Aerospace

Air power, combat aircraft, drones and missiles.


Four NATO States Order Up to Five MQ-4C Triton Surveillance Drones

Four NATO States Order Up to Five MQ-4C Triton Surveillance Drones

Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway agreed to acquire up to five Northrop Grumman Corp. MQ-4C Triton surveillance aircraft for NATO, signing a letter of intent on Tuesday at the alliance's annual summit in Ankara. The high-altitude drones would join NATO's alliance-owned intelligence force and watch the seas from the Mediterranean to the Arctic, giving commanders a persistent maritime picture as Russian naval and submarine activity rises across the North Atlantic. Northrop would build the airc


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

Denmark’s P-8 Buy Shows Boeing Is Winning Europe’s Submarine-Hunting North

Denmark’s P-8 Buy Shows Boeing Is Winning Europe’s Submarine-Hunting North

Denmark is buying Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, joining a northern group of NATO allies that are standardising around the same American submarine-hunting jet as Russia’s undersea threat returns to the centre of European defence planning. Copenhagen said on Tuesday it would acquire two P-8As from Boeing to strengthen surveillance around Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Danish waters. The decision follows a US State Department approval in December for a possible sale of up to thr


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

Why Europe Is Turning to Ukraine for Missile Production

Why Europe Is Turning to Ukraine for Missile Production

Ukraine and France are negotiating a licence that would allow Kyiv to build SCALP cruise missiles on its own soil, the clearest sign yet that European missile production is moving toward the country those weapons were recently built to supply. Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed the talks on 29 June, saying there had been steady progress on intellectual property and the mechanics of standing up a production line, while cautioning that no deal was final. The negotiations followed a meeti


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

New Pentagon Drone ‘Czar’ to Close Gap With US Rivals

New Pentagon Drone ‘Czar’ to Close Gap With US Rivals

The United States has consolidated oversight of almost all of its military drone and autonomous-systems programmes under a single new office, as the Pentagon races to close a fielding gap with rivals it now openly concedes are producing unmanned weapons at far greater speed. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum, dated 29 June and released on Wednesday, establishing the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, known as the DRPM-UxS. The office will report directly


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

America's F-15EX Bet at Kadena: More Firepower, Same Missile Problem

America's F-15EX Bet at Kadena: More Firepower, Same Missile Problem

The US Air Force has begun rehearsing the return of permanent fighter power to Kadena Air Base, flying an F-15EX Eagle II into Okinawa on 29 June alongside two F-15E Strike Eagles. Kadena, the closest major American air base to Taiwan, has spent nearly four years without a resident fighter squadron. The F-15EX is meant to end that gap. Thirty-six of the new Eagle IIs are due to replace the F-15C/Ds that guarded the base for more than four decades before their withdrawal began in late 2022. For


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

US Reveals Its Stealth Bomber Can Sink Ships in Warning to China

US Reveals Its Stealth Bomber Can Sink Ships in Warning to China

The US Air Force has disclosed for the first time that its B-2 Spirit stealth bomber can launch the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, revealing a penetrating maritime-strike capability designed to hold China's expanding navy at risk. Pacific Air Forces announced on Monday, 29 June, that it had conducted a live-fire sinking exercise north of the Mariana Islands in which a B-2 fired the Lockheed Martin AGM-158C LRASM at a surface target. The drill formed part of Exercise Valiant Shield 2026, with the


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

China-Russia Bombers Patrol Sea of Japan Again as Joint Missions Become Routine

China-Russia Bombers Patrol Sea of Japan Again as Joint Missions Become Routine

The 11th joint strategic air patrol flown by China and Russia on June 27, over waters near Japan and South Korea, will read to many in the region as just another entry in a lengthening logbook. That sense of routine is the point. What began in 2019 as a single, attention-grabbing flight of Chinese H-6K and Russian Tu-95MS bombers close to Japanese airspace has settled into a fixture of the regional calendar, and the steady accumulation of these missions has become the message that Moscow and Bei


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics

Australia's New Spy Jet Patrols Northern Waters as China Pushes South

Australia's New Spy Jet Patrols Northern Waters as China Pushes South

Australia has begun flying its newest surveillance and electronic-warfare aircraft from the country's north, widening its ability to track Chinese military movements through its maritime approaches as Beijing sends its navy further south. An MC-55A Peregrine from the Royal Australian Air Force's 10 Squadron deployed to RAAF Base Darwin this month for its first operational test and evaluation flights, the Department of Defence said. The missions resemble the maritime patrols flown by the air for


MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics