A Philippine security official said Jan. 14 that China is “pushing us to the wall” with growing aggression in the disputed South China Sea and warned that “all options are on the table” for Manila’s response, including new international lawsuits.
China has installed a large structure in the Provisional Measures Zone of the West Sea (Yellow Sea), a disputed area where the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of South Korea and China overlap, South Korean officials said Jan. 9.
On Jan. 11, 2025, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, USAF (Ret.), and Senior Resident Fellow Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.), joined Brig. Gen. Akshai Gandhi, USAF, and Linden Blue, CEO of General Atomics, to present the 2023 General Atomics RPA Squadron of the Year to the 111th Attack Squadron, Texas Air National Guard, at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, Texas.
The Space Force for months has been dragging its feet to fulfill the longstanding agreement between the Department of the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on the assignment of military personnel to the spy satellite agency, according to a handful of government and industry sources—resulting in a shot across the service’s bow by lawmakers in the recently passed fiscal 2025 Intelligence Authorization Act.
Stratolaunch, a California-based firm building a reusable hypersonic test vehicle, is modifying its carrier aircraft to support high-speed test missions around the globe. Through a nearly $25 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency the company will modify one of its launch platforms, dubbed the Spirit of Mojave, to fly from any airport that can support an aircraft the size of a 747 jetliner.
Defense Department satellite operators will soon have a new tool to determine whether space weather was the likely cause of an on-orbit anomaly. Space Weather Analysis and Forecast System (SWAFS) 2.0, a cloud-based platform, will be released for operational use in March or April, U.S. Air Force Col. Todd Blum, chief of the U.S. Space Force Environmental Monitoring Operations Branch, said Jan. 13 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here.
As Joe Biden’s presidency nears its end and President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next week, DefenseScoop has compiled a rundown of the various drones that Washington has acknowledged committing to Ukraine thus far.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has called on alliance members to urgently agree on a new defense spending target above the existing 2 percent GDP floor, stating, “we really have to get this done in the next couple of months.” “This is urgent, it is urgent now,” he said Jan. 14 during the Baltic Sea Summit in Helsinki, Finland. “This cannot wait until some summit somewhere.”
A monthslong wait for needed repairs that saw six Air National Guard attack jets stuck at a Navy base in Sicily should come to an end this week, according to service officials. Maryland National Guard maintainers are at Naval Air Station Sigonella completing repairs on the A-10C Thunderbolt II jets, Maj. Benjamin Hughes, a spokesman for the Maryland National Guard, said Jan 14.
The Air Force will debut its large-scale multicombatant command REFORPAC exercise this summer in the Indo-Pacific with minimal limitations even if Congress isn't able to approve the fiscal year 2025 budget by March. But the longer the ongoing continuing resolution remains, “the more potential issues could occur,” an Air Force spokesperson told Inside Defense.
More details have emerged about the United Kingdom’s Tempest next-generation stealth fighter, being developed under the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP). While many specifics of the aircraft are still being decided by the three partner nations—the United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy—we now know there are plans to arm it with larger air-to-air missiles offering a longer range than those currently used by these countries.
After innocent-looking cargo shipments began catching fire at airports and warehouses in Germany, Britain and Poland over the summer, there was little doubt in Washington and Europe that Russia was behind the sabotage. But in August, White House officials became increasingly alarmed by secretly obtained intelligence suggesting Moscow had a far larger plan in mind: bringing the war in Ukraine to American shores.
The Revolutionary War’s Battle of Camden did not go well for the Continental Army or its patriot militias. ... American Gen. Horatio Gates, intending to follow up on his stunning 1777 victory at Saratoga, met the British in South Carolina in 1780. The result was a total collapse of Gates’ forces and nearly 2,000 American casualties. More than 240 years later, 14 of those casualties were unearthed on the historic battlefield. In 2022, the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources respectfully exhumed the remains from their shallow graves. Now they are looking for help in identifying them.