Military

PARIS — France’s military is expanding into what it calls “very high altitude,” or near-space, with a test on Monday shooting down target balloons at an altitude of more than 20 kilometers, and this week detailing the strategy for what the country sees as an increasingly contested area.
France is upgrading radars to detect objects between 20 and 100 kilometers altitude and adapting fighter jets and air defenses to intercept high-flying targets, Philippe Koffi, in charge of strategy for air, land and naval combat systems at the Directorate General for Armament, said in a press briefing here on Thursday. Next steps will include lasers, space planes and stratospheric drones.
Near-space will become increasingly militarized, similar to what happened in low Earth orbit and on the sea floor, Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu said at the Paris Air Show on June 17, where he outlined France’s very-high altitude strategy.
The minister and other officials discus..

As the U.S. Army attempts one of the biggest reorganizations in recent decades, it will have to do it within the confines of a minimal budget increase in fiscal 2026 amid unrelenting inflation and as demands for the force grow at home and abroad.
The Army is requesting $192 billion for its fiscal 2026 base budget and is also banking on an additional $5.4 billion in funding included in a separate $113 billion party-line spending bill now under debate in Congress, according to a service-issued budget overview document released Thursday.
Factoring both the base request and the one-time bill, the Army is planning on working with a budget of $197.4 billion, which marks a nearly 7% increase over last year’s enacted amount of $184.6 billion.
The Army announced at the start of last month that it would undertake a massive transformation to include consolidating major commands, making drastic force structure changes and canceling a wide variety of programs where billions have already been spent ..

ROME — The Italian navy has ordered two PPA multimission vessels from local shipyard Fincantieri, filling a gap after two PPAs previously ordered by the sea service were diverted to Indonesia.
The vessels will be delivered to the Italian navy by Fincantieri in 2029 and 2030 under a contract worth €700 million ($819 million) which also covers work carried out to convert the two ships sold to the Indonesian navy.
Sold in variants ranging from “Light” to “Full,” the new vessels for Italy are designated “Light Plus.” The 143 meter long, 31 knot, 171-crew ships are equipped with systems provided by Italian defense giant Leonardo thanks to an ongoing team-up with Fincantieri.
When Indonesia signed a €1.18 billion deal in March 2024 to acquire two PPA vessels, Italy agreed to speed up the deal by delivering vessels already being built to fulfill the Italian navy’s own order for seven ships.
The tactic of diverting ships already under c..

At about 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on June 21, a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine launched over two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles into Iran, striking targeted infrastructure sites in Isfahan.
Shortly after the Tomahawks were fired, fighter aircraft and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers swept over Iran, culminating in the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities with the force of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as “bunker busters.”
While the B-2 bombers and bunker-buster bombs are so far dominating discussions of the mission, titled Operation Midnight Hammer, the Ohio-class submarine performed a critical role in it, too.
The specific vessel that fired the missiles has not yet been identified, but Secretary of the Navy John Phelan confirmed to lawmakers in a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday that it was an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine that had “performed exceptionally, causing significant damage to Iran’s nucle..

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The United Kingdom will buy 12 F-35A fighter jets, marking a significant boost to the country’s nuclear deterrence posture, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.
Announced ahead of the NATO summit held this week in The Hague, the government called it “the biggest strengthening of the UK’s nuclear posture in a generation.” The new procurements will allow Britain to “join NATO’s nuclear mission” by reintroducing to the Royal Air Force so-called dual-capable aircraft: airframes that can carry both conventional and atomic payloads. Seven other NATO countries, including the U.S., Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, currently operate such platforms.
The NATO airborne nuclear mission involves European partner countries delivering American B-61 nuclear bombs on behalf of the alliance in the case of a nuclear war. Under the agreement, even though the bombs are carried by European planes and European pilots, the U.S. would have the fin..

TOKYO — Japan’s army announced Tuesday that it conducted a missile test for the first time on Japanese territory, as the country accelerates its military buildup to deter increasingly assertive China.
The test-firing of the Type 88 surface-to-ship, short-range missile was conducted Tuesday at the Shizunai Anti-Air Firing Range on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido.
About 300 soldiers participated in Tuesday’s exercise by the Ground Self-Defense Force’s 1st Artillery Brigade, using a training missile targeting an unmanned boat about 40 kilometers (24 miles) off the southern coast of Hokkaido, officials said.
Officials were still examining the results of the test, the GSDF said.
Due to space limitations and safety concerns, Japan has previously conducted missile tests in the territories of the United States, a treaty ally, and Australia, a top Japanese defense partner where vast training grounds are available.
Tuesday’s first domestic missile..

Saab has picked emerging solid rocket motor producer Anduril Rocket Motor Systems to design and build solid rocket motors for its Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, according to officials from both companies.
The selection of Anduril jump-starts the company’s effort to become a new major solid rocket motor supplier in the U.S. – a small pool with currently just two big players.
Amid the need to dramatically ramp up munitions production in the U.S. to meet future needs and replenish stock sent to Ukraine, more companies are stepping into the specialized business.
The new teaming arrangement is about building both Saab’s meaningful presence in the U.S. and its partners. “This is one of the areas that is really exciting for us, is building these strategic partners in the U.S., which is going to complement our broader capacity and capability growth strategy,” Brad Barnard, the Swedish company’s U.S. subsidiary’s vice president and general manager of land sys..

PARIS — The companies behind the Eurofighter, Europe’s most prevalent homegrown combat jet, have set new growth targets that prize a near-term fleet buildup over more distant breakthroughs expected from sixth-generation programs like the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS.
The plan envisions an annual Eurofighter production boost from 14 planes now to 20 copies within 36 months, eying 30 at some point after that, said Jorge Tamarit Degenhardt, CEO of a consortium combining Airbus, Leonardo and BAE Systems.
Degenhardt told reporters at the Paris Air Show he expects the export business to grow, with sales campaigns humming in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Austria and Portugal. That is in addition to requests for planes and upgrades from the core users Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
“We didn’t max out yet,” Degenhardt said, referring to company plans to make more jets, faster.
The idea of producing “combat mass” for Europe, as the CE..

U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll promised Congress today the service would show its homework in 10 days on how it decided to consolidate commands, restructure formations and cancel or restructure a slew of weapons programs.
In a memo to the Army, the service secretary announced in early May that major change was underway and dubbed it the Army Transformation Initiative.
Yet many of the decisions laid out in the document lacked clear analysis behind them, such as a plan to consolidate Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command into one entity and cancel programs just as they were crossing the finish line like the M10 Booker light tank and the Robotic Combat Vehicle
Driscoll tallied the amount of spending planned over the next five years for programs the service will cancel or reorient to roughly $48 billion. The service will reallocate funding into innovative efforts to transform the Army into a highly mobile and lethal force, service leaders are saying.
“I agree ..

The Army’s ongoing brigade modernization program is headed to the Guard.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told members of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee during a hearing Wednesday that Guard units are being identified for the service’s Transformation in Contact, or TIC, initiative.
“We want to do that as fast as we can in the Guard as well,” George said. “They are identifying those units who can do that in the Guard.”
The initiative seeks to deliver new equipment — such as Infantry Squad Vehicles, drones, counter-drone equipment and increased electromagnetic warfare capabilities — to operational units as they prepare for major training events and deployments.
George noted that those same capabilities will be in the Guard as well.
“They’re going to have the same systems,” George said. “They will not look any different.”
First armor brigade conducts combat training center rotation with new tools
Th..