David Axe

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5 minute read

• Military tech

Ukraine and the Netherlands team up on missile defense as Europe plans its own missile killer, free of US approval

The best time to intercept an incoming ballistic missile is when it's just halfway to its target. Can Ukraine afford this capability?

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5 minute read

• Latest news

Ukraine may already be pushing Operation Vivaldi across the Zherebets River. It’s a risky gamble

Two mappers put Ukrainian troops on the river’s eastern bank this week, including at Terny, where Russia crossed in 2024 and kept pushing until Vivaldi drove it back.

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5 minute read

• Military tech

This is the fancy new F-16 Ukraine could get. It’s not what its pilots need most.

Ukraine could buy newly built F-16 Block 70/72s from U.S. firm Lockheed Martin. But that's not the greatest need.

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6 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

Starlink helped Ukraine pull off Operation Vivaldi. Now Starlink could help Russia take the ground back

The operation retook 277 square kilometers north of Lyman. The drones that now hold that line lose their Starshield link above about 160 km/h.

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4 minute read

• Military tech

Ukraine’s answer to Russia’s jet Shaheds: a jet drone named Bars, built to strike Russia and now turned around to hunt them

Zelenskyy says it has the best hit rate of any Ukrainian interceptor against the jet drones, about 30%, but the small jet engines it needs may be in short supply.

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5 minute read

• Military tech

Belgium’s 10 F-16s bring Ukraine’s promised fleet to about 100 jets. Fewer than 40 are flying, as Russia’s jet drones run them ragged

The rest arrive in batches through 2029, and every sortie against Russia's jet drones brings the jets already in Ukraine closer to long inspections abroad.

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5 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

Russia still parks its best bombers in the open. Ukraine has spent a year knocking out the air defenses that were supposed to protect them

The Russian air force parked six Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers out in the open at a base within reach of Ukraine's Neptune cruise missiles. Now at least four are wreckage.

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5 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

Russia is losing the Black Sea grain war it started. Its answer is to sink civilian ships off Romania and Bulgaria

The burning ships off Romania and Bulgaria are the latest round of a contest Ukraine opened this summer, when it began choking Russia’s own Black Sea exports

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5 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

Russia is back at Dobropillia a year after it failed there. Now it’s the southern jaw of a pincer on Donbas’s last big free cities

This time Russia brought another army, and Dobropillia’s defenders have until the leaves fall to stop it.

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4 minute read

• Latest news

Ukraine sent a spiked tank and a Bradley into Russian drone fire. The spikes held, and Ukraine’s own drones got them home

Armored vehicles aren't dead on arrival anymore on the drone-patrolled battlefield. Friendly drones can escort them to the fight.

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5 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps took the lessons of the failed 2023 counteroffensive into Operation Vivaldi. It fought small, and won.

Five months in, it has erased 18 months of Russian advances toward Sloviansk.

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5 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

“Supplying Crimea is turning into a nightmare”: Ukrainian drones hit Russian trucks 770 times in September, and winter will make it worse, analyst says

That's the most of any month this year, up from 630 in August, even though Russian supply trucks now travel in convoys with their own air defense.

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6 minute read

• Russo-Ukrainian war 2022-2026

Armored assaults aren’t dead. Robots got the credit, but it was Ukrainian infantry in armored trucks that reversed a year of Russian gains near Lyman

Robots cleared the mines and blew up the bunkers, but soldiers still had to ride in and hold the ground.

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5 minute read

• Military tech

Turkey’s Korkut guns now shoot down Russian drones over Ukraine. Almost half of the jet-powered Shaheds still get through

Russia launched about as many of the fast ones as slow ones in September, by one analyst's count, and its winter assault on the power grid is still ahead.