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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…

Americas Austal USA has received a $113.9 million deal to design the US Navy Auxiliary General Ocean Surveillance Ship (T-AGOS 25). The agreement includes a $3.2 billion option for the design and construction of up to seven T-AGOS vessels. Work on the first T-AGOS will take place at various US locations in partnership with L3Harris Technologies, […]View the full article

Americas SOFIS-TRG LLC won a $83 million single award contract for MQ-9 Aircrew Training Support. This contract provides for all personnel, equipment, tools, materials, supervision, and all other items and services required to perform and support MQ-9 Remotely Piloted Aircraft aircrew academic instruction; courseware development; and air and ground intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance test and training support. Work is expected to be completed by Aug. 31, 2029. Air Combat Command, Acquisition Management and Integration Center, Hampton, Virginia, is the contracting activity. Boeing won aa?$14.8 million bilateral modification for the?F-15 Eagle Passive Active Warn…

Americas Anduril has clinched a $642-million contract to supply counter-drone technology for the US Marine Corps (USMC). Under the 10-year deal, the defense tech company will install, deliver, and sustain installation-counter small unmanned aircraft systems and related services to USMC bases worldwide starting this year through 2035. The California-based firm bested nine other unnamed competitors in the solicitation issued in February last year. It is expected to provide a network of defenses to detect, track, identify, and defeat small drones and other threats against USMC installations and personnel. The US Air Force 53rd Test and Evaluation Group’s Detachment 3 recentl…

On Sunday’s Midrats Podcast, our guest Liz Buchanan mentioned an article out of Australia by Laura Tingle, China's parade of military might raises big questions about the AUKUS muddle. I gave it a read and thought it would be a good move to start the week with it. Yes, it is Tuesday and not Monday, but I’m having “a moment.” Bear with me for the next 10 days or so. Tingle covers a lot of ground here, and she suffers a bit of a foreigner’s incomplete understanding of Trump World, but I’d like to put that to the side and focus on a welcome Australian view of the present state of play WRT AUKUS. For an island nation roughly the size of the continental USA with a population b…

Raytheon, an RTX business, has been chosen by the German government to supply its SPY-6(V)1 radar system for installation on eight F127-class frigates, under a proposed foreign military sales contract with the U.S. Navy. The deal would make Germany the first international customer for Raytheon’s SPY-6 radar, the cornerstone of the U.S. Navy’s next-generation air […] The post Germany to equip new frigates with Raytheon’s SPY-6 radar first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Japan’s 2025 defense expenditures have reached their highest level in postwar history as Tokyo continues to expand its military capabilities in response to what officials describe as an increasingly severe security environment in East Asia. The Ministry of Defense reports that the country’s base defense budget for the 2025 fiscal year totaled ¥8.7 trillion (around […]View the full article

The U.S. Southern Command has reported that U.S. Marine Corps forces recently conducted an air-to-air missile exercise in the Caribbean Sea, using an AH-1Z Viper helicopter armed with an AIM-9 Sidewinder. The live-fire training occurred on November 25, 2025, and was publicly announced by the command on December 3. According to the announcement, the helicopter […]View the full article

With a few days now behind us, most of the general facts are in on our raid into Caracas, Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro and, it appears, his wife as well. Now that Maduro is a guest of the Southern District of New York, it is time to not just look at some of the details of the buildup and execution of this raid, but the initial lessons we can take from it, and what it means in the larger strategic environment. You can listen at this link or at the Spotify widget below. SummaryIn this episode of Midrats, Mark and Sal discuss the recent military operation in Venezuela, reflecting on its execution and implications for national security. They explore the potential for V…

France’s defense procurement agency, the Direction générale de l’armement, has delivered 1,000 low-cost “drone du combattant” systems to the Armée de Terre, marking the first tranche of a rapid acquisition program launched last year. According to the DGA, the 1,000 micro-drones were delivered following an order placed on June 30, 2025, with French company Harmattan […]View the full article

The United States Army integrated Israeli-made computerized rifle sights into multinational counter-drone training at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on Feb. 12, 2026, where American and allied troops conducted weapons qualifications using the SMASH 2000 system. The activity took place during the Air Force’s Joint Multi-Domain Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operator Course, according to […]View the full article

The Ecuadorian Army launched a military operation near the Colombian border targeting an illegal mining complex tied to organized criminal groups, deploying AMX-13 light tanks, mortars, and armed helicopters in a coordinated ground-and-air assault. The operation took place in the El Chical area of Carchi province in northern Ecuador, a region close to the Colombian […]View the full article

The Belgian Armed Forces have completed their first training exercise integrating unmanned ground vehicles into active operational scenarios, fielding Polish-made robotic systems across a range of missions including nighttime reconnaissance and target identification. The exercise, conducted in Belgium, marked the Belgian military’s debut use of UGV platforms in a structured field environment — putting soldiers […]View the full article

South Korean-based Hanwha Aerospace and Estonian robotics company Milrem Robotics signed a teaming agreement at the BSDA 2026 defense exhibition in Bucharest to jointly pursue Romania’s unmanned ground vehicle program, combining Korean wheeled unmanned platform experience with Milrem’s combat-proven tracked UGV technology in a bid to capture one of Eastern Europe’s most strategically significant ground […]View the full article

Britain’s long-troubled Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicle is being put back into trials under tightly controlled conditions as the Ministry of Defence pursues a two-phase plan to deliver a fixed version of the program, the UK Defence Journal reported. Minister Luke Pollard set out the approach in a written answer to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, who […]View the full article

Ukraine’s air force failed to shoot down a single Russian ballistic missile during a massive overnight bombardment of Kyiv on July 6, 2026, a gap in the country’s defenses that officials directly attributed to a critical shortage of interceptor missiles for the Patriot air defense system, Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported, citing the Air Force’s own […]View the full article

A German reconnaissance drone flying over Ukraine has got a new paint job and a rearward-facing camera, and both changes trace directly back to a threat that barely existed a couple of years ago, other drones built specifically to hunt reconnaissance aircraft out of the sky. Quantum Systems, a German drone manufacturer based in Gilching, […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Navy said it destroyed a Russian uncrewed surface vessel near Snake Island in the Black Sea on Tuesday, according to Militarnyi. Footage released alongside the announcement shows the drone boat being struck by a precision munition dropped from an unmanned aerial vehicle after being detected. The vessel caught fire and detonated following the strike. […]View the full article

Soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division spent two weeks in the field in Hawaii this month testing new command-and-control software under realistic combat conditions, wrapping up the fifth round of the division’s Lightning Surge experiments with a brigade certification exercise called Nakoa Fleek. The exercise ran from Sept. 14 to 25 at Schofield […]View the full article