As the elevator doors closed, Willette Alston’s heart broke.
In September 1993, Alston handed her 13-month-old son, William, to her father and prepared to enter rehabilitation for a crack cocaine addiction. As they said their goodbyes, the toddler reached out with both arms for his mother and pleaded in his limited vocabulary for them not to go.
As she turned her back, Alston cried. So many years later, she still can hear the sounds of her son’s screams through the elevator doors.
Also Read: A Marine Corps veteran once weighed 424 pounds.

Christopher Stone, RealClearDefense
Next-Gen OPIR Is More Than a Bridge—It’s the Foundation of Missile Warning’s Future

Nick Mordowanec, Military.

E. Gossrow, Naval News
General Dynamics Electric Boat has shared a photo showing the first completed Virginia Payload Module (VPM) for the U.S.

Michael Peck, Navy Times
China is devoting enormous efforts — from submarines to ballistic missiles — to destroy America’s aircraft carriers

Global Defense News
MARTAC partnered with SŌLACE Boats to add production capacity for 100 Devil Ray unmanned surface vessels per year

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Washington is preparing for the right war, but in the wrong theater. For years, U.S. strategic thinking has centered on the Indo‑Pacific: the militarized atolls of the South China Sea, China’s churning naval shipyards, and the tense waters of the Taiwan Strait. Yet the next phase of competition will likely play out on the Eurasian landmass, contested through pipelines, swing states, and shifting alignments along routes that overlap with the ancient Silk Road. This is where China is building alternative trade and energy corridors beyond the immediate reach of U.S. military power.

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Russian state defence conglomerate Rostec has taken the El Alamein International Airshow in Egypt as an opportunity to showcase the extreme range of its Su-57 fifth generation fighter, flying the aircraft to the Northeast African country on internal fuel, and subsequently operating it at the airshow without the need to refuel first. “The Russian fifth generation Su-57E fighter demonstrated exceptional flight range with internal fuel tanks. The Su-57E flew to the El Alamein International Airshow in Egypt using internal fuel tanks located inside the cargo bay.

Footage released on Chinese social media has for the first time shown the sixth generation fighter under development by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation in flight testing with a radar, as indicated by the colouring of its randome. Fighters integrating radars in testing have consistently used light grey randomes, with the new colour indicating that the program has progressed to the next stage of flight testing.

U.S. Africa Command recently set up its own Defense Economics Office to explore modern policy reforms, new ways to disrupt adversaries’ revenue streams and other money-related activities that can generate concrete security impacts, as it pivots to a significantly smaller physical presence across the African continent.
“A lot of times just the economic investment that we have done [with our African partners] is what provides us the ability to gain access or to be able to bring in ships and fueling, [and] allows us to be able to have that communication,” Africom commander Gen.

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BFBS Forces News puts SIG Sauer&

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Why being ex-military doesn’t automatical

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Space Force is making headway on two efforts the service says will modernize how the Defense Department tracks airborne and ground-based moving targets.
The first Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (SB-AMTI) prototypes will be launched into low-Earth orbit before the end of September, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced Monday. The upcoming mission comes after the Space Force tapped SpaceX in May to field an operational constellation by 2028.
“We are applying the same approach to proliferating constellations.

The year 2026 has brought sweeping change to Latin America’s relationship with the United States. Following a major military buildup in the Caribbean and strikes against vessels suspected of drug trafficking, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3 — unilaterally deposing the country’s leader and making new oil deals with the post-Maduro government.

Doug DeMaio says he still hasn’t out-processed from the base where he was once the commanding officer. In August 2022, DeMaio says he was abruptly relieved as the commander of the Alabama Air National Guard’s 187th Fighter Wing, and within three hours left the Guard’s Dannelly Field in Montgomery.
He’s been barred from going back since.
And still, he says, he doesn’t know why he was fired.
“I have no idea why I was removed,” DeMaio told Task & Purpose. “No clue.

The war against Iran is putting new strains on U.S. military readiness by consuming munitions and missile defense interceptors, as well as through extended deployments, sustained operational demands, and the diversion of forces and attention from other theaters.

There’s a rifle race going on right now – P

Nokia Defense and UK-based C3IA have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly advance digital communications capabilities for the UK defence sector.

Rheinmetall UK and Mercedes-Benz UK have formalised their partnership as they plan to support the British Army’s future tactical mobility requirements under the Land Mobility Programme.

Meet the HMT 600 ‘Coyote’🦊
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The U.S. Air Force is currently considering resuming procurements of the F-16 in Fiscal Year 2027, which would mark the end of a 22 year pause in procurements in the expectation that the F-35A would replace the Cold War era fighter type. A proposed new variant designated the F-16G is derived from the latest F-16 Block 70 standard, but incorporates a number of additional systems intended to provide substantially greater range, sensor coverage and operational flexibility than earlier F-16C/D fighters.

Guns and ammo: SIG Sauer’s latest offerin

Many polls over the last year and a half show how unpopular President Donald Trump is and how low his approval rating has fallen.

One recent poll asks a unique question: Whether voters agree with certain words as they’re applied to the president.

President Donald J. Trump speaks with members of the media alongside outgoing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, Friday, August 21, 2026, en route to South Carolina. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

President Donald J.

Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney loved to hunt while growing up on a ranch in a small town in Oregon. His father, who served in the Marine Corps during World War II, taught his son how to fire a rifle. The younger Mawhinney paid attention.
Mawhinney followed his father in the military, choosing the Marines over the Navy only because they allowed him to delay his entry so he wouldn’t miss deer hunting season. Mawhinney’s original plan was to become a military pilot, but he failed the flight qualification test because of heavy drinking the previous night.

K. Livingstone, DNews
The possibility of an adversary detonating a nuclear weapon in space to disrupt U.S.

NextGenDef.

Mike Garcia, RealClearDefense
America does not lack advanced weapons. We lack enough of them.

UK Defence Journ.

DS
“We have to assume from now on that our formations will be hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum, and tracked in real time”

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This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Brig. Gen. Steven P. Carpenter, the commanding general of Multi-Domain Command – Europe, the U.S. Army’s first multi-domain operations command, headquartered at Clay Kaserne in Mainz-Kastel, Germany. Multi-Domain Command – Europe serves as the premier multi-domain fires headquarters for U.S. Army Europe and Africa. We spoke with Brig. Gen.

On Aug. 24, 2026, the Trump administration transmitted the text of the U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement to Congress. By doing so, the administration triggered the 90-day congressional review process described in the Atomic Energy Act and relaunched a debate about the right approach to international nuclear commerce.The United States and Saudi Arabia jointly announced a deal in Nov. 2025 and signed the final text in July 2026.

China has warned that the United States’ newly acknowledged deployment of weapons in orbit could trigger a global arms race, following Washington’s first public confirmation that it possesses operational “on-orbit space control weapons.” The disclosure by U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on September 14 represented the most direct public acknowledgement by a senior American official that the United States has placed weapons in space. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun responded by calling on Washington to halt its military expansion in outer space. “We urge the U.S.

Russian drone operators are taping $2 compasses to FPV drones to navigate without guidance systems.
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The Pentagon continues to face concerns over whether the U.S. defence industrial base has sufficient capacity to simultaneously develop and produce the U.S. Air Force’s F-47 and the U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX sixth generation fighters. Although the F-47 program is progressing towards a planned first flight by 2028, the Navy’s F/A-XX program has only recently been revived after facing an effective suspension, with Air Force’s Director of Critical Major Weapon Systems General Dale R. White having warned that limitations in manpower and production capacity remain significant constraints.

The U.S. Air Force is considering purchasing newly built F-16 fighters to address an increasingly severe shortage of fighter aircraft, as the service develops its proposed fiscal 2028 budget and accompanying five-year Future Years Defense Program. This would represent the first procurement of new F-16s by the U.S. Air Force in more than two decades, after procurements ended in 2005. Lockheed Martin currently manufactures F-16 Block 70 aircraft for international customers, which is expected to serve as the basis for the newly proposed F-16G variant.

The Korean People’s Army is expanding and upgrading facilities used to train troops for urban warfare, according to new satellite imagery. The construction is taking place at major military training areas near Pyongyang and in Unsan County, including facilities previously associated with the Korean People’s Army’s special operations forces.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki has called for an emergency meeting after Russian drones closed two of the country’s airports on the morning of Wednesday, 16th September.

Polish fighter jets were scrambled, and operations were temporarily halted at Lublin Airport and Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport after Russian drones attacked Ukrainian targets close to the country’s border.

MiG-29 Fighter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

MiG-29 National Security Journal Photo Taken in July, 2025.

Meet LCpl Ryan Mountjoy, a serving PTI who now

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Twelv

Gen. Christopher LaNeve told an audience of soldiers on Tuesday that the decision to end a specialized unit’s drone mission and return it to an airborne infantry status predated his tenure as the service’s top uniformed officer, contradicting weeks-old reporting amid a recent chorus of Army officials defending the move. 
Last fall, the Army tasked an infantry battalion from the 173rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team to function as a dedicated drone unit.

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A global energy crisis is brewing because of the Iran war.

The energy implications of the conflict, which has been waging for well over six months, have long been clear.

Generic Oil Tanker Image. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Iran’s proximity to, and subsequent control of, the Strait of Hormuz has been well documented, as have the ramifications for global energy prices.

However, as conflict drags on, so too have its implications, and concerns are once again rising over energy prices as a new front opens up.

The search is underway to find a replacement fo

The Air Force has spent the last year building up a new system to defend bases from drones and missiles, testing everything from artificial intelligence-powered detection systems to electronic warfare and kinetic weapons designed to physically knock drones out of the sky. 
Now the service intends to dedicate airmen whose primary responsibility will be defending bases against aerial attacks.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen.

Yemen’s Houthis have gone on the offensiv

The Air Force’s portfolio acquisition executive responsible for modernizing command and control plans to create a new contract vehicle for the DAF Battle Network and other capabilities.
The upcoming multi-award indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract vehicle will be called Megatron, according to Brig. Gen. Joshua Williams, PAE for command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM).