Know What's Happening in Defense
Know What's Happening in Defense
U.S. IDFC boosts reinsurance guarantees for Hormuz shipping to $40 billion
The U.S. International Development Finance Corp has doubled its reinsurance guarantees for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to $40 billion, adding major insurers such as AIG and Berkshire Hathaway. The step is intended to reinforce maritime security amid escalating regional tensions.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Kraken Robotics acquires Colvya Group for $615M
The Department of the Air Force issued updated guidance on Feb. 1 to accelerate Line of Duty (LOD) determinations for Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard members serving 31 or more consecutive days on active‑duty orders. The revision to DAFI 36‑2910 aligns Reserve and Guard LOD processes with active‑duty standards, granting automatic "in the line of duty" status when specific service and medical criteria are met. Members must have at least 180 days of total active federal service, submit a rights advisement memorandum, and file requests before their orders end. The policy takes effect for determinations initiated on or after Feb. 1 2026 and focuses solely on health‑care access.
IonQ has been named an eligible contractor for the Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD IDIQ contract, a multi‑year procurement vehicle with a $151 billion ceiling. The selection positions IonQ among more than 2,400 firms competing for future task orders that support rapid,...
Anthropic disclosed that three Chinese AI labs—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax—used roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts to conduct over 16 million interactions with its Claude models, targeting reasoning, coding and tool‑use capabilities. The coordinated distillation attacks extracted large‑scale training data, effectively stealing...
Enterprise leaders are demanding proof of what AI systems actually did, not just what they were designed to do or what dashboards report. As AI moves into regulated, high‑risk environments, boards and auditors expect decision‑level evidence for each action. The...
The Department of the Air Force and Northrop Grumman have signed an agreement to expand B‑21 Raider production, leveraging $4.5 billion authorized in FY 2025 legislation. The deal raises annual production capacity by 25 %, compressing delivery timelines while preserving cost and performance...
Sierra Nevada Corporation and Northrop Grumman have completed the first flight of a B‑2A Spirit equipped with the Adaptable Communications Suite (ACS) 4.0. The upgrade embeds a secure, open‑mission computing environment that plugs the bomber into the Combined Joint All‑Domain Command...
President Donald Trump dismissed reports that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine warned against a war with Iran, insisting any conflict would be easily won. Trump posted on Truth Social that Caine never opposed military action and would...
Spanish Civil Guard arrested four alleged members of the hacktivist group Anonymous Fénix, accused of orchestrating DDoS attacks on government ministries, political parties, and public institutions in Spain and South America. The campaign intensified after the October 2024 Valencia floods, with...
The United States ordered nonessential personnel and their families to leave the Beirut embassy as tensions with Iran rise. The move is described as a temporary safety precaution while core diplomatic staff remain on site. It coincides with a massive...
U.S. forces are assembling their largest deployment since the 2003 Iraq invasion as diplomatic overtures continue with Iran. Both sides have scheduled talks for Thursday, while Tehran declares openness to dialogue but also readiness for war. President Donald Trump's mixed...
The Department of the Air Force is assessing interest in leasing land at three Alaska installations—Joint Base Elmendorf‑Richardson, Eielson Air Force Base, and Clear Space Force Station—for large‑scale commercial data centers. The Request for Information, released Feb 17, seeks vendor input...
Australia and the United Kingdom revived their Defence Industry Dialogue on 23 February 2026, reaffirming commitment to the AUKUS partnership and deeper industrial cooperation. Ministers highlighted progress on AESA radar technology, joint submarine initiatives—including HMS Anson’s deployment to Perth—and plans to secure energetics...
Picogrid and Guardian RF have secured a joint contract to protect Vandenberg Space Force Base from unauthorized drone activity. The deal integrates Guardian RF’s low‑SWaP Scout passive RF sensors with Picogrid’s Expeditionary Command and Control Nodes, creating a unified, real‑time...
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Iran‑linked APT MuddyWater has escalated its campaign, dubbed Operation Olalampo, against organizations in the Middle East and Africa. The group continues to rely on spear‑phishing but also began exploiting public‑facing servers, delivering several previously unseen malware strains such as the...
President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring a national emergency over Cuba and threatening tariffs on any nation that continues supplying oil, effectively targeting Mexico, Cuba’s primary oil source. In response, Mexico halted its daily oil shipments to Cuba,...
Six New York Army National Guard aviators were honored on Feb. 22, 2026 with the French National Defense Gold Medal with Bronze Star for rapid aerial support that rescued 34 French special‑operations troops during an Aug. 28‑29, 2023 firefight near Hawija, Iraq. The crews...
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear two Air Force cases challenging the Department of Defense’s COVID‑19 vaccine mandate, deeming them moot after the Pentagon began reinstating service members who had refused the shot. Plaintiffs, citing the Religious Freedom Restoration...
Airbus Helicopters, together with Collins Aerospace, Raytheon and MBDA, has submitted two next‑generation rotorcraft concepts to NATO’s Next Generation Rotorcraft Capabilities study. The proposals include a conventional helicopter and a high‑speed compound aircraft that share common systems, training and maintenance...
The National Guard Domestic Operations Conference convened Feb. 10‑12 at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, uniting senior Army and Air Guard leaders to synchronize homeland‑focused disaster response plans. Attendees examined recent hurricanes, wildfires and cyber‑induced infrastructure failures to develop a unified playbook...
The Enigma cipher machine, originally built in 1918 and later adapted by the Nazis, saw only a few hundred surviving units out of an estimated 35,000‑40,000 produced. Historian‑turned‑cybersecurity expert Marc Sachs will discuss the device’s historic failures at RSAC 2026, highlighting...
The article maps the evolution of Russia's information warfare doctrine from Imperial-era morale operations through Soviet psychological warfare to today's hybrid strategies. It highlights how Moscow blends propaganda, cyber attacks, and covert forces to shape narratives and destabilise opponents without...
Ukraine's 78th Air Assault Brigade has appointed Colonel Vladislav Tsika as its new commander. Tsika advanced from platoon leader to head of the 90th Airmobile Battalion and later served in the Lithuanian‑Polish‑Ukrainian Brigade and as deputy commander of the 77th Airmobile...
The United Nations Office of Counter‑Terrorism released a 2026 Practice Guide on artificial intelligence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE). It warns that extremist groups are exploiting AI to produce multilingual propaganda, deepfakes, and synthetic media, while only about...
Analysts label today’s geopolitical rivalry a "New Great Game" pitting the United States against a China‑Russia alliance. The contest spans Central Asia, the Middle East, the Arctic and the Indo‑Pacific, driven by competition for fossil fuels, rare‑earth minerals and strategic...
U.S. Army CIO Leo Garciga announced a rapid purge of legacy business applications, shutting down 100 systems in the past two quarters and cutting the total from roughly 800 to under 300. The consolidation focuses on enterprise‑wide platforms, low‑code/no‑code tools,...
Russia‑linked APT28 launched Operation MacroMaze, a campaign against Western and Central European entities from September 2025 through January 2026. The attackers delivered spear‑phishing documents containing a macro that calls a webhook.site URL, acting as a tracking‑pixel to verify document opening. The macro drops...
Since the start of President Trump’s second term, the administration has completed ten direct equity investments in private firms, highlighted by a $1 billion stake in L3Harris Technologies' rocket‑motor unit and minority positions in Intel and critical‑mineral suppliers. The moves target...
A financially motivated, Russian‑speaking threat actor used generative AI services to compromise more than 600 Fortinet FortiGate firewalls worldwide between January and February. The campaign avoided exploiting software vulnerabilities, instead leveraging exposed management ports and reused credentials with single‑factor authentication,...
If they are really going to do a $1.5T defense budget, additional heavy airlift assets (C-17 line restart or whatever) absolutely needs to be in that and in a big way. It's more important than the kinetic stuff (which even...
Industry briefings under the "Securing the Future of Space" campaign stress a sovereign‑commercial nexus to protect an increasingly congested Low Earth Orbit. Experts like Dr. Moriba Jah advocate a shift from space conquest to environmental stewardship, leveraging AI to monitor...
The U.S. State Department is withdrawing non‑essential personnel and their families from the embassy in Beirut as tensions with Iran rise. Roughly 50 staff members have been evacuated, though a core diplomatic team remains on site to maintain operations. The...
China’s reusable Shenlong space plane lifted off from Jiuquan on Feb 6, 2026, marking its fourth orbital mission. The vehicle’s prior flights ranged from a two‑day test to multi‑year stays, each releasing one or more satellites. Unlike the U.S. X‑37B, Shenlong...
Simple analogy on AI and cybersecurity. Security has never been solely a technology problem - it's largely a people problem. Complexity of business integration, misconfigurations, legacy systems, business transformations, M&As, etc. are all part of this industry we call cybersecurity. I can't remember...
Britain’s decision on the Chagos Islands is more than politics. It shapes how strategic rivals — especially China — interpret UK resolve, alliances and influence. This analysis explains why this matters in the context of great-power competition and what it reveals about...
Palantir Technologies, the US data‑fusion and AI firm, has secured contracts with the UK National Health Service and the Ministry of Defence. Critics argue the deals give a surveillance‑focused company access to sensitive citizen data. The firm’s platforms, already employed...
Here it is folks. The moment my 100k followers have been waiting for…. “We can not rebuild our industrial base without the US Merchant Marine. They are critically important,” @PeteHegseth, Secretary of War 🫡 https://t.co/HYvWum8qFA
“Sending the U.S. Navy’s hospital ships USNS Mercy or USNS Comfort to Greenland in late winter would face major obstacles from peak sea ice, a lack of available icebreaker escorts, and ports too shallow for the ships’ deep drafts” https://t.co/xI3xIjrRbh
The Space Development Agency awarded AST SpaceMobile a $30 million firm‑fixed‑price contract to demonstrate its BlueBird satellite constellation can deliver resilient, low‑latency broadband directly to military radios. The "Europa" phase of the HALO program requires AST to complete a series of...
Just in on long-delayed F/A-XX (Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon will accelerate development of a next-generation stealth fighter jet for the Navy after previously pushing back — a move that could benefit either Boeing Co. or Northrop Grumman Corp., which are...
“We created chaos faster than they could adapt.” The American Army’s ability to operate in ambiguity became a decisive advantage inside Baghdad. https://t.co/Icc6ylQSli
Optimizely, a New York‑based ad‑tech firm, disclosed a data breach after a sophisticated voice‑phishing (vishing) attack on February 11. Threat actors accessed the company’s CRM and other internal business systems, extracting only basic contact information and not sensitive customer data. The...
Straight Talk On State Of U.S. Airlift Capabilities From General Who Ran Air Mobility Command General Minihan's frankness about the China threat ended his career, but now as a civilian, he has much more to say. Exclusive: https://t.co/voeW7vfCc8
After a terrorist attack yesterday in Lviv, Ukraine's Minister of the Interior Ihor Klymenko said that the Russian intelligence services communicate with Ukrainian agents through Telegram in at least half of the cases. He said it is impossible to ban...
Operation Spiderweb in June 2025 demonstrated how Ukrainian forces hijacked Russian mobile networks to control and stream data from drones, disabling about 20 aircraft. The incident exposed a growing vulnerability as 4G/5G standards now embed native drone support, allowing off‑the‑shelf...
KC-130J’s Hellfire Missile-Firing Harvest Hawk Kits Retired By Marines Developed to turn USMC C-130s into close air support platforms during the Global War on Terror, Harvest Hawk's relevance has waned. https://t.co/FWdjbg1wcs
Iran Signals Possible “Fast Deal” To Be Made In Nuclear Talks As U.S. Military Build-Up Grinds On Iran may be softening its negotiating stance as pressure builds in the form of hundreds of combat aircraft and dozens of warships arrayed around...
Desider, the monthly corporate magazine of the UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), was launched on 26 January 2026. It is aimed at DE&S staff, the wider MOD, armed forces and industry partners. The publication delivers stories on operational...
Japanese micro‑satellite firm Axelspace secured an exclusive contract to supply optical imagery for the Ministry of Defense’s new satellite constellation. The agreement, part of a broader ¥283.1 bn project led by a consortium of Mitsubishi Electric, SKY Perfect JSAT, Mitsui &...
In late 2025 and early 2026 the U.S. Coast Guard and allied forces seized three oil tankers—M/T Skipper, M/T Centuries and Bella 1—after months of multi‑source intelligence proved they were moving sanctioned cargo. The operation underscores a new enforcement paradigm: governments...
Australia has taken delivery of two AH-64E Apache attack helicopters from the United States under a Foreign Military Sales agreement, marking the first arrivals of a 29‑aircraft order. The delivery is part of Project Land 4503, with the remaining helicopters slated for...
