For a Gold Star spouse, life after loss isn’t just learning how to live without the person they loved. It’s about figuring out how to carry the life they planned together, even when one half of that future is suddenly gone.
When U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton was killed in Iraq, his wife, Mia Gonzalez-Swinton, didn’t just lose her husband—she lost the future they had spent years imagining together.

North Korea displays ballistic missiles during a military parade. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), North Korea has recently completed construction of a new two-story uranium enrichment facility at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. A second site at Yongbyon, the Kangson enrichment facility, has recently had an expanded annex brought online. The director general of the IAEA described the findings as “serious concern.

USS Princeton (CG 59) transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Photo: U.S. Navy / DoD
An Iranian commercial container ship has been attacked near Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz early on Sunday morning. The attack killed one crew member and injured four others. Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted the governor of Qeshm Island said that an “enemy, terrorist, [has attacked] the Islamic Republic of Iran”. He added that he had not yet found out whether the attack had been carried out with a rocket or not.

Out of the aircraft. Into the sky.

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“Celebrate and commemorate the service of their

The last of the Air Force’s longest-deployed airplanes finally retired earlier this month, as the last in-service EC-130H Compass Call electronic warfare plane took its final flight over Arizona. For its final on-duty sortie, it shared the sky with the modern jet that is replacing it.
An EC-130 Compass Call from the 55th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, flew side by side with an EA-37B that will replace it at the 55th Electronic Combat Group on a “fini flight” for the older plane.

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A F-22 pilot had to think quickly and work out a plan to save his plane when a tribute flight went wrong. After losing a landing wheel, Capt. Michael Cloninger of the 90th Fighter Squadron had to find a way to safely land the jet. 
His successful belly landing of the F-22 earned him the Air Force’s top flight safety award. This week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach presented him with the 2025 Koren Kolligian Jr. Trophy.
The award is named for Air Force 1st Lt. Koren Kolligian Jr., who vanished in 1955 off the coast of California while flying a T-33.

When we think of deployments these days, we think of long separations and physical distance. We don’t think of a total lack of communication. Between video calls, internet messages, texts, emails, and care packages, communication can pretty much stay constant using the myriad technologies available to us.
Also Read: Italian women quietly enabled a new front for the Allies in World War II
But as we all know, that was not the case in decades past. Military spouses at one time got nothing: no forms of communication at all.

On September 11, 2001, two planes flew into the Twin Towers, one crashed in a Pennsylvania field, and another struck the Pentagon. In Lower Manhattan, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum operates and maintains the site where the towers fell. While the National Park Service established and operates the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Penn., the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial has remained separate under the Pentagon Memorial Fund.
Also Read: How the last survivor of 9/11 made it out alive after the Twin Towers fell
On Sept.

Francis P.

Hovering over Georgia this summer, National Guard helicopter crews flew from field to field searching for marijuana being grown illegally on private property.
The Georgia Guard calls part of the mission “probable cause generation,” a role in a decades-old counterdrug partnership with civilian law enforcement where military helicopters provide police an aerial platform to search for marijuana. This summer, officials say they took a different approach in how they conduct those searches.

U.S., Japanese, and South Korean commanders at the Freedom Edge 2026 opening ceremony. Photo: DoD/Wikimedia Commons
North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its eastern coast early Saturday morning, Seoul confirmed. The launch, which came as a five-day U.S.-South Korea-Japan joint military exercise concluded, was said to have been timed by Pyongyang to the minute.

Would you trust your body to handle 9G?

Chris Naylor, The National Interest
As the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks approaches, we should remember that the events of that day were far from unforeseeable.

Daniel Sullivan, Proceedings
The E-7 would provide operational advantages while helping solve problems specific to the Navy.

D.M.

Eve Sampson, Military Times
Devastating attacks by Iran on U.S.

Joseph Trevithick, The WarZone
A new report from Anthropic presents a stark picture of how malign actors are using commercially available U.S. AI services despite safeguards.

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The Korean People’s Army has fired several precision guided rockets from its eastern coast on September 12, with South Korean assessments indicating that the salvo included 600mm guided rockets from the KN-25 system. The rockets reportedly flew approximately 250 kilometres toward the waters east of the Korean Peninsula, demonstrating the Army’s ability to strike military bases, airfields, command centres and logistics infrastructure across much of South Korea.

The Russian Army has received a new batch of T-90M and T-72B3M main battle tanks, with the delivery announced by Uralvagonzavod on September 12. The producer confirmed that vehicles in the latest batch incorporate improved all-round protection derived from combat experience in the Ukrainian theatre, while elaborating that production volumes are increasing and that modifications are continuing, particularly in response to the threat posed by unmanned aerial vehicles.

A Pakistan Air Force pilot has commented on the current standing of the Chinese J-10C ‘4+ generation’ fighter in the country’s combat fleet, and how the position of the U.S.-supplied F-16, which at the beginning of the decade was the country’s most pale fighter type, has diminished considerably. “The J-10C leads the F-16 by a generation. In terms of radar, avionics, electronic warfare systems, and especially the weapon systems using PL-15 missiles, the F-16 is completely incomparable to it,” the pilot observed in a recent interview.

15 service personnel. 24 hours.

Russian state run United Aircraft Corporation CEO Vadim Badekha has claimed that the SU-57 fifth generation fighter its superiority over Western weapons systems every day, at a time when the aircraft’s performance on export markets has steadily improved. “The Su-57 is the only fifth-generation aircraft in the world that is actually seeing combat and demonstrating its superiority over the best foreign weapons systems every single day. Our friends are well aware of this. We can say with confidence that the F-35 is not being considered on the Indian market today,” he observed.

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The Pentagon is close to completely migrating all of the military’s classified systems away from Anthropic models and over to alternate frontier AI vendors, according to Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael.
“I’d say about 90% has transitioned. All of the Maven Smart Systems or Palantir work has been transitioned months ago, and we’re on track to get it done by the end of the month,” Michael told a small group of reporters on Thursday.

A soldier was awarded a Bronze Star for valor in the wake of a deadly Iranian drone strike on a U.S. Army operations center in Kuwait at the start of the war with Iran.
On March 1, Iran launched a series of retaliatory strikes on American bases around the Middle East during the opening hours of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. One of those attacks struck an Army position at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, killing six Army Reserve soldiers.  
The Army confirmed that it recognized a separate soldier who responded at the site of the strike, Sgt. 1st Class Oscar M. McGrew, for his actions that day.

The Army awarded two electronic warfare-related contracts with a combined value of nearly $196 million, officials said Thursday, marking the first production deals under a new rapid call for solutions program focused on technology meant to help soldiers fight in the electromagnetic spectrum. 
The service awarded Heaviside Industries Inc., a California-based startup focused on autonomous precision munitions, $99 million for its MOTH spectrum analyzer, according to an Army press release. The service also awarded Research Innovations Inc. $96.

We go inside the Ineos factory in Warwickshire

Rare footage has emerged on social media showing Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force J-20 fifth generation fighter aircraft conducting simulated air-to-air engagements within visual ranges. The footage has highlighted the high training levels of Chinese pilots, which have for years surpassed those in the United States and Russia in flight training hours, complementing the world leading capabilities of the aircraft themselves. China has dramatically expanded the scale and intensity of pilot training over the past decade, with assessments from former U.S.

The Army is weighing several changes to its uniform regulations, ranging from moving ranks to the collar for soldiers wearing everyday camouflage uniforms to possibly wearing baseball caps, and making them responsible for maintaining a high shine on their dress shoes.
Following a post on the popular Army subreddit that detailed possible changes to Army Regulation 670-1, the service confirmed that it “consistently reviews policy for improvement of standards with uniforms, grooming, and appearance.”
Maj.

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Don’t sleep on @ultrapouches.

Ukrainian drone attacks forced a major Russian oil refinery to suspend operations, according to industry sources.

The Ryazan oil refinery, located approximately 120 miles southwest of Moscow, was struck on Sunday, 6th September, by Ukrainian forces.

Shahed Drone from Ukraine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The closure marks the latest disruption to Russia’s energy infrastructure as part of an ongoing campaign by Ukraine.

Sunday’s Strikes
Ukraine struck targets across Russia on Sunday, including the oil refinery in Ryazan.

From sailing across the North Atlantic to skiin

This was the moment we fired the US Army’s M8

Donald Trump has conceded that the Iran war is unlikely to be over until after the November midterms.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, 9th September, en route to the Republican National Convention in Dallas, TX, the President said he believed the war would end “immediately after” the elections on Tuesday, 3rd November.

President Donald J. Trump speaks with members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Thursday, April 16, 2026, en route Joint Base Andrews for a trip to Las Vegas.

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) said this week that it has struck a pair of Russian gas plants in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets region, in what represents the longest-range strike by Ukraine since the start of the war.

Fox News described it as a strike at Russia’s “Arctic gas heartland.”

HIMARS platform liked used by Ukraine against Russian forces. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

According to the Kyiv Post, the drone strikes went more than 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) into Russia.

Yemeni Ansurullah Coalition forces have seized the strategic Yemeni port of Mocha, delivering a major setback to Saudi Arabian and allied U.S. forces, and bringing the coalition’s forces to within approximately 50 kilometres of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The development represents a dramatic shift in the security situation along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, and is expected to allow coalition forces to control one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.

The Houthis’ war with Saudi Arabia, which appeared to end with a truce in 2022, looks like it’s back on, with the Iran-allied militia recently launching a big attack on Saudi oil infrastructure.

And now, the Houthis have captured a major piece of territory in Yemen.

President Donald Trump meets with President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in the Oval Office.

Royal Marines stun Paras 5-0⚽️
Connor McAul

Ukraine struck eight infrastructure targets across Russia in sweeping attacks on Wednesday, 9th September.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the drone assaults targeted locations across Russia, ranging from the Arctic to the Caspian Sea.

Neptune Missile. Image Credit: Government of Ukraine.

In the process, Ukraine set a wartime record for the deepest strike inside its neighboring aggressor.

The usual familiar uniform of the Household Cav

🗣️ “People have just come to live with t

The Yak-130M light fighter attracted significant interest from African and Asian countries at the El Alamein International Airshow 2026 in Egypt, according to PJSC Yakovlev test pilot Alexander Guskov. “Here at the exhibition [in Egypt], the African continent is showing a great deal of interest. Asia is also very interested in it,” he stated. He added that the main focus of the aircraft’s modernisation was on improving its combat capabilities. The Yak-130 serves as both a lightweight fighter and as an advanced trainer, and is considered a direct competitor to the U.S.

The changes were chaotic at first. They were even terrifying for many. Then, they became more and more gradual. As time went on, many Americans went about their lives, barely registering the idea that the fabric of our society had taken a very deep, often dark turn.

CLEAR THE DARK | Military Motivation
✓ Milita

When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, millions of Americans instinctively thought it was a horrible accident. Then the second plane struck, and we realized grave coincidences are for the naïve.
Al-Qaida’s attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York, at the Pentagon, and on United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania initiated two decades of conflict. We fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and, when al-Qaida’s genie escaped the bottle, on the Arabian Peninsula, in Africa, and globally.
Whether those wars achieved durable political objectives is, at best, debatable.