Raw Intel

The Ukrainian startup behind the autonomous Shahed interceptor system announced this week by Ukraine’s Defense Minister has a name, a price tag, and a detailed technical story: MaXon Systems, a Kyiv-based defense technology company, built an interceptor drone that kills Shaheds on autopilot for approximately $3,500 per unit, Defender Media reported in an exclusive interview […]View the full article

An Israeli drone manufacturer whose production facility was struck by an Iranian ballistic missile just two months ago has announced that its G3 reconnaissance drone platform completed operational readiness and training activities with unnamed security organizations over the past two weeks, with photographs showing the aircraft carrying blurred external payloads that were obscured, apparently for […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers recently trained alongside the Wild Goose robotic ground vehicle, a small unmanned platform designed to carry heavy weapons, ammunition, and casualties across terrain that wheeled vehicles cannot reach, according to an announcement from American Rheinmetall, the American subsidiary of the German defense giant. The training, conducted over several days in partnership with […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force awarded a $4 billion contract on June 8, to keep its training bases running for the next decade, selecting 19 companies to provide everything from aircraft maintenance and fire services to IT support, grounds keeping, and human resources across eleven Air Education and Training Command installations, including several of the Air […]View the full article

Britain’s next-generation main battle tank has completed another round of Battlefield Mission serials, putting Challenger 3 trial vehicles through cross-country driving, road work, gunnery drills, and full crew exercises in conditions designed to mirror real operational use, UK Defence Journal reported. The results are feeding directly into the engineering baseline as the program builds toward […]View the full article

Industrial robots have arrived at L3Harris Technologies’ new GMLRS facility in Camden, Arkansas, marking a visible step in the Pentagon’s drive to rebuild the American munitions production base at a pace the country has not attempted since the Cold War. L3Harris posted photographs of the robotic arms on its official social media account, describing the […]View the full article

Germany and France have jointly decided to abandon the fighter jet component of the Future Combat Air System, known as FCAS, after years of industrial disputes between Airbus and Dassault Aviation proved impossible to resolve, according to Der Tagesspiegel. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron reached a shared conclusion that Airbus and […]View the full article

The same family of unmanned surface vessels that has been hunting Russian warships in the Black Sea made its Indo-Pacific debut at the largest annual U.S.-Philippines military exercise, sinking a decommissioned target ship in live-fire conditions off the northern tip of the Philippine archipelago. UFORCE, the exclusive manufacturer of the Magura maritime drone family, confirmed […]View the full article

A still image pulled from a newly released Russian Ministry of Defense video on Su-34 strike aircraft operations against Ukraine has provided what Israeli defense analyst Guy Plopsky described as “the clearest view yet” of what appears to be a new dorsal antenna hump fitted aft of the cockpit on at least one variant of […]View the full article

A German company that makes the transmission inside the Leopard 2 main battle tank has started production of its 4,000th unit, marking a milestone that speaks directly to how central one piece of engineering has been to Western armored capability for more than four decades. RENK Group AG, headquartered in Augsburg, Germany, announced on June […]View the full article

As U.S. forces confront a growing wave of low-cost drone attacks that have exposed a fundamental flaw in how America stocks and prices its air defense arsenal, the Army has tapped a rocket technology startup to scale a more affordable answer: a laser-guided version of one of the most proven rockets in the American inventory. […]View the full article

Ukraine has crossed a significant threshold in its air defense campaign against Russian drone attacks: an autonomous interceptor drone that can hunt down and destroy Shahed loitering munitions with minimal human input has now completed its first successful combat engagements in the Kharkiv region. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced the achievement, describing a system […]View the full article

It is far past time to pick up the conversation point we last visited back in September: AUKUS. Just to refresh everyone on my position that I’ve held since this program was announced a half-decade ago: this is one of the most important military and diplomatic initiatives of this century. There are a host of reasons we discuss this on a regular basis. They are also why I have been emphatic that it not only must work, but must come online as early as possible. Australia is one of our most critical allies. She is one of our most reliable allies. She occupies one of the most strategic positions in the world. Our greatest adversary—and hers—are aggressively attempting to subd…

A Lithuanian defense firm that has been developing hybrid electric military vehicles since 2020 demonstrated its latest capability to the Lithuanian Armed Forces last week: a remote-control system that can turn virtually any vehicle into an unmanned ground platform, tested during the military experimentation exercise Vanguard 2026 at the Rūdninkai Training Area. Ostara, the Vilnius-based […]View the full article

A Czech aircraft manufacturer that has been building military planes for a century just posted the best financial results in its modern history, with profit before tax jumping more than 400 percent in a single year as demand for affordable jet trainers accelerates across defense markets worldwide. AERO Vodochody AEROSPACE, the largest aircraft manufacturer in […]View the full article

Russia’s official position on negotiations with Ukraine hardened further on Monday when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that it is “difficult to imagine” how talks with what he called the “current Kyiv regime” could take place, adding that Kyiv was taking every possible step to obstruct the peace process. The statement arrived three days […]View the full article

A Ukrainian strike drone flew hundreds of kilometers into Russian territory and hit the hangars of a research and production center that Russia uses to develop and manufacture its own unmanned aircraft systems, targeting the kind of facility that feeds the very drone campaign Russia has been waging against Ukrainian cities every night for years. […]View the full article

In creating a maritime renaissance in the U.S., there is a lot of work, discussion, and money going toward not just buying more ships, but also expanding the industrial base and training skilled tradespeople to make that expansion possible. A cornerstone of this should be training more dedicated Merchant Mariners and employing their skills in a better way. Returning to Midrats today is Brent D. Sadler to discuss this and related topics. Along with Hollins Randolph and Peter Lynch, he co-authored a report at Heritage, Time to Bring Back the U.S. Maritime Service to Support America’s Maritime Revival and a Wartime Economy, that we will use as a basis for our conversation. …

Fresh Sentinel-2 satellite imagery has confirmed what local Russian officials initially denied: Ukrainian long-range attack drones struck the 15th Naval Arsenal of the Russian Navy at Bolshaya Izhora in the Leningrad region, triggering a massive fire and secondary detonations powerful enough that more than 600 residents of nearby settlements had to be evacuated while Russian […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has selected a European-pedigreed precision artillery shell capable of hitting targets 70 kilometers away, awarding General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems a contract to develop an American version of a munition already in service with Germany, Italy, and other allied nations. General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, a business unit of General […]View the full article