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.

When the USS Wahoo sailed into Pearl Harbor on February 7, 1943, she had an odd ornament on her periscope: a common broom. But that broom was one of the most impressive symbols a crew could aspire to earn, because it symbolized the boat had destroyed an entire enemy convoy, sweeping it from the seas.

As Russia and China continue to invest heavily

Loitering munitions and first-person-view drones are emerging as top causes of death and bodily harm in modern military conflicts, senators warned Thursday.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the small drone industrial base, multiple lawmakers urged senior defense officials to explore ways to help the U.S. military adapt to drone-specific injury patterns — particularly as the Pentagon hustles to expand its arsenal of uncrewed aircraft and watercraft.
“Small unmanned aerial systems, or sUAS, have become a defining feature of warfare.

Marines will have to tread water for longer and learn more swimming strokes under new, tougher rules for the service’s water survival program.
All Marines must already pass a basic water survival test to graduate from basic training, which covers a series of floatation and swimming skills designed for water emergencies. Many Marines must also requalify each year, often with tougher tests. The new rules further expand those requirements.

A British F-35B Lightning II has shot down a ho

The Pentagon has tapped Gavin Kliger, a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee, to lead the DOD’s growing adoption of artificial intelligence capabilities as its new chief data officer.
“We are in a global competition for military AI dominance, and America must build on its leadership to extend our advantage over adversaries,” Kliger said Friday in an announcement posted by the Pentagon’s research and engineering directorate, which is led by Emil Michael.

Watch HMS Dragon take one step closer to deploy

Rheinmetall has signed a contract in Zagreb, Croatia to acquire a 51% stake in Croatian uncrewed ground systems company DOK-ING.

Germany is set to acquire 47 Common Infrared Countermeasures (CIRCM) systems from Northrop Grumman as part of a US Army production award.

If you’re heading to West Point as a cadet, congratulations!
You’re about to embark on the most rewarding and rigorous experience of your life so far. The U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, is one of America’s most prestigious military institutions of higher learning. For generations, West Point has been associated with developing cadets into capable soldiers. These days, the mission remains the same.

RISE WITHOUT MERCY — Relentless Mentality | M

Somewhere near the President of the United States right now, a military aide is carrying a black leather briefcase that could end civilization. He’s not a cabinet member. He’s not a general. He’s a mid-grade officer selected for reliability, discretion, and the ability to keep up with the most powerful person on the planet. He’s with the Leader of the Free World at all times, in any country, under any circumstance.

CDR Salamander
…the chart don’t lie…

Breaking Defense
During the Vietnam era, the USS Midway set the record for longest at-sea deployment at 332 days.

Howard Altman, The WarZone
Cloned from the Iranian Shahed-136, CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper praised the drones and their performance so far.

Riley Ceder, Defense N.
Military Times spoke with several national security specialists, defense analysts and foreign policy pundits who warned that the U.S.

Government Accountability Office
This testimony is based on many reports from our broad work on readiness across the military services, such as …

London Scottish and the Royal Navy announced a

The US military is planning to increase bombers “pulses” over Iran and deploy additional fighter squadrons to the region.

The Belgian Armed Forces have landed and conducted an armed takeover of an oil tanker, the Ethera, in international waters in the North Sea, during a coordinated operation supported by France, after the vessel was reported to have been exporting Russian oil. The tanker, which was sailing under the flag of Guinea, was forced to the port of Zeebrugge, and is expected to be sold and the funds appropriated by European states involved in the operation.

This video describes the military situation in

The Trump administration should abandon any plans to arm Iranian Kurdish forces before the first fighter crosses the Iraqi-Iranian border. Not refine it. Not sequence it more carefully. Drop it entirely. The operation will not topple the Iranian regime, will inflame the Persian nationalism that is the Islamic Republic’s most reliable reserve fuel, and — most damagingly — will hand Tehran a coalition-fracturing tool it did not have to build. There is no version of this gambit that serves American strategic interests.

Most accounts of the Manhattan Project tell a familiar story: American scientists relentlessly racing to design and build the fission bombs that would ultimately fall on Japan. A neglected chapter of the saga was the obsessive advocacy of a handful of physicists who favored a far more potent weapon design. The “Super” of their imagination would derive its explosive energy not simply from fission, or the splitting of atomic nuclei, but also from the fusion of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen.

This video describes the military situation in

German officials speaking to the Wall Street Journal have warned that the country has been left poorly protected against potential air or missile attacks due to the transfer of military systems, and particularly MIM-104 Patriot long range air defence systems, to Ukraine. The issue has been exacerbated by the more recent deployment of remaining Patriot systems to protect Poland on NATO’s eastern flank from late 2025.

The U.S. Air Force on March 4 scrambled two F-35A and two F-22 fifth generation fighter aircraft to interceptor two Russian Tu-142 anti-submarine warfare aircraft in the Alaskan and Canadian Air Defence identification zones, with the Russian aircraft being closely shadowed, and remaining in international airspace. The fighters were supported by four KC-135 tankers, and one E-3 airborne warning and control system (AWACS), while Canada deployed two F-18 fighters and a CC-150 tanker.

Reports from multiple Western sources confirmed on March 5 that the United States Army has expended over 800 anti-ballistic missiles from MIM-104 Patriot long range air defence systems during just five days of hostilities with Iran, after the U.S and Israel both launched a large scale attack against the country on February 28.

A NATO E-3A Sentry airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) have conducted their first ever operational mission over Finnish airspace, positioning them in close proximity to the Russian Arctic and well within range to monitor deep into Russian territory.

Members of the Pentagon’s counter-drone task force were in Kyiv last week to understand how Ukraine’s military was protecting infrastructure and troops against Russian unmanned aerial systems — just before the start of joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran.
The revelation — which was delivered by Joint Interagency Task Force 401 director Brig. Gen. Matt Ross at an industry event in Virginia on Thursday — came just hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he received a request from the U.S.

It’s been what, a couple thousand years or so since the Persians had a military invention of their own? They were overdue.

It is D+3, and there is one part of Operation Epic Fury that keeps popping up to top-of-mind for me, the Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS).
First of all, like I said Sunday, BZ to the staff weenie(s) who came up with that acronym for the best blatant copy-job by the U.S. military since the Springfield 1903 looked at Mauser and said, “Nice gun you have there.