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What A Second American Air War Against Iran Would Really Cost: The fragile truce between Washington and Tehran has hardened into a stalemate that satisfies no one. The shooting has mostly stopped, but the Strait of Hormuz, the artery through which close to a fifth of the world’s oil moves, remains effectively shut, and Iran shows no sign of handing it back. That leaves the United States staring at a tempting and treacherous option: restart the air campaign to force Iran to reopen the strait and abandon its nuclear program for good.

Ukraine has spent this week doing something it could not do for most of the war: striking deep into the heart of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in his own hometown, during the one event meant to project Russian stability to the world. Twice in under a week, swarms of Ukrainian drones have crossed roughly 1,000 kilometers to hit naval targets around St. Petersburg, and the timing was no accident.

Ukraine Opens A New Front Against Putin In St. Petersburg — And Edges The War Closer To NATO

Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The raids bracketed the St.

Summary and Key Points: A nuclear-powered supercarrier is one of the most complex machines humanity has ever built — yet the part that gave the U.S. Navy the most grief on the USS Gerald R. Ford wasn’t the reactor, the hull, or the radar. It was the catapult: the system that flings a loaded fighter from a standstill to flying speed in the length of a basketball court.

-The Navy had traded a century of reliable steam for something far more ambitious — in essence, a rail gun built to throw airplanes.

 Summer looks a little different for every military family.
Some families spend the season surrounded by moving boxes and permanent change-of-station (PCS) checklists. Meanwhile, others settle into a new duty station and try to plan summer routines, camps, road trips, and moments of rest for their children. No matter what season of military life you are in, most parents try to find the balance between letting kids enjoy summer break while still keeping some sense of structure.

The military’s latest attempt to create cheap and effective counter-drone weapons looks like a shipping container. And for the first time, it took out a mid-sized aerial drone with a Joint Air-to-Ground Missile.
The Army and weapons developer Lockheed Martin successfully took out the drone during recent testing at the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, the Army and Lockheed announced. They used Lockheed Martin’s GRIZZLY platform, a missile launcher based on the M229 launcher system that is heavily used by the U.S. military. However this one has a shipping container built around it.

Summary and Key Points: Muammar Gaddafi had drawn a “line of death” across the Gulf of Sidra and swore to shoot down any aircraft that dared cross it. On the morning of April 15, 1986 — in the aftermath of an American bombing raid on Libya — an SR-71 Blackbird crossed that line anyway, at full throttle, to photograph the damage. When a missile alert flashed in the cockpit, the pilot pushed the legendary spy plane harder than it had ever flown.

Summary and Key Points: In the spring of 2005, the United States Navy set out to sink one of its own aircraft carriers — and for most of a month, it failed. The decommissioned USS America absorbed torpedoes, missiles, and bombs and refused to go under until the Navy finally scuttled her with charges set off inside the hull. To this day, she is the only supercarrier ever sent to the bottom, anywhere on earth. That ordeal is often cited as proof that the American aircraft carrier is nearly unsinkable — and in one sense, it is.

The British Army has deployed new Bolt loitering munitions in Estonia, less then 70 kilometres from the Russian border, highlighting NATO’s continued efforts to enhance its forward offensive capabilities near Russian territory at a time of continuing hostilities in the Ukrainian theatre. The Bolt is a single use attack drone capable of identifying and striking armoured vehicles and other battlefield targets with precision.

Summary and Key Points: For the first time in history, all 22 National Guard generals who command America’s Air National Guard fighter squadrons have signed a single letter to Congress — and the warning inside it is blunt. The U.S. Air Force, they say, has never been older, smaller, or less ready in its entire existence. The alarm comes at a striking moment: the same Air Force just proved its worth over Iran during Operation Epic Fury, even as the generals warn that pilots are being sent into combat in jets built before they were born.

The U.S.

The U.S. Air Force is facing an unexpectedly severe capability gap after suffering extensive combat losses of MQ-9A Reaper drones during operations against Iran and Iranian-aligned Yemeni Ansurullah Coalition Forces forces, leading the service to initiate an urgent search for replacement aircraft. This has included efforts to purchase unused MQ-9A Block 5 airframes from the producer, General Atomics, although fewer than ten new aircraft remain available worldwide.