Halted shipments of some American military aid to Ukraine could resume after a series of high-level meetings in Italy and Ukraine over the coming week, according to two people familiar with the planning. ... President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg will meet with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov in Rome at an international aid conference followed by a meeting in Kyiv this week and next, with the issue of aid sure to be at the top of the agenda. The Ukrainian government sees the resumption of air defense and precision munitions as critical to its war effort, as Russia has hit civilian targets hard in some of the largest drone and missile strikes of the war over the last two weeks.
The U.S. Air Force is exploring new options to help with the development of improved fuzes for the 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bomb. The service is also interested in additional sources for the production of other key GBU-57/B components, as well as assistance in sustaining its current stocks of the bombs. This follows the first combat use of the MOP in strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last month.
Dutch and Norwegian F-35 fighter jets will be stationed in Poland under NATO command to protect supplies of equipment to Ukraine, the Dutch defense ministry said. The Dutch F-35s will be based in Poland from the start of September to the start of December, following a request from NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE, the Netherlands’ Ministry of Defense said in a statement on July 7.
U.S. Cyber Command’s budget request for fiscal 2026 includes funding to begin a new project specifically for artificial intelligence. While the budget proposal would allot just $5 million for the effort—a small portion of CYBERCOM's $1.3 billion research and development spending plan—the stand-up of the program follows congressional direction to prod the command to develop an AI roadmap.
U.S. firms have not been shy about their desire to cash in on President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome homeland defense initiative. But ironically, companies used an international gathering—this year’s Paris Air Show—to start laying out their visions. At forums and in interviews with Breaking Defense, industry officials stressed that while they don’t know exactly the shape of Golden Dome, themes are emerging starting with an emphasis on using existing technologies as the core of the project.
They are fishing nets, but they are not catching fish. They are catching Russian drones. The nets are strung over roads leading to hot spots in Ukraine’s eastern front, above military checkpoints and artillery positions. They are sewn in cities far from the front, or shipped from Nordic ports, donated by fishermen who no longer need them. ... With their dense mesh, the nets can tangle drone propellers and immobilize the weapons. They are a simple but effective countermeasure against drones that are often too fast to shoot down and can fly deep behind the front to strike logistical routes once out of reach.
The UK, Italy, and Japan have taken the next formal steps in developing their sixth-generation fighter under the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP), confirming a new joint headquarters and a target to finalize a major international contract by the end of 2025.
A Liberian-flagged cargo ship came under fire on July 7 in the Red Sea, with two security guards on board reportedly hurt and two others missing in an assault that came after Yemen’s Houthi rebels purportedly sunk another vessel in a similar attack. ... The two attacks and a round of Israeli airstrikes early Monday targeting the rebels raised fears of a renewed Houthi campaign against shipping that could again draw in U.S. and Western forces to the area, particularly after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration targeted the rebels in a major airstrike campaign.
U.S. military cyber spending—offensive and defensive capabilities, worker development, and more—will get a boost from the giant Republican policy-and-spending law signed over the weekend.
In the 2020s, uncrewed aerial systems, better known as drones, have become a standard part of modern military tactics. But eight decades ago, the U.S. military embarked on a short-lived project to create early, remote-controlled suicide drones.
