Free Republic

A surge in missile and rocket production tied to rising global conflicts is transforming smaller U.S. manufacturing hubs into critical parts of the American defense supply chain, as weapons makers race to expand capacity and hire thousands of workers, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Defense contractors including Lockheed Martin (LMT), L3Harris (LHX) and RTX (RTX) have significantly expanded operations in Camden, Arkansas, following increased Pentagon demand for missile systems, rocket launchers and artillery ammunition after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The investment wave has fueled rapid hiring and factory expansion across the region. Aerospace and defense employment in...

In the continuing study of how effective handguns are when used as a defense against bears, I posted two articles on Ammoland showing the distribution of the number of cases vs the number of shots fired. The first article was for the statistics for all cases, which included brown bears, black bears and polar bears. The second article separated out the statistics for brown bears. Unsurprisingly, ursus arctos (brown bears, grizzly bears and Kodiak bears) showed more shots being fired per case than black bears and polar bears. This article shows the statistics for black bears and polar bears. There...

The Tennessee Legislature has sent Gov. Bill Lee a narrow but important reform to the state’s deadly-force law, and the fight over SB1847/HB1802 shows how much can change between a bill’s introduction and the final version that reaches a governor’s desk.The Tennessee Legislature passed SB1847 on April 23, the last day of the legislative session. SB1847 includes the legal justification to use deadly force to protect property under certain limited circumstances. In this correspondent’s reading of the law, the legal ability to use deadly force under the bill is not very wide or broad. In the previous law, residents could...

“Golden Dome” could cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion over 20 years, according to a government report issued on Tuesday. ...Even if the system is built, the report concluded, an adversary like Russia or China that has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons could overwhelm it and some missiles would hit their targets. The budget office report found that the “space-based interceptors” the president envisions — satellites armed with missiles orbiting the planet — would consume about 60 percent of the cost.

Sources: books, articles, papers, interviews, FOIA requests In the ongoing study of how effective handguns are when used as a defense against bears, this correspondent posted an article on AmmoLand showing the distribution of the number of shots fired vs the number of cases. The most common case was one shot fired, with the least common cases having the most shots fired. On examining the data, there is a significant difference noted among bear species.In cases involving brown bears, grizzly bears, Kodiak bears, (ursus arctos) more shots are fired per case.There are 109 total handgun-only cases involving Ursus arctos, of...

ARLINGTON— The Navy took a major step forward in delivering game-changing hypersonic strike power to carrier pilots when it awarded California startup Castelion a contract nearing $105 million to fully integrate the Blackbeard hypersonic weapon onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The deal puts U.S. forces on a fast track to field its first operational air-launched hypersonic strike weapon from carrier decks by 2027. Unlike land-based ballistic missiles, Blackbeard is made for Navy aircraft carriers and can be launched from an F/A-18 fighter jet operating hundreds of miles from shore, giving the U.S. enhanced capabilities to strike an adversary’s missile batteries...

Wyoming lawmakers introduced a bill this year that would have given real protection to people dragged through the criminal justice system after using lawful self-defense. House Bill 14, titled Protecting self-defense-reimbursement and amendments, would have required counties to reimburse defendants who were found not guilty, had charges dismissed, or were otherwise released from prosecution because they reasonably used defensive force under Wyoming law.But the bill did not make it out of the House. HB0014 failed introduction on February 10, 2026, by a 29-32-1 vote.HB0014 was aimed at one of the most abusive realities of modern self-defense law: even when a...

Tyler Robinson was back in court today where his defense team argued that they needed an additional six months just to read and view all of the evidence against their client which prosecutors have turned over to them.Prosecutor Ryan McBride laid out a massive "mountain of proof" against the suspected assassin, arguing that a six-month delay requested by the defense is unnecessary because the state’s evidence already far exceeds the legal bar for trial...[Defense attorney Richard] Novak characterized the state's production as "gigantic and voluminous," telling the court that his lawyers haven't finished reading the thousands of pages of discovery...

RIGA, Latvia — Sindija Brakovska is 18 years old and dreams of becoming a hairstylist or a dance teacher. She studies at the Riga Technical School of Tourism and Creative Industry, a vocational school centered on hospitality, tourism and fashion. “I love girly stuff,” the tall Latvian tells me. On this March morning, roughly two dozen girls between 16 and 18 are sitting in the classroom with Brakovska. Some of the girls look shy. Others sprawl with the studied boredom of teenagers everywhere. Top: A soldier walks in a classroom with students on both sides Bottom left: Close up a...

The Trump Administration has been clear that its national defense strategy is to defend the homeland and deter China. To achieve these goals, the new funding made available in the FY 2027 defense budget should be focused on expanding capacity across the services—especially in sea power and airpower with large procurement orders for existing programs and investments in next-generation capabilities like the B-21 and F-47. America’s long-neglected strategic deterrent needs funding to defend the homeland, to include necessary support for programs like the Sentinel missile and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. New spending needs to prioritize the Indo-Pacific and the Western...

OH CANADA: Canada just met its NATO 2% defense obligation for the first time since the 1980s. Carney celebrated. He did not mention that Canada's GDP shrank in Q4 2025 and that is the only reason they hit the target. Canada did not build up its military. It contracted its economy.

@Acyn Boebert: I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado who can't afford to live. We need America first policies right now.

The IDF sources noted that tackling Iran's ballistic missile threat was among the military's primary goals in the war.

Israel is preparing to share its most treasured military secrets with India as part of a deepened strategic alliance, it has been reported. According to media reports, Israel might agree to share key technological components of Iron Dome (and related systems like Iron Beam) under a "Make in India" style arrangement to integrate them into India's planned multi-layer air defence network, including Mission Sudarshan Chakra. However, nothing is officially signed yet the deal is still speculative and in the negotiation phase, with technology transfer expected to be the focus rather than an off-the-shelf system delivery. If finalised, this could significantly...

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In 911 recordings, the two men involved in a road rage incident give chilling details of what happened to them on Interstate 587 Monday morning. The Wilson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident that left one driver, Isaiah Quawi Farden, 20, of Greenville, crashed and the other, Anthony Alan Cape, 39, of Goldsboro, shot and in critical condition. The first call lasts just over four minutes and is from Cape at 7:15 a.m. Yelling, Cape can be heard using multiple expletives and a racial slur, saying he had just been shot by a man with an “AR.” During the...

Well, that escalated quickly...As Ben Smith reported earlier on Friday, the Pentagon and AI giant Anthropic were in the midst of a showdown regarding the deployment terms of its Claude AI model in defense systems. The Pentagon wanted to authorize "all lawful use," but Anthropic had other ideas.Anthropic has drawn its line at two points: no domestic mass surveillance and no fully autonomous weapons operating without meaningful human oversight. Those limits are already written into its defense agreements. The Pentagon wants broader language that covers “all lawful use” once Claude is embedded.READ MORE: AI Is Already Embedded in Military Systems...

The left is engaged in an all-out attack on the policies of the Trump presidency. However, most of those attacks are not aimed at policies, per se; they are aimed at specific people and agencies. For instance, the nation remains in favor of getting rid of illegals, but, thanks to lies perpetrated by the left and their stenographers in the media, they are becoming dissatisfied with how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are operating. Krisit Noem and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are the targets of personal attacks. JD Vance has had his faith, his wife, and his marriage attacked. In...

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - A pair of shootings downtown Sunday were not connected, as police originally believed, authorities said Monday. Police responded at 11:09 p.m. to a shooting near the intersection of Dauphin and South Joachim streets. Mobile Police Chief William Jackson said at a news conference that five men and two women, ranging in age from 24 to 30, suffered gunshot wounds. One of the victims remains in critical condition, according to the chief. Jackson said the second shooting took place minutes later, about a block away, in the parking lot at Joachim and Conti streets, across from the...

An analysis released by Google this month showed that the U.S. defense industrial base—a network of public and private entities used to develop or maintain military weapons systems—has sustained cyberattacks from groups and criminal organizations from China, Russia, and North Korea in recent months.The report, released on Feb. 10 by Google Threat Intelligence, found that the Chinese regime and associated groups continue “to represent by volume the most active threat to entities in the defense industrial base,” which it said can pose “significant risk to the defense and aerospace sector.”Google’s report added that it “has observed more China-nexus cyber espionage...