The U.S. is deploying an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with dozens of soldiers to operate it. President Joe Biden ordered the Pentagon to send the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system—known as THAAD—to Israel in the coming days to help Israel fend off potential Iranian missile attacks and add to the Israeli government’s already robust missile defense infrastructure.
“The U.S. military is in a dogfight to control the skies. For decades after World War II, America took its air superiority for granted. We no longer can. Our primary adversaries have massively invested in modern fighters, advanced surface-to-air missiles and other new countermeasure technologies. Each new system blunts our competitive edge,” write Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).
China employed a record 125 aircraft, as well as its Liaoning aircraft carrier and ships, in large-scale military exercises surrounding Taiwan and its outlying islands Oct. 14, simulating the sealing off of key ports in a move that underscores the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait, officials said.
From an F-35 fighter to an antenna connecting with a satellite, the Department of the Air Force ingests huge amounts of data every minute—but making sense of all that information will require new technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to sift through the noise and present the key points to warfighters so they can take action.
As the boundaries of warfare continue to extend beyond traditional battlegrounds, the U.S. Army is making strides into the space domain. With satellite capabilities now vital to military operations, the Army is launching initiatives to bolster its space warfare expertise and develop technologies to counter adversaries’ orbital assets. While not intended to rival the Space Force, this move highlights what officials describe as an increasing synergy between ground and orbital operations.
A partnership between American defense contractor L3Harris and Brazil’s Embraer to bring the latter’s C-390 Millenium to the U.S. market has fallen apart, the CEO of Embraer’s defense business told Breaking Defense. “I think it’s fair to say that the L3 partnership is not there anymore for the agile tanker,” Bosco da Costa Jr. said in an interview. “They decided not to move on [it] because of other priorities.”
U.S. Space Command Oct. 11 welcomed France and Germany as the newest participants in Operation Olympic Defender, the U.S. military’s operational planning process for warfighting in space. SPACECOM Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting traveled to Paris on Oct. 14 and Berlin on Oct. 11 to attend the two induction ceremonies with Maj. Gen. Phillipe Adam, French Space Command commander, and Lt. Gen. Gunter Schneider, director-general for military strategy and operations at the German Ministry of Defence, respectively.
Boeing’s defense business continued bleeding in the third quarter of 2024 as troubled programs, fixed-price contracts, and an inability to reach a deal with thousands of striking machinists dragged down the company. On Oct. 11, the aerospace giant announced that it will cut 10 percent of its entire workforce, roughly 17,000 people, in order to “position” itself for the future.
The Pentagon has posted the final rule for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 (CMMC 2.0), cementing the department’s plans to implement new cybersecurity standards for contractors by mid-2025. The rule was released for public inspection on the Federal Register on Oct. 11, and the Defense Department anticipates officially publishing the new guidelines Oct. 15, according to a Pentagon press release.
With collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) increasingly being eyed for electronic warfare (EW) tasks, Leonardo has developed a lightweight, low-cost, stand-in jamming capability that could help protect force packages.
In this episode of the Aerospace Advantage, Heather “Lucky” Penney chats with China expert Mike Dahm about an important aspect of China’s military modernization: how we perceive such developments. Given the restricted nature of China’s security complex, plus different cultural and political factors between our nations, those in the West must often rely on conjecture and partial information to arrive at various conclusions regarding the scale, scope, and vector of this buildup. This oftentimes sees individuals arrive at false conclusions, while failing to observe crucial nuances that should inform how the U.S. and its allies are building their corresponding military capabilities.
Russia has recaptured a few villages in its western borderlands that Ukraine invaded over the summer, threatening Kyiv’s hold on territory it views as crucial leverage for pushing Moscow toward negotiations to end the war.
The Space Force wants to transition the first of its space domain awareness satellite programs to a new cloud-based ground system as soon as next spring—and rather than work with a traditional defense contractor, it’s formed a consortium of small, commercial firms to help it modernize satellite operations.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline. Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors.
SpaceX launched its 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship vehicle for the fifth time ever today (Oct. 13), sending the giant rocket aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas at 8:25 am. EDT (1225 GMT; 7:25 a.m. local Texas time). The mission aimed to break new ground for Starship, and for spaceflight in general: SpaceX planned to return Starship's huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, directly to its launch mount, catching it with the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower in a bold and unprecedented maneuver. And that's exactly what happened.
