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​Canada and the F-35 Problem: Canada finds itself in quite a quandary. The country lies geographically above the United States, but in no way is it powerful enough to counter the wishes and interests of its American neighbor. It is often little more than an extension of US power and will.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, however, tensions and trade wars have defined the US-Canada relationship. One of the victims of this ongoing spat between Washington, D.C., and Ottawa is Canada’s long-delayed military modernization plan.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel are again shadow boxing over the fate of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has long been a proxy of Iran. More importantly, though, the Iranians have told the Israeli government to clear their civilians out of northern Israel if Tel Aviv does, in fact, continue with strikes directed at Southern Lebanon.

Obviously, Tehran is not going to wait for things to deteriorate.

The regime will act in defense of what it perceives as its interests.

As the French fabulist and poet Jean de la Fontaine once wrote, “a person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” This quote quite nicely sums up the Constellation-class program. Following the troubled Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, the United States Navy launched the Constellation-class project to build a new lightweight surface ship on an existing design. Despite efforts to avoid the mistakes of the LCS, the program quickly spiraled out of control, running into many of the same issues that nearly crippled its predecessor.

Russia’s most advanced combat aircraft, the Su-57, appears to be back in action in Ukraine after a period of prolonged reduced activity earlier in the year. In recent weeks, Ukrainian air raid monitoring channels have recorded more than ten separate Su-57 cruise missile launch incidents across multiple parts of the front, with the aircraft reportedly detected over the Kursk border region and over the Azov Sea. The aircraft has also been spotted over occupied Crimea, launching Kh-59 and Kh-69 missiles from positions well inside Russian-controlled airspace.

Summary and Key Points: China has fielded a weapon that can threaten a US aircraft carrier from a launcher sitting thousands of miles inland — and according to the Pentagon’s most recent assessment, that same missile can reach parts of the American homeland with a conventional warhead. The DF-27 is the newest and longest-legged member of a carrier-killer family that has spent fifteen years pushing the US Navy out of waters it once dominated, the moment the threat stopped being regional and became global.

The Pentagon’s next iteration of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract would establish a cloud marketplace for military users while expanding support for artificial intelligence, edge computing and cross-domain operations, according to a draft solicitation.
On May 20, the Defense Information Systems Agency published a draft performance of work statement for the upcoming JWCC Unified Cloud Marketplace (UCM) contract on Sam.gov.

Summary and Key Points: When Trump announced his blockade of Iran in April, the goal was simple: choke off the oil money that keeps the regime alive. Two months later, the squeeze is real — tanker traffic around Iran has collapsed and the economy is hurting. Tehran is scrambling for a way around it, from shadowy Chinese buyers to a pipeline meant to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. But every escape route hits the same wall — one Tehran may not have time to climb.

Iran Has a Problem 

Oil Platform. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

After a nearly year-long deployment, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the newest and most advanced aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy, could be out of action for as long as 14 months.

The carrier recently completed her long and grueling deployment, during which she suffered from faulty sewage systems, an onboard fire, and an intense combat deployment in Iran. The ship and her crew have been pushed to their limits, and extensive maintenance will likely be required before the carrier is back up to full operational standards.

The world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R.

As the series of successful Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure has demonstrated, Kyiv can inflict meaningful, long-term damage on several key nodes in Russia’s energy extraction, refining, and export, though Ukraine would be unlikely to force a complete Russian energy shutdown. Still, the ongoing Ukrainian strike campaign has forced Russia to shutter some of its oil output, but Russia has adapted by rerouting some energy product flows and has managed to continue energy exports at substantial, though somewhat crimped, volumes.

In 2019, Army specialist Lauren Palladini was rushed to a hospital for a cesarean section delivery of her daughter, Everly. During the procedure at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the medical resident lacerated her right uterine artery. It was a life-threatening error that would eventually cost her any chance of having more children. It would also launch a six-year, uphill battle for accountability. 
In the weeks that followed, Palladini hemorrhaged seven times.