Westleigh Park in Havant hosts another chapter
Author: Michael
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on March 25 shot down a U.S. Navy F-18E/F carrier based fighter, with footage of the incident appearing to show a short range surface-to-air missile attack destroying the aircraft. The aircraft was shot down over Chabahar County and crashed in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. naval presence has been heavily concentrated. The Corps reported that this was the fourth U.S.
Somewhere in a defense ministry, someone is drafting a policy on whether to permit AI-assisted software development in defense procurement. The sentiment is understandable, but the policy is unfortunately unenforceable because the code is already there.In April 2025, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella told an audience that 20 to 30 percent of code in some Microsoft repositories is now AI-generated. The figure cannot be independently verified — as multiple analysts have observed, there is no reliable method to measure AI-generated code in a repository after the fact.
In 2019, Gen. David Berger, the 38th commandant of the Marine Corps, issued his Commandant’s Planning Guidance, which announced the service’s force planning initiative to prepare for conflict in the modern era. Berger identified wargaming as critical to the Marine Corps’ efforts and direction was issued to improve games in both quality and quantity. Twenty major wargames and several smaller games were executed in the first two years to support what became Force Design 2030.
Early in the ongoing war against Iran, the Trump administration and its ally, Israel, believed they could foment a popular uprising to topple the Iranian regime. Part of that plan involved arming Kurdish fighters to infiltrate Iran from their locations in Iraq.The idea had intuitive logic. Kurdish fighters have built a reputation as capable battlefield partners of the U.S. military in recent years, particularly in the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. Kurdish groups already maintain networks along the Iran–Iraq border and inside Iran.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force has deployed multiple J-10C fighter units to conduct high-intensity drills under complex electromagnetic conditions, highlighting their ability to integrate operations closely with both airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) systems such as the KJ-500, as well as with ground-based air defence and electronic warfare units.
What if the real battlefield of great-power competition is the global flow of money?The ability to mobilize and direct large pools of public and private capital across critical industries — defense, infrastructure, manufacturing, and technology — is becoming the defining instrument of contemporary economic statecraft. These industries operate largely in private balance sheets and global supply chains, meaning governments should increasingly align national priorities with private investment.As a result, a new toolkit of economic statecraft is emerging.
The launch of a U.S. Army MIM-104 Patriot long range air defence system in Bahrain has been identified as the cause of dozens of civilian casualties on March 9, with researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies confirming that the missile the caused the casualties was launched from a U.S. Army battery located approximately seven kilometres southwest of the Mahazza neighbourhood on Sitra island. Washington and the local government had initially attributed the casualties to an Iranian drone strike.
The Belarusian Armed Forces have conducted exercises across all country’s largest cities, which according to Chief of General Staff Pavel Muraveyko simulated a “complex situation…. taking into account the specifics of the processes taking place in Europe.” Reflecting prevailing security threats, he highlighted that exercises took place across “all administrative and economic centres of the country, with the involvement of all executive committees of the regions and districts of the Republic of Belarus.
The U.S. Armed Forces and the Israeli Air Force have significantly reduced deep penetration strikes over Iranian territory following the confirmed successful surface-to-air attack on an F-35 fifth generation fighter on March 19. The Iranian operation is widely assessed to have been carried out using an infrared guided surface-to-air missile, possibly from the Majid system, and damaged the F-35 sufficiently to cause shrapnel wounds to the pilot, as was later confirmed by the U.S. Air Force.