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Judged to be retired Su-24M airframe used as a decoy.

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Trump is trying to buy Muricans with up to 0.50 cents cheaper petrol at Freedom Fuel.
-Politico

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Ukrainian soldier receiving combat related stress during training.

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USAF bought more Norwegian stealth missiles for the F-35A.

New order: $98.4m for more AGM-184A Joint Strike Missiles.

Known US spend is now roughly $547m:

• Lot 1: $208m
• Lot 2: $241m
• Lot 3B: $98m

Exact stockpile is not public, but the US likely has 200+ JSMs ordered / under contract, not all delivered yet.

Target inventory: 340 missiles.

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Britain’s first 12 F-35As are not the nuclear jets.

RAF AVM Jim Beck says they were bought for training and conversion units.

Why F-35A for training?

• ~50% more student capacity
• ~30% less engineering burden
• frees F-35Bs for the front line and carriers

The 12 jets can still go operational if needed.

More F-35As may follow later for the NATO nuclear role.

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Raytheon is preparing to restart MALD decoy production.

MALD is an air-launched decoy used to confuse and soak up enemy air defences.

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RTX says the production line is still warm: tooling, test equipment and sustainment infrastructure are already in place.

Newer MALDs are being upgraded with:

• improved reliability
• additively manufactured airframes
• new mission payloads
• jammer / warhead / future-kit nose options

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Production would restart in Tucson, Arizona, with RTX also looking at a second line in Europe if approvals and demand line up.

🇺🇸 The US Navy is paying $418.5m to dismantle its first nuclear aircraft carrier.

The former USS Enterprise CVN-65 was the world’s first nuclear-powered carrier and the only carrier ever built with 8 nuclear reactors.

Now NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services will cut up, recycle and dispose of the ship.

The funny part: this is about $118m less than the earlier $536m award.

Enterprise was decommissioned in 2017.

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Poland may buy Czechia’s strategic explosives producer.

Polish state-owned defence giant PGZ is reportedly considering a bid for Explosia the Czech state-owned maker of gunpowder, explosives and energetic materials.

The timing is beautiful:

• revenue up 64% to almost 3bn CZK
• net profit almost doubled to 838m CZK
• operating profit above 1bn CZK
• Europe is desperate for ammunition inputs

Poland already understood strategic assets in Czechia once:

it owns ORLEN Unipetrol, Czechia’s only crude-oil processor, plus the country’s largest petrol-station network.

Babiš really is running a regional strategic-asset clearance sale.

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Britain is buying just 3 new mine-hunting motherships.

These will support the Royal Navy’s shift from traditional minehunters to autonomous mine-warfare systems.

📉 The awkward comparison:

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• UK: 3 new motherships
• Hunt-class MCMVs now reduced to 4
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• Belgium: 6 new MCM motherships
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• Netherlands: 6 new MCM motherships

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Bulgaria wants Poland’s remaining MiG-29s, the ones meant for Ukraine.

Sofia still needs MiGs as a gap-filler until its F-16 Block 70 fleet is fully ready.

The problem:

• Bulgaria has 15 MiG-29s
• only around 6 are airworthy
• it wants to keep them flying until 2030
• Poland still has MiGs, engines and parts

The irony:

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Ukraine looked at the Polish MiGs and wanted repairs first.

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Bulgaria looked at the same pile and said:

“Perfect, we need those to keep our air force alive.”