🛢️ Marines, Coast Guard Seize Tanker Olina in Caribbean

📬 In Today’s Defense Brief

🛢️ Marines, Coast Guard Seize Tanker Olina in Caribbean — Read More

🤖 Hanwha, HavocAI Partner on 200-Foot Autonomous Warship for US Military — Read More

☢️ New AI System Takes Aim at Nuclear Radiation Safety Gaps — Read More

🎯 Mach Industries Debuts ‘Dart’ to Fend Off High-Volume Group 1-3 Drone Attacks — Read More

🏗️ USAF Consolidates Some Acquisition Program Offices into Mission-Focused Groups — Read More

🎱 Plus 9 other news stories you may like

📰 Full Breakdown

🛢️ Marines, Coast Guard Seize Tanker Olina in Caribbean — Read More

• U.S. forces boarded and took control of the oil tanker Olina in the Caribbean as part of an interdiction tied to enforcement against sanctioned maritime activity linked to Venezuela, according to U.S. officials and public reporting. The operation involved a Coast Guard law-enforcement detachment supported by embarked Marines, and was framed as a homeland-security mission to disrupt illicit funding streams and restore maritime security.

• Reporting indicates the boarding was conducted pre-dawn with U.S. military support, including aviation and personnel inserting onto the vessel, and the U.S. military publicly described the action as support to DHS efforts in the Western Hemisphere. Coverage also notes Olina was characterized as part of a “ghost fleet”/sanctions-evasion pattern, with records tying the ship to prior sanctioned oil movements under earlier identities or flags.

• The seizure adds to a running series of interdictions described as part of a broader campaign to pressure Venezuela-linked oil logistics and deter sanctions-busting shipping behavior. Multiple outlets reported this was the fifth tanker intercepted/seized in the campaign, underscoring the administration’s willingness to use combined military and law-enforcement tools at sea—and raising questions about escalation dynamics and legal authorities in international waters.

🤖 Hanwha, HavocAI Partner on 200-Foot Autonomous Warship for US Military — Read More

• Hanwha Systems and Hanwha Defense USA teamed with HavocAI to develop a roughly 200-foot (70-meter) autonomous surface vessel aimed at U.S. military missions, positioning the effort as a blend of shipyard-scale production and an autonomy stack built for contested conditions. The concept is an uncrewed ship designed to operate without an onboard crew while supporting multiple mission types.

• The partners emphasize operations in GPS-denied environments, with HavocAI supplying autonomy software it says has already been delivered to DoD and tested under GPS-degraded conditions. The agreement also covers manufacturing prep, installation, and long-term technical support—signaling this is intended as more than a one-off demonstrator and is being structured for repeatable fielding and sustainment.

• Hanwha’s U.S. shipyard footprint is a centerpiece: the article notes Hanwha is the only shipbuilder with an active U.S. shipyard formally aligning with an autonomous-vessels developer, and cites Philly Shipyard as a leading production candidate. Framed against Pentagon calls for more hulls faster, the partnership pitches scaled output and lower costs as the pathway to expanding unmanned fleet capacity.

☢️ New AI System Takes Aim at Nuclear Radiation Safety Gaps — Read More

• Stony Brook University and Redshred are developing “RADIANT” (Radiation AI Decision and Information Assistant for Nuclear Tasks), an AI-enabled tool intended to provide real-time guidance in nuclear and radiological environments where decisions must be fast and error-tolerant. The system is described as combining AI with health physics to extract and interpret complex nuclear/health-physics data with “human-level context.”

• The write-up positions RADIANT as useful across tactical units, mission planners, and nuclear inspectors, with an emphasis on improving decision quality under exposure risk and compressing the time needed to turn technical readings into actionable steps. It also highlights compatibility with small/compact devices, suggesting field portability rather than a fixed-site-only safety analytics tool.

• Development is being advanced under a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which the article notes is Stony Brook’s first DTRA-backed project in more than a decade. The effort is framed as building on prior work supported by a U.S. Air Force grant for “AIRMATE,” implying continuity from earlier operational AI tooling into radiological safety use cases.

🎯 Mach Industries Debuts ‘Dart’ to Fend Off High-Volume Group 1-3 Drone Attacks — Read More

• Mach Industries introduced “Dart,” a counter-UAS system aimed at defeating Group 1–3 drones—from single threats to high-volume swarms—by pairing custom ground radars, integrated sensors, and low-cost interceptors. The concept centers on autonomous cueing to reduce human input and speed engagements, with the company pitching it as a scalable surface-to-air defense package.

• The system is described as deployable across launch stations, vehicles, and fixed installations, with an architecture intended to scale from a single unit to “hundreds” of nodes for swarm defense. Mach argues the key air-defense problem is economic—keeping intercept costs below the value of incoming drones—and says Dart is designed around that cost-exchange reality rather than exquisite interceptors.

• Mach ties Dart’s speed-to-field to its “Forge” ecosystem, bringing design and manufacturing under one roof to support rapid prototyping, quick iteration, and reduced reliance on fragile supply chains. The company says Dart was developed using simulations against known adversary assets, and it claims the modular design is meant to evolve with emerging threats and support production “at the scale of millions,” with operational duty expected later this year.

🏗️ USAF Consolidates Some Acquisition Program Offices into Mission-Focused Groups — Read More

• The Air Force is reorganizing parts of its acquisition enterprise by grouping program offices into mission-focused portfolios led by “Portfolio Acquisition Executives” (PAEs), aligning with (and in some cases predating) the Defense Secretary’s acquisition-reform guidance. Defense One reports the service publicly rolled out the first set of these new groups and named the PAEs who will run them.

• Air & Space Forces reports that the Department of the Air Force announced seven mission-area PAEs spanning Air Force and Space Force, positioning the move as an early, concrete step toward shifting away from stove-piped program structures toward integrated mission outcomes. The stated logic is faster decision-making, tighter accountability, and more agile movement of resources across related capabilities, rather than treating each program as a standalone bureaucracy.

• The department’s own public-affairs release frames this as putting acquisition on a more “wartime footing” by implementing a new “Warfighting Acquisition System” approach. The theme is speed: empowering leaders to move faster, streamline oversight, and deliver capability at operational tempo—while still operating within the constraints of formal acquisition rules that have historically slowed fielding and iteration.

🌏 Other Important News

✈️ Air

• Northrop Grumman ICBM target vehicle program advances to support missile-defense testing — Read More

• Lockheed Martin F-35 delivery update highlights production and delivery headwinds — Read More

• India’s new MAPSS drone aims for 24+ hour solar-electric battlefield overwatch — Read More

• Lockheed showcases next-gen mission autonomy with multi-vehicle control in UK trials — Read More

• US Marine Corps moves toward a loyal wingman drone built on the XQ-58 Valkyrie — Read More

🛡️ Land

• Army advances Bell, M1, Lockheed to second phase of Flight School Next competition — Read More

🌊 Sea

• The Digital Defense Depot: moving IP from digital to physical — Read More

🏭 Industry

• Reed: Congress would have to codify Trump’s defense-industry stock-buyback mandates — Read More

• European analysts: US unlikely to launch a military takeover of Greenland — Read More

Thanks for reading today’s Defense Brief. If you found it useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague who'd appreciate staying sharp on defense tech and military news.