Verified military news tracked by GlobalMilitary.net: aircraft losses and deliveries, warship commissionings, procurement decisions, program milestones and data analysis drawn from our inventory database. Also available as an RSS feed.
The Convair XB-36 made its first flight at Fort Worth on August 8, 1946. Eight decades on, the ten-engined Peacemaker still holds the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built: 70 meters, 14 more than the B-52 that replaced it and 30 more than the incoming B-21 Raider.
The US Air Force awarded Boeing a $75 million contract on August 5, 2026 on behalf of the Navy, clearing the jet-powered JDAM for production. The GBU-75 pairs a turbojet and pop-out wings with a standard 500-pound bomb to reach targets 300 nautical miles away.
The Defence Minister announced the purchase at Exercise Pitch Black in Darwin on August 6, 2026. Australia will be the first country outside the United States to field the AIM-260 JATM, the classified long-range air-to-air missile built to succeed the AMRAAM.
The Congressional Budget Office costed the U.S. Navy's proposed Trump-class battleship at roughly 35,000 tons. GlobalMilitary.net inventory data shows the largest cruiser or destroyer in service anywhere displaces 15,907 tons, and only 14 hulls worldwide exceed 11,000.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated on August 5, 2026 that the U.S. Navy's 15-ship Trump-class battleship program would cost $275 billion through 2056, with a lead ship at $23.4 billion and a design larger than any surface combatant built since 1945.
Yuma Proving Ground has fired a full-scale hypersonic warhead from a cannon derived from the canceled Strategic Long Range Cannon, giving the Army a cheaper way to measure what a Mach 5 impact actually does to a target.
The German group revealed a 140-metre guided-missile frigate on August 3, 2026, built around the Aegis combat system and 64 strike-length launch cells. It is Rheinmetall's first attempt to act as prime contractor for a major surface combatant.
Across 81 armies tracked by GlobalMilitary.net, China fields 4,770 main battle tanks, more than any other country. Greece, in fifteenth place, holds more than Germany, the United Kingdom and France combined.
Two separate reports published on August 4, 2026 say five months of war with Iran have consumed virtually all of the US Army's long-range precision missiles and between 38 and 80 percent of its THAAD interceptors. The Pentagon disputes the figures.
Forty-seven years after entering service, the F-16 remains the most numerous combat aircraft in the world outside China and Russia, with 2,621 airframes active across 27 air forces in GlobalMilitary.net's 2026 inventory data.
The Department of War awarded Northrop Grumman a $3 billion framework agreement on 3 August 2026 to build solid rocket motors for PAC-3 MSE and THAAD, breaking a single-source bottleneck in the drive toward nearly 14,000 interceptors.
The Department of the Navy announced on 3 August 2026 that the 19 Virginia-class submarines fitted with the Virginia Payload Module will be redesignated from attack submarines to guided-missile submarines, each carrying 40 Tomahawks instead of 12.
The United States and Russia hold 27 of the world's 45 operational ballistic missile submarines. Five other navies field the remaining 18, and every established fleet is being replaced at the same time.
DAPA and Hanwha Ocean signed on 31 July for the detailed design and construction of the KDDX lead ship, unlocking a 7.8-trillion-won programme for six destroyers built around an entirely Korean combat system.
The government approved Delivery Phase 4 of the Dreadnought programme on 30 July, awarding BAE Systems £5.9 billion to build, integrate and test the four submarines that will carry Britain's nuclear deterrent from the early 2030s.
GlobalMilitary.net's conflict tracker has logged 129 aircraft destroyed since the war began on February 28, 2026. Uncrewed aircraft account for 60 of them, and a single type, the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, for 36.
A US Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II crashed and burned near the runway at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego on July 31, 2026. The pilot ejected and survived, and the Marines classified the accident as a Class A mishap.
GlobalMilitary.net inventory data weighted by fleet size puts the average North Korean combat aircraft design at 65 years old, against 33 for the United States and 20 for the United Kingdom.
Turkish Aerospace released footage on July 31 of the second airworthy KAAN prototype taxiing under its own power at Ankara, with the company's president saying the aircraft could fly within a couple of months.
Gen. Dale White told an industry conference in Dayton on July 30 that the sixth-generation fighter has entered engineering and manufacturing development and that Boeing is building test aircraft, with first flight held to 2028.
Footage released on July 29, 2026 shows the YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship missile launching from a Type 052D destroyer, spreading the weapon from China's ten largest warships to a class of 35 hulls still in production.