Schogol, T&P
The Scorpion Light 81mm mobile mortar system allows crews to digitally enter data needed to hit targets and automatically moves the tube into firing position.

Sam LaGrone, USNI News
Spreading the construction of the Trump-class battleship across several different manufacturing locations is key to the Navy’s current plan to build the almost…

The WarZone
Pairing uncrewed underwater vehicles and SEALs in submersibles opens the door to new operational possibilities, but there are challenges.

The South Korean Defence Project Promotion Committee on May 22 approved a $352 million contract to procure U.S. SM-6 anti-ballistic missiles, which were designed for integration on the Mk-41 vertical launch systems that are integrated onto the country’s destroyers. Shortages of the missiles following the U.S. assault on Iran are thought to have contributed to a protracted delivery schedule, with the missiles are only expected to become operational in 2033. The SM-6 is the newest type of anti-ballistic missile in the U.S. Navy’s arsenal, and was previously in service only in the U.S.

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Catarina Buchatskiy, the co-founder and director of analytics at the Snake Island Institute, a Kyiv-based defense analytics center, and Viktoriia Honcharuk, the institute’s director of defense technologies. We asked them to share their views on how Ukraine’s military and defense firms turn battlefield feedback into rapid innovation, what Western investors and defense tech companies can learn from Ukraine, and what a future Ukraine-West defense industrial partnership might look like.

The Department of Defense does not primarily have a cyber recruiting problem — it has a cyber talent management problem. The military already possesses serious qualification frameworks, scholarship programs, credentialing systems, and selection tools. What it still lacks is a system tying assessment, training, assignment, performance, and retention together across an entire cyber career.In March 2026, the department announced at its Cyber Workforce Summit 2.0 an effort to reinvent the cyber workforce. Called Cyber Command 2.

During Congressional testimony from Department of Defense leadership last week, Representative George Whitesides asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, “How does canceling a command-initiated review support a culture of accountability?” But before the secretary could answer, Whitesides instead decided to direct the question to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Caine replied, “What you are alluding to … is a partisan question.

The Russian Armed Forces Battlegroup North have deployed TOS-1A thermobaric rocket artillery systems under itsnuclear biological, and chemical defence units to destroy key Ukrainian targetsin the Sumy Region. According to a platoon commander in the region, the system’s operations have been making a significant contribution to the advancement of Russian units along the entire line of contact. Targets destroyed within a 24 hour period using the systems have included five Ukrainian Armed Forces strongpoints and four unmanned aerial vehicle control posts.

Anglesey based RAF Valley takes on Cyprus based

Acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao has confirmed that the delivery of $14 billion worth of defence equipment to the Republic of China Armed Forces has been temporarily suspended, which is expected to exacerbate the already considerable delays to defence supplies to the island-based forces at a strategically critical time. Speaking at a Senate committee hearing, Cao stated that the pause is intended to allow for the replenishment of U.S. stockpiles following the 39 day U.S.-led war against Iran. He added that deliveries will resume once they are approved by on Capitol Hill.

Following the announcement that the Russian Armed Forces and allied Belarusian forces were conducting large scale nuclear forces exercises, which included units across the breadth of the two countries’ territories from Eastern Europe to the Pacific, the launches of six separate types of nuclear-capable missiles have been confirmed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has commented on Belarus’ effective handling of nuclear weapons since the two countries entered a nuclear sharing agreement in 2023, observing that Belarusian personnel have shown considerable skill in handling the new high-impact armaments.

The U.S. Navy’s Orca XLUUV — Extra Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle — is an 84-foot autonomous submarine drone with a 6,500 nautical mile range, built by Boeing under a 2019 Navy contract that began with DARPA’s Manta Ray program and Northrop Grumman’s prototype before Boeing inherited the production line.

The Orca Could Change Naval Warfare and Submarines Forever 

If you are of a certain age and perhaps a member of the Baby Boom or “X” generation, you may remember a 1977 movie by the name of Orca: the Killer Whale.

On December 29, 2011, a Russian Delta IV submarine called the Yekaterinburg caught fire in the PD-50 dry dock at Roslyakovo, near Severomorsk in the Murmansk region. Sparks from welding on the hull ignited wooden scaffolding around the submarine, which spread to the rubber acoustic coating on the boat itself. Russian firefighters fought the blaze for nearly 24 hours using helicopters and tugboats; eventually the Russian Navy had to partially submerge the entire submarine to extinguish the fire. Russian officials told the public there were no missiles aboard the Yekaterinburg during the fire.

Three months into the Iran War, Gulf states are pushing the United States and Israel toward a lasting peace settlement with Tehran. The talks are stalling on two points neither side will abandon: Iran’s nuclear materials and Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has created a new government bureaucracy to collect tolls from ships passing through the Strait. Iran cites the 1936 Montreux Convention covering the Turkish Straits as legal justification. Washington counters that Turkey charges service fees for navigation aids and rescue services, not tolls.

The U.S. Air Force concluded Exercise Checkered Flag 26-2 at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida on May 14, integrating F-22 Raptors, F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters, F-16 Fighting Falcons, Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, and E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes into a single combat network. The 325th Fighter Wing ran the exercise in partnership with the 53rd Wing’s Weapons System Evaluation Program East. Aircrews conducted live-fire missile engagements against maneuvering aerial drone targets across the Gulf Range Complex.

The U.S. Navy was supposed to have its own stealth bomber. The A-12 Avenger II — nicknamed the “Flying Dorito” for its triangular flying-wing shape — was designed to replace the A-6 Intruder, fly off carrier decks, and deliver precision strikes against the most heavily defended Soviet targets on Earth. The Navy planned to buy 620 of them. Not a single one ever flew. Dick Cheney canceled the program in January 1991 — the largest defense contract termination in Pentagon history. The lawsuit that followed lasted 23 years.

The post Governor Lamont Skips Coast Guard Graduation While Democrat Activists Flash “86-47” Signs Outside In Protest appeared first on Armed Forces Press.

Could Ukraine’s new domestically-produced

In the coming weeks, the Army will introduce an online marketplace where the United States’ allies and partners can quickly purchase American-made defense systems.
The Foreign Military Sales Marketplace will be open to 25 foreign nations “in a couple of weeks or a month-ish” and will initially feature unmanned aerial systems and counter-drone technology, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll told reporters Wednesday. The goal is to simplify the service’s current FMS process, thereby speeding up weapons sales to other countries and bringing more business to the U.S.

More than a dozen agencies gathered at Fort Bragg last week to game-out a worst-case scenario for the North Carolina installation.
All at once, drones attacked; a nearby water treatment plant was hacked, launching a wave of E. Coli across post that sickened countless soldiers readying to deploy; and a municipal worker accidentally severed a fiber optic line critical for crisis communication while clearing debris.

The President’s Cup heads back to the Net

Russia’s Project 955A Borei-A class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine carries 15 Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles — each armed with up to 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) nuclear warheads. The 560-foot submarine displaces 24,000 tons submerged, runs on an OK-650 nuclear reactor and a pump-jet propulsion system, and reaches 30 knots submerged with minimal noise. The first Borei-A, Knyaz Vladimir, entered active duty on June 12, 2020 and is assigned to Russia’s Pacific fleet.

Europe’s flagship fighter jet program might need a reset, or at least Airbus thinks so.

The Future Combat Air System (FCAS), being spearheaded by France, Germany, and Spain, has been described as a “system of systems” built around a New Generation Weapon System.

FCAS Artist Photo Creation. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

FCAS Photo Artist Image. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The plans would have crewed fighters, uncrewed remote carriers, and other platforms linked via a secure combat cloud.

This video describes the military situation in

The next iteration of the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class fast attack submarine — Block VI — is designed to carry Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapons by 2028, operate Unmanned Underwater Vehicles like the Barracuda sea drone for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and hug the contours of the seafloor to evade enemy detection. The submarines will continue to use the Virginia Payload Module — the 80-foot hull insert that carries an additional 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Dr.

In November 2009, an Emirati pilot flying a French-built Mirage 2000 notionally shot down a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor during a joint wargame at Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates. The exercise included French Rafales and British Eurofighter Typhoons. The U.S. Air Force confirmed the single F-22 loss happened in close-quarters combat after the Raptor pilot made a tactical error. American pilots won six simulated dogfights against French Rafales and drew five more. The F-22 dominated almost every other engagement of the wargame.

Nobody asked Polaris to build a six-wheeled tactical vehicle that fits inside a helicopter, carries more payload than a Humvee, and can launch loitering munitions before the enemy figures out it left the ground. Then again, nobody had to; however, maybe there were some clues.
Also Read: An ode to the Deuce-and-a-Half: the M35 Cargo Truck
Customers started showing up with problems their four-seater couldn’t solve, and Polaris answered the only way an engineering company knows how: Slap an extra axle on it.
The MRZR Alpha 6×6 is a pre-production prototype, technically speaking.

Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet pitched the F-55 Ferrari concept — a supercharged F-35 incorporating technology from the company’s failed sixth-generation fighter demonstrator — after losing the Next Generation Air Dominance program to Boeing’s F-47 in 2025. The F-35 took more than 20 years and over $1 trillion to develop, and its current readiness rating sits at barely 50%. The Technology Refresh-3 upgrade required for the full Block 4 modernization is years behind schedule.

Army Pfc. Mace Veit knew completing four of the Army’s most distinguished training courses in less than six months, including the rigors of Ranger School, would be tough.
Constant testing. Brutal fitness standards. Lack of sleep. He knew he was ready for all that.
What Veit didn’t expect was the growing number of funny looks he’d get from fellow soldiers as he moved from school to school.

A recently resurfaced Kremlin video shows Russian President Vladimir Putin coughing repeatedly and struggling through a recorded International Women’s Day speech in March 2026. The original upload was quickly removed and replaced with an edited version that cut the coughs out entirely. BBC producer Ben Tavener said multiple outlets believed the Kremlin accidentally uploaded the unedited footage. Speculation about Putin’s health has intensified since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Fire remains the most dangerous threat to a U.S. aircraft carrier — and the U.S. Navy’s newest, the USS Gerald R. Ford, just proved it. During the Operation Epic Fury campaign against Iran, a fire in the carrier’s laundry burned for 30 hours, displaced more than 600 sailors from their berthing racks, injured 3 directly, and caused as many as 200 cases of smoke inhalation. The carrier withdrew to Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece for repairs. The historical record runs deep: Japan lost all four of its aircraft carriers to fire at Midway in June 1942.

On May 20, 2026, Airbus Defence rolled out the latest Tranche 4 Eurofighter Typhoon for the German Air Force at its Manching facility in Bavaria. More than 600 Typhoons are now in service across 9 operators. The aircraft Britain, Germany, Italy, and Spain built after France walked out of the joint Future European Fighter Aircraft program in 1985 has accumulated genuine combat experience across Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and now Iran. An RAF FGR4 scored Britain’s first military air-to-air kill since the 1982 Falklands War over Syria in December 2021.

Britain’s next main battle tank, the Challenger 3, breaks decades of British design tradition by replacing the Challenger 2’s smoothbore gun with a 120mm rifled main gun — and giving the British Army access to standard NATO ammunition and programmable rounds. But the Royal United Services Institute warns the Army will field only 148 Challenger 3s by 2030, well short of the 170 to 300 tanks NATO considers credible for an armored division. Germany has roughly 320 Leopard 2 tanks; the United States operates around 4,600 M1 Abrams.

L3Harris Technologies has supplied its T4 and T7 multi-mission robotic systems to the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to support personnel protection operations.

The British Army will operate 148 Challenger 3 tanks, arranged in new reduced Type 44 regimental formations.

Russia has lost between 1 million and 1.2 million soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine since February 2022, according to Western analysts. A January 2026 CSIS analysis estimated as many as 325,000 dead. Russia controlled roughly 27% of Ukraine at its 2022 peak; Ukrainian counteroffensives at Kharkiv in September 2022 and Kherson in November 2022 pushed Moscow back to about one-fifth of the country. Russian advances have slowed dramatically. In April 2026, the Institute for the Study of War recorded Russia’s first net territorial loss since August 2024.

The U.S. Navy’s 14 Ohio-class SSBN ballistic missile submarines form the sea-based leg of America’s nuclear triad. Each submarine carries 20 Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with multiple independently-targeted warheads and a range of 4,000 miles. The Ohio-class is 560 feet long, displaces 18,750 tons submerged, runs on an S8G nuclear reactor at over 20 knots, dives below 984 feet, and carries 155 sailors. Each boat operates with Blue and Gold crew rotations — 77 days at sea, then 35 days in port. The class begins retirement in 2028.

There is no F-35 Lightning II kill switch — the Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin have both said so directly. But the rumor that the U.S. could remotely disable allied F-35s gained traction after the Trump administration’s televised confrontation with Volodymyr Zelensky in March, and several allies are rethinking their orders. Canada is contractually obligated to only 16 of an originally agreed 88 F-35s; Saab is pushing the JAS-39 Gripen for the remaining 72. Portugal canceled its F-35 buy.

Yes, you read that right: Norman Schwarzkopf’s Beretta. The handgun that was on the hip of one of America’s most famous generals during one of the nation’s most significant modern military operations could soon be yours.
Imagine having the opportunity to bid on Andrew Jackson’s sword from the Battle of New Orleans or Teddy Roosevelt’s Colt 1892 revolver from his assault on Kettle Hill. Going straight from his family’s possession to the auction block, the sale of Gen. Schwarzkopf’s Desert Storm M9 is unprecedented.
Also Read: Gen.

Lockheed Martin’s $11 billion F-22 Raptor 2.0 upgrade adds stealth-compatible conformal external fuel tanks and infrared search and track pods on the outer wings — extending the F-22’s combat radius by up to 850 nautical miles without sacrificing stealth. Katie Ciccarino, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s F-22 program, said the new Low Drag Tank and Pylon fuel tanks can stay on the aircraft through combat. The F-22 Raptor’s current unrefueled combat radius is roughly 590 nautical miles — a critical limitation in the Pacific.

Operation Epic Fury has effectively saved the A-10 Warthog, an aircraft we have seen up close – our original videos and photos included below. The U.S. Air Force, which spent years trying to retire the venerable close air support platform, is now extending the A-10 Thunderbolt II’s service life into the 2030s — driven in part by the aircraft’s surprising success hunting Iranian small boats and coastal threats at low altitude during the campaign. The A-10 is engineered around its GAU-8/A 30mm Gatling gun, which fires 70 rounds per second from a 1,150-round magazine.

During NATO Exercise JTFEX/TMDI 99 in 1999, the Dutch diesel-electric submarine HNLMS Walrus (S802) penetrated the layered defensive escort screen around the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) and notionally sank her in simulated torpedo attacks. The Walrus displaces only about 2,800 tons submerged, measures 222 feet, carries roughly 50 to 55 crew, runs on near-silent battery power, and is armed with four 533mm torpedo tubes and Harpoon missiles. The USS Theodore Roosevelt cost more than $4.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on May 21 that Chinese President Xi Jinping may travel to Pyongyang as early as next week, according to a senior government official in Seoul. An advance team from China’s Central Security Bureau and protocol officers from the CCP Central Committee have already traveled to the North Korean capital. South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong Young said a Kim Jong Un-Donald Trump summit will be discussed if Xi visits Pyongyang. Trump met Kim three times during his first presidential term.

Airbus Defense and Space chief Mike Schoellhorn told an Airbus event that he would support a two-aircraft solution for the European Future Combat Air System sixth-generation fighter program if a single fighter cannot work for France, Germany, and Spain. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury added that the assumptions behind FCAS — launched in 2017 to deliver a European sixth-generation fighter by the 2040s — are no longer valid after the war in Ukraine. France is the only partner with an aircraft carrier and an explicit nuclear weapons delivery requirement.

Australia’s HMAS Waller, a Collins-class diesel-electric submarine, ‘notionally’ sank a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in a wargame simulation and several escorts at the RIMPAC 2000 exercise. The Waller penetrated the carrier strike group’s defenses through patience, acoustic discipline, slow deliberate movements, and the natural advantages diesel-electric propulsion offers at low speed in the littorals. The Collins-class is 77.8 meters long, displaces 3,400 tons submerged, carries 58 crew, runs to 20 knots underwater on battery, and is armed with six 533mm torpedo tubes.

Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told investors that the company’s F-35 Ferrari concept — an advanced fifth-generation-plus derivative of the F-35 Lightning II incorporating technology from the company’s failed NGAD demonstrator — is now being discussed at the Department of Defense and may soon reach the White House. Lockheed Martin lost the Next Generation Air Dominance program to Boeing’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter in 2025. Taiclet claims the proposed F-35 Ferrari could deliver 80% of sixth-generation capability at half the price.

A French Dassault Rafale fighter notionally shot down an American F-35A Lightning II at Exercise Atlantic Trident over Finland in 2025. Cockpit video shows the French pilot acquiring radar lock and saying take the shot — observer-controllers ruled the engagement a kill. The exercise involved roughly 40 aircraft and 1,000 personnel, including Finnish F/A-18 Hornets and British Eurofighter Typhoons. The Rafale is a non-stealthy fourth-generation-plus fighter equipped with the SPECTRA electronic warfare suite, an AESA radar, and the Meteor beyond-visual-range missile.

GE Aerospace and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions won a U.S. Air Force contract on May 19 to design the GE426 expendable drone engine — a compact propulsion system intended for attritable, next-generation unmanned combat aircraft built for one-way missions or limited operational lifespans. The program now enters the preliminary design review phase. The GE426 is part of the Air Force’s collaborative combat aircraft strategy that pairs manned fighters like Boeing’s new F-47 with autonomous wingmen capable of reconnaissance, electronic warfare, strike or decoy missions.

In 1985, the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier hit Bishop Rock at Cortes Bank — an underwater seamount roughly 100 miles west of San Diego — during an Operational Readiness Exercise. The collision opened a massive gash along the port side and damaged the propellers, but the nuclear reactors were unaffected. The crew executed a counter-flooding operation to stabilize the carrier. Captain Robert L. Leuschner Jr. then decided to continue the exercise before returning to port for $17 million in emergency repairs. Leuschner was relieved of command afterward.