Author: thaobh.leo@gmail.com

MELBOURNE, Fla.—Brazilian aerospace giant Embraer is teaming up with Northrop Grumman to develop what could be the Air Force’s next tanker—and promises to spend a half-billion-dollars on infrastructure to make the KC-390 Millenium here.“We have…almost 3,000 direct employees here in Melbourne,” said Bosco da Costa Junior, CEO of Embraer Defense & Security. “If we have the right business case, Embraer is eager to invest over $500 million to a dedicated facility for KC-390. By the way, the platform today is already compliant with [the] Buy American Act” and could be a “winning value proposition” for U.S. and international markets.The companies…

A new Army organization aims to meld service leaders’ mandates to cut bureaucracy and adopt a venture-capital mindset with their push to turn soldiers’ ideas into manufactured gear. The Pathway for Innovation and Technology is another office, yes, but its director says it will bring together the Army’s innovation and rapid acquisition hubs at the service’s headquarters level, putting muscle behind what until now have been siloed efforts, and coordinating them with the Program Acquisition Executives, who have the funding and authority to turn ideas into programs.“I sit at the table with the PAEs. I communicate directly with them to express what…

It has become commonplace to think of the 21st century as the “urban century” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2023). With roughly 70% of the population estimated to be living in cities by 2050 (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2018), it is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the 21st century’s most pressing issues—such as climate change, economic inequality, political polarization, and security—are intertwined with city politics. In the backdrop of both intensifying global problems and growing economic and political power, cities and other subnational groups have been stepping up their global activity, attempting to fill in…

Clash of Clans brings new Pet Greedy Raven unlocks with Pet House Level 12.Earthquake Spell Tower added with new Troop and Defense upgrade levels added. While the next season is bringing some amazing changes to the Gold Pass, Clash of Clans is all set to make some fantastic new additions. We’re getting new troop levels, new defense levels, a brand-new Spell Tower option, 75 more walls to upgrade, and a completely new pet called the Greedy Raven. Everything announced with the Clash of Clans February 2026 update New Pet: Greedy Raven The headline addition of this update is the brand-new…

ONE Championship has officially announced the launch of ONE Samurai, a new monthly event series set to run in Japan. The promotion held a press conference at Kanda Myojin Hall in Tokyo on Wednesday, February 18. It unveiled the series, which will heavily feature Japan’s biggest martial arts stars across MMA, Muay Thai, kickboxing, and submission grappling. International superstars will also appear on each card, with multiple World Title fights guaranteed per event. The inaugural ONE Samurai 1 goes down at Ariake Arena in Tokyo on Wednesday, April 29. U-NEXT, Japan’s leading streaming service with 12 million subscribers, will exclusively…

Alistair Black (real name: Tom Büdgen) may have left his home in Amsterdam to pursue a love of pro wrestling, but he’s taken his European influence into every ring that he’s ever grappled in. Together with a vast background in martial arts, Black’s WWE performances offer an exciting mix of striking and chain wrestling, a rapidly waning skill that is being lost in the current era of “sports entertainment.” M&F sat down with the detail-oriented Dutchman, to find out how his training has evolved during his career so far, and how he’s passing this wisdom down to the next generation…

Editor’s note: This article is the fourth in an eight-part series led by retired General James Mingus, the thirty-ninth vice chief of staff of the Army, on transforming the Army to meet the challenges of tomorrow’s battlefield. You can read other articles in the series here. On a stormy Christmas night in 1776, General George Washington pulled off an audacious victory at Trenton, New Jersey that changed the course of the Revolutionary War. With a battered force facing annihilation, he loaded soldiers into boats, crossed the ice-choked Delaware River, marched nine miles through sleet, and successfully struck a Hessian garrison…

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Soldiers of the Army National Guard’s 28th Infantry Division snagged the award for Best Innovation at the U.S. Army’s inaugural Best Drone Warfighter Competition in Huntsville, Alabama, this week for inventing a drone that uses a claw to retrieve downed drones. Project RED, which stands for Recovery Exploitation Drone, is built to fly over and inspect downed unmanned aircraft systems. The system uses artificial intelligence software to discern the difference between friendly and enemy drones. Using a robotic arm with a claw, it can pick up a fallen drone and transport it to troops for evaluation or…

The Office of Personnel Management clarified this week that a recent memo instructing agencies to push forward with the termination contracts with federal employee unions was not intended to encourage violating court orders blocking two executive orders excising labor from much of the federal government.Last year, President Trump signed a pair of executive orders citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to ban unions at most agencies under the auspices of national security, effectively stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights. Though most agencies implicated in the two edicts terminated their contracts…

The National Institutes of Standards and Technology is launching a new project around standards for artificial intelligence agents, with NIST positioning the project as key to advancing agentic AI innovation. NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) announced the “AI Agent Standards Initiative” this week. The project aims to foster “industry-led technical standards and protocols that build public trust in AI agents, catalyze an interoperable agent ecosystem, and diffuse their benefits to all Americans and across the world,” NIST said in a release this week. “AI agents can now work autonomously for hours, write and debug code, manage emails…