Author: Michael

WASHINGTON, D.C. – APRIL 22, 2018: A metal plaque on the facade of the Department of Veterans Affairs building in Washington, D.C., features a quotation by Abraham Lincoln. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images).

Sometimes a story seems too good to be true — and not actually in a good way. Like the possibility of means-testing disability payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs based on income, which would mean that the more money one earns at work, the less one would receive based on a service-related disability.

Slovakian MoD screencap

In a move bound to raise hackles in Moscow, four Ukrainian pilots climbed into MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets in Slovakia and flew them home to join their own air force, the Slovakian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced Thursday.
The Fulcrums were the first tranche from a total of 13 promised last week by Slovakia to Ukraine, which has had dire need of combat aircraft since the full-scale Russian invasion began.

In the official video above, the pilots are shown walking to the jets and taking off.

In the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit wants to make sure that it’s well-positioned to react quickly and help its partners in industry who might be in jeopardy if additional financial institutions go belly up, according to the leader of DIU.
The SVB bank failure, one of the largest in U.S. history, happened after worried depositors started withdrawing their uninsured deposits in large quantities, among other contributing factors.

South Korea’s state arms procurement agency hopes to sign a contract for the serial production of the domestically-made KF-21 Boramae fighter next year, officials said on Thursday, in what could be a key milestone for the South Korean state arms procurement agency aircraft acquisition project.
During a National Assembly defense committee session, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration briefed lawyers on the development plan, including its push to complete an “interim” combat-readiness test of the aircraft in May. of this year.

Blipshift/The War Zone

Nobody, and I mean nobody, saw the Chinese Spy Balloon story, or the subsequent great balloon hunt over North American airspace that saw the downing of three additional objects, coming like The War Zone and our readers did. To commemorate this absolutely bizarre series of events, we and our Blipshift partners began our own hunt for a t-shirt design that would truly get your game on. The result pays homage both to recent events and to what was for many of us a favorite game of the Nintendo Entertainment System era — Duck Hunt.

Several vintage Soviet-made T-54 MBTs were reportedly discovered at a train station in the Russian Far East on March 22, 2023, as seen in a video shared on Russian social networks Telegram and VK. It has been reported that Moscow intends to send T-54 and T-55 tanks to the front in order to replace the contemporary MBTs that have been lost or damaged.

The United States and its partners are stepping up their support for the Ukrainian military — including the Pentagon’s new plan to speed up the delivery of Abrams main battle tanks and the decision by Poland and Slovakia to provide fighter jets — reflecting alarm over recent developments: Russians and the Kremlin’s ever-closer alliances with China and Iran.
While Vice President Biden has promised to stand behind Kyiv “for as long as it takes,” Ukrainian leaders, Western diplomats, and analysts all say that aid is taking too long to arrive.

Industries face the enduring problem of providing the optimal degree of versatility for soldiers in the dismounted battlespace. Their attempts to balance capability with size, weight, power and cost becomes an absurd juggling act at times.
Yet, in the age of digital warfare, balancing these considerations is essential to enable the modern soldier to work in an environment where access to large bandwidths cannot be guaranteed. The seamless sharing of actionable data is a prized capability that gives military units the competitive edge.

Austria’s defence spending increases need to be more significant to allow major modernisation as its equipment ages, amid increasing pressures in Europe to increase expenditure following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A GlobalData report on the “Austrian Defense Market 2023-2028” outlines how Austria has announced its plans to increase its defence spending in the coming years, focusing on upgrading its ageing equipment and investing in new systems. The country’s defence budget is set to rise from $3.4bn in 2023 to $5.8bn by 2028, an increase of more than 70%.

What exactly happened between a Russian Su-27 and an American MQ-9 Reaper over the Black Sea last week? Here’s what you need to know.
The post Reaper Madness: What really happened between Russian fighters and a US drone over the Black Sea first appeared on Sandboxx.
The post Reaper Madness: What really happened between Russian fighters and a US drone over the Black Sea appeared first on Sandboxx.