Raw Intel

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured early Saturday by members of the United States Army’s Delta Force during a U.S. military operation in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials cited by CBS News. The officials said the operation was carried out by Delta Force, the U.S. military’s top special mission unit, and resulted in Maduro being […]View the full article

Soldiers from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division conducted drone bomber training using a C100 Medium Range Reconnaissance unmanned aerial system during a Table VI exercise for Spartan Focus, the division said. According to the 3rd Infantry Division, the training involved unmanned aircraft system operators from the Multi-Function Reconnaissance Troop, 6th Squadron, […]View the full article

United States Central Command said Sunday that U.S. B-2 stealth bombers struck hardened ballistic missile facilities in Iran overnight, employing 2,000-pound bombs against what officials described as fortified military targets. The command announced the operation in an official statement, declaring, “No nation should ever doubt America’s resolve.” The strike comes amid ongoing U.S. military efforts […]View the full article

Japan’s Ministry of Defense said early Friday that the Maritime Self-Defense Force Kongo-class guided-missile destroyer JS Chokai has formally acquired the ability to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles. The announcement was released by the Ministry of Defense and the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency on March 27, and provides the most detailed official account to date […]View the full article

A fire broke out aboard USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) late Sunday night while the destroyer sat pierside at HII Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, injuring three sailors. The blaze was reported at approximately 9:45 p.m. on April 19, 2026, and was extinguished by the ship’s crew before outside fire services were needed. One sailor was transported […]View the full article

Ukrainian drone forces have struck a Russian naval vessel in the Caspian Sea for at least the third time in recent months, publishing footage on May 17 showing a Fire Point FP-1 attack drone successfully locating and hitting a Project 10410 Svetlyak-class patrol boat in the port area of Kaspiisk, Dagestan, more than 1,500 kilometers […]View the full article

Diehl Defence has developed a new generation of its compact mobile air defense system and unveiled it on the eve of the ILA Berlin Air Show. The German defense company announced the IRIS-T SLS MK 4 on June 9, the day before ILA Berlin opens its doors to the defense industry. The fourth-generation version of […]View the full article

A Polish aircraft repair plant that has spent decades overhauling aging Soviet-era jets is about to start building brand-new American cruise missiles instead. Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 2, a Bydgoszcz-based facility that operates under Poland’s state-owned defense conglomerate Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, known as PGZ, signed an agreement paving the way for the assembly and production […]View the full article

The Pentagon has agreed to lend a small Texas drone company up to $820 million, a bet that fixing a handful of tiny, unglamorous parts could unlock America’s entire drone manufacturing pipeline. The U.S. Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million to Performance Drone Works, […]View the full article

A Russian Aerospace Forces Mi-8 helicopter crashed onto a highway on Sakhalin Island on September 2, coming to rest on its side in a roadside ditch after what the pro-Russian military Telegram channel Fighterbomber described as a complete loss of power from fuel exhaustion in both engines. Video and photographs of the incident show the […]View the full article

U.S. Space Command held the third of four wargames with commercial space companies on Sept. 23, this time focused on spacecraft that operate outside the orbits most satellites use today, including very low Earth orbit and the space between Earth and the Moon. The tabletop exercise, part of a series called APOLLO INSIGHT, brought military […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS McFaul (DDG 74) has sailed all the way around Africa, stopping in Kenya, Ghana and Cabo Verde for fuel and supplies on a voyage of thousands of nautical miles from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa announced the completed transit on Oct. 14 in a release. […]View the full article

Download DA_FORM_IMT_WF1 [Thanks to Matthew S. for the form.] View the full article

Our friends at the Congressional Budget Office have done it again. Their analysis of the Navy's shipbuilding plan came out this week. You can get your copy here, or read at the bottom of the post. You need to read it all, there is a lot here - but here is what I found the most interesting at second reading. They lay it all out in the summary; we have garbage in and garbage out. Once you read the cold, hard, facts given by the CBO and then look at DoN's numbers, it almost seems like the two organizations are living in parallel universes. We'll get to the numbers in a bit - but one thing that kept coming to mind as CBO sliced off each of its thousand cuts w…

The fact that operating fixed wing aircraft has a long and bloody learning curve is no news to readers here - but this stuff coming out of Chinese state media is interesting. Via our friend Wendell Minnick over at DefenseNews; In an unusual departure for mainland Chinese-language media, the Beijing-based Sina Military Network (SMN) criticized the capabilities of the carrier-borne J-15 Flying Shark as nothing more than a “flopping fish.†... What sounded more like a rant than analysis, SMN, on Sept. 23, reported the new J-15 was incapable of flying from the Liaoning with heavy weapons, “effectively crippling its attack range and firepower.†The fighter can take…

Ignoring all that we will be fighting during the Terrible 20s, I can't think too much about the fleet we have provided to our Sailors to fight with this decade too much without having a slow-building rage. Maybe you're happy. If so, head on over to USNIBlog and tell me where I'm wrong. Ho, ho, ho. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=yIl2AUoC8zA http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=qj6IDK7rITs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=f-NqqpmrNds:8mIrpv-xOrE:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=f-NqqpmrNds:8mIrpv-xOrE:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=f-NqqpmrNds:8mIrpv-xOrE:V_sGLiPBpWU http:…

Does this guy look badass enough for you? You have no idea. In the summer of 1897 tribesmen of the North-western frontier of India (now a part of Pakistan) began attacking and intimidating British forces in the area. The Indian Government decided that the unprovoked attacks by the Afridis and the Orakzais tribesmen could not go unpunished and decided that a show of force in Tirah, the tribe’s summer home, was appropriate. Accordingly, Sir William Lockhart was ordered out from Britain and appointed to command a force of 32,882 officers and soldiers. The intention was to advance into the Chagru valley on 20 October but the Alikhel tribesmen had seen the preparation of …

A foundation stone of DivThu for over a decade and a half is this simple concept: in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial nation, the most destructive thing that can be done by leaders who value it is to encourage people to divide themselves along racial, ethnic, or other sectarian lines. No society in human history has ever prospered by doing so, Martin Luther King Jr. was right, the only solution is to judge someone by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. We once extended this concept to include race, creed, color and nation origin. Not only is that the only way to promote unity, and from that unity receive national strength and cohesion, but also …

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I find it fun, and helpful, to read refreshed think pieces on carrier vulnerability like our friend and always pleasant read Robert Farley put out last week at 19fortyfive, The U.S. Navy’s Nightmare: 5 Ways To Kill An Aircraft Carrier. From their very birth, carriers have been vulnerable. They are delicate but deadly creatures. Expensive to own and operate, but valuable beyond measure at war. Recall that one of the reason the Guadalcanal Campaign had so many surface actions was because there were just not that many carriers available to sustain casualties because ... well, they're vulnerable. Everyone wants to kill them not just because they are so vulnerable, but becaus…