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Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov held a high-level meeting with senior executives from U.S. defense contractor Raytheon on May 19, focusing on expanding collaboration in air and missile defense systems, particularly the Patriot platform. In a statement released after the talks, Umerov said he had a “productive meeting” with Joseph DeAntona, Raytheon’s Vice President for Land and Air Defense Systems. The conversation, he noted, centered on Ukraine’s urgent need for additional missile systems and interceptors to strengthen the country’s defenses against continued Russian air attacks. “The main topic was strengthening the protection of Ukraine’s skies,” Umerov said. “We discussed the...

VIENTIANE, Laos — Women and racial diversity are vital to the strength of U.S. armed forces, outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in an exclusive interview with NBC News as he prepares to shortly exit the top military post after four years. “I have spent 41 years in uniform, three long tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and everywhere I went on a battlefield, there were women in our formation,” Austin said. “I would tell you that, you know, our women are the finest troops in the world. Quite frankly, some of the finest in the world.” President-elect Donald Trump’s...

Hegseth, a staunch opponent of DEI initiatives and former guard at Guantanamo Bay, has less leadership experience than current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and critics have called him “unqualified.” America’s next secretary of defense could be starkly different from what the country has ever seen before. On Tuesday, just a day after Veterans Day, President-elect Donald Trump selected Pete Hegseth, 44, a former FOX News commentator and former Army National guardsman, to lead one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Hegseth will succeed Secretary-General Lloyd Austin III, the nation’s first Black Secretary of Defense, a historic choice made by...

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Kyiv early Monday morning, as the future of US aid to Ukraine hangs in the balance of the imminent US presidential election and as Russia continues to make small but steady gains on the battlefield. Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov while in Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s weapons needs and how the US can continue to support the country’s military over the next year, the secretary told a small group of reporters traveling with him to Kyiv on Sunday night. The secretary’s visit will also serve as...

RTX Corp., the defense contractor formerly known as Raytheon, agreed Wednesday to pay more than $950 million to resolve allegations that it defrauded the government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar. The company entered into deferred prosecution agreements in separate cases in federal court in Brooklyn and Massachusetts, agreed to hire independent monitors to oversee compliance with anti-corruption and anti-fraud laws and must show good conduct for three years.... The biggest chunk is a $428-million civil settlement for allegedly lying to the government about its labor and material costs to justify costlier no-bid contracts and drive the company's...

Ukraine has doubled down on demands for U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, pressing for vital, sophisticated assets to shield its cities at a moment of deepening concern over the future of military aid destined for Ukraine. "Give us the damn Patriots," Kyiv's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told Politico in an interview published on Monday. Ukraine is thought to have a handful of Patriot batteries, considered the gold-standard of air defenses. The exact number and locations are not known, but Ukraine is believed to have batteries stationed around major cities, like Kyiv, as well as close to the front lines. According...

The Chinese Communist Party has aggressively built up its military, expanding its arsenal of both conventional and nuclear capabilities. The growth was largely funded by its rival, the United States.That is one of the arguments made by James Fanell, a retired U.S. Navy captain, and Bradley Thayer, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based think tank, during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Though Leaders“ program.“The Chinese Navy now is over 150 naval combatants greater than the U.S. Navy. They are now the largest navy in terms of numbers of hulls and tonnage,” said Mr. Fanell,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced Tuesday. It's the Pentagon's first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn't until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren't just out of replenishment funds, but $10 billion overdrawn....

WALTHAM, MA — A somber mood fell over one of the nation's foremost defense contractors this morning, as Raytheon lowered its flags to half-staff after Nikki Haley announced she was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The aerospace technology corporation, which had been holding out hope that the world would enter a new era of highly profitable war, destruction, and death with the onset of World War III, was devastated by this morning's news that Haley had suspended her campaign. "This is a major blow," said a Raytheon spokesperson. "We are deeply saddened by the news of Nikki Haley...

We're PRETTY sure RFK Jr. didn't mean to give the Biden administration up since it sounds like he is trying to defend Biden and give him the benefit of the doubt even though he has been denied Secret Service protection. By the Biden administration. So maybe he did mean to? After all, it does sound like he is calling out the shadow president ... From the rest of his post: I suspect that the White House decision to deny me Secret Service protection — and many other more important decisions — are being made, not by the President himself, but...

@RepMattGaetz @SenMullin is trying to encourage Republicans to sign a DISCHARGE PETITION with Democrats to force the Senate’s “Ukraine First” bill forward! He didn’t have the guts to vote for it in the Senate but wants the House to pass it. I will stand with @SpeakerJohnson to STOP this terrible unpaid-for $95 billion aid bill.

Defense contractor Raytheon has been tasked with designing, building, and testing a pair of directed energy weapons for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force. Unlike cutting-edge laser systems that use the power of light to down airborne threats, the new weapons will use ultra-powerful microwave emitters to fry the electronics of attacking drones, missiles, and other electronically guided ordinance. According to RTX Corporation, which owns Raytheon, the two prototypes are expected to be delivered in 2024 and 2026, respectively. DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS INCREASINGLY VALUABLE IN ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE Traditional munitions like bullets use kinetic force to damage or destroy attacking...

(Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) "The Russians tried repeatedly to settle...major thing they wanted was for us to keep NATO out of Ukraine. The Big Military Contractors want to add new countries to NATO...Why? Because that country has to conform its military purchases... Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed get a trapped market... We committed 113 billion dollars...we then committed another 24 billion since then... Biden's asking for another 60 billion. But the big, big expenses are going to come after the war when we have to rebuild.... Mitch McConnell was asked "Can we really afford to spend 113...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Congress on Tuesday during a private briefing that if they do not pass more aid to Ukraine, it would “very likely” lead to U.S. troops fighting a war in Europe.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calmed growing concerns throughout the nation's capital this week by explaining the United States can easily afford to pay for two separate foreign wars because of the 20% "Friends & Family" discount she receives from Raytheon. "I've got you covered!" Yellen said with a smile after multiple U.S. officials expressed doubt the country could stay afloat financially while simultaneously funding wars in Israel and Ukraine. "With the killer discount I get from Raytheon, we'll be bombing people into oblivion on two continents, all without breaking the bank!" Yellen then produced her limited...

An open letter signed by “46 foreign policy experts” calling for more arms shipments to Ukraine published in POLITICO failed to mention ties of nearly half of the signatories to the defence industry, allegedly glossing over conflicts of interest, the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft claimed.

Raytheon has called in retired engineers to teach its employees how to build the Stinger missiles heavily used by Ukraine’s military—using blueprints drawn up during the Carter administration. It’s the latest example of a private company working to ramp up production of a now-in-demand weapon that the Pentagon hasn’t purchased in decades. “Stinger's been out of production for 20 years, and all of a sudden in the first 48 hours [of the war], it's the star of the show and everybody wants more,” Wes Kremer, the president of RTX’s Raytheon division, said during an interview last week at the Paris...

Ukraine's air force has appeared to confirm that a U.S-made Patriot missile system was behind the downing of five Russian aircraft in one day in May 2023. A video posted on Monday shows "kill" markings on the side of a Patriot air defense system that indicate it claimed three helicopters and two jets on May 13. If accurate, this would be a record for a Patriot system in a single day.

It turns out we are so wedded to the Chinese, that our own defense sector, while they may be able to “de-risk” – the “it” word of the moment – absolutely find it well-nigh impossible to “de-couple,” in the Gwyneth Paltrow sense.So we are being told as of yesterday. It figures – the Raytheon CEO with the word would be in Paris not Poughkeepsie – but he felt duty bound to disabuse us of those quaint notions we had about bringing American interests, especially security-wise, home.Handsomely, he left the door open for other defense contractors to walk through who agree...

Although Raytheon is producing 400 Javelins per month with Lockheed Martin as a manufacturing partner, he said, the ongoing fighting in Ukraine has burned through existing weapons stocks.“The problem is we have consumed so much supply in the first ten months of the war,” he said. “We’ve essentially used up 13 years’ worth of Stinger production and five years’ worth of Javelin production.”