Raw Intel

Ukraine’s 146th Separate Repair and Restoration Regiment published photographs of a Soviet-era BMP infantry fighting vehicle fitted with a Spanish GUARDIAN 30 remote weapon station. The photographs, posted to the regiment’s official social media page, show a standard BMP hull carrying the GUARDIAN 30 turret in place of the original conical Soviet turret that the […]View the full article

I’d like to revise and extend my remarks from my post this March, Up-arm the Fleet? With What? There is a limiting factor to my argument that I have no one but myself to blame for in the subtitle: To hell with your RCS. I want more weapons topside, now. If you want to hear the topside thoughts, give the linked-post above a read. What I’d like to ponder this fine Tuesday is something below decks. Nothing new, really. Nothing that needs to be invented. Nothing that requires all that much more than…space below deck. Right now, the smallest standard installation of the MK-41 VLS system is a single-module 8-cell package, 4x2. It is not a small bit of kit. The basic module is…

Greece has signed an agreement to expand its fleet of Shield AI V-BAT drones for maritime surveillance operations across the Aegean Sea, the company announced June 2, deepening a partnership that has already seen the Hellenic Army deploy the systems for intelligence and reconnaissance missions across one of NATO’s most geographically complex operating environments. The […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy bought six specialized reconnaissance boats designed by former Australian Navy frogmen, built in North Carolina, and validated through two years of testing with Marine Corps special operations units. Naval Sea Systems Command awarded The Whiskey Project Group USA a $17.5 million contract for six Multi Mission Reconnaissance Craft (MMRC), expeditionary watercraft designed […]View the full article

Before any American strike package enters defended enemy airspace, an EA-18G Growler goes in first to blind the radars, jam the communications, and break the targeting chain that would otherwise kill the jets behind it. The Navy invested $61 million to significantly improve that aircraft’s ears. The Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval […]View the full article

Every warship in the U.S. Navy practices shooting down the kind of supersonic cruise missiles that China and Russia have spent decades perfecting, and the Navy paid nearly $100 million to keep that practice running for another five years with the only American target missile that can actually replicate what those weapons do. The Naval […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin opened a purpose-built missile production facility in Courtland, Alabama on Monday dedicated entirely to manufacturing the Next Generation Interceptor, the missile that will eventually replace the aging Ground-Based Interceptors currently guarding the United States against ballistic missile attack from Alaska and California. The 88,000-square-foot Missile Assembly Building 5 represents a concrete physical step […]View the full article

Finland’s next generation of warships is getting armored protection from a specialist composite materials company, with Integris selected to supply advanced naval ballistic protection systems for all four Pohjanmaa-class corvettes currently under construction at Rauma Marine Constructions’ shipyard in Rauma, Finland. The partnership began at the earliest stages of ship design rather than as a […]View the full article

The first Eurofighter built under Spain’s Halcon I program has rolled out of the factory at Getafe, Madrid, with Airbus Defence and Space confirming that the aircraft is ready for its first engine run and maiden flight, marking the arrival of a new generation of European air combat capability on the Spanish Air Force’s flight […]View the full article

Northrop Grumman completed a successful flight test of its Jackal precision strike missile on June 1, demonstrating the core systems that will define how American ground forces deliver long-range strikes in the most contested environments they are likely to face. The test validated the missile’s automated turbojet engine startup, autopilot-controlled flight, and high-speed maneuvering, confirming […]View the full article

Britain has ordered hundreds more Lightweight Multirole Missiles from Thales to rebuild stockpiles and reinforce the air defense of British forces in the Middle East, with the contracts worth a combined £36 million, roughly $48 million, George Allison of the UK Defence Journal reported June 1. The two contracts were placed by the National Armaments […]View the full article

The U.S. military fired more than 1,000 Patriot interceptors during the Iran conflict but received only 172 new ones in return, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis, leaving American air defense stockpiles in a deficit that won’t be replenished until 2029 at the earliest. That gap has driven a search for […]View the full article

An Israeli fire control technology company has now secured contracts with all four major branches of the U.S. military, completing a sweep across the American armed forces that took less than a year. Smart Shooter announced June 1 that it received its first significant U.S. Navy contract, a $1.8 million award for soldier-portable SMASH 2000LE […]View the full article

With so much else going on, it is easy to forget that the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 is still ongoing. It has always been true that if you want to better prepare your nation for its next war, watch closely what works or does not work in other people’s wars. We’ve seen a cottage industry build around this concept when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine. Some of it gets rather tiresome as people try to directly translate what works on the Ukrainian steppe to a potential Taiwan conflict, for just one example. Much of this pontificating and projecting is firmly where most people are comfortable, the Tactical level. We’re not going to do that today. Recently, breaking above…

Pakistan’s Chinese-made J-10CE fighter jets went undefeated against Qatar’s Eurofighter Typhoons in nine simulated air combat engagements during a joint exercise in 2024, with China’s state broadcaster CCTV confirming the result last week without identifying the specific drill or the countries involved, according to an analysis by Harrison Kass published by The National Interest. Pakistani […]View the full article

South Korea just cracked one of the most tightly guarded engineering secrets in global defense, successfully developing a domestic laser oscillator for its Cheongwang laser weapon system, a component so strategically sensitive that only the United States, Israel, China, and Germany are known to produce it independently. The announcement from South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program […]View the full article

A German aerospace firm completed the first flight of its Wespe unmanned helicopter on Thursday, marking a milestone for a platform designed to solve one of the most dangerous problems in modern combat medicine: moving critically wounded soldiers from forward field hospitals to surgical facilities without putting additional crew members in harm’s way. Aerospace, the […]View the full article

Israeli loitering munitions manufacturer Uvision launched a new battle management software system on June 1 that connects sensors, decision-making processes, and multiple weapons into a single unified framework, announcing the CORTEX active Battle Intelligence and Mission Management system at ILA Berlin 2026 as the company’s most ambitious step yet toward automating the full sensor-to-shooter chain […]View the full article

A Netherlands-based command and control platform led one of four competing teams at NATO’s largest counter-drone interoperability exercise in May, fusing sensor data from 13 countries into a single operational picture and receiving an official certification from NATO’s communications agency confirming it successfully connected with 46 separate counter-drone nodes across two tiers of the alliance’s […]View the full article

A Slovak defense engineering company has signed a framework agreement worth up to $580 million with Slovakia’s Ministry of Defence for military excavator systems, structured under the European Union’s new SAFE financing program in a way that allows any other EU member state to join the contract without running its own separate procurement competition. CSM […]View the full article