Raw Intel

A spinning umbrella built to save armored vehicles from a kamikaze drone sounds like something out of a cartoon, but Russia’s military has patented exactly that. The Combined Arms Order of Zhukov Academy, one of the Russian Armed Forces’ premier officer training institutions, has designed and patented a rotating cartridge launcher meant to protect vehicles […]View the full article

Seven Russian warplanes sat inside hardened aircraft shelters on occupied Crimean soil this week, and Ukraine’s security service says it turned most of them into wreckage before dawn. Ukraine’s Security Service, known by its Ukrainian initials SBU, said its drones struck seven hangars at the Saky military airfield in western Crimea, destroying or damaging at […]View the full article

Russia has begun using a new autonomous version of its Molniya strike drone in Ukraine, a cheap fixed-wing attack UAV now being adapted to hit targets without the control antenna that made earlier models vulnerable to electronic warfare. The new variant was identified after a Russian Molniya struck a Ukrainian facility and was found without […]View the full article

Echodyne’s counter-drone radar has become one of the most widely deployed sensors on modern battlefields, showing up on test ranges in the United States, at military training grounds in Lithuania, and in active combat use in Ukraine, and the Kirkland, Washington company told The Defence Blog in a written interview that it is now racing […]View the full article

A Thai company has beaten out South Korean, Turkish, and Czech defense giants to win its first-ever export contract, and the prize is a vehicle built to carry Philippine Marines across water and onto beaches in one of the world’s most scattered island nations. The Philippine Navy has selected the AWAV 8×8, an armored amphibious […]View the full article

Thirty-eight companies have told Japan’s government they can build a drone that shoots down other drones, and the country’s defense chief wants one flying within weeks rather than years. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi disclosed the figure at a press conference following a cabinet meeting on July 3, 2026, confirming that the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics […]View the full article

A warship that needs less than half the crew of Japan’s older destroyers has joined the fleet, and it represents the tenth proof that a country facing a shrinking population can still build a modern navy fast. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries handed over the frigate JS Nagara to Japan’s Ministry of Defense on June 29, 2026, […]View the full article

A Taiwanese military unit that once had nine administrative vehicles at its disposal now has just one it can actually drive, according to a claim a lawmaker raised directly to the island’s defense minister this week, Taiwan’s FTV News reported. Kuomintang legislator Ma Wen-chun pressed Defense Minister Wellington Koo during a Legislative Yuan questioning session […]View the full article

Elite American and French forces spent a week in the desert heat of East Africa calling in live airstrikes together, sharpening the exact skill that decides whether a bomb lands on an enemy position or a friendly one. U.S. Air Force tactical air control party members and joint terminal attack controllers assigned to the East […]View the full article

New footage from American Rheinmetall shows the company’s XM30 infantry fighting vehicle concept in greater detail, giving the clearest promotional look yet at the front profile, main gun, turret sensors and running gear of one of two vehicles competing to replace the U.S. Army’s Bradley. The video arrives as the Army’s XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat […]View the full article

A new air defense missile system will move through a secure Kratos manufacturing facility under a roughly $36 million contract, adding another discreet but telling order to the United States push to rebuild missile and air defense production capacity. Kratos Defense & Security Solutions said July 2 that it had received the single-award contract for […]View the full article

A New Zealand-built drone boat became a moving radio-sensing platform during a British military trial at RMB Chivenor, where SYOS Aerospace supported the Trident Sprint series with its SM300 uncrewed surface vessel and helped integrate CRFS passive RF sensors into a wider battlefield network. The trial, led by the UK Ministry of Defence and MarWorks, […]View the full article

Nineteen companies have survived a brutal, weeks-long elimination round built to answer one question the Pentagon considers existential: can American industry build enough cheap, lethal drones fast enough to matter in a real war. The Drone Dominance Program, a Pentagon initiative jointly run by the Test Resource Management Center and the Defense Innovation Unit, announced […]View the full article

Ukraine is preparing a grant competition to develop humanoid robots for its Defense Forces, opening a new experimental track in the country’s wartime effort to move soldiers away from the most dangerous parts of the battlefield. The initiative was announced by Brave1 head Andriy Hrytseniuk during the Brave1 Advantage event, Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported. Brave1, […]View the full article

Czech paratroopers in Chrudim have received their first U.S.-made Flyer 72 HD light tactical vehicles, beginning the replacement of aging Land Rover Defender Kajman vehicles that have served the unit since 2009 and giving the Czech Army’s airborne force a more mobile platform for raids, command tasks and combat operations across difficult terrain. The vehicles […]View the full article

The combat jet that is supposed to replace an aging fighter fleet on the front lines of the Pacific flew back into Okinawa this week, months after the Air Force quietly admitted its permanent arrival has slipped by a year. An F-15EX Eagle II, escorted by two F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft, landed at Kadena Air […]View the full article

Drug cartels have started borrowing tactics straight from the Ukraine battlefield, and Washington state’s National Guard just bought the hardware needed to teach police officers how to fight back. The Washington Army National Guard issued a sole-source purchase order on July 1, 2026, for four Vector Defense first-person-view drones, two of the 10-inch class and […]View the full article

A missile system old enough to have fought in Vietnam is getting locked in for at least three more years of service, and the Army has confirmed only one company is allowed to keep it running. The U.S. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama published a presolicitation notice on July 1, 2026, announcing […]View the full article

From New England to Puerto Rico, across the Gulf of America, skipping over the desert to the West Coast…the vast American coastline is littered with closed and abandoned shipyards. They surround us like ghosts haunting the ruins of a once great empire, whispering of what once was. Some have been repurposed so much it would require a national emergency to claw back the waterfront. Others only a bit, and another cohort almost frozen in aspic from the day they were closed. Every time there is a proposal to do something as straightforward as reviving Charleston or something more ambitious like Jan Sramek’s Solano Shipyard, those trying to make forward progress have to swim t…

The U.S. Navy has told the defense industry it wants an alternative to its own primary radar-killing missile, and it wants companies capable of building as many as 600 of them every year. The Naval Air Systems Command, the branch of the Navy responsible for developing and buying naval aircraft and weapons, published a Request […]View the full article