Raw Intel

It’s been almost nine months since the last Long Game post. We’re overdue. For a while I thought I might stop the Long Game series I started in 2004, after all, the Long is Now…but I was mistaken. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still playing a long game…and we—and that includes me—just keep getting distracted. I had the following exchange with Brent Sadler at about the 52-minute mark toward the end of last Sunday’s Midrats Podcast that reminded me that, even in 2026, we’re still thinking like it’s 1996. Sal: It seem like it just happened a little while ago when they said, “Hey, there are there are PRC police stations right here in New York City.” It’s fairly hig…

A California aerospace firm building giant swarms of unmanned aircraft has landed a deal with the Air Force to prove it can manufacture those aircraft faster and cheaper than anyone else in the industry. Swarm Aero, a defense technology company that develops large uncrewed aerial vehicles designed to operate in coordinated fleets, announced more than […]View the full article

Money is flowing into defense technology at a pace that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago, and the people writing the checks are not just Pentagon program managers anymore. Individual investors, boutique venture funds and family offices are increasingly betting on drone makers, artificial intelligence startups and companies building weapons for a war in […]View the full article

The Swedish Armed Forces will receive 45 heavy recovery and technical rescue vehicles built entirely in Poland, a deal that marks one of the few instances in which Sweden has turned to a manufacturer outside its own borders for this kind of specialized military hardware. Szczęśniak Pojazdy Specjalne, a family-owned vehicle manufacturer based in Bielsko-Biała […]View the full article

A defense company that just unveiled a laser powerful enough to shoot down threats from a fighter jet cockpit also posted a record $32 billion order backlog, and the two facts are not unrelated. Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense technology company that develops everything from night vision goggles to unmanned aircraft, reported second quarter 2026 […]View the full article

A Ukrainian company that built its drone-detection network by listening for the sound of incoming Shahed attack drones has tried something its own engineers had never planned for, and it worked well enough to change how the technology might be deployed across NATO’s eastern flank. Zvook, a Ukrainian defense and space manufacturing company headquartered in […]View the full article

Sometimes, history whispers to you during small and medium-sized wars. It won’t force you to listen or even understand, but it is a loud enough whisper that you know it is there. These are not private whispers, only for you. These are understandable by anyone making an effort to hear them. More often than not, it is not a good-news whisper. No, it is an uncomfortable whisper, an inconvenient whisper, an expensive whisper. You don’t have to think about the implications of this whisper, but other people may. These whispers from small to medium-sized wars are, on occasion, riddle-strewn prophecy, but more often than not they are clear and direct about what you should expect …

A West Point cadet has spent three weeks helping Army engineers solve a math problem that could determine how many enemy drones an American air defense system can shoot down before it runs out of ammunition. Cadet Alex Anteen, a member of the U.S. Military Academy’s class of 2028, worked alongside scientists at the Army’s […]View the full article

Cameras mounted on Royal Navy surveillance drones bound for special forces missions in the Gulf were secretly transmitting signals to an IP address inside China, The Telegraph reported, citing an investigation by the newspaper’s Richard Holmes. The drones in question are Kraken K3 Scout uncrewed surface vessels, roughly 8.4-meter (28-foot) unmanned speedboats built by the […]View the full article

A mysterious Chinese warship that has spent years testing stealth technology just showed up with something new bolted to its deck, and naval watchers cannot agree on whether it is designed to disorient people or fry electronics. Open-source images circulating on social media this week show China’s unnamed experimental corvette, a stealthy test vessel that […]View the full article

A British air defense startup that did not exist until late 2024 just landed a $300 million funding round that values the company at $3.4 billion, a valuation that puts it on par with established defense primes despite having built its first missile from a blank sheet of paper less than two years ago. Cambridge […]View the full article

Russia’s prized “unstoppable” hypersonic missile has gone dark, and Ukrainian military intelligence says Moscow pulled the plug on purpose to feed a different weapon entirely. Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate, known by its Ukrainian acronym HUR, told the outlet RBC-Ukraine that Russia halted production of its Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile back […]View the full article

Panels, seminars, conferences, reports, speeches, and emotion do not build a navy. Even shipyards do not build a navy. In the American system of government, if you want a navy you have to go up to Capitol Hill and get Congress to fund it. Without money, everything else is just a PDF. What is the state of play in bringing the argument for sea power to Congress? Returning to the Midrats Podcast just in time for the Senate’s August recess will be Brent Sadler, CAPT, USN (Ret.). You can join us LIVE today from 5-6 PM Eastern at this link. If you can’t make the live show, check the Substack later Sunday for all the podcast links and make us part of your commute listen. Brent i…

A patch of forest and lakeshore in northern Michigan has become one of the most important pieces of real estate in the U.S. military’s race to catch up with China on drone warfare. Camp Grayling and the National All-Domain Warfighting Center, a sprawling military training complex in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, has been selected by […]View the full article

An Israeli drone maker best known for building some of the quietest tactical aircraft in the sky is now pouring fresh money into scaling up how many of them it can actually build, ramping up serial production at home while pushing into new markets across Europe and Asia, Israel Defense reported in an article by […]View the full article

A Florida company that started out printing furniture with giant robotic arms is now applying that same technology to something considerably more consequential, building drone boats for the U.S. military layer by layer instead of piece by piece. Haddy, a digital manufacturing company based in St. Petersburg, Florida, announced on Saturday that it has produced […]View the full article

A small Indian defense company has built a weapon that looks like it walked straight off a battlefield in Ukraine, a portable, gun-shaped launcher that fires its own miniature drone to physically hunt down and destroy enemy aircraft in midair. Picraft Technology Pvt. Ltd., a private Indian defense technology company, developed the system, called Harpy […]View the full article

A soldier in the California desert flips a switch, and a small drone lifts off the ground carrying the ability to see through darkness and, if commanders choose, to strike a target without ever putting a human pilot in harm’s way. That was the scene at Fort Irwin, California this summer, where soldiers from the […]View the full article

A Russian tank that Ukrainian and Western observers had already written off as another failed experiment in anti-drone armor may actually have done exactly what it was built to do, just not enough of it. New battlefield testimony from a combat drone specialist who spoke directly with the Ukrainian unit involved in the fight suggests […]View the full article

A Russian air defense battery that had been launching missiles at Ukrainian cities for days finally went up in flames, and Ukraine’s drone operators are taking credit for putting it there. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, a dedicated branch of the country’s military built specifically around drone warfare, struck a Russian S-400 Triumf air defense position […]View the full article