Raw Intel

A Chinese vehicle-mounted laser weapon system designed for counter-drone operations has been spotted at the Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, images circulating in open-source defense channels show, marking an apparent export of Chinese directed-energy technology to a Gulf state that has been actively expanding its counter-UAS capabilities. The system visible in the […]View the full article

F-22 Raptors from Alaska and Virginia have arrived at Kadena Air Base in Japan, the latest rotation of America’s premier air superiority fighter through the island base that sits at the geographic center of U.S. air power in the Western Pacific. The aircraft come from two squadrons: the 90th Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, […]View the full article

U.S. Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum have begun training with the Bumblebee V1, a first-person-view counter-drone system that its users are already discovering does considerably more than shoot down enemy unmanned aircraft. The training brought together soldiers from different units across the division to operate a system that Joint Interagency Task […]View the full article

The U.S. Army is buying a Draganfly commercial, heavy lift drone system for Fort Drum, New York, with the Mission Installation Contracting Command posting a combined synopsis and solicitation on May 6, 2026, for a complete unmanned aerial system package that includes communications hardware, a ground control station, delivery box, batteries, and a sensor gimbal. […]View the full article

General Dynamics Mission Systems has won a contract worth up to $69.7 million to produce the KIV-78A cryptographic device, a piece of hardware that sits at the heart of how allied military aircraft identify each other in contested airspace, with the contract covering Foreign Military Sales to 18 countries across NATO, the Indo-Pacific, and the […]View the full article

Boeing has received an additional $125 million for the VC-25B program, the next-generation Air Force One replacement, pushing the total contract value to $4.445 billion. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, awarded the modification to Boeing’s Tukwila, Washington, according to the Department of War’s contracts announcement. The […]View the full article

A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer that had been sitting in the Arizona desert since 2021 flew back into active service on April 22 after nearly two years of intensive depot maintenance at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, returning to Dyess Air Force Base as a fully mission-capable bomber. The aircraft came from Type […]View the full article

Ukrainian drones struck a Russian Defense Ministry military logistics complex near Moscow overnight on May 7, hitting the Nara production and logistics facility in Narofominsk in the Moscow region. The Nara complex is a large-scale military facility covering more than 180 to 200 hectares, located in Narofominsk on the grounds of Military Town No. 3. […]View the full article

Two foreign drones crossed from Russia into Latvian airspace overnight and crashed in the Latgale region in the early hours of May 7, with one striking an oil storage facility in Rezekne and igniting a fire that emergency services extinguished before dawn. Latvia’s State Police confirmed that operational services at the oil storage facility on […]View the full article

SummaryA shorter than usual UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, with look around current naval developments, military actions in the Strait of Hormuz, the state of the Royal Navy, and Japan’s growing ties with its Western Pacific neighbors. Chapters00:00: Introduction and Overview of Current Naval Issues 03:24: The State of the Royal Navy 06:04: Japan’s Military D… Read more View the full article

The F-35 Joint Program Office is preparing to modify the fighter’s In-Line File Encryption Device software to support government-mandated quantum-resistant algorithms, according to a presolicitation notice published on May 6, 2026. The notice, issued through Naval Air Systems Command, signals that the F-35 program is beginning the process of hardening one of the aircraft’s core […]View the full article

Ukraine has doubled its strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and is keeping up that pace into May, targeting refineries, export terminals, Baltic Sea ports, and sanctioned tankers in what analysts at ACLED now describe as a sustained campaign rather than a temporary escalation — one calculated to drain the revenue Russia is drawing from a […]View the full article

DARPA flew a hybrid-electric unmanned experimental aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base in April 2026, marking the first flight milestone for a propulsion architecture the agency believes could fundamentally change how military aircraft are designed and what they can do. The aircraft, designated XRQ-73, was developed through DARPA’s Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration program, […]View the full article

Otto Aerospace has completed a flight-test campaign for an unmanned aircraft built around laminar-flow aerodynamics, validating in actual flight the drag-reduction performance the company has been modeling for years and generating data with direct implications for long-endurance drone design. The tests were conducted at Spaceport America in New Mexico, within White Sands Missile Range airspace, […]View the full article

One of the great things about writing for so long on the maritime beat—2004 in my case—is that I’ve had the chance to travel along this path with other people who have been in the game as long or longer than I have. In the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan published an essay, America's Elegant Decline. I first mentioned it ten months after its publication while I was in Afghanistan, and then only briefly. It was more or less taken aboard as background info. Fifteen years after its publication, I revisited its points and covered some of it in detail. It says something for Kaplan that a decade and a half later, it still popped into my nogg’n for consider…

ThinKom Solutions has won the U.S. Space Force’s “Fight Tonight” competition for 2026, beating out competing entries with a containerized satellite ground station designed to replace the kind of fixed dish antenna infrastructure that makes military communications vulnerable to detection and attack. Space Systems Command announced ThinKom as the overall winner on May 6, 2026, […]View the full article

Raytheon has landed its largest single order to date for the SharpSight surveillance radar, a 120-unit contract awarded by Blue Raven that the company says signals strong global demand for a system it is now ramping up to produce in bulk. The contract, announced by Raytheon (an RTX business), pairs the radar manufacturer with Blue […]View the full article

RENK Group AG recorded its highest-ever order intake for an opening quarter in company history, the German propulsion manufacturer announced on May 6, 2026, with approximately $657 million in new orders and a total backlog that has climbed to an all-time high of approximately $7.8 billion. The Augsburg-based company posted first quarter 2026 revenue of […]View the full article

EagleNXT has sold three eBee VISION unmanned aerial system kits to the U.S. Army’s 7th Army Training Command, the company announced on May 5, 2026, adding to a growing Army-wide adoption of the fixed-wing ISR platform that now totals 34 systems across six distinct organizations. The sale was facilitated by Dronivo, a German UAS integrator […]View the full article

Leonardo DRS opened 2026 with its strongest quarterly earnings performance in recent memory, reporting first quarter revenue of $846 million and net earnings of $62 million while raising its full-year guidance across every key financial metric, the Arlington, Virginia-based defense electronics company announced on May 5. Revenue grew 6% over the same period last year. […]View the full article