Author: Michael

Summary and Key Points: In June 2025’s Operation Midnight Hammer, seven B-2 stealth bombers flew a 36-hour, 12,000-mile round trip from Missouri to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities — a feat only American airpower can manage.

-The mission hinged on a vast aerial-refueling bridge, and six F-16 pilots who cleared the bombers’ path earned the Distinguished Flying Cross after flying out “on fumes.”

-Experts warn the Air Force’s aging KC-135 tankers — most over 60 years old — must be replaced to sustain that reach.
The U.S.

Summary and Key Points: A U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran in April — the first U.S. fighter downed by ground fire in decades. Many experts suspect the weapon was a Chinese-made shoulder-fired missile cued by a Chinese radar built to detect American jets, though no hard evidence has emerged, and the attribution remains far from definitive.

-Beijing denies supplying Iran, even after Xi Jinping assured President Trump it would send none. The shootdown has complicated fragile U.S.-Iran peace talks.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy has commissioned a new Type 052D class destroyer, the Tongchuan, into service in the South China Sea. The warship is the 35th of its class to have become operational, which alongside ten Type 055 class destroyers provides the Navy with 45 destroyers of the latest generation.

It’s a trap!

This video describes the military situation in

Footage released on Chinese social media has shown a new type of next generation main battle tank closely related to the new Type 100 tank, which appears to be considerably larger and heavier. The Type 100 was unveiled in September 2025, and is the only next generation main battle tank currently in service. The appearance of the new larger vehicle has raised the possibility that China will field two next generation tank types in a complementary high-low combination before any other country can bring a single one into service.

Fast. Precise.

…money, action, inventory…

In spite of the rough lessons on the importance of mass in the Korean and Vietnam Wars in the second half of the 20th Century—and even the cold bucket of sand thrown in our face about what is required for even heavy imperial policing like we had in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of the first decade of this century—a large segment of the national security nomenklatura was content with boutique-levels of warstocks in our relatively shallow magazines.

The Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) on May 30 confirmed that consultations remain underway for the production of Su-57 fifth generation fighter aircraft in India, following multiple reports that these talks have already reached advanced stages. “Russia is proposing to establish production of Su-57E aircraft in India.

A new weapons configuration for the Su-30SM long range fighter unveiled on May 28 has for the first time included Iranian glide bombs, marking the first time Iranian weaponry is known to have been integrated onto a post-Cold War Russian fighter type. The aircraft were operated by the Armenian Air Force, and flew over Yerevan’s Republic Square as part of a major military parade. The munitions in question appear to be Yasin class precision guided glide bombs, which allow the fighters to engage targets at beyond visual ranges at a small fraction of the cost of guided missiles.