HG S2 (Intel Bot)

BAE Systems said Thursday it has delivered the final ACV-Personnel, or ACV-P, vehicle to the United States Marine Corps. The handover closes out deliveries of the troop-carrying version of the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, the platform intended to replace the Marine Corps’ aging Assault Amphibious Vehicle fleet. The ACV-P serves as the primary carrier for Marine […]View the full article

United States Central Command has released new footage from strikes on Iran as part of Operation Epic, with the video appearing to show the destruction of an Iranian Shahed-171 Simorgh stealth drone or its Shahed-191 version, one of Tehran’s most advanced unmanned aerial platforms. The footage was released as the campaign entered its fifth week, […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said its units, working with military intelligence, struck Kirovske airfield in occupied Crimea overnight on April 2, destroying a Russian An-72P patrol aircraft and a site used to prepare Orion strike and reconnaissance drones for missions. The strike was carried out by the 1st Separate Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces […]View the full article

After President Trump’s speech Wednesday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reminded everyone of the four goals of Operation Epic Fury. • Destroy their weapons factories • Destroy their navy • Destroy their air force • Destroy their chances of ever having a nuclear weapon I start with that for a reason. These stated goals have been consistent throughout the first month of the operation. That fact can get lost because when he talks about the operation, President Trump is, well, Trumpy in how he communicates. The hyper-partisans on both sides react by throwing a bunch of chaff in the air, making meaningful discussions difficult. We see that in the comments section here on occasion. You need to maneuver around it. If you want to throw partisan poo from one side or another, I’m really not all that interested in engaging with that. So, what can we get from last night’s speech? I am going to pull out some of his quotes in the little under 19-minute speech and will post the full speech at the bottom. If you are looking for where this is going, let’s look at what I consider the meaty bits. As we do that, remember Rubio’s four points above. The President started out with a polite nod to the crew of Artemis II. That was nice, but everyone want to shift to Iran, and he pivoted to that rather quickly. The speech could have stopped at the below. As the President was clearly tired, that may have been best. …it’s been just one month since the United States military began operation epic fury targeting the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, Iran. In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive overwhelming victories on the battlefield. ... Tonight, Iran’s navy is gone. Their air forces in ruins. Their leaders, most of them terrorist regime they led are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is being decimated as we speak. … …tonight, I’m pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion. And we are going to finish the job. And we’re going to finish it very fast. We’re getting very close. I want to thank our allies in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. They’ve been great. We’re four weeks in and “nearing completion.” Two days near? Two weeks near? Not sure. This looks conditions-based, not calendar-based…so I hope we have achievable Measures of Effectiveness for our Objectives. Good on him for pointing out who was helping us knock down what really is/was a global threat. …the countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on. So to those countries that can’t get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us as we asked. Go to the straight and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done. So, it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally. It’ll just open up naturally. They’re going to want to be able to sell oil because that’s all they have to try and rebuild. It will resume the flowing and the gas prices will rapidly come back down. That is a bit aspirational, but sends a clear signal that we are not going to expand our mandate. We are not going to invade or occupy anything to force the strait. That is in line with our stated goals and the nature of a punitive expedition. I’ve made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly. Very shortly, we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. OK, we have our time limit. Two to three weeks. We should wind things down between 14-21 April. I can support that, but not much more. I’d prefer today, but I don’t have all the information they do. I’ll give the Joint Staff and CENTCOM the benefit of the doubt. That being said, I’m not sure I’m a fan of this. Yet if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil even though that’s the easiest target of all because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone and there’s not a thing they could do about it. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force. The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the B2 bombers have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust. And we have it under intense satellites surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we’ll hit them with missiles very hard. Again, we have all the cards. They have none. Part of some negotiation strategy? I have no idea. What I do have an idea about is that there is a very long history of even the most worse autocratic regimes getting support from the most brutalized populations when an outside power starts attacking civilian infrastructure that does not have a clear military purpose. From burning crops a thousand years ago, to the Blitz on London, to burning a Vietnamese village in order to save it…it does not have a very good track record. Yes, I understand the theory of all the above, but none of that theory played out as expected or created anything but undesired effects for the aggressor. Executive Summary: we’ll see where we are in three weeks. If in three weeks, someone in the administration is talking about early May, they’ve lost the bubble. 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United States Air Force students at Air University are working on new ways to counter small drones through the Alpha Blue innovation program, as the military faces a threat that has expanded rapidly across recent conflicts and domestic installations. The latest effort brought together students from the Air War College and the Air Command and […]View the full article

The Indiana National Guard said its Technology and Readiness Experimentation framework, known as T-REX, helped move the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) from a Pentagon demonstration to operational use in just seven months. LUCAS was first publicly demonstrated in the Pentagon courtyard in July 2025. By February 2026, the system had been employed during […]View the full article

The United States Army has awarded Colt’s Manufacturing almost $41 contract to produce M4 and M4A1 carbines for Foreign Military Sales to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Macedonia, and Tunisia, according to a contract notice released this week. The award, issued to Colt’s West Hartford, Connecticut-based operations, carries a total cumulative face value of $40,863,564 and […]View the full article

The United States Air Force has awarded Boeing a ceiling $900 million contract to sustain and support the T-38C Talon avionics system, extending support for one of the service’s core pilot training aircraft through March 31, 2036. The contract, awarded to Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, operations on March 31, 2026, covers total life-cycle support for […]View the full article

British radar company Blighter said on April 2 it will make its debut at FIDAE 2026 in Santiago, Chile, as it moves to expand its presence in the Latin American defense and security market. The company said it will exhibit at the International Air and Space Fair from April 7 to 11 within the UK […]View the full article

Russia and Ukraine sharply increased long-range strike operations in March, with both sides expanding drone and missile attacks deep beyond the front lines, according to a new assessment provided by ACLED senior analyst Witold Stupnicki. The data points to a sustained rise in strike intensity, highlighted by what ACLED described as a record 948-drone Russian […]View the full article

A public dispute broke out in Ukraine over a reported assault near Pokrovsk after volunteer, blogger, and Defense Ministry adviser Serhii Sternenko accused commanders of the 425th “Skelia” Assault Regiment of sending troops into an operation that left Ukrainian soldiers exposed to drone strikes and caused multiple casualties. Sternenko said the assault involved armored vehicles […]View the full article

Ukraine has approved the Sky Devil fixed-wing reconnaissance drone for serial production, bringing a new domestically developed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platform into military service. The drone, developed by Ukrainian defense technology company SkyAtom, has also received a NATO code, making it the company’s first system to complete formal military approval and enter mass production. […]View the full article

The United States Army has awarded a four-year contract to Global Military Products to assume facility management and new product development responsibilities at the Quad Cities Cartridge Case Facility (QCCCF) at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, according to an April 1 announcement. The government-owned site, which has operated for more than a century as part […]View the full article

We’ve returned to this topic often over the last two decades. A recent example was this back in 2022. In 2023/24, as we saw expenditures in the Red Sea grow, we discussed the inventory of SM-3, SM-6, and missiles in general. Things were worrisome then. As we approach the one month anniversary of Operation Epic Fury, the numbers must be…well…mind-numbing. Production of these exquisite missiles cannot be accelerated on a dime. This takes time and it takes money. The decades of rule by the cult of efficiency and the despotism of the accountancy and consulting class has left us—and most of our allies—with an almost criminally underarmed Navy. I have not seen updated Standard Missile expenditure figures over the last month, but we have seen the numbers for our Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM). As an old TLAM bubba, this is my comfort space. I remember the concerns 27 years ago after Desert Fox that our ~325 TLAM expenditures were “problematic”…but that is small change. This CSIS graph should stop everyone in their tracks. Becca Wasser from Bloomberg brings even more joy to the conversation. …the US has only bought 322 Tomahawks in the last 5 years. If the US shot 850 in Iran + the low estimate of 250 for strikes in the Middle East and Nigeria, it is clear replenishment rates do not match expenditure rates. Here’s the problem. Tomahawks are prized in part because they can travel more than 1,000 miles, reducing the need to send American pilots into well-defended airspace. The heavy reliance on them in the Iran conflict will require urgent discussions about whether to relocate some from other parts of the world, including the Indo-Pacific, and a concerted long-term effort to build more, said several U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning. … The Pentagon has tracked the number of Tomahawks used with an increasing focus on what the burn rate will mean for not only a sustained campaign against Iran but for future military operations as well, people familiar with the matter said. One official characterized the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East as “alarmingly low,” while another said that without intervention, the Pentagon is closing in on “Winchester” — military slang meaning out of ammunition — for its supply of Tomahawk missiles in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, we put one of our ships in Winchester, and another only had a few D1 and D2 warheads left. First of all, I don’t want everyone to become this guy. We cannot be paralyzed from doing what needs to be done today, in fear of what might be needed tomorrow. As one of the greatest Americans once said, So, besides asking the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to kindly behave herself for at least a half a decade, preferably a full decade, what is to be done? Look again at the quote above at what the TLAM offers the targeteers…and it does that without putting a human feet-dry. Iran has a population of 93 million souls with a second-rate military. The PRC has 15X the population on almost 6X the land mass and she has a first-rate military. In case of a general war against the PRC there will be A LOT more targets that will need to be engaged than we found this month in Iran. Just as an opening figure to argue about, let’s use population as a proxy. 850 TLAM x 15 the population, is 12,750 TLAM. 12,750 TLAM just to get you to D+30. Hell, we don’t even have that many VLS cells. There are only 11,000 or so in all navies worldwide. We also need VLS cells for defensive purposes. We don’t even have an operational way to reload VLS cells forward. Understatement of the week: we don’t have enough TLAM, nor VLS cells. You don’t want to know how long it would take U.S. industry to produce that many TLAM—even if we had enough VLS cells and expeditionary reload capability. We talk about a desire to be able to produce 1,000 a year at some point in the future, but we are not even close to that. However, war must be fought. How do we engage that many targets? We need weapons that can strike the same target set as TLAM with the same advantages that TLAM brings—or close to it. Standoff weapons. Every factory that produces standoff weapons that can be carried by an aircraft or ship into the fight needs to put on another shift. If we are going on a war footing, which we should, then we need to further tell the accountants and consultants to get in the back of the room: we need these weapons and their supply chains dispersed, and production facilities preferably scattered across multiple locations. In case you have not been paying attention since 2022, it is no longer a theory that CONUS is vulnerable to attack. Every base. Every factory. I almost started listing single-point-of-failure weapons systems, but I’m not going to do the bad guys’ work for them. IYKYK. It isn’t just legacy weapons systems. We need to get emerging capabilities like Conventional Prompt Strike at Full Operational Capability sooner rather than later and then deployed on more platforms. Three Zumwalt DDGs carrying a dozen each won’t cut it. The Surface, Subsurface, and Aviation sides of the house all need long-range strike capability with standoff weapons. TLAM, CPS, JASSM, SLAM-ER…all of them. Three shifts. We’re not going to get 12,750+ TLAM. 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

The United States Army has awarded DRS Sustainment Systems (DRS SSI) a $44.98 million contract modification for the procurement of 20 Joint Assault Bridge (JAB) systems and associated spares, according to a contract notice released this week. The procurement is directly tied to one of the Army’s core operational requirements: ensuring armored formations can continue […]View the full article

The United States Navy, acting through Naval Air Systems Command, has awarded Collins Elbit Vision Systems LLC (CEVS) a $585 million contract for the production and delivery of Lot 18 and Lot 19 F-35 helmet-mounted display hardware, covering U.S. services, international program partners, and Foreign Military Sales customers. The contract, announced on 31 March, covers […]View the full article

U.S. arms maker Lockheed Martin opened a new Rapid Fielding Center designed to accelerate the development, testing, and prototype production of next-generation defense systems for U.S. government customers, the company said in a statement. The new center integrates engineering, prototyping, and manufacturing functions in a single modular environment. The facility is directly linked to the […]View the full article

The United States Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin Space a $1.36 billion contract modification to support missile and launch platform production for the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic weapon program. The March 31 award covers engineering development, systems integration, long-lead materials, testing, and specialized tooling required for continued production of the missile and its launch […]View the full article

The U.S. Department of State has approved a possible $340 million Foreign Military Sale to Japan for equipment and services supporting the country’s indigenous upgraded Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile (HVGP) capability, according to a notification released on March 25, 2026. The proposed package centers on test preparation, range support, transportation, and associated logistics services for […]View the full article

California-based Bulwark Dynamics said it has completed the maiden unmanned resupply demonstration of its Caravel autonomous landing vessel, a 15-foot platform designed for contested littoral logistics missions in regions such as the First Island Chain. The company disclosed the test this week in a public statement, saying the vessel moved from initial concept to open-water […]View the full article

A Russian military An-26 transport aircraft was crashed in occupied Crimea on Tuesday evening after communication with the aircraft was severed during a scheduled flight, according to statements from Russia’s Ministry of Defense and military-linked sources. The fate of the crew and passengers remains unknown, with search-and-rescue teams dispatched to the suspected crash area. The […]View the full article

The Lebanese Armed Forces received 39 VAB armored personnel carriers donated by France during a ceremony held Tuesday at the Port of Beirut, according to an official statement from the army. The handover took place on March 31 and was attended by French Minister Delegate for Veterans and Armed Forces Affairs Alice Rufo, Lebanese Chief […]View the full article

Azawad rebel forces said they carried out a drone and missile strike on a military compound in Anefis, in Mali’s Kidal region, on March 30, targeting positions used by the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) and Russian personnel from Africa Corps. The reported attack appears to be part of a continued escalation in northern Mali, where […]View the full article

Northrop Grumman on March 31 showcased the autonomous mission capabilities of its Lumberjack Group 3 uncrewed aircraft system during the United States Army 101st Airborne Division’s Operation Lethal Eagle exercise. According to NG, the Lumberjack drone demonstrated full autonomous mission control through the U.S. Army’s Maven Smart System, allowing Army personnel to test how the […]View the full article

The United States Army has conducted evaluation testing of a lightweight one-way attack drone known as the Hornet DE-2 in Germany. According to the 7th Army Training Command, the demonstration took place at its Grafenwoehr Training Area and focused on how artificial intelligence-enabled one-way attack systems can integrate with Army fires formations. In an official […]View the full article