Jonny Ball, an Afghanistan veteran, assesses th

The United States has withdrawn most of the troops sent to Nigeria earlier this year, after wrapping up a combat operation against Islamic State fighters in the country.
Gen. Dagvin Anderson, head of U.S. Africa Command, confirmed the drawdown of “much of our forces that were just there for that operation.” Speaking at the 2026 African Chiefs of Defense Conference, Anderson said that the campaign around the Lake Chad Basin in the spring “not only helped the countries in that immediate region; it also helped countries globally as that disrupted the ISIS network.

Russia’s indiscriminate aerial attacks ha

This video describes the military situation in

The Ukraine War Gets Worse: Russian forces unleashed an enormous drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early Thursday morning.

At least 30 people were killed, and over 100 were wounded in Kyiv, local authorities said, in what the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, called the most massive Russian attack on the capital during more than four years of air assault on Ukraine.

Exercise Artemis Strike is a German-led tactical live fire exercise with live Patriot and Stinger missiles at the NATO Missile Firing Installation in Chania, Greece from Oct. 31-Nov. 09. Over 200 U.S.

The Thursday, 2 July, attack on Kyiv was one of the most massive ever launched on the Ukrainian capital. One key indicator being cited as evidence of the ferocity of the attack is the number of persons who were forced to take refuge in the city’s underground.

Kyiv Metro authorities reported that 52,500 people, including 4,500 children, had sheltered in these underground stations overnight. That figure, they stated, was the highest number in “recent years”.

Skyfall Missile Russian Flying Chernobyl. Russian Government/Screenshot.

The Navy beat its recruiting goal for new sailors this year, signing up 45,000 new recruits. The service announced the milestone on Thursday. It’s the highest number of people signing up for the Navy in roughly two decades.
“Today’s Navy is stronger because tens of thousands of Americans chose to answer the call to serve,” Rear Adm. Jim Waters, the head of Navy Recruiting Command, said.

The new Armed Forces Commissioner has said she

Russia and Ukraine Are Promising to Escalate: Both Ukraine and Russia are vowing to escalate and intensify the war after Moscow launched one of its biggest missile and drone attacks of the conflict, causing chaos in Kyiv and destroying residential buildings. The large-scale attacks prompted new Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory overnight.

Rescue crews continued their search through the rubble in Ukraine’s capital city on Friday as the death toll from the Thursday night attack climbed to at least 30 people, with more than 90 injured.

Ukraine’s long-range strikes against Russia continued overnight, while reports suggest the U.S. is warning Poland that Russia may be planning a new assault that tests NATO’s resolve. It’s clear that Russia is beginning to panic, and it’s all thanks to what some might describe as “asymmetric” warfare tactics being deployed by Ukraine.

Warrant Officer Class 1 Johnson Beharry, who wa

NBC News reported that Iran and Oman presented the United States with a proposal to administer the Strait of Hormuz, including jointly collecting fees from ships passing through the waterway.

The New York Times earlier reported that Iran and Oman are moving forward with plans to collect transit fees from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, despite public objections from the United States, according to an Iranian official and four diplomats involved.

Generic Oil Tanker Image. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Oil Platform. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Pressure is mounting on the Kremlin as Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes have had tangible effects on the economy. With gas shortages reported across the country and long lines forming at gas stations, there is a general feeling of unease and discontent in Russia. Vladimir Putin’s response? Basically nothing. Rather than easing up on the war in Ukraine or looking for a ceasefire, the Kremlin has instead doubled down on the war. As the Russian Army advances at a snail’s pace in the Donbas, Moscow continues to launch large combined missile/drone attacks against Kyiv.

Nato is behind certain member states in adopting cloud technology, revealed a commander within the Romanian Defence Staff.

Russia’s indiscriminate aerial attacks ha

Pro-Russian milbloggers have reported on the Telegram app that its air defenses may have intercepted a “long-range operational-tactical missile” launched by Ukraine.

While Russian and Ukrainian authorities have not publicly confirmed any such launch, what is known is that Russian air defense systems engaged and intercepted a target at an unusually high altitude during an alert on June 30.

Ukraine Cruise Missile 2026. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Rheinmetall has obtained a contract for its Skynex air defence systems from an unnamed international customer.

This video describes the military situation in

Western news media outlets are awash with enthusiasm for Ukraine’s successes in the most recent phase of its ongoing drone and missile wars against Russia.  Photos and videos of a blazing Russian oil refinery on the outskirts of Moscow were especially prominent in late June 2026.  However, nearly every Ukrainian drone or missile attack that inflicts damage on a Russian target receives maximum coverage in Europe and the United States.

Ukraine will loom large over the July 7-8, 2026, NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey. The war in Ukraine is now well into its fifth year. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gamble has cratered Russian conventional power. The frontline is a meat grinder. Russia loses in just one month what it lost over nearly a decade in Afghanistan. Putin dismissed the notion that Ukrainian culture and identity were anything more than contrived; he could not envision that Ukrainians would rally around the flag and lay down their lives for a false ideal. Arrogance predominated.

Russia Unleashes One of the Largest Air Assaults of the Ukraine War: As one conflict simmers down, the Iran War, another–the Ukraine War–is boiling over. After a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on critical Russian energy infrastructure, causing massive disruptions to the civilian economy inside Russia, Moscow retaliated with a thunderous cacophony of violence. Russia’s recent airstrikes on Kyiv resulted in tragedy: nearly 27 people died, and countless other Ukrainians were injured.

NO MERCY MODE | Military Motivation 2026
✓ Li

In yet another devastating attack by Ukrainian drones on Russian-occupied territories, Kyiv knocked out power to 13 different power stations in Crimea, Luhansk, and the Donetsk regions during a 48-hour period.

The strikes severely impacted the energy grid in those occupied territories as the Ukrainian military continues its campaign targeting the energy architecture supporting the Russian military.

Su-57 Felon Fighter from Russia. Creative Commons Image.

The Next Shock After Oil: How the Iran War is Reshaping the Global Food Supply – Let’s file this next one under “More Tales from the Golden Age.” A spate of recent reports tracking the economic implications of the Iran War highlights just how bad the global economic situation is becoming.

By the way, the Strait of Hormuz has not been fully reopened. And as we’ve been warning you in this publication, the longer the Strait remains blocked, the worse the global economic fallout from the war will be.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN for short, recently notched what was for it a long carrier deployment, with the Liaoning completing 40 days at sea, during which it conducted a number of training exercises.

Though notable for the PLAN, it pales in comparison to the Gerald R. Ford, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and that ship’s post-Cold War record of nearly 300 days at sea.

The Liaoning’s Origin Story

China New Carrier Type 003 CCTV Screencap Photo.

Although the Liaoning is China’s first aircraft carrier, it was not built in China.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is approaching its fifth year, a remarkable marker for what Russia’s leader initially anticipated to be a very short “special military operation” that would quickly decapitate Ukraine’s leadership and see the country absorbed into Russia. With Russia newly on the back foot, thanks to Ukrainian ingenuity and the Kremlin’s ability to finance the war, much has changed on the battlefield. But some things, particularly Putin’s objectives, have remained the same.

BAE Systems has completed delivery of 19 Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicles to the US military, bringing the total number handed over to 58.

The initial reaction to Kengo Kuma’s design for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Memorial has not been kind. Criticism seems to fall into three buckets: its abstract design, the absence of a clear heroic tribute, and a lack of a “roll call” or list of names of the fallen. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL now in Congress, called it a “jazz hands monument to our fallen brothers and sisters.” Sen. Jim Banks, another Navy veteran-turned-lawmaker who served in Afghanistan, referred to it as “disconnected abstract art.

Pompano Beach, Florida – A new report by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, entitled “Russia’s UAV Campaign over Europe,” concludes that over the past 15 months, Russia is believed to have launched regular UAV incursions into NATO airspace. These violations were not carried out, however, for the simple purpose of harassment or to gauge how long these NATO militaries would take to respond to airspace violations or other hostile acts.

USNI N.

A.

Joseph Trevithick, The WarZone
GAO previously questioned the Navy’s choice of a C-130-based aircraft to meet its nuclear command and control needs.

DefBlog
New footage from American Rheinmetall shows the company’s XM30 infantry fighting vehicle concept in greater detail

Jared Keller, Defense News
The U.S. military is closing in on its high-energy laser weapon of choice for counter-drone missions. Now it needs the vehicles to support it.

Following confirmation that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force 1st Air Brigade had been re-equipped with J-20A fifth generation fighters, significant questions have been raised regarding the implications of this enhancement to the elite unit’s combat capabilities. The brigade transitioned from baseline J-20 fighters to the heavily enhanced J-20A variant, with its older fighters being reallocated to lower priority units.

This video describes the military situation in

Footage released by Russian sources has shown the T-90M main battle tank in a new configuration, which integrates further explosive reactive armour, anti-drone ‘cage’ protection, and the Arena-M hard kill active protection system.

This video describes the military situation in

Editor’s note: This is the first article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.

For many observers, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech on the future of NATO, delivered in Brussels on June 18, 2026, constituted a perfect example of how the Trump administration is angrily abandoning the longstanding U.S. commitment to European security. The prevailing picture is that the administration is eager to shift the burden of Europe’s defense and is thus moving to withdraw U.S. forces from the continent, even though Europe is moving to do more militarily.

MP calls for more to be done on ‘dire sta

Footage released on July 3 has confirmed the delivery of J-20A fifth generation air superiority fighters to a fourth air brigade in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force, namely the 1st Air Brigade at Anshan under the Northern Theatre Command. The 1st Air Brigade was notably also the fourth unit to receive baseline J-20 fighters, which were first delivered in January 2021, while also being the first frontline unit to receive J-20s powered by indigenous WS-10C engines.

New footage released on July 3 has shown a Russian Aerospace Forces Su-57 fifth generation fighter carrying four externally mounted R-77 active radar guided air-to-air missiles, with the new configuration appearing to be optimised for medium range air defence operations. With the Su-57 estimated to be able to carry up to six R-77M missiles internally in its primary weapons bay, the carriage of four external missiles increases its total payload to ten beyond visual range missiles.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have conducted their first-ever ballistic missile strike against Moscow, marking a major milestone in the country’s rapidly expanding long range attacks on major population centres. Although Ukrainian authorities have not officially confirmed the weapon used, Russian military sources and multiple media reports have claimed that the attack employed a newly developed Ukrainian-produced ballistic missile.

Russia is fighting this war badly. That is not the same as losing it; the difference is the whole argument.

The latest CSIS assessment hands Washington the numbers it has wanted to hear for three years. Roughly 1.4 million Russian casualties since February 2022.

Putin and Russian Military Creative Commons Image

Somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 dead. Advances in some sectors are measured not in miles but in tens of meters a day.

A monthly loss rate that may now be running ahead of the pace at which Moscow can put fresh men into uniform.

For most of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has fought a defensive war. It was outgunned and outnumbered from the start, with Kyiv focusing on holding territory while pleading with its Western allies for long-range weapons that it argued were necessary to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.

Even as recently as last year, when Zelenskyy had a tense meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the White House, it appeared possible that Ukraine’s military campaign could be scaled back under mounting political pressure.

TOS-1. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Putin Knows He’s Losing The War With Ukraine: Russian President Putin has publicly acknowledged for the first time that the cause of Russian citizens facing fuel shortages is due to waves of Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside the country.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now dragged on longer than World War I and World War II, which Russia calls “The Great Patriotic War.”

Russian President Putin. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Putin in 2021. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The Pentagon awarded a $500 million contract to AeroVironment, a defense company that makes Switchblade loitering drones and other tech such as the LOCUST directed energy laser, to procure commercial counter-drone technology for the military over the next three years.
The award language contained few details, but was listed under the Army section of the Defense Department’s online contract update posted Wednesday.

2022 vs.

A battle in Congress has sparked a fierce debate among veterans groups about whether legislation that would expand benefits for veterans, caregivers, and survivors is worth the price of reducing future disability ratings for sleep apnea and tinnitus.
Many of the more than 60 bills that are bundled in the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act are legislative proposals that veterans service organizations have long fought for, such as the Major Richard Star Act, which allows veterans with fewer than 20 years of service to collect both disability compensation and retirement pay at the same time.