As NATO races to supply Ukraine before Trump takes office, Europe is struggling to touch two percent of its GDP on defence expenditure while Russia plans to spend more than 32 percent of its national budget on its military.
Romania has signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance for 32 F-35A aircraft that are expected to cost around $6.4 billion. Romania already operates the Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter and has become the 20th member of the club of F-35 operator countries.
A total of 168 KC-46A tankers are on contract around the world with the latest order for the aircraft worth $2.38 billion. The order for the P-8A worth $1.6 billion brings the number of aircraft on contract to 207, of which 135 have been ordered by eight other countries.
F-35C fighters from the U.S. Marine Corps’ VMFA 314 squadron aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln conducted multiple strikes on Houthi weapons storage facilities in Yemen. The F-35C stealth fighter model has longer, folding wings and, like the F/A-18, is designed to be launched from the catapults of aircraft carriers, allowing it to carry heavier payloads than the F-35B.
The strategy paper that is said to be an evolving, ‘living document,’ includes ‘detailed plans’ for eventualities that range from defending Germany to deterring Russian manoeuvres on NATO’s eastern flank and anticipates that Germany might have to become a ‘hub for tens or hundreds of thousands of troops’ that have to be transported east, besides logistics for war materiel.
Ukraine struck Russia’s Bryansk region with U.S.-supplied ATACMS systems while President Vladimir Putin has signed into decree, his country’s revised nuclear doctrine, which has enlarged the conditions under which adversaries would be subject to nuclear deterrence.
Russian officials did not, however, specify the country that has ordered the aircraft, the export variant of which is called the Sukhoi-57E. Potential customers for the Sukhoi-57 in the past have included India, China, Vietnam and Algeria.
The nomination of a television program co-host with credentials lighter than a feather, for the senior cabinet position of Secretary of Defense, will make it easier to side-line or remove senior military officers whom Trump has said he would fire for being ‘woke.’
Chinese drone manufacturer DJI is facing trouble doing business in the U.S with all kinds of legal hurdles and has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Pentagon, while Raytheon has been fined almost $1 billion and Sweden’s Saab has been subpoenaed for its sale of Gripen fighters to Brazil.
German arms company Rheinmetall and Italy’s Leonardo will build the Panther KF51 Main Battle Tank for the Italian Army via a new company in addition to building a thousand variants of the Lynx Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
Australia announced a $4.7 billion purchase of Raytheon SM-2 and SM-6 missiles and Taiwan is likely to buy three Raytheon NASAMS medium-range air defence systems in a $2 billion sale.
The Bolt VTOL drone does not require any dedicated launch equipment and can operate from congested environments. It can be unpacked and airborne in under five minutes and loaded with a range of anti-personnel and anti-materiel warheads.
Swarm drones across domains hosted by motherships will be the future of naval operations according to a top official of Russia’s Rubin Design Bureau, which unveiled new uncrewed submersible concepts at the Army 2024 defence exhibition in Moscow in August.
The order is for a turnkey factory that will become a ‘Ukrainian Centre of Excellence for Ammunition’ to be operated by a Rheinmetall joint venture with a Ukrainian state-owned company, that will begin production within 24 months to manufacture hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition per year.
Boeing issued a ‘global No Technical Objection (NTO)’ confirming there are no technical issues to any Boeing-built defence aircraft and derivatives operating on synthetic aviation turbine fuels at the maximum allowable limit of a 50-50 blend with conventional fossil fuels.
