Author: Michael

Here’s a fact that does not exactly inspire confidence, at least until we really dig into what this may or may not mean: China’s navy is now larger than the U.S. Navy.

That point is repeated so often that it has begun to stand in for analysis.

It shouldn’t.

Fleet size, taken on its own, tells us very little about the question that actually matters: whether the United States can bring effective naval power to bear in the Western Pacific when it needs to.
That is the issue on which any serious contingency in the region would turn.

In January, the Army unveiled a pre-prototype version of the M1E3 Abrams, which is expected to serve as the Army’s next-generation main battle tank.

While the demonstrator vehicle is not the final iteration of the M1E3, it offers a glimpse into what the Army wants with the M1E3 program.

With an unmanned turret, a new hybrid power system, and simplified controls for easier training, the new tank is lighter and more technologically advanced while retaining what works from previous Abrams tanks.

U.S.

Misawa Air Base in northern Japan is about to get a serious upgrade. The Pentagon is replacing the 36 F-16 Fighting Falcons currently flying out of the installation with 48 brand-new F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters—a permanent deployment of America’s most advanced tactical aircraft along the first island chain. The move comes as the Trump administration sharpens its Indo-Pacific posture against China, North Korea, and Russia, and as Japan’s own defense modernization accelerates. With JASDF F-35As already operating from Misawa, the U.S.

YouTuber and AI-slop extraordinaire Gorm The Old has released new videos that might soon be his greatest hits: Summaries of the most important events of World War I and World War II, animated entirely through clips from “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” and modified to take place across Europe and the Mediterranean.
Also Read: A Russian game studio made a ‘propaganda’ game about its worst failure
The result, while maybe not the most historically accurate use of uniforms and tactics, is still hilarious for both World War history buffs and “GTA: San Andreas” fans.

The U.S. Navy reports that the long-anticipated MQ-25 Stingray carrier-launched refueler drone has finally completed its first operational test flight, something of great consequence for air attack campaigns given the risks and problems associated with the Air Force’s fleet of large, non-stealthy fixed-wing tanker aircraft.

MQ-25: Fixed-Wing Tankers That Are a Game Changer

MQ-25. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The largest problem with large fixed-wing tankers is quite self-evident, as they simply operate with a survivability problem.

The $64,000.00 question: Will the goshdarn SR-72 Son of Blackbird “SOB” ever actually fly? Ever since its epic appearance in the opening scene of the 2022 box office blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick,” the SR-72 “Darkstar” AKA “SOB” has captured the imaginations of moviegoers, even though, as far as we officially know, the plane’s existence is purely apocryphal.

When the United States Air Force was looking for a fifth-generation air superiority fighter, the two competing planes were the YF-22 Raptor and the YF-23 Black Widow II. Ultimately, the Air Force chose the Raptor. Alas, we have a special place in our National Security Journal for the YF-23, as we have visited the only two of these warplanes ever built. We have included original photos of those visits in this article.

But the Black Widow was the preferred plane among the pilots–including the great Chuck Yeager–who argued the better bird was the YF-23.

Rheinmetall’s Mission Master Unmanned Gro

When the Human Genome Project was announced in 1990, its leaders specified three main goals. They sought to sequence the 3.2 billion letters in the human genome, or DNA; map other genomes important to studying biology; and improve DNA analysis. 
Realizing the challenge ahead of them, organizers set a timeline of 15 years to complete the project. Scientists from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and China didn’t need that long. The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium announced the project’s completion on April 14, 2003.

China’s upcoming H-20 stealth bomber does not compare with either the United States Cold War-era B-2 Spirit bomber — nor with the upcoming B-21 Raider, a sixth-generation bomber. This comes according to the Commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, General Stephen L. Davis. Though General Davis did concede that the Chinese are fielding increasingly sophisticated aircraft, he regards their designs as less sophisticated and therefore less capable.