Jack Buckby, 19FortyFive New watchdog data shows F-35 availability at 50% and Air Force readiness sliding to 67%. “Fly, fix, fight” now meets hard reality.
Author: Michael
When Discipline Replaces Fear | Military Motiva
Some weapons win firefights, and then some weapons decide whether a firefight is even allowed to happen.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the MK19 Mod 3 automatic grenade launcher lived firmly in the second category. It didn’t need to be fired often to do its job. This beast’s presence, mounted high, visible, unapologetic, was more than enough to ease anxiety. Its presence rewrote behavior, redrew boundaries, and simplified decisions in wars defined by the fog.
This was not about precision or finesse. It was about controlling the battlespace in environments where space was a problem.
This video describes the military situation in
How does guard duty compare around the world?
2025 was a busy year for defense tech, but this year’s most-read Cogs of War pieces have a clear throughline. Readers were most interested in whether the United States can still build things that matter at scale. From drones and shipyards to software, data centers, quantum materials, and missile defense, our writers expressed frustration with systems and processes that slow production, reward hype, and turn industrial weakness into risk. Factories, labs, infrastructure, and the laws that govern them hold power.
Lattice Materials has secured an $18.5m award from the US Department of War for critical minerals germanium and silicon.
On Dec. 5, 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reached a significant milestone in his bid to build “Europe’s strongest conventional army”: Germany’s parliament passed a controversial bill requiring all German men to register for potential military service, which could become the first step toward reinstating a draft if volunteer numbers fall short. The breakthrough followed weeks of tense negotiations within Merz’s governing coalition, during which leading members accused one another of “torpedoing” the plan.
New video footage has for the first time confirmed that the first batch of J-20 fifth generation air superiority fighters integrating twin WS-15 turbofan engines has completed serial production, marking a major milestone in China’s most high profile fighter program. The first flight of a serial production aircraft with the engines reportedly took place on December 27.
A U.S. Department of War contract notice has confirmed that Boeing received a ceiling $8,577,700,000 award to produce F-15IA heavyweight fighter aircraft to equip the Israeli Air Force. The effort covers the design, integration, instrumentation, test, production, and delivery of the fighters, with the option for the production of 25 more. Israel is the first country to place an export order for the F-15 in over eight years, since Qatar procured 25 F-15QA fighters in 2017, with the aircraft having since been ordered only by the U.S. Air Force, which is acquiring the F-15EX variant.