Author: Michael

China’s J-20 Mighty Dragon Stealth Fighter, Explained in One Word: Fifteen years after a gray prototype lifted off in Chengdu and embarrassed a visiting American defense secretary, China’s first stealth fighter has become the most consequential military aircraft of its generation that has never fired a shot in anger. One word explains why.

One Word: Momentum

J-20 on the Tarmac. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

J-20 Fighter Image. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

If you had to break down the J-20 Mighty Dragon in a single word, it would be momentum.

Russia Says Ukraine Sent More Than 400 Drones Toward Moscow as Fires Spread Near the Capital: Russia says Ukraine sent more than 400 drones toward Moscow and the surrounding region overnight into July 20, wounding 10 people and setting buildings on fire. A Reuters report on the attack said fires and damage were reported in Domodedovo, south of the capital, while smoke rose over Podolsk.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the operation ran from about 8:30 p.m. until 5 a.m. and that 85 drones were destroyed while approaching the capital.

Funding appears to be an issue for the British Army’s plans to replace its 105mm artillery and 81mm mortar with a new 120mm mortar solution.

This video describes the military situation in

Somewhere, a hard drive is filling up with secrets no one can read yet, and its owner is waiting for the machine that opens them all at once. On March 30, 2026, that wait got shorter.Two independent research teams lowered the public estimates for breaking the encryption that secures banking, communications, and classified traffic. One showed that Shor’s algorithm, the quantum method for factoring the large numbers behind public-key encryption, could run at cryptographically relevant scale with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable neutral-atom qubits.

The secretary of defense’s November announcement on acquisition reform laid out an unprecedented vision across the entire acquisition spectrum to improve the delivery speed of critical capabilities to our warfighters. One foundational pillar is the implementation of a commercial first policy, which laid out several initiatives: leveraging existing but less often used acquisition authorities, maximizing non-traditional contract vehicles, and increasing the use of more flexible solicitations. Most critically, it drives a commercial solution-first paradigm.

The Russian Army has begun to field a new airborne electronic warfare variant of its Mi-8 transport helicopter, adapting the platform into a dedicated flying jammer that appears intended to disrupt Ukrainian long-range strike drones. The modified Mi-8 has been fitted with what appear to be multiple electronic warfare antennas designed to interfere with the satellite navigation and communications systems used by long-range unmanned aircraft.

Footage has confirmed the service entry of Z-20F maritime helicopter in the China Coast Guard, which represents a major landmark the modernisation of the service’s anti-submarine warfare capabilities. This represents part of the increasingly close integration between the China Coast Guard and the People’s Liberation Army, as while the Coast Guard is officially a civilian maritime law-enforcement organisation, it has operated under the command of the People’s Armed Police since 2018, giving it a closer institutional relationship with the armed forces.

The U.S. Department of War has been accused of withholding information regarding the true scale of American casualties sustained during the ongoing war with Iran, following a report by The New York Times citing U.S. officials who stated that dozens of injuries suffered in recent Iranian attacks were not publicly disclosed. The report has renewed scrutiny over Pentagon casualty reporting practices as American forces continue to face sustained missile and drone attacks across the Middle East.

More than a year ago, I speculated here about a connection between the forthcoming Boeing F-47, a modest technology demonstration program from the 1990s and a little-remembered pioneer of stealth.

A set of images of an unknown aircraft in an infra-red video, released this month, suggests I may have been on target. The video was taken by Youtube creators Project Fear, close to the secure flight-test facility known as Area 51. The footage has been vouched for by Anders Otteson, who brought us another classified aircraft in January.

NGAD F-47. Image Credit: Creative Commons.