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US Army

The U.S. Army says it has gotten rid of its entire fleet of Airborne Reconnaissance Low-Enhanced aircraft, or ARL-Es, and is now in the process of divesting dozens of smaller Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System types, or EMARSSs. The service is planning to supplant these and other existing fixed-wing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft with a new fleet of business jet-based designs. However, the intended replacements are still years away from becoming operational in significant numbers.

Members of the USS Barb’s crew hold the submarine’s battle flag aloft after returning from a final patrol in 1945. The train kill can be seen in the bottom-center of the flag. (U.S. Navy).

In August 1945, eight members of the crew of the USS Barb posed for a photo at Pearl Harbor holding up the submarine’s battle flag. The different patches on the flag represented the boat’s myriad accomplishments over 12 patrols in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

The U.S. and Canadian militaries are developing a sensor network with classified capabilities that officials hope will strengthen the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s capacity to identify airborne threats — like the suspected, high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon that President Biden ordered shot down last week after it traversed over multiple states and sensitive national security assets. 
During a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on Thursday, lawmakers raised grave concerns about the balloon incident and U.S.

Twitter screengrab

Ukrainian forces have put an advanced Russian BMPT Terminator armored fighting vehicle out of commission for the first time, according to the Ukrainian Marines. The Terminator is a relatively new addition to Russia’s ground arsenal and only a small number of them are known to be in service, making this kill quite the trophy for the Ukrainian military.
Members of the Ukrainian Marine Corps’ 140th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion helped destroy the BMPT, according to a post on the service’s official Facebook page.

A Turkish woman is winning hearts by kissing an Indian Army officer on the cheek. The officer is in the quake-stricken country to help with rescue and relief work.
The Indian Army posted a picture of the two women with the caption “We Care.” This was a great way to show how quickly India helped its “dost” Turkey.
India started Operation Dost to help Turkey and Syria after Monday’s earthquakes and aftershocks, which caused buildings to fall and cities to be leveled.

A Special Forces Soldier conducts weapons training with partner forces on a range in Southwest Asia, Sept. 2, 2019. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Kyle Alvarez).

The U.S. military’s Global War on Terrorism may be heating up again on distant battlefields, but a bipartisan group of American lawmakers at home is pushing to rein in the ever-expanding global campaign by repealing part of its legislative foundation.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN), joined by Reps.

The Army Research Laboratory plans to evaluate unmanned platforms and autonomy technology at Aberdeen Proving Ground this summer, and it’s reaching out to industry to see who wants to participate.
Capability areas of interest for ARL’s Tech Assess ’23 event include autonomous mobility, air-ground teaming, coordinated behaviors of unmanned platforms, object tracking and identification, “global localization,” human language-guided operations, and weather-resistant drones, according to a request for information published on Sam.gov.

The “indiscriminate” adoption and use of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomous systems for military applications could carry catastrophic global consequences if left unchecked, warns a new report from an arms control and national security nonprofit.
In the report, the Arms Control Association calls on policymakers, defense officials, and others to better explore the consequences of the rapid adoption of emerging tech for operational military applications and develop a framework to reduce the escalatory risks of doing so.

Spying is often bitter, hard-fought, and can even be brutal, but the players all generally know the rules.
The post What the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ incident tells us about global espionage appeared first on Sandboxx.

KCNA

North Korea’s latest military parade once again saw intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, take center stage, with the country’s biggest-ever display of these weapons, including around a dozen examples of the Hwasong-17, its largest ICBM design to date and very likely the largest road-mobile missile of its kind. At the same time, Pyongyang showed off a mock-up or a possible prototype of what could be a future solid-fuel ICBM design, which would be a significant development for the country’s rapidly evolving strategic missile forces.