The Turkish Air Force has deployed six F-16C/D fighter aircraft to support NATO’s air defences in northern Cyprus, after British F-35B fighters based there were credited with shooting down multiple drones near the island. This represents part of a quick-reaction air policing operation, at a time when multiple NATO members including France and Italy have deployed assets to the region to support collective Western Bloc defences against Iran. This follows the United States and Israel’s initiation of a large scale assault against Iran on February 28.

The Swiss Federal Council has confirmed that planned procurements of F-35A fifth generation fighters have been reduced from 36 to 30 aircraft, which represents the maximum number of aircraft possible within the financial framework approved by voters. Rising costs linked to inflation and raw material prices, which have increased price of the aircraft, have been cited as primary factors leading to cuts in planned procurement numbers. “The USA are claiming additional costs for inflation, the development of raw material prices and other factors,” the Swiss government announced.

Advanced violence is democratizing.  AI, in conjunction with dramatic improvements in robotics, energy production, and sensors, will increasingly enable ever-smaller groups of people to use targeted violence more effectively, and from a distance. Over time, this shift will dramatically impact all varieties of force projection: state-on-state war, various forms of low-intensity conflict, and how states enforce internal order.

In Beirut, Baghdad, and across the Middle East, the same pattern repeats: a leader is killed, a funeral fills the streets, and within weeks someone new is giving orders.Indeed, despite the setbacks faced by the regional network of armed groups aligned with Iran that calls itself the “axis of resistance,” it has not disappeared. U.S. forces have struck several groups linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, while Israel has sustained operations against Hizballah across southern Lebanon and Beirut.

South Korean government sources speaking to a number of local media outlets have confirmed that MIM-104 Patriot long range air defence systems have been preparedfor redeployment in the Middle East, and that heavy U.S. aircraft transport planes, likely C-17s, have flown to Osan Air Force Base to move them. This follows multiple reports of an extreme depletion of Patriot and THAAD missile defences in the Middle East, after the U.S.

Chinese state media has published footage of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s two Type 055 class destroyers operating under the Eastern Theatre Command Navy, otherwise referred to as the East Sea Fleet. Analysts have widely speculated that this may be intended to draw attention to the Type 055’s ability to shape the balance of power at sea in the region, in the expectation that fleet will receive two additional Type 055 class ships in 2026. The footage was published at a time of high tensions with both Japan and the United States.

This story is developing…
BREAKING: CENTCOM:
Last night, a U.S. service member passed away from injuries received during the Iranian regime’s initial attacks across the Middle East.
The service member was seriously wounded at the scene of an attack on U.S. troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on March 1.
This is the seventh service member killed in action during Operation Epic Fury.
This is the first U.S. soldier killed in Saudi Arabia; the previous six were killed in Kuwait.

A U.S. service member passed away Saturday night, days after being wounded in an Iranian attack on American forces in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Central Command said.
CENTCOM announced the death of the service member on Sunday afternoon, saying that the American was “seriously wounded at the scene of an attack on U.S. troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on March 1.” They are the seventh American service member to die during Operation Fury, the U.S. military’s name for combat operations against Iran.
According to U.S.

Nine days into the war with Iran, U.S. forces alongside the Israeli military continue to bomb targets around Iran and throughout the Middle East as the conflict shows no signs of ending.
U.S. forces have hit more than 3,000 Iranian targets as part of Operation Epic Fury, U.S. Central Command said, with fighter jets, bombers and missiles fired from destroyers. This weekend, President Donald Trump posted to social media saying that the U.S. military is expanding its range of targets and that Iran “will be hit very hard.

Watch live as HMS Dragon prepares for deploymen

L. Ron Hubbard, a Navy veteran, filed for disability claims and was denied—something he attributes to his going off the deep end and eventually founding the most balls crazy religion west of the Mississippi (my words, not his). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 
Our story begins during World War II, when military brat (used here as a term of endearment) Lafayette Ronald Hubbard served in the Navy. What did he do in the Navy? Well, it depends on who you ask.

There’s a lot of great television out there right now, so much that it can be difficult to keep up.

Russian state tech corporation Rostec has stated that the T-72 main battle tank which currently forms the backbone of the country’s armoured units has very significant potential for further modernisation. “The higher the upgrading potential, the better the combat equipment. The T-72B3M tank, produced by our Uralvagonzavod Group, is a platform with almost endless capabilities. This combat vehicle is significantly superior to earlier T-72 models thanks to a modern sighting system, new protective equipment, and a more powerful engine,” the firm observed.

Chairman of the ruling Korean Worker’s Party Kim Jong Un has announced a highly ambitious schedule for destroyer production to revolutionise the Korean People’s Army Navy’s blue water capabilities, which places the service on track to field the world’s fifth largest destroyer fleet in the early 2030s. The Navy’s first destroyer, the Choe Hyon, was launched in April 2025, and from March 3-4, 2026, conducted pre-commissioning trials that saw it conduct manoeuvrability and warship-control tests and validate its combat systems.

“Training like this is how Nato makes sure it c

The Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre next to the largest U.S. Air Force facility in Europe, Ramstein Air Base, has paused its labor and delivery services to prioritise its “primary objective” of treating casualties from the conflict in the Middle East, as multiple reports have indicated that the damage from Iranian and allied strikes has been severe. The medical centre has also reportedly made urgent calls for blood donations, providing a further indication of a large scale emergency. The facility is the only U.S.

Footage released by Chinese state media has for the first time shown a new variant of the DF-17 medium range hypersonic ballistic missile, which appears to integrate a new kind of hypersonic glide vehicle distinct from the vehicle seen in military parades in 2019 and 2025. Some analysts have assessed that the new glide vehicle is likely a less costly counterpart to the previously seen vehicles, which may be a cost-reduction measure that will allow the missile type to enter service in greater numbers.

L Todd Wood and COL Rob Maness (USAF, Ret) discuss the Iran conflict and the way forward with the Department of War.
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The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has destroyed $3.5 billion worth of high value radar systems during the first week of engagements with U.S. forces, after the Corps responded to U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran from February 28 by launching large scale missile and drone strikes on key military and strategic targets across the Middle East. Although strikes on multiple radar systems of varying value have been reported, including lower value radars such as the AN/TPS-59 valued at around $70 million, three of the U.S.

The CCP is very timid and risk averse. Pushing proxies to do the heavy lifting was the CCP style. With no proxies, the Chinese malign campaign collapses

The CCP is very happy to watch their suborn proxies (i.e. colonies) grind themselves into nothingness.
Russia is the prime case study.
However, China had Venezuela to project deadly activities straight into the U.S. while Iran and its proxies were available to kill Americans and to provoke regional bloodletting to grind down American resources.

American and Ecuadorian forces carried out “lethal kinetic strikes” against drug traffickers in Ecuador near the Colombian border, U.S. Southern Command announced on Friday.
The operation targeted a training camp used by the Comandos de la Frontera, Ecuador’s defense ministry said, and was located in the northeast of the country. It was the apparent first strike involving U.S. forces in South America since the attack on Venezuela in January and the first confirmed action by U.S. troops since its anti-cartel mission was announced.

President Trump received the remains of U.S. Army soldiers killed by Iranian strike on tactical operations center in Kuwait.

The post Trump Attends Dignified Transfer Of American Heroes Killed appeared first on Armed Forces Press.

A Massachusetts man was arrested this week and accused of impersonating an Army veteran for more than three decades, receiving tens of thousands of dollars in VA medical care and committing crimes in the soldier’s name. 
James D. Sommers was arrested on Thursday, March 5 at a transitional housing space for veterans, where he had been living while pretending to be an Army veteran. He was charged with one count of making false statements, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, but the extent of his alleged actions span 32 years.

This video describes the military situation in

Pete Barnum can’t talk much these days. Surgery for squamous cell carcinoma—the kind linked to toxic exposure, the kind the PACT Act was written for—has left his speech severely impaired. But even when the VA calls to discuss his claim, they ask to speak with him.
His wife Keri answers anyway. She has been answering for months: scheduling appointments, tracking medications, escalating denials, spending ten or more hours some weeks on hold.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth today announced that the War Department will conditionally continue to provide support to Scouting America — formerly the Boy Scouts of America — following the youth organization’s commitment to pull all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from its program.

Oscar Berry, RealClearDefense
Operation Epic Fury is achieving its military objectives.

AP
An American anti-drone system proven to work against

WATM
John Ripley vs. 20,000 communists.

Times of Isr.
USS George H.W.

Alison Bath, Stars and Stripes
Ford, along with the destroyer USS Bainbridge, transited the Suez Canal on Thursday

Public Domain

I read Matthew Woessner’s piece “In Defense of War Colleges” in RealClearDefense with the same disappointment I feel watching senior leaders defend a broken system instead of fixing it.
As a Naval War College graduate, a 32-year combat veteran who rose from enlisted EOD tech to wing commander, and someone who’s seen the downstream effects of what these institutions are producing, let me be blunt:
The war colleges aren’t “remaining focused on educating military leaders to fight and win the nation’s wars.

HMS Dragon is one step closer to deployment🌊

This video describes the military situation in

“A sledgehammer to crack a nut”🗣️
A Britis

The Republic of China Ministry of National Defence’s unprecedented investments in arms procurements from the United States have drawn growing scrutiny from lawmakers domestically, with criticisms increasingly encompassing not only the extreme delays to deliveries which have hampered military modernisation efforts, but also the cost effectiveness and viability of much of the equipment on order.

Following the release of satellite images indicating that the AN/TPY-2 X-band mobile radar system from the U.S. Army THAAD anti-ballistic missile system had been destroyed in an Iranian drone strike,an anonymous individual on March 7 posted photos providing confirmation, showing the radar destroyed. The radar system was stationed at Muwafak Salti Air Base in Jordan. The destruction of the radar is expected to significantly reduce the utility of THAAD systems to provide defence against Iranian missile attacks.

South Korean sources revealed on March 5 that over 1,000 guided bomb kits were shipped to the U.S. mainland from military facilities inKorea in mid-December 2025, as part of what analysts have widely interpreted as large scale preparations for the initiation of a large scale military assault against Iran. These kits consist of GPS or laser guidance devices and control wings, which can be attached to gravity bombs to allow them to strike targets with high levels of precision. Each kit costs $20,000-55,000 making them significantly less costly than other kinds of guided weapons.

The U.S. Navy Nimitz Class nuclear powered supercarrier USS George H. W. Bush has been dispatched to the Middle East, where it is expected to support the currently ongoing war effort against Iran. The George H. W. Bush is one of the Navy’s two newest carriers, with the only newer vessel, the USS Gerald Ford, having was arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean hours before the U.S. and Israeli initiated attacks on February 28.

United Stated officials speaking to the Washington Post have reported that Russia has been supplying Iran with intelligence on the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships, aircraft, and bases in the Middle East. This follows the U.S. and Israel’s initiation of a full scale military campaign against Iran on February 28, which Iranian forces have responded to by launching large scale ballistic missile strikes on military and other strategic targets across the region.

This video describes the military situation in

“We sit at readiness to deploy”🗣️
Cdr Andr

A Coast Guard rescue swimmer died Thursday from injuries sustained during a rescue at sea late last month. 
Petty Officer 2nd Class Tyler Jaggers was a rescue swimmer, a rate known in the service as an Aviation Survival Technician, assigned to Coast Guard Air Station Astoria, Oregon. He suffered “critical injuries,” the Coast Guard said, during the rescue of a crewman on the Momi Arrow, a commercial freighter, 120 miles off the coast of Cape Flattery, Washington.

Small helicopter with big strengths🚁
This qu

“These are no longer selective crises”🗣️
A

The world spent over $2.

The military and Federal Aviation Administration will conduct a high-energy laser test over the weekend, the Pentagon announced Friday, confirming DefenseScoop’s reporting earlier this week.
The FAA and Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Defense Department’s counter-drone hub, will conduct the test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico between March 7-8. The test is intended to advance “the safe use of counter-unmanned aerial systems in the United States” and boost interagency coordination, according to the Pentagon.

“They wouldn’t have been able to avoid it

An Army doctrine writer, Lt. Col. Scott McMahan spends most of his days turning wonky military concepts and research data into the manuals that soldiers use to do their jobs. Whether the topic is arctic combat, contested airspace, or deployment guidance, his goal is to make the Army’s basic instruction manuals for each simple enough that a high schooler could easily understand it.
He can now do that much quicker, he says, under an Army push to use artificial intelligence to create doctrines.

On March 11, 1944, anti-aircraft fire struck a B-24D Liberator bomber, causing to crash off Papua New Guinea.
Eleven airmen, including 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly Jr., were on board the Heaven Can Wait. After an extensive search couldn’t locate their remains, the American Graves Registration Service deemed them unrecoverable in 1950.
Related: This is how the ‘missing man formation’ honors fallen pilots
It is likely they would have remained so, if not for the dogged persistence of Kelly’s family.