Raw Intel

A small handheld device spotted at a U.S. Army exercise at Fort Irwin, California, on October 28 last year and only now has drawn attention from defense observers for reasons that go beyond its compact size. The device, observed in use during Army training and labeled with the designation BlackSky Guardian-1, appears to be physically […]View the full article

Ukraine has spent four years stress-testing defense technology at a pace no Western procurement system can match. Next month, British parliamentarians and defense industry leaders will gather at Westminster to ask an overdue question: how do you bottle that and bring it home? A parliamentary roundtable scheduled for June 23, 2026, at Portcullis House in […]View the full article

Shield AI, the San Diego-based defense technology company that has been building autonomous flight systems for military applications since 2015, announced that its Hivemind AI completed its first autonomous multi-platform teaming flight in Oklahoma, combining its V-BAT unmanned aircraft with multiple Hornet drones from Destinus Defence in a demonstration that points directly at how military […]View the full article

Six defense technology companies walked into a demonstration event with separate products and walked out days later with a fully integrated autonomous hunter-killer ground vehicle system, presenting it directly to the Secretary of the Army in what participants described as proof that the American defense industry can move at a speed the Pentagon’s traditional procurement […]View the full article

Photos of a new Ukrainian drone-dropped munition began circulating on social media this week, published among the first by the open-source intelligence community Exilenova+, showing a rectangular metal device with a sharpened wedge at its forward end specifically engineered to penetrate the overhead cover of Russian field fortifications rather than detonate on surface impact. The […]View the full article

Ukrainian company Yartura has unveiled a fixed-wing drone interceptor capable of reaching 450 km/h (280 mph) and equipped with an AI-powered automatic target re-engagement system, developed specifically to counter the growing speed of Russian kamikaze drones, the Ukrainian defense outlet Oboronka reported, citing a company announcement. The system, designated Dancer 4.5.0, arrives as Ukraine’s drone […]View the full article

On Sweden’s National Day, a country that spent more than two centuries avoiding military alliances took formal command of a NATO battlegroup positioned at the edge of the Arctic, placing its soldiers under the alliance’s direct authority for the first time and completing a strategic transformation that would have been unimaginable before Russia’s invasion of […]View the full article

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, published a solicitation on June 5, launching a new program called ExPEDitions, short for Expeditionary Power- and Energy-Dense Implementations, to develop rechargeable batteries capable of delivering five to ten times the energy density of current technology for use in drones, ground vehicles, and other military equipment. […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has published a sources-sought notice asking whether any company other than the current sole producer can build and deliver the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile for production lots from 2031 to 2036. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Long Range Systems Division, operating out of Wright-Patterson […]View the full article

With millions of soccer fans heading to the Seattle area for the FIFA World Cup this summer, the Washington National Guard gathered federal agents, police officers, and military units at a desert training range in June to rehearse a threat that barely registered on public safety radar a year ago: drones. Representatives from federal, state, […]View the full article

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone offensives of the war overnight into June 6, sending more than 400 unmanned aircraft deep into Russian territory and striking targets that included a naval weapons depot near Saint Petersburg, an oil refinery in Siberia, a port in Russian-occupied Mariupol, and munitions warehouses in the Leningrad region. Russia’s […]View the full article

Listening to what the enemy is saying on the radio, the phone, or any other communications channel has been one of the most consistently decisive intelligence advantages in modern warfare, and the U.S. Army has invested nearly $10 million to make sure its capability to do exactly that stays current. The deal, awarded to a […]View the full article

Every mortar round fired by an American soldier depends on a small set of metal fins at the back of the shell to spin it into stable flight, keep it on course, and make sure it lands where the gunner intended. Without those fins, a mortar round tumbles, loses accuracy, and becomes a danger to […]View the full article

Norway has built one of the most capable stealth, anti-ship missiles in the Western arsenal, and the United States Air Force ordered another batch of them for $241 million, deepening a transatlantic weapons partnership that has become increasingly central to American plans for fighting a war in the Pacific or the North Atlantic against a […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded an $11.2 million contract to Teledyne FLIR Defense to deliver more than 45 drone kits capable of flying into chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear contamination zones and mapping hazards in real time, keeping soldiers out of environments that can kill within seconds of exposure. Teledyne Technologies announced the contract award […]View the full article

France has fired its next-generation air-to-air missile from a Rafale at supersonic speed for the first time, clearing one of the most demanding technical hurdles in the weapon’s qualification program and moving MBDA’s MICA NG significantly closer to operational service. The second development firing of the MICA NG, which stands for Missile for Interception, Combat, […]View the full article

Australia fired its first domestically built self-propelled howitzers during live-fire training last week, completing the journey from a production line in Geelong to live rounds downrange in a matter of months — a timeline that would have seemed implausible for a major weapons system just a few years ago. Thirty gunners from Townsville’s 4th Regiment, […]View the full article

Vladimir Putin told the world’s press agency chiefs this week that Russia’s Su-57 fighter is the best combat aircraft on the planet. Independent analysts and the jet’s own production record tell a more complicated story. Putin made the claim at a meeting with leaders of major international news agencies organized by TASS, Russia’s state news […]View the full article

A Ukrainian naval drone lost control after Russian electronic warfare jammed its guidance system during a Black Sea mission, drifted into Romanian territorial waters, and detonated inside the civilian port of Constanța on Friday morning, the Ukrainian Navy confirmed. The explosion, which shook windows across the city and triggered a mass evacuation of the coastline, […]View the full article

Back in 2007, I did a Battle of Midway FbF that featured one of my favorite aircraft, the Brewster Buffalo. In the post, I focused on then 2LT William “Bill” Brooks, USMCR. In the mid-60’s Mr. Brooks helped found Bellevue University, among other things. Back in 2010, I was notified by the President of Bellevue University that Mr. Brooks passed away. In his honor, I would like to repost that FbF from 2007 and 2010. You could spend a lifetime on Battle of Midway posts - that is what I like about it. This time, I want to focus on the men of Marine Fighting Squadron 221. Men who knew they were being asked to do a suicide mission, but did it - and did it well. They were, as …