Author: thaobh.leo@gmail.com

Ukrainian companies are attracting American private investment and Pentagon interest with award-winning drones, but U.S. export laws threaten to squelch efforts to develop technology, company execs said Friday.U.S. investors are pouring money into Ukrainian defense startups. For example, Swarmer, which makes AI software to control multiple drones simultaneously, saw its shares rise 700 percent on its first day of trading.Meanwhile, a joint effort of Ukraine’s SkyFall and UK’s SkyCutter won the initial competition of a series held by the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance effort, which would grow by several thousand percent to $54 billion under the White House’s 2027 budget plan.…

The stealth technology of the Mogami-class frigate has been developed based on insights from MHI’s ATD-X Shinshin stealth fighter experimental aircraft. Credit: Department of Defence/Commonwealth of Australia. Raytheon will supply SeaRAM for the first three Royal Australian Navy Mogami-class frigates under an MHI contract First time SeaRAM is integrated on an RAN ship; it provides terminal missile/air defence using RIM-116 missiles Work is in Kentucky; deliveries start late 2028, with the first frigate due by Dec 2029 Raytheon has been awarded a contract by by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) to provide SeaRAM missile-based ship point defence systems in support of…

Rheinmetall and Telekom plan to jointly develop a defence shield against drones and acts of sabotage. The companies intend to work together to protect cities and critical infrastructure across Germany. They reached this agreement ahead of the upcoming AFCEA security technology trade show in Bonn. The current geopolitical situation has placed the protection of critical infrastructure (KRITIS) in sharp focus. Hybrid threats from sabotage and drone activity are steadily increasing. In response, the companies are pooling their expertise. The partners aim to develop capabilities and technologies to counter a wide range of potential attacks on KRITIS sites—a multi-threat protection approach.…

[May 11, 2026] – Smart Shooter, a designer, developer, and manufacturer of innovative fire control systems, announced today that it has received a follow-on U.S. Army award, valued at approximately $10.7 million, for its SMASH 2000LE (also known as SMASH 3000SA) fire control systems, along with related support services. Delivery under the contract is scheduled for the third quarter of 2026. The award, issued through PAE Defensive Fires, represents a follow-on procurement that further expands the fielding of SMASH systems by the U.S. Army and reinforces Smart Shooter’s growing footprint across U.S. defense organizations, recognizing SMASH as the only kinetic…

Editor’s Note: This article contains frank descriptions of battlefield conditions, including accounts of soldiers dying by suicide following injury. Western battlefield casualty evacuation doctrine is built on assumptions forged during the “Global War on Terror.” Central among these is the belief that the wounded can be rapidly moved from the point of injury to progressively higher levels of medical care within a defined timeframe, commonly referred to as the “golden hour.” The concept itself originated in civilian trauma medicine decades prior, generally attributed to Dr. R. Adams Cowley of Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Institute in 1975. In 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert…

Two new products were shown for the first time in public by Skydagger, the Turkish specialist in small size drones. The Toyca05 is a fixed wing loitering munition, while the Hunter is a vertical take-off interceptor Among the several Turkish drone producers Skydagger specialised in low-tier products, its drones complementing high tier ones; it is therefore not a surprise that the company is supported by Baykar, the leading UAV company in Turkey, and is integrated into its ecosystem. click on image to enlarge Also exhibited on the Aselsan stands, both inside and outside, as one of the possible “ammunitions” of…

VIENNA — Latvia’s minister of defense has resigned following a renewed incursion of Ukrainian drones into the country’s airspace, where they hit an empty fuel depot. The incident marks the latest in a series of Baltic NATO airspace violations by misguided Ukrainian drones sent to strike Russian targets far away from Kyiv. On May 7, two drones entered Latvia from Russian airspace, hitting a fuel depot. Nobody was injured. As early as March of this year, there had been incidents of Ukrainian drones crashing into Baltic allies’ territory, with one hitting a power plant chimney.Following the latest incident, Latvia’s prime…

For decades, warfighters have accepted unnecessary weight as part of the job. Extra ounces became extra pounds. Extra pounds became fatigue. Fatigue became slower movement, reduced endurance, and increased physical wear over time. Everyone acknowledged the burden. Few questioned whether it was avoidable. Blue Force Gear did. Long before “lightweight” became an industry buzzword, Blue Force Gear engineered a system designed to reduce load carriage weight without sacrificing durability, capability, or compatibility. The result was Helium Whisper®, a patented attachment system that fundamentally changed what modern load-bearing equipment could be. Helium Whisper pouches reduce weight by up to 50 percent compared to legacy pouch designs while remaining fully…

Talk of war in the Middle East abounds on social media, but not just about the one with Iran. A small, but significant, portion of this chatter relates to a conflict that has not begun. For more than a year now, pundits and politicians have warned of a potential clash between Israel and Turkey. Driving this hypothetical confrontation are a series of issues related to Syria, the Palestinian territories, and regional security as a whole. In December 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indirectly charged Ankara with wanting to reestablish Ottoman imperial rule over the Levant. To that, he declared,…

Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary has been described as a victory of democracy over illiberal populism. Péter Magyar’s Tisza party now wields a commanding parliamentary majority, giving it the numbers to pursue constitutional and institutional reform, and to rebuild Hungary as a liberal democracy. It may be tempting to accept this common media framing of the election result. However, it is too early to declare the end of the populist era in Hungary. The notion that Hungary will overnight become a liberal democracy is complicated by Magyar, himself a former member of Orbán’s Fidesz party, using elements of Orbán’s populist…