HG S2 (Intel Bot)

Ukraine’s First Separate Medical Battalion said it completed six successful casualty evacuation missions in a single day using unmanned ground vehicles. The battalion said the missions were carried out over a 24-hour period and focused on extracting wounded troops from combat positions under constant pressure from Russian first-person-view attack drones. In a statement cited by […]View the full article

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday released new footage showing recent airstrikes on targets inside Iran, including what appears to be a strike on an Iranian S-300PMU long-range air defense system, one of the most advanced Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile systems in Tehran’s inventory. The newly published footage comes as Israel continues to showcase the results […]View the full article

Firehawk has broken ground on its Great Plains Arsenal in Lawton, Oklahoma, opening the next phase of the company’s push to expand U.S. production of rocket motors and propellant. The ceremony took place on April 2, 2026, with company executives, investors, and Oklahoma officials attending what Firehawk described as a major step in scaling up […]View the full article

Theseus, a San Francisco-based innovation startup focused on GPS-denied navigation, said it successfully completed a long-duration test flight of its Micro Visual Positioning System over central Florida. The company said its Micro Visual Positioning System completed a 5-hour, 22-minute flight covering about 564 kilometers during a March test in central Florida. Ian Laffey, chief executive […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has published a solicitation announcing its intent to award a sole-source contract to Boeing for the remanufacture of a critical guidance component inside the AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile, keeping the nuclear-capable weapon operational for nearly another decade. The solicitation, posted April 6, 2026, by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center […]View the full article

Raytheon has been awarded a contract worth up to $708.9 million to produce the next production lot of the Small Diameter Bomb Increment II, commonly known as the StormBreaker, the U.S. Department of Defense announced on April 6, 2026. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, issued the undefinitized […]View the full article

Soldiers assigned to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) set up and operated the AEVEX Atlas precision-guided drone system at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC ) at Fort Polk, Louisiana, on April 5, 2026 — the first time the Atlas system has been integrated into training at JRTC, according to the U.S. Army. JRTC […]View the full article

A General Atomics Aeronautical Systems test aircraft for the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program suffered a mishap following takeoff from a company-owned airport in the California desert on Monday at approximately 1 p.m. Pacific time, the company announced. The aircraft involved was a YFQ-42A, one of several production-representative test platforms currently in the […]View the full article

U.S. Central Command’s top officer directed a strike against an underground Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters near Tehran while American forces were simultaneously conducting a rescue operation for a downed airman inside Iran, high-level U.S. defense sources told Fox News on Monday. Admiral Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, ordered B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to fly […]View the full article

The Israeli Air Force struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helicopters at two Tehran-area aviation facilities, with the Israel Defense Forces releasing footage of the attacks showing the destruction of Mi-17 series helicopters at Fat’h Heliport in Karaj, west of the Iranian capital. Aviation analyst Babak Taghvaee confirmed the scope of the strikes, identifying the targeted […]View the full article

The rescue of the pilot and weapons sensor officer from the F-15E Strike Eagle that went down in Iran is—even with the limited information we have right now—an almost-unbelievable act in the history of the profession of arms. I am looking forward to the details to come out, but let’s let that work its way through the system. That isn’t what I want to focus on today. As always, let’s first look at the chart. Initial reports are that this was an “all hands on deck” operation where we sent every service but the Postal Service in to retrieve our last airman on the ground. That was pretty far inland. We have access to bases in every nation on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, and in Iraq. It appears at first glance that all the units involved were land-based. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and other USAF units sure were. When you get into any discussion of Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR), with the usual suspects you get a lot of “Joint” that gets folded into the discussion. That is great and good, but, here’s the problem. Geography is not a”Joint” solution. Look at that map again. The Persian Gulf is almost an inland sea. The ranges are short, and the shore options are many. Look again across the Persian Gulf from Iran and all the bases we have, in depth, a short flight to the south/southwest. Now, shift your view to the rest of the world, especially the Pacific. The below is a to-scale map of Iran rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise and placed along the coast of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) across from Taiwan. As we reviewed last week, the PRC has 15X the population on almost 6X the land mass and she has a first-rate military. Any Great Pacific War that starts with (and let’s not kid ourselves, it will not be limited to) Taiwan, there will be MANY more strikes ashore against a much better capitalized and numerous military. Additionally, as this is an advantage of aircraft carriers, our aircraft from the sea can come from any axis from Hainan Island to the Yellow Sea. So, where will our USAF-led “Joint” CSAR efforts be based within range of U.S. Navy ingress and egress routes to and from targets? Yes, yes, yes…we will start the war with standoff weapons, but I hope everyone is aligned with ‘Ole Sal now that by D+30, that bolt will be shot. We will have to get up close and personal. As no one will entertain my Three Gorges Dam COA until the war will have gone on too long, we will have a lot of USN pilots and naval flight officers needing rescue at sea and ashore. What has Big Navy done to prepare for this? In the Korean War, with a much smaller coastline, the data are hard to come by, but the USN had dedicated CSAR units, as did the USAF. Then LT. Robert L. Dolton, USNR (he received a Distinguished Flying Cross for a CSAR he conducted) gave some solid information in 1952. Via the Naval Helicopter Association. Pretty inspirational stories…even make good works of fiction. I think it is safe to say that in any Great Pacific War against the PRC, we will not have the luxury of having our warships close to shore as we did in the Korean War. Take out the plane guard mission, that leaves 198 CSAR missions, 64 of them ashore, the rest at sea. Use whatever metric you wish for a conflict against the PRC in the next decade or so to upscale that number, but who exactly will retrieve those airmen who are not in close enough proximity for “Joint” CSAR assets based <looks again at the chart> where again, exactly? The record of USN rotary-wing CSAR in the Vietnam War is even more extensive. Yes, yes, yes, we have multi-purpose helicopter squadrons based on all sorts of warships and auxiliaries…but are they trained to conduct CSAR in a non-permissive environment? This stands as a great disgrace that, when this need arises, will become a national scandal that will be the mirror image of the feeling of national greatness we feel right now after the successful CSAR in Iran. It is not a new concern. No. Back in 1984, while on staff at the Naval War College the late Captain Wade J. Pharis, USN, directed then LCDR Kerry J. Sullivan, USN to write the often referenced paper, Navy Combat Rescue: The Forsaken Mission. Of note, sixteen years and even more experience in military and civilian rescue operations, he wrote, A pilot’s guide to rescue: Getting help when you need it, but I digress. Let’s get back to now. In one of the most blinkered, myopic, and rage-inducing acts of accountancy of the last decade, we decommissioned the last USN reservoir of rotary-wing special operations expertise kept in the USNR as embodied in HSC-85. At a time when everything in the real world demonstrated we should be expanding this capability in our Navy, instead we killed the remnant. As we know about, without our helo-capable ships getting close to shore, we will not have enough helicopters within range to rescue enough people. A solution exists right now in the Japanese US-2, but in spite of appreciating the platform and the problem it solves, we still dither and make excuses. Excuses that won’t work when American airmen are abandoned to exposure and a myriad of possible nightmarish deaths that can come from being lost at sea. So, as you start this week, all I ask is for you to ponder the above. Are we—and by we I mean the US Navy—really prepared to follow through with the “leave no man behind” statement we have been bragging about over the weekend. If you in any way respond with the word “Joint” in your reply—then find another area of interest in which to invest your time. You are part of the problem, not the solution. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

A U.S. Marine who trained alongside Republic of Korea Marines on the new K808 White Tiger wheeled armored personnel carrier during Korean Marine Exchange Program 26.1 at Suseong-Ri, South Korea, in March 2026, offered a firsthand comparison of the South Korean vehicle against the American-made Stryker and Light Armored Vehicle platforms he had trained on […]View the full article

U.S. Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted an extensive series of combined arms training exercises at Camp Santiago, Puerto Rico, throughout March 2026, integrating light armored vehicles, attack and reconnaissance drones, vehicle-mounted mortar systems, and MV-22B Osprey assault operations into a sustained training package that tested the unit’s full expeditionary combat capability. The […]View the full article

Soldiers assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment gave German Army Master Sgt. Steven Solis a hands-on familiarization with the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank at Camp Herkus, Lithuania, on April 2, 2026, as part of a two-week bilateral training exchange that paired German-led marksmanship qualification with U.S. armored vehicle instruction. The exchange grew […]View the full article

Airmen from the 39th Security Forces Squadron at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, completed Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station certification training at Aviano Air Base, Italy, on March 26, 2026, adding ten newly qualified operators to the installation defense network spanning two of the U. S. Air Force’s most strategically positioned bases in Europe and the […]View the full article

Elbit Systems said Monday it has secured a $750 million contract to supply its Precise & Universal Launching System, known as PULS, to the Hellenic Armed Forces under a defense agreement between Israel and Greece. The award, first flagged in a December 2025 announcement, gives Greece a new long-range rocket artillery capability at a time […]View the full article

Russia has publicly released video footage of range trials of an unmanned ground combat system designated “Kuryer,” fitted with a newly disclosed automated mortar module called “Bagunlnik-82.” The footage, published by the NRTK channel, which covers Russian ground robotics development, shows the system operating with a rotating turret housing both the mortar tube and an […]View the full article

UK Defence Innovation has launched a market engagement activity seeking novel technologies capable of detecting and defeating fibre-optic controlled drones, opening a formal call to industry that closes on April 21, 2026. The solicitation marks the first public acknowledgment by the UK Ministry of Defence that fibre-optic drone control has become a sufficiently pressing operational […]View the full article

The British Army and UK Defence Innovation have issued a Request for Information for a vehicle-mounted 120mm hinged mortar system under Project STOKES, opening a formal procurement process aimed at fielding approximately 60 systems integrated onto light tactical vehicles, with the Jackal 3 Extenda identified as the assumed platform. The RFI, published under project code […]View the full article

Ukrainian defense forces struck the Sheskharis oil terminal in the port city of Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai, on April 6, 2026, hitting multiple locations across the facility in a drone attack that open-source analysts say has effectively halted export operations at one of Russia’s most strategically important petroleum hubs. Sheskharis is the terminal point for major […]View the full article

Denis Shtilerman, chief designer at Ukrainian strike drone and missile developer Fire Point, has confirmed the company is developing an air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) based on its FP-9 platform, adding a new long-range strike capability to a portfolio that already includes some of Ukraine’s most advanced domestically produced weapons. Shtilerman disclosed the program during a […]View the full article

A United States Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallion helicopter assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One lifted a Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement during a heavy lift training exercise at Auxiliary Airfield II in Yuma, Arizona, on March 31, as part of the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course 2-26. The exercise is one element […]View the full article

Soldiers from the Tennessee National Guard’s 278th Cavalry Regiment became the first licensed operators of the Infantry Squad Vehicle within their state last week, completing a new equipment training course hosted by the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell from March 31 through April 2. The training marks a concrete step in the 278th’s conversion […]View the full article

United States special operations forces rescued a wounded American colonel from deep inside Iranian territory in the early hours of Sunday, April 5, completing one of the most complex and costly combat search-and-rescue operations in modern American military history. The officer, the weapons system officer aboard an F-15E Strike Eagle shot down by Iranian forces […]View the full article

An Iranian ballistic missile strike late Thursday heavily damaged the production facility of Israeli drone manufacturer Aero-Sentinel, hitting just meters from the company’s site in Petach Tikva and disrupting part of its manufacturing operations. In comments shared with Defence Blog, the company said the site was struck by an Iranian missile but stressed that the […]View the full article