Defense

The U.S. Air Force is accelerating its timeline for a cheaper, more expendable successor to the MQ-9A Reaper, officials said Sept. 3, after combat losses left the service unwilling to wait out the rest of the drone’s life. Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, told reporters at the Pentagon that a follow-on was already under discussion as the MQ-9 aged out.

The year 2025 was another record setter for global defense companies, so much so that production bottlenecks in Western nations — not the usual industry lamentations about lacking government spending — began creeping up as the key problem many NATO countries are facing today. Companies in the United States and Europe rode a wave of significant defense-spending increases on both sides of the…

KYIV, Ukraine — Dozens of American- and European-made components are still being used to build Russia’s deadly ballistic missiles despite nearly 24,000 sanctions imposed on Russia-linked individuals and entities since 2022, Ukraine’s presidential commissioner for sanctions policy said last week. Vladyslav Vlasiuk showed reporters on Aug. 25 foreign-made components recovered from Russian…

The U.S. Navy this week unveiled an array of new specifications for its future carrier-based Combat Collaborative Aircraft, or CCA. While the service did not detail the aircraft’s combat radius, the Aug. 31 Request for Information did note that the service wants the CCA to carry up to 5 tons of weapons and cost no more than $30 million per unit. The service has set a response deadline of Sept.