To an outside observer, the drills would appear to reflect that Washington’s relationship with Cairo, a cornerstone of US policy in the region, remains on solid ground. But underneath all that military hardware, the sands are shifting, as Egypt slides closer to China. It’s time for the US to wake up to the danger, reorient its bilateral relationship and perhaps use the next Bright Star to make a different point altogether. Bright Star exercises began in 1980, born out of the Camp David Accords that saw Egypt become the first Arab state to make peace with Israel, and have long been a barometer of US-Egypt ties. While they came to a halt during the Arab Spring, their return in 2017 under Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El Sisi was meant to reaffirm the strategic partnership that successive administrations in Washington have called indispensable.

But though the US-Egypt relationship may be indispensable now, there’s competition. Just four months earlier, Cairo hosted “Eagles of Civilization 2025,” the largest Sino-Egyptian bilateral exercise ever. Featuring Chinese J-10 fighter jets, KJ-500 early warning aircraft, and Z-20 helicopters, the drill signaled Cairo’s deepening military relationship with Beijing. Far from being a one-off, Eagles of Civilization 2025 capped a decade of growing Sino-Chinese defense ties, involving arms sales, technology transfers, and Chinese participation in Egyptian infrastructure projects with dual-use potential. One month, Cairo is integrating Chinese forces and reportedly purchasing Chinese-made air defense systems. The next, it is carrying out exercises with the United States and NATO partners. To Egyptian officials, this is all a part of a hedging strategy aimed at maximizing benefits from both Washington and Beijing while minimizing costs.

I can't believe the Egyptians committed geopolitical adultery. Outrageous!

Unless Washington confronts Cairo’s double game, the Bright Star exercise series risks becoming less a symbol of enduring partnership and more a symptom of flawed US strategy. To Washington, Egypt’s behavior is a strategic liability. Joint exercises like Bright Star give Egypt familiarity with some US tactics, techniques, and procedures. If that information makes its way to Chinese forces, it could erode US military advantages. And more broadly, this situation sends muddled signals to the region: if Egypt can have it both ways, why shouldn’t others? While Washington cannot stop Cairo from hedging altogether, it can set clearer boundaries and guidelines. US financial assistance to Egypt has continued on autopilot. Washington provides Cairo $1.3 billion annually in Foreign Military Financing (FMF), nominally to sustain peace with Israel, support counterterrorism, and increase interoperability with US forces. In practice, it has become a subsidy for the regime helping to arm Egypt while simultaneously freeing up Cairo’s own funds to purchase Chinese military systems.

Congress should consider Cairo’s actions and initiate a review to determine whether current levels of FMF to Egypt align with U.S. interests. Cairo shouldn’t be overconfident in the outcome of such a review. After all, the Trump administration suspended nearly all security aid to Pakistan in January 2018 after running out of patience with Islamabad’s double game of receiving US funding while backing the Taliban. More recently, India, another Bright Star 25 participant, has faced tariffs over continued purchases of Russian oil. Washington can also restrict the scope of Bright Star exercises as a signal of its displeasure. For example, if Cairo continues to deepen ties with China, the next Bright Star should be smaller in size and limited in mission sets. The Bright Star exercises have been a reminder of what US- Egyptian cooperation can deliver by enhancing interoperability and operational readiness. Yet without a recalibration based on Cairo’s drift toward Beijing, Bright Star and other drills risk projecting a façade of US influence even as China gains ground. Bright Star should reflect an enduring partnership, not an outdated commitment that no longer aligns with US strategic interests.

Y'know, I'm not, like, an expert on Cold War-era arms deals, but I feel like back then it was more so the tendency to try to entice countries by giving them stuff, not threaten them to take it away? Like, surely cutting cooperation just drives that country further towards China, now that they're the only ones who can offer them the gear they need? no carrot, only stick . carrots, in this economy?

I make the "in this economy" joke, but honestly I do wonder if this behavior is actually connected to de-industrialization to some degree - perhaps when the empire has a bountiful harvest of military equipment, it can afford to just hand stuff out left and right, on the off chance that it helps bring countries into its sphere of influence, and is willing to take the risk that some of those countries play both sides for freebies - but when supplies are tight, it has to pick and choose who it gives stuff to more carefully? At least for the immediate post-Soviet period, the US, and the West more broadly, was in a position where they were the only ones that could really supply the fancier military tech countries might need - but now with China catching up, there's less of a reason for countries to get tangled up in deals with Western countries specifically. The US is still a leader in the latest planes and air defense I guess, but that stuff's too expensive for most countries to afford in anything beyond token numbers anyway.

~~As Beijing beckons,~~ is Washington sleepwalking ~~on Egypt~~? Just like, in general?

“When the Navy goes and industry goes and [negotiates] contracts with the shipbuilders … we have got to ensure those folks who are pricing those components — of course, we want to be competitive — but we have got to reflect prices that can allow us to have the labor pool that we need for the long term,” said the official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity. The official also said that the nature of shipbuilding programs means cost is driven up by schedule delays. “Getting a workforce that is sustained, that is retained, that gets trained … and stays. That’s the best, cost model we can have … If that’s a short-term adjustment in what our labor rates look like and how they reflect against the service industry growth that’s happened in the nation, then we’ve got to adjust.”

The issue of pay for shipyard workers — especially the kind of entry-level ones the service is anxious to see join the workforce in the coming decade — has been a pervasive problem for both the Pentagon and industry. As shipbuilding executives often put it, over the years, food service, retail and other industries have slowly increased their respective entry-level wages to be competitive, or even better, than the pay a first-year shipyard worker could expect. “People can go do far less difficult things for just about the same money from an entry wage standpoint,” Kari Wilkinson, an executive at HII, the United States’s largest military shipbuilder, told Breaking Defense last year. “I will say though that within a year-and-a-half to two years, you can double your salary as a shipbuilder.” Despite the promise of better pay in the future, the workforce attrition numbers speak for themselves. Brett Seidle, a senior Navy civilian, told lawmakers in March that “50 to 60 percent” of new industrial base workers, recruited through the Navy’s ongoing campaigns, quit within their first year on the job. “Those folks are coming, and then we’re attriting out way too quick,” he said at the time.

HII, General Dynamics Electric Boat and senior Navy leadership have lobbied Congress and two different administrations to move forward with the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support plan that would, among other things, increase wages for various shipyard workers. That bill, colloquially known as SAWS, has appeared to stagnate on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of numerous lawmakers calling out the Navy for a “lack of transparency” on its funding requests. “It’s incredibly frustrating to know how important building a submarine [or] building a destroyer is, and to hear often that there’s a story of, ‘Well, I’ll go to Chick-Fil-A’ or ‘I’ll go to,’ you fill in the blank,” the official said. “We must overcome that as an enterprise.”

I, uh, I'm not sure if I'm just tired but I have no idea what that last quote is even saying. I'll go to, you fill in the blank? Huh?

Patria and British defense firm Babcock International additionally signed an agreement to manufacture the armored carrier in the U.K. under the program, called Common Armoured Vehicle System or CAVS, the companies said. The Finnish defense company is the lead designer of CAVS, based on the Patria 6x6 wheeled platform and manufactured in Finland but also locally in Latvia, with plans for production in Germany.

The APC costs between €1.1 million and €1.5 million (US$1.3 million-1.8 million) per vehicle, based on recent purchases by Latvia and Sweden.

The Boxer, for comparison, is supposed to be €4-5 million for its APC variant and €7-9 million for its IFV variant. I couldn't find per-unit costs for the Ajax (it also comes as both an APC and an IFV, as well as some other variants, like the Boxer, so costs would differ between them), but the total cost is around €4.7 billion for 589 vehicles, which averages out to around 8 million per vehicle - so maybe the IFV ones are something like 10 mil, while the APCs like 6 mil, as a rough guesstimate. Maybe somewhat cheaper, since a big part of the ballooning costs was presumably R&D and testing, so after that's ironed out the actual manufacturing costs shouldn't be as big.

“As European security needs to be strengthened, multinational collaboration is increasingly important for interoperability, interchangeability and security of supply among allies,” Patria CEO Esa Rautalinko said in a statement. Patria says it’s received orders for nearly 1,000 6x6 vehicles, and delivered more than 250 through the CAVS program, making it the current best-seller in the Finnish company’s portfolio. Separately, Patria announced a new tracked APC at DSEI UK on Tuesday for all-terrain troop transport, which it aims to have ready for serial production in 2027. Babcock will manufacture the Patria 6x6 vehicles for the British Army, under the agreement announced on Tuesday, after the U.K. Ministry of Defence officially joined the CAVS program. “Our partnership brings clear benefits,” said Jussi Järvinen, Patria’s executive vice president for protected mobility. “The UK needs a proven ready-to-use vehicle platform, and the Patria 6x6, already operational in NATO countries, will be locally built and supported to meet British Army requirements.” Babcock said CAVS is being used by a growing number of countries in the Joint Expeditionary Force alliance, of which the U.K. is a member, with JEF members Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark and Germany all buying the APC. “We are proud to be working with Patria as their official build partner on the 6×6, and as a strategic partner of the British Army, we are perfectly positioned to deliver a large fleet of formidable, proven armored personnel carriers,” said Tom Newman, the CEO for Babcock’s land sector.

CAVS has Stanag level 2 ballistic and mine protection, designed to withstand armored-piercing rifle rounds, and can be upgraded to level 4 for protection against high-caliber AP rounds. The vehicle can carry up to 10 soldiers in the rear, in addition to the driver and commander. The all-wheel-drive, diesel-powered APC has a maximum combat weight of 24 metric tons, including a maximum payload of 8.5 tons, and has a top speed of more than 100 kilometers per hour and a range of more than 700 kilometers.

The all-terrain troop carrier was unveiled at the DSEI UK defense show in London on Tuesday, and fills a hole in the market between lighter and heavier vehicles, according to Patria. Trackx is designed to carry 12 soldiers with equipment, including a driver, commander and ten dismounts. Patria is pitching Trackx as a modern alternative in the 13-18 metric-ton class of tracked armor, a segment still dominated by the M113, a 65-year old design that has recently seen extensive use in Ukraine. With most recent armor designs trending heavier, the new APC could provide European forces with a lighter, more affordable option for all-terrain troop transport.

“There is nothing similar on the market, there is currently no comparable product segment from any other manufacturer,” Jussi Järvinen, Patria’s executive vice president for protected mobility, told Defense News in a written reply to questions. “Competitors mostly manufacture lighter or significantly heavier and more expensive vehicles.”

either too light or too heavy... wait a minute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interim_Armored_Vehicle "In a June 1999 communique, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki said "our heavy forces are too heavy and our light forces lack staying power." ... He called for a mid-weight unit that would strike a balance between heavy armor and infantry."

Trackx is the first production-ready vehicle to come out of the European Union-funded FAMOUS program to develop future high-mobility armor, for which Finland is the lead nation and Patria the coordinating company. Patria presented a FAMOUS concept vehicle at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris last year. The new APC could be “a very suitable solution” for countries that operate the M113 or MT-LB type light tracked armor and are looking for a replacement, according to Patria. The M113, with more than 40 variants, is one of the most widely used combat vehicles in the world, with more than 80,000 vehicles produced.

The maximum combat weight of Patria’s new APC is 15.5 tons, with ballistic protection against small-arms fire that can be upgraded to protect against armor-piercing rifle rounds. Patria says it has extensively tested Trackx on roads, in forests, bogs and snow. The vehicle is equipped with rubber tracks, and designed to have low ground pressure, a low center of gravity and adjustable hydro-pneumatic suspension for each track wheel. Trackx has drawn “considerable attention” from potential customers, as the APC addresses gaps in land mobility, according to Järvinen. He said most of the interest is from countries in the EU, but there are also inquiries from outside Europe. With regards to potential markets, the executive said “it’s important to note” that the FAMOUS program member countries contributed to development efforts and helped set the requirements. In addition to Finland, eight EU countries participate in the program, including France, Germany and Spain.

The total budget of the FAMOUS program is around €132 million ($155 million), including around €9 million in funding from the European Commission and €95 million from the European Defence Fund, with the remainder funded by the member countries and the participating companies. For Finland, the program is part of a project to replace its existing fleet of all-terrain vehicles, with a requirement to operate in harsh northern weather and terrain conditions. Patria’s partners in the FAMOUS consortium include France’s Arquus, French-German KNDS and Spain’s Indra. The Finnish company said the manufacturing role of its partners will depend on potential customer nations. Patria said its operating model is based on the strong role of local production, and it has experience in setting up wheeled-armor programs in other countries. The company is the lead designer of the Common Armoured Vehicle System based on the Patria 6x6 wheeled platform, which is manufactured in Finland but also in Latvia, with plans for local production in Germany.

The Pentagon has previously said that 125 aircraft, including the B-2s, took part in Operation Midnight Hammer. President Donald Trump has also said that the force package included stealthy F-22 Raptor and F-35 fighters, as well as dozens of aerial refueling tankers. The B-2s dropped 12 MOPs in total on Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facility at Fordow and another two on an underground site at Natanz, according to U.S. officials. The Iranian nuclear facility at Isfahan was also subjected to a barrage of more than two dozen Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles fired from a single submarine, very likely the Ohio class guided missile submarine USS Georgia.

“As the Operation Midnight Hammer strike package entered Iranian airspace, the U.S. employed several deception tactics, including decoys as the fourth and fifth generation aircraft pushed out in front of the strike package at high altitude and high speed, sweeping in front of the package for enemy fighters and surface to air missiles,” Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press briefing the morning after the operation, but did not elaborate. “As the strike package approached Fordow and Natanz, the U.S. protection package employed high-speed suppression weapons to ensure safe passage of the strike package with fighter assets employing preemptive suppressing fires against any potential Iranian surface-to-air threats.”

The new disclosures that U.S. forces expended SDBs and laser-guided rockets, as well as the MOPs, in relation to Operation Midnight Hammer come from a Pentagon budget reprogramming document dated August 1, but which was only released recently. By law, the U.S. military has to seek approval from Congress to reallocate funding from one part of its budget to another.

Overall, “this reprogramming action addresses funds for the replacement of defense articles expended in support of Israel through U.S. combat operations executed at the request of and in coordination with Israel and for the defense of lsraeli territory, personnel, or assets during attacks by Iran, and subsequent or anticipated attacks by Iran and its proxies,” the document notes. “Funds are available from division A of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024, division A of Public Law 118-50, appropriated to the Department of Defense.” The reprogramming document specifically lays out the reallocation of $2.3 million, $3.3 million, and $123 million to help replace SDBs, laser-guided rockets, and MOPs employed in relation to the operation to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, respectively. No details are provided about the total number of any munitions expended (though we have the previous details about the number of MOPs dropped) or how many are expected to be purchased with the supplemental funds. Another $9.976 million is also required to pay for “temporary lodging expenses of personnel supporting Operation Midnight Hammer.” In addition, the document includes the shifting of $498.265 million to provide funds for the replacement of an unspecified number of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile interceptors fired in the defense of Israel, without any explicit mention of Midnight Hammer. The U.S. Army reportedly fired more than 150 THAAD interceptors to defend Israel during its 12-day war with Iran in June, raising significant questions about the depth of the remaining U.S. stockpile of those missiles. You can read more about the THAAD expenditures in detail in TWZ‘s past reporting here.

If the $123 million figure in the reprogramming action reflects the full cost to replace the 14 MOPs dropped on Iran, this would average out to nearly $8.8 million per bomb. However, ancillary costs could also be included in that total. The U.S. government does not appear to have ever provided an official unit cost for the GBU-57/B, with past reports offering $3.5 million and $15 million price points, but without clear sourcing. The dollar figures for the SDBs and APKWS II rockets raise some immediate questions about the full scope of what might be considered to be “during Operation Midnight Hammer.” The Air Force has pegged the unit cost of a typical GBU-39/B at $40,000 in the past, and more recent budget documents put it at between $70,000 and $80,000. If the $2.3 million figure reflects the total cost of SDBs expended just on June 21-22, this would mean roughly between 30 and 60 SDBs were dropped in one night. Similarly, $3.3 million averages out to around 132 APKWS II rockets based on available cost data. It is possible in this case that “during Operation Midnight Hammer” also includes tangential operational activities. Midnight Hammer came at the tail-end of the Iran-Israel war, during which U.S. forces were heavily engaged in defending the latter’s territory from incoming threats, as underscored by the THAAD interceptor section in the repogramming document.

...

The use of GBU-39/B would fit with Caine’s previous disclosure that aircraft in the Midnight Hammer strike package had conducted pre-emptive strikes on Iranian air defense assets to help clear the way. With its standoff range and precision, the SDB is well-suited to the suppression/destruction of enemy air defense (SEAD/DEAD) mission set, and F-22s and F-35s can also carry them internally while flying in their most stealthy configurations, further reducing their vulnerability. SDBs could have been employed by various other platforms, and against other ground targets, as well. As noted, there are more questions about how the APKWS II rockets could have factored into Operation Midnight Hammer, especially given that the repogramming action says air-to-air optimized Fixed Wing, Air Launched, Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Ordnance (FALCO) versions were expended. ... FALCO rockets were first employed in combat in the air-to-air role last year in the Middle East, at least against drones, but the air-to-air APKWS II capability was also developed as a means of downing subsonic cruise missiles. Iran certainly has an extensive arsenal of drones and cruise missiles, but it is not clear why the Midnight Hammer strike package would have been engaging them as it punched its way to Fordow and Natanz. FALCO-configured APKWS IIs could have been employed against ground targets, but this also seems less likely to have been the case. Any use of laser-guided rockets would have required a non-stealthy launch platform, as well. Overall, it seems much more likely that the rockets were expended in the context of the broader defense of Israel and U.S. assets in the region during Iran’s drone and missile barrages.

The full scale and scope of munitions and other capabilities employed during Operation Midnight Hammer is still unknown. Caine’s past comments about decoys and “high-speed suppression weapons” have also raised the possibility that variants of the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD) and members of the AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) family were employed, but this remains unconfirmed. The mention of decoys could also be a reference to the additional B-2 bombers sent flying out into the Pacific as part of an elaborate deception effort in support of the operation. In the immediate wake of the Operation Midnight Hammer, TWZ highlighted the overall enormity of the resources required for its successful execution, writing: “It’s also worth discussing what went into making this attack possible. We have been writing about the B-2 and its MOP capability constantly for many years. It has been a critical program that has needed constant enhancement. Mission planners, maintainers, ordnancemen, aircrews, engineers and everyone else in between have been preparing for this exact mission for many years. Many years of technological development went into the hardware to achieve it. We have seen large-scale exercises that certainly looked like rehearsals for yesterday’s mission, too. And it’s not just B-2 and MOP, but the package of aircraft (likely F-22s, F-35s, EA-18Gs, tankers, and possibly one or two we don’t even know about yet), vessels, satellite assets, and the supporting command and control architecture that all played a part.” “So, seeing it all come together, with apparently perfect timing and coordination, from space to down below the waves, is something to behold.”

Though questions remain, the recently released budget reprogramming document does offer additional insights into the full breadth of Operation Midnight Hammer.

A cancellation notice, published by Madrid’s procurement agency last week, does not provide an explanation for the move, but it sits in line with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to accelerate approval of a Royal Decree Law, consolidating an existing arms embargo against Jerusalem. The move is one of nine actions the Spanish government said it plans to take to help “stop the genocide in Gaza, pursue its perpetrators, and support the Palestinian population.” Once adopted, the Decree will establish “a legal and permanent ban on the purchase and sale of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment” to Israel, Spain’s central government announced last week. The AFP previously reported the cancelation of the SILAM deal.

The Spanish Ministry of Defense referred Breaking Defense to “recent comments” on the matter and other cancelled weapon buys of Israeli origin from Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles. “We have made it very clear that this technological material, which was being supplied to Spain by Israeli companies, will be replaced by Spanish industry,” she said. “Additional measures” announced last week by Madrid in response to the Gaza conflict include a ban on any aircraft transiting Spanish airspace to transport defense equipment to Israel. Similarly, ships carrying fuel to the Israeli armed forces are prohibited from entering Spanish ports.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in response, accused Sánchez of antisemitism and barred two senior Spanish officials from entering Israel.

The SILAM contract was originally awarded in 2023 to a joint venture between Spanish companies Escribano Mechanical & Engineering and Rheinmetall Expal Munitions, a subsidiary of the German giant. According to the Spanish Ministry of Defense (MoD), Expal, Escribano and Spanish technology firm GMV, displayed the SILAM solution at the FEINDEF trade show in 2023, alongside Elbit, prior to contract award. The weapon system was put forward for acquisition in order to address an “absence of artillery capability that arose a decade ago when the [Spanish Army’s] Teruel system was decommissioned,” noted the MoD at the time [PDF]. Elbit Systems company literature states that PULS “can fire a variety of ammunition types to various ranges from the same position, to ranges of up to 300km.” The system can fire munitions including Accular and Predator Hawk rockets. PULS European customers include Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands. Earlier this year, Madrid cancelled a €285 million contract for the purchase of 168 launch units and 1,680 Spike LR2 anti-tank missiles produced by Israel’s Rafael. Elbit and Rafael did not immediately respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. A United Nations independent commission announced today that it has found that Israel “is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza” — an accusation Jerusalem has vehemently denied as it carries out military operations in Gaza that it says target Hamas fighters.

Prior to taking up the post as German chancellor, Freidrich Merz criticized US President Donald Trump’s “America first” doctrine and said he is prepared for the “worst case scenario,” hinting at a future where Washington would no longer be seen as a trusted ally. But Papperger pushed back on political signaling from Merz for Germany to establish “independence” from the US. “Chancellor Merz now will invest the money, and the whole government will invest the money,” added Papperger, on Berlin’s plans to increase defense spending. “So I think that Germany, but also Europe … will grow up to be a reliable partner of the United States.”

Trump’s pressure on Europe to do more for its own security has since led to most NATO allies agreeing to a 3.5 percent GDP defense spending pledge and an additional 1.5 percent GDP on related items like infrastructure. The German government is investing “more than the rest of Europe” and years of underspending in the country’s armed forces before the war in Ukraine has been “fixed” under a Ministry of Finance plan to reach a military budget of €160 billion in 2029, said Papperger. Rheinmetall holds robust industrial ties with US giant Lockheed Martin and strengthened cooperation further this week at DSEI by unveiling a next-generation “missile tank destroyer” technology demonstrator. The land system comprises a 6×6 Fuchs armored vehicle and Hellfire Longbow and Joint Air to Ground Munition (JAGM) missiles. The latest move to join forces builds on partnerships across several other high profile weapon system programs including F-35 fifth-generation fighter jets and the Global Mobile Artillery Rocket System (GMARS) capability.

“We make a Europeanisation of that stuff,” said Papperger. “It’s not that we buy American technology, it’s that we implement American technology into Europe.” Relying on European solutions alone would be counterproductive, he suggested. “If you want to make a R and D [Research and Design] program in Europe to build up everything … you are not [going to be] ready in 10 years,” he said. A total of three F-35A fuselages, being built by Rheinmetall for non US-customers, have so far been produced by the firm at a new production facility in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. A “grand opening” of the site is scheduled in four to six weeks, Papperger explained. In 2023, Rheinmetall stated that “at least” 400 of the fuselages will be manufactured in all.

"Europeanisation" is when you locally manufacture one part, import everything else (including the engine and the delicate electronics which actually make the plane what it is), and then pat yourself on the back for the might of your domestic industry. This is like that deal for Egyptian M1 Abrams production, where in the end they ended up only being able to make like a fifth of the parts and mostly just assembling tank kits imported from the US.

North Korea’s strong performance, according to a BOK official during a briefing, is “mainly due to significant increases in manufacturing, construction and mining industries,” which were brought about by North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine. BOK also cited “the strengthening of national policy projects domestically, and expansion of economic cooperation between North Korea and Russia externally.” North Korea’s heavy chemical sector, per the bank, saw double-digit growth. South Korea’s bank has been publishing data about North Korea’s economy, based on “various sources including intelligence and foreign trading agencies and data from the South’s unification ministry,” since 1991, Reuters said.

North Koreans in Russia

Per CNN, North Korea recently released a 20-minute propaganda video through state media KCTV, aimed at praising its soldiers who have fought on Russia’s side in Ukraine. The video, per CNN, features “heavily dramatized shots of soldiers on the snow-covered battlefield – handling weapons, holding meetings with Russian soldiers, and installing bombs on trees.” Soldiers in the video are also shown gazing at a portrait of the North Korean leader. It’s not clear, per CNN, how “real” the footage is in the video. Citing Western officials, CNN said that it is believed that up to a third of 12,000 soldiers sent from North Korea as part of the initial deployment were either killed or wounded. Kim held two events in August to meet with families of those killed in the war.

our realistic and honest documentaries, their propaganda videos

citing my ass: "yeah actually a gajilion North Koreans died, and all that footage? CGI, not like our brave Ukrainian friends who have never lied or exaggerated throughout the whole war!"

Kim in China

The economic numbers were released as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a rare trip out of North Korea, in order to attend a military parade in China to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also scheduled to attend the parade, as is the president of Iran. There is speculation, NBC News reported, that a trilateral meeting might take place among China’s Xi Jinping, Putin, and Kim. NBC also described the military visit as Kim’s “first multilateral event” since he took power upon his father’s death in 2011. Per NBC News, Kim arrived in Beijing by train, clad in a dark suit. “Standing side by side with Xi Jinping and Putin on Tiananmen Gate, he will reproduce the triangular solidarity structure of the Cold War era,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said in a message to South Korean lawmakers this week, NBC reported.

Another Trump/Kim Meeting?

Donald Trump, during his first term, met on three occasions with Kim, in what were the first meetings between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader in decades. The diplomatic opening was historic, but it never led to any lasting agreement. In August, Trump announced that he would be willing to resume his diplomacy with Kim, and did so while seated next to the president of South Korea. The comments came during the first visit to the White House by President Lee Jae-myung, who recently took over as South Korea’s president. Lee offered to “usher in a new era of peace on the Korean peninsula,” and even raised the possibility of a Trump Tower being built in North Korea one day. “We will do that,” Trump told his South Korean counterpart. “We look forward to meeting with him, and we’ll make relations better.”

Damn, I didn't realize that the Seals murdering civilians leaks were like 10 days after Lee Jae Myung met with Trump. What timing!

also the way other countries' politicians have learned to just glaze Trump is great, "oh and we'll build a Trump Tower there too! A Juche Trump Tower!"

“With Fuze, the Army is telling innovators that we’re open for business. Fuze will help us to not only invest but scale promising capabilities — bridging the valley of death,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said in a statement to Defense News. Unlike traditional procurement that starts with an Army-defined problem followed by appointing a company to solve the problem, Fuze flips the approach. The new process allows the service to find technology to bring in “that helps us think about what our problems are differently,” Chris Manning, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for research and technology, told Defense News in a recent interview. Venture capitalists make 100 investments and only end up with a few with outsized returns. The Army is accepting that same risk to capture bigger payoffs. “We’re really taking the approach where we’re going to deliberately make a large number of investments in emerging tech companies,” Matt Willis, the Army’s Fuze program director, said in the interview. “Some tech might not reach the maturity that we want, [but] there’s going to be some companies that are going to have an outsized, revolutionary impact on our soldiers.”

Y'know, there's this amazing thing called a planned economy, where you can just, like, put in the economic plan "we'll provide X money/resources to this and that R&D program", with the same expectation that not all of this research will actually produce something directly usable, and you don't even need to pad tech CEO's wallets for that, you can just have guys directly working for the government doing all that! Many valuable pieces of technology were developed under this model!

The program aligns four existing fundings streams: XTech prize competitions, small-business funding, tech maturation and manufacturing technology — worth about $750 million in fiscal 2025. The Army plans to initiate the program by running an XTech Disrupt live pitch competition, in partnership with Y Combinator — a technology startup accelerator and VC firm — at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference next month in Washington.

the... hackernews guys?

The competition, according to Willis, will focus on four technology areas important to the Army: electronic warfare, unmanned aircraft systems, counter-UAS and energy resiliency at the edge. The prize pool totals $500,000. Technologies that win out in the competition will go straight into the hands of soldiers in operational environments for real-world evaluation. The Army has spent the better part of a decade trying to match its acquisition speed with the rest of the high-tech world, but trying to break down the bureaucracy and change the culture has been a challenging task. Fuze is central to a broader shift in the Army as it seeks dramatic transformation rapidly. “Continuous transformation is like our once-in-a-generation change for the Army to get at and prepare for the future battlefield,” Brandon Pugh, the Army’s cyber adviser, told Defense News. “But a key part of that is the acquisition process to really make sure that the warfighter and the soldier on the battlefield has the correct technology they need.”

And surely tech-bro dipshits will be able to deliver that. Logistics? Oh, we have an app for that, just pick the ammunition you need from the menu (and don't forget to tip your BattleDash driver!). This whole program is even named like an app!

Speed is central to that transformation. “We’re hoping to have a capability to an acquisition pathway in 10 days, and hopefully within 30 to 45 days, for the first prototype to be with an Army unit,” Pugh said. “That is extraordinary.” The Army has struggled with the pace of past acquisitions, particularly in fast-evolving fields like electronic warfare. “It’s so quickly evolving, you have to be able to acquire this quickly and iterate quickly, or else you’re instantly behind, even if you do successfully acquire it. I think that’s the risk,” Pugh noted. Army officials stressed that Fuze is not just a bureaucratic reshuffling. “This isn’t just like a rebranding. We’re coalescing these innovation programs from a strategic, operational and execution standpoint… to help companies move through that pipeline more quickly,” Willis said. “The end outcome we want is having the best technology here quickly,” Pugh said.

Hmm, I wonder if maybe there's a reason that technology which people's lives depend on has a somewhat slower development process than, like, a fucking app. Now, there obviously is plenty of graft in US military procurement, but throwing stacks of cash at random tech companies doesn't exactly solve that problem.