A Ukrainian wife with an alleged 4-month-old child goes berserk as bounty hunters snatch her husband off the street, likely to be sent to the front where death is almost certain as tens of thousands are being killed monthly. She may have no source of income at this point.
Force conscription is hard to watch in Ukraine.
This needs to end.
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The Pentagon is looking to put “low-collateral” kinetic drone interceptors at every U.S. installation as part of its attempt to bolster security around stateside military bases against unmanned aerial system threats, according to the director of the department’s counter-UAS task force.
Brig. Gen.

It starts with something normal. You make a comment about a PCS, a deployment, or TRICARE in a regular conversation. You’re not giving a speech. You’re not trying to educate anyone. You’re just talking like a human being.
And then you feel the shift. Military Spouse Q&A is coming.
There’s a half-second pause where the room decides what kind of moment this is. Faces get serious. Someone’s tone changes. Somebody leans in like you just made some sort of brave comment instead of, “Yeah, we’re moving again.

Senior officials at the Defense Department say the Pentagon’s new cyber force generation model will help the military boot out Chinese threats from America’s critical infrastructure networks.
A digital tactic known as “living off the land” has been a concern for U.S. officials in recent years as actors linked to China, such as Volt Typhoon, have infiltrated networks in the United States.
“The Chinese have executed a deliberate campaign in order to compromise U.S.

The days of having to file lawsuits against for-profit schools for useless online degrees are over. When it comes to distance learning, veterans now have access to programs that work with a real-life schedule, don’t waste their GI Bill months, and won’t surprise them with tuition gaps (which can lead to VA overpayment debt).
Most importantly, online schools can effectively prepare veterans for well-paying, challenging careers after leaving the military.

Air Combat Command has established a team that will help develop and validate enhanced tactics, techniques and procedures for protecting U.S. military installations from small unmanned aerial systems.
In October, the service selected the 319th Reconnaissance Wing located at Grand Forks Air Base in North Dakota to spearhead the new Point Defense Battle Lab — a collaboration hub that will contribute to the Air Force’s ongoing counter-sUAS efforts.

L Todd Wood talks with ‘Alex’ from Kyiv on the situation across the war front in Ukraine.
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China’s military strategy for future conflicts has evolved into “national total war,” a whole-of-nation mobilization effort aimed squarely at overcoming “the strong enemy” it sees in the United States. That’s the conclusion of a recent Pentagon report to Congress on China’s military developments as the country’s leaders eye Taiwan and other regional ambitions.

Halton House, the iconic Grade II listed buildi

…no one is hiding anything. just read it…

As we discussed in the opening of last Sunday’s Midrats Podcast, I really have no idea why we keep publishing significant national security related documents on Fridays…but it is what it is.
As it has been four days, there has already been more than a few opinion pieces written about it and to be blunt, a lot of it is a bunch of hot garbage.
Even though I think everyone should agree with me, and one day you will, I would ask—after reading the rest of this post—that you read the National Defense Strategy yourself.

In 2024, Philippe Lagassé and Justin Massie wrote, “Don’t Count on Us: Canada’s Military Unreadiness,” where they argued that Canada’s military was in a death spiral. In the midst of heightened tensions between Canada and the United States, we thought now would be a good time to revisit the question of Canada’s independent military readiness.

When Pfc. Vallen Grayson received his Eagle, Globe, and Anchor insignia, it marked the fulfillment of a long effort to shed nearly 90 pounds so he could earn the chance to be a Marine.
“It felt unreal,” Grayson told Task & Purpose on Tuesday. “It felt like all the work that I had put in was finally starting to pay off, and I finally had something to hold onto for all the work that I had put in.”
Grayson said he always wanted to be a Marine, and after one of his friends enlisted, he encouraged Grayson to join too. But he weighed 290 pounds at the time.

Hit period drama series Bridgerton has used the

Jack Wilmer was the Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of War from 2019-2020 and is currently CEO of SIXGEN. Retired Lt. Gen. Charlie Moore served as Deputy Commander of USCYBERCOM from 2020-2022.
Last year, in a crowded conference hall in the Las Vegas desert, teams of caffeine-fueled hackers surrounded by laptops and radio gear attacked and took control of a simulated government satellite. Operators were locked out as participants seized functional control and redirected payload behavior in real time. 
Fortunately, the 2025 hack was a friendly demonstration.

The modern American drinker lives in a strange little funhouse. On one hand, there’s the glossy, aspirational cocktail culture, all smoked ice cubes and bitters with origin stories. On the other is the hangxiety, the 3 a.m. doom scroll, the creeping suspicion that your “one or two” has a tendency to breed in the dark.
Related: ​​This is what happened when the Navy banned alcohol on its ships
America loves a clean redemption arc. Hit rock bottom, swear off the booze, join a tribe, and never touch the stuff again.

Ever wondered about military ranks and what they mean? From chevrons to bars, diamonds to arcs, here’s a definitive guide.
Related: The inside joke names soldiers have for different unit patches
Army Ranks from Private to General
Army Gen. John Pershing’s rank came with some perks, such as awarding Sgt. Stubby a medal. (Picryl)
There are enlisted folks, warrant officers and officers in the U.S. Army. The top dog is the general of the Armies. However, only three soldiers have ever held that rank: George Washington, John J. Pershing, and Ulysses S. Grant.

This video describes the military situation in

Seven Japanese-American soldiers who were once deemed “enemy aliens” but fought for the Army during World War II were posthumously commissioned as Army officers. 
Prior to the war, all seven had been on track to be commissioned as Army officers at the University of Hawaii, but were expelled from the program as the war began. All seven — Daniel Betsui, Jenhatsu Chinen, Robert Murata, Grover Nagaji, Akio Nishikawa, Hiroichi Tomita, and Howard Urabe — died in combat in 1944 and 1945 while fighting as enlisted soldiers in Europe.

The Italian Army has taken delivery of its first four Lynx KF-41 IFVs, marking the beginning of the Army Armoured Combat Systems programme.

Image by Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

AFP has been vocal about the threat to American aircraft and other military high-value systems located on domestic installations and abroad.

In 2024, Pvt. Spencer Howe considered quitting figure skating because of a serious right shoulder injury.
Howe didn’t want to give up something he loved passionately, but the pain had become nearly unbearable. His outlook changed after he underwent surgery in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a roommate told him about the Army’s World Class Athlete Program.

Robbin Laird, DEFENSE.

Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense

Jeremiah Gertler, RealClearDefense
In preparing its

Global Def.
U.S.

Akhsan Erido Elezhar, The Defense Post
Dubbed SM-39 Razor, the aircraft features a low-observable triple-fuselage layout, a configuration intended to help limit wave drag during sustained…

Ukraine has claimed to have inflicted a total of 819,737 successful drone strikes in 2025, eliminating various Russian military assets.

China’s Ministry of National Defense said over the weekend that it was investigating two top military officials.

This video describes the military situation in

Modern synthetic biology and AI represent both medicine’s greatest breakthrough and warfare’s most terrifying evolution. In this new landscape, where biological weapons can be designed faster than traditional defenses can be developed, recent government decisions risk abandoning our only countermeasure that can keep up: messenger ribonucleic acid, better known by its acronym, mRNA.Known most famously for the prominent role it played in vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), mRNA is a medical platform that can generate new defenses in days rather than years.

Urban warfare is often invoked as an alibi: dense terrain, an embedded enemy, human shields, imperfect intelligence. These conditions are real but they do not, on their own, explain outcomes. Every modern military that has fought in cities has faced uncertainty, civilian presence, and adversaries who exploit it. What distinguishes campaigns is not whether these problems exist, but how commanders choose to respond to them, whose risk is prioritized, and what forms of harm are treated as acceptable.

The Chinese firm Alibaba’s Qwen-3 on January 25 was confirmed to have become one of the world’s first general-purpose artificial intelligence models to be uploaded and operated in orbit, marking a major milestone in China’s emerging leadership in space-based computing sector. Chinese aerospace start-up Adaspace Technology deployed Qwen-3 to a space computing centre in orbit, where it executed multiple inference tasks in November.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy deployed four warships to sail from between Okinawa Island and Miyako Island into the Pacific Ocean, according to data from the Japan Ministry of Defence’s Joint Staff Office. The Chinese ships transited from January 27-28, including the Type 052C class air defence destroyer Xi’an and the Type 052D class destroyer Zibo, accompanied by a Type 054A frigate and a Type 903A comprehensive supply ship. The Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force deployed a Sugashima class minesweeper and P-1 and P-3 maritime patrol aircraft to monitor the ships.

The United States Air Force has deployed at least 42 heavy transport aircraft to lift supplies into the Middle East during the eight days between January 18 and January 26. Data compiled from publicly available flight trackers showing that 41 C-17A Globemaster III aircraft and one C-5M Super Galaxy landed at regional facilities transferring supplies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Bases in Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, which have for decades been central hubs of the Western military presence in the region, all received supplies.

The first publicly released close-up photo of the PL-17 ultra-long-range air-to-air missile has indicated it has a diameter of approximately 305 mm and a length of about 5.8 meters, following a decade of speculation regarding its actual size and capabilities. The first images of the PL-17 emerged in 2016, with images having shown it being tested on a J-16 fighter. Subsequently in December 2023 images for the first time showed J-16 fighters in active service carrying the missiles, alongside the long range PL-15, medium range PL-12 and short range PL-10 missiles.

The U.S. Army will deploy an Abrams-equipped detachment as part of its normal rotational forces in Romania, marking a significant strengthening of the armoured warfare capabilities in the country bordering the current war zone in Ukraine. Romanian Chief of the Defence Staff Gheorghita Vlad referred to this as an enhancement of the “quality and lethality” of U.S. rotational forces in the country, highlighting that there will be be no significant changes to the number of U.S. Army personnel in the country.

Promotion ceremonies have their own ecosystem. There’s the script, the seating chart, the obligatory “congratulations to your spouse,” and sometimes gifts. Then there’s the part that matters: the spouse introductions. Those tiny conversational exchanges that tell you exactly what lane someone’s in before you’ve even found the bathrooms.
Related: 4 Ways to fake it til you make it at your first change of command ceremonyThis is a gentle roast. Affectionate. Because the goal is not to judge anybody.

In the aftermath of the Pentagon’s large-scale rollout of the new GenAI.mil platform, the Army has no plans to deactivate its highly specialized CamoGPT machine learning offering or cut off personnel’s access to the other preexisting, purpose-built frontier AI models.
“The U.S. Army remains committed to advancing artificial intelligence capabilities through rigorous research and development,” a spokesperson for the service told DefenseScoop this week.

There’s just something about two people in a fistfight that’s irresistible to watch. We can’t look away. There’s something about the sound of a sliding barstool, the rising tide of voices shouting, and the sudden rush of action in one spot that is just pure entertainment.
Related: A War of 1812 veteran saw the Battle of Gettysburg from his porch, then joined it
On a battlefield, however, there’s a lot of fighting going on. And some of that might be hand-to-hand. It’s happened a lot thorughout military history.

The Space Force has its eyes set on selecting which vendors will be part of the first Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) cohort before the end of this fiscal year.
After wrapping up a successful pilot effort last year, the service’s Commercial Space Office is now entering the program’s next phase aimed at delivering a CASR minimal viable capability, Director Col. Tim Trimailo told reporters Thursday.

The crew of HMS Tamar train hard and stay ready

The Navy is betting on one of the only certainties in future warfare: it is unpredictable. And the service’s top officer offered new details this week on how tech will fit into that volatility.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle officially announced Tuesday the Navy’s latest approach to investing in and then deploying capabilities for conflict called “hedge strategy,” a concept he previewed earlier this month.

A Tennessee man is facing prison time for hacking into a Department of Veterans Affairs health platform, accessing a Marine Corps veteran’s personal health information, and posting it on an Instagram feed he named “@hackedthegovernment,” federal officials said.
Nicholas Moore, 24, pleaded guilty Jan. 16 in federal court to hacking the VA-run My HealtheVet site, Department of Justice officials announced this week.

US president Donald Trump has been praised by N

The new US National Defense Strategy has outlined the approach of the Trump administration as it seeks to reshape existing norms.

In the world of special operations, the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service (SAS) is as good as they come. They are the British government’s elite counterterrorism unit, specializing in rescuing hostages and covert reconnaissance. The SAS generally takes the fight to unsuspecting bad guys all over the world.
Formed during World War II, they were the blueprint for the U.S. Army Delta Force, Israel’s Sayeret Matkal, and almost any other special operations force the world over.

The US Army has granted Salesforce a 10-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract capped at $5.6bn.

…the 20th century’s yesterday…you can care all you want…everybody does, yeah, that’s okay

Public Domain

If you’ve been looking for a more substantial reason for the latest news coming from Japan, you’re thinking right.
The last month or so since the new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, took office, you’re hearing a lot of superficial symptoms of a larger issue.

The American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Linco

Last year, a picture shared on social media showed a man entangled in concertina wire on the top of a fence after attempting to break out of a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Now, he has been sentenced to an extra nine months behind bars, according to the Army.
Zachary Harader received the extra time per a plea agreement after being convicted on Jan. 12 of one specification of attempted escape under Article 130 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ, Army spokeswoman Heather J. Hagan said on Tuesday. Stars and Stripes first reported on Harader’s sentence.