Sometimes, when I am lucky enough to give a lecture or speak to a group of folks interested in national security, I get the question: what got me interested in this field? Since I was a child, I have dragged history books (A World At Arms is my favorite) with me everywhere I went, and I have always been obsessed with military history. But the one thing that literally pushed me to change careers from the telecommunications industry in Rhode Island to a professional defense geek in a Washington, DC think tank back over a decade ago was one missile.

The latest flare-up between U.S. and Iranian forces underscores how the current “ceasefire” has so far failed to stop fighting between the two countries.
On Wednesday, U.S. forces intercepted five Iranian one-way attack drones launched near the Strait of Hormuz and “prevented a sixth drone launch from an Iranian ground control site in Bandar Abbas,” according to U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM.
CENTCOM’s carefully worded statement did not specify if the U.S. military had attacked the Iranian ground site. Nor did it include any information on how U.S.

We are so used to Vladimir Putin leading Russia that it rarely seems that there could be a different president someday. He has created a cult of personality, eliminated all opposition, and limited dissent so well that there is no reason to believe that even a violent coup could take him down. But he can’t live forever. There are usually reports discussing his various health issues, but these are often just internet rumors. Putin just keeps ticking.

He may also be hiding in an underground command center, fearing assassination from Ukrainian drone strikes. He is definitely a marked man.

Ukraine’s forces aim to build on its frontline progress by targeting Russian logistics along its operational depth at the rear.

Global oil markets are behaving as though the Strait of Hormuz crisis is not temporary, despite continued public optimism from the Trump administration about negotiations with Iran, and analysts warn that inventory drawdowns and rising summer fuel demand could bring global oil inventories to “minimum operational levels.

Americans tend to be thought of as gun-toting cowboys with a “big iron” on their hips. This might stem from the nostalgia of the “Wild West” that led to a boom of 1950s and 1960s Westerns in American pop culture. It might also stem from a romanticized version of the actual Wild West of the late 19th century.
Also Read: The Colt Detective Special was America’s concealed carry of choice through Vietnam
In fairness, the U.S. military has had a long-standing relationship with the classic six-shot revolver.

The U.S. Navy plans to fire Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile from an F/A-18 Super Hornet by 2027. Built by former SpaceX engineers, Blackbeard is a low-cost, Mach 5 weapon designed for high-volume production at a fraction of what Lockheed or Raytheon charge. The Navy has committed roughly $379 million through its MACE program, and the Army is eyeing a HIMARS-launched variant. If successful, the missile could help narrow America’s hypersonic gap with China.

The F/A-18 Super Hornet Goes Hypersonic 

U.S.

With the 2026 Midterms less than six months away, it is high time that the ruling Republican Party, generally, and the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) coalition, specifically, prepare itself for what is likely to be a decisive defeat at the polls in November.

That’s because the scion of the MAGA movement, President Donald J. Trump, initiated a deeply unpopular war of choice against the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28.

This morning, I went on my hometown radio station, 99.7 WPRO, in Providence, Rhode Island, to talk about the war in Iran and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Let’s just say I was not a fan favorite when I explained that we could soon be looking at $6.00 gasonline prices and a global oil shortage if the situation isn’t resolved soon.

Clearly, time is running out to avoid an energy shock; the American people aren’t feeling it in full just yet, thanks to the drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

A federal jury has convicted a man for the drug-related killings of a soldier and an Army veteran with ties to elite units at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2020 — murdering one during a cocaine deal gone bad and the second deep in the base’s pine woods to cover his tracks. 
Kenneth Maurice Quick, Jr., 26, was convicted May 16 on eight counts related to the shooting deaths of Master Sgt. William “Billy” Lavigne, 37, and Army veteran Timothy Dumas, 44, in December 2020.

Over the last several days, the Russian Federation launched one of the largest combined missile-and-drone attacks on Kyiv (and other Ukrainian cities) seen in months. Western reporting described hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles used, including Russia’s newer Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile system.

Per Reuters, Ukrainian officials claim that the Russian strikes killed civilians, damaged civilian infrastructure in the historic city, and injured many more.

Ukraine launched attack drones and Western-supplied cruise missiles at targets within Russian-occupied Crimea earlier this week, striking several administrative buildings and related infrastructure. The strikes may be part of Kyiv’s wider pressure campaign against entrenched Russian forces on the peninsula. Ukraine is making more progress on the battlefield than perhaps at any time since the 2023 counteroffensive — once again raising the prospect of a Ukrainian recapture of Crimea.

Recent Ukrainian Strikes on Russian-occupied Crimea

Storm Shadow Missile.

The weekend brought some of the most violent strikes on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, since the war began. Several Ukrainian civilians died in the strikes, which included at least one Oreshnik hypersonic missile. Russia followed up the deadly round of strikes with stark rhetoric, hinting at additional bellicosity in the future. But despite the seemingly grim picture from the ground in Kyiv, Russia’s actions are not those of a Russian war machine that is winning, but rather writings of desperation.

Democrats want to impeach Donald Trump for starting a war without congressional authorization. The constitutional case is strong. But the proposed remedy misses the deeper problem. And that problem is something Congress would rather not discuss.

The constitutional outrage is real. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a full-scale air war against Iran without a single congressional vote.

This video describes the military situation in

Ukraine’s Drone Force Hits Tuapse Again – Following another overnight Ukraine drone attack, a fire has broken out at the Russian Black Sea oil port and refinery on the Black Sea at Tuapse.

This is the 5th such attack this Spring and comes after several other strikes on the same complex in the past few weeks.

At the time of the attack, local authorities and environmental services were still clearing up damage to the coastline and massive oil slicks covering the beaches caused by previous strikes.

According to the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the nation’s intelligence, cyber, and security agency, nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine that began in February 2022. The announcement was made by Anne Keast-Butler, who runs the agency, on 27 May.

MPs heard that the UK’s future defence-industrial resilience may depend not only on access to critical minerals, but on domestic refining

This video describes the military situation in

To get more missiles and advanced technology like lasers and rail guns out to sea, the Navy wants to see 15 Trump-class “battleships” built over the next 30 years.
The BBG(X), as it is listed in the Navy’s new 2026 shipbuilding plan, would be a nuclear-powered surface combatant built around long-range fires, command and control, and future weapons that current surface vessels like destroyers may not have the space or power to support. The plan shows 15 BBG(X) purchases across its 30-year procurement profile, getting started with three between fiscal years 2027 and 2031 at a cost of $43.

Barely into her 20s, Amelia Earhart was working as a nurse’s aide in Canada when she attended a flying show in 1918.
That display of flight energized Earhart in a way that few other things could. Two years later, a veteran aviator took Earhart up for her first time in an airplane, cementing what the young woman saw for her future.
Also Read: The biggest challenge Charles Lindbergh faced in flying across the Atlantic
“As soon as I left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly,” Earhart said, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

Ukraine Needs Help with Missile Defense Right Now: In an unprecedented move, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged US President Donald Trump to help his nation by providing more air defense systems and interceptor missiles. His request comes as Russia has threatened waves of new strikes on the capital Kyiv and other cities. Ballistic missiles, said the Ukrainian leader, are Moscow’s “last major advantage on the battlefield.”

Zelenskiy’s appeal came in the form of a letter sent directly to Trump and the US Congress, and which was shown to the Reuters news agency.

The Israeli Air Force has taken delivery of its first Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tanker, which arrived at Nevatim Airbase on May 27, 2026, less than a month after the aircraft’s first flight in the United States. Nevatim Airbase notably also hosts all of Israel’s F-35I fifth generation fighters, providing an indication that the new tanker may be intended specifically to support operations by the elite of the Israeli combat fleet.

The Canadian Defence Ministry has selected the Swedish GlobalEye airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system to modernise its air defence capabilities, rejecting the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, which is widely considered the most capable NATO-compatible system, as well as the L3Harris Aeris X system. Announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney, this landmark procurement decision marks the beginning formal negotiations for six new aircraft, with the Swedish firm Saab having secured a preferred status.

The U.S. Air Force has begun to deploy F-22 Raptor fifth generation fighters from dispersed base locations across Alaska to provide a more robust and flexible air defence capability, which represents a shift toward faster and less predictable air defence operations to counter growing challenges from Russian and Chinese strategic aviation.

Eve Sampson, Army Times
The Lightweight Command Launch Unit, LWCLU, will replace the older, heavier command units and offer improved target detection range

Defence Blog
The United States just used its most powerful conventional bombs against the deepest underground nuclear facility in the world.

Bill Sweetman, UnHerd
Drones don’t have mothers

Aviationist
An F-35 Lightning II pilot sent tactical autonomy commands via a tablet to the MQ-20 Avenger as part of a recent Manned-Unmanned Teaming demonstration.

Global Defense News
An exclusive analysis of an image released by The Defense Visual Information Distribution Service reveals a U.S.

The U.S. Marine Corps has deployed High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) for major live-fire exercises near Mount Fuji, Japan, demonstrating the ability to rapidly redeploy launchers and delivery precision fires from austere positions. Equipment and ammunition was transported by air and sea, with HIMARS having been specifically designed to be highly compact allowing launchers to be rapidly redeployed by C-17 or C-5 transports to forward locations in strength.

In 2024, when Jiangsu Delong, the world’s second-largest stainless-steel producer, filed for bankruptcy, several Chinese firms and state-owned enterprises quietly absorbed its Indonesian assets. Among them was China First Heavy Industries, a state-owned enterprise founded in 1954 as one of China’s early Soviet-backed industrial projects. Today, China First Heavy Industries supplies military-grade metals to China’s military, including reactor vessels for nuclear submarines.

Sea control has changed. In recent years, there has been a quiet revolution in maritime strategy that has seen navies increasingly expected to exert greater levels of control over more of the world’s oceans, more of the time.

When news broke that North Korea had revised its constitution, analysts in the West and across the Korean Peninsula rushed to declare it the formal death of Korean reunification as a policy objective. The changes were hard to ignore. Pyongyang stripped all references to a unified Korean nation, codified a territorial clause treating the Republic of Korea as a separate foreign state, vested direct nuclear weapons authority in Kim Jong-un personally, and concentrated near-absolute executive power in the supreme leader alone.

The Italian Air Force has deployed F-35B fifth generation fighter aircraft to conduct highway operations in Finland for the first time, operating the aircraft from the Finnish Air Force’s dispersed road base network to simulate dispersal in a high intensity conflict situation. The fighters operated from the Jokioinen alternate landing site in Kanta-Hame, approximately 200 kilometres from the Russian border. These operations reflected a broader U.S.

Delays to the development of the Indian Tejas lightweight fourth generation fighter have caused serious and worsening issues for Indian Air Force’s combat capabilities, resulting in both the missing of targets for the size of the fighter fleet by a considerable margin, and in major increases to the average age of currently serving fighter types.

General Designer at Russia’s largest tank producer the Uralvagonzavod Group, Andrey Terlikov, has provided new details on the future of the T-90M main battle tank program and the vehicle’s future modernisation potential. Assessing that the tank is performing excellently during operations in the Ukrainian theatre, he projected that it continue to be modernised for a decade. Referring to the baseline T-90 variant, he observed: “The tank was developed in the 1990s. Its service life is at least 50 years.

L Todd Wood and former Special Mission Unit Commander Pete Blaber discuss the Iran conflict, and how Europe is pushing for war with Russia as the Ukraine conflict may be coming to an end.
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Russian forces attempted to shoot down a real stork with an FPV interceptor drone on the southern front.
The stork narrowly escaped by entering a sharp spin at the last moment to evade the attack.
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Summary and Key Points: Congress and the Pentagon are reviewing the Ford-class aircraft carrier program — including whether the CVN-80 and CVN-81 block buy actually delivered the promised savings before authorizing a future CVN-82 and CVN-83 block.

-The Ford-class supply chain involves over 2,000 specialized sub-vendors, and abruptly canceling the line would collapse the U.S. carrier industrial base. Designing, testing, and certifying a clean-sheet replacement would take 10 to 15 years before the first steel is cut.

Everyone is again talking about a potential deal between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran that will end the war and see the Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed despite a (shaky) ceasefire being in place, reopened to all civilian shipping.

Yet again, it seems, the world has amnesia. We’ve all been down the false path of peace talks between the Trump administration and Tehran. Every time, it has yielded no results whatsoever (other than keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed).

One of the first things I did when I moved to a new home just south of Orlando after leaving national security think tank-land in DC was to make as many contacts in the space community as I could. I have been fortunate to meet a number of past and present SpaceX employees, and I have to say they are some of the smartest and most fascinating people I have ever met. In fact, my uncle worked for NASA, helping design and maintain the Space Shuttle back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has the world’s largest arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons and has rattled his nuclear saber quite often since the war in Ukraine started, and as he keeps trying to use nuclear blackmail against the West.

Western intelligence and security analysts generally view the actual deployment of those weapons as highly unlikely. However, he keeps repeating it, trying to unnerve the West, but it has had the opposite effect.

MiG-31 Russian Air Force. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Su-33 Flanker from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Infanteers from Y Company, The Princess of Wale

The MITRE Corporation confirmed that insiders are reviewing its archives to comply with a recent production request from Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., who pressed the not-for-profit organization for dozens of assets that would reveal whether it currently has or previously possessed information on unidentified anomalous phenomena and associated unexplained technologies.

Summary and Key Points: The United States Navy originally planned a fleet of 29 Seawolf-class attack submarines, but only 3 were built before the program was canceled following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

-Each Seawolf used HY-100 steel, which allowed the boat to operate at greater depths and could carry as many as 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles. The cancellation directly contributed to the Navy’s current submarine deficit.

RFA Lyme Bay has sailed from Gibraltar packed w

Summary and Key Points: Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out 25 percent of Russia’s oil refining capacity, forcing Moscow to ban diesel and aviation fuel exports. Since February 2022, Ukraine has carried out 158 strikes against Russian oil refineries and hit 24 of its 33 major facilities.

-Russia’s average refining rate in April fell to 4.69 million barrels per day — the lowest level in more than 16 years.

This video describes the military situation in

The 11th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded on May 22. Held every five years, the conference offers an opportunity to evaluate the treaty’s implementation, respond to technological and geopolitical developments, and reinforce states’ commitment to the treaty. For the third time in a row, the conference failed to reach consensus on a final document.We asked five experts for their perspectives on what the conference achieved — or failed to achieve.Read more below.