L. Seligman, et al.

The War Zone
The Navy is pushing more counter-drone hard-kill capabilities to its fleet as it comes to terms with the growing threat of one-way attack drones.

Warner, S&S
Out front is the Air Force, which already has a number on its plane: F-47.

AP
resident Donald Trump has ordered the U.S.

The future of U.S. military aviation is unfolding.
In the Air Force, the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter is in the works, and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber is already flying. On April 20, 2026, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle shared that the Navy will decide on its next-gen fighter in August. That same day, Northrop Grumman released the first public images of its concept for the Navy NGAD.

Foreign contractor personnel operating alongside Ukrainain special forces have reportedly taken extensive casualties in a friendly fire incident near Kovsharovka in the Kharkov/Kharkiv Region, after Ukrainian personnel fired on them and the special forces. Severe and worsening personnel shortages have resulted in foreign contractors playing an increasingly central role in the Ukrainian war effort, although the origins of the contractors killed in the latest incident remains unknown.

Iran released a produced video of its small boat forces storming a tanker in the Persian Gulf, threatening commercial shipping.
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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has deployed its first warship built primarily to deploy unmanned aircraft, the Type 076 class aircraft carrier Sichuan, for its first ever cross-regional training mission in the South China Sea. This follows multiple earlier sea trials, the first of which began on November 14, 2025, and is in line with the ship’s planned development schedule. The landmark trials have been assessed by local analysts to mark rapid and efficient progress towards service entry.

The U.S. military is firing million-dollar missiles at Iranian drones that cost a tiny fraction as much — a striking example of the kind of overmatch modern warfare punishes.The Department of Defense’s approach to electromagnetic spectrum policy follows a similar logic, occupying prime mid-band frequencies for vital but relatively low-throughput national security uses — including radars, satellite communications, navigation, and electronic warfare — even as those same bands could generate much larger commercial, allied, and strategic returns.

Closing small boat stations has proven difficult. Leaving them unchanged is operationally inefficient. These units are enduring parts of the Coast Guard’s force structure, yet their full potential is not always realized. This article proposes a model to better align their mission with national priorities.During the recent Senate confirmation hearing for the next commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, senators raised a wide range of global maritime concerns, including Arctic competition, cyber threats targeting ports, migration pressures, and increasingly severe storms.

The U.S. Armed Forces depleted their stockpiles of critical missiles to dangerous levels during the country’s seven week war against Iran, resulting in a “near term risk” that could leave it vulnerable, according to a new assessment published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

France and Poland are preparing to conduct exercises over the Baltics involving Rafale fighter jets equipped with nuclear warheads, which will simulate strikes on targets in Russia and Belarus. The Rafale fighters will be deployed on Polish territory, but will remain entirely under French control. The deployment is reportedly related to plans for a nuclear sharing agreement under which Poland will gain access to French nuclear warheads, possibly to equip its F-16 or F-35A fighters.

The Finnish Defence Ministry has reported that the government has submitted a proposal to parliament to allow the import of nuclear weapons and their storage in the country. This development follows years of speculation that the country could enter a nuclear sharing agreement with the United States, following a decision in December 2021 to procure 64 F-35A fighters, which are well optimised for nuclear delivery, and after the country joined NATO in April 2023.

Federal authorities have arrested and charged an Army Special Forces soldier with using classified information to place bets on the Jan. 3 raid that whisked Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of a secure compound and into U.S. custody.
Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, placed bets that totaled about $33,000 on the timing of U.S. operations in Venezuela, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. He allegedly netted more than $409,000 in winnings through Polymarket.

It’s no secret that Operation Epic Fury and the associated war in the Middle East have sparked major disruptions in the complex, global logistics network that U.S. Transportation Command relies on to move, equip and support the joint force.
But according to its commander Air Force Gen. Randall Reed, those disturbances are also enabling Transcom and its military partners to integrate and refine their joint logistics operations, and expand deployments of real-time data and AI-enabled visualization assets.

Usually it’s tourists and lorry drivers⛴️ This time? The cargo is 1,000 British troops on a North Sea crossing, heading for a Nato exercise🫡 Find out why soldiers are using civilian transport #BritishArmy #MilitaryExercise #NATO #DesertRats #UKForces #ArmedForces #Defence #MilitaryReadiness #UKNews #GlobalSecurity #explained

Prince Harry has landed in Ukraine 🇺🇦
The

Defense officials recently used the Pentagon’s enterprise-wide generative artificial intelligence platform to create 100,000 agents amid a broader push by department leadership to speed up AI adoption, according to a senior member of the research and engineering directorate.
The Pentagon first introduced its GenAI.mil platform for its workforce in December, with the aim of providing commercial tools to millions of personnel across the DOD. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CTO Emil Michael have both championed the capability and encouraged its widespread use.

Multinational forces may face a dangerous chall

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An Army veteran attempting to wield South Carolina law to sue a military contractor won a major Supreme Court victory Wednesday, carving out a narrow legal lane for those seeking to hold wartime contractors to account.
The ruling allows a former soldier to use state injury laws to sue Fluor Corporation, a contractor whose Afghan employee gravely wounded him in a 2016 suicide bombing.

The Raven GBAD mobile air defence platform has gone through multiple iterations in the short time is has been operational in Ukraine.

After decades of flying the AV-8B Harrier II and the F/A-18 Hornet, the Marine Corps is going all in on the F-35.
Besides being stealthy, the jet has far more advanced sensing and data-sharing tools than anything the Marine Corps has flown in the past, an asset that service officials say will be vital on future battlefields.
But the F-35 is as complicated as it is capable, and bringing a jet that advanced into the demolition derby of expeditionary warfare requires a shift in how the Marine Corps thinks about aviation logistics.

Michael Kofman joined Ryan at a live event earlier this year to discuss the performance of American defense technology in Ukraine and why it often falls short. They examine the challenges of fielding and iterating systems in combat, from poor implementation and weak feedback loops to deeper mismatches between design and battlefield reality. They also explore what it takes to succeed in this environment and what it means for future conflicts. Thanks to Leonid Capital Partners for hosting the event at which this podcast was recorded.

KNDS has inaugurated a new production line for the BOXER 8×8 wheeled vehicle at its Munich-Allach site in Germany.

The National Guard tends to be the butt of a lot of jokes from fellow service members and civilians alike.
It’s not without merit, as a lot of times, the jokes write themselves. Especially if you’ve deployed overseas and seen how some National Guard units are put in the tower-guard-and-sandbag-filler pigeonhole.
Also Read: The National Guard’s ‘one weekend a month, two weeks a year’ slogan is outdated
But what the National Guard doesn’t do very often is defend itself by parading around its own history.

Next-generation weapons are among the key focuses as the US Army presented a $253bn budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year 2027.

Lacking a land warfare centre, Saab determined that many forces in Africa cannot effectually dictate troops how to train.

First, the Army got a remote-controlled Black Hawk. Now it is a step closer to getting an autonomous Chinook, after a CH‑47F Chinook successfully landed in testing without a pilot. The test flight is a major milestone as the Army increasingly explores automating parts of its air fleet.
The test flight comes as the Army has begun implementing major cuts to its pilot and aviation corps, targeting 6,000 positions of crews and pilots to be cut.

A white T-shirt represented the last chance for 38 submariners.
Without it, they could not have survived much longer in the crippled U.S. Navy submarine S-5. It sank on September 1, 1920, after a crew member mistakenly left the main induction valve open during a normally routine crash dive. That moment of forgetfulness caused the sub to flood and eventually sink.

Brian Everstine, AvWeek
The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes a major increase in F-35 procurement and spares after last year’s reduction

Colton Jones, Defence Blog
Soldiers from Boxer Battery, 1st Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade, completed a multi-day High Mobility Artillery Rocket System…

Thomas Newdick, The WarZone
Development of X-BAT is accelerating, including the use of a thrust vectoring nozzle from an experimental F-16 that was borrowed “Indiana Jones style.

Todd South, A&SF Mag.

The Serbian Defence Ministry is planning to procure new air defence equipment from China, according to reports from multiple local sources, as President Aleksandar Vucic has announced the imminent signing of new contracts to strengthen the country’s network. Serbia relies more heavy on surface-to-air missile systems than any other European state, with its limited defence spending levels and small relatively old fighter fleet limiting its ability to seriously contest control of its airspace using its combat aviation assets.

U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has informed Congress that the U.S. Armed Forces are actively adapting to lessons from Russian-Ukrainian War, stressing that the way forces in the theatre have responded to the conflict has resulted in a fundamental transformation of how war is waged. “They have fundamentally altered how humans engage in conflict,” Driscoll told lawmakers regarding the Ukrainian Armed Forces in particular: “They have done an absolutely amazing job of innovating.

The U.S. Air Force’s budget for the Fiscal Year 2027 has increased planned procurements of F-15EX fighters to 267 aircraft, up from a previously planned 129. Of these, 24 of the fighters will be procured in 2027 at a cost of $3 billion. An Air Force spokesperson commented that procurements are intended to “begin to recapitalise the aging F-15E fleet,” expanding on the previous primary rationale for procurements which was to replace the even older F-15C/D fleet. Plans to surge annual defence spending to approximately $1.

Editor’s note: This article is the seventh in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.Americans lost nearly $21 billion to cybercrime in 2025, a new record for cyber-enabled economic losses.

The debate over how best to deter China in the western Pacific has reached a new level of ambition. Ely Ratner, a former senior defense official in the Biden administration, proposed a “Pacific Defense Pact” — a legally binding multilateral treaty among the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. This reflects serious concerns over China’s rise and its potential future use of force along the first island chain. The underlying diagnosis is sound: Existing U.S.

The Russian Su-57 fifth generation fighter is benefitting from continuous improvements to its artificial intelligence related capabilities, according to a recent announcement by a spokesman for the state intermediary agency for Russian defence exports Rosoboronexport. “The Sukhoi Design Bureau is continuously working to improve the technical design of the advanced multirole Su-57E fighter, including its modern onboard equipment with AI components.

During U.S. Armed Forces’ military assault against Iran from February 28, the very widespread reliance on Cold War era KC-135 Stratotankers to support operations drew considerable attention to the ongoing issues with the Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tanker program intended to provide a direct replacement with next generation features. Due to ongoing issues and development delays, the KC-46A is still not fully through operational testing, despite already being in limited service, which has for years represented a concurrency problem for the Air Force.

The Russian 35th Guards Combined Arms Army’s Nuclear Biological Chemical Protection Troops have deployed TOS-1A thermobaric rocket artillery systems to bombard Ukrainian positions in the Zaporizhzhia region, where ground forces are making major advances. Footage released from the settlement of Komsomolske has shown large explosions as the TOS-1A systems appear to inflict major damage.

The Russian Su-35 long range air superiority fighter in 2025 achieved a major turnaround on global export markets, with leaked Russian government documents that year showing that 48 of the aircraft had been ordered to re-equip the Iranian Air Force, and six more to equip the Ethiopian Air Force. Combined with the delivery of 18 aircraft to Algeria from February that year, this represented a quintupling o confirmed export orders in 2025, from a previous 24 fighters sold to China, to 96 fighters sold to four separate foreign clients.

John Phelan is departing his role as secretary of the Navy, effective immediately, and Hung Cao will step in as acting SECNAV, Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell announced on social media late Wednesday.
Phelan’s surprise exit comes a day after he delivered a keynote address at the Sea-Air-Space symposium, in which he touted plans for a next-generation battleship, one of President Donald Trump’s signature military modernization initiatives.
“Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately,” Parnell said in a statement.

Public Domain

This story is developing…
Washington — In a surprise move, the Pentagon announced Wednesday that Secretary of the Navy John Phelan is leaving his post effective immediately, marking the first departure of a service secretary under President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Reuters is reporting Phelan was fired with no details given.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed the news in a social media post, stating: “Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately.

Navy Secretary John Phelan is “departing the administration, effective immediately,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced on Wednesday.
Undersecretary Hung Cao will serve as the Navy’s acting secretary, Parnell wrote in a brief statement on social media.
Parnell did not provide any reasons why Phelan is departing his current role. No further information about Phelan’s departure was immediately available.
Phelan was confirmed as Navy secretary in March 2025.

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The Royal Navy Cricket team just made a huge st

Roy Hallums was rescue during the Iraq war after spending approximately a year buried alive. CMDR Dan O’Shea gets his story on tape.
Dan O’Shea is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL, combat-veteran, world traveler, history buff, and storyteller. He is known for his hostage terrorism subject matter expertise and counterinsurgency experience, as well as two decades of reporting on terrorism as a military analyst for BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, News Nation and NewsMax. He writes and speaks on topics related to terrorism, leadership, teamwork and the warrior creed.