Raw Intel

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that it has launched a large-scale military operation targeting strategic sites across Iran, marking a coordinated offensive carried out alongside United States military forces. In a national address delivered shortly after the operation began, Israel’s Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, announced that Israeli Air Force aircraft […]View the full article

The United States Army has launched a new effort to improve how it produces and manages ammunition, issuing a contract notice on March 27 for engineering support services worth up to $44.6 million. The work will focus on upgrading and supporting the country’s Ammunition Industrial Base, with proposals due by April 20, 2026. Demand for […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy conducted a live-fire test of AeroVironment’s LOCUST Laser Weapon System aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). Military technology writer Jared Keller, author of the Los Angeles-based Laser Wars newsletter, was among the first to flag the test after official imagery surfaced publicly. Photos published to DVIDSHub show […]View the full article

Valinor’s Harbor platform has joined Anduril Industries’ $99.6 million Next-Generation Command and Control contract with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division, bringing battlefield casualty tracking and medical supply chain data into the same operational picture that commanders use to coordinate fires, sensors, and maneuver forces. The integration puts HarborOS directly into Lattice, the AI-powered command […]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

A small tracked robot that can launch its own quadcopter, watch a target from the air, and then land the drone right back on its own chassis has surfaced in a newly published Russian patent, a design open-source trackers have nicknamed the “tracked Mavic” after the popular DJI consumer drone it resembles in miniature. The […]View the full article

An aging French-built fighter jet has got a serious upgrade, and the company behind it wants the world to see exactly how far a decades-old airframe can stretch when paired with modern guided weapons. EDGE Group, the UAE’s state-owned defense conglomerate, published photos showing its Thunder (P-32 variant) precision-guided munitions mounted on a Mirage 2000 […]View the full article

Americas General Atomics won a $305.2 million deal for MQ-9 Reaper contractor logistics support. The deal provides for program management, contractor filed service representative support, depot repair, depot maintenance, sustaining engineering support, supply and logistics support, configuration management, tech data maintenance, software maintenance and inventory control point/warehouse support for the MQ-9. The Reaper is designed primarily to disable or destroy time-sensitive targets and has a secondary function as an intelligence-gathering platform. The service branch will obligate $65.4M at the time of award from its fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance funds. Work w…

There are but a few options here, none of which speak well of our Navy or its leadership – but we have to look at where this is with clear eyes. I have tried to be as clean-slate optimistic as possible with the CNO, Admiral Gilday. On a lot of actual Navy issues, I find him incredibly well informed, intelligent, and thinking in the right direction – but that is only part of his job. Another part of his job is to be a good steward of the position of the CNO, the Navy’s apolitical stance in line with our national traditions, and to ensure that all his Sailors can expect fair and equal treatment and consideration under his command. In the last respect, I can no longer giv…

Americas Serco won a $22 million contract action in support of the Program Executive Office (PEO) “SHIPS” PMS 400D mission to design, build, outfit and test all DDG 51 guided-missile destroyer-class ships, increasing the design performance capability of the DDG 51 class ships. The Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class guided missile destroyers provide a wide range of warfighting capabilities in multi-threat air, surface and subsurface environments. The US Navy currently has seven new DDG 51 Flight III destroyers under construction, Work will take place in Washington DC. Estimated completion date is September 8, 2022. JF Taylor won an $8 million deal for F-35 high fidelity crewsta…

Americas Champion Aerospace won a $9 million contract to procure 252 175 ampere (amp) Transformer Rectifier Unit (TRU) retrofit kits (240 for the F/A-18E/F fleet and EA-18G squadrons, and 12 for the EA-18G Growler capability modification operational test in support of upgrading the current 150 amp TRU to a 175 amp TRU). Work will be performed in Liberty, South Carolina, and is expected to be completed in December 2023. General Electric Aviation said it and the US Air Force finished testing the firm’s second adaptive engine, which it hopes the military will adopt for the F-35 jet, and is ready to move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase. Middle East …

In the first year of this blog ~18-yrs ago, we blowtorched the Navy for throwing away our riverine capability forcing the Army in Iraq to "reacquisition" fishing boats, and generally surrendering a primary logistics path - rivers - to the enemy. We covered the rise and rebuilding of riverine in our Navy, and if you followed the tag, the ahistorical stupidity of our Navy at once again throwing it away due to having the attentions span of a squirrel. Wherever there is war with any significant river systems, having a mature, well equipped riverine force is essential to controlling that logistics corridor and having the ability to defend from and project force quickly using t…

Americas Elbit America won a $10 million order deal with no options for the procurement of integrated avionics processors in support of the V-22 aircraft. Work will be performed in Haifa, Israel; and Fort Worth, Texas. Work is expected to be completed by December 2024. Annual working capital funds (Navy) in the full amount of […]View the full article

M1A2 SEP (click to view full) America’s M1 Abrams tanks come in a number of versions. In addition to the M1A1 that is now standard, the US Army is beginning to field its M1 TUSK for urban warfare. It also operates the M1A2 System Enhancement Program (SEP), currently the most advanced standard variant. This Spotlight […]View the full article

Americas Donald Trump has vowed to construct a ‘Golden Dome’ – similar to Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense – as he build :”the most powerful military of the future”. The first step, he told a joint sitting of the United States Congress is to fund a “state-of-the-art missile shield to protect our homeland”. The initiative aims to shield US from a rapidly evolving array of aerial threats, including a range of ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles. Trump’s latest announcement to the Congress is being seen as the official renaming of the US’ flagship security initiative, initially launched as the “Iron Dome for America”. Researchers at the Purdue Applied Research Ins…

In the wake of Ukraine’s successful strikes on the Russian Black Sea Fleet using low-cost, agile unmanned surface vessels (USVs), the global defense community has shifted focus to a domain once considered niche. Yet, long before Kyiv’s sea drones earned battlefield credibility, a little-known American platform had already proven its potential — and was quietly […] The post U.S. Navy had a war-ready naval drone in the ’90s — and scrapped it first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

OK, full disclosure, I have a little bit of battered child syndrome on this topic. On my first sea duty, we saw the odd retirement ceremony, but they were for senior enlisted or a Commander/Captain leaving after 20-25-30 or so. I don’t remember the details. That is a good retirement ceremony. In my first year of shore duty, that changed. I got roped into the preparation and planning of a 2-star admiral’s retirement ceremony that to this day is over the top. At the time it was unseemly. Untold hours and money were spent on this Broadway-like ceremony. Some of it was just cringe, but it was done. Dozens of officers and enlisted personnel were expended on this individual…and…

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that relations between the United States and China “has never been better,” following President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea and subsequent military talks in Malaysia. In a statement posted on X, Hegseth wrote, “I just spoke to President Trump, and we agree […]View the full article

A top-secret US government body called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a new solicitation seeking proposals for a high-rate, energy-efficient method of producing nitric acid directly from air and water. The initiative, known as the High-Efficiency Nitrogen Oxidation, or HNO3 program, is aimed at protecting critical U.S. defense-industrial supply chains and […]View the full article

Ukraine’s military intelligence confirmed the delivery of a newly developed armed patrol boat to the Main Directorate of Intelligence on January 1, describing it as a New Year’s transfer to support maritime operations. According to a statement released by the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, the specialized vessel was purchased and handed over by […]View the full article