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Russia is heading toward a crippling shortage of working-age men to fill both military ranks and defense factory lines, according to Alexander Kolyandr of the Center for European Policy Analysis. The natural Russian population has declined every year since 1992, resulting in a cumulative decline of 16.8 million people. The workforce aged 25 to 29 fell by more than 720,000 in 2022 alone. Russia’s economically active population could shrink by as many as 23 million — roughly a quarter — by 2050. The late American demographer Dr. Murray Feshbach predicted the trajectory in 1983.

The U.S. Air Force has been spotted integrating hypersonic weapons onto the B-1B Lancer, with footage from Edwards Air Force Base released in late April showing Lockheed Martin’s AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon mounted externally beneath the bomber. The ARRW is a boost-glide weapon that flies at speeds exceeding Mach 5 and was previously only seen on the B-52H. The B-1B can carry up to 75,000 pounds of weapons and exceed Mach 1.2 — the fastest bomber in U.S. inventory. Boeing has discussed equipping the aircraft with up to six external LAM pylons.

After a drone attack injured dozens inside the Tower 22 outpost in Jordan, Army National Guard doctor Maj. Erika Page suddenly found herself in charge of a small team of doctors and medics treating dozens of injured soldiers. For hours, she and her team diagnosed traumatic brain injuries in the field and made calls on which troops would be evacuated for serious medical care and who could stay in the camp and help.
Three soldiers died in the attack, the most Americans killed in a single strike in the region prior to the start of the Iran War.

A crowd of more than 5,000 people arrived at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868, with a purpose.
They came to place flowers on the graves of soldiers who fought so valiantly on the first Decoration Day, which later became Memorial Day. Before the crowd paid their respects, James Garfield rose to speak.
Also Read: Widow’s powerful response to Army general goes viral on Memorial DayBefore serving as the 20th president of the United States, Garfield was a congressman from Ohio. He also served as a major general in the Union army.

New footage has shown the J-35 fifth generation fighter in a new configuration with externally mounted weaponry, namely with four PL-15 long range radar-guided air-to-air missiles under its wings. Combined with the six missiles the fighter can accommodate in its internal weapons bays, this provides considerable firepower for engagements with other aircraft. The J-35 was developed under a joint program between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force and the Navy, with variants developed for both services confirmed to have entered service in 2025.

The Chengdu J-20 made its maiden flight on January 11, 2011, deliberately timed to coincide with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing that same morning. The flight was a diplomatic message. What the West did not know was how much of the aircraft had been stolen — from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program, from Boeing’s F-22 files, from the wreckage of an F-117 shot down over Serbia, and from Russia’s canceled MiG 1.44. Sixteen years later, more than 300 J-20s are in PLAAF service, and 1,000 are projected by 2030.

Footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry has shown road-mobile cruise missile launchers from the Iskander-K system taking part in large-scale nuclear war exercises, which are being conducted jointly with Belarus. The Iskander-K has gained growing publicity for its role in the Russian Ukrainian War, and after entering service in the mid-2010s, it was enhanced in the early 2020s with the new 9M729 cruise missile providing a much extended 1,500-2,000 kilometre engagement range.

The United States is accelerating work on the development of the Golden Dome missile defence system specifically due to the Pentagon’s growing concerns regarding the capabilities of new Chinese and Russian hypersonic missile systems. Defence officials have increasingly warned that the current U.S. missile defence architectures were primarily designed to counter limited ballistic missile threats, namely the North Korean arsenal of the 2010s, with the far larger scale and more advanced Chinese and Russian arsenals requiring an entirely new approach.

When Shenyang rolled the FC-31 Gyrfalcon out of its hangar in 2012, nobody took it seriously. The aircraft had no customer, used Russian engines, and had lost the competition to the J-20. Fourteen years later, the same airframe has produced two operational variants — the carrier-based J-35B launching from China’s first EMALS aircraft carrier, and the land-based J-35A entering frontline PLA Air Force service. Pakistan looks set to take 40 planes. The Pentagon projects that 1,300 Chinese fifth-generation fighters will be in service by 2030.

The US Department of War has announced the withdrawal of a Brigade Combat Team, comprising at least 4,000 troops, from Europe.