“Since becoming the chief, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with airmen throughout CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command],” said Wilsbach, who assumed the position in November. “I have walked flight lines, visited maintenance hangars, and stood inside operations centers where young Americans were managing missions overhead. Let me tell you about a few courageous airmen I met on my recent trip to the Middle East. They told me about their experience on the flight line during an attack.”
Burning Hangar
“As missiles were inbound, airmen sprinted toward bunkers,” the service chief said, without providing details about which base. “Moments later, a missile struck nearby in a hangar, and the aircraft inside burst into flames. The bunker withstood the blast, but the force of the impact damaged the door so badly it wouldn’t open, trapping the airmen inside.”
“Picture the scene,” Wilsbach explained. “Fire was spreading, an aircraft was burning only feet away, their teammates were trapped inside, and they had no way out. Despite the danger, airmen ran toward the flames.”
“A security forces NCO grabbed a pry bar and forced the door open,” he continued. “Calmly communicated with the airmen trapped inside. Seconds later, the ejection seat on the burning aircraft ignited, sending glass and metal fragments through the air. Finally, the door gave way, and the airmen escaped and ran for cover.”
“Wherever I went, I saw airmen with that steely-eyed look of warriors, determined to get the mission done and protect their fellow airmen,” the chief noted. “More than 30,000 airmen deployed in support of Epic Fury to a dozen locations. They served alongside soldiers, sailors, Marines, Guardians, and Coalition partners.”
Launching F-15Es Under Fire
“Operation Epic Fury will be studied for its scale, precision, and speed,” said Wilsbach. “Over 38 days of combat operations, the Joint Force struck more than 13,000 military objectives. Five hundred aircraft executed 10,000 sorties, an average of more than 250 sorties every day. Our airmen accomplished this through 1,200 alarm reds while executing 48 airfield repairs and completing more than 420 reportable explosive ordnance disposal, long lonely walks.”
“That walk is exactly what the name suggests,” Wilsbach proffered. “EOD technician leaving a place of relative safety and approaching a suspected bomb or unexploded munition to render it safe for everyone else.”
“Behind those numbers were thousands of decisions made by airmen who had to keep the mission moving while the enemy was actively trying to stop them,” Wilsbach stated. “One was Garrett, a staff sergeant F-15E crew chief from East Texas. He joined the Air Force to travel and see the world. We sure allowed him to achieve that goal, but I’m not sure the Middle East was exactly what he had in mind. On the second day of Epic Fury, Garrett was on the flight line launching four Strike Eagles when alarm red sounded. Airmen around him started running for shelter. Garrett’s adrenaline spiked. He knew exactly what that alarm meant. Danger was inbound, but his launch was not complete.”
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle in the CENTCOM region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Gerald R. Willis) Tech. Sgt. Gerald Willis
“A young airman was working with him, and Garrett sent him to the bunker,” the service chief continued. “Garrett stayed. The rest of the team was separated, so he armed the weapons and cleared the jet. Proceed… While everyone else ran for cover, he decided to stay. Garrett understood why those Strike Eagles were in theater. He knew they were one of their best lines of defense, so he stayed until the job was done. Only after the last fighter taxied out, Garrett finally took cover. Later, when someone asked why, his answer was simple: his fellow airmen needed those airplanes in the air.”
Swatting Down Drones Under Fire
“Hundreds of miles away, two senior airmen, Shanae and Nolan, tracked a swarm of enemy drones headed toward their base,” Wilsbach pointed out. “Shanae joined the Air Force to provide for her family. During the opening days of Epic Fury, she found herself protecting another family – the hundreds of airmen depending on her.”
“People sprinted for shelter as alarm red announced an incoming attack, but Shanae and Nolan stayed focused on the screens in front of them because every inbound track could be a weapon aimed at their teammates,” the general said. “Shanae is 27 years old, and Nolan is 21. Think about the responsibility we placed on these two airmen. Hundreds of lives depended on them to identify the threats and employ countermeasures. Every second mattered. The stakes were life and death. Together, Shanae and Nolan achieved more than 10 surface-to-air kills that night, defeating threat after threat before it could reach the airmen they were protecting. There were moments when they were afraid, and most people would be, but courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is overcoming it. They stayed locked on, trusted their training, and did the job everyone around them was counting on.”
Picking Up The Pieces After An Attack
“Peter is a senior airman from New York who spent nine months in the Middle East as an air transportation airman,” Wilsbach said. “With his team, he moved heavy ordnance, prepared missile systems, and downloaded Patriot equipment, while ballistic missiles and attack drones repeatedly target their airfield.”
“One of those attacks became very personal,” the service chief noted. “Enemy fire destroyed Peter’s living quarters and nearly everything he had brought from home. Imagine coming back after a 12-hour shift to find the wreckage of your hooch. The few pieces of home he carried halfway around the world were gone. Peter’s response told me everything I needed to know about him. He said that his possessions could be replaced, but the mission could not.”
Keeping The Reapers Flying
“More than 4,000 dynamic targets had to be found, identified, validated, and engaged,” Wilsbach said. “Remotely piloted aircraft, airborne ISR platforms, cyber operators, space professionals, and countless others turn enormous amounts of data into intelligence commanders could use.”
“Suit is a first lieutenant with a family tradition of excellence,” Wilsbach said of one MQ-9 Reaper pilot. “Both of his grandfathers served in the Army. I’m sure they wanted a better life for their kids, which is why his parents chose the Air Force. Today, Suit flies the MQ-9 and carries his family tradition forward. He also scored a perfect 100 on its physical assessment this year, so apparently excellence runs in the family.”
MQ-9 Reaper (USAF)
“MQ-9s flown by pilots like Suit supplied critical ISR and kinetic strike capabilities, launching them from bases within range of enemy fires,” said Wilsbach. “Suit planned and launched an MQ-9 combat sortie during an active attack. While missiles hit the airfield, Suit taxied out and got his Reaper airborne. He handed off control to another crew, then switched to the ground control station to recover a different MQ-9. His crew destroyed a priority target and then turned their sensors back toward their own airfield to inspect the runway for damage and determine whether operations could continue.”
“The MQ-9 was a workhorse for combatant commanders during Epic Fury. It provided real-time intelligence, struck 860 targets, and gave our forces the edge while denying the enemy freedom of movement. Airmen-like Suit made sure this asset stayed in the fight and maximized its impact. The MQ-9 success demonstrates the need for a capable follow-on aircraft that achieves the same effects with greater survivability, adaptability, and at a lower cost.”
Rescuing An F-15E Crew Shot Down Over Iran
“Peaches is an air battle manager from Texas,” the chief stated. “During Epic Fury, she found herself in the middle of a story of her own her family will be telling for generations. Peaches led 134 joint and coalition operators responsible for command and control across a complex battle space. Her team supported operations involving more than 1,000 one-way attack drones and 1,200 enemy ballistic missile threats. Those numbers are difficult to comprehend, but for Peaches, command and control was not a collection of symbols moving across the screen.”
“Every symbol represented something real: an aircraft, a threat, a crew, an airman,” he explained. “It was during this time two of those airmen became isolated inside of Iran. What followed became one of the defining moments of the operation. Over 50 hours, Peaches was one of the many who coordinated the combat search and rescue effort, leading her team to integrate 176 aircraft, fighters, bombers, tankers, intelligence platforms, and Air Force Special Operations Command forces that converged on one objective: bringing those Americans home.”
“Think about the complexity of that problem,” Wilsbach noted. “Aircraft operating at different speeds, altitudes, fuel states, with different sensors, weapons, and responsibilities, while an adversary was actively trying to stop them. Maintenance teams generated additional fighters. Tanker crews extended the range and endurance of the force, intelligence professionals track the threats. AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] airmen brought specialized capabilities need[ed] to reach out to our isolated teammates and get them out. Every one of those airmen was doing something different, yet all were contributing to the same mission.”
“The Dude 44 rescue demonstrates why integration matters,” Wilsbach added. “To someone outside of our profession, committing that much combat power to recover two people might appear extraordinary. To an airman, the reason is simple: we make a promise to one another in our Airman’s Creed. I will never leave an airman behind. If you are isolated, injured, or trapped behind enemy lines, we are coming to get you. The courage and performance displayed during that mission was so impressive that 10 airmen received battlefield promotions. I had the distinct honor of promoting six of those heroes, ranging from staff sergeant to chief master sergeant during a recent trip. Everyone understood that their success depended on someone else doing their job. That is how our air and space forces fight.”
Debris from a Chinese-made ballistic missile found in Yemen could have inadvertently revealed a previously undisclosed addition to Saudi Arabia’s secretive ballistic missile arsenal. Imagery circulating online appears to show the wreckage of a Chinese DF-15A short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), potentially marking the first known Saudi combat use of a weapon in this class, although both the identification and ownership remain unconfirmed.
The booster stage of a Chinese-made DF-15A (Dong Feng-15A) ballistic missile operated by Saudi Arabia fell in Raghwan District, Marib Governorate, northern Yemen. pic.twitter.com/dfSXMOiCzQ
It is also unclear what happened to the missile itself. The debris suggests a stage separation or the missile broke apart or crashed before reaching its target. The Houthis are not known to possess any weapons that could have intercepted it.
A screenshot from a video clearly shows the DF-15A name applied on the side of the missile. via X
The development comes amid a sharp escalation in the long-running Saudi-Houthi conflict. After years of relative de-escalation following the 2022 truce, fighting has intensified in recent weeks as Houthi forces have dramatically overrun Saudi-backed Yemeni government positions, including around strategically important Marib and Taiz. The Houthis have also escalated missile and drone attacks against southern Saudi Arabia, targeting military and energy infrastructure while threatening the kingdom’s ability to move oil through the Red Sea. The group has declared the Bab el-Mandeb closed to Saudi oil traffic, adding a direct threat to one of Riyadh’s critical energy-export routes.
You can catch up with our latest coverage of the fighting here.
As for the DF-15, also known by its NATO designation CSS-6, this is a road-mobile, solid-fueled SRBM developed by China during the 1980s. The system formed part of Beijing’s effort to develop a new generation of conventionally armed mobile ballistic missiles, including systems primarily intended for export.
As you can read about here, the DF-15 family has evolved through several variants, although open-source information concerning their capabilities remains inconsistent.
The DF-15A reportedly entered Chinese service in the mid-1990s. Estimates of these missiles’ maximum range vary substantially, from roughly 600 kilometers (373 miles) for the original DF-15 to as much as 900 kilometers (559 miles) for later versions.
Among the later versions of the DF-15 family is the DF-15B. A more substantial redesign, its most obvious external change is its triconic reentry vehicle fitted with control fins, a configuration widely interpreted as incorporating a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) warhead. Photo by GREG BAKER / AFP via Getty Images GREG BAKER
China is the only confirmed operator of the DF-15 family. There have been longstanding reports of Chinese transfers of the DF-15 or the related M-9 export version to Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria, but in each case, the export record is heavily disputed, with some reports likely conflating the DF-15 with the broadly similar DF-11.
While Saudi Arabia has never publicly acknowledged operating the DF-15 family, it has a well-established history of acquiring Chinese ballistic missiles.
In 2013, Prince Fahd bin Abdullah bin Mohammed, Deputy Minister of Defense, visited the Strategic Missile Forces of Saudi Arabia, and was given this model. YEARS of speculation on the smaller missiles (The large is DF-3). Now we know – they are DF-15 and DF-15A. pic.twitter.com/oOn8qiCgye
Saudi Arabia imported Chinese ballistic missiles to expand its long-range strike options. Its desire for a land-based strategic deterrent was initially driven by concerns over Iran, regional missile proliferation, and nuclear hedging. More recently, however, it shifted toward fielding more accurate, mobile systems with greater conventional military utility.
Riyadh secretly obtained DF-3A missiles from China beginning in the late 1980s, establishing a strategic ballistic-missile capability that remained largely outside public view.
The kingdom has also subsequently been linked to the DF-21 family. Satellite imagery and other open-source intelligence have provided evidence of Chinese-designed ballistic-missile infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
While the Houthis have their own ballistic-missile arsenal, this is principally associated with Iranian technology, captured Yemeni systems, and locally produced or modified weapons.
Saudi employment of an SRBM in the current fighting would represent a notable expansion of the kingdom’s response options. If Saudi Arabia did indeed do this, its main advantage would be speed and responsiveness. A solid-fueled ballistic missile could reach targets deep inside Yemen within minutes while keeping Saudi aircraft and crews out of the immediate engagement area, providing Riyadh with a rapid strike option against fixed Houthi targets. That could be particularly valuable as the conflict expands and Saudi forces face pressure to respond quickly to Houthi attacks on military and energy infrastructure.
Previous losses at the hands of Houthi ground-based air defenses could also dissuade Riyadh from relying on crewed aircraft to strike targets on the ground deep inside Yemen. Houthi air defenses, while pathed together in many ways, are capable enough to give even U.S. airpower a serious run for their money.
At the same time, a conventional SRBM like the DF-15A can deliver a large warhead at very high speed, imparting significant kinetic energy, making it particularly useful against fixed, high-value, or hardened targets.
Use of an SRBM would also be in line with the current pattern of escalation, with the Houthis conducting missile and drone attacks against Saudi military and energy targets while Saudi-backed Yemeni forces are engaged in renewed ground fighting. Riyadh’s demonstration of an SRBM capability in this campaign would also signal that it is is willing to draw more heavily on its strategic missile inventory as the conflict intensifies, potentially further raising the stakes of the confrontation.
Such a move would carry a message beyond Yemen. Using a previously unacknowledged ballistic missile capability in combat would signal to Iran that Riyadh is now willing to employ this arsenal, after decades of keeping it very much in the shadows.
If the evidence ultimately points to a Saudi DF-15A launch, the discovery would offer a rare look at the operational use of an extremely secretive part of the kingdom’s arsenal, and add a significant new dimension to the rapidly escalating Saudi-Houthi war.
After the U.S. lost dozens of its MQ-9 Reaper drones to fighting in Iran, newcomer drone-maker Swarm Aero announced Monday that it had developed a drone in the same medium altitude, long-endurance (MALE) class, capable of executing swarm missions and cheap enough to afford losing, even in large numbers. This comes as the USAF is looking for a cheap replacement for the Reaper, targeting just a fraction of the MQ-9’s cost, at $10M per copy.
Called Gamera, the new drone, built from a clean-sheet design, has a wingspan of about 72 feet, a payload capacity of 2,800 pounds, a “Pacific-spanning” unrefueled range of 9,000 miles and a combat radius of 2,300 miles with “hours” of on-station time once at its patrol area. Kitted-out Reapers, which reportedly cost $30-50 million apiece, have a payload capacity of up to 3,800 pounds.
Meet Gamera, a new category of Group 5 strike and sensing UAS that we unveiled at @AFA_Air_Space's Air, Space & Cyber Conference today.
Mass-producible, significantly lower cost than legacy platforms, and the first UAS specifically designed to employ bomber-class strike… pic.twitter.com/UhT9bgcTPn
A mockup unveiled at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Washington, D.C., underscores the aircraft’s large wingspan and showcases its unique design that is built for cost efficiency, above all else. It features a single propeller, like the Reaper, a central fuselage and hardpoint, large fuel cells in sponsons on either side and an OV-10 Bronco-style twin-boom t-tail.
Gamera at Air, Space & Cyber 2026. (Eric Tegler) Gamera with a JASSM-ER mockup attached to its centerline hardpoint. The aircraft has seven stores stations in total. (Hope Hodge Seck)
These general design choices were made for efficiency and practicality, Peter Kalogiannis, CEO of Swarm Aero, said in an interview on the show floor.
“The Bronco tail is really there to provide us that flexibility. So it allows us to use a variety of payloads, whether they’re released, whether they’re rocket-powered, and it really gives us it… it really sets into the flexibility goal here, which is we can carry a whole bunch of different payloads, whether they’re strike, whether they’re sensing,” he said. “And it’s also easy to manufacture, right? It’s straightforward, and that’s a design decision that again we’ve made everywhere across the design standpoint.”
Other modularity features include making the wings removable and separate from the fuel system (dry wing), the executive said, which increases efficiency in manufacturing.
(Hope Hodge Seck)
Gamera’s native payload, according to the announcement, will be JASSM-ER cruise missiles, which have a plussed-up range of 600 miles. This payload, the company said, will deliver “comparable strike effects to exquisite systems for roughly one-tenth the cost-per-effect of existing platforms.”
Swarm Aero execs said the aircraft’s six other hardpoints beyond its centerline one allow it to carry many munitions and other payloads. Renderings of a number of configurations show the drone configured for direct strike with Hellfire/JAGM missiles, ISR support with podded sensing payloads, and even air-to-air missiles.
(Swarm Aero) (Swarm Aero) (Swarm Aero)
Swarm Aero’s unveiling comes after the Air Force announced its desire for what it’s calling a “Massed Modular Aircraft” – a MQ-9 successor at a fraction of the price point: $10 million per copy.
Certain announced Gamera specs line up with the Air Force’s MMA wish list, which included a 2,800-pound payload capacity and an unrefueled combat radius of 2,300 nautical miles.
“Built around a unique manufacturing approach, swarms of these Group 5 UAV give the U.S. Air Force the cost-effective force structure needed for their ultimate goals of surface strike, sensing, and other missions,” the company said in its announcement. “Their tremendous range and payload flexibility fill the gaps between ‘pulsing’ forces to provide highly persistent air dominance over vast areas.”
(Swarm Aero)
Oliver Palmer, Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder of Swarm Aero, said the unit cost of Gamera would come in under the $10 million target. While he declined to say by how much, he maintained that the offering for the Air Force’s Massed Modular Aircraft requirement would be “competitive.”
Kalogiannis said the clean-sheet and targeted approach was critical to achieving cost reduction.
“Low cost isn’t something that you kind of sprinkle on an existing design, an existing engineering system, even an existing organization,” he said. “You have to design the aircraft, design the company around that, and that’s what we’ve done. So every design decision we’ve made has been factoring in cost from the very beginning, and manufacturability and the ability to build these at scale.”
Though the company has been reticent about the main materials in Gamera, executives referred to the $10 million Air Force Research Lab contract the company is executing to develop metal composites. The company’s first engineering hire, they said, was a materials and process engineer.
“We’re demonstrating the progress there and kind of applying those technologies to real aerostructure development,” Kalogiannis said.
Expanding the picture is the drone’s swarming capability – the company says it’s most effective in “groups of up to 80,” powered by a Swarm Aero command-and-control and autonomy system called Legion. The system purports to let a single military operator or team direct a cluster of dozens of different uncrewed systems across multiple domains at the same time and has already been experimentally deployed by the Navy to direct air and sea drones.
A video screen capture from Swarm Aero showing a large formation of Gameras on a mission. (Swarm Aero)
The company, which was founded in 2022 and is based in northwest Arkansas, also noted that Legion has already been tapped by the Defense Innovation Unit as a C2 source for its Autonomous Collaborative Teaming program.
“At Swarm we’ve inverted conventional wisdom around air power platform design, manufacturing, and combat operations and introduced an affordable, mass-producible strike platform that will re-establish an asymmetric edge over our adversaries,” Palmer said in a statement.
The Air Force has stressed its desire to develop Group 5 unmanned aerial systems akin to Reaper, emphasizing that attritability is not the same as expendability and the category lives between single-use weapons and more exquisite, higher-cost platforms.
An MQ-9 prepares for a sortie. (Air National Guard)
While the Air Force has said it wants at least 180 MMA units, Palmer suggested Gamera’s low price point and capabilities might push the service toward a higher acquisition target.
“Reaper was very specifically for terrorism, overhead surveillance and strike with very short ranges in uncontested airspace, and really not transiting massive distances to do those operations,” he said. “This is really intended more for long-range strike, and then also can do all of those MQ-9 sensing [and other] missions. It’s a different paradigm. So when we think about how you build out the force, how you size that, it’s really for long-range strike, and that really drives the program and the aircraft into a different direction.”
The Air Force’s quest for a less-expensive Reaper successor will clearly trigger a race to meet the requirement. Earlier this month, Reaper maker General Atomics unveiled Wildfire, a MALE drone developed from the MQ-9 that purports to deliver similar performance to its progenitor, with some key tradeoffs, at a lower cost. The company has been outspoken about how achieving Reaper’s full capabilities at a fraction of the cost will be an unrealistic challenge. General Atomics has yet to provide full specifics on if it will arrive under the $10 million target cost stipulated by the Air Force.
The U.S. Air Force is now aiming to have at least 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) in service by 2032. The service also wants to have an equal number of Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) drones to succeed its MQ-9 Reapers by that time. In terms of stated CCA force structure plans, this is a substantial step up, with the service having most recently talked about acquiring “over” 150 of these drones by the end of the decade.
A composite image showing the FQ-42 and FQ-44 designs together with their new official nicknames. USAF
“We will have autonomous fighters like the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA. We intend to have at least 500 of these in service by 2032,” Meink said in his speech. “Our intent is to field 100 MMAs in 2029 at even a lower cost than the CCAs and a fraction of [the] cost of manned aircraft we build today. Then by 2032, 500 of these [MMA] platforms will join our force.”
When it comes to CCAs, “today, the first FQ-42 and FQ-44 increments are already rolling off the assembly line,” Meink added. “They’ll be performing many of the same missions that we do with manned fighters today.”
A row of YFQ-42A prototypes. General Atomics previously gave the company name Dark Merlin to this design. GA-ASI
The Air Force’s stated CCA force structure targets have fluctuated significantly in recent years. In 2023, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall outlined plans to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs, if not more, across the life of the entire program. However, Kendall and other Air Force officials subsequently talked about a far smaller initial fleet of between 100 and 150 drones.
“These contracts reaffirm our confidence in the strategic path forward for the program to procure over 150 combat capable CCA by the end of the decade,” Meink himself said in a statement in June when the production orders for the FQ-42 and FQ-44 were announced.
A YFQ-44A prototype, with an inert AIM-120 air-to-air missile under its wing, seen during a test. USAF
The FQ-42 and FQ-44 are also being acquired under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the CCA program. At least one additional increment is planned, and could lead to orders for one or more additional types of CCA. Though it is not immediately clear, it is possible, if not probable that Increment 2 CCAs are factored into the latest 500 drone figure.
TWZ’s Jamie Hunter got a close look at the Skunk Works’ Vectis drone at Air, Space, & Cyber 2026. Photo: Lockheed Martin
“We talk about 500 by 2032, [but] we could actually build more of them than that,” Secretary Meink also said today during a question-and-answer session immediately following his speech. The goal of the CCA program “from the get-go” was “simple aircraft that you could build fast and at a lower cost,” he continued.
“So now we’re in a situation to [sic] where we could actually build more than we can actually afford to buy,” he added.
It is unclear what the unit costs of the FQ-42 or FQ-44 are currently. The Air Force has said previously that it is targeting a price point of around $20 million apiece once full-rate production gets underway.
Beyond any fleet size target, the Air Force is still very much in the process of figuring out how future CCAs will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated on a day-to-day basis, as well as employed tactically. During today’s question-and-answer session today, Meink drew attention to a dedicated Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) the service has established to lead the process of laying the groundwork for future CCA operations. The EOU notably led a significant new round of operational testing of YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 prototypes at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada back in July, which TWZ was first to report on. The EOU supported another similar test exercise at Edwards Air Force Base in California in April.
A YFQ-44A at Edwards Air Force Base during a test exercise in April 2026. USAF
“Getting them [CCAs] into these developmental kind of operational units, so they can start experimenting with that – familiarity breeds confidence, right?” Meink said.
The Air Force continues to make it clear that it sees its future CCA fleets as essential for providing capabilities and operational capacity necessary to succeed in future conflicts, especially a potential high-end fight against a near-peer opponent like China.
“Collaborative Combat Aircraft change how we project power and generate mass in highly contested environments,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in a statement when the FQ-42 and FQ-44 production contracts were announced. “Delivering this capability to our warfighters faster ensures our forces maintain the tactical edge required to deter and, if necessary, defeat any adversary.”
The MMA drones are expected to conduct the same general strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) mission sets the service’s MQ-9A Reapers perform today. Major Reaper losses in the course of operations against Iran, compounded by significant additional attrition and deliberate divestments in recent years, are key drivers behind the MMA effort, which officially kicked off in July.
A US Air Force MQ-9A Reaper drone. USAF
“As we saw in Epic Fury [the nickname for major combat operations against Iran earlier this year], ISR/strike platforms have been essential. We have used MQ-9 and even now the ULTRA aircraft to great effect,” Meink said during his speech today. The MMA program is “building on these lessons” and “will provide affordable, attritable, long-range strike, and we will be able to field them at scale.”
“MMA is designed to deliver the results our combat commanders need,” Chief of Staff Wilsbach said during his own separate keynote at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference today. “That’s how we stay ahead by moving quickly, investing in new tech, and delivering to our warfighters what they need to win.”
If the Air Force can meet its target of having a fleet of at least 500 MMA drones by 2032, this will be another significant boost to the service’s overall uncrewed capabilities. As of May, the Air Force had 135 MQ-9s left in inventory, and there have been more reported losses since then.
General Atomics, which developed the Reaper, has already put forward a new design called Wildfire as a potential successor. Many other companies are already lining up to submit their own proposals to meet the Air Force’s MMA needs.
Between the latest CCA force structure plans and the new MMA program, the Air Force’s fleets of combat drones are on track to look very different by 2032.
America’s nuclear weapons deterrent and how it is controlled is increasingly critical in the face of the rapidly-expanding arsenals across multiple adversaries. A new fleet of E-4C nuclear-hardened survivable airborne operations center aircraft is now in development, as is the U.S. Navy E-130J, which will provide next-generation communications with nuclear ballistic missile submarines deep beneath the waves. Focus is also turning to a mission that’s dedicated to emergency communications with the U.S. nuclear forces in times of crisis, a role known as Operation Looking Glass, which is also poised for updating under a program dubbed Looking Glass-Next.
The comprehensive modernization of America’s nuclear strike muscle involves three major elements – new B-21 Raider stealth bombers, the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program to replace Minuteman IIIs, and new Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines. A fourth facet that ties all these new elements, as well as existing ones, together is the next generation nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) architecture. It securely connects nuclear weapons systems to decision-makers. Without it, America’s nuclear deterrent isn’t a deterrent at all.
A USAF E-4B assigned to the 595th Command & Control Group at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. USAF/TSgt Codie Trimble
America’s nuclear modernization is set against a backdrop of rapidly-developing nuclear strength across adversaries and pacing threats, which could threaten not only U.S. fighting forces, but also the existing aging NC3 infrastructure. This could impede the collective responsiveness and effectiveness of the American nuclear enterprise. For example, a coordinated attack on NC3 could degrade the National Command Authority chain, which could prevent communications that are necessary to conduct a retaliatory strike.
If fixed underground command posts are targeted and rendered inoperable, the current strategy would involve turning to a set of highly-survivable air assets that are designed to be on hand to execute emergency war orders. This includes the U.S. Air Force’s E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) “Nightwatch” aircraft, and the E-6B Mercury that is operated by the U.S. Navy.
A major recapitalization effort is already underway for the NAOC E-4Bs, which are being superseded under the E-4C Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) contract. It is being led by defense contractor SNC. The new SAOC aircraft are based on the far more modern 747-8i, and are planned to have a much broader mission set than the four E-4B Nightwatch types they are set to replace, as you can read more about here.
The Navy’s E-6B Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO) aircraft have a primary role of strategic connectivity with the ballistic missile submarine fleet. These converted 707s also execute another mission known as the Airborne National Command Post (ABNCP), more recently renamed “Looking Glass.” For this they are manned by U.S. Air Force missileers and U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) battle managers who are responsible for running the airborne nuclear NC3 systems.
An E-6B Mercury flies over U.S. and UK submarines during a joint exercise. U.S. Navy
The joint service team on Looking Glass mirrors some operations performed by USSTRATCOM’s underground command posts, and a small portion of what the NAOC executes. The Looking Glass mission is really focused on performing an airborne backup mission solely for USSTRATCOM to ensure another means of communicating with fielded nuclear bombers, their assigned tankers, ICBMs and deployed nuclear submarines. It is best known for its ability to supply airborne communications connectivity to the USAF’s ICBM force on the ground and can command remote launches of those weapons if necessary.
Additional NC3-related modernization is coming on the heels of SAOC, with the new E-130J set to assume the Navy’s TACAMO role from the ageing E-6Bs, assuming strategic connectivity for nuclear ballistic submarines. It means that at some point roughly two-thirds of the E-6 current mission will go to the new E-130J aircraft – raising the question of what will fulfill the critical Looking Glass mission.
Since the E-130J is not planned to take on the Looking Glass role, the USAF is in the early stages of what’s dubbed Looking Glass-Next (LG-N), which presents the future pathway for USSTRATCOM’s mobile contingency operations. This could take on a number of forms, including NC3 communications functions being increasingly moved to space-based assets and more distributed operations across the ground, although an air platform is still likely to form a major part of the overall capability.
The need to modernize America’s NC3
Brian Golden is a retired USAF colonel who intimately understands nuclear command and control (NC2) and the associated NC3 equipment and processes from both a service and industry perspective. As a subject matter expert for SNC, he draws on his extensive experience as a former E-4B NAOC commander and he commanded much of the USAF’s multi-domain NC3 systems, including the Airborne Launch Control System onboard the current E-6B Looking Glass. He is also extremely familiar with all the nation’s continuity of government and continuity of operations missions for both Congressional and executive branches of the U.S. government.
“Everyone referred to the nuclear triad as the platforms that were controlled through the NC3 architecture,” Golden told TWZ during a detailed discussion. “Those platforms received their messages and executed their missions. But this isn’t just about that platform triad. The U.S. nuclear enterprise has four primary pillars, and nuclear command, control, and communications is a critical part of it. Without a robust NC3 system, it’s like having a brand new Bugatti Veyron but without the keys! It looks awesome on the driveway, but you can’t drive it.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth working aboard an E-4B Nightwatch. USAF/SrA Madelyn Keech
Golden explains that the current NC3 enterprise consists of a series of exquisite systems that are extremely reliable, but that are in need of modernization to stay ahead of the steepening threat curve, and stay in front of supply chain constraints. “What we have currently is very reliable, robust, and very survivable, but it can be difficult to maintain some of our legacy systems. Additionally, as threats evolve we must ensure our communications pathways also evolve.
“Our nation’s industrial base engineers figured out extremely robust methods of nuclear communications when these systems were fielded. Looking at the overall command and control [NC2], and then the NC3 communications pathways, any new systems that we introduce must be sustainable, scalable and modular.”
The U.S. nuclear enterprise is facing greater threats than ever with adversaries challenging U.S. nuclear infrastructure in multiple domains: space, cyber, ground, air. Because of this, NC3 demands a continuous process of improvement.
Going forward, the NC3 enterprise will likely need to integrate upgraded proven legacy systems with all-new technology. “Sometimes the physics of radio waves may dictate the need for a legacy approach with upgraded systems, such as communicating with a submarine that’s very deep in the ocean.”
Golden’s view is that NC3 requires a layered, open architecture approach as modernization is evaluated. “Applying those same physics and then adding new layers such as artificial intelligence may determine a better way of doing things.”
Upgrading to SAOC
Golden points to the SNC-led E-4C SAOC program as a clear example of critical NC3 modernization, while emphasizing that the NC2 mission is far from being the primary role of the E-4B and its forthcoming successor. “Nuclear command and control is only a fraction of what the current NAOC does and what the future SAOC will do for our nation and our allies and partners.”
An E-4B Nightwatch at Yokota Air Base, Japan. USAF/A1C David S. Calcote
The E-4B initially featured just a handful of communications systems, which have grown over time, leading to what Golden calls the “King Kong” of communication capabilities today. The E-4 is not a battlefield communications platform, its mantra is all about supporting Presidential-level requirements across the board. It does possess an extensive NC3 suite, but it also serves the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and the Department of Homeland Security, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in many other crisis roles. Another mission the E-4B fleet performs is to safely transport the Secretary of War on trips within the United States and abroad.
The E-4B NAOC and Looking Glass are two complementary tiers of the same survivable architecture. The NAOC (and future SAOC) is designed to anchor national-level decision-making and government continuity from the very top, while Looking Glass provides USSTRATCOM with the dedicated airborne command and battle-management capacity required to direct forces. Both roles are critical and non-negotiable.
An artist’s rendition of the new E-4C SOAC. SNC
“The new E-4C SAOC, like the E-4B before it, will deliver an expansive communications suite and increased capacity supported by a larger fleet,” Golden explains. “SAOC is built to ensure the President and national leadership can direct the entire country through any crisis. Looking Glass supports an equally vital and highly specialized mission. It is dedicated to USSTRATCOM’s operational needs, connecting directly to bombers, ICBMs and submarines. Attempting to merge these unique missions on a single airframe would compromise the unique, essential role that each was created to perform.”
Looking Glass-Next
The Looking Glass role and the platform that fulfills it is not classified as a national-level mission. As Golden alluded to earlier, it’s not assigned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or to the Secretary of War. It’s exclusively assigned to USSTRATCOM; however, without the Looking Glass mission being upgraded soon, America has a gaping hole in its nuclear architecture.
An E-6B Mercury flying over Colorado. USAF/Greg L. Davis
The commander of USSTRATCOM is the customer and ultimately the decision-maker when it comes to Looking Glass-Next, and the USAF has been tasked by the Secretary of War to develop and field it. SNC is looking at several options for the requirement, with some sort of air platform at its core, which Golden refers to as an “E-6C.” He endorses that the current E-6B is one of the “cogs in the wheel that has to be replaced,” but adds that this doesn’t mean the next-generation Looking Glass is just an aircraft.
“At SNC, we have significant expertise and experience with mission system integration,” says Golden, adding that SNC is evaluating what he calls “aggressively creative options,” for the modernization requirement. He further noted that the modern threat is driving a requirement for Looking Glass-Next to be very difficult to target and must be dispersed.
“Having an aircraft as the only option for this USSTRATCOM mission is a legacy mindset,” Golden states. “We have advanced multi-domain capabilities, including numerous space capabilities available through the Sierra Space Corporation. Future mission resilience requires a creative and integrated approach.”
“We believe a creative approach to provide NC3 options will ensure a robust, reliable, survivable and cost-effective solution.”
Golden endorses this approach to creativity and development and indicated that SNC will continue to inform and respond to the ongoing Looking Glass-Next requests for information that may result in a future program.
One of the 747-8is that is being modified by SNC in Dayton, Ohio, to become an E-4C SAOC. SNC
“SNC has leaned heavily into the nuclear command, control, and communications architecture and it’s a natural fit for us, building on our work with the Department of War and our subcontractors on the E-4C SAOC. Our Looking Glass-Next responses and inputs will leverage relevant work and experience gained from SAOC, but we are also focused on being creative. We’re small enough to be agile, but big enough to deliver. That’s why we think we’re very well positioned in the NC3 space.”
The majority of SNC’s work on the E-4C SAOC is being completed at the NC3 Center of Excellence, housed in the Aviation Innovation and Technology Center (AITC) in Dayton, Ohio.
Golden believes the timing couldn’t be better to deliver bold and creative NC3 solutions. “The USAF is already asking the right questions, and industry is really able to innovate, which will result in a transformational era for nuclear command, control and communications.”
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced projects division has shared all new information about its stealthy Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) type drone design named Vectis, which it first unveiled a year ago. One of the most intriguing details is the true nature of its air inlet configuration, pointing to the premium on survivability the Skunk Works has placed on its CCA offering, especially when compared to other CCA designs.
Vectis has a far more exotic, deeply recessed “submerged” top-mounted air intake than was originally disclosed when Vectis first came out of the shadows. This further underscores the heavy emphasis Skunk Works says it has been placing on its CCA’s ability to stay undetected and live to fight another day. Vectis is also the first tailless CCA design we have seen from a U.S. manufacturer.
An updated view of Vectis. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works Lockheed Martin
Ron Fehlen, Lockheed Martin Vice President and General Manager of Skunk Works, gave TWZ and other outlets an update on Vectis last week ahead of today’s start of the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Skunk Works says work on constructing the first prototype of Vectis – a word that means lever or pole in Latin, and that Lockheed Martin has said reflects the ‘leverage’ the drone offers – is underway now. The goal is to have it flying by the end of next year. There are already plans to build four more prototypes using internal funding.
Check out the Skunk Works’ new Vectis video below:
Source: Lockheed Martin
“It is designed, as you can likely see, to be both survivable and affordable and flexible across the range of missions that our customers need, have needed, and continue to need into the future,” Fehlen said by way of introduction. “The technical specs, as you can imagine, are designed to meet and, in some cases, exceed the customer sets that we are working with and their requirements and their mission needs.”
The basic core of the single-engine Vectis that we have seen now is largely unchanged from what had been shown at the time of the unveiling last year. It is still a tailless drone that has a lambda wing planform and air intake mounted on top of the central part of the fuselage, as well as a prominent chine line around the forward end and a shovel-like shape to its nose. New renderings do show revised positions for various conformal antennas and/or sensor apertures around the central fuselage. These are all established features of low-observable (stealthy) aircraft designs.
Skunk Works’ Fehlen also shared last week that Vectis is approximately 34 feet long and has a wingspan of around 38 feet. As a comparison, the Navy’s two-seat primary jet trainer, the T-45 Goshawk, is roughly 39 feet long by 30 feet wide.
The biggest new detail, as mentioned, is the shaping and position of Vectis’ air inlet. Fehlen stressed that this is actually not a new feature, and has “been a part of the design since the beginning,” but was not reflected in previously released renderings and scale models.
Another newly released rendering of Vectis showing the submerged intake. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
The intake was depicted in the past as having a relatively straightforward configuration. It did appear to have a saw-tooth leading edge, another indication of stealthy design considerations. The visuals we have now show the intake is deeply recessed into the top of the fuselage, sitting behind a downward-sloping v-shaped channel.
A rendering of Vectis that Lockheed Martin released last year that did not depict the submerged intake. Lockheed MartinSkunk Works
Vectis doesn’t have a fully flush-mounted inlet, like what is found on Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone, among other designs, but it is close to it, very loosely similar to what’s found on the B-21. The rear is slightly raised above the v-like pocket where air flows down into the intake. Flush or near-flush intakes offer particular benefits when it comes to low-observability (stealthiness) and aerodynamic efficiency, but are also notoriously problematic, especially in certain flight regimes, as you can read more about here. This is even worse for high-performance aircraft that have a wide operating envelope and have to maneuver at higher angles of attack. The CCA would likely fit into this category, at least to a degree.
When it comes to Vectis, “there’s a lot of different reasons behind it [choosing this submerged intake configuration], but I’ll pick up on a couple here for you,” Skunk Works’ Fehlen explained. “The first is it reduces that frontal drag. So, anything sticking out in the wind, as many – as all of you know, I’m sure, creates drag on the aircraft itself. So, if you want better performance from a range, et cetera, then you need to be able to reduce that drag, and that’s an example.”
“It’s also interesting to me, particularly as the Air Force speaks about Agile Combat Employment, the ACE concept, as you’re aware. There is an advantage to having an inlet on the top of the aircraft if you’re out in more austere environments and you’re concerned about FOD [foreign object debris] pickup off of a runway,” he added.
Another newly released rendering offering a different perspective on the submerged intake. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
Fehlen also confirmed that the inlet’s design has to do with survivability, but did not elaborate in any detail, which is unsurprising considering the sensitivities of such design elements. The original Vectis promotional video Lockheed Martin put out last year, seen below, showed an S-shaped duct behind the air intake and exhaust shrouding, which are features designed to further reduce a platform’s signature.
In terms of performance, Lockheed Martin has yet to share any hard specifications it is targeting for Vectis, or disclose details about the engine the design will use. Fehlen did also highlight the drag-reducing performance advantages of the drone’s tailless design, including for maximizing range.
Details about what other capabilities Vectis might have are still limited. Fehlen noted that the design is expected to be capable of both air-to-air and air-to-ground mission sets. In a new computer-generated promotional video, seen earlier in this story, the drones are depicted launching what look to be AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) glide bombs, also known as StormBreakers. The AIM-120 has already emerged as something of a default initial weapon for Western CCA-type drones. The video also confirms Vectis has an internal bay that is able to accommodate at least two munitions, likely the size to accommodate medium-range air-to-air missiles.
Captures from Lockheed Martin’s new Vectis promotional video depicting the drones launching what looks to be an AIM-120 missile, at left, and a pair of GBU-53/B SDB IIs, at right. Lockheed Martin capturesA rendering of Vectis with its elongated internal bay open from the new promotional video. Note the AIM-120 in the background. Lockheed Martin captureAnother screen capture from the new Vectis promotional video showing two munitions loaded inside the drone’s internal bay. Lockheed Martin capture
In addition, the video shows Vectis as having a traditional electro-optical/infrared sensor turret behind a stealthy faceted enclosure under the nose. When the drone was first unveiled last year, TWZ noted that it could carry a variety of sensors, including compact radars and/or infrared search and track (IRST) systems, which would be particularly relevant in the air-to-air role.
The sensor turret inside the stealthy faceted enclosure as seen in the new Vectis promotional video. Lockheed Martin capture
During the press call, Skunk Works’ Fehlen reiterated that Vectis is being designed with an eye toward modularity and open-architecture systems. This, in turn, will make it easier to integrate new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line. Open architecture is at the heart of every CCA offering we are aware of at this time.
Fehlen further highlighted Lockheed Martin’s extensive work to date on advanced autonomy packages and crewed-uncrewed teaming capabilities. This includes the development of the Multi Domain Combat System (MDCX), an “autonomy platform” that is already central to the U.S. Navy’s plans for the carrier-based MQ-25 Stingray. The head of Skunk Works also explicitly called attention to autonomous air intercept testing conducted in cooperation with the Air Force earlier this year using the unique X-62A test jet, and said that work is feeding into Vectis’ development.
The X-62A test jet seen during the autonomous air intercept testing earlier this year. USAF
On top of all this, Lockheed Martin is already actively laying the groundwork for the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 and F-35 fighters to control future CCA drones, via in-cockpit touchscreen-type user interfaces, likely involving tablets, at least at first.
The new Vectis promotional video also shows a traditional ground control station being used to direct the drones, but with the phrase “managed from anywhere” on the screens, as seen below. Fehlen did say that any specific requirements for autonomy, command and control, and other operational capabilities would be up to individual customers, and that third-party vendors could be involved.
Lockheed Martin
Beyond Vectis’ design and expected capacities, Fehlen touted the speed at which work on the first physical prototype is progressing, and highlighted the use of digital design techniques and advanced manufacturing processes.
“This team, when kicked off, took a design on a napkin, which we will likely frame one day in my office … two months later, they were in the wind tunnel validating the design,” he said. “So, in under two months, we’re already getting in the wind tunnel straight from off of a napkin. We had the first digital build in six months, and the first part release in eight months. So it gives you a touch of a sense for exactly how fast we’re moving.”
“This aircraft was designed in a fully integrated digital environment,” he added. “Really, it’s creating that unbroken digital thread from the design all the way through sustainment.”
“We’ve used advanced design and manufacturing processes developed for many years under our own internal investment … for other Skunk Works programs, we’ve pulled that into this, of course, to continue to advance our manufacturing as well as the advanced design capability,” Fehlen continued. “They’re using real production processes.”
A central fuselage part of the first Vectis prototype now under construction. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
The Skunk Works boss stressed that this approach offers advantages not just for accelerating development and prototype, but also for reducing costs and positioning Vectis to enter full-scale production.
“It gives you the reliance and the confidence as you continue to move forward that you’re ready to off and build these things because you’re using those real production processes,” he explained. “An example of that is a technique that we call minimal tooling determinant assembly. It’s a technique that really enables an increased level of affordability and speed through really reducing the amount of touch labor required and increasing the first pass yield. We’ve seen, in many cases, an 80 percent reduction in labor hours to build up the aircraft itself.”
Part of one of the wings for the first Vectis prototype. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
Fehlen made an indirect reference to flat-pack furniture from IKEA to provide additional context, in extremely general layman’s terms, about what this technique offers.
“That’s what we’re talking about, that idea that it can come together very quickly, limited touch, and limited error. We constrain that to reduce the number of labor hours, which is not just a cost implication, but also buoys the speed and how fast we’re going to be able to produce them,” he said. “You can imagine, as well, there’s a lot of simplification that goes into this. We have significantly reduced the part count. Again, back to simplify the build so that you can have a positive impact on speed and affordability, not new techniques, but we’ve applied them here with vigor to ensure that we are getting to the cost point that the services and our customers need in order to make this system effective.”
Another element of the first Vectis prototype, which is now being built. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
In terms of actual unit cost, “we’re always looking at, and, of course, we’re targeting to be [at] the CCA competitive price, so we’re very cognizant of it and make trades associated with that,” according to Fehlen. Vectis is “focused more on the CCA side of the house, and obviously the price points that are highly relevant in that regime, and then, of course, making trades along the way, and to make sure that we can meet it.”
The head of Skunk Works was responding here specifically to a question that mentioned the Air Force’s target of a roughly $20 million unit price for drones acquired under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program once full-scale production is achieved. The service announced in June that it was ordering fleets of both of the Increment 1 designs now in development, General Atomics’ FQ-42A Dark Merlin and Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury. The Air Force has plans for at least one more increment to this program, and has said in the past that it could pursue lower-cost (and less exquisite) designs.
A trio of YFQ-42A Dark Merlin prototypes. GA-ASIA YFQ-44A Fury prototype with an inert AIM-120 missile under its wing. USAF
“While not discussing suppliers, you can imagine we are ensuring that all of the decisions we make in the development and then the build out of these aircraft are designed around achieving that competitive cost point, while at the same time maximizing the amount of capability,” Fehlen added. “Those are the things that our customers are looking for, and we put it in a survivable solution.”
“There are some [companies] that are really going down the attritable [route], which defines a different price point than the CCA community has been targeting,” he also noted. Attritable designs are “quite a bit less from a cost point perspective and often from a capability perspective.”
With this in mind, there are still larger questions about where exactly Vectis may fit into U.S. military CCA plans, as well as those emerging from allied and partner air arms globally. Skunk Works has said in the past that it was eliminated from the Air Force’s CCA Increment 1 competition because it put forward a very stealthy “gold-plated” design that was not what the service wanted. Lockheed Martin had also indicated that its view of the capability/cost balance on new CCA-type designs had subsequently shifted very much in the opposite direction. Though it is still not entirely clear, what we’ve learned about Vectis in the past year would seem to signal that the pendulum at Skunk Works has swung back the other way again, at least to a degree.
As an interesting point of comparison, Northrop Grumman had also entered a higher-end design for the Increment 1 competition. In the wake of that loss, the company produced a much more familiar CCA design with a more traditional planform, which is now known as the YFQ-48A Talon Blue.
It’s also worth noting here that Skunk Works had publicly shared a future crewed-uncrewed teaming vision that included multiple tiers of drones back in 2022. This ranged from a cruise missile-like design the company now calls the Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT) all the way up to a concept for what could have been a very low-observable (stealthy) and highly autonomous flying wing uncrewed combat air vehicle (UCAV).
“We listen closely to our customers to deeply understand the operational environment and use those insights and our own analysis to inform the diverse solutions we develop for different mission sets,” Lockheed Martin told TWZ directly after the press call last week in response to a follow-up question about whether the 2022 vision was still relevant and if Vectis had supplanted the upper-tier concept shown at that time. “We continue to evaluate a range of crewed and uncrewed concepts against evolving customer needs.”
“Lockheed Martin Vectis addresses a warfighter need for a survivable, flexible and multi-mission capability, both domestically and internationally,” the company added in its statement. “We’re leaning into that demand, making strategic investments to accelerate Vectis’ progress and maturity and to deliver the capabilities our nation and allies need.”
A screen capture from a more recent Lockheed Martin video showing renderings of various different drone designs, including Vectis (at lower left), the CMMT (at upper right), and the stealthy flying-wing (at lower right). Lockheed Martin capture
Lockheed Martin and a host of other companies globally are being presented with a clearly expanding CCA market, but there is also still obvious interest in higher-tier UCAVs. China, in particular, has positioned itself as the current leader in the stealthy flying wing UCAV space, as well as a dominant actor in advanced combat drone developments more generally speaking. Russia, India, Turkey, and France continue to pursue flying wing UCAVs, as well. That being said, Skunk Works’ Vectis is arguably the closest we have seen to a low-observable UCAV to come out of recent CCA developments.
Regardless, Skunk Works is confident that there is a place for Vectis, together with autonomy and other capabilities it is developing, domestically and internationally, in this future uncrewed air combat ecosystem. It “is a survivable autonomous multi-mission platform, which we believe is the solution needed within today’s operational environment and into the future,” Fehlen said last week.
Skunk Works is committed to “delivering what’s next across … airframes, open architectures, to include artificial intelligence and autonomy, and then crewed-uncrewed integration,” he added. “Make no mistake, it will take advancements across all these areas to get to where our customers are going. We look at the full picture. Vectis is a holistic weapon system from our perspective.”
Altogether, “it’s an urgent need. We know that. We can hear it.”
UPDATE: 3:10 pm EDT
We now have a photo of the full sized Vectis mockup on the floor or Air, Space, Cyber 2026:
The Ukrainian Navy is claiming one of its uncrewed surface vessels (USV) sank a Russian USV, marking the first time one of these weapons, also known as drone boats, destroyed another. The engagement is the latest iteration in the use of combat drone boats, which Ukraine has employed to devastating effect against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet vessels and facilities, forcing the general evacuation of Russian naval assets from occupied Crimea to bases in Russia proper. The use of weaponized USVs is now proliferating around the globe at an increasing rate.
The incident took place somewhere in the Black Sea, said the Ukrainian Navy, which provided no details about when it happened or exactly where. TWZ cannot independently verify this claim; however, we cannot find any evidence of a drone boat killing another drone boat in the past.
“Units of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) detected the target,” the Ukrainian Navy stated on Telegram. “The Ukrainian Navy’s ‘Sargan 3000’ unmanned boat, equipped with a remotely operated weapon station (RWS) Protector 12.7 mm, successfully destroyed it. This is the first naval battle in history between unmanned boats.”
An 81-second video released by the Ukrainian Navy opens with a view from the Sargan 3000’s onboard camera. It shows the Ukrainian USV acquiring, then engaging the Russian USV with its machine gun. It then cuts to a closer view of the Protector gun system firing at the Russian drone boat. At about the 30-second mark, the view switches to a feed from an aerial platform, though it is unclear if it is piloted or a drone. The video continues with the Sargan 3000 raking the Russian USV with its heavy machine gun until pieces start flying off and it eventually sinks, stern first.
Ukraine's Navy says a Sargan unmanned surface vessel destroyed a Russian unmanned boat with machine-gun fire in the Black Sea, the first-ever battle between unmanned surface vessels. Ukrainian Navy personnel operated in coordination with HUR. #Ukrainepic.twitter.com/Avg4ecz8m6
The Sargan 3000 (the name means needlefish in Ukrainian) was first introduced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in April as a “multi-purpose platform that has undergone testing and entered service with the Ukrainian Navy. These uncrewed vessels are highly maneuverable and capable of carrying out strike missions.”
“The maritime drone features a specialized low-profile hull with distinctive hydrodynamic lines and is constructed from materials that reduce its radar signature,” the publication explained. “The Sargan-3000 USV is equipped with a waterjet propulsion system (presumably powered by a diesel or hybrid engine to ensure a long operational range).”
AmalNews states that the Sargan 3000 is 6.9 meters (about 22.6 feet) long, 2.2 meters (about 7.2 feet) wide, with an operational radius of up to 1,600 km (about 994 miles) and can carry a payload of 450 kg (about 992 pounds). It travels at an estimated speed range of 40-55 knots.
During operations, the Sargan 3000 connects to Ukraine’s Delta situational awareness system, “enabling the real-time transmission of target data, video feeds, and telemetry to operators,” AmalNews noted. “It features multi-channel control capabilities, including redundant satellite communication terminals (utilizing secure Western commercial networks and NATO military networks).”
It is also equipped with “an autonomous inertial and optical navigation system to ensure operation in the event of GPS jamming, and it incorporates electronic countermeasures (ECM) modules.”
There are several variants of this USV. They include those equipped with machine guns; rockets; FPV drones; an electronic warfare version and one that lays mines, the publication added.
Ukraine’s Sargan-3000 naval drone was presented in an FPV drone carrier variant, additionally fitted with a remote weapon station. The type first appeared in combat conditions in early June, when one washed ashore and detonated in the waters of Romania’s Constanța port. #Ukrainepic.twitter.com/QyKnyJFqUq
The drone boat’s first publicly known combat engagement took place in July, when one “destroyed the Russian Federation’s FSB border guard ship Izumrud,” the Ukrainian Navy stated at the time.
“Ukrainian naval sailors sank the border guard ship of the 2nd rank with the Sargan-3000 maritime unmanned complex near Novorossiysk,” the Ukrainian Navy claimed on Facebook. “Among the crew of the ship are dead and wounded.”
It is unclear whether the USV acted as a kamikaze vessel or a weapons platform, although the former is most likely.
“It was Izumrud that on November 25, 2018, participated in the attack on the ships of the Ukrainian Navy in the Kerch Strait,” the service added. “Revenge is inevitable.”
Ukraine's Navy has sunk the Russian FSB Border Guard patrol ship Izumrud near Novorossiysk using the Sargan-3000 unmanned maritime system.
The vessel, a Rank 2 patrol ship, reportedly sustained catastrophic damage, with casualties and injuries among its crew.
— SPRAVDI — Stratcom Centre (@StratcomCentre) July 14, 2026
One sea drone killing another is a notable development given the damage these systems can inflict and the challenge of locating and destroying them on open waters. Being able to operate on the water over long distances and timeframes, they can be used to hunt down other drone boats, as what appears to have taken place in this engagement, or serve as a picket line of sorts to protect harbors, vessels and other targets that have been attacked by USVs in the past.
The Russian drone boat, which is not identified, did not appear to be armed.
Ukraine has carried out the world's first known combat mission in which a sea drone transported and deployed an armed ground robot behind Russian lines on the occupied Kinburn Spit. pic.twitter.com/zyJdFXWxVb
The U.S. used drone boats as kamikaze weapons for the first time in July, during an attack “on a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran,” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on X at the time.
Yesterday, using multiple one-way attack surface drones, CENTCOM forces successfully struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. Three Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, marking the first time American forces have employed sea… pic.twitter.com/bOM2kmgRxz
Regardless, it looks like history was made with this incident in the Black Sea. But this involved a sea drone hunting down and destroying another that couldn’t fight back. Given the rapid pace of weapons development by both sides in the Ukraine war, it seems inevitable that a duel between two armed drones boats could soon follow.
Saudi Arabia on Friday announced it had to temporarily shut down the key east-west pipeline after drone attacks on Thursday from an Iranian-backed militia group in Iraq. As we have explained in the past, the Kingdom has diverted millions of barrels of oil per day through pipelines to its Yanbu port on the Red Sea in an effort to minimize the energy shortages due to hostilities near the Persian Gulf that have closed the Strait of Hormuz.
The pipeline was shut down a day after the Houthi rebels of Yemen increased their control over the crucial Bab al-Mandab Strait (BAM), a narrow body of water separating the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden. Combined with Iran vastly curtailing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, this gives Tehran significant control over two of the world’s most crucial passageways for the flow of oil.
3. The Houthis have reportedly attempted to seize ROYG-controlled islands in the Red Sea from which Houthi fighters could launch attacks on international shipping. Houthi forces reportedly landed on the Hanish Islands in the southern Red Sea on the morning of September 10 after… pic.twitter.com/tiFPgNDOHZ
“The East-West pipeline, in the regions of Riyadh and Medina, was subjected to several attacks on Thursday morning, September 10, 2026,” Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry posted on X. “The line was shut down as a precaution. The attacks resulted in some injuries, and medical care has been provided to those injured.”
“Emergency teams and specialized technical teams began work immediately after the attacks occurred, and took the necessary measures to secure the line and verify its safety, in accordance with approved safety procedures and emergency plans, and in coordination with relevant authorities,” the ministry added. “Any updates will be announced in due course.”
A before and after of the East-West Pipeline pumping station showed that it wasn’t just “hit”, it was absolutely MANGLED.
The past 24 hours have been nothing short of catastrophic for the global energy markets, but the harsh reality?
Showing the complexity of this situation and the high degree of coordination among various Iranian-backed proxies, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Iranian proxies in Iraq of carrying out the attack. The Kingdom subsequently said it would hold off on responding to “give the brotherly Iraqi government an opportunity to take the necessary measures to prevent attacks launched from Iraqi territory against the Kingdom and neighboring countries,” according to the Arab News.
Officials in Baghdad quickly responded to that request, firing a regional commander overseeing operations where the attack was launched from.
“The Prime Minister, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Mr. Ali Falih Al-Zaidi, directed the formation of an investigative committee regarding the Maysan Operations Command,” the Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office announced on X. “His Excellency ordered the dismissal of the Operations Commander from his position, following confirmation that the attacks targeting the brothers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were launched from one of the sites within the province.”
وجّه رئيس مجلس الوزراء، القائد العام للقوات المسلحة، السيد علي فالح الزيدي بتشكيل مجلس تحقيقي بحق قيادة عمليات ميسان.
وأمر سيادته بإعفاء قائد العمليات من منصبه، على خلفية ثبوت انطلاق الاعتداءات التي طالت الأشقاء في المملكة العربية السعودية من أحد المواقع داخل المحافظة.…
On Friday, the Houthis acknowledged that they captured new stretches of Red Sea coast from the Saudi-backed factions they’ve been battling. This includes the port of Mokha and the key islands of Perim (also known as Mayun) and Zuqar.
The Bab al-Mandab Strait and the islands of Perim (Mayun) and Zuqar. (Google Earth)
In a quick recap of what’s changed, the port provides a potential new surveillance and launching point for the Houthis. From here they can deploy mines, standoff weapons, as well as uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) that can be used to attack shipping. The islands give the Houthis a presence in the middle of shipping lanes. This is especially true for Perim, which sits in the narrowest part of the BAM, less than two miles west of Yemen and about 13 miles east of Djibouti, giving the Houthis a commanding presence at the mouth of the Red Sea. Its position could even allow Houthis to launch attacks on shipping using lower-end munitions, such as anti-tank guided missiles and even rocket artillery.
However, maintaining a major military presence on these islands would be a challenge logistically, especially should the U.S. or its allies attack positions there. You can read more about how the fall of the islands unfolded in our report here.
As they swept through the coastal region, the Houthis captured a treasure trove of U.S.-made Oshkosh M-ATV mine-resistant vehicles, pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons, artillery pieces, and large quantities of ammunition and small arms abandoned by retreating National Resistance and Giants Brigade forces.
Videos show the scale of equipment the Houthis captured during the western coast offensive.
The "booty" footage from Mokha and surrounding positions includes U.S.-made Oshkosh M-ATV mine-resistant vehicles, pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons (technicals), armored… pic.twitter.com/n3VPyoSmHk
Houthis Display Vehicles and Weapons Seized in Mocha
Yemen’s Houthis have displayed vehicles, weapons and military supplies they say they captured in the Red Sea port city of Mocha after Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies withdrew from the city.… pic.twitter.com/JmTMNY6wIS
Iran, which has held off on getting the Houthis directly involved during Epic Fury, has now played its hand and is putting the Houthis in a better position to close the strait than ever before. This was always a ‘sum of all fears’ scenario for oil exports from the Middle East and now Iran could put maximum pressure on the United States and the world to end the conflict in their favor, with oil potentially being cut off from both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Houthis are likely preparing to close the strait with a much better position than they had before. Having both straits closed has long been a 'sum of all fears' middle east energy crisis. Been writing about this exact scenario for over a decade. U.S. stretched thin, especially in…
Still, on Friday, the Houthis tried to allay those concerns, promising they would limit their control of the BAM to just Saudi vessels.
“The Yemeni armed forces confirm that maritime navigation is safe for all companies, except for Saudi Arabian ships, which have previously been placed under a ban,” Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree proclaimed. “We are continuing to uphold the equation of blockade with blockade, striking enemy Saudi Arabian troop concentrations, and escalating in response to their actions, until the aggression ceases and the blockade is lifted from our dear people.”
Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree. (Houthi Telegram)
Their rationale is that this campaign is all about defending against attacks by the Saudis and their proxies.
The conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis grew out of a civil war in Yemen that erupted in 2014. It expanded a year later when a Saudi-led coalition joined forces with the government ousted by the Houthis and raged on until the parties reached a tenuous ceasefire in 2022. Tensions, however, reignited after that conflict ended when the Houthis joined the U.S.-Iran conflict on the side of their major supporter. In addition to a blockade on Saudi shipping, the Houthis began striking Saudi refineries and other oil infrastructure, including pipelines near the coast.
Houthi assurances about their intentions have meant little in the past. In 2023, when they launched their earlier campaign against Red Sea shipping, the Houthis also claimed a narrow rationale. They said they were doing so on behalf of Palestinians being killed during the Israel-Hamas war. The reality turned out to be that the Houthis were striking even ships not connected to Israel. This ultimately led to the U.S. and allies deploying warships to protect commercial vessels, battles with the rebel group on the water and a campaign of airstrikes on Houthi land targets.
It should be noted that the Saudis held off on getting involved that fight.
The Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Carney fires a surface-to-air missile at Houthi threats on October 19, 2023. U.S. Navy
Amid all this, the per-barrel price of Brent crude rose to more than $109 yesterday, but was back down to $104 today, according to OilPrice.com.
We have long suggested that the U.S. could get pulled back into a new conflict with the Houthis. Now the rebel group’s rapid defeat of the Saudi-backed forces has reportedly already led to an American role in that fight.
“More than 100 US military advisers are on the ground in Saudi Arabia providing intelligence and targeting support to the Kingdom in its military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen,” CNN reported on Thursday, citing multiple sources familiar with the effort. “The US military personnel are working as part of a newly-established joint forces command, which was formed in recent weeks amid signs Iran was ramping up its own efforts to aid Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, one of the sources, a US official, said. That official put the total at roughly 200 troops.”
Still, there are limits on the U.S. role.
“The US is sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia — as it routinely does already — but it is not participating directly in strikes,” CNN noted. “The US is also not helping refuel Saudi warplanes or providing other operational support, as it has in past fighting with the Houthis.”
CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper “flew to the kingdom overnight Thursday as Yemen’s Riyadh-backed forces crumbled in the face of a lightning Houthi offensive southward along Yemen’s western coast this week,” Al-Monitor reported. “He was expected to meet with top Saudi officials as they seek to consolidate the battered military effort by forces aligned with Yemen’s government.”
Trump, as we noted at the top of this story, has already declined to intervene kinetically.
“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called President Trump twice Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis as the Iran-backed group closed in on a vital Red Sea chokepoint,” Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials. “Trump declined, and U.S. officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now.”
U.S. President Donald Trump (R) meets with Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Win McNamee
Asked if the U.S. would take direct military action against the Houthis, a senior White House official didn’t rule it out but said it is currently relying on regional partners to carry the burden.
“The United States is focused on protecting our core national security interests—such as ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea—while empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges,” the senior official told us. “We are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen Government regarding regional stability.”
The war against Iran and the ongoing mission to try to protect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz have already strained the U.S. military. There have been 18 troops killed, more than 800 wounded and wide scale destruction of U.S. bases and equipment. U.S. commanders have warned that the ongoing conflict is unsustainable without deeply degrading America’s ability to respond to other contingencies. How much the U.S. could commit to a fight against the Houthis is an open question, especially if the Iran war spun-up again. During the Red Sea operation, at times two carrier strike groups and many other assets in the air and on the sea, were needed to sustain that operation.
“A second front potentially adds more U.S. military risk as we try to sustain a military that has been involved in a protracted deployment to support our economic pressure-focused strategy,” former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel told us on Friday. “The U.S. can do just about anything, but it will be a choice that will impact sustainment, create longer-term deployments and impact other national security priorities.”
25 years later, it’s still somber waking up on 9/11. Thinking about all those we lost on that terrible day and in the years of war that followed.
Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.
If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you.
If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like.
Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.
So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on.
Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.
Earlier this year, an Iran-linked actor used Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence model to scrape and analyze data with the aim of helping target U.S. naval forces in the Middle East. A group in Yemen – very likely Iranian-backed Houthi militants – also used Claude to assist with work on guidance systems for ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
These are just some of the revelations about how adversaries and other malign actors have been using one of the premier pieces of AI software being developed in the United States that were contained in a new report Anthropic released late yesterday. The 154-page document also details instances where Claude was used directly and indirectly to support intelligence gathering and surveillance, cyberattacks, influence operations, and even worrisome biological research over the past eight months. In addition to Iran and Yemen, the human actors behind these activities were based in Russia, China, and a host of other countries.
Anthropic has shared details about what it calls the “misuse” of its models in the past, but describes the new report as its “most detailed” to date. The company has clearly been cataloging these case studies, and has assigned each one a control number. Though the entire contents of the report are cause for concern, the explicit attempt to use Claude to target American forces, as well as to develop new higher-end missiles and other military technology, are particular standouts and signs of what’s to come, as we will highlight below.
GTG-30005: Military reconnaissance
GTG-30005 is the case study dealing with the targeting of U.S. naval forces, and the summary is as follows:
“In another investigation, we identified and disrupted an Iran-nexus threat actor that used Claude to collect and analyze publicly accessible data to develop targeting recommendations against US naval forces in the region. The threat actor used Claude to compile targeting handbooks, through a Python pipeline the threat actor built with Claude’s assistance, to identify and track naval positions based on open-source information. The compiled material included a roster of US personnel scraped from captions on public military photographs; publicly accessible ship and aircraft transponder identifiers; commercial satellite-imagery query scripts; and an inventory of public websites that exposed US naval movements. The threat actor also directed Claude to compile vulnerability research on shipboard systems, cataloging known CVEs in maritime VSAT terminals, Cisco communications equipment, and industrial control products.”
“We banned the actor’s account, developed detections to reduce the risk of future misuse, and shared threat intelligence with government authorities to disrupt the threat.”
The Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and several other US Navy warships sail together in the Arabian Sea in June 2026. CENTCOM
How exactly Anthropic defines the term “nexus” here is not immediately clear, and other entries in its new report also use “state-nexus” in addition to country-based variations. However, in this specific case, an addendum is added to the entry that explicitly says that the same account was separately tied to “domestic mass surveillance” software development work “for Iranian state systems,” clearly pointing to an actor directly linked to the regime in Tehran.
The use of AI technology by nation-state armed forces to develop target sets and engage them is already known to be growing globally. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been a pioneer in this regard, but the U.S. military, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and others are also known to be developing and fielding these capabilities.
GTG-87001: Disrupting a Yemen-based guided weapons engineering cell using Claude to develop guidance software
Anthropic’s new report details an instance where an individual in Yemen used Claude as part of missile guidance work, which is given the control number GTG-87001.
“We identified a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen running three weapons development programs: a guided rocket that used a commodity phone-class flight computer with final-phase homing guidance; a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated range goal above 2,000 km; and a multi-variant missile (referred to as the “R2000” set) that included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant.”
“The actors used Claude Code in place of human software engineers to develop the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) software that steers and stabilizes a flying vehicle. For example, they used Claude to integrate an open-source autopilot onto a phone-class flight computer, writing the control and position estimation software, tuning the control settings, running a firmware build pipeline, and performing a flight simulation. The actors managed several Claude instances at once, assigning each one a role, much as a lead would delegate work on a small engineering team: the actors tasked one instance with writing the code, another with research, and a third with reviewing the code the first instance produced.”
A graphic included in Anthropic’s new report summarizing the ways in which Claude was used by the actors in Yemen to support missile guidance system development. Anthropic
“Our safeguards blocked many of their requests, but not all of them. The actors used a variety of tactics to evade our safeguards, including hiding their goals and the products the software was meant for, and they split their work across multiple sessions so no single session revealed their full intent.”
“These actors carried out a sustained effort to develop guided weapons, including using Claude to design guidance software. We do not have evidence the actors succeeded in fielding an operational device; but they did test-fire a guided rocket. This field test appears to have failed: within hours, the actors returned to Claude to work out why it failed.”
“We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We banned accounts associated with the actors and shared threat information with public- and private-sector partners to mitigate risks posed by the actors. Nevertheless, we have evidence that the actors had already built an offline simulation toolkit that does not rely on Claude or other engineering computing environments such as MATLAB.”
As mentioned earlier, the report does not name the Houthis, but that group has historically been based primarily in the northern end of Yemen. It is also the only entity in the country known to have active missile development programs, which are conducted with critical support from Iran.
Whether this particular work directly resulted in any new capabilities is unknown. Anthropic notes that there looked to be at least one failed test launch before the accounts were banned, which would have occurred sometime after the beginning of this year, based on the stated cutoff dates for the report. By the end of 2025, the Houthis had already amassed a wide array of very real ballistic missiles, including types with at least claimed ranges of 2,000 kilometers (approximately 1,242 miles). The group also has a variety of cruise missiles and one-way attack drones that it has employed operationally.
An example of just one of the many types of ballistic missiles in the Houthis’ arsenal. Houthi-controlled media
Still, being able to leverage Claude could only have helped any domestic missile development efforts in Yemen, which might help reduce dependency on Iran, at least to a degree. Furthermore, developing functional hypersonic glide vehicles capable of prolonged stable flight has historically been notoriously difficult, even for entities with extensive relevant knowledge bases on an organizational level.
GTG-17001: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to draft a fire control specification and acquisition documents for undersea warfare
Use of Claude in foreign military endeavours goes beyond the Middle East, as evidenced by case study GTG-17001. This involved a Chinese actor conducting work related to a naval counter-torpedo defense system.
“We identified a China-based threat actor who used Claude to advance three parallel tracks of work on an anti-torpedo weapons system:”
“First, the actor used Claude to draft a Chinese-language specification for an anti-torpedo fire control system (the core logic that aims and times an anti-torpedo weapon’s response). The document was written to win approval from a Chinese defense manufacturer, which would move the work on to technical certification and operational testing.”
“Second, the actor used Claude to produce a Chinese-language technical proposal of more than 200 pages, accompanied by an executive briefing deck.”
“Third, the actor used Claude to benchmark their own system against specific US anti-torpedo and anti-submarine programs based on publicly accessible information. They then generated a Chinese-language briefing on US Navy systems derived from open-source reporting.”
“The actor presented themselves as an original equipment manufacturer in the US defense sector. We assess the actor was associated with a Chinese defense industry manufacturer aiming to produce a weapons specification and acquisition proposal for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.”
This picture shows a test of an anti-torpedo system fitted experimentally to a Nimitz class aircraft carrier in the 2010s. USN
“The actor used Claude to write the acquisition proposal, refining it over many drafts. After each draft, the actor instructed Claude to role-play a hostile expert reviewer to critique the proposal, then used that feedback to sharpen the next version. In parallel, the actor used Claude to build pieces of the anti-torpedo weapons system’s fire control software and a test matrix to validate them.”
“The operational lift the actor achieved was a function of using Claude to automate complex technical outputs. The actor leveraged the model to compress the development timelines for the certification registry, compliance documentation, and automated fire control logic. The actor also accelerated the traditional human review cycle by having Claude critique the acquisition proposal across multiple rounds of review while role-playing a persona.”
“We uncovered this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We cannot attribute the activity to a specific entity or actor. But we have banned the account for violating our Supported Regions Policy and our Usage Policy, which prohibits weapons design and development, and incorporated our investigative findings into our safeguards to mitigate the risk of future misuse.”
Anthropic’s report does not name the U.S. programs leveraged here, but does note the information in question was publicly available. Anti-torpedo systems for surface warships and submarines have been an area of significant interest for the U.S. Navy for years now. Those developments have also produced compact torpedo designs for use in other applications.
A Very Lightweight Torpedo (VLT), a compact torpedo design developed by Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman
The PLAN’s interest in these same kinds of capabilities is not at all surprising. Underwater threats and countermeasures to them, broadly speaking, would play a central and vital role in any future conflict between the United States and China across the broad expanses of the Pacific.
GTG-27005: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to engineer an autonomous military drone swarm
Another case study, GTG-27005, details the use of Claude by Russian actors working on drone swarming technology.
“We identified likely freelance Russia-based threat actors who set out to build a full-stack autonomous first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drone swarm. The actors used Claude Code to write and test the code and save it directly into the actors’ own project files. In addition to Claude Code, the actors used a software-in-the-loop simulation stack and a rented graphics processing host for model training. They called the operation ‘DronDoc’ or ‘Serafim.'”
“The actors used Claude to build the core software system, including the drones’ shared swarm memory and fault-tolerant coordination logic (FTCL); an onboard small language model to govern attack, observe, and return-to-base behaviors; a terminal guidance software system to steer drones to their target (using the onboard camera) and issue the call to detonate; a control-link geolocation module to find opposing drone operators; a passive acoustic detection layer; and low-level logic for the drones’ programmable chips. The actors designed the platform for autonomous lethal engagement; the onboard model could select targets (including a ‘person’ target class) and issue detonation commands without a human in the loop. The actors’ activity—including flashing the low-level firmware to live development boards, provisioning single-board computers, and wiring up a simulation environment over a mesh network—confirmed that they were using real hardware-in-loop testing within their sessions.”
Many were surprised yesterday by the news that a Russian fiber-optic FPV drone flew into Kramatorsk and attacked a car.
But there is nothing surprising here. The war of 2025 is already very different from the war of 2024. From LBZ to Kram — 20 kilometers. Enemy FPVs can fly even… pic.twitter.com/hTfhJFPcxZ
“The actors trained a computer vision classifier on scraped Ukrainian combat footage, splitting the target classes into “enemy” and “friendly,” and allow-listing Russian systems. They also repeatedly used a fixed coordinate in Donetsk Oblast as the demonstration strike point, with front-line cities and corridors in Ukraine as the mission geography.”
“The actors created their accounts between late 2025 and early 2026 and started the operation in mid-May 2026. The actors circumvented our geographic access controls by routing traffic through commercial virtual private servers.”
“We assess the actors were a small, specialized freelance team doing a mix of civilian and military work, not a Russian state entity. We identified nine accounts associated with this group; eight were used only for ordinary freelance work, not weapons-related software development. Based on our investigation, we assess the actors had ties to a regional university with a federal research center associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. The actors claimed to have received funding from Russia’s Advanced Research Foundation, National Technology Initiative, and Ministry of Defence, though we cannot verify those claims. We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development, we banned accounts associated with the actors, and have incorporated our investigative findings into safeguards to reduce the risk of future misuse.”
Anthropic’s report included a table, reproduced below, detailing different types of drones and other capabilities that were fed into the model as part of this work.
GTG-17002: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to build targeting software for electronic warfare and air defense suppression
The last case study in the Conventional Weapons section of Anthropic’s new report, GTG-17002, covers electronic warfare-related work by a Chinese actor, with a particular focus on potential air defense targets in Taiwan.
“We identified a China-based actor who used Claude’s chat, coding, and agentic work tools to design, build, and iterate on a Chinese-language suite of about 16 modules for electronic warfare, using the electromagnetic spectrum to detect, jam, or deceive an opponent’s radar and communications, and for suppressing an opponent’s air defenses.”
“The actor used Claude to build the software system, from the underlying logic to the user interface, and iterated through 12 versions. This included implementing and optimizing the system’s radar detection and jamming physics, generating a vulnerability analysis module, and drafting Chinese-language targeting instructions. The software suite the actor built analyzed an opponent’s radars, surface-to-air missile sites, command posts, and communications nodes, then computed their detection coverage, assessed the effectiveness of jamming, ranked targets by value and vulnerability, including which to suppress first, and determined how best to assign jammer sorties to targets across multi-day campaigns. The suite also ranked which of an opponent’s assets to suppress first, and modeled specific engagement envelopes, including those of Patriot and THAAD-class [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] systems.”
“Mid-project, we observed the actor change the simulation’s default scenario to 12 targets in Taiwan. The targets included a command bunker in Taiwan, an early warning radar site, Patriot and Tien Kung [surface-to-air missile] batteries, major air bases, and a regional combatant command headquarters.”
“The actor also ran a self-hosted model on an internal network alongside Claude and connected the software suite to this model through a tool-use integration.”
“Based on our investigation, we assess the actor is a China-based defense and military-industrial researcher. Account-level metadata and content flagged by our safeguards indicated the actor was linked to PRC research institutions, including the PLA Academy of Military Sciences. We detected this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development, we banned accounts linked to the actor, and have incorporated our investigative findings into our safeguards to reduce the risk of future misuse.”
An accompanying table, seen below, mentions several specific types of U.S.-made air defense radars, as well as the Link-16 datalink network, as having come up in the course of this work. Electronic warfare variants of the Chinese Y-8 and Y-9 aircraft, as well as the J-16D electronic warfare jet, and what appears to be a reference to the Golden Eagle drone helicopter, are also mentioned.
A Chinese Y-8GX-11, one of several electronic warfare variants of the Y-8/Y-9 design. Chinese internet via X
The suppression of enemy air defenses is an essential part of any modern air campaign, whether conducted independently or as a part of a larger operation. This would be no less critical in any military intervention against Taiwan from the mainland, or any other larger-scale conflict the PLA might find itself in.
Guardrails and ethics
Beyond the details in any of the specific case studies, Anthropic’s new report underscores growing broader concerns about guardrails for the use of AI and general ethics surrounding the technology. As noted in the instances above, Anthropic has also implemented various safeguards to try to block access to Claude from certain regions and/or to prevent the model from conducting certain types of work. At the same time, what the company has now shared makes clear that those protections can still be circumvented to a significant degree, at least for now.
TWZ has noted in the past that America’s adversaries are likely to be less worried about ethics, in general, when it comes to AI. Anthropic’s new report also shows there are few bounds to what state-aligned or even non-state actors might seek to use this technology for, including the development of potential weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time, AI models like Claude are not going away, and developments continue to advance at an ever-quickening pace, opening the door to further proliferation. Developments are rapidly intermingling globally, with companies in China notably leveraging models created in the U.S. to further their own work, which is then released publicly. The technology will increasingly become more integrated and critical to most aspects of military operations and weapons development, alongside its commercial and civilian applications. It is just as much a superweapon as anything else, and the country with the more capable models, and the willingness to deploy them, will have a major edge in future conflicts.
With all this in mind, it seems very plausible, if not probable, that the case studies described in Anthropic’s new report are just the tip of an approaching iceberg that will need a concerted effort to tackle.
Lockheed Martin and a team made up of Boeing and Anduril are now facing off head-to-head to supply a new middle-tier surface-to-air missile to the U.S. Army. The service wants a second interceptor for its new Enduring Shield system, which can already fire AIM-9X Sidewinders, to expand its capabilities, especially against incoming cruise missiles.
Boeing and Anduril announced their offering had been selected to move ahead to the next phase of the competition to develop what is formally called the Integrated Fires Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2) Second Interceptor on Wednesday. The Army subsequently confirmed to Breaking Defense that Lockheed Martin advanced to phase 2 of this program. Rafael Systems Global Sustainment, a U.S. subsidiary of Israeli defense contractor Rafael, had also been in the running, but was not down-selected.
The Army’s search for a second interceptor for Enduring Shield traces back to at least 2023. The system, developed by Leidos’ subsidiary Dynetics, is entering operational service now paired with the AIM-9X. It is designed to provide short-to-medium range defense against a variety of aerial threats, including drones. The Army has not had any kind of mid-range air defense capability since it retired its Hawk surface-to-air missile systems in the 1990s.
A US Army Enduring Shield launcher seen deployed in South Korea. USAF Pfc. Sang Woo Choi
A model of the missile Boeing and Anduril have put forward was only shown publicly for the first time earlier this year. Boeing says it is a clean-sheet design and it uses a solid-fuel rocket motor provided by Anduril.
A model of the Boeing/Anduril interceptor seen on display at the 2026 Space & Missile Defense Symposium in August of this year. Jamie Hunter
In its announcement about the Army’s down-selection, Boeing shared a previously unreleased rendering of the design, which notably had two sets of fins toward the tail end of the body. The model that has been shown so far only has one set of fins at the very rear of the body. Whether the rendering reflects a newer or older version of the design is unclear. What is seen in the rendering may also be an additional booster rocket motor not seen on the model, which could be necessary for ground-launched applications.
The rendering that Boeing released this week as part of the announcement of its selection to proceed in the IFPC Inc Second Interceptor competition. Boeing
Boeing has also said that the new interceptor is being developed with an emphasis on lower cost and producibility. Modularity and open-architecture systems to enable “faster, lower-cost upgrades by allowing seeker, avionics or software blocks to be swapped without redesigning the entire weapon” have also been particular focus areas, according to the company.
Other details about the missile’s design and capabilities, including how it is guided, remain limited.
“Our scalable production approach is designed to provide a reliable, affordable layer of defense against a range of aerial threats to protect the warfighter with practical, dependable capability when it matters most,” Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems, had said in a statement earlier this week.
Lockheed Martin first showed a rendering of its design last year, but has also shared relatively specific details about it since then. For what has been seen so far, it is visually reminiscent, at least in broad strokes, of a compact air-to-air missile concept called Cuda, which the company previously promoted for a time in the 2010s.
A rendering depicting Lockheed Martin’s proposed interceptor being fired from Enduring Shield launchers. Lockheed Martin
The design is “not new,” Chris Murphy, senior manager of Business Development for Integrated Air and Missile Defense Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division, confirmed to TWZ in October 2025.
“There are technologies that we already have that we’re leveraging,” Murphy added at the time. “But the requirements for the missile are such that they’re going to be new technologies, and there’s going to be some level of development in order to get those integrated.”
“So you know that our [PAC-3] MSE missile [for the Patriot surface-to-air missile system] is a hit-to-kill system, right? We have great confidence in that technology,” he also said when asked specifically about whether the interceptor would have a traditional warhead. “We also work [on] blast-frag[mentation warheads] on other programs. So we will look at everything. That’s part of the trade space the Army has asked us to look at.”
The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) is generally presented as a hit-to-kill weapon, meaning that it is designed to destroy its target through sheer force of impact. However, it is actually something of a hybrid design that includes a high-explosive “lethality enhancer” charge to increase its chance of scoring a hit, something you can learn more about here.
A breakdown of the PAC-3 MSE’s key features, including the “lethality enhancer.” Lockheed Martin
For its part, the Army has talked in the past about wanting its second interceptor for Enduring Shield to offer roughly comparable capabilities to the AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), but in the same form factor as the AIM-9X. A key driving factor behind the size requirement is retaining magazine depth. The system’s existing palletized launchers can currently be loaded with up to 18 Sidewinders in individual canisters.
“I do want to highlight a couple of things that I think are very critical gaps that we have. I don’t think – I cannot add anything to the emphasis on magazine depth for currently fielded systems, or for the need for cheaper and [a] wide-ranging mix of interceptors,” Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, head of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), told TWZ and other attendees in a keynote address at the 2026 Space & Missile Defense Symposium last month. “That couldn’t be made more loud and clear from the highest levels of our government.”
At that time, Rafferty also stressed the need to further expand the Army’s ability to provide multi-layered air and missile defense capabilities. Enduring Shield, as the Army’s first middle-tier air defense system in decades, is already a key component of that broader effort.
The Army also more specifically sees Enduring Shield as central to reducing over-reliance on its Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. The immense strain on the service’s Patriot force and its inadequacy to meet existing operational demands are well established at this point, and have only been reinforced by the latest conflict with Iran. The Army is notably in the process of establishing its first new Patriot battalion in years, on Guam, which will actually be a composite unit also equipped with Enduring Shield. Pairing the two systems together helps free up Patriot batteries to engage higher-tier threats, especially ballistic missiles, which may themselves be targeting air defenders directly.
The Army has now at least moved to the next phase of the competition for a second interceptor for the Enduring Shield system, demand for which is already growing.
France is accelerating work on the Rafale F5 standard, bringing forward development of a major new configuration of its combat aircraft at a time when the country’s planned next-generation fighter with Germany has effectively collapsed in its original form. The contracts cover the equipment judged to have the highest technical risk, ahead of the overall development contract for the F5 standard, expected for the end of this year.
The French defense procurement agency, the Direction générale de l’armement (DGA), ordered the first upstream development work for F5 from Dassault Aviation, Thales, MBDA, and Safran. The contracts cover key areas including navigation, datalinks, radar, electronic warfare, and propulsion, laying the groundwork for the next configuration of the Rafale, which is planned to enter service with the French Air and Space Force and the French Navy starting around 2033.
The most extensive modernization of the Rafale yet, the F5 standard was originally part of a longer transition toward France’s next-generation combat-air capability. But with the Franco-German New Generation Fighter (NGF) effort now effectively dead in its original configuration, the accelerated F5 program is taking on a much larger strategic role.
Concept artwork of the NGF future fighter. Dassault Aviation
Rather than simply keeping the Rafale relevant until NGF arrives, France is now developing a version of the aircraft that is set to carry much of the country’s high-end combat-air capability well into the 2030s and potentially beyond.
The increasingly capable F5 could, in turn, reduce the urgency of finding a replacement for the Rafale — while potentially adding to the fighter’s export appeal. After a slow start, Dassault has recorded export sales of 299 new-build Rafales to eight nations.
The DGA’s contracts engage four of France’s principal combat-aircraft industrial players. Dassault Aviation remains responsible for the aircraft and its overall integration; Thales is involved in major sensor, electronic warfare, and communications capabilities; MBDA is responsible for much of the weapons system; and Safran is responsible for propulsion.
The Rafale assembly line at the Dassault Aviation facility in Mérignac, France. Dassault Aviation – V. Almansa ALMANSA
Previous Rafale standards have largely consisted of incremental upgrades, focusing on software and other improvements to the existing aircraft configuration. F5 is notably more extensive, addressing many of the critical systems that determine how the aircraft senses the battlespace, communicates with other platforms, conducts electronic warfare, and generates the power needed to operate increasingly demanding equipment.
The DGA has specifically identified the Thales RBE2-XG radar as one of the major technological advances associated with F5.
The RBE2-XG is expected to feature gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors. Compared with previous technology, GaN generates less heat and has the capacity to operate at higher voltages, meaning that output power can be increased, while component size can be reduced. Overall, using GaN should help to get more power out of the radar without increasing its size.
According to the DGA, “This new radar will benefit from a substantial increase in power, and consequently in detection range, as well as improvements in the identification of targets with an extremely low radar cross-section (RCS). Its computing capabilities will also be enhanced to facilitate the integration of artificial intelligence.”
The RBE2-XG will also be “designed with collaborative combat in mind, featuring sensors capable of working together without the need for pilot intervention.” It is also planned to have enhanced resilience, including against cyber threats.
France is already working on the concept of a combat drone to accompany the Rafale, with the future F5 standard providing the crewed aircraft around which those systems can operate.
A Rafale during a test mission with a Dassault nEUROn combat drone demonstrator. Dassault Aviation – A. Pecchi
The new radar will be combined with more capable electronic warfare equipment, improved communications and datalinks, expanded processing capacity, and a more capable propulsion system.
To be developed by MBDA and Thales, the forthcoming F5 version of the SPECTRA self-protection suite is intended to significantly improve detection and jamming capabilities, the DGA says, “through a fully digital approach, enabling a complete overhaul of the core electronic warfare system to counter the increasing density and broadening of the threat spectrum, as well as the growing complexity of threat waveforms, expected by 2035.”
Thales will also be responsible for the new Inter-Vehicle Data Link (IVDL) system, described as a “stealthy and resilient datalink.” The DGA says the new datalink will expand connectivity “thanks to a new high-speed, discreet, and jamming-resistant waveform. IVDL will allow the Rafale to penetrate hostile areas where jammers are widespread, while maintaining optimal quality of communication and dialogue between aircraft.”
Safran will begin preliminary design work on the M88 T-Rex engine, which is planned to increase the turbofan’s thrust from around 16,500 pounds to nearly 19,850 pounds, an increase of roughly 20 percent.
In terms of armament, the contract announcement mentions the ASN4G missile, set to be introduced to service by 2035, which will allow the Rafale F5 to continue to serve as the airborne nuclear component. The munition remains in the early stages of development, but it will be capable of hypersonic speeds — defined as speeds greater than Mach 5 — with a range in excess of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).
Other likely new missiles include a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile to succeed the current Meteor. As you can read about here, France’s Comet program, apparently led by the French side of MBDA, is already looking into this requirement, with an apparent plan to introduce the weapon around 2030.
An older video from MBDA showing some of the company’s weapons integrated on earlier versions of the Rafale:
For France, the original logic behind the pan-European FCAS program was that Rafale would eventually give way to the NGF as its principal crewed combat aircraft, operating from land bases and aircraft carriers.
With the collapse of the Franco-German effort, France cannot simply wait for a next-generation fighter program whose industrial and political future is uncertain. Instead, the Rafale has to remain capable against rapidly evolving threats throughout the 2030s and beyond.
With the F5 standard, however, France is looking to incorporate some of the concepts envisaged for NGF. These include distributed architectures in which crewed fighters, uncrewed aircraft, remote carriers, missiles, and offboard sensors cooperate across a battlespace.
The nEUROn drone and a Rafale M in flight over the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, during tests to investigate the use of a UCAV in a naval context. Dassault Aviation – A. Pecchi
For now, F5 also sidesteps the central problem in the now-defunct Franco-German effort: whether the two countries could agree on the requirements, industrial structure, and workshare behind a new-generation combat aircraft.
Despite its advances, the F5 airframe remains derived from a design dating back to the 1980s, which first entered French service in the early 2000s. In particular, it falls well short of fifth-generation designs — let alone sixth-generation ones — in terms of low observability. This is one area where collaborative drones could potentially help compensate for the Rafale’s inherent limitations.
France has therefore bought itself some time with the F5 program. But it may eventually decide that it needs a future high-end crewed fighter to provide capabilities that an upgraded fourth-generation airframe cannot fully replicate, particularly in terms of survivability against advanced integrated air-defense systems, signature reduction, internal weapons carriage, and operations deep inside heavily contested airspace.
On an industrial level, F5 is also significant because it brings together the same French industrial heavyweights that would have formed the backbone of its FCAS effort. Dassault Aviation, Thales, Safran, and MBDA are now well-positioned to work together on whatever comes after F5, whether that is a crewed combat aircraft, uncrewed CCA-type platforms, or a combination of both. Based on its experience with the nEUROn program, France would be well placed to develop a UCAV that can work cooperatively as well as independently, taking over the deeper-penetrating fighter mission set, and potentially skipping a sixth-generation fighter altogether.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNsu7g7r94
Meanwhile, success with F5 — and, in particular, with the wider combat ecosystem planned around it — could put France in an even stronger position when it comes to any future European fighter project.
For the time being, Britain, Italy, and Japan are pursuing the GCAP/Tempest pathway toward a new combat aircraft. Germany and Spain remain tied to the wider FCAS architecture, even as the original Franco-German NGF arrangement has fractured. Sweden’s position is less clear, with indications that it could collaborate with either France or Germany.
France, for its part, is now investing heavily in an increasingly sophisticated Rafale architecture while maintaining its own sovereign industrial base.
In terms of acqusition, France is expected to pursue a mixed approach, buying new-build Rafales while upgrading suitable aircraft already in service to the F5 standard. The oldest jets are unlikely to receive the full F5 treatment, however.
The irony is that the failure of the NGF effort may ultimately make Rafale F5 more important — and potentially more capable — than it was ever expected to be.
Work at a specialized underground weapons test site in New Mexico, contracted earlier this year, was linked to planning for a potential new operation targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, according to a report from CNN. The U.S. military has notably left Iran’s hardest-to-reach site under Pickaxe Mountain untouched so far, but President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials have been openly talking about striking it.
On February 27, the day before U.S. and Israeli forces launched their initial wave of strikes on Iran, the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) quietly announced it had awarded a sole-source deal to Pate Construction Co., Inc., for new construction at the so-called Alternate Seismic Hardrock in Situ Test (ALT-SHIST) site. The work was needed to support an upcoming classified live-fire test. ALT-SHIST is situated within the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), a sprawling U.S. Army-managed complex in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert basin. DTRA is a relatively small and obscure organization that plays a leading role in U.S. military efforts to develop new and improved ways to respond to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threats.
WSMR and DTRA have come up in discussions about strikes on Iran in the past. The U.S. military’s heaviest conventional air-dropped weapon, the 30,000-pound-class GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bomb, has been extensively tested at multiple sites there in the past. DTRA was also directly involved in its initial development. MOPs made their combat debut during U.S. strikes last year on underground Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz as part of Operation Midnight Hammer. The possibility has been raised that a different site within WSMR may have been used to test the plan of attack against Fordow, which involved two ventilation shafts being hit with six GBU-57/Bs each. The bombs were dropped in rapid succession, with each one burrowing deeper and deeper into the facility below. WSMR also happens to contain the site of the first atomic bomb test in 1945.
A map showing the general location of White Sands Missile Range, with an inset giving a better sense of how expansive it is. Holloman Air Force Base, which juts into the southern end of the range complex, is also highlighted. Google Maps
“The plans for the test [at ALT-SHIST] were connected to the Iran war,” CNN said in its story, published yesterday, citing unnamed sources “familiar with the matter.” Beyond that, the planned testing was tied to a “need to develop a way to target Iran’s deepest-buried underground facilities and, likely, simulate U.S. strikes against specific nuclear facilities.”
CNN said it was unable to independently verify whether or not the test in question had occurred.
A formal justification for the sole-source contract to Pate Construction that DTRA released in February did not mention Iran or elaborate on the need for the new testing at ALT-SHIST, but stressed there was an urgent requirement critical to U.S. national security.
“The services required are the immediate and mission-critical enabling services for a ‘real-world’ national security ordinance [sic; ordnance] test. This is not routine construction; it is the highly specialized remediation and operational preparation of a unique, subterranean test facility at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR),” according to the justification document, which DTRA officials had approved on February 24. “The work is a critical path dependency for a live-fire test designed to validate classified capabilities against rapidly emerging threats.”
“As the incumbent contractor for over a decade, Pate Construction Co., Inc. possesses unparalleled and non-transferable tacit knowledge of this specific subterranean test facility. This is a unique Government structure with complex geological and security considerations, and Pate Construction Co., Inc.’s direct, hands-on experience is a tangible asset that no other source possesses,” the document adds. “Pate Construction Co., Inc. is the only contractor that currently maintains a fully mobilized presence at WSMR with the specific heavy equipment and security-cleared operators required.”
CNN‘s piece says apparent work at ALT-SHIST was visible in satellite imagery of the site between mid-February and mid-March, but the outlet said it was unable to confirm whether or not this was related to the contract with Pate Construction.
We reviewed satellite imagery showing work at a remote DTRA/STRATCOM test site that coincided with this contracting action, but we couldn’t confirm its purpose.
The Pentagon didn’t respond to our questions regarding the test, and we couldn’t independently confirm it occurred. pic.twitter.com/k8zyvqWy56
ALT-SHIST is an active test site, and any work observed there earlier this year could well have been linked to other projects. For instance, additional publicly available DTRA contracting documents offer details about planned work on a specific part of the ALT-SHIST site, called Tunnel 7, tracing back to last year, as part of a project nicknamed Millstone Willemite 6 (MW-6).
“This task requires the construction contractor to repair and address the damage to Tunnel 7 caused by prior incidents, in accordance with government-provided designs, specifications, and other contract documents,” according to one contracting document dated September 15, 2025. “The contractor will also be responsible for providing support during testing activities, as well as safing after each test and general support between tests. All tunnel construction must be completed by 15 June 2027.”
“The contractor shall repair a D-shape tunnel and overburden using the D-shape of 20 feet depth and width, inside the tunnel. The contractor shall remove and repair any damage to the ribs, crown, and invert to Tunnel 7,” that same document continues. “After the repair of Tunnel 7, the contractor shall provide general construction support to instrument the tunnel in preparation for testing and then safe the tunnel for re-entry post-testing.”
The schedule for the MW-6-related work indicates that it is separate from what Pate Construction was hired to do at the site back in February.
A view out into a mountainous part of the White Sands Missile Range complex. USACE
ALT-SHIST, which was first established in 1995, is also not the only site DTRA makes use of within WSMR. As its name indicates, it is an alternate to the original SHIST site, use of which began in 1993.
“There was a small addition made to the SHIST site, but that area has been heavily used since 2007,” according to an environmental impact study the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed in 2015. “The granite bedrock at these sites has been fractured and damaged by extensive testing. There are no existing granite areas adjacent to those sites where similar testing can be performed.”
A map showing the relative locations of SHIST and ALT-SHIST, as well as other test sites, at the northern end of the WSMR complex. USACE
USACE conducted that study in support of the establishment of a new test site at WSMR, simply called the Granite Test Site, to succeed the original SHIST. The Granite Test Site is now in use. There are many more sites within the range complex designed to simulate underground and otherwise hardened targets. This is also just one aspect of the wide array of testing that occurs on a daily basis at WSMR.
All three also appear to have been involved in the testing and development of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). 5/10 pic.twitter.com/3aWSYXIZln
However, the presence of large areas of undisturbed granite is a key factor here, as that is particularly relevant for testing weapons designed to penetrate into extremely deeply buried facilities. CNN‘s piece yesterday noted that Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain site is built underneath a granite mountain.
“The mountain in White Sands, they specifically picked mountainous areas that were solid rock, and they used state-of-the-art tunneling technology to make the kind of cavities in the mountain that you would put this kind of [Iranian nuclear] facility in,” Gary Stradling, a retired scientist who previously worked for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), told TWZ in an interview last year. “I think that there is a lot of work that DOD has done in these kinds of facilities that is highly classified, and I couldn’t talk to you about it. This is very sophisticated work. It is not casual, and it’s not speculative. These are real experts who are doing the work. Careful, technical, quantitative work to be able to deliver this kind of war-fighting capability to the services.”
TWZ spoke to Stradling, who did work tied to earth-penetrating munitions at various points during his lengthy career, in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer.
Me, standing at the edge of a MOP crater on a mountain top at White Sands Test Range, where detailed studies of massive earth penetrators were studied for effectiveness against deeply buried targets by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) —formerly Defense Nuclear Agency.… pic.twitter.com/JYq1V2xO6q
The U.S. military notably did not strike Pickaxe Mountain, which is situated immediately to the southwest of Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, during Operation Midnight Hammer. The site also went untouched by Israel during last year’s 12 Day War. American and Israeli forces did not target it during major combat operations earlier this year, either. All of this underscores the targeting challenge the site presents, even for strikes using MOPs, which TWZ explored in detail earlier this year and that has continued to make it a point of particular discussion.
CNN‘s report yesterday was primarily focused on a new assessment of ongoing construction at Pickaxe Mountain from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington, D.C.
Satellite “images reveal more road activity at Pickaxe Mountain in 2026 than at any point in the site’s history,” according to a report CSIS published yesterday. “There is a clear surge in construction activity in 2026 that corresponds to the raising and hardening of the portal accesses, paving of the internal road network, reinforcement around access areas, and the flattening and removal of excavation spoil.”
“This assessment can neither refute nor substantiate the Israeli intelligence claim that Iran moved centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain,” CSIS’s report also noted. “The continuous construction, the absence of an increased internal security posture, and the lack of observed nonconstruction vehicles and equipment suggest the underground facility is not yet capable of enrichment work, if that is the intended purpose. Further analysis of daily activity would be needed to establish the site’s pattern of life beyond its current construction footprint.”
This is in line with TWZ‘s own previous reporting on Pickaxe Mountain back in July, when there were already signs of growing activity following the establishment of a shaky ceasefire between the United States and Iran the preceding month. As we wrote at that time:
“As with the strikes on Fordow, multiple bombs could be dropped on the same impact point to try to penetrate further down into Pickaxe Mountain. Whether there might be similar ventilation shafts or other weak points that could be exploited at Pickaxe Mountain is unknown. …”
A graphic with details about the employment of MOPs on strikes at Fordow during Operation Midnight Hammer. DOD
“A strike ‘right in the front door’ on the tunnel entrances at Pickaxe Mountain would be another option to at least hamper access to the facility inside for a time. This could be combined with strikes aimed at sections of the tunnel networks that run deeper inside the facility, but that are still close enough to the surface to be reachable by available conventional munitions. For instance, MOPs may not be able to hit the main cavern areas, but they could possibly hit certain tunnels that might lead to them.”
“Even a combined strike on entrances and shallow tunnels at Pickaxe Mountain could still present certain challenges. Firm intelligence on exactly where the tunnels snake under the mountain could be limited, making it difficult to select the best impact points. This is exactly why the U.S. military has been investing heavily in advanced, void-sensing fuzes for MOP and other bunker buster bombs for decades now. These fuzes detect when a munition has penetrated into a sufficiently large space, such as a room or tunnel in an underground facility, to help maximize damage. Fuzes that can effectively ‘count’ floors also help to ensure the munition has burrowed sufficiently deep before detonating.”
…
“…the U.S. military could conduct follow-on strikes on the entry points at Pickaxe Mountain to disrupt any attempt to regain access, as well.”
“Destroying Pickaxe Mountain will be a scientific and targeting challenge,” CSIS also noted in its report yesterday. “It is an underground fortress buttressed by granite. It is one of the only facilities in Iran’s nuclear program that the United States has not yet struck. Structurally degrading Pickaxe Mountain requires more than just kinetic force – it takes actionable high-confidence intelligence and sophisticated mathematical modeling.”
With all this in mind, it is not at all hard to imagine how new testing at ALT-SHIST, as well as other sites, would be essential for exploring additional options for striking Pickaxe Mountain and/or other deeply-buried targets in Iran using MOPs and/or other munitions.
A US Air Force B-2 bomber drops a GBU-57/B MOP during a test. USAF
It’s also worth noting here that GBU-57/Bs are understood to be in relatively short supply, though it is unknown how many of them are currently in inventory. Furthermore, the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bombers are currently the only aircraft certified to employ the huge MOPs operationally. There was a report in 2024 that prime contractor Boeing was working to expand its capacity to produce these bombs. A MOP successor, the GBU-76/B Next Generation Penetrator (NGP), is in development now, but prototyping work is expected to run through the end of Fiscal Year 2028.
President Donald Trump certainly has raised the prospect of a strike on Pickaxe Mountain publicly on several occasions since July. He has also repeatedly said that the site is being persistently surveilled, particularly from space.
“There’s another place called Pickaxe Mountain, another nice place. We may have to give them a shot there, too, because someone said there was a little movement at the site,” Trump said yesterday during a speech at a convention the Republican Party is hosting in Dallas, Texas, ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “We don’t need much. We see everything, you know, because of Space Force.”
“We may hit Pickaxe [Mountain] very soon,” the President also said while speaking to reporters at the White House last Friday.
Trump on Pickaxe Mountain: We may have to give them a shot there too. We see everything. We can the see tag on their coat. “Muhammad Al-Fayed” It’s never Muhammad Jones. pic.twitter.com/UQm939OruL
Whether growing activity at Pickaxe Mountain finally prompts a U.S. strike at the site, either alone or as part of a larger operation, remains to be seen. If and when such a mission is launched, past and future testing at sites like ALT-SHIST in New Mexico will all but certainly have played an important part.
“The Joint Forces have formed a command center south of the city of Mokha, following Houthi breakthroughs across various combat axes under heavy fire, in which the Houthis used various types of weapons,” Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), Lt. Gen. Tareq Saleh, said in his acknowledgment that his forces lost the port. The PLC was created in 2022 to represent the internationally recognized government of Yemen.
“The armed forces on the West Coast — the National Resistance, the Giants [Brigades], and the Homeland Shield — in addition to units of the Taiz axis west of the governorate, have paid a heavy price, martyrs and wounded, over the past days as they confronted the Houthi attack, which was planned by Iran, supported by it, and carried out with the participation of its various proxies/tools.”
“Thanks to God, our armed forces were able to repel an enemy combat formation a short time ago in the province of Taiz, forcing it to withdraw,” Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree proclaimed. “This was achieved by targeting it with a number of locally manufactured surface-to-air missiles.”
(Houthi Telegram channel)
Videos have emerged showing Houthi forces inside Mokha and its airport and a large amount of equipment being seized.
The people of the port city of Al-Mokha gave a warm reception to Yemeni armed forces fighters following the city's strategic liberation. pic.twitter.com/0XDrveJPxU
BREAKING: The Houthis have announced a Cessation of Combat Operations along the Coast of Bab al-Mandab Strait following the Collapse of Pro-Saudi Forces
The Core Military of the Houthis has entered the City of Mokha
Even before the capture of Mokha, the rebel group held the BAM under threat with its array of drones and missiles, some of which it launched from deeper in Yemen. In fact, the group became the first to fire anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) at vessels during its campaign against Red Sea shipping.
Mokha, however, provides a potential new surveillance and launching point for the Houthis to deploy mines as well as aerial drones and uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) they can use to attack shipping. As we have reported previously, the rebel group pioneered the operational use of some of these weapons.
The Houthis “are determined to control the ports in order to use booby-trapped boats from areas close to shipping lanes,” Col. Abdul Basit Al-Baher, a Yemeni army officer and military analyst, told Arab News last month as the rebels were pushing closer to the port.
In addition to Mokha, the Houthis also reportedly captured two important islands that could also add to its control over shipping through the strait. However, TWZ cannot independently confirm this.
There are claims that the Houthis seized Perim Island, which sits right in the middle of the BAM. In 2021, satellite images we obtained showed completion of a new, approximately 6,150-foot-long runway on the island as well as hangars and other facilities. The installation was supposedly meant primarily to support drone operations and was built by the United Arab Emirates.
This strategically located island sits in the narrowest part of the BAM, less than two miles west of Yemen and about 13 miles east of Djibouti, giving the Houthis a commanding presence at the mouth of the Red Sea.
Zuqar Island, which was also reportedly captured, sits in the middle of the Red Sea about 80 miles north of Perim Island. In the custody of the Yemeni government since 1998, it was being “used by government forces to track shipping traffic, monitor movements by Houthi rebels and stop weapons smuggling in the Red Sea,” according to The National.
Last year, images emerged of construction of a runway on the island.
A closer look at the new 2.1 km runway on Yemen’s Jabal Zuqar Island in the southern Red Sea shows a small apron with one completed aircraft hangar and another likely under construction, plus a taxiway leading to two military emplacements, likely to shelter aircraft or UAVs. https://t.co/cnphe6yCeOpic.twitter.com/iOwr7C6I91
Zuqar Island sits about 7 km east of the northbound shipping lane in the Red Sea. Control over these two islands could allow the Houthis to mirror the pattern Iran established in the Strait of Hormuz by directing traffic to pass through a narrow passage between Qeshm and Larak islands.
The Iranian transit scheme for the Strait of Hormuz. (Iranian government)
The conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis grew out of a civil war in Yemen that erupted in 2014. It expanded a year later when a Saudi-led coalition joined forces with the government ousted by the Houthis and raged on until the parties reached a tenuous ceasefire in 2022. The Saudis held off on getting involved in the recent Red Sea conflict which saw the U.S. and coalition warships duking it out with the Houthis, and eventually led to a U.S.-led air campaign over Yemen. Tensions, however, reignited after that conflict ended when the Houthis joined the U.S.-Iran conflict on the side of their major supporter. In addition to the aforementioned blockade, the Houthis began striking Saudi refineries.
The Houthis already control the port of Hodeidah, about 100 miles to the north. Capturing Mokha and the two islands extends their reach even closer to the BAM.
“On average, 273 ships sailed through the chokepoint each week between 27 July and 23 August,” the organization reported. “The naval ban on Saudi Arabia came into effect on 20 July, and the weekly average in the run up date was 319. Still, traffic remains above volumes seen before the crisis in the Middle East Gulf that led to a flurry of activity in the Red Sea as Saudi oil was redirected to Yanbu.”
Saudi Arabia has increasingly sent oil to its port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. (Photo by Yasin Demirci/Anadolu via Getty Images) Anadolu
The biggest impact of the blockade, Lloyd’s List Intelligence notes, is that it is driving up the cost to deliver oil by forcing traffic north through the Suez Canal, “extending voyage times and tying up capacity. In the Middle East, rising use of Hormuz shuttle tankers and multiple STS transfers is creating delays and increasing vessel utilization. Combined, these rising inefficiencies have led to the third VLCC spot-rate spike since the beginning of the crisis in the Middle East Gulf.”
The Houthi strikes on Saudi’s oil infrastructure, including a Houthi missile and drone attack against the Saudi Aramco refinery at Jazan on the Red Sea earlier this week, add a further dilemma for Riyadh, making it harder to get its product to points of shipment.
Video of of the aftermath of those strikes, which you can see below, emerged on social media.
Following Houthi strikes, fires can be seen raging at the Jizan oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/tAqOPlsmvS
All this is raising the specter of the U.S. having to get as involved as it did during the previous Houthi campaign against shipping that ended last September, which could pull resources away from Iranian-focused operations, if supporting such an operation is even possible at all at this point. The Navy, and other key elements of the U.S. military, is overstretched and worn down by continuous deployments for many months leading up to Venezuela and then Iran, and now six months after Operation Epic Fury.
U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf are under increasing pressure as tensions with Iran continue to simmer. On Tuesday, several U.S. Air Force jets were damaged in an Iranian missile barrage on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, according to CBS News. An A-10 Thunderbolt II close support jet lost a wing and about eight F-15E Strike Eagle multi-role fighters were slightly damaged and returned to service, the network noted.
There is also a report that Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said Iranian forces “blew the hell out of Bahrain” where the U.S. military has a number of key facilities, including the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The country has been the subject of frequent Iranian barrages since the U.S. and Israel first attacked on Feb. 28.
Cao’s assessment matches what we have seen and heard prior to his comments and raises anew the question of whether the U.S. will return to Bahrain and other bases in the region heavily attacked by Iran.
In an exclusive interview, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told me that Iranian forces "blew the hell out of Bahrain."
While open-source analyses have long indicated that the U.S. Fifth Fleet Headquarters at Naval Support Activity Bahrain sustained extensive damage in the early…
“At least three times in the past week, Iranian forces have launched missiles at American warships, including an aircraft carrier, taking direct aim at the U.S. Navy in a way it hasn’t done since the start of the war,” the newspaper noted. “The attempted strikes on warships have led to much closer calls than previous attempts, with Iran using maneuverable warheads, people familiar with the attacks said.”
Amid this activity, traffic through the Strait remains suppressed.
“Vessel transits via the Strait of Hormuz fell on Wednesday to seven from 12 the previous day, preliminary ship-tracking data showed on Thursday, with levels also below the 10-day average of 14,” Reuters reported. “Out of these seven ships, four vessels exited and three entered, according to the data.”
However, an exact figure is hard to come by. Some vessels could be sailing through the waterway with their transponders turned off and would not be counted toward the totals, the outlet added.
Vessels transit the Hormuz Strait off the coast of Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas on September 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) ATTA KENARE
As it is, oil prices are skyrocketing. As of noon Thursday, the per barrel price of Brent Crude exceeded $107, the highest price since July when it fell to just over $77 per barrel, according to OilPrice.com.
It will take some time before we get a better picture of how the Houthi seizure of the port of Mokha, and possibly Perim and Zuqar islands, will affect the global economy due to rising oil prices, either through reduced supply, increased cost of delivery or some combination of the two. With no end in sight to the U.S. conflict with Iran that helped to drive these actions, the Yemeni rebel group has incentives to inflict economic pain wherever it can.
Ukraine has unveiled a new domestically developed surface-to-air missile system designed to turn a diverse collection of air-to-air missiles into a flexible ground-based air defense capability. Called Shershen, Ukrainian for hornet, the system combines a locally-developed command-and-control architecture, a dedicated surveillance radar, and multiple launchers that can employ both Ukrainian and Western missiles.
The system was displayed at the MSPO defense exhibition in Kielce, Poland, by the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries (NAUDI). The example shown is reportedly the second operational prototype and is described as being close to its production configuration.
At the ongoing MSPO-2026 defense and industrial exhibition in Poland, the launcher of the Ukrainian Shershen air defense system, developed by Radionix, has been presented for the first time, along with the R-120K surface-to-air guided missile specially developed for it (second… pic.twitter.com/5RfZWHWuxl
The appearance of Shershen comes as Ukraine continues to develop an increasingly diverse family of indigenous air defense systems, while simultaneously adapting older missiles and foreign-supplied weapons to address a severe shortage of interceptors.
The Buk/Sea Sparrow FrankenSAM combines the Soviet-era Buk transporter-erector-launcher with U.S.-supplied RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles. Operational Command East
Shershen takes that philosophy a step further by making missile interchangeability a central feature of the system.
The Shershen battery consists of a Perun command-and-control vehicle, an Athena radar, and four Borei launchers.
A graphic shows a typical Shershen battery. via Oboronka
According to the developer, the system’s architecture is deliberately open. This allows it to use different missiles from different manufacturers and also permits the integration of third-party surveillance and guidance radars.
The company says Shershen can currently employ the R-27 (AA-10 Alamo), R-73 (AA-11 Archer), AIM-9 Sidewinder, and AIM-132 ASRAAM, while compatibility with the R-60 is also being explored. These weapons come with a mix of semi-active radar or infrared homing seeker heads.
One of the ASRAAM/Supacat air defense systems supplied to Ukraine. Ukrainian Armed Forces
Air-to-air missiles are already available in considerable variety across Ukraine’s arsenal and those of its foreign partners. Being able to employ several types from a common ground-based system provides much more flexibility than a conventional SAM designed around one dedicated interceptor.
It also offers a way to exploit missiles that were never originally intended to be fired from the ground. That means Shershen’s launcher and fire-control system are meant to be interceptor agnostic, at least to a certain degree.
Shershen’s Athena radar is reported to be capable of detecting targets at ranges of up to 85 kilometers (53 miles).
The Athena radar for the Shershen. NAUDI screencap
In terms of the engagement envelope, Shershen is claimed to be capable of engaging aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones at ranges of up to 25 kilometers (16 miles) and altitudes of up to 10,000 meters (32,800 feet). Clearly, these figures will vary widely depending on the type of interceptor.
When employing radar-guided missiles, the system’s engagement architecture can reportedly guide as many as six missiles simultaneously.
The advertised performance figures have not been independently verified, and it remains unclear what target types and engagement conditions were used to establish them.
Україна представила складові мультикаліберного зенітного ракетного комплексу «Шершень» на міжнародній виставці MSPO 2026 у польському місті Кельце.
Міжнародний консорціум компаній Shershen Group, який створює ЗРК в інтересах України представив, показав командний пункт,… pic.twitter.com/9wAS7ewxzg
The developer says the second prototype has completed initial testing, including successful interceptions at a test range.
One of the Borei launchers displayed at MSPO were armed with an R-120K, a new Ukrainian missile equipped with a radar seeker and is intended to be capable of both air-to-air and surface-to-air employment.
The R-120K remains under development, however. Work is reportedly continuing on its rocket motor, meaning that its eventual performance and production status remain uncertain. Still, having the option of including the R-120K on the Shershen system in the future is significant.
A test launcher used for the Shershen program, armed with a radar-homing (nearest camera) and an infrared-guided R-27 missile. The latest prototype features a cage-type container launcher. NAUDI screencap NAUDI screencap
Rather than relying indefinitely on stocks of Soviet and Western air-to-air missiles, Ukraine could eventually have a domestically produced interceptor specifically tailored to its growing family of ground-based air-defense systems. That will become increasingly important as stocks of legacy missiles are depleted. Earlier this year, it was reported that Ukrainian F-16s were running low on their air-to-air missiles, which include the same AIM-9s that are used in some FrankenSAM systems, as well as being compatible with Shershen. But even before that, it was clear that Western-supplied missile stocks in Ukraine across the board were diminishing, in some cases drastically, with critical interceptors like the AMRAAM and Patriot being badly affected.
A live AIM-9L/M Sidewinder launched from the wingtip rail of a Ukrainian F-16. Ukrainian Air Force screencap
Ukraine’s need for additional surface-to-air missiles has become increasingly acute during the full-scale war, especially as Russian drone and missile barrages have stepped up.
The shortage has encouraged Ukraine to pursue a combination of indigenous development and unconventional adaptations.
The FrankenSAM initiative, conducted with U.S. support, demonstrated how existing Ukrainian systems could be combined with foreign missiles to rapidly create additional air-defense capacity. Ukraine has also fielded modified Osa systems armed with R-73 air-to-air missiles rather than their original 9M33 interceptors. Other R-73-based concepts have even been demonstrated aboard Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels.
An R-73 missile loaded on an Osa-AKM SHORADS vehicle. Come Back Alive
Shershen appears to reflect the next logical step in that evolution: rather than creating a one-off FrankenSAM combination, build an architecture from the outset that can accept multiple missiles. Additionally, with so many different ground-based air defense systems now being fielded, it comes with the significant advantage of a standardized launcher and control interface that can accommodate a range of interceptors.
At the same time, Ukraine is pursuing substantially more ambitious indigenous SAM projects.
Earlier this year, a previously secretive Ukrainian missile identified as the Koral made what appeared to be its first public appearance. The program dates back to at least 2021, when Ukraine’s Luch design bureau presented a concept for a medium-range surface-to-air missile.
A missile is launched from a Koral air defense system, based on a Czech Tatra truck chassis. Ukroboronprom
Koral is intended to provide a much longer-range capability, potentially filling some of the gap left by Ukraine’s aging Soviet systems and supplementing the Western-supplied Patriot and SAMP/T.
Shershen, by contrast, is clearly focused on the short-range layer.
Together, the programs illustrate the breadth of Ukraine’s emerging domestic air-defense effort: from relatively inexpensive systems built around repurposed air-to-air missiles to new, purpose-designed interceptors intended to replace or augment Soviet-era systems.
Ukraine’s experience with FrankenSAM has demonstrated the value of getting unconventional air defense combinations into service quickly.
Once fielded, Shershen, with its architecture capable of accepting different Soviet-origin and Western-made interceptors, and eventually a Ukrainian one, gives Ukraine another way to stretch its missile inventory and enhance its air defense capabilities.
The Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing has taken another significant step toward turning the F-15EX Eagle II into a true multirole fighter, conducting the first live-bomb drops from operational F-15EXs during training at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The milestone came during a roughly three-week deployment to Nellis in late August and early September in support of the U.S. Air Force’s Weapons Instructor Course (WIC).
Weapons technicians from the 142nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron load a bomb onto an F-15EX at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada on August 27, 2026. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Steph Sawyer
Photographs released by the Air National Guard yesterday show F-15EXs from the 142nd Wing carrying live bombs on the flight line and departing Nellis with the weapons loaded. Official imagery shows the jets armed with a single 500-pound Mk 82 freefall bomb on the fuselage centerline, while spotters also captured F-15EXs carrying a 2,000-pound Mk 84 freefall bomb in the same position.
The 142nd’s F-15EXs are only now acquiring a capability that was deliberately absent from the wing’s previous F-15C fleet. The Portland, Oregon-based unit was an air-superiority organization when it operated the F-15C, while the F-15EX is ultimately derived from the F-15E Strike Eagle and has considerably more inherent multirole potential.
As we reported in July, the wing had already begun laying the groundwork for this transition. In May, 142nd personnel traveled to Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, where they loaded and dropped inert BDU-50 and BDU-56 training bombs from their F-15EXs. Those weapons replicate the size and weight of 500-pound-class Mk 82-series and 2,000-pound-class Mk 84-series bombs. Over 10 missions, the crews dropped 24 BDU-50s and 12 BDU-56s.
A BDU-56 is loaded onto an F-15EX assigned to the 142nd Wing during a training mission at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, in May 2026. U.S. Air Force
While the F-15EX had already been tested in an air-to-ground role by the Air Force’s test community, the Mountain Home deployment was the first time an operational Eagle II unit had loaded and dropped bombs. The next step, the wing said at the time, would be live weapons employment at Nellis.
The Air Force has emphasized that the F-15EX’s primary mission remains defensive and offensive counter-air, particularly in the homeland-defense role. At the same time, the service’s plans call for the aircraft to provide combatant commanders with strike packages capable of operating in contested environments.
An F-15EX fires an AIM-120D missile during a test mission near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The F-15EX can carry up to 12 AIM-120 missiles. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. John Raven
The F-15EX is inherently well suited to such a mission. Derived from the Strike Eagle lineage, it combines that aircraft’s large payload capacity and long range with substantially modernized avionics and electronic warfare systems. The aircraft’s design leaves considerable room for additional weapons and mission equipment, making an expansion into air-to-ground operations relatively straightforward compared with trying to add that capability to the F-15C.
The 142nd has been building the institutional knowledge required to make that transition. Three of its pilots underwent a nine-month course covering the science, tactics, and procedures associated with air-to-ground weapons employment before returning to help establish the wing’s training program. Weapons personnel also traveled to Nellis earlier this year to work with F-15Es assigned to the 59th Test and Evaluation Squadron and become certified in bomb loading procedures.
An F-15EX Eagle II assigned to the Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing sits on the flight line at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada with a live bomb attached to its belly as it prepares for takeoff on August 27, 2026. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Steph Sawyer \
As well as teaching pilots how to release a weapon, the wing had to develop an entirely new air-to-ground training pipeline for pilots, maintainers, and weapons personnel at a unit that had not previously operated an aircraft with an operational bombing mission.
Nellis is home to the Air Force’s Weapons School and is central to the Weapons Instructor Course, making it one of the most important locations in the service for developing and evaluating advanced tactics. The 142nd’s participation therefore places its emerging F-15EX air-to-ground capability in an environment specifically focused on integrating advanced weapons, tactics, and mission planning.
A weapons loader assigned to the 142nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron prepares a bomb to be loaded onto an F-15EX at Nellis Air Force Base. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Steph Sawyer
The wing’s new live bomb-dropping capability also comes as the Air Force continues to explore how broadly the Eagle II can be employed.
Test and evaluation units have already demonstrated that the aircraft can accommodate sophisticated air-to-ground weapons. Earlier this year, an F-15EX from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron participated in a munitions-load training event at Kadena Air Base in Japan, where Air Force personnel practiced loading live GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb IIs onto the aircraft.
GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb IIs sit on a dolly in front of an F-15EX from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron during a training event at Kadena Air Base, Japan, on July 8, 2026. U.S. Air Force
The F-15EX is also capable of carrying the conformal fuel tanks used by the F-15E, which can provide additional fuel as well as additional weapons stations. The operational F-15EXs delivered to the 142nd have so far been seen without CFTs, however, and the status of the plan to equip the Oregon aircraft with them remains unclear.
CFTs could become increasingly important if the Air Force moves toward more demanding air-to-ground missions for the Eagle II, particularly those requiring substantial weapons loads and long-range operations.
Another unresolved question is how the Air Force will ultimately crew F-15EXs when they are performing more complex multirole missions.
A weapons loader assigned to the 142nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron loads a bomb onto an F-15EX at Nellis Air Force Base. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Steph Sawyer
The Eagle II retains the F-15E family’s two-seat cockpit, although the Air Force’s initial operational concept has generally involved flying the aircraft with a single pilot. That leaves an unused cockpit that could potentially become an important asset as the mission set expands.
Former 142nd Wing commander Col. Michael Kosderka previously told TWZ that the addition of a weapons systems officer or other specialist in the rear cockpit could open the door to more air-to-ground capabilities.
“We can start talking about putting all kinds of air-to-ground capabilities into the airplane, potentially putting WSOs or other experts in the backseat as well to have us do any number of multi-role capabilities that it’s just physically not possible to in the C model,” Kosderka told TWZ in an interview back in 2024. “So the X has tremendous growth capability. It’s really exciting.”
The Weapons School has also been associated with developing two-seat F-15EX operations, indicating that the second cockpit’s utility is already being considered at the tactical-development level.
142nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron weapons loaders transport a bomb to an F-15EX at Nellis Air Force Base. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Steph Sawyer
For now, it would be premature to characterize the F-15EX as an operational replacement for the F-15E Strike Eagle in the air-to-ground role. The 142nd’s newly demonstrated bombing capability remains part of an ongoing training and development process.
The Air Force has announced plans to base F-15EXs at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, where they will eventually replace older F-15Es, which, in turn, are slated to move to Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, as part of a broader realignment of the Eagle fleet.
Another two active-duty F-15EX squadrons are slated to replace the former F-15C force at Kadena. The first F-15EX for permanent assignment at Kadena recently departed Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, facility for the 142nd Wing, where it will undergo final preparations before its eventual deployment to sprawling Okinawa.
An F-15EX assigned to the 142nd Wing takes off from Nellis Air Force Base with a bomb attached to its belly, August 27, 2026. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Steph Sawyer
The operational implications of the air-to-ground training therefore extend well beyond Portland.
The Eagle II’s generous weapons payload, long range, modern sensors and electronic warfare systems, and ability to carry both air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons give the Air Force a platform that can potentially perform several missions without sacrificing the characteristics that make the F-15 attractive for homeland defense and counter-air operations. The same characteristics are also extremely relevant to any export operator, which would expect to operate the Eagle II in a multirole capacity.
As well as a weapons-training milestone, the first live-bomb drops by the 142nd Wing provide more evidence that the F-15EX’s mission is continuing to evolve.
Recently released pictures have highlighted a particularly interesting feature on the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Mustin: a piggy-backed point defense system with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on top of a 30mm chain gun. The Mk 38 Mod 4 Gun Weapon System (GWS) is interesting to examine as it offers significant boosts in firepower and other capabilities, including against drones, compared to preceding Mk 38 types.
Yesterday, Destroyer Squadron 15’s (DESRON 15) public affairs office released several pictures showing USS Mustin replenishing at sea in the Indian Ocean, including one highlighting the ship’s Mk 38 Mod 4 GWS (also sometimes confusingly referred to as a Machine Gun System, or MGS). DESRON 15 had put out another group of pictures late last month showing the weapon system being fired during routine training. Mustin was the first vessel in the Navy to receive Mod 4, and still looks to be the service’s only warship with this new version.
USS Mustin fires its Mk 38 Mod 4 GWS during live-fire training in the Indian Ocean in August 2026. USNAnother view of the Mk 38 Mod 4 GWS being fired. USN
“The Mk 38 Mod 4 Machine Gun System (MGS) is an upgrade … to address deficiencies in meeting Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) requirements,” the Navy has said in the past. “In addition, the upgrade will also improve performance against surface targets and maintain Anti-Terrorist / Force Protection capabilities.”
To take a step back quickly, the original Mk 38 Mod 0 was developed internally by the Navy in the late 1970s and was simply a manually operated deck-mounted 25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun with a maximum rate of fire of 180 rounds per minute. The M242 was entering U.S. Army service at around the same time as the main armament for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A product improved Mod 1 version was the first Mk 38 to actually enter serial production and began to be fitted to Navy ships in the late 1980s.
A Mk 38 Mod 1 weapon system, seen here mounted on the deck of the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate USS Ingraham in 2003. USN
Following the deadly terrorist attack on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen in 2000, the Navy began to acquire Mk 38 Mod 2s, also known as the Typhoon Weapon System, from United Defense (later BAE Systems).
The Mod 2 “introduced remote-control operation and mount stabilization and allowed the weapon to maintain aim even as the ship pitched and rolled. It also added a new electro-optical/infrared sensor and a laser rangefinder, giving the system reliable day/night target performance,” according to the Navy. “Beyond sensors, Mod 2 brought improved ammunition handling and enhanced interfaces – resulting in faster and more reliable engagement. Testing showed it delivered two to three times the strike accuracy of its predecessor.”
The Mk 38 Mod 2 otherwise featured the same M242 gun as the Mod 0/1 types, feeding from a magazine on the mount that could be loaded with up to 168 rounds. It is worth noting here that this is less than a minute of total firing time at the weapon’s maximum rate of fire. However, it can also be fired in single-shot and three-round burst modes, as well as at a lower automatic rate of fire of 100 rounds per minute.
In the 2010s, the Navy began acquiring the Mk 38 Mod 3 from BAE Systems, which added a smaller 7.62x51mm Mk 52 Mod 0 chain gun feeding from a 750-round magazine to the complete weapon system. The Mk 52 is also a much faster-firing weapon than the M242, with a maximum rate of fire of 570 rounds per minute.
The Mod 3 “also incorporated an improved EO/IR sensor that provides 330-degree surveillance capability and multiple fields of view,” per the Navy. “This sensor is decoupled from the gun, allowing operators to scan independently of the weapon and reducing the chance of alerting an adversary that they’ve been detected.”
Over the years, Mk 38 1/2/3 types have been integrated on a wide array of Navy ships, including Ticonderoga class cruisers, Arleigh Burke class destroyers, Nimitz and Ford class aircraft carriers, as well as a host of other amphibious warfare ships and auxiliaries.
The complete Mk 38 Mod 4 also comes with a new Mk 48 Mod 2 electro-optical sight system (EOSS), which is mounted separately on the ship, and a Mk 134 Mod 0 operator console for remote operation. Furthermore, the complete system is designed to be fully integrated with the Aegis Combat System on Arleigh Burke class destroyers like USS Mustin. The optical turret appears to replace the older EOSS system mounted atop the bridge that was primarily used to target the ship’s 5-inch gun. It isn’t clear how these new mounts are individually targeted simultaneously as they don’t appear to have their own optics. Radar targeting through Aegis would be a big advancement for at least some targets types, like drones. The older Mk 38s had their own individual FLIR systems. It’s still possible these new turrets could have a basic boresighted electro-optical system as well.
Various views of the main turreted weapons component of the Mk 38 Mod 4 system. MSI Defense SystemsThe Mk 48 Mod 2 electro-optical sight system (EOSS) that is also part of the Mk 38 Mod 4, but is mounted separately on the ship. MSI Defense Systems
In a July 2022 test, a Mk 38 Mod 4 system “successfully identified, tracked and engaged both surface and aerial targets using live ammunition against fixed and moving targets,” according to the Navy. The event “also highlighted the enhanced fire-control chain, the 30 mm gun’s improved performance and its ability to counter new challenges.”
The USS Mustinreceived its Mk 38 Mod 4 in 2024 and, as noted, this destroyer still appears to be the only ship in the Navy with this new weapon system, for reasons that are not entirely clear. The service had signed a contract with MSI Defense for an initial low-rate production batch of 15 systems in 2023. Other versions of the Seahawk DS30 are in use today on several classes of naval vessels globally, including British Type 23 frigates.
“USS Mustin (DDG 89), an Arleigh Burke class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was the first U.S. Navy warship to receive the upgrade. [The Naval Surface Warfare Center] Dahlgren Division is now finalizing the configuration so the system can be introduced to a wider set of platforms as fleet requirements evolve,” according to an official news item from Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) just this past February.
Another view of the Mk 38 Mod 4 on USS Mustin. USN
The Navy’s 2027 fiscal year budget request, released earlier this year, makes clear the plan is still to integrate the Mk 38 Mod 4 at least on all Flight IIA and Flight III subvariants of the Arleigh Burke destroyer. The Mk 38 Mod 4 is also set to be a feature on future U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers, which will also have combat systems derived from Aegis.
All remaining Mk 38 Mod 2s in Navy service are being brought up to the Mod 3 standard, as well.
For the Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyers, specifically, the Mk 38 Mod 4 reflects broader efforts to improve and expand the shorter-range defensive capabilities of those ships, especially against growing drone threats. An increasing number of these destroyers are also being equipped with new anti-drone interceptors. In addition, the service is working to replace the 20mm Vulcan cannon-armed Mk 15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems (CIWS) on all subvariants in the class with different launchers for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) to further bolster defenses against drones, as well as incoming missiles and other aerial threats.
Mustin may not be the only Navy warship equipped with the Mk 38 Mod 4 for much longer, if the system has not already started finding its way at least onto more Arleigh Burke class destroyers.
“Today, an attack by a drone was repelled against one of the industrial facilities in Noyabrsk,” Dmitry Artyukhov, governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, stated on Telegram. “As a result of the drone’s debris falling, a fire broke out. Emergency services specialists are working at the scene. Most importantly: there are no casualties or injuries. The extent and nature of the damage are being determined.”
“I urge residents of Yamal to remain calm and to rely only on information from official sources,” Artyukhov added. “The situation is under control.”
(Dmitry Artyukhov Telegram)
“The criminal Kyiv regime has, for the first time, attacked the Arctic region of the Ural Federal District,” Artem Zhoga, the Presidential Envoy of the Russian Federation to the Ural Federal District, confirmed on Telegram. “As a result of debris from a drone falling on the territory, a fire broke out at a fuel and energy complex facility in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District… The enemy is trying to damage economic facilities in order to sow panic.”
New range record: Ukrainian drones attack Novy Urengoy – nearly 3,000 km from Ukraine.
The facility in Novy Urengoy that processes gas condensate for transport was hit—one of the most important installations in Russia's gas condensate infrastructure.
The target of the attack was the Novy Urengoy Condensate Stabilization Plant (CSP), according to Ukraine’s Armed Forces General Staff, which took credit for the attack.
“On 9th September 2026, units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine struck the Novy Urengoy Gas Condensate Processing Plant in Novy Urengoy, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug,” the general staff claimed on X. “The extent of the damage is being assessed.”
The plant has an annual processing capacity of approximately 19.5 million tons, the general staff added.
“It produces stabilized gas condensate, petroleum fractions, diesel fuel and other petroleum products,” the Ukrainian military pointed out. “Its products are used, among other purposes, to meet the needs of the Russian armed forces. Operations against key enemy military targets are ongoing.”
Ukrainian officials did not provide any details about how the strike was carried out.
More than 3,000 km away. Novy Urengoy gas condensate processing plant hit
On 9th September 2026, units of the Defence Forces of Ukraine struck the Novy Urengoy Gas Condensate Processing Plant in Novy Urengoy, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, russian federation.
One video that emerged from the scene showed a column of flames rising in the distance but does not offer much in the way of detail about where the attack took place or the extent of the damage.
Ukrainian drones have for the first time attacked Russia’s largest gas-production hub, almost 3,000 km from the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine struck the Arctic part of the Urals Federal District. A fire started at a fuel-and-energy site.
Another video showed smoke rising in the distance, but again offered little in the way of detail about what happened.
Ukrainian drones attacked Novy Urengoy in Russia for the first time. That's about 3,200 km from Ukraine!
The Novy Urengoy plant for preparing condensate for transport, located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, was the target. It is one of the region's key gas condensate… pic.twitter.com/KDwOFWicd6
“Novy Urengoy is Russia’s unofficial gas capital, located in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district in northwestern Siberia,” according to the Moscow Times. Gazprom “estimated the region’s gas resources at 26.5 trillion cubic meters as of 2020, enough to cover global demand for more than six years.”
In Novy Urengoy, Khanty Mansi AD, west Siberia, Russia, long-range Ukrainian drones hit an industrial facility in the city located some 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) from the Ukrainian border.https://t.co/bruXXjLYR4
In addition to being the first attack in this region of Russia, this was “the furthest strike since the start of the war,” the Russian Mediazzzona Telegram channel stated. “Previously, the record for distance was the attack on the Omsk Oil Refinery in July 2026. It is located approximately 2,500 km (about 1,550 miles) from the border in a straight line.”
While the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff offered scant details about the strike, officials from the Fire Point weapons company hinted online that one of their drones carried out the attack.
“Guess who traveled over 3300 km (about 2,050 miles) and successfully achieved their goal,” the company stated on a Telegram post that included video of the gas plant attack.
“3200)),” Fire Point’s founder, Denys Shtilierman, teased in an X post with an image of the burning gas plant.
Neither Shtilierman nor the company provided any other details; however Fire Point claims its FP-1 drones can now travel about 2,100 miles (3,400 km) with a 60 kg payload.
Despite Fire Point’s hints, there is no confirmation that the company’s weapons had anything to do with this attack. There is also the chance that it could have been carried out by another system or even from inside Russia. Ukraine has, in the past, relied on proxies to stage attacks deep in Russia. In addition, Ukraine last summer carried out a series of remotely launched drone attacks on Russian strategic aviation. Dubbed Operation Spider Web, it included strikes on the Belaya Air Base, about 3,000 miles from the border.
However, a strike from inside Russia is much less likely than one launched from Ukraine given Fire Point chiming in and the increasing reach of Ukraine’s weapons. We have reached out to Fire Point and Ukrainian officials for comment.
You can see video of the Operation Spider Web attack on Belaya below:
Ukrainian drones struck Russian strategic aviation at the Belaya air base in Irkutsk – 4,800 km from Kyiv. pic.twitter.com/UBAi7znioR
The Novy Urengoy Gas Condensate Processing Plant wasn’t the only site in Russia affected by drone incursions far from the Ukrainian border today.
“A state of emergency has been declared in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug due to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) activity,” the Russian RIA Novosti news outlet reported on Wednesday. This is located about 1,500 miles from Ukraine.
“Temporary restrictions have been implemented at the airports of Igra, Nyagan, Uray, ‘Sovetsky,’ Surgut, and Khanty-Mansiysk,” the outlet added.
The publication did not report any attacks and Ukraine did not claim any, but video emerged of what appears to be a Fire Point FP-1 drone flying over the area.
Russian Telegram channels report drones in the area of Khanty-Mansiysk, a city, in west-central Siberia, Russia. pic.twitter.com/in0M552FZN
While the extent of the damage to the Novy Urengoy Condensate Stabilization Plant is unclear at the moment, the attack extends the range of Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s oil infrastructure.
This summer, Ukraine struck nearly all Russian refineries within range, the Kyiv Post noted.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing the government to temporarily take control of critical infrastructure if private owners fail to protect it from Ukrainian drone attacks or rebuild it after strikes.
Though Russia is continuing its grinding offensive, the energy infrastructure attacksare clearly taking a major toll. The ability to do so seems to have taken on additional significance in the wake of another round of attempts to end the fighting.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s top envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, recently traveled to both Russia and Ukraine seeking to rekindle peace talks. However, there does not appear to be any immediate resolution in sight.
The expanding range and quantity of Kyiv’s long-range strike arsenal gives Zelensky perhaps his most powerful card to play against Russia’s interest in continuing the war. Ukraine has been improving these weapons by the month and the pace of development of its drones and cruise missiles is rapidly accelerating. The country also has several ballistic missile projects in the works, which will only add to the pressure put on Moscow once operational.
Regardless, earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expects the war with Russia to continue into the winter at the very least. Given that, Kyiv’s campaign against Russia’s energy infrastructure does not seem like it will end anytime soon, either.
Case in point, Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes continued on Wednesday with another attack on Sochi, a Black Sea resort town often frequented by Russian President Vladimir Putin. And, for the second day, drones were visible over Russia’s remote central high-north energy production hub.
Massive fire erupts at Sochi port, Russia, following reported Ukrainian drone attacks. pic.twitter.com/cm2WsiA4jS
The Navy says it is making a concerted effort to apply the hard lessons learned from the marathon deployments of the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln, both in combat and in quality of life for the crew, according to a new video posted by the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle. The changes will be rolled out when USS Theodore Roosevelt deploys following a brief, last-minute, and previously unreported maintenance availability, TWZ has learned. Meanwhile, the United States and Iran are quickly climbing the escalation ladder again, as the latest series of tit-for-tat strikes has resulted in a massive overnight ballistic missile attack on a Jordanian base hosting U.S. forces and the destruction of 10 Iranian commercial oil tankers over the past week.
Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG), using publicly available open-source information. Check out last week’s report here.
TWZ/IAN ELLIS-JONES (High Resolution)
George Washington Strike Group Evades Iranian Ballistic Missiles
Less than a month after taking up station in the Middle East, elements of the George Washington CSG reportedly came under ballistic missile fire from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on September 5, according to Iranian media. “A U.S. aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer successfully evaded multiple unprovoked Iranian attacks,” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed in a statement, without identifying which warships were targeted. TWZ cannot independently verify the Iranian reports, and the Islamic Republic has frequently leveraged disinformation throughout the war.
U.S. forces responded swiftly the same day, striking three Iranian commercial oil tankers, part of the “shadow fleet” that funds IRGC operations, in a notable step beyond U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently announced tanker-for-tanker policy. “Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost – taking out three of yours,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, warned. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet,” he added. No U.S. casualties or damage to the American ships was reported.
Video of U.S. Central Command forces striking three Iranian crude oil carriers on September 5, 2026. (USCENTCOM video)
Details surrounding the attack on September 5 are limited, but Iranian-affiliated channels claimed the IRGC fired the Qassem Basir medium-range anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) for the first time. If true, it would represent the first known combat employment of the ASBM since it was unveiled in May 2025 and poses a new threat to Navy warships operating within the 1,200-kilometer, or roughly 750-mile, stated range (although that figure is more than likely overstated). Generally speaking, American cruisers and destroyers can engage ASBMs in two layers, in some cases using Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) in the midcourse phase and SM-6 during the terminal phase. Both are finite resources, and only so many can be loaded in their Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells.
Since the initial exchange on September 5, the tit-for-tat strikes have continued to escalate. CENTCOM destroyed another five crude oil tankers on September 8, bringing the total to 10 in a week, after the IRGC targeted an unidentified Navy warship again with ballistic missiles. Iran answered overnight, launching a huge salvo of ballistic missiles toward Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, where a significant contingent of U.S. forces is forward-deployed. Dramatic videos on social media show Patriot batteries firing against the incoming projectiles, with open-source analysts counting at least 60 interceptors employed.
U.S. destroys another five Iranian tankers after the IRGC targets another American warship. (CENTCOM video)
The USS George Washington arrived in the CENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR) on or around August 19, escorted by a single guided-missile destroyer, USS Shoup. The pairing matches the composition described in CENTCOM’s statement about the IRGC attack on September 5. Washington’s public affairs team reposted the statement on their social media accounts.
The possibility that the second Nimitz class flattop operating alongside Washington in the Middle East, the USS George H.W. Bush, was the target of the attack cannot be ruled out. Both carriers are the same class and look alike from a distance (or through a seeker). The George H.W. Bush CSG is currently composed of a guided-missile cruiser, USS Princeton, and two guided-missile destroyers, USS Ross and USS Donald Cook.
An EA-18G Growler launches from the flight deck of USS George H.W. Bush during night flight operations. (CENTCOM photo) An F/A-18F Super Hornet on the flight deck of aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). (U.S. Navy photo) U.S. Central Command Public Affa
Bush was pictured conducting nighttime flight ops in CENTCOM’s most recent update detailing the status of the ongoing blockade: U.S. forces redirected 94 commercial vessels, kinetically disabled three, and boarded two to ensure compliance, as of September 7.
USS Theodore Roosevelt Undergoes Last-Minute Maintenance Ahead of Deployment
The next carrier scheduled to deploy from the U.S., the USS Theodore Roosevelt, recently got underway after a brief maintenance period. While there was no mention of an upcoming availability in budget documents, we noticed what appeared to be pierside work in commercial satellite imagery, similar to the brief stints Washington and Vinsoncompleted recently while in homeport. In response to our inquiry, a Navy official told TWZ, “Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) is currently in port at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego conducting routine, planned maintenance. While we do not comment on future operations or movements due to operations security, aircraft carriers follow an optimized fleet response plan that provides full realignment of maintenance, training, and deployment cycles to fit in a standard 36-month rotation.”
Roosevelt’s upcoming deployment has been the subject of heavy speculation, as there will soon be no carriers available in Asia should a contingency arise. While Lincoln is currently in the South China Sea, she’s at the tail end of her deployment and in the process of heading home. The same official addressed the coverage gap, telling us, “U.S. Pacific Fleet’s posture across the region remains strong, adaptive, and ready. The U.S. Navy is purpose-built to flex, surge, and sustain across multiple theaters simultaneously – and that flexibility is a strategic advantage, not a vulnerability. U.S. Pacific Fleet’s commitment to the region is enduring – backed by the Joint Force and a strong network of allies and partners – and we will continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows to support a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Flight operations on USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), Sept. 7, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo) Petty Officer 3rd Class Alexander BussmanSailors direct the launch of an F/A-18E Super Hornet on USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). (U.S. Navy photo) Petty Officer 3rd Class Alexander Bussman
Roosevelt departed San Diego on September 5 and is still at sea as of publication. Imagery posted two days later on DVIDS, the military’s content-sharing platform, shows the flattop carrying out flight operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet AOR and conducting “advanced training to bolster strike group readiness and capability.” The carrier was last tracked broadcasting a position publicly with her Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder on, operating to the west of Baja California, Mexico, according to MarineTraffic. It’s unclear if the maintenance has been completed or if additional modifications and training will be required before the CSG deploys.
Transit of USS Theodore Roosevelt off the west coast while working up. Source: MarineTraffic/KPLER (Reprinted with permission)
As noted above, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle, alongside Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON) John Perryman, posted a video yesterday with new information on Roosevelt’s upcoming deployment. “The lessons you’re bringing home are helping us better prepare the next team to deploy,” Perryman explained, addressing Lincoln’s crew. “Right now USS Theodore Roosevelt is putting those lessons into action using what we learned from Abraham Lincoln and Gerald R. Ford,” Caudle added. On logistics, that means maximizing the loadout of food, retail products, and hygiene items by converting available spaces into additional storage facilities. Regarding quality of life, improvements include new entertainment, more fitness equipment, and holiday materials purchased in advance.
“Small things matter during a long deployment because taking care of our Sailors is part of maintaining combat readiness,” Perryman noted. Watch the full video below.
CNO Adm. Daryl Caudle and MCPON John Perryman provide an update on USS Theodore Roosevelt’s upcoming deployment. (U.S. Navy video)
Three other U.S.-based carriers, USS Carl Vinson, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and USS Ronald Reagan, were recently underway for training but have returned to their respective homeports since our last report on September 1.
Eisenhower returned to Pier 14S at Naval Station Norfolk on September 2 after a 12-day underway for Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) and Training Command (TRACOM) Carrier Qualifications (CQ) in the Virginia Capes and Jacksonville operating areas. Vinson completed 25 days of Tailored Ship’s Training Availability (TSTA) and Final Evaluation Period (FEP) before mooring at Juliet Pier on Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, on September 4. And Reagan, which just finished a nearly 18-month Drydocking Planned Incremental Availability (DPIA), returned to Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton in Washington state on September 7 after a four-day post-availability shakedown and sea trials. It’s unknown how many rounds of sea trials will be required before Reagan returns to the fleet.
For the time being, America has one carrier coming back online, but the net gain will be short-lived, as Lincoln is expected to begin a DPIA after returning home.
USS Abraham Lincoln Leaves Thailand Looking Like A Different Ship
Elements of the Abraham Lincoln CSG, as well as escort cruiser USS Robert Smalls, arrived in Thailand on September 2 for what the Navy characterized as the “first full port call” of their nine-plus-month deployment. The crew of roughly 5,000 Sailors and Marines was finally able to leave the ship for liberty, with the majority standing on solid ground for the first time since November 2025.
“This port visit to Pattaya was a tremendous opportunity for this crew to recharge and a highlight for the strike group,” Abraham Lincoln’s commanding officer, Capt. Dan Keeler, said in a press release. “Thailand has such a rich culture and history, coupled with incredible hospitality, and that all shone through in this port visit. We are grateful to our Thai allies for hosting us, and we look forward to continuing our mission here in 7th Fleet, alongside Thailand and our other regional allies and partners.”
The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) arrives at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand on September 2, 2026. (Photo by Thananuwat Srirasant/Getty Images; Reprinted with permission)
According to the press release, the crew “experienced all the sights and sounds Thailand has to offer, deepening their understanding of the Thai people and strengthening interpersonal bonds.” Lincoln pulled into port looking worse for wear after 286 days at sea, with noticeable algae and rust spots, conditions that are expected given the high operational tempo endured during nearly seven months of combat. Videos surfaced of the hull being scrubbed by Thai contract crews at a fraction of what the same job would cost stateside. The carrier departed five days later on September 6 in much better shape.
Timelapse video of USS Abraham Lincoln leaving Thailand on September 6, 2026. (Abraham Lincoln video by MC3 Castro)
Lincoln is now continuing the journey home to San Diego, though whether any additional stops will be made along the way is unknown. A single-sourced report from Newsweek, which TWZ has not verified, claimed that another port call might be added, according to the wife of an officer aboard. As of publication, Lincoln is 293 days into the deployment, just 33 days short of the 326-day record set by USS Gerald R. Ford earlier this year.
U.S. Navy Big-Deck Fleet At A Glance
Overall, three U.S. carriers are deployed (with one heading home), one is preparing to deploy in the near term, three are working up in various states of readiness, three are in current or upcoming maintenance, and one is being used primarily for training before deactivation next year. One amphibious ready group is deployed, one is forward-deployed and at homeport, four are working up or in port, and three are in maintenance.
Note: Positions are general approximations.Non-deployed LHA/LHD amphibious warships are not shown.
Hermeus is developing an expendable ramjet-powered aircraft, Ramjet-X, which will be air-launched from its reusable, F-16-sized Quarterhorse high-speed drone. The result aims to create a two-vehicle architecture intended to make high-speed flight testing less dependent on expensive, single-use test platforms. That would give Hermeus and potential customers a way to conduct repeated high-Mach flight tests without expending a large booster on every mission.
America didn’t lose ground in high-speed flight because of a lack of ideas. We slowed down because flight tests became too expensive, too rare, and too cautious.
Meet Ramjet-X. Air-launched from the Quarterhorse program, it’s a low-cost, repeatable test vehicle built to fly and… pic.twitter.com/rMed6NhcvD
The company unveiled the concept today. Hermeus says the Ramjet-X will be carried beneath Quarterhorse and released at a speed of around Mach 3, at which its ramjet can begin operating. The smaller vehicle will then accelerate, climbing to around 100,000 feet, and a speed in the region of Mach 4. Quarterhorse will then return to base and be available for another mission.
Imagery released by Hermeus shows a Quarterhorse carrying a Ramjet-X mounted on a pylon under each wing, indicating that two different high-speed tests can be carried out in a single sortie. Intriguingly, the Quarterhorse is shown with no fewer than six underwing hardpoints in all, suggesting that other kinds of external payloads are envisaged.
Hermeus has not released detailed performance specifications for Ramjet-X, including its range, payload capacity, or the critical expected cost per flight. We have reached out to the company for more information.
Images released by the company show a relatively compact, missile-like vehicle with delta wings incorporating prominent dihedral. There are no horizontal tail surfaces, but a conventional vertical fin is complemented by a ventral fin. Axiosreports that Ramjet-X is approximately 22 feet long and 7 feet wide.
In terms of appearance, and also thanks to its ramjet propulsion system, the vehicle is outwardly veryreminiscent of the Lockheed’s D-21 Tagboard supersonic spy drone. However, at more than 40 feet long and with a wingspan of 20 feet, the D-21 was significantly bigger. Overall, the entire concept recalls the Cold War-era D-21 and its M-21 mothership, on a smaller scale.
A D-21 drone. U.S. Air ForceM-21 and D-21 paired together. CIA
The basic concept aims to address a longstanding problem with ramjet flight testing. Unlike a conventional jet engine, a ramjet cannot provide useful thrust from a standstill. The vehicle therefore has to be accelerated to a sufficiently high speed before the ramjet can take over.
That acceleration can traditionally require another propulsion system, including an expendable rocket booster. Hermeus is proposing to substitute a reusable aircraft for that initial boost. It is unclear if the Ramjet-X vehicles are similarly recoverable, but we have asked Hermeus for more details here, too.
As it stands, flight-test programs of this kind are often constrained not only by the cost and availability of test infrastructure, but also by the limited availability of suitable airspace and range access. A reusable carrier aircraft could help address both challenges, allowing multiple Ramjet-X vehicles to be deployed from airports near a designated test range as required and launched only once the vehicle is within the approved test area. That flexibility could reduce the need for a new large booster for every experiment while also making it easier to conduct tests, including at shorter notice, within increasingly constrained airspace.
Hermeus says Ramjet-X is being designed not just for its own development work but as a potential test platform for outside customers. The company is calling the concept “Flight Test as a Service,” with customers able to fly payloads including sensors, communications equipment, computing and autonomy systems, materials, and propulsion hardware.
The program reflects a broader push toward increasing the availability of commercial high-speed flight testing that has attracted U.S. government interest.
Hermeus was also selected by the Defense Innovation Unit for work under its Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing, or HyCAT, effort. That program is intended to use commercial flight-test capabilities to expand the government’s access to relevant high-speed environments.
The company is also pursuing its own increasingly ambitious Quarterhorse aircraft. Its Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 completed an uncrewed supersonic flight earlier this year, reaching Mach 1.21 on its third test flight. The company’s roadmap calls for subsequent Quarterhorse variants to progressively increase speed and address the thermal and propulsion challenges associated with high-Mach flight.
Quarterhorse Mk 2.1. Hermeus
Supersonic. Mach 1.21.
Quarterhorse Mk 2.1 is now the world’s first privately developed, unmanned supersonic jet and the fastest unmanned aircraft flying today.
This flight makes Hermeus the fastest company in aviation history to go from founding to supersonic flight – exactly… pic.twitter.com/wjoIcdiEOj
The imagery released for Ramjet-X shows a different Quarterhorse configuration than the 2.1 version, including beefed-up landing gear with twin nosewheels. The requirement for release of the Ramjet-X at Mach 3 suggests that its launch platform will be the Quarterhorse Mk 2.3, which will be the first to reach this kind of speed. This summer, Hermeus confirmed that its second supersonic aircraft, the Quarterhorse Mk 2.2, and the Mach 3-capable Mk 2.3 aircraft were under construction.
For its future Quarterhorse Mk 3, Hermeus has been developing Chimera, a turbine-based combined-cycle propulsion system. This is intended to transition from turbine operation to ramjet operation as speed increases.
Ramjet-X effectively separates part of that problem into another aircraft and the system could also be useful for experiments that do not require an entire hypersonic aircraft.
For example, an organization developing a high-temperature material might need to know how it behaves in an actual high-speed flight environment, rather than only in a ground test. The same could apply to weapons, sensors, communications systems, guidance hardware, onboard computers, or other components intended for high-speed vehicles.
So far, however, it’s not clear what kind of flight profiles Ramjet-X will provide. Hermeus has mentioned a cruise phase lasting “tens of minutes.”
The ramjet intake on the Ramjet-X. Hermeus
But a short-duration dash through a high-Mach regime is not equivalent to sustained flight at those speeds. The duration available to an experiment, thermal loads, acceleration, vibration, available electrical power, telemetry, maneuverability, and payload mass will all determine what can actually be tested.
The company says it is already testing the Ramjet-X propulsion system at its High Enthalpy Air-Breathing Test facility in Jacksonville, Florida. High-temperature structures are also under development at its El Segundo, California, headquarters. Integrated vehicle testing is currently planned for 2027.
The HEAT facility itself is part of Hermeus’ effort to establish high-speed propulsion test infrastructure. The company says the facility is being developed to eventually provide continuous high-Mach airflow for more flight-like ground testing.
Ramjet-X has yet to fly, but if it performs as intended, it could help lower one of the major barriers to obtaining real-world flight data at high Mach numbers. At the same time, the company is entering a market that is attracting growing interest from other aerospace firms, which are also expanding their high-speed flight-test capabilities, especially to capitalize on the broader hypersonics boom, including Stratolaunch.
There is fairly clear potential weaponization of this concept, for strike and surveillance missions, as well, although there has been no indication of that being in the works at this time.
The planned 2027 integrated testing should provide the first meaningful indication of whether the concept can progress to become a practical high-speed test capability.
Login
