The Russian Aerospace Forces scrambled Su-35 and Su-27 fighter aircraft to repeatedly intercept a British Royal Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft operating near Russian forces over the Black Sea. The British Ministry of Defence on May 20 published footage of the incidents, which included a very close approach by a Su-35 that triggered the British aircraft’s onboard emergency systems and automatically disable its autopilot. A Su-27 subsequently made six passes directly in front of the RC-135, closing to within six metres of its nose.

The Chengdu J-20A — the upgraded variant of China’s J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighter — is being assigned to top-tier PLAAF formations within direct operational reach of Taiwan and the First Island Chain. Senior National Security Editor Brandon Weichert argues the J-20A is best understood not as China’s answer to the F-22 Raptor but as a long-range battle manager — a flying quarterback designed to orchestrate the wider kill chain across PL-15 long-range missiles, drone swarms, naval forces, ground-based missile batteries and airborne early warning aircraft.

The U.S. Navy’s Block V Virginia-class fast-attack submarine adds an 84-foot Virginia Payload Module that triples Tomahawk cruise missile capacity from 12 to 40 per boat. The increase matters because Operation Epic Fury against Iran depleted nearly one-third of America’s prewar Tomahawk inventory — over 1,000 of 3,100, according to CSIS. The U.S. Navy is also retiring four Ohio-class SSGNs between 2026 and 2028, removing 616 Tomahawk cells, and twelve Ticonderoga-class cruisers, removing another 2,080 vertical launch cells. Tomahawks cost between $1.

The Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) — the joint sixth-generation fighter program between Britain, Italy, and Japan — is facing its first major crack. BAE Systems has warned that roughly 4,000 British engineers and personnel working on the program will be reassigned within ten weeks if the British government does not finalize longer-term contracts before the temporary bridge funding ends in June. Britain has already paid £686 million into Edgewing, the industrial venture combining BAE Systems, Italy’s Leonardo, and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co.

TAMPA, Fla. — While U.S. forces deployed to the southern border employ several fixed and mobile counter-drone systems, the top general in charge of stateside defense said troops lack adequate technology for patrols.
Within days of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, troops quickly flooded to the southern border as part of the administration’s crackdown on immigration, soon taking to mounted and dismounted patrols along the barrier.
Since then, the region has become what officials dubbed a testbed for counter-UAS systems, part of an effort to zap drones coming over the border. Gen.

Australia transferred 49 retired M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks to Ukraine as part of a roughly $160 million military aid package, with Washington’s approval. The tanks were being replaced in Australian service by newer M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams. Ukraine’s First Separate Assault Regiment then welded anti-drone cope cages, explosive reactive armor bricks, electronic warfare protection, anti-FPV spike barriers, and locally adapted communications onto the tanks before sending them into combat.

Israel operates a fleet of German-built Dolphin II submarines designed by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems as the cornerstone of the country’s sea-based nuclear deterrent. The 225-foot boats displace 2,400 tons submerged, reach 25 knots, and use air-independent propulsion to stay submerged for up to 18 days. The INS Tanin and INS Rahav were commissioned in 2014 and 2016.

In case you didn’t already know this, James Stewart—yes, “It’s A Wonderful Life” Jimmy Stewart—set down his Academy Award and put on the uniform of the Army Air Corps to fight in World War II. He enlisted as a private and by the time the war was over, he had flown 20 combat missions over Germany as leader of a squadron of B-24s, earning him the rank of colonel, not to mention his two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the French Croix de Guerre.

China’s J-15 Flying Shark, the backbone of the PLAN’s carrier air wing, traces its origin to a single T-10K-3 Su-33 prototype that Beijing bought from Ukraine in 2001. Russia had refused to sell production Su-33s unless China ordered at least 50, citing past Chinese reverse-engineering of the Su-27 into the J-11. Beijing reverse-engineered the aircraft instead. Early J-15s used Russian AL-31F engines; since 2022, newer J-15T variants fly on domestically produced WS-10B engines.

The Kitty Hawk-class — the USS Kitty Hawk, USS Constellation, and USS America — were America’s last great conventionally powered supercarriers. Each ship displaced about 84,000 tons fully loaded, exceeded 32 knots on eight boilers and four Westinghouse steam turbines, and carried up to 90 aircraft ranging from the F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Hornet to the E-2 Hawkeye and EA-6B Prowler. The class anchored U.S. naval aviation through Vietnam, the Cold War, the Gulf, and the Global War on Terror. The USS Kitty Hawk earned a Presidential Unit Citation during the Tet Offensive.

The U.S. Air Force announced in May that the B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program completed its Critical Design Review, clearing Boeing to begin converting the first two B-52H bombers into the upgraded B-52J configuration later this year. Rolls-Royce will supply eight F-130 engines per aircraft to replace the Pratt and Whitney TF-33s that have powered the bomber since the Cold War. The Air Force has warned the TF-33 becomes unsustainable beyond 2030. The first two converted aircraft will test at Edwards Air Force Base before fleet-wide conversion.

Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation confirmed on May 19 that the new two-seat Su-57D Felon stealth fighter completed its first flight, with Sukhoi chief test pilot Sergei Bogdan at the controls. The Su-57D features an elongated canopy and a tandem cockpit configuration, with the second crew member positioned behind and above the pilot. First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said the aircraft will function as a combat trainer and a command-and-control platform. UAC CEO Vadim Badeha said the aircraft is intended for export. Algeria, India, and North Korea are among potential customers.

A remarkable story of resilience and courage un

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle told Congress this month that the Trump-class nuclear-powered guided-missile battleship will use the A1B nuclear reactor — the same one that powers the Ford-class aircraft carrier. The lead ship will be named the USS Defiant. The Navy considered conventional propulsion to speed delivery but ultimately returned to nuclear, with Caudle saying nuclear is the exact right answer. Existing Ford-class reactor plant components — steam generators, pressurizers, reactor coolant pumps — will carry across.

In future fights, deployed troops could be resupplied with critical supplies by a six-wheeled vehicle that is small enough to be transported in an MV-22B Osprey, so it can go places larger vehicles can’t reach, according to Polaris, which is developing the vehicle for the military.
The Polaris MRZR Alpha 6×6 can carry up to 3,000 pounds of cargo, which is about 1,000 pounds more than what can be carried by the Marine Corps’ four-seat version of the vehicle, said Erin Telander, defense program manager for Polaris.

Israel’s F-16I Sufa — Storm in Hebrew — is a heavily modified two-seat F-16D Block 50/52 built by Lockheed Martin and customized by Israeli defense industries for the Israeli Air Force. The Sufa can reach Iran or Libya without refueling thanks to Israeli-designed conformal fuel tanks that extend its range by 50% and let it carry 50% more weapons. Israel operates more than 360 F-16s — second only to the U.S. Air Force globally. Half of the aircraft’s avionics are Israeli, including the Elisra SPS 3000 self-protection jammer and Elbit’s DASH IV helmet.

Rear Admiral Mike Brookes testified to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March that Beijing is building an undersea Great Wall of sensors — integrating air, surface, seabed, and undersea systems into a networked architecture designed to track American submarines and push them out of contested waters. China’s Blue Ocean Information Network combines a seabed sensor grid with satellite imagery from the Ocean Star Cluster, smart buoys, wave gliders, autonomous underwater vehicles, and the Deep Blue Brain data integration system.

This video describes the military situation in

China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force has deployed the upgraded J-20A stealth fighter to the 41st Air Brigade at Wuyishan Air Base in Fujian province, directly across the Taiwan Strait from the island. The brigade replaced its 1960s-era J-7s with baseline J-20s in 2023, and the J-20A introduces China’s long-awaited WS-15 engine — providing more thrust, longer range, better supercruise, and ending Beijing’s dependence on Russian AL-31 powerplants.

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In 2025, Choong-Koo Lee wrote, “Putting the Screws on the Partnership Between North Korea and Russia,” where he argued that the United States and South Korea should work together to weaken Pyongyang and Moscow’s military relationship. A year later, we asked him to revisit his arguments.Image: The Kremlin via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that the United States and South Korea should work together to limit the deepening military relationship between Russia and North Korea. How has the U.S.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on October 18, 1989 and reached Jupiter on December 7, 1995 after a six-year journey involving gravity-assist flybys of Venus and Earth. It became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet. Galileo’s atmospheric probe endured deceleration forces of nearly 228 Gs and temperatures of 15,000°C while measuring winds exceeding 400 mph inside Jupiter. The orbiter found strong evidence of a global liquid-water ocean beneath Europa’s ice and revealed Io as the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has frozen the broader Lockheed Martin F-35A purchase, committing to only 16 of an originally agreed 88 jets in a 2023 deal worth roughly C$19 billion. Ottawa is reportedly weighing Saab’s JAS 39 Gripen-E as an alternative with potential domestic assembly. The Pentagon paused U.S. participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense on May 18 — the bilateral forum created under the 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement that laid groundwork for NORAD.

In the next war, soldiers may look through a digital lens and see a landscape and a heads-up display that looks familiar to gamers: directional markers on a compass, messages from their command, and other icons and tags marking key individuals or locations in their field of vision.
EagleEye is Anduril’s new headset that the company says will give soldiers “immediate battle space in a dismounted way,” Grant Hartanov with Anduril told Task & Purpose. The idea is that troops can see everything in front of them, plus other helpful features like a navigation compass or battlefield alerts.

Only 5% of fighter pilots in World War II achieved ace status — yet that 5% accounted for nearly half of all air-to-air kills during the war. In Korea, just 38 jet aces were responsible for more than a third of the 823 MiG-15s shot down by the Fifth Air Force. Air Force psychologist E. Paul Torrance studied 31 aces and 62 less successful combat pilots and identified four common traits: uber-aggressiveness, extreme self-confidence, fanatical devotion to flying, and high risk-taking.

How did low-tech, cheap weapons completely chan

The USS Gerald R. Ford has returned home. The carrier saw action off both Venezuela and Iran in an epic deployment, one of the longest of any aircraft carrier since World War II. With her sister ship, the USS John F. Kennedy, set to enter service next year, the mechanical and morale difficulties towards the end of Ford’s deployment have raised questions about the future of the CVN-78 design, and about the health of the US Navy’s carrier fleet more generally.

Teething Problems for USS Gerald R. Ford

Pre-Commissioning Unit John F.

His mother sent cookies. She sent canned goods, too. And every month or so, somewhere in the rotation, a can of sardines showed up at whatever firebase Pvt. Mike Vining was operating out of in Vietnam.
He never ate a single one.
His little brother had told their mother that sardines were a good thing to send, certainly with his older brother’s best intentions in mind. So she sent them faithfully, alongside the cookies and the rest of it. Vining just traded them away quietly and never made much of it.

The UK Armed Forces look to win their third con

The UK Armed Forces look to win their third con

Ukrainian one-way attack drones have become Kyiv’s primary equalizer against Russia, accounting for roughly 80% of Russian battlefield casualties and striking oil and gas infrastructure as far as 2,000 kilometers from the front. About 70% of the Russian population now lives within range of Ukrainian drone attacks. A Gazpromneft refinery in southern Moscow has halted oil processing for fear of strikes. The Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery at Kstovo — Russia’s fourth-largest by volume — has been hit.

The Defence Research & Development Organisation has completed final trials of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Launched Precision Guided Missile.

Britain’s four Vanguard-class ballistic-missile submarines carry the entire United Kingdom nuclear deterrent. Each 15,900-ton boat is powered by a Rolls-Royce PWR2 nuclear reactor, runs at more than 25 knots submerged, and carries up to 16 American-made Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The class — HMS Vanguard, HMS Victorious, HMS Vigilant, and HMS Vengeance — entered service between 1993 and 1999. The Royal Navy has kept at least one of them on patrol every single day since 1969.

In March 1996, Bill Clinton sent two U.S. aircraft carriers — the USS Nimitz and USS Independence — into the Taiwan Strait to intimidate China during the island’s first direct presidential election. Beijing had no military answer. China backed down. That single humiliation became the organizing principle of thirty years of Chinese military investment in one thing above all else: missiles, and lots of them.

Little Debbie snacks, once an indirect victim of the COVID-19 pandemic, are finally back in Commissaries. Soccer teams and lunch boxes everywhere, rejoice. For those unfamiliar with the beloved, shelf-stable baked treats, Little Debbie is the brand that brings us Nutty Buddy, Oatmeal Creme Pies, Honey Buns, and of course, pure childhood joy.
Also Read: American troops drank 2 million energy drinks during Operation Epic Fury
In 2022, family-owned McKee Foods Corp., makers of the Little Debbie line of prepackaged sweets, couldn’t keep their products on Commissary shelves due to supply costs.

Defence technology firms Echodyne and Moog have completed testing of counter-UAS systems designed to identify and engage small uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS) in battlefield conditions.

The USS Gerald R. Ford returned to Naval Station Norfolk on May 16, 2026, after a 326-day deployment — the longest American carrier deployment since the USS Coral Sea spent 329 days at sea in 1965. The Ford was scheduled for seven months but stretched to eleven across operations against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and the opening of the air campaign against Iran. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle has openly opposed deployment extensions, telling the Surface Navy Association the practice disrupts funerals, marriages, and family planning.

The Pentagon selected Shield AI to integrate swarm technology onto the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a one-way attack drone the U.S. military cloned from an Iranian variant, according to the company.
U.S. Central Command said it used the LUCAS for the first time in combat against Iran during Operation Epic Fury, though the military produced just dozens of the systems initially, according to the Pentagon’s chief technology officer in March.

Russia has become the most important enabler of North Korea’s nuclear program, according to a 38North assessment published May 13. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told Seoul that Pyongyang is probably adding a new uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon. North Korea is estimated to possess roughly 50 nuclear warheads but still lacks a reliable ballistic missile delivery system.

Iran never aimed to close the Strait of Hormuz, Dr. Andrew Latham argues. Tehran built something far more useful — permanent uncertainty. Mines, shore-based anti-ship missiles, fast attack craft, and cheap drones make every transit a calculation rather than a routine. Global oil inventories dropped 250 million barrels across March and April. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve stood at roughly 384 million barrels in early May. The IEA projects Q2 drawdowns averaging 8.5 million barrels a day.

After a suggestion that AI might be the “holy grail” of future special operations, the general in charge of the U.S. military’s most elite combat forces had another pre-modern metaphor for the technology.
“This extends all the way back from the first stone thrown from the first sling,” Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, told an audience at SOF Week Tuesday in Tampa, Florida.

U.S. Undersecretary of War Elbridge Colby announced May 18 that the Pentagon was pausing its participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, the 86-year-old advisory body that has coordinated North American continental defense since 1940. Washington cited Canada’s failure to meet NATO’s 5% GDP defense spending target and incomplete progress on its commitment to buy 88 F-35s. Ottawa has so far ordered only 16 and is reviewing the remaining purchase amid trade tensions.

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.

This video describes the military situation in

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.