This video describes the military situation in

Vladimir Putin could order the mobilisation of

The U.S. Navy is investigating a serious engineering failure that left the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold without power for four days while operating in the South China Sea. The destroyer suffered what the Navy described as an “engineering casualty involving its generators” on July 24, forcing the ship to remain without normal electrical power, forcing it to be towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force has deployed its J-16 heavyweight fighters outside Asia for the first time with at least six of the aircraft having been identified as part of the deployment for the Eagles of Civilisation 2026 China-Egypt air exercise, which is scheduled to run from mid-August into early September. The deployment represents an important step up from last year’s China-Egypt exercise.

U.S. ‘Stealthily’ Moves Oil in War-Torn Strait of Hormuz – The United States military is quietly moving millions of barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz every day, despite Iran’s bid to strangle shipping in the strategic waterway.

Axios said the U.S. military has established a protected shipping corridor along the southern side of the strait, close to Oman. Two U.S. officials said between 15 and 20 tankers have been entering and leaving the Gulf through the route each night in recent weeks, moving close to 10 million barrels of oil per day.

The Secret U.S. Hormuz Route That Appears To Be Working – Two unnamed American officials told Axios this week that the U.S. military has established a shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz that is successfully challenging Tehran’s claim over the waterway and moving millions of barrels of oil each day. The claim comes as reports suggest that Iran is losing control over the strategic waterway, but amid ongoing traffic disruptions that are causing global economic pain.

What Axios Claims

Littoral Combat Ship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Think about the World War II shows and films that stuck with you, like “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific,” or “Saving Private Ryan.” Now consider that not one of them is about the division that spent more days in combat than any other American unit in the war.
It’s hard to deny the long-term effects World War II had on the United States. We are sitting close to the 100th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and are still making movies about the events that took place.

The crew of a malfunctioning MQ-9A drone worked for more than 7 minutes last August to keep their stricken aircraft aloft, but a damaged wire in the fuel system had irreversibly killed its newly installed engine, dooming the $23 million drone after a day-long mission in the Middle East.
Flying from a base in South Dakota, the Predator’s pilot guided the powerless drone for nearly 10 minutes before making a “forced landing” that buckled the landing gear. Rather than recover the drone inside the undisclosed country in which it landed, U.S. forces destroyed it.

The Strait of Hormuz, despite President Donald Trump’s frequent claims to the contrary, remains almost completely closed, and the president has also said that no talks are planned between the U.S. and Iran. The president has even been musing of late about declaring the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory.

However, one new report says the United States has made a clandestine move, with some success, to get oil through.

Libre Aircraft Carrier Naval Group Image

SOUTH CHINA SEA (Jan. 15, 2022) A U.S. Navy aircraft launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68).

Thales and Systematic have established a strategic partnership aimed at delivering advanced, interoperable air defence solutions to the Danish Armed Forces.

Defence tech company Castelion has secured $1bn in Series C funding to ramp up production of its Blackbeard hypersonic missile and further develop advanced weapons technology.

Dzirhan Mahadzir, USNI N.

Rempfer & Pomerleau, BrDef
The Army is toying with new ways to deal with communication disruptions on the battlefield

Global Defense News
U.S. Missile Defense Agency awarded X-Bow Systems a $10.

Sandra Erwin, SpaceNews
Company founded by former SpaceX executives aims to produce a low-cost hypersonic weapon and a broader portfolio of longer-range strike and missile defense weapons

Emily Ryan Miller, Defence Blog
The U.S.

Let me start by saying that shooting 55gr .223 out of a 20-inch pencil barrel with a rifle-length gas system, as Eugene Stoner, Bob Fremont, and Jim Sullivan intended, is a very enjoyable firearms experience. That said, since the AR-15 was introduced, shooters and engineers have been trying to figure out just how short an AR’s barrel length can be.
Also Read: Why the Army doesn’t need the Sig Sauer M7 rifle
The AR’s internal pistol design bleeds gas from the barrel and uses it to cycle the bolt carrier group.

This video describes the military situation in

This video describes the military situation in

Military analysts are captivated by how the material nature of war is transforming in Ukraine. Unmanned systems have captured Russian infantry units, battered Russian naval and commercial ships, and even, with the help of on-board AI, conducted autonomous strikes deep into areas where Russian jamming foils remote piloting. These technologies are powering a dramatic democratization of military capability, allowing a country to hold off an invader many times its size.But that democratization is only part of the story, and is in fact driven by an equally dramatic consolidation.

For years, the Chinese military’s own newspaper has been making a promise it may no longer be able to keep. Whenever the People’s Liberation Army Daily (Jiefangjun Bao), the official newspaper of China’s Central Military Commission, discusses artificial intelligence and command, it returns to the same reassurance: Machines may sort sensor data, draft options, and compress the time between observation and action, but the final authority, and the responsibility that comes with it, belong to the human commander.

A new U.S. Air Force EA-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft has flown intensified operations along the borders of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in Central Europe, operating closely alongside a NATO E-3 AWACS and a U.S. Army ARTEMIS II intelligence aircraft. Kaliningrad is one of the most sensitive areas on NATO’s eastern flank, as it is geographically separated from mainland Russia and lies between Poland and Lithuania, leaving it surrounded by hostile states.

The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps considering attacks on U.S. military facilities in Europe if the ongoing war effort further escalations, according to a report by the Financial Times. Two unidentified Iranian sources reportedly told the paper that U.S. bases in countries including Bulgaria have been assessed as potential targets as part of contingency plans for expanding the conflict. The development would represent a major geographical expansion of the conflict and could put U.S. forces across Europe on a higher state of alert.

Russia’s state defence conglomerate Rostec has delivered a new batch of Pantsir-S air defence combat vehicles and stationary Pantsir-SMD air-defence systems to the Russian Ministry of Defence. The systems were produced by Rostec’s High-Precision Systems holding and have reportedly completed the required testing before being accepted into service.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Army’s top cyber officer revealed Wednesday the existence of a new task force dedicated to exploring the use of artificial intelligence in the service’s cyber command, from simple staff processes to agents “hunting” in the Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN).
Task Force Lexington was established in April and charged with creating AI agents for different cyber work roles, including developers, data engineers, host analysts and exploitation analysts, according to Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank, head of U.S. Army Cyber Command.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has returned to Moscow following a strange series of trips across Siberia and the far eastern regions of Russia amid speculation that the Kremlin was deliberately keeping him away from areas most likely to be hit by Russian drones.

But Putin’s return changes nothing about the reality of the ongoing Ukrainian strikes, which are crippling Russia’s energy industry and causing major logistical headaches for businesses all over the country.

The Pentagon is considering a major reduction or relocation of American forces in the Persian Gulf after nearly six months of war with Iran exposed just how vulnerable some of the United States’ largest military bases in the region are.

The discussions could ultimately result in U.S.

The Pentagon’s new comprehensive report on the state of America’s defense research enterprise spotlights severe structural, logistical and bureaucratic vulnerabilities undermining the military’s technological edge.
“The average age of laboratory facilities across all the Services is greater than 45 years, with most built during the Cold War era,” it states. “These facilities are past their traditional life expectancies and the methods and requirements of conducting research in the 21st century is beyond their capabilities.

The Army has awarded Hanwha Defense USA, a subsidiary of South Korea-headquartered Hanwha Aerospace, $100 million for mobile tactical cannon prototypes as part of a deal that could be worth up to nearly $263 million.
The service announced the other transaction agreement, which has an estimated four-year period of performance, Tuesday evening.
The move represents a confluence of two Army goals: boosting its long-range firepower for modern battlefields and expanding the defense industrial base.

US Navy’s Nimitz class aircraft carrier,

A French Air Force Rafale intercepted a specialised command-and-communications variant of the Russian Tu-214 aircraft over the Baltic Sea, with the fighter deployed to the region as part of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission. The intercepted aircraft has been identified as Tu-214PU RA-64534, operated by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which belongs to the Russian government’s Rossiya Special Flight Detachment that operates aircraft for senior political, military and security officials.

Nato’s maritime mission is changing hands

The United Arab Emirates has suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran, severing one of Tehran’s most critical remaining economic links.

The announcement comes after Iran was accused of launching two ballistic missiles toward maritime traffic near Emirati territorial waters.

U.S. Air Force Capt. Nick “Laz” Le Tourneau, pilot and commander of the F-22 Raptor Aerial Demonstration Team, performs an aerial demonstration at Air Dot Show Tour Fort Lauderdale, Florida, May 9, 2026. Capt.

Trump Declares Strait of Hormuz ‘Open’ – President Donald Trump says the Strait of Hormuz is “open and operating.” On Tuesday, he went a step further, sharing a map that labeled the strategic waterway “NEW U.S. Territory.”

Only six commodity vessels crossed the strait on Tuesday, according to Kpler data reported by Reuters. That was down from nine a day earlier and well below normal pre-war traffic, when roughly 130 to 140 vessels passed through Hormuz each day.

President Donald J. Trump holds a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room Wednesday, May 27, 2026.

Afshon Ostovar, one of the leading experts on Iran and the host of the members-only podcast The Iran Reckoning, is joined by War on the Rocks membership editor Kerry Anderson for a state-of-play conversation on the conflict between the United States and Iran. They consider why the fighting has settled into a stalemate and dig into which figures in the Iranian regime have influence over Iran’s approach to the war. Afshon unpacks the implications of Mohsen Rezaei’s recent appointment as head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, before the two look ahead to what comes next.

President Donald J. Trump, at least according to a Reuters poll this week, has the lowest approval rating of his second presidency and is tied for the lowest across both of his presidencies. The war in Iran, which Trump launched and with which he is closely associated, is also wildly unpopular; there’s not much confidence among anyone in either party that the United States will be able to pull itself out of that conflict anytime soon.

Therefore, the Iran War, along with rising gas prices and related inflation, is likely to be top of mind for voters as the November election approaches.

Security teams at an Air Force nuclear base may soon be training with Chinese-made drones, which are now so widely used in war zones that one expert called them ‘the new AK-47.’  According to a federal contract solicitation, nuclear security airmen at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, need the Chinese-made drones so they can train with the “exact devices adversaries are most likely to employ.”
First reported by Stars and Stripes, the solicitation specifically seeks “brand name DJI” drones. DJI, a company based in  Shenzhen, China, builds most of the world’s civilian drones.

In the latest episode of Sub Life, we asked sai

Russia has issued a sharp warning to the United Kingdom over the reported use of British-made drones in Ukrainian strikes against targets deep inside Russian territory. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow could regard Britain as a participant in the conflict if British involvement in attacks against Russia continues to expand. The warning comes after reports that Ukrainian forces have begun using British drones for long-range strikes inside Russia.

The Iran war is approaching its six-month anniversary and looks nothing like U.S. President Donald Trump suggested it would when the strikes began in February.

When U.S. and Israeli forces launched attacks in February, Trump was still famous for campaigning against America’s endless overseas wars.

FILE PHOTO — The B-2 Spirit is a multi-role bomber capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear munitions. A dramatic leap forward in technology, the bomber represents a major milestone in the U.S. bomber modernization program.

Donald Trump was elected in 2024 by a unique coalition of groups that seemed unlikely to stay together long-term. Trump earned the support of podcast bros and also the Christian Right.

He did better than usual with pro-Israel Jews and also with Muslim-Americans in Michigan, as well as a half-dozen other similar dynamics.

AOC. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

AOC. Image CNN Screengrab.

In 2024, Trump succeeded in appearing as multiple things to multiple groups.

The Red Hawk, Leonardo M-346 or Golden Eagle?

Donald Trump has been underwater in the polls for most of his second term. But this week, he hit a new low.

According to Reuters, the president’s approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, which is the lowest of his second presidency in the Reuters/Ipsos poll.

President Donald Trump holds a Cabinet meeting, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in the Cabinet Room. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

President Donald Trump delivers remarks at a National Day of Prayer event, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in the White House Rose Garden.

Defense startup X-Bow has been tapped to develop and demonstrate an affordable interceptor for the Missile Defense Agency in late 2027, the company announced Wednesday.
MDA awarded the two-year, $10.9 million contract to the company in July under the agency’s Rapid Response Small Launcher Technology program, moving X-Bow into phase 2 of the Low-Cost Interceptor (LCI) initiative. Like others across the Pentagon, the effort seeks to rapidly build and test an inexpensive defense solution against advanced missile threats — including hypersonic weapons.

The Marines had broken the step ladders on their heavy logistics trucks. So, while they were training in the Pacific over the summer, they made some more.
It was a simple fix for a part the Marines were constantly having to replace. But the physical manifestation of the ladders represented what officials called a promising, though partial, answer to the logistics challenges the military expects to face if the U.S. and China go to war.

Moscow Gas Stations Forced to Ration – Russia’s fuel crisis is worsening, and now it is hitting consumers at the pump in the capital.

This week, major gas station chains in Moscow reimposed purchase limits as Ukrainian strikes continue to disrupt the country’s refining industry.

Vladimir Putin in Syria. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Putin in Briefing. Image Credit: Russian Government.

50 Million Russians Affected 
Ukraine’s growing drone production capabilities are plunging Russia into more chaos than its 2025 attacks did.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Straight from tours supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia, U.S. Army officers presented their latest assessment of just how deadly electronic warfare has become, where virtually every emission can be detected and targeted within minutes.
They added fresh entries to the catalog of concerns about the American military’s ability to operate in such a conflict, and argued that because nearly every mission must now consider the electromagnetic spectrum, the service’s signal soldiers must become some of the most tactically proficient members of the modern battlefield.

Royal Marines boarded the Russian shadow fleet

This video describes the military situation in

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired a senior member of his administration on Wednesday, August 19, just hours after anti-corruption investigators searched her home as part of a money-laundering investigation involving a series of high-profile legislators, bank executives, and other officials close to the presidency.

Zelenskyy dismissed Iryna Mudra as deputy head of the Office of the President with a one-sentence decree that offered no explanation for her removal.

Zelensky Speaking in UK Ukraine Government Photo

President Donald J.