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The Air Force is going ahead with its plan to retire the famed U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane in the fiscal year 2026 as part of a yearlong effort to reshape the way the service monitors American adversaries from the air.
Nearly twenty years ago, Air Force leaders began discussing the possibility of retiring the U-2 fleet, asking Congress in some years to get rid of this Cold War workhorse and in other years to retire the RQ-4 Global Hawk drones that were supposed to replace it. Both have been placed in the guillotine.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Ukraine’s military has confirmed shooting down one of the country’s own Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones flying over Kyiv earlier today. Individuals on the ground had captured dramatic pictures and video of the incident. The Ukrainian Air Force claims that control of the drone was lost and the decision to destroy it was made in order to avoid “unwanted consequences.” This has come as Russia has been launching strikes on Ukraine’s capital in retaliation for still murky drone attacks on the Kremlin yesterday.

Russian troops “set up camps, fished and dug defensive positions ten kilometers from the plant.”
Russian soldiers who dug trenches in the Chernobyl forest during their takeover have been certified by officials to be ill from exposure to radiation.
When the Russians arrived, local Ukrainians warned them not to camp in the forest due to radioactive contamination from the plant’s explosion 37 years prior.

Naval Base San Diego, Calif. — New and emerging training technologies that deepen collaboration and simulate “real-life” military operations are helping build confidence for Navy surface mariners on different career paths — and the instructors charged with preparing them for modern missions at sea.
“I taught a class this morning and there were students across the gambit of ships,” Lt. Daniel Vossler told DefenseScoop during a recent visit to Naval Base San Diego.
In conversations during and after a technology-focused tour around that sprawling U.S.

PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

Satellite imagery The War Zone has obtained from Planet Labs, seen at the top of this story and below, shows much of a volatile materiel storage area in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad (Pavlograd) absolutely obliterated by a blast earlier this week.
Before and after satellite imagery showing the mass devastation at the site. PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Russia has no future as a state without a proper navy,” then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in 2009, as Moscow was moving forward with far-reaching plans for its naval forces.
Years later, however, the Russian surface fleet falls short, a relatively unimpressive force that has been allowed to “stunt,” as a former US Navy admiral previously stated.

USAF

Kratos has provided an update on its stealthy XQ-58A Valkyrie drone, including a new unit cost for its flagship tactical product and details of expanding U.S. Marine Corps activities involving the drone, which seem to be centered upon electronic warfare. The company has also disclosed the existence of a new and previously secret drone project, known as Dark Fury, as well as another mysterious new, unnamed drone that is already undergoing flight testing.

Representatives from countries with F-35s came to Scott AFB in Illinois to discuss a common problem plaguing their fifth-generation fighters: getting spare parts.
More than 60 foreign nationals and Department of Defense employees joined the quarterly task force on global asset management, during which the US Transportation Command hosted the various uniformed members and civilian attendees.

As the possibilities and potential threats of generative artificial intelligence grow, the United States intelligence community is looking to engage with the private sector to help them assess the technology, according to U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
“We’ve been writing some analysis to try to look at what the potential impact is on society in a variety of different realms, and obviously we see some impact in intelligence activities,” Haines told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

The Defense Department’s enterprise-wide Data Strategy that defines its overarching vision for managing its sprawling and sensitive information assets might soon be revamped by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, DefenseScoop has learned.
“CDAO is reviewing the existing strategy; and like most strategies, they do need to be updated from time to time,” the office’s spokesperson Kathleen Clark told DefenseScoop on Thursday.