Author: FlyMarshall Newsroom

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is casting new doubt on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s relevance to the United States after key allies recoiled from backing Washington’s “Operation Epic Fury.” Rubio, speaking to reporters following a meeting with NATO foreign ministers in Sweden on Friday, contended that the raison d’etre of NATO was undermined when allies refused to allow the U.S. to use installations on their soil during a war.“One of the arguments I always made was that these bases in the region provided us logistical options that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” Rubio said. “And when some of those bases…

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The U.S. Marine Corps is testing new ways to combine low-cost drones with traditional aircraft, having recently paired a UH-1Y Venom helicopter with an attack drone in a recent Southern California exercise. During the test, Marines launched a Neros Archer first-person-view, or FPV, drone from the ground before transferring control to operators aboard a helicopter orbiting miles away, the Corps announced in a statement last week, saying that the move was a step towards integrating inexpensive drones into aviation operations. The goal, according to the release, was to see if aircraft like the UH-1Y Venom and AH-1Z Viper could extend…

The presidents of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania issued a joint statement on May 21, 2026, urging NATO to transition its Baltic Air Policing mission into a full air defense mission and to reinforce the alliance’s eastern flank with additional counter-drone capabilities. The declaration by Alar Karis, Edgars Rinkēvičs, and Gitanas Nausėda follows a week of escalating airspace incidents along the EU’s external border, including the shootdown of a drone over Estonia by a Romanian Air Force F-16 on May 19, 2026, and simultaneous air danger alerts in Lithuania and Latvia the following day. Latvia is now issuing drone-related warnings to…

A Congressional Research Service report released this month tallied 42 U.S. aircraft lost or damaged during Operation Epic Fury, the 40-day campaign against Iran that began Feb. 28. It is the most complete public accounting of a war the Pentagon has yet to assess on its own terms.The May 13 report, “U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses in Operation Epic Fury: Considerations for Congress,” draws on news accounts and statements by the Defense Department and U.S. Central Command to compile the list. The CRS, the nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress, works from open sources and has no access to…

Spain is to fit some of its Airbus A400M military transport aircraft with specialist firefighting equipment, the country’s president, Pedro Sánchez, announced on May 21, 2026.  The firefighting kit is a Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro-Ro) system that can be fitted in standard A400M aircraft without the aircraft needing any type of special modification.  An aircraft fitted with this equipment is able to drop up to 20,000 liters of fire retardant in a single pass from altitudes as low as 98 feet (approximately 30 meters). According to Airbus, the tank can be refilled in less than 10 minutes while on the ground, using…

The British Army, leading NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, transformed the former Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross Station – 86 feet below the streets of central London – into an operations nerve centre staffed by five hundred personnel. Exercise Arrcade Strike, the latest in a long line of exercises testing the readiness of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), NATO’s premier deployable corps headquarters, has been in full swing under the city of London this week. The ARRC is headed by the British Army, headquartered at Imjin Barracks, Gloucestershire, but is staffed by personnel from 21 NATO member states. …

The United States has paused participation in a joint defense board with Canada that the two countries formed in 1940, marking a new rupture in bilateral defense ties as Washington criticizes Ottawa over military spending and its delayed review of a planned Lockheed Martin F-35 purchase. The Pentagon announced that it was pausing participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, a senior US-Canada advisory body created to coordinate continental defense issues. A Pentagon official told Reuters that the move followed growing concern that Canada has not taken the steps needed to become a credible security partner, including raising defense…

Alaska Airlines has arrived at London-Heathrow Airport (LHR) after completing its first nonstop flight from Seattle Tacoma International Airport (SEA). The Alaska Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, registered N781HA, departed Washington State on May 21, 2026, and arrived safely in the UK’s capital at 15:25, around nine hours later. The year-round daily service was first announced in August 2025, along with the unveiling of a brand-new livery for the carrier’s new Boeing 787 fleet. Last month, Alaska Airlines launched its first nonstop flight between Seattle and Rome, marking the carrier’s maiden entry into Europe. At a special event marking the launch…

IZMIR — In a pair of milestones that underscore Ankara’s growing ambitions as a regional military player, Libya and Syria have deployed forces to Turkey’s EFES-2026 Combined Joint Live-Fire Field Exercise — the first time either country has participated in a military exercise on foreign soil.The live-fire phase of EFES-2026 ran through May 21 along the Aegean coast near İzmir, making it one of Turkey’s largest combined and joint exercises to date. Conducted under the Aegean Army Command, the drill spanned two phases — a computer-assisted command post phase in April and the live-fire field phase — drawing over 10,000…