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Electronic warfare patents fell 10.9% YoY to June 2026, while grant ratio hit a three-year high. Thales leads; C4ISR/weaponry grows.

Editor’s note: This is the third article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.

Earlier this spring, Claude’s developers found the cyber potential of Anthropic’s model, Mythos 5, hazardous enough to pump the brakes on model release, creating the Project Glasswing collaboration to give cyber defenders the upper hand through controlled access to the model. Despite these efforts, the U.S. government stepped in on June 12, 2026, and forced Anthropic to take down Mythos and its safeguarded form, Fable 5 — an action the company disputed, calling the trigger a narrow, nonuniversal jailbreak.

In January, Robson Henry died at the age of 66. Chances are, you have never heard of Henry. He was not famous, rich, or powerful. In many ways, Henry was no different from the thousands of young men and women who, at the age of 18, chose to serve by enlisting in the U.S. Army. Nor does the fact that he stayed in the Army for the next 26 years, serving multiple tours of duty in the Middle East, meaningfully distinguish him.

A Russian Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft has successfully launched two Russian cosmonauts and one American NASA astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS), highlighting the resilience of U.S.-Russian cooperation in human spaceflight even as relations between the two countries remain strained. The mission, which lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carried NASA astronaut Anil Menon alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. The spacecraft entered orbit before completing a fast-track rendezvous with the ISS approximately three hours later.

Ukrainian air defenses intercepted five ballistic missiles during another Russian bombardment overnight into Tuesday, July 14.

It was one of Ukraine’s most significant and successful series of interceptions in recent weeks and follows calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for more air defense interceptors from his Western allies.

Finnish artillery units fire Howitzers At Rovajärvi exercise area In northern Finland. Image Credit: NATO.

NATO Artillery Test. Image Credit: NATO.

When the U.S. launched a war in Iran in February, the Iranians responded not long after by closing off the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a major chokepoint for shipping traffic and also causing energy prices to rise.

Trump was heavily criticized for not seeming to realize that the closure of the Strait was a strong possibility, and as the war continued, it soon became clear that the U.S. side had no easy options to reopen it.

Donald Trump in 2023 Speaking. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore.

Donald Trump Giving a Speech. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore.

The Army spent almost half-a-billion dollars on a Texas ammunition factory to restock the military’s supply of 155 mm artillery shells, but the facility has yet to produce a single round in two years, a Pentagon watchdog found. The facility, in Mesquite, Texas, was brought online in 2024 after rounds of rapid-fire contracting to speed up the Army’s efforts to replenish artillery shells sent to Ukraine and cover increased training needs for U.S. forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has claimed that China privately intervened in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and warned Moscow not to even consider using nuclear weapons.

The shock revelation would be the clearest reported intervention by the Chinese into the Ukraine invasion yet and reveals a significant rift between the two allies.

Ukraine Cruise Missile 2026. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

As the current war in the Middle East continues to heat up, other parties are starting to get involved.

In a somewhat unusual episode, Saudi Arabia has exchanged fire with the Houthi rebels in Yemen, rekindling old fires that have been calm for several years now.

(August 1, 2025) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108) approaches the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) for a replenishment-at-sea in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. (Official U.S.