Author: Defenceline Webdesk

BELFAST — The international joint venture Edgewing has been awarded its first Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) design and development contract, valued at £686 million ($905 million). The GCAP Agency, which manages the multibillion dollar flagship project on behalf of the UK, Italy and Japan, issued the contract on Wednesday. It runs until June 2026. Mirroring GCAP’s national sponsors, Edgewing is comprised of England’s BAE Systems, Italy’s Leonardo, and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co. Ltd. (JAIEC). The new funding invests in “key design and engineering activities and enables the trilateral partnership to build momentum and accelerate pace of delivery,” noted…

Artificial intelligence is widely expected to revolutionize intelligence-gathering, enabling faster, cheaper and more scalable collection of information. But a new analysis suggests the technology may also spur a return to some of espionage’s oldest methods.A recent article in Studies in Intelligence, the CIA-backed academic journal, argues that as AI degrades the reliability of digital communications like text messages and video calls, traditional human intelligence tradecraft — like dead drops, brush passes and in-person meetings — could regain renewed importance.The same technologies that improve intelligence gathering may make it harder to trust the data those tools produce or transmit, argues the author, Thomas…

Reports have emerged from Iranian state media suggesting that a United States fighter pilot was forced to eject from an aircraft in southwest Iran. According to the news agency AP, citing local broadcasters, this incident marks the first recorded loss of a US jet within Iranian borders since the outbreak of hostilities on 28 February.The aircraft involved has been identified by several major American news outlets as an F-15E Strike Eagle. This specific model is a dual-role fighter that carries a crew of two: a pilot and a weapons-systems officer. While official confirmation is pending, US media suggests that special…

Jacob W. Brantley, RealClearDefense … the U.S. lags in establishing constant Arctic presence but even with the U.S. Coast Guards (USCG) new fleet of icebreakers, which have yet to be… Source link

WASHINGTON — On this day one year ago, President Donald Trump declared that a “chronic trade deficit” had become a national emergency, resulting in the need for the United States to impose retaliatory tariffs on American allies and foes alike to “make America wealthy again.” The announcement created shockwaves through global markets and set off a scramble from partners and allies to try and work out less punitive agreements. The volatile shifts that followed — in which the administration repeatedly paused or modified how it would employ tariffs, followed by the Supreme Court overturning the tariffs in February — seemed…

The Navy doesn’t want robot boat prototypes, so it nixed its existing unmanned surface vehicle program in favor of an already-made-or-being-built strategy. That move rattled industry last week, but it could bring the Navy closer to getting what it says it needs in medium unmanned surface vessels. Wargames showed the larger Modular Attack Surface Craft vehicle as having “too short a range (2,500 [nautical miles]) to be useful, and sometimes it was hard to effectively use its 16 missiles before the vessel was destroyed by counter-battery fire,” said Bryan Clark, who leads the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.…

NASA’s Orion spacecraft has transitioned seamlessly from concept to operational reality. On 1 April, it launched successfully atop the Space Launch System (SLS), propelling four astronauts on the Artemis-II mission. This marks humanity’s first crewed voyage around the Moon in over half a century.The mission has unfolded without significant hitches, bolstering faith in NASA’s ambitions for deep-space travel. A brief toilet malfunction surfaced shortly after launch, underscoring the human elements of spaceflight. Mission specialist Christina Koch, with her trademark wit, dubbed herself the crew’s “space plumber” after swiftly rectifying the waste management issue.With essentials sorted, Orion has proven itself a…

Conversation An Iran-linked group calling itself Handala

WASHINGTON — Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has signed off on the creation of a new staff organization at service headquarters that would, in effect, take the place of the Space Force’s previously planned Space Futures Command. The new SF/S9 Force Design and Analysis staff group will be established on April 21 to support the Space Force chief in his “statutory role as Force Design Architect for Space for the Armed Forces,” according to a March 31 memo signed by Saltzman and obtained by Breaking Defense. Asked for comment about the status of the plan, a Department of…

The Pentagon is negotiating to buy Ukrainian interceptor drones, having concluded that no American manufacturer can match the price, delivery times, and battlefield-tested reliability. A drone developed by UK firm Skycutter with Ukraine’s SkyFall recently scored 99.3 out of 100 in the Pentagon’s own Drone Dominance evaluation, beating every U.S. competitor by more than ten points. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine had about seven domestic drone manufacturers. It now has roughly 500. Last year, they produced a rough total of four million drones, exceeding by far the combined output of all NATO members; in 2026, they are aiming to make seven…