Israel attacked military targets in Iran with pre-dawn airstrikes Oct. 26 in retaliation for the barrage of ballistic missiles the Islamic Republic fired on Israel earlier this month. It was the first time Israel’s military has openly attacked Iran. The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted facilities that Iran used to make the missiles fired at Israel as well as surface-to-air missile sites.
Iran’s leaders emphasized on Oct. 27 that they had a right to respond to Israel’s airstrikes a day earlier but appeared to take a measured tone, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the assault had achieved its objectives. Their comments came as Israeli and American negotiators headed to Qatar in an effort to revive long-stalled talks aimed at brokering a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Earlier, Israel carried out more deadly attacks in northern Gaza and in southern Lebanon.
Shortly before 2 a.m. on Oct. 26 in Israel, airmen and women wearing bomber jackets bearing the Star of David climbed into the cockpits of about 100 jet fighters, spy planes, and refueling aircraft at an Israeli military base. They were following commands from an underground bunker known as the pit.
Several times over the past three months, swarms of as many as 150 Ukrainian drones flew hundreds of miles into Russia, slamming into missile storage facilities, strategic fuel reservoirs, military airfields and defense plants. Once considered exceptional, these deep strikes now barely register in the news. Yet, Ukrainian officials and some of their Western backers increasingly see the pain that long-range attacks inflict as a game-changer that could force President Vladimir Putin into negotiating an acceptable peace.
A few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow. The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola, and hemorrhagic fevers.
France, Germany, and Spain will refine the scope of their future sixth-generation fighter jet and its associated combat systems at a summit in December, before the joint project moves to the demonstrator phase, the head of the French armaments office said.
When the Space Force contracts commercial companies to provide “reserve” capabilities that could be “surged” in times of conflict—and possibly denied to non-US customers for a period of time—those joining can expect a number of peacetime benefits in exchange for their willingness to serve, according to the head of the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO).
New White House AI guidance offers a solid framework for safely using the technology, but there needs to be more investment in the enabling infrastructure to better harness AI’s national security potential, Defense Department and industry leaders said this week.
Before the end of 2024, officials leading the Pentagon’s temporary generative artificial intelligence-enabling team—Task Force Lima—aim to reveal their findings and plan to guide the military’s way ahead for deploying emerging and extremely powerful frontier models to support operations, a spokesperson told DefenseScoop.
Whether it’s perfecting supply chain logistics, sorting out the intricacies of a complex wargame, or planning key operational moves in a campaign, data holds the key to better decisions for the U.S. Air Force. Learn more about how industry and the military are better using data to improve outcomes.
Brazil’s Embraer is hunting for new A-29 Super Tucano orders to keep its American final assembly line humming, with 2025 seen as a critical year to parry back a production gap, its defense CEO told Breaking Defense.
The U.S. military is reducing the number of missile defense sites it intends to put on Guam, cutting the previous proposal of 22 down to 16 locations. The revised plan calls for splitting the various systems across three bases on the island, with the goal of 360-degree defense from aerial munitions.
In this episode of the “Aerospace Advantage,” Heather “Lucky” Penney chats about a key component of the nuclear triad with Chris Adams, sector vice president and general manager for strategic space systems at Northrop Grumman, and Jen “Boots” Reeves, senior fellow for space studies at Mitchell Institute.
Steadfast Noon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s annual tactical nuclear weapons exercise in Europe, was completed Oct. 24, having been run simultaneously with the British-led Strike Warrior large-scale maritime maneuvers, centered around a British Carrier Strike Group.
The Space Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) is ordering hundreds of off-the-shelf satellite jammers that can disrupt adversary capabilities from targeting U.S. or allied forces on the ground, the agency’s leader said Oct. 24.
The U.S. Air Force’s latest way to prepare for a global conflict? Video games. The Air Force is increasingly using video games as a cheap, detailed, and internal way to test potential war scenarios. And it’s increasingly using one game in particular: “Command.” And as of this past week, Airmen can play the game’s professional edition on the Air Force’s internal network.