Raw Intel

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

ARX Robotics is expanding its deployed fleet in Ukraine to five times its initial size, the European unmanned ground vehicle maker announced in May 2026, securing a new contract to supply several hundred additional GEREON uncrewed ground vehicles to Ukraine’s Defense Forces and cementing its position as the largest supplier of Western UGVs to Ukraine. […]View the full article

Russia announced missile tests at the Kura test range in Kamchatka scheduled from May 6 to 10, a window that brackets its Victory Day parade in Moscow and which analysts at Militarny are reading as a deliberate nuclear signaling move timed to deter any Ukrainian strike on Red Square. The announcement came from the Emergency […]View the full article

A Virginia-based counter-UAS training company has launched a program focused on the phase of a drone incident that most training programs ignore entirely: what to do after the drone is already on the ground. 38 Sierra announced Drone Incident Response Training, known as DIRT, on May 5, 2026, from Barboursville, Virginia, positioning it as a […]View the full article

Russia ignored Ukraine’s ceasefire initiative and launched a sustained overnight attack with drones and glide bombs within minutes of a silence regime taking effect, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha declared on May 6, calling Moscow’s parallel proposal for a May 9 ceasefire a political performance with no connection to genuine diplomacy. Sybiha posted the statement […]View the full article

Turkey’s ASELSAN unveiled two new unmanned naval systems at SAHA 2026 in Istanbul on May 5, expanding the country’s autonomous warfare portfolio into both underwater strike and surface vessel domains with platforms designed for swarm operations, covert missions, and asymmetric combat at sea. The company introduced the KILIÇ family of autonomous underwater strike systems and […]View the full article

Let’s pick up the topic we spent some time on back in March. After the invention of gunpowder, every time a navy faces conflict after a long time at peace, one of the first things they realize they have to do is to get more guns, and larger caliber guns, on their ships as soon as possible. This reality today also applies to a side-branch, missiles, as well, but today let’s focus on the gun proof. In peace, the accountants and those who are willing to shift their personal career risk onto combat risk worn by other people will happily divest platforms of money and people hungry weapons to buy cheaper, smaller, none—or if they are feeling a little guilty, will “fit for but n…

U.S. Army soldiers from 2d Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment, launched the Hornet one-way strike drone at Pabradė Training Area in Lithuania on May 3, 2026, as the system continues to expand its footprint across American military exercises in Europe. The same week, Hornet drones were also deployed at Bemowo Piskie Training Area in Poland during […]View the full article

U.S. Army soldiers in Lithuania are training with an unmanned ground vehicle to evacuate casualties from the battlefield, as part of a live exercise that is simultaneously testing counter-drone systems, AI-enabled command networks, and robotic ground platforms across a month-long series of linked drills. Soldiers assigned to 2d Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment, practiced medical evacuation […]View the full article

During the U.S.-Philippines “Shoulder-to-Shoulder” exercise, allied forces used a simulated target ship near Bataan Island featuring a Chinese ZBD-05 amphibious assault vehicle as a dummy target for live-fire shooting. The exercise brought together approximately 800 personnel from the United States, the Philippines, and Japan for combined amphibious denial training on the coast of Laoag in […]View the full article