Author: thaobh.leo@gmail.com

The French Navy (Marine Nationale) is maximising frigate availability through developing its approach to maintenance and operations, the service has told Naval News. The details expand upon remarks by Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, the French Navy’s Chief of Staff, that the navy has built up the availability of its ‘first rank’ destroyer and frigate force to 80 percent. Speaking at the 2025 Paris Naval Conference, Adm Vaujour said: “Availability is one of my motivations because I have by law – [France’s] military planning law – 15 destroyers and frigates …. So, the way to have more ships is not to build…

ROME — Italy is to buy six Airbus A330 MRTT multi-role tanker transport aircraft in a €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) deal after 15 years of flying Boeing tankers.The purchase, which was announced by the European Union’s TED public procurement platform, envisages ten years of logistic support and indicates the A330 was the only aircraft in the bidding.The deal marks a shift from Boeing to Airbus for the Italian Air Force, which flies four Boeing 767-based tanker aircraft which entered service from 2011.In 2021 Italy announced plans to upgrade its B-767 tankers and purchase two more, but the following year Rome…

Earlier this week, an interesting touch of death was discovered for Wolfgang Krauser. This sequence clearly wasn’t intentional since it relied on outright freezing the opponent, which locked them out from doing anything for an excessively long period of time. Essentially, if Wolfgang Krauser used a super against an opponent immediately after a Guard Crush, they’d experience the lockout. Krauser would then be free to perform any sequence of attacks that he’d like against the opponent. …

Updated May 20 at 9:10 a.m.Nearly half of the positions in the federal government’s office responsible for handling and cleaning up nuclear waste are currently vacant, according to a new audit, after the Trump administration incentivized a wave of departures at the agency. The Energy Department’s Environmental Management office lost around one-third of its employees in fiscal 2025, the Government Accountability Office found in a new report, most of whom left as part of the “deferred resignation program” that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before exiting government. It already maintained a vacancy rate of 20% in…

Hype Fighting is facing backlash after several fighters took to social media to complain that they are still awaiting payment from the promotion for their matches at a pair of cards that took place in Brazil in March and April.MMA Fighting contacted 17 fighters who took part in the events, and all 17 confirmed they are yet to be paid. That list includes preliminary fighters, who competed in bare-knuckle matches, and main card stars, including several UFC stars. Staff and celebrities hired to promote the show weren’t paid either, MMA Fighting has learned.Some of the unpaid purses from bare-knuckle matches…

Contemporary security competition increasingly operates below the threshold of armed attack, within the political, economic, military, social, informational, and infrastructural (PEMSII) domains upon which democratic societies and the international community depend for peace and security. In this environment, the cognitive dimension, encompassing values, beliefs, public trust, perception, and decision-making, becomes a decisive terrain for the generation of strategic impact across the competition–conflict spectrum, given its capacity to shape behavior not only within political and military leadership, but also across civilian populations. The UK National Security Act 2023 (NSA) was introduced in response to this challenge, equipping the United Kingdom to…

Credit: BlackSea TechnologiesDefense Feeds – Tampa, Florida. The BlackSea Unveils COMET USV for U.S. Special Forces announcement at SOF Week 2026 has drawn growing attention across the defense sector as autonomous maritime warfare continues to evolve at a rapid pace. The newly revealed COMET unmanned surface vessel, or USV, is designed to support special operations missions ranging from intelligence gathering to precision strike operations in contested coastal environments.Presented by BlackSea Technologies during the annual SOF Week event in the United States, the COMET platform reflects the Pentagon’s increasing focus on smaller autonomous systems capable of operating in dangerous maritime zones without…

“You musicians of Mars must not wait for the band leader to signal you. . . . You must each of your own volition see to it that you come into this concert at the proper place and at the proper time.” You may have seen a version of this quote from General George S. Patton before, potentially in a 2022 article publicizing the enshrinement of multidomain operations as the Army’s current operational concept. But if you saw it there, you did not see the whole quote. The authors omitted Patton’s guidance to “not wait for the band leader to signal you” and…

The Navy’s drone tanker, the MQ-25A Stingray, is cleared for low-rate initial production—just weeks after a production-ready model took its first flight. “MQ-25 reached Milestone C, which is huge because now we have inflight refueling that is unmanned…it’s a great capability,” Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said at the end of an hourslong Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. The service plans to order three aircraft as part of a Lot 1 contract, which should be awarded later this summer, the Navy said in a news release Tuesday. Priced options for two subsequent lots with a combined eight aircraft are also expected…

ROC Central News Agency 05/20/2026 03:24 PM Taipei, May 20 (CNA) Taiwan’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a special budget proposal that allocates nearly NT$295 billion (US$9.3 billion) for a package of weapons already approved for sale to Taiwan by the United States. The proposal was approved after the Legislative Yuan passed a special act earlier this month authorizing up to NT$780 billion in spending on two batches of U.S. arms purchases between 2026 and 2033. Under the act, funding for the first batch of weapons purchases approved by the U.S. in December 2025 is capped at NT$300 billion, and the…