In Today’s Briefing:

🔥 No Deal: Epic Fury Runs Into Week Three With Thousands of Targets Left

🚀 Eight Months, Supersonic: AFRL's Liquid Rocket Engine Bet Pays Off

🤖 GA-ASI's MQ-20 Just Flew a Full ISR Mission Without a Human

🌐 Trump Threatens NATO Over Hormuz. Allies Said No.

🛡️ Lockheed Delivers Japan's Second SPY-7 Radar Shipset on Time

📌 Plus 9 more stories across Air, Land, Sea & Industry

🔥 No Deal: Epic Fury Runs Into Week Three With Thousands of Targets Left — Read More

  • Trump told NBC he won't stop until Iran offers terms that are "very solid," including full nuclear abandonment, while the IDF says it has "thousands of targets ahead" and is war-planning through Passover and beyond.

  • The week's biggest kinetic development: U.S. forces struck more than 90 military targets on Kharg Island, Iran's primary oil export hub, while preserving oil infrastructure; separately, Iranian missiles hit Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, damaging up to five KC-135 tankers, and a drone destroyed a Giraffe radar protecting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

  • Israel has told Washington it is critically low on ballistic missile interceptors, putting more pressure on THAAD and SM-3 stocks; Israeli security officials are also reassessing war objectives after the Iranian public has not risen against the regime, and Goldman Sachs warned a continued Hormuz closure through April could shrink Gulf GDP by 14%.

🚀 Eight Months, Supersonic: AFRL's Liquid Rocket Engine Bet Pays Off — Read More

  • The Air Force Research Laboratory and Ursa Major flew the Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator to supersonic speeds using Ursa Major's Draper liquid rocket engine, which went from concept to flight-ready in just eight months.

  • Unlike solid motors, the Draper engine can throttle and restart mid-flight, offering greater mission flexibility, and it builds on Ursa Major's existing Hadley architecture to keep costs down.

  • Ursa Major is contracted for additional flights and data collection, with AFRL framing the program as a model for compressing government-industry development timelines on affordable, mass-producible missile propulsion.

🤖 GA-ASI's MQ-20 Just Flew a Full ISR Mission Without a Human — Read More

  • In a cross-country demonstration, an MQ-20 Avenger autonomously executed an ISR patrol, identified a beyond-line-of-sight target, and rerouted around a pop-up threat, all with operators in Virginia managing a drone flying in California through GA-ASI's cloud-based Optix.C2 system.

  • The autonomy was handled by GA-ASI's TacACE software, which fused onboard and offboard sensor data to generate and revise flight plans in real time with no operator input at each decision point.

  • The demonstration reflects where the CCA program is heading: agentic AI that can operate across distributed sensor networks and make chained autonomous decisions, with a human approving the mission rather than flying it.

🌐 Trump Threatens NATO Over Hormuz. Allies Said No. — Read More

  • With oil at nearly $105 a barrel and the Strait still closed, Trump told the Financial Times that allies failing to send warships to help reopen Hormuz would face consequences that would be "very bad for the future of NATO."

  • The response was near-universal hesitation: the UK stopped short of a commitment, Japan cited legal constraints, Australia said it wasn't asked, and France, already burning through MICA missiles intercepting Iranian drones over the UAE, reportedly declined and is convening a crisis meeting over its own missile stockpile.

  • The IEA has activated emergency stock releases for Asia, central banks are rethinking rate cut timelines, and the IDF simultaneously opened a new front against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, widening the conflict's footprint.

🛡️ Lockheed Delivers Japan's Second SPY-7 Radar Shipset on Time — Read More

  • Lockheed Martin delivered the second AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar shipset to Japan's Ministry of Defense via Mitsubishi Corporation, on schedule and following the first delivery in June 2025, with both Aegis-equipped vessels still on track for commissioning in JFY 2027 and 2028.

  • The SPY-7 is a long-range discrimination radar built to counter advanced ballistic missiles and engage multiple targets simultaneously; the same architecture underpins Guam's TPY-6, the U.S. Long Range Discrimination Radar, Spain's F-110 frigate, and Canada's River-class destroyer.

  • The delivery is well-timed: with THAAD and SM-3 interceptor stocks under pressure from the Iran campaign, Japan's two incoming SPY-7-equipped warships represent a meaningful addition to Indo-Pacific ballistic missile defense depth.

📌 Other Important News

✈️ Air

  • The MQ-9 Won't Die: How the Military Keeps Finding New Uses for the Reaper — Read More

  • The F/A-18 That Got America's First Air Kill in 18 Years Is Now Over Iran — Read More

  • Thales's SkyDefender Dome Layers Space Satellites With Ground Radar for Missile Defense — Read More

🛡️ Land

  • France's ITAR-Free Containerized Rocket Launcher Hits Targets 150km Away — Read More

  • New Ohio Simulation Center Can Train 300 Military Medical Teams at Once — Read More

🌊 Sea

  • Navy's Only Mine-Clearing Ships in the Middle East Quietly Disappeared to Malaysia — Read More

  • Fincantieri Wants Back In: Pitching Corvettes and Unmanned Vessels for the Golden Fleet — Read More

  • USS Nimitz Gets a Lifeline, Won't Be Decommissioned Until 2027 — Read More

🏭 Industry & Policy

  • The Pentagon Is 95% Dependent on China for Rare Earths. Here's Its Plan to Change That. — Read More

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