Author: Michael

The U.S. Army has released full-body photos of its first prototype of the M1E3 Abrams, a next generation variant of the Cold War era Abrams tank that first entered service in 1980. The new variant is by far the most revolutionary in the history of the program, and was developed after the Army abandoned plans for further modernisation of the M1A2 design.

Read More

U.S. Army and Lithuanian Army artillery units have conducted advanced interoperability training centred on employment of the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) at the Pabrade training area in eastern Lithuania, near NATO’s border with Belarus. The exercises focused on synchronised long-range precision fires, digital command and control procedures, and rapid mobility concepts, all of which are critical to the United States’ rotational force posture in the Baltic region, a former part of the Soviet Union now on the frontlines of hostilities in Europe.

Read More

China’s newly released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) proposal, unveiled after the Fourth Party Plenum in October 2025, not only marks Beijing’s quest to achieve the People’s Liberation Army’s  goal of building a so-called world-class military by 2049. As the last major planning cycle before the 2035 benchmark for “basically achieving full modernization,” the plan also reaffirms General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core priorities: operational efficiency, technological self-reliance, and the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute command.

Read More

Synopsis and Key Points: Former U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia Gordon Gray draws striking parallels between the current 2026 protests in Iran and the 2011 Arab Spring.

-Following the collapse of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Gray argues that Tehran faces a similar existential crisis driven by economic ruin and a loss of dignity. While the regime has survived five uprisings since 2009 due to the loyalty of the IRGC, Gray warns that “brittle” autocracies eventually shatter.

B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber Flying. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-With explicit U.S.

Read More

Next-generation battleships will provide additional capacity needed to carry multiple offensive weapons and command-and-control capabilities the service does not have with its current surface fleet, a senior Navy officer said Tuesday.
President Donald Trump announced in December that the Navy would design and develop a new class of battleships as part of the future so-called “Golden Fleet.

Read More

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared his team’s long-awaited new plans to outpace U.S. adversaries by rapidly advancing the military’s arsenal of AI, drones, hypersonics and other disruptive technologies — and drastically reshaping the Pentagon’s approaches for safely deploying them.
“In short, when it comes to our current threat environment, we are playing a dangerous game with potentially fatal consequences.

Read More

The crew of an Air Force special operations CV-22 Osprey survived a hard landing in New Mexico because of quick thinking by the pilots and crew when the plane suffered a major engine failure. A board investigating the mishap noted that the crew had just completed a safety stand down focused on the exact type of engine failure the crew suddenly faced during the flight.
The failure, the board found, was caused when a steel gear inside the plane’s transmission cracked in midflight, a failure that investigators linked to a dozen other Osprey mishaps in recent years.

Read More