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Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon is moving into production for the U.S.

The Pentagon is partnering with an organization focused on unmanned system competitions to run its Top Drone program, officials said this week, teeing up events that will pit remote pilots against each other under a core blueprint.
At a Technology Readiness and Experimentation (T-REX) event run by the Defense Department’s research and engineering directorate last year, pilots flew drones under simulated battlefield conditions in the inaugural Top Drone demonstration. 
Now, the R&E office is transferring the program to the U.S.

For all the warnings about an increasingly capable Chinese military, this may very well be an awkward moment for Beijing to have that military tested. General Secretary Xi Jinping has hollowed out much of the People’s Liberation Army’s senior command through purges and is now trying to rebuild it while preserving the appearance of uninterrupted strength. Several factors have allowed Xi to purge and rebuild on this scale, among them a temporary easing of external pressure. The United States unintentionally provided that comfort.

The U.S. Air Force and Boeing are making progress towards finalising the design of the F-47 sixth generation fighter, with the aircraft remaining on schedule for its first flight within the next two years. Air Force General Dale White, the service’s direct reporting programme manager for major acquisition programs, stated on September 15 that there were currently no significant obstacles threatening the target. “We are absolutely on [track] to be able to hit the mark of flying within this administration, we see no issues in front of us right now,” he stated.

The Israeli defence sector is integrating the Rafael SPICE 1000 precision-guided standoff weapon with its F-35I fifth generation fighters, providing the aircraft with a significantly longer-range air-to-surface strike capability. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced on September 15 that it was working with Lockheed Martin to integrate the 1,000-pound-class munition with the F-35 for the first time, in a project being conducted at Lockheed Martin facilities in the United States.

Newly released photographs leaked by U.S. Armed Forces personnel at facilities in the Middle East have provided a rare look at the extent of damage inflicted on American military facilities in the Middle East by Iranian missile and drone strikes during. The photographs, obtained exclusively by CBS News from serving U.S. military personnel who requested anonymity, show heavily damaged buildings, vehicles and aircraft at American positions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

U.S. Army physical training formation, Fort Lewis, Washington. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Keep the numbers in perspective. Pentagon officials estimated roughly 4,200 affected service members in 2025, a tiny fraction of the force, and treatment costs were small compared with the defense budget. That is not the hill to die on. The stronger question is consistency. The military treats chronic medical limits as readiness issues.

The U.S. Air Force is facing growing difficulties sustaining its aerial refuelling fleet, with its ability to sustain global air operations increasingly constrained by the age of its KC-135 Stratotankers and continuing problems with the newer KC-46A Pegasus. A recent assessment by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the condition and sustainment of the tanker fleet had deteriorated significantly, while the service’s transition from the KC-135 to the KC-46 has failed to proceed quickly enough to prevent a growing capability gap.

Footage released by Chinese state media has provided a rare look at the country’s underground military facilities, which form a vast network designed to protect strategic weapons, command structures, aircraft, ammunition and personnel from air and missile attacks. This subterranean infrastructure has a much broader role and represents an important component of China’s approach to surviving and continuing to fight through a major conflict.

China has for the first time provided a semi-official acknowledgment of its significant investments in expanding its silo-based intercontinental-range ballistic missile arsenal, after work on this was first observed in commercial satellite imagery in 2021. A new CCTV documentary marking the 99th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army features a PLA engineer discussing his work constructing what he describes as “houses for missiles” in remote mountains and deserts.