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Latest headlines from The War Zone.
Anduril has unveiled Steelfin, a modular interceptor family intended for missions from point defence to upper-tier ballistic missile defence. The company says common components and production lines could support thousands of missiles a year, but has not disclosed prices, performance figures or a detailed production schedule.
South Korea released images of its first successful test of a domestically developed hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, including its launch and water impact. Officials said the test checked core technologies, while key details such as the vehicle’s speed and flight distance remain undisclosed.
A U.S. Navy notice says it plans to negotiate a sole-source contract with Lockheed Martin to integrate AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles onto Air Force B-52 bombers. The notice gives no schedule or planned missile capacity, while the work would add to broader efforts to equip U.S. bombers and other aircraft with LRASM.
The U.S. Air Force is seeking information from industry about returning up to four retired KC-10 tankers to service for possible transfer to a North African partner. The contracting notice does not name a recipient or confirm a transfer, and the aircraft’s condition is unclear.
The carrier returned to San Diego on Oct. 8 after a 321-day deployment that included operations against Iran. Its superstructure displays kill marks whose tallies differ from figures in the strike group’s Presidential Unit Citation.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would make Portugal a “very competitive” offer to replace its F-16 fleet. Lisbon is seriously considering the F-35 proposal while weighing other aircraft and awaiting a Eurofighter bid.
Shield AI says it plans to complete the first full-scale X-BAT prototypes by the end of October and begin flight testing before year-end. The Navy’s RIMES program is targeting an early operational capability in 2029, while the company aims to fly a fully missionized aircraft in 2028 and begin series production the following year.
Sikorsky is developing a digital backbone, new engines, a modular nose and autonomy options for Black Hawks, with the uncrewed U-Hawk cargo aircraft scheduled to fly later this year. The effort is intended to add capability to a fleet used by 36 nations while supporting new missions, including drone control and contested logistics.
Castelion has released an image of its Blackbeard hypersonic missile firing from a truck-mounted ground launcher, offering a first public look at the Blackbeard GL system under development for the U.S. Army. The Army plans a production-representative live-fire launch in fiscal 2027 as it pursues a lower-cost precision weapon compatible with its existing mobile fires systems.
The testing plan for the U.S. Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47 fighter is continuing to take shape ahead of the type’s expected first flight in 2028. The Air Force Test Center (AFTC) aims to blend developmental and operational test elements, and leverage new tools in the virtual realm, to help accelerate that work...
As part of the largest U.K. Commando Force exercise in 15 years, British special operators conducted a submarine insertion off Scotland, making use of a German Navy Type 212A - a boat you can read about in detail here. The maneuvers are the first time since the war in Afghanistan that all of the Commando Force’s...
Multiple reports now say that U.S. Air Force B-1 Lancers left the United Kingdom over the weekend due to the threat of an Iranian-directed near-field drone attack broadly akin to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb that decimated Russian bombers. Though many specific details are still unconfirmed, this is an entirely...
During his time as the lead propulsion engineer for SR-71 Blackbirds at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Tim Conners looked into how to push the iconic recon plane to fly faster than it had ever flown before. The world record for any crewed jet-powered aircraft is officially Mach 3.3, or 2,193 mph. It was set by...
Aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush arrived in Phuket, Thailand, on Sunday for a scheduled port call after 188 days at sea, leaving just one carrier strike group, led by USS George Washington, in the Middle East for the first time in months. Across the Pacific, USS Abraham Lincoln, which Washington relieved in...
The United Kingdom could be heading toward its most significant expansion of ground-based air defense in generations, under a plan announced by the Conservative Party. For now, however, with the Conservatives in opposition, the proposed £10 billion (about $13.3 billion) “Britannia Shield” exists only as a policy...
Headlines from The War Zone, listed as published.