Military

MILAN — U.S.-based Saildrone deployed a handful of unmanned surface vessels as part of NATO’s Task Force X demonstration in the Baltic Sea, which helped detect and track Russian shadow-fleet vessels operating in the area, according to the company.
Launched last year, Task Force X is led by NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and seeks to accelerate the acquisition, development and integration of uncrewed maritime systems into naval operations.
The alliance’s top transformation branch hosted its second operational demonstration in June, where over 60 American and French-made uncrewed systems were stress-tested to assess their effectiveness against conditions on the Baltic Sea.
Among the platforms deployed were four Voyagers, Saildrone’s ten-meter USVs, which operated in the Gulf of Finland and the western Baltic Sea.
“Saildrone Voyagers detected and tracked hundreds of vessels daily and successfully identified the exercises’ ‘red fo..

PARIS — Dutch and Norwegian F-35 fighter jets will be stationed in Poland under NATO command to protect supplies of equipment to Ukraine, the Dutch defense ministry said.
The Dutch F-35s will be based in Poland from the start of September to the start of December, following a request from NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE, the Netherlands’ Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Monday.
“It is essential that we contribute to the defense of NATO territory and the security of Europe,” Dutch Minister of Defense Ruben Brekelmans said in the statement. “We are once again doing so with our most advanced capabilities.”
Deploying the Dutch F-35s to monitor airspace above Eastern Europe will protect military equipment intended for Ukraine, Brekelmans said. Stationing the jets in Poland will also allow for a quick response to violations or imminent violations of NATO airspace, according to the minister.
“In this way, we ..

MILAN — After announcing it was buying U.S. shipyard sites to build icebreakers, the Canadian shipbuilding company Davie is zeroing in on the need for such ships in Sweden.
The intentions were made public in a recent LinkedIn post by Davie’s chief executive officer, James Davies, who said the Swedish “aging icebreaker fleet needs urgent renewal” and that the company’s “shipyards are open and ready.”
An assessment about Sweden’s lackluster icebreaking chops was part of a recent report by Helsinki Shipyard, which Davie has owned since 2023.
Sweden currently has six icebreakers, some of which were built several decades ago. In 2022, the Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA), or Sjöfartsverket, issued a tender for the construction of two new icebreakers, with the first one expected to be delivered in 2026.
The plan never materialized, as the SMA stated in 2024 that no bids met their outlined requirements, per a report from the Swedish me..

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — When Neros Technologies was founded in 2023, there wasn’t much demand in the U.S. military for small, first-person-view drones.
“It took us a while to find the right customers and end users who were excited about the technology and wanted to move very quickly,” Soren Monroe-Anderson, Neros CEO and co-founder, told Defense News during a recent Defense Innovation Unit test event here.
But the company believed strongly there was military utility for small, cheap, attack drones — a reality playing out daily on the battlefield in Ukraine. So, in the firm’s early days, Monroe-Anderson and others traveled to the war-torn country to better understand how the systems were being used and what capabilities were needed.
Those visits helped sharpen the company’s focus in three areas: production, supply chain and rapid iteration, said Monroe-Anderson, a 22-year-old professional drone racer and hobbyist turned weapons-maker.
Neros worked quic..

The U.S. Army will test a nascent capability to effectively preposition equipment and supplies forward in the Pacific theater in Australia during the large-scale exercise Talisman Sabre kicking off this month, according to U.S. Army Pacific Command commander Gen. Ronald Clark.
As the U.S. military tackles preparing for the difficult challenge of sustaining a possible protracted operation in the Pacific theater, the services are working together to develop what they are calling Joint Theater Sustainment Distribution Centers.
The Army is largely responsible for establishing several of these major sites that will shelter equipment and a variety of supplies that could be used during war, humanitarian crises or natural disasters.
“We are responsible for setting the theater for the joint force,” Clark told Defense News in a June 27 interview. “The way that we’ve undertaken that strategically is to build joint interior line through Joint Theater Distribution Centers ..

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is ramping up its maritime defense posture with plans to establish and upgrade several naval bases in critical areas across the archipelago, including an island base under a basing agreement with the United States and a former American base in Luzon.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told reporters last month about plans to speed up infrastructure works in Balabac Island, a joint Air Force and Navy base in the southern end of Palawan province.
The island is a “strategic location” for the country, Teodoro said, adding that the increased presence of the military there will deter potential surveillance activities in the main island of Palawan, where the government worries about suspected Chinese espionage sleeper cells.
The remote island of Balabac is located 140 nautical miles from Mischief Reef, a China-controlled island in Philippine waters.
Mischief Reef lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, a claim backed ..

The Defense Logistics Agency Maritime Mechanicsburg awarded a $5 billion contract this month to six businesses with the goal of boosting ship manufacturing at speed.
The Maritime Acquisition Advancement Contract is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract designed to accelerate procurement processes. The MAAC has five one-year options at $1 billion each and can potentially reach up to $10 billion.
“There are significantly long lead times the Navy faces … this contracting vehicle streamlines and reduces our end of the administrative lead time,” Elizabeth Allen, DLA Maritime Mechanicsburg’s deputy director, said in a release.
The contract will see companies including SupplyCore, Atlantic Diving Supply, Culmen International, ASRC Federal, Fairwinds Technologies and S&K Aerospace manufacture parts for an array of U.S. Navy vessels, including Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines.
SupplyCore is taking on the task of supplying the Navy with co..

U.S. Navy warships conducting operations in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea disrupted several Iranian air strikes, according to a release issued by the service Sunday.
The U.S. 6th Fleet positioned five Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers in the area to provide defensive support to Israel. Since June 14, the ships “intercepted multiple Iranian ballistic missiles,” the release said. Those destroyers were: the Thomas Hudner, Arleigh Burke, The Sullivans, Oscar Austin and Paul Ignatius.
The ships used the Aegis Weapon System, an automated naval weapons system that utilizes high-powered radar to detect and destroy aerial threats. The release did not provide details about the targets of the missiles that the Aegis destroyed.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Stuart B. Munsch, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa commander, visited crew aboard the Thomas Hudner during a port call in Sousa Bay, Greece, on Sunday and congratulated them on ..

The Air Force wants to retire its final 162 A-10 Warthog attack jets in fiscal 2026, as part of a plan to divest 340 total aircraft.
The Pentagon also plans to cancel the E-7 Wedgetail program over what an official said were “significant delays” and cost increases.
The service released its list of planned aircraft retirements as the Pentagon released its belated 2026 budget plan, which calls for a $211 billion discretionary budget for the Department of the Air Force. That includes a $184.9 billion discretionary budget for the U.S. Air Force itself, and a $26.1 billion discretionary budget for the Space Force.
The Pentagon also wants to add another $38.6 billion in “mandatory” spending as part of the budget reconciliation bill, which would include $24.7 billion for the Air Force and $13.8 billion for the Space Force. If that passes, the department would receive $249.5 billion in total funding, which would be a 17.2% increase over enacted spending in 2025.
But if ..

The U.S. Army in the Pacific has begun working through how it will build two Multi-Domain Commands in the theater to oversee and direct the service’s Multi-Domain Task Force units as it continues to expand and refine its presence as part of an overall effort to deter China’s increasing aggression in the region, Gen. Ronald Clark, U.S. Army Pacific commander, told Defense News.
The new Multi-Domain Commands, units designed to operate across all domains — land, air, sea, space and cyberspace — and are equipped with the Army’s growing capabilities like the Precision Strike Missile, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Mid-Range Capability Missile.
The new units are a part of the Army’s new transformation initiative.
The service’s first MDTF was experimental, but since then the Army has operationalized its first MDTF unit. According to an Army execution order issued in May, the service plans to build four new units. Indicative of the Army’s desire to..