As America faces a housing and skilled labor crisis, students and mentors work to build better hands-on futures for themselves and their communities in a new documentary series called “Building Back America’s Trades”—and two of those skilled professionals are military veterans.
Also Read: This metal manufacturing jobs program wants to fill 122,000 openings
The series features Gordon Unrein, a Marine Corps veteran and longtime trades instructor at Columbus Technical College, alongside William Franks, a retired Air Force veteran and graduate of the program Gordon leads.

Aviationist
The Rapid Dragon program, now called Dragon Cart, transitioned to a Program of Record and will see cargo aircraft able to deploy palletized cruise missiles by 2027

Joseph Trevithick, The WarZone
Remotely triggered containerized drone swarms, potentially placed behind enemy lines, create a hard-to-defend-against threat from pretty much everywhere

GD
U.S.

Airforce Tech.

Todd South, A&SF
A combined Navy and Air Force program is seeking to build a smaller version of a ubiquitous air-to-air missile that could give advanced aircraft, such as the Collaborative…

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Talk of war in the Middle East abounds on social media, but not just about the one with Iran. A small, but significant, portion of this chatter relates to a conflict that has not begun. For more than a year now, pundits and politicians have warned of a potential clash between Israel and Turkey. Driving this hypothetical confrontation are a series of issues related to Syria, the Palestinian territories, and regional security as a whole. In December 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indirectly charged Ankara with wanting to reestablish Ottoman imperial rule over the Levant.

Editor’s Note: This article contains frank descriptions of battlefield conditions, including accounts of soldiers dying by suicide following injury. Western battlefield casualty evacuation doctrine is built on assumptions forged during the “Global War on Terror.” Central among these is the belief that the wounded can be rapidly moved from the point of injury to progressively higher levels of medical care within a defined timeframe, commonly referred to as the “golden hour.” The concept itself originated in civilian trauma medicine decades prior, generally attributed to Dr. R.

Images released on Chinese social media on May 11 have confirmed that the J-10C ‘4+ generation’ fighter has integrated the new DF-4/3 external weapons pylons, which are used to integrate the world’s longest ranged air-to-air missile type, the PL-17, onto J-16 fighters. This has led analysts to widely conclude that J-10C units will very likely also begin to be equipped with PL-17 missiles, which could transform how they are employed.

Footage released by the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has shown the destruction of launchers from an Israeli Iron Dome air defence system using first person view drones. maintenance crew were seen diving away from the drone seconds before impact, with the aircraft approaching unobserved until less than five seconds before it struck. The launchers were deployed at the Jal al-Alam military site in northern Israel. Analysts observing the footage have indicated that the drones may have integrated PG-7VL or PG-7-AT high-explosive anti-tank warheads.

She saw her son standing in formation and said, “Look, he’s wearing his little outfit.”
A drill sergeant overheard her, turned around, and said, “BDUs, ma’am. It’s not a little outfit. Welcome to the Army.” She wanted to vomit. Just sayin’.
Also Read: Your spouse just retired. Now your child wants to enlist. WTF.
How could a mother be prepared for that moment? Mom didn’t get an orientation packet at basic; no pamphlet was slipped under the door with proper terminologies and nomenclatures. One day, she’s the woman who packed his lunch and knew where everything was.

The U.S. Department of War has confirmed that the second Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, has again seen its delivery date significantly delayed, following months of speculation by analysts that such delays would occur. The warship, which began construction in 2011, is now confirmed to be scheduled for launch in March 2027, meaning it will take 16 years from construction to delivery.

L Todd Wood talks with Commander Salamander on the prospect of a long-term blockade in the Persian Gulf. We also talk Naval readiness.
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Today, Hezbollah released a video of an FPV drone attack on the Israeli Iron Dome system near the border with Lebanon.
The IDF has struggled to respond to the FPV drone threat, which uses special cables and manual operation of the drone to outwit the IDF’s advanced technologies for jamming and tracking drones, reported The Jerusalem Post.
Israeli military units operating in southern Lebanon have begun equipping vehicles with improvised anti-FPV drone protection systems, mirroring battlefield innovations widely used by Ukrainian forces against Russian drone attacks.

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The U.S. Army recovered the body of one of the two soldiers who went missing a week ago while taking part in an international training exercise in Morocco.
This afternoon, the Army’s Southern European Task Force, Africa announced that Moroccan search and rescue teams located the remains of 1st. Lt. Kendrick Lamont Key Jr., 27, of Richmond, Virginia. Key, an air defense artillery officer, served as a platoon leader with Charlie Battery, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command.
“Today, we mourn the loss of 1st Lt.

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Six F-16 fighter pilots were presented with the Distinguished Flying Cross last week for their role in Operation Midnight Hammer, last year’s strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities
Gen.Adrian Spain, head of Air Combat Command, presented the honors — the highest award for valor during flight — on May 5, although the Air Force did not announce the awards until Friday, May 8. The pilots were part of a massive force of 125 planes that took part in the June 21-22 strikes on three Iranian facilities.

The retirement ceremony is the easy part. The flag is folded, the speeches are kind, the family takes pictures, and the Air Force band plays a song that gets every fist in the room in the air for one last “GIVE ‘EM THE GUN!” Then you go home. And on Monday morning, for the first time in your adult life, nobody is waiting for you at 0600.

Russian developers appear to be testing a specialized blinding ammunition for shotguns, designed specifically to neutralize the optics of FPV drones at close range, according to a video recently circulating online.
According to the footage, the munition deploys a highly adhesive red compound upon firing. This payload rapidly creates a cloud of fine particulate matter that adheres to the drone’s camera lens. The substance then quickly hardens, rendering the optics completely opaque and blinding the drone operator.

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In late April it was confirmed that an Iranian Air Force F-5E third generation fighter had successfully conducted a bombing run against Camp Buehring in Kuwait, penetrating multi-layered U.S. and U.S.-supplied Kuwaiti air defences, and raising serious questions regarding the limitations of these defences. Subsequently in early May it was confirmed that the F-5’s heavier and longer ranged counterpart in the Iranian Air Force, the similarly obsolete F-4E, had been used to launch a successful penetration strike over Saudi Arabia.

The South Korean KF-21 Boramae fighter has received final combat suitability approval from the country’s defence ministry, clearing it for operational deployment as it is poised to replace the F-5 and F-16 as the new backbone of the country’s combat fleet. The approval process required the Defense Acquisition Program Administration to submit evaluation results to the Defense Ministry, and followed more than a decade of development and flight testing covering more than 13,000 conditions.

The UK could be taking a major step forward in

Following growing indications that North Korea has brought an enhanced variant of its first 155mm self-propelled howitzer, the Juche-107, into large scale production, speculation has grown that the program may have benefited from technology transfers from neighbouring China or Russia.

The U.S. Coast Guard has created a new Special Missions Command to oversee its “deployable specialised forces,” as the service’s units have played a central role in escalating efforts to target civilian shipping in international waters from late 2025. Coast Guard personnel can under U.S. law board vessels, carry out seizures, and make arrests, although they have little to legal basis to do so in international waters, which has made their operations highly controversial internationally.

Associate researcher at the Republic of China Institute for National Defense and Security Research Shu Hsiao-huang has assessed that the Republic of China Armed Forces can take a range of measures to compensate for an inability to procure fifth generation fighter aircraft. His assessment was made at a time when an increasingly wide technological disadvantage in the air domain is perceived to have placed security increasingly under threat.

Deputy CEO of Russia’s leading producer of air defence systems Almaz-Antey, Dmitry Savitsky, has claimed that the Russian Aerospace Forces have maintained global leaderships in the integration of air defence systems with flight controls. “These tasks, in the terms of ICAO and EUROCONTROL – the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation – are called ‘civil-military air traffic management coordination.’ I think we are definitely a world leader in this aspect of air traffic control – both technically and technologically,” he stated.

Following the commissioning of China’s first supercarrier the Fujian into service, in November 2025, and the warship’s subsequent considerable progress towards increasing its operational capabilities, the Chinese Ministry of National Defence has elaborated on key development goals for the country’s aircraft carrier program. Defence Ministry Spokesman Senior Colonel Jiang Bin was specificallyasked to comment on the Navy’s successful commissioning of all “five essential capabilities for aircraft carriers,” which the Fujian is the only warship outside the U.S.

An American military element will continue to oversee search and rescue efforts for two soldiers who disappeared near the Moroccan coast last weekend, the Army said. The effort to find them is continuing after a week, and after the large-scale African Lion 26 exercise wrapped up yesterday.
“Search and rescue operations remain ongoing. Search patterns continue to expand west into the Atlantic as ocean‑current modeling refines planning,” a spokesman for the Army’s Southern European Task Force, Africa said in a statement to Task & Purpose.

The Marine Corps is establishing a new rotational force for Alaska, part of a wider expansion into the Arctic and in preparation for cold-weather missions.
The Marine Corps announced “Campaign – Alaska” on Saturday, a new initiative that will give the service a permanent presence in the northernmost state and expand training in what Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, called “a region of growing strategic importance.” The largest part of the effort is the creation of Marine Rotational Force – Alaska.

Loving a service member is a unique kind of romance. Military spouses are often celebrated for our resilience. We are told we are strong, adaptable, and capable of weathering anything military life throws in our path. We PCS with efficiency and understanding, single parent through deployments and separations, rebuild communities while grieving the ones we say goodbye to every few years, and often hold it down alone while our service members focus on the mission. Mission first, family always.

Francis P.

Strategist

The most dangerous assumption in current contingency planning is that any war, even a regional war involving the United States, would be short

Edward Luttwak, UnHerd
Its heroic age is over

Kevin Eyer, CIMSEC
So, how many Small Surface Combatants does the Navy plan on fielding?

Marine Corps Compass Points
The missiles are flying in the Philippines at exercise Balikatan 2026. Japan fired its Type 88 anti-ship missile, and the US Army fired its HIMARS.

Bloomberg
The Pentagon’s top acquisition official has assumed oversight of the Navy’s next-generation stealth fighter

U.S. forces disabled two Iranian tankers, Sea Star III and Sevda, after the vessels attempted to breach the American naval blockade and enter an Iranian port.
According to the U.S. military, an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet launched from the USS George H.W. Bush conducted precision strikes on the smokestacks of both tankers, leaving them unable to proceed to Iran.(@Visegrad24)
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Royal Marines🗡️ 🆚 US Navy⚓️
The Roy

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Chief Designer of the J-10C ‘4+ generation’ fighter Li Jun, a senior researcher at the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, has confirmed plans to continue to enhance the aircraft’s capabilities, noting that it still has significant room for improvement, and will have a viable service and market life of at least two to three decades.

Main battle tanks delivered to the Russian Army have integrated new improved anti-drone ‘cage’ defences, which were first seen on theT-90M, T-80BVM, and T-72B3M tanks delivered coinciding with Victory Day celebrations on May 9. The vehicles were described by state defence conglomerate Rostec as incorporating lessons learned from combat experience and feedback from frontline personnel, with the gradual evolution of defences against attacks by drones and loitering munitions being one of the most noticeable changes to Russian tank configurations over the past four years.

Basic Training for most people joining the Brit

The Russian Army has received a new batch of T-90M, T-80BVM, and T-72B3M main battle tanks, which were delivered by the state defence conglomerate Rostec and are intended to support ongoing operations in the Ukrainian theatre. The vehicles were described by Rostec as incorporating lessons learned from combat experience and direct feedback from frontline personnel, with the capabilities of all three types having been gradually updated over the past four years.

The future of North Korea’s destroyer program intended to revolutionise the Korean People’s Liberation Army Navy’s combat capabilities has been elaborated on by the chairman of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, Kim Jong Un, after he travelled on the country’s first destroyer, the Choe Hyon, during operations in the Yellow Sea. The operations saw the warship operate approximately 220 kilometres from the country’s coast, demonstrating growing confidence in the ability to conduct medium range operations since the Choe Hyon was launched in April 2025.

North Korean state media has published footage showing the production of a new generation of self-propelled howitzer, the Juche-107, which is expected to significantly enhance the capabilities of frontline units. Production of the 155mm guns was inspected by multiple military and civilian leadership figures, including the chairman of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party Kim Jong Un, who personally revealed that the new howitzer has a range exceeding 60 kilometres.

An Iranian F-4E Phantom II fighter aircraft and a U.S. Air Force F-16CJ fighter engaged one another during an Iranian penetration strike over Saudi Arabia, which resulted in the F-4 making a hard landing in Iran, possibly after taking limited damage. The incident has highlighted the serious limitations of the U.S. and its strategic partners’ air defences, with the F-4 and lighter F-5 that form the backbone of the Iranian fighter fleet being obsolete Vietnam War era aircraft, but still proving to being able to evade some of the most capable Western air defences in the world.

The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment passed o