was often a step or two ahead of everyone else, even if they did not realize it. Prior to WWII, his thinking was more aligned with that of the German…

I stopped doing dedicated politics here a decade ago, and there are plenty of places you can go to get the play by play of the Democrats’ very good midterm. That round is out of the tube, so let’s start thinking about what this means for the Navy. I think it is time that we revisit my post from February of this year, We Need a Plan-B for the Battleship. I hate to say, “I told you so,” but… If you are really on team battleship, there are some critical vulnerabilities from the start that you need to accept. The Trump Class: this is the foundational error of what by all logic and tradition should be called the Defiant Class. At the start, this automatically makes 38% of the…

Satellite navigation interference hit almost the entire length of NATO’s eastern border on Nov. 3, according to a map of aircraft data published by the Italian flight-tracking project ItaMilRadar. The heaviest disruption ran in a nearly continuous band from the southern Baltic Sea through Lithuania, eastern Poland, Romania and Bulgaria to the western Black Sea. […]View the full article

France has ordered production of a large uncrewed combat submarine demonstrator for its navy, with first sea trials planned for 2028. The French defense procurement agency DGA and the Defense Innovation Agency signed the contract with Naval Group on Nov. 3, the French shipbuilder said in a press release. The demonstrator, called UCUV for Unmanned […]View the full article

U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transports have flown at least 16 missions into Israel’s Ovda Air Base since mid-October, most of them from Fort Bliss, Texas, the home of the U.S. Army’s air and missile defense forces, according to flight data compiled by open-source trackers. Three more C-17s were logged flying into Ali Al […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers on the southern border are training on the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser, a vehicle-mounted 20-kilowatt laser that has already shot down cartel-linked drones, according to photos released by the Department of War. Troops from the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, operated the system on an Infantry Squad Vehicle […]View the full article

Joint Task Force-Southern Border has deployed the Bumblebee Version 2, an updated light interceptor drone that destroys hostile drones by ramming them, for testing near the U.S.-Mexico border, according to photos and captions released by the U.S. military. The interceptors were staged near Chaparral, New Mexico, on Oct. 21, where service members and military contractors […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers on the southern border have set up an Anduril-built Heimdal Mobile Trailer Kit, a towable counter-drone sensor system, for testing near Chaparral, New Mexico, according to photos and captions released by the U.S. military. Troops from the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Mobile Brigade Combat Team, put the trailer in place […]View the full article

A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter has airlifted a U.S. Navy MH-60S Seahawk off a mountainside in California’s Sierra Nevada, recovering the stranded helicopter undamaged so it can fly again, the U.S. Navy said. The CH-53K, from Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1, carried the nearly 16,000-pound (7,260-kilogram) Seahawk on a […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force is looking for companies that can build more than 1,000 Extended Range Attack Munitions, the low-cost air-launched cruise missile developed for Ukraine’s F-16s, with deliveries starting no later than three months after a contract is signed and finishing within 15 months, according to a request for information the Air Force Life […]View the full article