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A long essay today from the publication War on the Rocks posits that Russia will now expand the size of its force to gain back the initiative in its thus-far failed war in Ukraine.

The authors point out that Moscow’s military expanded severalfold after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, leading the reader to believe that this model of force expansion can be repeated.

T-14 Armata. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Main battle tank T-14 object 148 on heavy unified tracked platform Armata. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Russian forces, taking advantage of a dearth of Ukrainian air defense missiles, unleashed a large drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early Tuesday morning. The attack set large fires in two of Kyiv’s districts.

The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said early on Tuesday that air defense units were attempting to shoot down the attacks. He added that fires had broken out in the Holosiivskyi district of the city after the strikes.

Putin Warns Of Massive Escalation – But What Will It Be? Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to Ukraine’s intensifying long-range strike campaign by warning that his military will respond in a way that is several times more powerful than Kyiv’s most recent strikes.

Per the TASS news agency, President Putin made the remarks during a speech after attending a military exhibition in Moscow on July 13. During the visit, the Russian leader promised that Ukraine will “feel increasingly greater blows in the future.”

Putin June 2026 Kremlin Photo Handout.

Few technology developments have turned the military’s acquisition and deployment requirements upside down more than the advent of cheap drones.
Defense officials have made major strides in deploying unmanned air and sea craft over the past decade. The rescue of downed helicopter pilots in the Strait of Hormuz by an autonomous Corsair maritime vessel earlier this month illustrated how years of investment appear to be paying off.

The latest round of awards for the U.S. military’s Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program has a total value exceeding half a billion dollars, including more than $70 million for software capabilities, according to a list of deals announced Tuesday.
Those totals do not include classified procurements, a Defense Department press release noted.

On July 7-8, NATO held its 36th official summit in Ankara, Turkey. There were several consequential topics to discuss at this year’s meeting, chief among them the wars in Ukraine and Iran and the uncertain future of European defense and security. We asked five experts to assess the outcomes of the summit for the various parties involved.Liviu HorovitzAssociate Researcher at German Institute for Security and International AffairsThe key takeaway from Ankara is that even President Donald Trump is struggling to escape NATO’s strategic logic.

The Space Development Agency has tapped L3Harris and Sierra Space to build 36 additional missile warning and tracking satellites in support of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome architecture.
Under the Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 (AMDT3) program, the companies will each develop 18 platforms for the Tranche 3 tracking layer of the agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), SDA announced Monday. L3Harris and Sierra Space received $955 million and $798 million, respectively — making the deals worth a combined $1.75 billion.

Ukraine Seeking 300 Patriot Interceptor Missiles to Survive Winter: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed an agreement with the country’s NATO and other allied partners to participate in the ​design and production of a European-developed anti-ballistic missile defensive shield. The proposed system would be an alternative to the US-made Patriot system.

However, development of any such system – or even the already agreed participation of Ukraine in the Aster-30 program – will take years to become active hardware in Ukraine’s inventory.

U.S. Targets Iranian Military Sites Ahead Of Blockade: The United States launched a new wave of military strikes against Iran on Monday, July 13, this time targeting military infrastructure along the country’s southern coastline. The attacks took place just hours before Washington plans to reinstate its naval blockade of Iranian ports. In a statement, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) described a five-hour mission that concluded at 10:15 pm Eastern Time and struck Iranian coastal defense systems and missile and drone sites.

Russia and Ukraine have now been at war for almost four and a half years. And as pointed out this week in a New York Times op-ed, the state of play in the war has changed quite a lot, as have the weapons being used.

The op-ed, with the headline “The Ukraine-Russia War Reaches a New Phase,” was written by Serge Schmemann, the Times’ former Moscow bureau chief who won a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1990s for his coverage of the German reunification.