Your read-in for military tech, trends, and happenings. themerge.co

First A-10 combat use of MALD and SDB?

The U.S. military confirmed that a Saronic Corsair was used in the first-of-its-kind rescue operation following the downing of a U.S. Army helicopter. At Saronic, we build autonomous vessels to extend capability into the most demanding and dangerous environments. Knowing Corsair could play a role in helping bring our service members home safely is exactly why we build. Proud to support the men and women of the U.S. armed forces — and grateful to the team that made it possible. 🇺🇸

When the President of France visited the United States in April 1960, he asked the FBI to help him find a man. The man he was looking for was an American citizen. He was sixty-four years old. He had been awarded fifteen French military decorations and — six months earlier, in a ceremony in Paris — had been made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian honor France can give. The medal had been pinned to his chest by the President himself, who had publicly called him un véritable héros français. A true French hero. The FBI located the man within a few days. He was operating an elevator at Rockefeller Center in New York City. The elevator operator's name was Eugene Bullard. He had been born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895, the son of a man whose own father had been a slave. He had run away from Columbus at the age of eleven, after watching a white mob nearly lynch his father. He spent the next several years drifting through the American South. At sixteen, he stowed away on a German freighter at Norfolk, Virginia. He landed in Aberdeen, Scotland. From there he made his way to London, where he learned to box. By 1913, at eighteen, he was prizefighting in Paris. When Germany invaded France in August 1914, Bullard was nineteen years old. He had no legal obligation to fight. He had no French citizenship. He went to the recruiting office on October 19, 1914, and signed up for the French Foreign Legion. He spent the next eighteen months as an infantryman in some of the worst fighting of the war — at the Somme, at Champagne, at Verdun. He was wounded three times. The third wound, on March 5, 1916, tore open his thigh and left him with permanent damage to his leg. He was twenty years old. The doctors told him he would not return to the infantry. He decided he wanted to fly. In a Paris café in the spring of 1916, while he was recovering, Bullard mentioned to three white American friends that he was thinking of joining the French air service. A Mississippian named Jeff Dickson laughed. Gene, Dickson said, you know damn well there aren't any Negroes in aviation. Bullard answered: Sure do. That's why I want to get into it. There has to be a first to everything, and I'm going to be the first. Dickson bet him two thousand dollars he would not make it. Bullard took the bet. He earned his pilot's license on May 5, 1917. He won the bet. He reported to the front in August 1917 and flew approximately twenty combat missions over the next three months in a SPAD VII. The fuselage was painted with a bleeding heart pierced by a knife and the French phrase Tout le Sang qui Coule est Rouge — All Blood that Flows is Red. He carried, on every combat flight, a small capuchin monkey named Jimmy in the front of his flight jacket. The French press began calling him L'Hirondelle Noire — the Black Swallow. When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bullard immediately applied to transfer to the U.S. Army Air Service. His application was rejected. The U.S. Army Air Service had a policy, in 1917, of not accepting Black pilots. The other American pilots flying for France in his unit, all of them white, were transferred to the U.S. Air Service. He was the only one who was not. For the next twenty years, he was one of the most familiar faces in the Montmartre nightlife of Paris between the wars. He owned a nightclub called L'Escadrille. He spoke fluent French, English, and German. Hemingway drank there. Fitzgerald drank there. Langston Hughes drank there. Josephine Baker performed there. Louis Armstrong was a personal friend. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bullard was forty-four. His fluent German and his ownership of a nightclub frequented by German officers made him useful to the French Resistance. He became an intelligence agent — eavesdropping in his own bar on conversations between German officers who did not know he understood every word. When France fell in June 1940, friends in the Resistance smuggled him across the Spanish border before the Gestapo could arrest him. He came back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years. He arrived in New York with thirty dollars in his pocket and a permanent limp. He did not return to a hero's welcome. He returned to a country that had no idea who he was. He worked at a perfume counter. He worked as a security guard. He worked at the Staten Island shipyards. By the late 1940s, he had taken the job that he would hold for most of the rest of his life. He operated the elevator at Rockefeller Center. He was wearing the elevator uniform on the day a producer from NBC came down from the studios upstairs to ask if he was the man Charles de Gaulle had been looking for. A few weeks later, NBC sent a film crew to interview him in the lobby. The studios where NBC produced The Today Show were on the floors above. He had operated the elevator that took the network executives up to those studios every morning for nearly ten years. He had not been recognized as he did it. He went back to operating the elevator the following Monday. He died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961, three days after his sixty-sixth birthday. He was buried in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. The casket was draped with the French flag. In 1994 — thirty-three years after his death — the United States Air Force formally commissioned Eugene Jacques Bullard as a Second Lieutenant, posthumously. It was the first commission the U.S. military had ever offered him. He had been the first Black combat pilot in American history. The French had been calling him a hero since 1917. The Americans got around to it in 1994.

𝗗𝗶𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄? The P-51 Mustang's distinctive look was shaped by math. It's called conical lofting, and here's how it worked 👇 themerge.co/p/mustang-math

On this day in 1944, 150,000 Allied soldiers are being loaded onto ships all across southern England. Tomorrow, they'll take part in history's greatest invasion. “At that time, we didn't know it was D-Day," one veteran would later recall. "We just knew we had a job to do.”

NEW! Our new Thursday newsletter will analyze a defense business, and there is no better company to kick things off than @anduriltech! themerge.co/p/anduril 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁! To do it right, we also devoted an entire episode to discussing Anduril. youtube.com/watch?v=eC-Hl7FH…

Raytheon has developed the Coyote Block 3 Non-Kinetic system to protect military forces from drone threats. During a recent U.S. Army test, it successfully defeated multiple drone swarms without using explosives, reducing the risk of damage to nearby areas. The reusable Coyote drone can stay airborne, intercept incoming drones, and return after completing its mission, making it a cost-effective counter-drone solution.

Here's our video of the explosion at Launch Complex 36. It happened about 9 pm ET (0100 UTC) as Blue Origin was beginning a static fire test of its New Glenn rocket. Watch live views: youtube.com/watch?v=thfYPsRq…

We’re the fastest ever to go supersonic (Mach 1.21) from founding to flight. Most companies take decades to go supersonic. We got there less than a year after our first ever flight. Show me your supersonic plane and I’ll show you mine.

An unreasonably long wait, but we are fixing this.

UH-60M Blackhawks from Indiana's 38th Combat Aviation Brigade fly low over Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the pace lap of the 2026 Indy 500.

In 2021 a squadron won the Army's top aviation award for work on a program its own leaders knew was failing. That is what misaligned incentives look like. warontherocks.com/2026/05/ar…

Footage of the mid air collision between a pair of Navy Super Hornets/Growlers during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show at Mountain Home Air Force Base moments ago.

NIXON: Bob, they’re telling me we need the E-7 Wedgetail. Big airplane. Radar on top. Looks like a 737 with a canoe strapped to it. HALDEMAN: That’s the general configuration, Mr. President. NIXON: Don’t get technical with me. HALDEMAN: I’ll try not to, sir. NIXON: And then the eggheads from Chantilly come in. Charts, folders, little arrows going around the planet. Space-based AMTI, they say. Persistent tracking, they say. Global coverage. Bob, any time a man says “global coverage,” he’s either selling you satellites or shaving cream. HALDEMAN: Which eggheads from Chantilly, sir? NIXON: What do you mean, which eggheads? HALDEMAN: NRO or SDA? NIXON: That’s exactly what I mean. Too many outfits. Too many letters. We used to have departments. Now we have alphabet soup with clearances. HALDEMAN: The NRO people would be the quiet ones. The SDA types would be the ones saying “proliferated architecture.” NIXON: Proliferated architecture. Sounds like a disease you get from a federal building. HALDEMAN: It’s contagious in budget hearings. NIXON: I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it. First they put cameras in space. Then radars. Then they tell me the airplane is obsolete. Then some damned Colonel with a slide rule says we need a Space Force. HALDEMAN: That term may test poorly. NIXON: Test poorly? Bob, it sounds like a toy line. Space Force. They could make a television show to sell the toys; the boys at Mattel would make an absolute killing. HALDEMAN: The Air Force would object to that characterization. NIXON: The Air Force would object to breathing if the Navy got appropriations for lungs. HALDEMAN: That’s probably true. NIXON: They’re out to get me, Bob. HALDEMAN: The Air Force? NIXON: The whole blue-suiter crowd. The bomber crowd, the missile crowd, the fellows who sit around drawing arrows over Poland. They want a new branch, new uniforms, new generals. And once they get space, they’ll look down at the White House and say, “There he is.” HALDEMAN: From Earth orbit, sir, the White House is a fairly small target. NIXON: Don’t reassure me with geometry.

Rivers, unforgiving terrain, and anti-tank obstacles are all part of land warfare Enter: the assault bridge! it's Here's what they are, and why its a big problem in the U.S. Marine Corps right now. 👇 themerge.co/p/assault-bridge

‼️⚡️OMG, this is next-level trolling! 😅 Zelenskyy released an official presidential decree allowing Russia to hold its parade in Moscow, specifically stating that Ukraine would exclude Red Square from its strikes for the duration of the parade—while also including the exact military coordinates of Red Square in the decree. DECREE OF THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE No. 374/2026 On Holding a Parade in Moscow. Taking into account numerous requests, and for humanitarian purposes outlined during negotiations with the American side on May 8, 2026, I hereby decree: To permit the holding of a parade in the city of Moscow (Russian Federation) on May 9, 2026. For the duration of the parade (starting at 10:00 a.m. Kyiv time on May 9, 2026), the territorial sector of Red Square shall be excluded from the operational use plan of Ukrainian weaponry. Red Square sector coordinates: 55.754413 37.617733 55.755205 37.619181 55.753351 37.622854 55.752504 37.621538This Decree shall enter into force on the day of its signing. President of Ukraine V. ZELENSKYYMay 8, 2026

This post could have been from 2016. IYKYK

As we wrote last month, Congress is step 1 in the journey. Also, the biggest step.