After blowing past a self-imposed August deadline, the U.S. Navy has finally announced Boeing as the winner of its F/A-XX next-generation carrier-based fighter competition. F/A-XX has become one of the most hotly anticipated U.S. defense procurement decisions in recent memory after the Pentagon tried to shelve the program indefinitely last year.
Boeing had been competing against Northrop Grumman for the F/A-XX contract. An earlier down-select reportedly eliminated Lockheed Martin back in March 2025.
TWZ has now published an initial analysis of Boeing’s winning F/A-XX design based on what can be seen in the new rendering, which you can find here.
As mentioned, the Pentagon had moved to freeze the F/A-XX program in June 2025. Three months earlier, Boeing had won a separate U.S. Air Force competition to produce what is now called the F-47. U.S. military officials had argued that the U.S. industrial base lacked the capacity to support work on two next-generation fighters simultaneously.
A rendering of Boeing’s F-47 for the US Air Force. USAF
Congress subsequently intervened to keep the F/A-XX program running, but its future had remained very murky until earlier this year. In April, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Daryl Caudle said that a winner of the competition would finally be announced in August. Secretary Pete Hegseth and Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao both publicly committed to that same timeline later that month. There had been concerns that the program might have slipped back into limbo after that deadline came and went. Adm. Caudle told Aviation Week‘s Brian Everstine that he himself was no longer aware of when this decision might come on the sidelines of the Tailhook Association’s annual convention last month.
Just two weeks ago, Air Force Gen. Dale White, the service’s Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, reiterated concerns about industrial capacity in response to a question about potential challenges in building F/A-XXs at the same time as F-47s. White also acknowledged that these concerns were “not unique” to F/A-XX and F-47.
In this context, Boeing’s win today is perhaps unsurprising. The company will be able to leverage design work it has already been doing in relation to the F-47 program, as well as relevant production experience and supply chains. TWZ had previously highlighted similarities between what was seen in a rendering the company released of its F/A-XX proposal and official renders of what it is building for the Air Force. We still have yet to learn just how closely related the two designs are.
Boeing’s previously released F/A-XX rendering. Boeing
It is also worth noting here that Boeing previously pushed back publicly on the assertion that it was not ready to meet Air Force and Navy needs at the same time.
Regardless of any industrial base considerations, top Navy officials have been consistently vocal about the need for F/A-XX, even after the Pentagon’s move to put the program on ice last year. The service has presented the next-generation fighters as essential for staying ahead of top global competitors like China and Russia, as well as smaller adversaries, such as Iran.
“I know these things are expensive, and I know the defense industrial base is compressed, but we have got to figure out how to walk and chew gum here with aircraft,” CNO Caudle said in January, just weeks before the start of major combat operations against Iran. “The folks that used to be not in [the] headspace that I needed a stealth aircraft of this level to fly a mission into their country, will gain capability that the F-18 [F/A-18E/F Super Hornet] will not match against.”
A US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet seen being launched from a carrier. USN
“This is an ever-evolving theme, and when you’ve got partnerships … well coupled with each other across China and Russia and Iran and North Korea, and terrorist groups that are getting that kit from all of those through back-channel ways, our ability to fly with impunity with our existing airframes is fleeting,” he added at that time. “So, if I don’t start building that [F/A-XX] immediately, you’re not going to get it for some time.”
The Pentagon has now issued a full press release for the F/A-XX contract award to Boeing, which is valued at approximately $20 billion. The deal covers the “full-scale development phase” and includes the procurement of “multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing.”
“The F/A-XX is a critical pillar in our commitment to maintaining peace through strength. F/A-XX will dominate contested airspace, extend operational reach, and deliver a decisive combat advantage for the warfighter,” Michael P. Duffey, Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment, has said in a statement. “The F/A-XX platform represents a crucial, non-negotiable investment in America’s national security and long-term air combat capabilities. We are joining forces with Boeing to field these capabilities rapidly, ensuring our warfighters possess the lethal and highly networked systems required to deter aggression, project undisputed power, and secure absolute air superiority.”
“This achievement marks a new era for the U.S. Navy,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao also said in a statement. “The Sixth-Generation fighter is a generational leap in air superiority and will provide the world’s best aviators with unparalleled capabilities to fight, win, and come home safe. We are excited to partner with Boeing, and for our warfighters to continue to dominate the skies and defeat our nation’s enemies.”
“The F/A-XX will provide advanced carrier-based power projection that extends the range of the most agile and survivable airfields: U.S. Navy carriers. In addition, F/A-XX will be interoperable with manned and unmanned platforms such as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and increase the capability of every CCA it teams with,” the press release adds. “Following this contact award announcement, Boeing will deliver the platform to augment and eventually replace legacy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers beginning in the 2030s, and operate alongside the F-35C.”
The Navy has not yet announced a formal designation for the F/A-XX aircraft. If Boeing’s base design does share significant DNA with the F-47, it is possible that the designation for the new sixth-generation carrier-based fighter could reflect that.
It is also worth noting how muted the F/A-XX announcement has been across the board given how hotly anticipated it was. The contrast with the F-47 contract announcement, which was a live-broadcast event headed up by President Donald Trump from White House, is particularly striking.
Update: 6:14 PM ET –
Boeing has now put out its own press release regarding the F/A-XX contract award, which notes that “technical and programmatic details” about the aircraft “remain classified under U.S. national security and export laws.”
“It’s an honor to be selected to produce the Navy’s first sixth–generation platform,” Steve Parker, President and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said in a statement. “Backed by decades of work, bolstered by game-changing innovations and solidified by the investments we’ve made in new facilities uniquely suited to build multiple products with next generation capabilities, our dedicated and talented team is ready to execute this critical program.”
6th-gen edge.
Thank you, @USNavy, for continuing our partnership to design, build and deliver your F/A-XX aircraft. We’re honored to produce the 6th-generation fighter that will revolutionize advancements in naval aviation to maintain U.S. carrier air superiority.
“Delivering two advanced fighters in parallel was always our plan, and we invested accordingly,” Parker added. “We are ready and able to build multiple concurrent future combat aircraft franchise programs.”
Boeing’s release explicitly highlights a major ongoing expansion of its production and other facilities in St. Louis, Missouri. That work is also widely understood to be supporting the F-47 program, asTWZ reported separately just earlier today.
“Investment in facilities is just one part of the story,” Boeing’s Parker also said. “We’re also investing in technology and people so that we can deliver for our customers.”
As an aside, Boeing also received a separate contract today from the Navy, valued at $16,667,607, to support the final shutdown of the production line for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jet.
Great timing. The same afternoon Boeing gets F/A-XX, the Navy gives them a new contract for shutting down the F/A-18, EA-18 line
Boom times are coming for STL though: F-47, F/A-XX, F-15EX increase, T-7 ramping up, MQ-25. pic.twitter.com/9TnMBC7jMb
The Geran-4 appeared last May, according to the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR). Unlike the Geran-3, which largely used a modified Shahed-136 airframe, the new drone has one purpose-built for higher-speed flight because “the structural strength [of the older model] was insufficient for high-speed flights, and even less so for maneuvering under high G-loads,” GUR noted.
A Geran 4 attempting to be intercepted by a Ukrainian drone. (Via X) (GUR)
The Geran-4’s new airframe features a blended air intake and overall “improved aerodynamic efficiency, a reinforced structure, and a turbojet engine with increased thrust,” GUR stated. “The wings are now permanently integrated into the center wing section. To reduce air resistance, the number of technological hatches on the fuselage has been minimized.”
In an overnight attack across Ukraine that lasted until Monday, “Russia launched 165 drones overnight, 79 of them jet-powered, the Air Force reported. Air defenses downed or suppressed 112, and hits were recorded at 14 locations.” You can see the aftermath of one of those attacks in the following video.
We’re under constant attackUnfortunately, just a few minutes ago, a jet-powered Shahed drone hit a residential building . #Odesa Burn in hell, ruzzianspic.twitter.com/EXTWM1yVIN
Recently,Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) got its hands on one of these weapons. Its report offers the best view yet of what makes these drones so dangerous.
The Geran-4 is “a new, faster version of the attack drone that is proving harder for Ukrainian air defenses to intercept,” the report states. “We were given a rare opportunity to literally take this surviving drone apart and find out what makes it so much faster, more maneuverable, and more accurate.”
“The first part we uncover is the turbojet engine. It is one of the Geran-4’s most significant upgrades, allowing the drone to fly at altitudes of up to eight kilometers,” the report explained. “That’s twice as high as the older propeller-powered drones. According to specialists, drones equipped with this type of engine have already flown from Russia-occupied Crimea to Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine, a distance of more than 700 kilometers.”
RFE/RL takes apart a Russian Geran-4 drone to uncover what makes the jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) faster, harder to intercept, and capable of operating deep inside Ukraine — from its turbojet engine and advanced camera to foreign-made communications and navigation… pic.twitter.com/WGNdlpS9w1
“This engine allows it to fly at speeds of up to 450 to 500 kilometers per hour over Ukrainian territory. Sometimes even faster,” RFE/RL proffered. “It flies fast and high, which is why it is still difficult to intercept.”
As the camera pans down over the engine, the reporters noted that while it is made in China, “we have investigated cases where these engines were assembled in Russia using Chinese components.”
The next component examined was the drone’s camera.
“It has several modes: daylight, night vision, and infrared,” the report stated. “The camera offers 10-times optical zoom and up to 32-times digital zoom, allowing the drone operator to view terrain from an altitude of eight kilometers.”
“If there is a relay station and it is connected to the network, an operator sitting in an automated workstation somewhere in Bryansk, Oryol, or Crimea can control the drone and guide it to its target,” RFE/RL stated.
“Once the drone is inside Ukraine, regular cellular SIM cards can help keep it connected,” the report continued. “We also found two GSM modems inside this drone. Using SIM cards, they can transmit the Geran-4’s location over mobile networks, allowing the operator to track it in real time.”
Back in 2024, we explained how Shaheds fitted with 4G modems and SIM cards from Ukrainian telecom firms, combined with a camera installed on the drone and the ability to use wireless networks, could be one of a number of avenues that would transform the Shahed into a relatively long-range reconnaissance and strike asset capable of beyond-line-of-sight real-time operations. This could help plug what at the time was a glaring gap in the Russian arsenal, although the stability of its connectivity is still unknown and providing man-in-the-loop guidances in real-time for strikes may be beyond the capabilities of this configuration, at least consistently.
Regardless, most of these drones do not have cameras or modems, they fly to a specific set of coordinates and dive on a target before detonating.
The following images offered a glimpse into that system.
Drone specialists who have investigated the remains of these weapons told the outlet that they had found SIM cards “from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and even some European Union countries. And the deeper we go inside the drone, the more foreign-made components we find.”
The RFE/RL team also found a Chinese mesh modem the Russians use to help guide the drone.
“It’s responsible, among other things, for radio and video communications. Essentially, this device allows the drone operator to see the video feed from the Geran-4 almost in real time,” RFE/RL stated. “The modem has a range of up to 300 kilometers and can also act as a signal relay. That means several drones flying near each other can relay and strengthen the signal, making it possible to control them over much greater distances.”
The discovery of the Chinese mesh modem illustrates something we reported earlier this year: “For some time now, Russia has been working on a man-in-the-loop (MITL) control capability for the Shahed/Geran, a feature that was confirmed when they started to appear with cameras and cellular modems, something TWZ explored in detail at the time. These developments allow the drone to be connected to an operator. Standard Shaheds fly autonomous routes to pre-planned targets on autopilot with no man-in-the-loop control. They are ‘fire and forget’ weapons.“
“Meanwhile, the range at which MITL can be achieved has been steadily increased. At first, the drones were adapted to exploit patchy cellular networks to provide additional connectivity when available. More recently, Shaheds have been flying with antennas allowing for direct line-of-sight control close to the front lines. This allows them to hit targets dynamically like an FPV drone, while packing a much heavier punch and being able to loiter for long periods of time. You can read all about this development here. Now, the datalink range is being extended using airborne signal relays, possibly creating a mesh network with multiple line-of-sight links.”
درون”Geran-4“ توقف محرك الـMicro-turbojet قبل الانقضاض على الهدف، وتتَّخذ وضعية الانزلاق البطيء، ربّما لتوفير الوقود او لدقة افضل اثناء البحث بالعدسة البصرية. ايضاً يظهر بوضوح هوائيات الارسال Mesh Antennas اثنان مثبَّتان على الذَّيل، أحدهما موجّه الى الاعلى والاخر الى الاسفل. pic.twitter.com/cQIyHhvbmm
Finally, the Ukrainian journalists found something else we have long reported on. Like many other Russian weapons, the Geran-4 even contains components made in America.
“Despite international sanctions, a significant portion of its components are still coming from abroad, highlighting gaps in global export control enforcement,” RFE/RL showcased. “We just opened up the drone’s onboard computer, and these circuit boards contain components made by a U.S. company. The markings on this component are partly worn off, but you can still see the manufacturer, Texas Instruments.”
“According to the specialists, what is actually Russian-made here is mainly the drone’s body and its assembly. This particular drone was manufactured and assembled at Alabuga, a major Russian drone production site. According to Ukraine’s military intelligence, Russia is now producing around 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones a month at Alabuga and other facilities across Russia.”
Satellite images of the site first emerged in 2023, which you can see below.
As if the Geran-4 drones were not challenging enough for Ukraine, Russian Geran-5 jet-powered drones are equipped with “a DSMAC (Digital Sensor Module for Autonomous Navigation) module for navigation using reference images of the Earth’s surface, similar to the X-101 missile,” the Ukrainian technology monitoring channel Polkovnyk GSh reported on Telegram. DSMAC allows for a weapon to navigate without any external help from global positioning satellites. The Tomahawk also uses this system. You can read all about it and how AI embedded in Shahed models will be the next leap in true autonomy far beyond the front lines, even for hunting and killing targets of opportunity, in our special feature linked here.
In addition, Russia has installed mesh repeaters on these weapons for radio signals so that video of the attacks can be “recorded (and immediately transmitted),” presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii Beskrestnov, known as Flash, said on Telegram.
The Russian military is now capable of acquiring real-time, high-quality BDA of its strikes with Geran-type OWA-UAVs/cruise missiles in downtown Kyiv.
In the footage below, we can see the moment of a Russian strike with Geran-5 cruise missile on the "Inkom" business center… pic.twitter.com/mPx4Kf9tmH
The Russian jet-powered drones were largely outrunning the drone interceptors Ukraine began using with great success against the piston-driven Shaheds. Those interceptors were not only saving lives, but they were also saving money because they cost a tiny fraction of far more expensive, higher-end munitions like the PAC-3 MSE fired by the Patriot system or the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile variants fired from the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) air defense launchers.
Seeking a more efficient and effective defense, Ukraine adapted by fielding higher-performing interceptor drones that are purpose-built to take on the jet-powered Russian munitions. Still, the engagement window for hitting the Russian drones is small, and these are more expensive to build. However, they will remain far less costly and faster to acquire than surface-to-air missiles.
In his speech earlier this week at the U.N. General Assembly, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that “our soldiers have already successfully tested four new jet-powered interceptor drones against Russian jet-powered Shaheds. So we are scaling up production.”
It is unclear exactly which interceptors the Ukrainian president was talking about; however, other types designed to take on Russian jet-powered Gerans have become public. One of them is the Sting S, a variant of the bullet-shaped Sting interceptor drone made by the Ukrainian Wild Hornets drone company.
On Sept. 19, the company posted a video on X claiming that “a crew from the 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment took down a Russian Geran-5 using the new STING S. This drone is faster and carries a larger explosive payload than other Geran variants.”
TWZ cannot independently verify these claims.
STING S takes down a Geran-5 jet-powered drone-missile
The crew from the 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment took down a Russian Geran-5 using the new STING S. This drone is faster and carries a larger explosive payload than other Geran variants.
When we asked for more details, Wild Hornets told us “that the tests are going well. About a dozen enemy ‘Geran-4′ jet-powered strike UAVs have already been shot down, as well as several ‘Geran-5’ models, just in the last few days. We should note that at this stage we are talking about only the first results of combat testing within a few select units.”
The Sting S “is a high-speed quadcopter-type interceptor,” the Wild Hornets spokesperson added. “When choosing this model, we took into account that the solution should be inexpensive, easy to use, and quickly scalable.”
“Furthermore, most of the targets during combat testing have been destroyed using ‘Hornet Vision Ctrl’ remote control technology,” the spokesman stated. Wild Hornets claims the system provides low-latency image transmission, long-range communication, and resistance to electronic warfare.
100 remote interceptions in 100 seconds: Hornet Vision CTRL in action
Since deployment, Ukraine’s Defense Forces have remotely destroyed 1,000+ enemy targets using the system.
All thanks to the skill of crews taking down enemy drones with STING interceptors every day pic.twitter.com/9sUthdjsvF
“We expect this will allow us to rapidly scale up the deployment of the new interceptor once mass production begins,” the spokesperson noted.
As we have frequently noted, Russia and Ukraine continuously create new weapons and ways to defeat them. The jet-powered Russian drones, and Ukraine’s newest interceptors designed to destroy them, are the latest examples of a seemingly endless weapons evolution cycle in this war.
The Navy has identified the aircraft type at the center of last night’s mishap aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The service said the incident involved the crew of an EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jet who were forced to eject after the aircraft experienced an arresting gear failure while trying to land. This took place about 6:18 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Monday as the vessel was off the coast of Virginia.
The Growler crew, attached to the “Zappers” of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 130, was “promptly recovered by search-and-rescue personnel assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 7. Both aviators were safely returned to the ship,” the Navy added. The cause of the mishap is still being investigated.
A U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet approaches the flight deck of Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), June 20, 2026. Eisenhower is underway in the Atlantic Ocean conducting carrier qualifications, supporting East Coast fleet replacement squadrons. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Miguel Santiago) Petty Officer 2nd Class Miguel Santiago
The two aviators and two additional sailors injured on the flight deck were flown to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth for follow-on evaluation, the Navy explained. Another sailor was flown to a Norfolk-area hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. All told, eight sailors had to be evaluated by the ship’s medical personnel following the incident.
Air traffic control audio has emerged indicating that the injured sailor flown to the area hospital was transported to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
DSTY613 (MH-60S) brought the injured into Sentara Norfolk General Hospital last night.
It is unclear at the moment whether the aircraft was lost or if there was any damage to the carrier itself. We have reached out to the Navy to find out more details.
The failure of an arresting wire is one of the worst nightmares carrier-based fixed-wing naval aircrews and sailors on deck can face. The wire turns into a falling steel whip that can cut a person in half as it slices through the air across the flight deck, and usually, the aircraft it broke away from, ends up in the sea as it doesn’t have enough airspeed or time to get airborne again. You can read more about this type of mishap in our past reporting here.
The mishap took place as Eisenhower was working up in preparation for a future deployment scheduled for 2027, which TWZpreviously reported. This followed an extended 16-month Planned Incremental Availability (PIA) that wrapped in April. The carrier had been pierside at Naval Station Norfolk since Sept. 2 after completing a 12-day underway for Fleet Replenishment Squadron and Training Command Carrier Qualifications in the Virginia Capes and Jacksonville Operating Areas.
U.S. Navy Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) conducts a full power demonstration during Sea Trial in the Virginia Capes, Apr. 22, 2026. Eisenhower returned to sea and is now in the Basic Phase in the Optimized Fleet Response Plan. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Nicole Schweigert) Seaman Apprentice Nicole Schweigert
Eisenhower got underway again on the afternoon of Sept. 28, according to ship spotters, for a Tailored Ship’s Training Availability and Final Evaluation Problem. That’s one of the final steps before onloading ammunition for the Composite Unit Training Exercise, when the full strike group gathers to complete pre-deployment training.
A top U.S. Air Force acquisition officer says work to set up a full production line for the F-47 sixth-generation fighter is getting closer and closer on the horizon. Prime contractor Boeing is in the midst of a nearly $2 billion expansion to its facilities in St. Louis, Missouri. The F-47 program otherwise continues to progress along an aggressive schedule, with a first flight still being targeted for 2028 and the goal of production jets entering operational service in the early 2030s.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich, the service’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft, provided an update on the F-47 program during a virtual talk hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies yesterday. Boeing won the Air Force competition to produce the F-47 in March 2023, and at least one pre-production example is being built now. The Air Force’s stated plan now is to acquire at least 185 of these jets.
“We have an imperative, I would call it a strategic asset, which is fighter production capacity,” Helfrich said during his opening remarks. “We only have so many production lines, and so we have to get the very most out of those that we can while planning for CCA [Collaborative Combat Aircraft drone] production, and pretty soon F-47 production.”
A rendering of the F-47 sixth-generation fighter. USAF
“There are only three active fighter production lines, right? We got F-35 down in Fort Worth, the F-15EX in St. Louis, and F-16 in Greenville,” Helfrich elaborated later on in the discussion in response to a question about steps the Air Force is taking to maintain sufficient operational capacity across its fighter fleets, in general. “So we need to grow the existing production lines, and we need to – or at least maximize what we can get out of those existing production lines, and we need to add production lines.”
“We’re not too far away from an F-47 production line, which will be additive to the production capacity,” he added.
Since 2023, Boeing has been working to substantially expand its production and other facilities in St. Louis by more than one million square feet. The company has repeatedly shied away from explicitly linking the $1.8 billion construction project to the F-47 program, but there have been clear signs of a connection for years now.
An undated aerial view of work to expand Boeing’s facilities in St. Louis. PARIC Corporation
“The project’s first phase includes plans to erect and renovate 1.1 million ft.2 of facilities on the 110-acre Brownleigh and 75-acre Northern tracts adjacent to St. Louis Lambert International Airport, according to planning documents released by the airport authority in 2023,” Aviation Week reported in 2025. “Phase 1 includes the construction of a 880,000-ft.2 aircraft assembly building on the Brownleigh [site], plus a 185,000-ft.2 hangar, 80,000-ft.2 radar cross-section test facility, open aircraft shelters, hush house, maintenance building, fuel calibration building and fire house totaling 90,000 ft.2 on the Northern tract.”
At that time, parts of the new facility were reportedly expected to open in 2026 ahead of the completion of the full project in 2030.
A post across Boeing’s social media accounts in July highlighted continued progress with this construction. This included the completion of roof and exterior panels and the installation of hangar doors at a section of the site dedicated to “Advanced Combat Aircraft Assembly,” as well as the “first steel column installed for the Central Utility Plan” in the North Tract area.
Progress you can see. Built for what's next. Momentum continues on our St. Louis expansion:
Advanced Combat Aircraft Assembly: roof and exterior panels complete, hangar doors installed North Tract: first steel column installed for the Central Utility Plant
“Momentum continues on our St. Louis expansion,” Dan Gillian, Vice President and General Manager of Air Dominance at Boeing, also said in July, according to Flight Global. “We are expanding our defence footprint while supporting next-generation capabilities.”
All of this is in line with Brig. Gen. Helfrich’s comments yesterday about a full production line for the F-47 steadily taking shape now. This, in turn, fits squarely with the aforementioned aggressive timeline the Air Force is pursuing for the program overall. Accelerated work on the F-47 has been aided by years of flight testing in secret of advanced demonstrator aircraft.
There is also a question of whether Boeing’s expansion of its production capacity in St. Louis could also be tied to the Navy’s F/A-XX next-generation carrier-based fighter program. Boeing has been facing off against Northrop Grumman in the F/A-XX competition with a design that looks related, at least to some degree, to the F-47.
A rendering of Boeing’s proposed F/A-XX design. Boeing
The F-47 and F/A-XX programs have become very closely intertwined in other ways. In 2025, the Pentagon moved to freeze F/A-XX, explicitly over concerns about competition for industrial base resources with F-47. This would include production line capacity. Congress subsequently intervened to keep the Navy effort going, but a final winner still has yet to be announced.
Just earlier this month, Air Force Gen. Dale White, the service’s Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, reiterated concerns about industrial capacity. White’s comments came in response to a question about potential challenges in building F/A-XXs at the same time as F-47s at a media roundtable at the Air & Space Forces’ Air, Space and Cyber Conference at which TWZ was in attendance. The general also acknowledged that these concerns were “not unique” to F/A-XX and F-47.
During the virtual talk yesterday, Brig. Gen. Helfrich otherwise touted continued progress on the F-47 program.
“The F-47 is going to be the world’s first sixth-generation fighter, and I can’t wait to fly it [sic; see it fly] this administration,” he said. “That’s a commitment that I made, that we are on track to do.”
The “administration” referred to here is President Donald Trump’s second term in office, which will come to a close in January 2029. With this deadline in mind, the Air Force has openly said in the past that it is aiming for a first flight of the F-47 in 2028. Beyond that, the stated goal is to be operating the jets operationally sometime in the early 2030s.
A stock picture of a US Air Force F-22 Raptor. USAF
When the jets do enter service, “one of the things that we know F-47 is going to bring is more survivability and lethality than anything that’s ever been delivered before. And going into that highly contested environment, you have to meet certain levels of survivability if you want to execute there,” Helfrich noted yesterday. “Beyond just the survivability and lethality that we know is going to come, there’s also an adaptability that the F-47 will bring.”
“The F-47 will come out of the box with full open architecture,” he continued. “Amongst other great things, it brings the ability to upgrade rapidly, faster than the threat if needed. That is what is going to be required in that kind of environment. Other things it’s going to bring, it’s going to be much more survivable than our fifth-gen platforms, as well as have a combat radius of over 1,000 nautical miles, which you’re familiar with. That’s a long way, which is needed for that kind of environment. You need to be able to execute and persist there.”
“Especially in these highly contested environments, no one’s going to be fighting alone. So we need to make sure that we are integrating,” he added. “There’s some ability to get lift from one platform to another, right? Whether it’s a mission system, it’s communications, it’s open architectures, we’re seeing that integration pay dividends, so that we are integrated from day one.”
This kind of integration and cross-platform commonality in mission systems will be particularly relevant for F-47s acting as airborne controllers for CCA drones. Brig. Gen. Helfrich’s comments above also came in the midst of a discussion about future operations involving both F-47s and B-21 Raider bombers.
Many questions do still remain about plans for the F-47 and its design, including what engines will power the aircraft when it first enters service. In July, TWZ published a deep-dive feature about what is known about the aircraft to date, which you can find here.
In the meantime, the Air Force and Boeing are continuing to push ahead with laying the groundwork for full production of the F-47 as the jet gets closer to its first flight in the coming years.
The U.S. Navy’s schedule for getting USS Connecticut, one of its prized Seawolf class nuclear attack submarines, back into service has slipped into next summer. The boat suffered severe damage, especially to its bow, in a collision with an underwater seamount in the South China Sea in 2021. The service had previously hoped that repairs would be finished before the end of this year, and planning is also now underway for the submarine’s retirement in 2031. This would mean it could serve for just four years before being pulled from service once and for all.
“USS Connecticut (SSN 22) is currently undergoing a complex Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability (EDSRA) at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility. Current work consists of structural and systems restoration and required lifecycle maintenance,” a Navy official told TWZ today. “The Navy’s target completion date for the availability is the summer of 2027. PSNS & IMF is dedicated to executing this work with the highest standards of safety, technical accuracy, and craftsmanship to ensure the ship returns to the fleet ready to take its place at the tip of the spear in defense of our nation’s interests.”
The USS Connecticut seen at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in 2023. USN
USS Connecticut is the second of just three Seawolf class submarines commissioned between 1997 and 2005, the others being USS Seawolf and USS Jimmy Carter. The Jimmy Carter, which came last, is a one-of-a-kind subvariant of the design that is optimized for underwater espionage missions. However, the Seawolf and Connecticut also feature advanced capabilities compared to other submarines in the Navy’s inventory today, and the service utilizes all three for a variety of specialized tasks, for which they are in very high demand.
After USS Connecticut hit the seamount in October 2021, the submarine first limped to Guam, and then made its way to San Diego in southern California. From there, it headed north to the Puget Sound area, where it has been ever since. The Navy’s investigation into the incident put heavy emphasis on how a weak command environment and lax attitudes toward the performance of key tasks had put the submarine on a path to the accident, as you can read more about in detail here.
The EDSRA formally began in February 2023. At that time, the Navy projected that the repairs would be completed in September 2025. By July 2023, the schedule had already shifted to early 2026, according to Naval News. In July 2025, the service confirmed to TWZ that the timeline had moved again to the right, to late 2026.
Another view of USS Connecticut at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in 2023. This picture offers a good sense of the extent of the damage to its bow. USN
The exact reasons for the delays are unclear. TWZ has stressed the particular complexities of major repairs to any of the Navy’s trio of Seawolf class submarines in our past reporting on Connecticut. As we wrote in 2023 around the start of the EDSRA:
“As for the USS Connecticut, as the images show, her state remains relatively the same, at least in terms of what is visible, compared to when she arrived over a year and a half ago. Her sonar dome is still missing and, clearly, the boat has been idle for some time, with huge sections of its anechoic coating missing from its sail.”
“Major repairs to the submarine’s bow, sonar, and other underside structure components will be challenging as the Seawolf class is long out of production. On top of that, just three boats were ever built, with one being a heavily modified sub-type in its own right, the highly secretive USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23). In the past, similar damage has been fixed by leveraging spare parts and entire sections of decommissioned submarines of the same class. That simply is not an option in this case.”
The Navy’s 2025 Fiscal Year budget proposal highlighted exactly these broader issues in seeking funds for spare bow domes “for use in the event replacement is required,” separate from the incident with the USS Connecticut. The original sustainment strategy for the Seawolf class did not include these items, which have a “three plus year lead time” to produce.
With the EDRSA, the Navy is also taking the opportunity to conduct a deep overhaul of USS Connecticut, which could include the integration of various upgrades. The Navy’s budget documents have long highlighted efforts to modernize key systems on all three Seawolf class submarines, some of which were first designed in the 1970s.
USS Connecticut underway in 2009. USN
How much the repairs and accompanying overhaul will cost is also not clear. In 2021, Congress approved $40 million for “emergency repairs” for Connecticut and an additional $10 million for a new bow dome, but the full price tag is expected to be far steeper. The Seawolf class submarines were extremely expensive to procure in the first place, costing approximately $3.1 billion apiece in 1983, or some $10.6 billion in 2026 dollars. This was due in large part to the truncated order, from 29 down to three, as a result of post-Cold War drawdowns.
Depending on when repairs to the USS Connecticut are actually finished, the Navy could find itself for at least a time with just one Seawolf class submarine in active service. USS Seawolf is currently scheduled to start a routine maintenance availability next May, which will then run through February 2030, per Navy budget documents. As mentioned, the Navy is now also planning to inactivate USS Connecticut in 2031, making it the first Seawolf class submarine to be retired, per its most recent annual shipbuilding plan.
The service still has plans to acquire a new class of attack submarines, which has been discussed in the past as something closer to a true successor to the Seawolf class than the Virginia class boats being procured now. However, these new submarines, currently referred to as SSN(X), are not expected to arrive until the mid-2040s at the earliest. Between now and then, the Navy is set to acquire a one-of-a-kind seabed warfare version of the Virginia, which could well take over for the USS Jimmy Carter, as you can read more about here. In August, the service announced that stretched Block IV and V Virginia class submarines with Virginia Payload Modules (VPM) will now be categorized as guided-missile types (SSGN), as well.
When it comes to USS Connecticut, the Navy remains committed to getting the highly capable submarine back to the fleet after being sidelined for nearly five years now. At the same time, the boat has now already entered the twilight of its career, with just four years of active service life left if the current repair schedule holds.
On Sunday, NBC News reported that Marines were injured during an Iranian cruise missile attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Sept. 14. The network’s sources said the Marines were not on a U.S. Navy ship, but they did not identify which vessel they were on. However, a former Royal Mail vessel that at one point was being converted into a floating armory stands out as a strong possibility.
While much remains unclear about the Sept. 14 incident, there was only one vessel known to have been struck that day, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) and a maritime security official we spoke with. The ship was eventually identified by several maritime media outlets as the M/V St. Helena. Again, the St. Helena’s involvement remains unconfirmed, but the ship’s interesting background is of particular note.
The St Helena logistics ship during the Saudi Arabia on March 30, 2021. Photo by Colin McMaster
“Eight U.S. Marines were injured two weeks ago when an Iranian cruise missile attacked the ship they were operating on in the Strait of Hormuz,” NBC reported, citing three U.S. officials. “The Marines were not seriously injured, but they sustained smoke inhalation and possibly traumatic brain injuries, as they had symptoms of concussions, such as headaches, the officials said.”
“The Marines, seven of them enlisted and one officer, all returned to duty soon after the Sept. 14 attack, the U.S. officials said,” according to the network. “The officials said the Marines were operating as part of a battalion landing team during the Iranian anti-ship cruise missile attack.”
TWZ cannot independently confirm that Marines were on board the St. Helena or that they were injured. We reached out to the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) for more information. The Pentagon referred us to CENTCOM, and CENTCOM declined comment.
The incident took place amid an uneasy truce between Iran and the U.S. broken up by sporadic Iranian attacks on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, the U.S. military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ships, during which it has struck several for trying to bypass that effort as well as in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping. Negotiations between Washington and Iran have ebbed and flowed, and U.S. President Donald Trump is once again mulling a choice between continuing talks or renewing large-scale attacks.
As we noted earlier in this piece, after the vessel was struck, several maritime industry trade publications identified it as the St. Helena.
“Iran has attacked a historic former British Royal Mail passenger ship in the Strait of Hormuz,” TradeWinds News reported on Sept. 15, a day after the incident. “Maritime security sources identify the 6,800-gt St Helena (built 1989) as the latest vessel to be hit by an ‘unknown projectile’ in the war-torn waterway. The attack was reported late on Monday, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations, which cited a ‘verified source’ for the incident without identifying the vessel.”
Aerial view of the St Helena transport ship in the sea off Porto Pino during the Sardinia on July 4, 2022. Photo by Sam Bagnall
“UKMTO has received a time late report of an incident within the Strait of Hormuz,” the organization reported on Sept. 15, citing an incident that took place a day earlier. “A verified source has reported that a vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile.”
“There is no reported damage or environmental impact,” UKMTO added. “Authorities are investigating.”
According to Lloyd’s List, the ship was being operated by the Ambrey maritime security firm at the time it was struck. Ambrey declined to comment.
Shipping expert Sal Mercogliano and open-source investigator Tom Bike were among those suggesting the St. Helena could have been the vessel at the heart of the NBC report.
So piecing together the evidence it appears that the US may have converted St Helena into a armed merchant cruiser.
The Marines looked at putting Armed Guards on board commercial ships three years ago as reported by @USNINews.
Exactly what the St. Helena was doing at the time it was struck is unclear; however, the ship has had a very unusual past.
The vessel entered into service in 1990 and “sailed between Cape Town, South Africa and Saint Helena and Ascension Islands, carrying both passengers and cargo, some of which was Royal Mail, earning her the rare RMS designation,” according to Cruise Arabia and Africa.
The St. Helena was Britain’s last working postal ship, according to Maritime Executive. After it was retired in 2018 because it was no longer needed for that function, things got really interesting.
Two different organizations took over the vessel, including, as we noted earlier in this story, a company that was planning to use it as a floating armory in the Middle East.
“Renamed MNG Tahiti, the 103-meter (340-foot) ship is being readied by her new owner MNG Maritime to become a floating armory working in the Gulf of Oman,” Maritime Executive wrote on April 22, 2018. “She will deliver security guards and weapons to vessels sailing through the region and is expected to be operational in her new role in the next few months.”
It is unclear what happened to that plan. However, two years later, an off-road racing series called Extreme E said that it “secured exclusive use of the former Royal Mail ship in 2018.” After that, the ship underwent “an extensive refurbishment process, which has included total overhaul of steelwork, engines, generators, propellers, interior and cabin space, and more, making it not only fit for purpose, but also as efficient as possible ahead of its new mission.”
Aerial view of the St Helena transport ship in the sea off Porto Pino during the Sardinia on July 4, 2022. Photo by Sam Bagnall
The ship was “specifically designed to transport all the infrastructure and equipment the Extreme E needs for their race weekends,” the organization stated. The plan was to have the ship serve “as its freight and logistics hub due to her versatility and ability to carry and unload a mixture of cargo, like all 10 of the championship’s ODYSSEY 21’s [electric off-road racecar], as well as team members and guests. This was also fit with a Science Laboratory so research can be conducted enroute to the race locations.”
On Sept. 17, 2024, the St. Helena was put up for sale, according to Horizon Ship Brokers. The current ownership is unclear. We reached out to Horizon Ship Brokers for more details.
Horizon Ship Brokers
Last year, the saga of the St. Helena took a new turn. A company called Terra Nova Expeditions chartered the vessel for Antarctic cruises, but those plans were scrubbed last month because the vessel was stuck in the Persian Gulf and was no longer available for the Antarctic sailing season.
While we can’t confirm that Marines were onboard when St. Helena was hit, Marines have been training for this exact mission set. USNI News reported in 2023 that a “force of 100 Marines, newly trained by Navy personnel,” stood ready “to respond, if ordered, to provide armed security aboard foreign commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
Those Marines were members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) embarked on the three-ship Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), USNI added at the time.
It is unclear if those plans are still in place and if Marines in the region have actually been ordered to provide armed security for foreign vessels sailing through or near the strait. Regardless, Marines could be quickly trained to take on this mission set and have drilled for ship boarding and searches for years, especially special operations and specially-tasked units. CENTCOM declined to comment when we asked if there are U.S. personnel embarking on commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
At the same time, it is possible that the unique attributes of St. Helena made it a convenient host ship for sea base operations for U.S. forces in the region specifically for this crisis. Adapting commercial vessels for exactly this purpose has a long history around the Strait of Hormuz, as it was a central facet of the Tanker Wars during the 1980s, that saw U.S. forces operate from barges in the region. Today, commercial vessels remarkably similar to St. Helena operate in similar roles, especially in support of special operations and interdiction operations.
The special mission ship U.S. Motor Vessel Kellie Chouest steams in the Caribbean Sea while participating in a passing exercise (PASSEX), with the Dominican Republic Navy and USS Billings (LCS 15) Oct. 24, 2021. Kellie Chouest is deployed to the U.S. 4th Fleet area of operations to support Joint Interagency Task Force South’s mission, which includes counter-illicit drug trafficking missions in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Austin C
Once again, we have no idea what the ship’s mission was at the time of the incident and if Marines were simply helping it transit safely out of the Persian Gulf or something more, but the attack did expose the fact that individual Marines are more involved with activities in this tumultuous body of water than it may seem.
Fincantieri Marine Group, which developed the cancelled Constellation class frigate for the U.S. Navy, says it sees a possible new opportunity in the service’s latest small surface combatant plans. At least three foreign frigate designs are already under review for possible Navy service, as is the prospect of having them built overseas, as part of a study expected to wrap up next month. Fincantieri wants to once again add the FREMM design, which the Constellation was based on, to the Navy’s options. The shipyard, which is a subsidiary of its Italian namesake, made significant investments in shipyard infrastructure in the United States and supply chains as part of the Constellation debacle, but it is not clear if that will be enough to make a new pitch attractive.
USNI News first reported on the possibility of a new Fincantieri frigate pitch to the Navy yesterday after an interview with CEO George Moutafis. TWZ also spoke at length with Moutafis about the failure of the Constellation class program earlier this year, and we have reached back out to the company for more information about new prospects now.
“Right now the Navy and the [Trump] administration could find the right type of dialog with us to set [development] up in a way that enables quick setup and swift construction without letting design spirals get in the way,” Moutafis told USNI News. “Accept the design that is and works well, and start work on it to get units out there for the fleet.”
In addition, “Moutafis said the supply chain the shipyard built during the Constellation could be applied to Fincantieri’s FREMM EVO design with few modifications to avoid the design churn that led to the cancellation of the Constellation,” according to USNI News.
The Constellation class was derived from the Franco-Italian FREMM, a multi-purpose frigate designed to offer a mix of anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-surface warfare capabilities. The explicit intent of the program had been to acquire a frigate based on an established, in-production ‘parent’ design, to which only relatively minor changes would have to be made, helping to reduce cost and risk. In the end, Constellationonly had 15 percent design commonality with FREMM, causing delays and other issues that directly contributed to its cancellation. However, the Navy’s demand for smaller surface combatants has not gone away. We will come back to this all in a moment.
As designed, the FREMM EVO is close to 472.5 feet (144 meters) long, is some 64.6 feet (19.7 meters) at its widest, and displaces 6,500 tons with a full combat load, according to Fincantieri’s website. Its hull dimensions and displacement are essentially unchanged from the Italian subvariant of the baseline FREMM. The EVO will have a new superstructure configuration and a host of new capabilities.
Renderings of the FREMM-EVO. FincantieriAn Italian Navy FREMM frigate, or Bergamini class, in front, sails together with a US Navy Arleigh Burke class destroyer. USN
The most notable new feature on the EVO version is set to be a new Leonardo Kronos Dual-Band Radar (DBR). The Kronos DBR combines the C-band Kronos Quad and the X-band Kronos StarFire into a single system with four paired sets of active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) positioned around the superstructure. In general, combining radars in this way can offer advantages for performing a variety of different tasks and doing so simultaneously. The ability to fuse data from both arrays together can help produce high-fidelity target tracks and other benefits. At the same time, DBRs have historically presented complexities that can cause serious difficulties with both integration and operation.
Among other things, the DBR is set to give the FREMM EVO expanded capability to knock down incoming ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of flight using Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles. Anti-ship ballistic missiles have become a threat that navies globally could realistically encounter in future conflicts, even against smaller nation states or non-state actors. There is a trend emerging worldwide now in the development of new anti-ballistic missile defenses to protect individual warships, as well as help defend other naval assets and interests ashore. Baseline FREMM frigates can already fire Aster 30 missiles, as well as Aster 16s, from any of their 16 Sylver vertical launch system cells at the bow end of the ship. EVO has space allotted for the integration of additional VLS cells, but it is unclear whether any current customers are pursuing that option.
In terms of armament, like the baseline FREMM, the EVO configuration will also have deck-mounted launchers for eight anti-ship cruise missiles, two triple torpedo tubes, two turreted 76mm guns, and various smaller automatic cannons and machine guns.
FREMM EVO is to feature improvements to other parts of its sensor package, as well as electronic warfare and communications suites, compared to the baseline design. This will all be tied into a SADOC 4 combat management system (CMS) from Leonardo.
On top of all this, this new FREMM configuration will have a new dedicated suite of counter-drone capabilities, another threat category that is very real now, and that only continues to expand in scale and scope.
“FREMM EVO represents a milestone both in confirming the ability to combine maturity and innovation in its EW systems that will be on board, and for the first naval supply of an advanced anti-drone counter capability,” ELT Group, which is supplying components for the counter-drone suite, said in a statement back in 2024, according to Naval News. “The latter will allow both the detection, recognition and identification of drones and their soft-kill counter. The project of a naval CUAS arises from the expertise acquired by Elettronica in this capacity for several years now, which have led to the development of sophisticated Artificial Intelligence algorithms developed specifically for countering the threat posed by drones.”
When it comes to a new pitch to the U.S. Navy, FREMM EVO does have the benefit of being an in-production design. As mentioned, Fincantieri had also been working to expand its facilities at the Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin to build similarly-sized Constellation class frigates before that program was cancelled. The shipbuilder has relevant established supply chains to feed into that yard, as well, as Moutafis highlighted to USNI News.
A Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) briefing slide from 2022 detailing work Fincantieri had been doing to expand its physical infrastructure to support the production of the Constellation class. USN
In speaking to us earlier this year, Moutafis also talked about important lessons learned from the Constellation program, which he felt were already having a positive impact the U.S. Navy way of doing business.
“Some of those lessons learned out of Constellation are being manifested in the things that the Navy has been rolling out the past few months – a new approach that empowers PAEs [Navy Portfolio Acquisition Executives] to make decisions, to minimize change, to embrace innovation and new technologies,” he said. “All these elements that we see now being rolled out, I think to a certain degree, connect back to lessons that have been learned out of the Constellation class journey.”
“Figure out what you want to prioritize, to what extent you want to prioritize schedule, and what’s the best way to say this,” he added when asked for specific examples of what he was talking about. “When you know when you need something delivered and at what pace, then enable the right level of decision-making. Because otherwise – I don’t want to sound this the wrong way – but perfection sometimes is the enemy of more than good enough.”
“Going beyond the Constellation class, now the needs are for vessels to be out there for the warfighter as soon as possible. For sure, we will see many cases where it will be considered that a vessel with these capabilities – even though potentially, in some areas, it may not have enough tons of steel on its sides, or whatever – it will be good enough to assist the warfighter as they head into harm’s way,” he also added at that time. “Those trade-offs are now being placed at the PAE level, allowing Navy leaders at that level to make the right decisions – figuring out whether to continue going down a design spiral versus just moving out with production and enabling us to have the right capabilities on time for the warfighter.”
When Moutafis spoke with us, the Navy had already unveiled a new FF(X) frigate program and announced plans to buy examples of a design derived from the Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Legend class National Security Cutter for the U.S. Coast Guard. Those frigates will notably lack a VLS array, at least initially, along with other features that were seen as critical to Constellation class. The Navy has outlined plans to offset the more limited baked-in capabilities of the FF(X)s with add-on containerized weapon systems and companion fleets of uncrewed surface vessels. All of this has already prompted significant debate about the operational utility of these small surface combatants, as TWZ has previously explored in detail.
A rendering of the FF(X) frigate. USN
In August, President Trump put out a memo that, in part, directed then-Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao to “submit a plan … that includes timelines and resourcing requirements, for a new competitive acquisition approach for surface combatants with sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties.” The memo also outlined an acquisition strategy referred to as the “Finland Model,” in which foreign shipbuilders would have to make major investments in U.S. enterprises and hire American workers as part of any future contract, even if an initial tranche of vessels is built overseas. This, in turn, has led to the aforementioned foreign warship study ongoing now, which is reportedly exploring the merits of Japan’s Mogami class, the South Korean Chungnam class, and the Istanbul class from Turkey, in-depth profiles of which you can find here.
Examples of the Japanese Mogami class (at bottom), the South Korean Chungnam class (at top left), and the Turkish Istanbul class (at top right). Yuichi Yamazaki-Pool/Getty Images/HD Hyundai Heavy Industries/Anadolu Shipyard
Whether or not the U.S. Navy will pursue the acquisition of any of the ships it is studying now, or whether it might be willing to consider additional pitches from Fincantieri or other shipbuilders, remains to be seen. If it is to be successful, any new attempt to leverage an in-production foreign frigate design will have to take concrete steps to avoid falling into the same design change pitfalls as the Constellation class. The Navy’s struggles with solidifying designs early and keeping changes to a minimum during development and initial production have impacted several domestic naval shipbuilding efforts, too.
For Fincantieri, while the Navy played a central role in the failure of the Constellation program, there is the additional matter of whether the service is interested in any way in the optics of not only going back to the same shipbuilder, but the same underlying parent design (FREMM).
A rendering of Dutch shipbuilder Damen’s LST-100 landing ship, the basis for the Navy’s new LSMs. Damen
It’s also unclear what any additional frigate procurement program might mean for the existing FF(X) frigate program, and what level of additional competition there might be for shipbuilding resources, as a result.
“In terms of which path we go – I’m not going to get ahead of that process – but [studying all options is] essentially what we’re doing,” Navy Rear Adm. Casey Moton, head of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Maritime (PAE-M) office, also said at the American Society of Naval Engineers Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium last week, according to USNI News. “I am not going to get ahead of what we are doing in response to the presidential memo.”
“We just went through CDR [the critical design review] on the Flight I [of FF(X)], and so we’re doing some pre-production activities with HII to help prepare for that material,” Moton also noted. The Navy has said in the past that it is aiming to have the first FF(X) frigate in the water by 2028.
The Navy’s fleet of Arleigh Burke class destroyers “gets used with a very high demand signal combatant commanders. The Navy can’t operate with only one size of ship,” Rear Adm. Brian Metcalf, Deputy PAE-M, also said in an official video in June, further underscoring the general demand for these new smaller surface combatants. “The [FF(X)] frigate will fill that gap. They can be used in less contentious waters. They can be used as high-value escorts. There are all kinds of things the frigate can fill the gap for and allow destroyers to execute the high-end mission set.”
Signs that a new foreign-designed frigate could be in the Navy’s future have already been growing. The service may have a clearer vision for how to proceed, and whether there might be room for additional pitches from Fincanterai and others, after the review it is working through now is complete.
An unusual shoulder-fired air defense missile seen in Russian use may be of Chinese or Iranian origin, raising questions about the movement of foreign weapons through the increasingly interconnected military supply networks linking Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran.
The man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) appeared in Russian television footage showing a mobile air defense group operating in the Rostov region, which borders Ukraine. The weapon was shown during an exercise said to have involved one of the elements of Russia’s 51st Air Defense Division. The footage was subsequently highlighted by the X account TheDeadDistrict.
ruSSian's have developed a new “Iva” MANPADS. In the footage, it is in service with one of the mobile fire groups of the 51st Air Defense Division in Rostov Oblast.
Although, no—it is most likely the Iranian Misagh-2 MANPADS.
The system does not closely resemble any of the Russian-made MANPADS families otherwise used by the country’s armed forces. Russian personnel seen with the weapon reportedly referred to it as “Iva,” although that designation by itself does not establish the weapon’s origin or model. The word Iva is Russian for willow (a type of tree), of which one particular species is named Verba — also the name of the Russian-made 9K333 MANPADS. This weapon looks very different to the example shown, but the connection is unlikely to be a coincidence.
An operator of the mystery MANPADS is interviewed by the Russia-1 TV channel. Russian State Media
A visual analysis of the newly observed launcher reveals comparisons with both the Iranian Misagh-3 and Chinese QW-series systems, particularly the QW-18/QW-18A and QW-19. In particular, a closer examination of the imagery highlights an additional box-like component toward the front of the launcher. That feature appears more consistent with photographs of Chinese QW-series systems rather than the Misagh.
The front part of the MANPADS launcher, with the distinctive box-like component below the tub. Russian State Media
There is also a scarcity of publicly available imagery of later Iranian variants to completely exclude an Iranian system. At the same time, the Misagh series itself is understood to be derived, or at least heavily influenced by Chinese designs.
An Iranian Misagh-3 MANPADS with its missile. Tasnim News Agency
Another possibility is that the weapon is a Russian-produced version or derivative of a Chinese or Iranian design, rather than an imported system.
The possibility of foreign-made or foreign-designed equipment appearing in Russian service has to be viewed against the much broader transformation of Moscow’s military relationships since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia’s relationship with China has deepened substantially since the invasion, with Beijing becoming a critical source of machinery, electronics, and other components that Russia’s defense industry can no longer obtain as readily from Western suppliers. Moscow and Beijing had already declared a “no limits” partnership shortly before the invasion, and their military relationship has subsequently included exercises and expanding military-technical cooperation. U.S. officials have accused China of supplying Russia with components used in weapons production, including microelectronics. Beijing has rejected accusations that it is providing lethal military assistance to Russia.
A close-up of the front end of the MANPADS. Russian State Media
Iran has also become an important military partner. Russia has used Iranian-designed Shahed-series attack drones extensively in Ukraine and has worked with Tehran on local production and adaptation of those systems. Moscow and Tehran formalized their relationship further with a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty in January 2025, which includes provisions for military-technical cooperation and joint exercises.
In return, Russia has supplied Iran with military technology and has cooperated with Tehran on sensitive weapons programs.
The possible Chinese connection takes on additional significance in light of a major reported procurement deal between China and Iran.
In July, Reutersreported that Iran was expected to receive the first shipment of a deal covering 300 to 400 Chinese-made MANPADS, with a reported value of $60 million to $70 million. The weapons identified by sources included the Chinese QW-12 and FN-16 systems.
Chinese missiles the United States fears… an unsleeping eye against drones and low‑flying aircraft
China’s QW‑12 and FN‑16 air‑defense systems intercept low‑altitude targets — including drones — forming a rapid defensive line against close‑range aerial threats. pic.twitter.com/kJZ6mnqmHg
The reported contract was signed with a Hong Kong-based company that sources described as an intermediary between the Iranian side and the Chinese supplier. Reuters said the initial deliveries were planned from Urumqi in western China, with the weapons then transiting through Pakistan before reaching Iran. Pakistan’s military publicly denied any involvement in such transfers, while China’s Foreign Ministry called the report “groundless.”
Reuters also reported that delivery schedules and quantities could still change.
More significantly for the Russian sighting, a European security source told Reuters that authorities were aware of several contracts under discussion involving the potential sale of QW-12, QW-18, and QW-19 MANPADS to Iran. A Middle Eastern security source separately claimed that Iran had been seeking QW-18 systems.
There is currently no evidence tying the launcher seen in Russian hands to the Iranian procurement from China.
At the same time, the possibility of an Iranian connection should not be ruled out, especially since Chinese-designed MANPADS have a documented history of appearing outside conventional state inventories.
Earlier TWZreporting, drawing on research by the Small Arms Survey monitoring group, examined the illicit proliferation of Chinese-designed MANPADS and identified dozens of cases involving armed groups in multiple countries. That research included QW-series weapons and documented cases in which investigators linked Chinese-designed MANPADS to Iranian supply networks.
Countries with reports of illicit possession of advanced MANPADS by armed groups, 2011-21. Small Arms Survey
One particularly notable case involved the Jihan, a vessel intercepted in 2013 carrying weapons that investigators identified as including QW-18-pattern MANPADS. UN investigators, the U.S. government, and Conflict Armament Research assessed Iran as the likely source of those weapons.
It is also worth noting that Chinese MANPADS have already appeared on the Ukrainian side of the war. In late 2025 and 2026, Ukrainian units were photographed with Chinese-made FN-6 and FN-16 systems, including an FN-6 associated with an air defense team reportedly engaging a Russian cruise missile. Exactly how the weapons reached Ukraine remains unclear, with possible third-party transfers or diverted shipments among the possible explanations.
A Chinese FN-6 MANPADS in service with the MFG of the 143rd JTC “Podillia.” It is reported that this MANPADS was used this morning to shoot down a ruSSian Kh-101 CM. The FN-6 was developed in 2000 and supplied, among others, to Sudan, from where it likely found its way to Ukraine pic.twitter.com/9zA012ue3j
Reported as the downing of an Kh-101 cruise missile this morning using a Chinese FN-6 MANPADS. There is no public information confirming that this system has been supplied to or used by Ukraine, making this a notable development. pic.twitter.com/pUujFB81aH
Incidents like these demonstrate that Chinese MANPADS can move through indirect supply networks, including networks associated with Tehran.
Regardless of how it arrived in Russia, the appearance of a foreign or foreign-derived MANPADS there is notable.
Mobile fire groups have become an increasingly visible component of Russia’s layered air defense effort, particularly as the war in Ukraine has placed enormous emphasis on countering low-altitude drones and other threats, including deep inside Russia.
MANPADS are well suited to this mission because they can be dispersed among small teams, rapidly repositioned, and deployed without the larger radar and vehicle infrastructure associated with conventional surface-to-air missile batteries. In particular, they can be deployed around military installations and other sensitive infrastructure.
A foreign system appearing in a Russian mobile fire group might be an imported weapon, an Iranian-produced derivative, a Chinese system acquired for evaluation, a captured weapon, or even a previously unidentified Russian configuration.
model, or even that it is a brand new Chinese-made variant (its possible that I just hadn't seen it, or seen it from these angles) but it is a notable new addition to Russia's MANPADS inventory.
Another possibility is that the MANPADS is North Korean in origin. Russia’s military relationship with Pyongyang has expanded significantly, including the provision of increasingly advanced military equipment and technology. There is no known North Korean MANPADS matching the configuration seen here, however, and the possibility remains speculative. North Korean weapons have also frequently incorporated or closely followed Chinese designs, meaning a Chinese-looking configuration would not necessarily rule out a North Korean origin.
I was able to geolocate and thus confirm that the photo of North Korean M-1978/1989 Koksan 170mm SPGs was taken in Russia.
Russia has dramatically expanded defense production since 2022, but its industry remains under heavy wartime demand and sanctions-related constraints. Western restrictions have complicated access to advanced electronics, machine tools and other components, while Russia has increasingly relied on domestic substitutes and foreign suppliers.
The mystery MANPADS launchers disassembled and in a container for transport. Russian State Media
At the same time, Russia must replenish weapons consumed in Ukraine, meaning foreign supplies could supplement domestic production, fill specific gaps, or allow scarce industrial capacity to be directed elsewhere.
For Russia, even a limited number of additional shoulder-fired systems could therefore have practical value as Ukrainian long-range strike capabilities continue to expand.
For now, the exact model and provenance of the MANPADS in question remain unconfirmed, but the apparent Chinese or Iranian design characteristics are highly noteworthy. Further appearances of the system could provide the clues needed to determine what it is, where it came from, and whether this represents an isolated example or a more significant acquisition effort.
Details continue to come in, but police in the United Kingdom have declared a “major incident” and ordered evacuations near RAF Fairford after the arrest of “several men on suspicion of offenses under the explosives act,” the Gloucestershire Constabulary stated.
RAF Fairford is a major hub for U.S. military aircraft in the United Kingdom. It is a regular host of strategic assets, including bombers and U-2 spy planes. It also acts as a pit stop for other aircraft, including fighters, that are being ferried to and from the United States. Bomber strikes launched from Fairford were a central aspect of major U.S. combat operations against Iran earlier this year.
“A number of properties are currently being evacuated in the Whelford area following the declaration of a major incident,” the Gloucestershire Constabulary also announced today in light of the incident.
Emergency services in Fairford after a major incident has been declared, with armed police manning a cordon near the village of Whelford in Gloucestershire, near RAF Fairford, which is used by the United States Air Force (USAF). (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images) Ben Birchall – PA Images
The evacuations were spurred by the arrests.
“The Army’s specialist explosive ordnance disposal team are currently examining a number of vehicles,” Gloucestershire Constabulary added. “The local residents are being evacuated to a nearby leisure center.”
“A cordon is currently in place, but we’d like to reassure people that we believe this incident is contained,” the law enforcement agency explained. “We are working closely with our partners and are enacting the well-rehearsed plans we have in place.”
The incident began around 12:45 AM local time Sunday “when police received a call relating to three suspicious vehicles traveling towards RAF Fairford,” according to Gloucestershire police Assistant Chief Constable Richard Ocone. “Armed officers responded and subsequently arrested five men in the Whelford area on suspicion of committing offenses under the Explosives Act. The men were taken into custody, where they remain.”
“A 400-meter cordon has been put in place around the vehicles while the army’s explosive ordnance disposal unit examined them,” Ocene continued. “As a precaution, around 85 households have been advised to evacuate while these examinations take place.”
BREAKING:
The British authorities issue a first official statement on the suspected terror plot against RAF Fairford
They sent in a local low-ranking policemen to deliver a statement saying 5 men have been arrested and that people shouldn’t speculate about the case.
“We are aware of the current reporting, for questions regarding off-base incidents please contact the local authorities,” a U.S. Air Force spokesperson told us in response to our questions about whether the incident had raised force protection levels at RAF Fairford or other installations in the area hosting American forces. Unconfirmed reports by the local aviation spotter community claimed RAF Fairford had been placed under what is called FPCON Delta, the highest level of alert at U.S. military installations.
The incident at RAF Fairford has been escalating overnight, this is what is clear so far.
Gloucestershire Police has announced that they have arrested multiple men on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act, and that they have declared a Major Incident.
“For operational security reasons we will not discuss specific force protection measures,” the Air Force spokesperson added. “The 501st Combat Support Wing and our fellow UK-based Wings remain vigilant and will take appropriate actions to ensure the safety and security of our U.S. service members, civilians, contractors, and their families. We constantly assess a variety of factors that determine what measures we institute or modify to protect our installations, our people and their families.”
It is unclear if airfield operations at RAF Fairford have been affected. U.S. Air Force officials did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
The British Defense Ministry did not immediately provide comment on this unfolding event.
RAF Fairford is a major hub for U.S. military aircraft, with strategic assets, like B-1B Lancer bombers, being forward deployed to the base and tactical and other assets often using it as a pit stop during flights ‘across the pond.’
A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer at RAF Fairford. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Robert M. Trujillo) Tech. Sgt. Robert Trujillo
As mentioned, RAF Fairford played a key role in major combat operations against Iran earlier this year. No connection has been established yet between today’s incident and any particular group, but the base has drawn direct threats from the regime in Tehran in the past.
“The American aggressor army, which used to launch cruise missiles from its vessels in the Indian Ocean in its aggression after the official resumption of the war, with the end of the missile reserves of the aforementioned vessels, yesterday switched to using B1 planes flying from Fairford Air Base, England,” Tasnim News Agency, a quasi-state outlet in Iran with ties to the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed on Telegram on July 23. “As the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stated, any base that is used to invade Iran’s territory is our legitimate goal.”
the enemy must pay the price for its breach of promises, and this time we will not allow America to use deceptive ceasefires to replenish its oil and ammunition stockpiles and then resume attacks once again.
Considering its importance to U.S. military operations, the base is a major potential target for nefarious actors, in general. Like other bases across Europe, it is a major potential target for Russia’s ‘hybrid war’ or ‘gray zone’ activities, as well.
Asked about the threats at the time, a British official told us that the country was prepared to defend itself.
“Our Armed Forces are ready to keep the United Kingdom safe from any kind of attacks, whether it’s on our soil or from abroad,” a government official told TWZ. “The UK stands ready 24/7 to defend itself. This includes through operating a layered approach to air and missile defense, provided by Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force assets equipped with a range of advanced capabilities, working closely with our NATO allies.”
“In the Defense Investment Plan we have made air and missile defense a priority after years of underfunding, dedicating £790 million to enhance protection of the UK homeland and overseas bases from air, drone and missile threats,” the official added. “That is complemented by more than £2 billion of funding to deliver further air defense and counter-drone capabilities, and to upgrade and sustain our Typhoon fleet.”
This is a developing story.
UPDATE: 10:49 AM Eastern –
A Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) has been imposed over Whelford, Gloucestershire, following the incident. It applies to all aircraft, including “any small balloon, any kite, any UAS and any parachute, including a parascending parachute or paramotor,” according to the FAA. “Pilots are forbidden to fly within the designated area without permission.”
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is getting lasers that can zap drones intruding into its airspace. When installed, the new directed energy defense system will be part of a much larger effort to protect the spaceport against drone incursions, a spokesperson for Space Launch Delta 45 (SLD 45) told us.
The idea is to ensure the safety of launches and to keep prying eyes away from an installation full of secrets about America’s military and commercial space efforts. Companies like SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Relativity Space use the installation for space launches. The base defense modernization effort comes as the Cape Canaveral region is inundated with drone incursions. There were hundreds last year.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on May 29, 2026. (U.S. Space Force photo by Gwen Kurzen) Gwendolyn Kurzen
“As the world’s premier spaceport continues to support an unprecedented launch tempo for national security and commercial missions, securing critical launch infrastructure from low-altitude aerial threats remains a top operational priority,” the spokesperson explained. “The ongoing security modernization integrates detection, tracking, and defensive capabilities to include directed energy systems. These will provide security forces with real-time situational awareness and the necessary tools to safeguard personnel, launch complexes, and national security payloads.”
The spokesperson did not have a timeline for when the directed energy system will be operational. Florida Today was the first to report that lasers will make up this defensive system.
Col. Brian Chatman, who commands Space Launch Delta 45, told the publication that the facility is “bringing on a directed-energy system that can do a kinetic kill against UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) that are coming into the area that are having nefarious intent.”
“The Air Force Research Laboratory [AFRL]-tested system has been proven to be able to safely bring down a drone,” Florida Today noted. “This directed-energy system uses lasers to shoot down any drone that flies into restricted areas.”
Chatman didn’t name the specific system to Florida Today and the SLD 45 spokesperson declined to say.
The following video shows one such AFRL-tested system that has been used in combat before.
For the spaceport, being able to use lasers is even more important than it is for other locations needing protection from drones. That’s because the traditional method of jamming radio frequencies to interfere with drone connections to controllers could damage spacecraft.
“If you start blasting a bunch of RF energy you run into potential challenges,” Chatman explained. “You don’t want that.”
There is good reason for Chatman to be concerned about drones. The spaceport has been subjected to many unauthorized incursions, the spokesperson told us. However, there were no statistics immediately available on how many or whether they occurred during launches. There were 500 unauthorized drone flights over the adjacent Port Canaveral in 2025, Port Canaveral CEO Capt. John Murray said.
In addition, on Sept. 18, a Chinese tourist pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge after flying a drone in restricted airspace above NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in late July. KSC is located across the Banana River from the space station.
It is unclear if the new laser system will also protect the skies over KSC. The spokesperson did not immediately know and is checking into it.
Cape Canaveral. (Google Earth)
That tourist, Xiaodong He, flew a drone that videotaped the installation, according to federal documents. The drone got within 1.56 miles of pad 39B, from where the next crewed lunar flight is expected to launch in 2028.
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center pad 39B. (NASA)
Encompassing about 25 square miles, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is a large, unpopulated, open area with a long Atlantic Ocean shoreline. The station’s physical layout allows many vectors for drone incursions, and what’s housed there makes it a logical target for a nefarious actor.
The systems being prepared for launch and launched at the sprawling facility are extremely valuable and can take many years to build, costing billions. When they are out on the pad or being transported around, the rockets are massive tubes packed with high explosives that would cause a devastating secondary explosion if struck.
Even disrupting launches there due to a successful or even attempted attack could have major national security impacts.
Maybe the place that needs them most. Use your imagination with this one.
The move to bring directed energy systems to protect the spaceport comes as the military is investing heavily in these systems to counter drones. Late last month, for instance, troops from the Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) employed an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) system during an operation dubbed Ardent Vanguard. The AMP-HEL was used “to engage and defeat three hostile UAS, determined to be such based on their use in direct support of activities posing a physical threat to U.S. military personnel and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] partners,” according to a media release at the time.
The shootdown was part of the U.S. government’s ongoing effort to counter drones being flown by Mexican drug cartels.
Joint Task Force – Southern Border personnel used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser system to engage and defeat a hostile drone. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Daniel Huerta) Operation Ardent Vanguard
The military is seeking to expand its ability to counter drones with directed-energy weapons. In May, the Defense Department and Joint Interagency Task Force 401 selected five installations to participate in a directed-energy counter-unmanned aircraft systems pilot program required by the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
“This initiative will accelerate the fielding and evaluation of advanced directed energy capabilities to protect critical infrastructure, military installations and homeland missions,” the Pentagon explained. “The locations were deliberately selected to support rigorous testing and operational assessments across diverse environments and mission sets.”
The Pentagon selected two “key southern border installations” for this program: Fort Huachuca, Arizona; and Fort Bliss, Texas. It also tabbed Naval Base Kitsap, Washington; Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; and Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
Though the Pentagon is pressing forward with making directed energy a key part of counter-drone efforts, laser weapons have limitations. These include their short-term magazine depth being limited to how many successive shots they can fire before thermal loads require the system to cool down. Energy supply can also be a limiting factor. Additionally, laser systems don’t function as well in heavy cloud cover and other inclement weather.
You can see the Iron Beam’s first claimed kills in the following video.
A World First — Combat-Proven Laser Defense, Powered by Rafael
For the first time in history, high-power laser systems have been used to intercept aerial threats in combat. This unprecedented breakthrough took place during the Swords of Iron War — with Rafael’s advanced… pic.twitter.com/B3D6UdCJvE
— Rafael Advanced Defense Systems (@RAFAELdefense) May 28, 2025
At the same time, a laser weapon of this kind is very much a point-defense weapon, with its short range meaning that multiple systems will be needed to provide coverage of a significant area. In some situations, even a single, large military base like Cape Canaveral Space Force Station might require more than one to provide full defensive coverage.
In addition, there have been concerns about the safety of the systems and the authorities required to use them in the homeland.
Safety concerns about using directed energy weapons, and especially kinetic ones, to take down drones in the U.S. have been a major factor in why they haven’t been previously used in this role. Almost two years ago, officials at U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which has coordinating authority for counter-drone efforts in the U.S., said the use of such weapons was not yet on the table. The reason is that they can create dangerous or otherwise serious collateral effects that are less of a concern in a war zone.
That the U.S. Space Force is bringing in a laser system to protect some of the nation’s most important and secret military assets is a strong indication that these concerns are being overcome.
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.
This week’s caption reads:
BERLIN, GERMANY JUNE 16: Heavy iron doors between different rooms during a media event on June 16, 2026, at the former Cold War-era Pankstraße subway station, now used as a nuclear fallout shelter. Built in the 1970s, the bunker offers sleeping accommodations for 3,339 people, has independent water and electricity supplies, and is hermetically sealed off from the outside world by massive steel doors. The bunker will be open to the public as part of guided tours of Berlin’s underground. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled German authorities’ interest in providing nuclear fallout shelters in the event of war. (Photo: Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
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The U.S. Navy has given us the first look at Blackbeard hypersonic strike missiles under the wings of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets during actual flight testing. The Navy is hoping to have Blackbeard in at least limited service no later than 2028, giving its carrier air wings an all-new fast-flying standoff weapon, particularly for engaging enemy ships. The missile is also being designed to be relatively cheap and quick to manufacture.
The Navy’s Office of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Aviation (PAE-A) has released a video montage of Blackbeard undergoing flight testing, seen in the social media post below. The service confirmed that it had at least begun test-loading the missiles onto F/A-18E/F Super Hornets in a presentation at the Tailhook Association’s annual convention last month. Now we know the program has moved ahead substantially from that point.
The company behind Blackbeard, defense start-up Castelion, has received several multi-million-dollar contracts from the Navy just this year explicitly to support integration of the weapon onto the Super Hornet, as well as otherwise accelerating its development. In its daily contracting on September 14, the Pentagon announced the Navy had struck yet another deal with Castelion, valued at $43.65 million, “for the manufacturing, assembly, testing, and delivery of the first production lot of 444 All-Up Rounds (AURs), defined as fully functional tactical missiles packaged within specialized shipping and storage containers.”
A screen capture from the Blackbeard flight testing video montage the Navy released today. USN capture
In terms of what we know today about Blackbeard’s design and capabilities, as we have previously written:
“A profile photo [seen below] at the company’s headquarters reveals a weapon with a ballistic missile-like booster, on top of which is mounted what could be an unpowered hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). A booster brings an HGV to the desired velocity and altitude before releasing it toward its target. The concept is in contrast to air-breathing cruise missiles capable of traveling at hypersonic speeds. Hypersonic speed is generally defined as anything above Mach 5, which larger ballistic missiles also reach in the course of their flights. More precise performance figures for Blackbeard are lacking, but Castelion has previously hinted it could hit targets out to just under 500 miles. Alternatively, the second stage may also have its own motor, allowing it to continue accelerating or sustain high-speed flight. A similar arrangement has been suggested as the propulsion system for the Russian Zircon missile.”
Castelion
“Both stages of the weapon have cruciform fins, while the upper one features a prominent ‘chine’ line along the length of its body, and a slightly beaklike nose. The trolley on which the weapon is mounted provides some idea of its overall size. The blue stripes seen on each stage normally signify that a munition is an inert, non-explosive round utilized for training or tracking purposes. This would indicate a real (unarmed) missile rather than a dummy or mockup.”
A picture shown at Tailhook had also offered a new look at the front of the missile, exposing what looked to be an aperture on one side of the design’s wedge-shaped nose. As we wrote after that image emerged:
“The apparent apertures are also seen pointed up, but many air-launched munitions do flip down after release.”
“How exactly Blackbeard is guided remains unknown, but a downward-angled aperture at the nose end for a seeker system would make sense for this weapon, which the Navy is pursuing primarily as a new way to target enemy ships. In particular, a wide array of existing anti-ship and land attack missiles, as well as certain anti-air types, have variously shaped apertures in their noses for imaging infrared seekers. Imaging infrared has the benefit of being immune to radio frequency electronic warfare jamming. In addition, it is a passive capability that does not send out signals that can give an opponent advance notice of an incoming attack. Blackbeard’s full guidance package very likely also includes some means of navigating to a target area first, and it could have multiple modes of operation.”
The new flight testing footage released today also underscores the relatively small size of Blackbeard overall. While the Super Hornet is set to be the first operational launch platform, it is very likely to be integrated on other aircraft quickly thereafter. The Navy is acquiring Blackbeard under a program called the Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector (MACE).
Another screen capture from the new Navy video offering a different of Blackbeards under the wings of a Super Hornet, underscoring their relatively small size. USN capture
Requirements for MACE that the Navy put out previously explicitly called for a design compact enough for carrier-based F-35C (and land-based F-35A) Joint Strike Fighters to carry four of them internally. Whether that remains a goal in any way is unclear. Still, being able to carry some number of Blackbeards internally would not only give those jets a hypersonic strike weapon, but one that they could carry in the most stealthy configuration. The Navy also notably does operate the F-35A outside of the test and evaluation community, which might point to air-launched Blackbeards entering service elsewhere in the future. As an aside, the U.S. Army is pursuing a ground-launched version of this missile, as well.
As mentioned, the Navy’s stated goal now is to reach an early operational capability with Blackbeard by 2028, if not sooner. What the exact fielding plan for those missiles might be is unclear. PAE-A did write “Coming soon to a theater near you” in its post on X containing the video montage, and tagged the official accounts for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM). CENTCOM oversees U.S. military activities in and around the Middle East, including ongoing operations against Iran. U.S. military officials have also long touted hypersonic weapons, in general, as key to success in any future conflict in the Pacific, especially a high-end fight against China.
NATO member Latvia is moving toward acquiring Anduril Industries’ Barracuda family of long-range strike missiles, with Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs highlighting the effort during a visit to the U.S. defense technology company and a series of new defense-industry cooperation agreements involving Latvia. If the acquisition goes through, Latvia would be the first of the Baltic states to field a strike weapon in this category.
“It was great to visit Anduril to meet with Palmer Luckey and to witness signing of memoranda of cooperation with MOD of Latvia and Origin Robotics,” Rinkēvičs said in a post on X. “Looking forward to complete acquisition of Barracuda long-range missiles and [Latvian-U.S.] defense industry cooperation.”
It was great to visit @anduriltech to meet with @PalmerLuckey and to witness signing of memoranda of cooperation with MOD of Latvia and @OriginRobotics. Looking forward to complete acquisition of Baracuda longe range missiles and defense industry cooperation pic.twitter.com/JafnNy5RAe
The statement does not specify the precise Barracuda variant involved, the number of missiles Latvia intends to acquire, the expected delivery schedule, or the value of the prospective purchase. We have reached out to Anduril for more details.
A likely candidate weapon is the Barracuda-500M, one member of Anduril’s family of autonomous, jet-powered cruise missiles, alongside the Barracuda-100M and -250M variants. Official descriptions put its range at more than 500 nautical miles, with a stated speed range of approximately 190 to 500 knots. The missile can be air-launched, for which it has received the official U.S. military designation AGM-189A. But with only a handful of utility biplanes and helicopters in its inventory, Latvia would acquire the surface-launched version, designated SLB-500M.
The announcement points to a potentially significant expansion of Latvia’s precision-strike capabilities as NATO’s eastern flank continues to build out longer-range conventional fires.
Latvia has already ordered the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which will be fired from M142 HIMARS launchers. The system is expected to enter Latvian service in 2027 and has a maximum range of about 186 miles.
A U.S. Army M142 HIMARS launcher involved in an exercise at at Spilve Airfield and Liepāja Airport in Latvia. Latvian Armed Forces Eriks Kukutis
Latvia’s ATACMS capability will give the country a foundation for ground-launched precision fires, but the broader European trend is toward significantly greater reach.
Ground- and sea-launched cruise and ballistic missile systems capable of hitting targets at between 1,000 and 2,000 kilometers (620 and 1,242 miles) or more are an emerging target for several European NATO members. France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom are pursuing combinations of indigenous development and foreign procurement to address this requirement.
Latvia’s neighbor Poland, for example, has been building a layered long-range strike architecture combining JASSM/JASSM-ER air-launched cruise missiles with HIMARS and ATACMS. Warsaw’s ambitions are extending toward ground-launched weapons with ranges potentially reaching 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and the country has previously expressed openness to hosting U.S.-owned nuclear weapons on its territory, too.
A M142 HIMARS launcher is seen during Poland’s Armed Forces Day parade in 2025. Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Artur Widak
Latvian interest in Barracuda fits into the same larger transformation in European conventional strike capabilities.
For NATO’s Baltic members, the logic is particularly straightforward, with mobile, ground-launched weapons providing an additional means of striking military targets at depth without requiring control of the air over the launch area.
Dragon’s teeth obstacles are among the anti-mobility measures on Latvia’s eastern border with Russia. Latvian Armed Forces
The potential Barracuda acquisition would represent another step in a broader European shift toward deep precision strike, a term increasingly used to describe conventional weapons capable of holding targets hundreds or thousands of miles away at risk.
Deep precision strike is widely acknowledged as an increasingly important European capability gap. European NATO members have historically relied heavily on air-launched cruise missiles and other aircraft-delivered weapons, while ground-launched long-range systems have been comparatively scarce.
The deterioration of the European security environment following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, together with the 2019 collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, are important factors behind renewed European interest in long-range conventional strike.
A key driver behind Europe’s push for longer-range conventional strike is the desire to build a credible deterrent capable of holding targets deep inside Russia at risk, potentially including Moscow. Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign has demonstrated the strategic value of being able to impose costs at significant distances, while also underscoring the importance of having sufficient stocks of precision weapons. For NATO’s eastern flank, systems such as the ground-launched Barracuda could therefore provide not just another fires capability, but an additional means of imposing costs on an adversary without relying exclusively on airpower.
Importantly for Latvia, the emerging European approach is not limited to large air forces. NATO’s prospective deep-strike requirements are likely to place significant emphasis on mobile ground-launched systems because they can be dispersed and offer survivability advantages while avoiding the cost and vulnerability associated with relying exclusively on aircraft or ships as launch platforms.
An Anduril Barracuda 500, top, and a Barracuda 100, displayed during Modern Day Marine 2026 in Washington, D.C. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Abigail Hutcheson Cpl. Abigail Hutcheson
That makes systems such as the surface-launched Barracuda particularly relevant to countries on NATO’s eastern flank.
Anduril has positioned Barracuda as part of an effort to address what it describes as a shortfall in affordable, producible long-range precision weapons. A prototype surface-launched Barracuda-500 successfully demonstrated its launcher, missile, and booster concept in testing in 2025. Anduril has emphasized that the family is intended to be more producible and affordable than many existing “exquisite” long-range weapons.
European governments are increasingly wrestling with the same issue. However, there is a fundamental tension between rapidly filling capability gaps through off-the-shelf purchases and developing indigenous European weapons that can strengthen the continent’s defense-industrial base, which is also a critical political consideration.
Latvia’s emerging relationship with Anduril appears to combine elements of both approaches, by acquiring an American-developed strike capability while simultaneously pursuing industrial cooperation with U.S. defense companies.
Ground launch of Anduril’s Barracuda-500M. Anduril
There is also a recent European precedent for combining Barracuda procurement with local industrial participation.
In July 2026, Anduril signed a strategic agreement with Polish national maintenance, repair and overhaul provider Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 2 (WZL-2) to establish production of the Barracuda-500M at WZL-2 facilities in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Polish state-owned defence group Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa said Poland was the first European country to sign such an agreement with Anduril.
Bezpieczeństwo zaczyna się od silnych sojuszy.
Dziś została podpisana umowa o współpracy @PGZ_pl i WZL-2 z firmą Anduril Industries, która umożliwi utworzenie w Polsce miejsc montażu i produkcji autonomicznych rakietowych pocisków manewrujących dalekiego zasięgu… pic.twitter.com/JnmM6lQZ7L
— Ministerstwo Aktywów Państwowych (@MAPGOVPL) July 6, 2026
Polish officials have also emphasized the missile’s intended low production cost relative to higher-end U.S. cruise missiles. The planned Polish program is expected to progressively increase Polish content and eventually incorporate broader European elements, including software solutions from Anduril.
Latvia has not publicly detailed whether any Barracuda-related production, assembly, or other industrial work would be conducted in the country.
However, Latvia’s Investment and Development Agency says the country’s defense-technology delegation in the United States is seeking opportunities involving joint development, testing, manufacturing, system integration and supply chains. Origin Robotics is among the Latvian companies participating in that effort.
The broader Latvian delegation includes companies working across unmanned and counter-unmanned systems, communications, electronics, sensors, software, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and manufacturing.
A Latvian Army soldier shows drone video footage to U.S. Marines during a HIMARS live-fire exercise at Adazi Training Area, Latvia. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Niles Lee Sgt. Niles Lee
Exactly how Latvia intends to employ Barracuda, how many missiles it plans to acquire, and whether any portion of the system will eventually be produced or integrated in Latvia remain unclear from the president’s announcement.
For now, the development marks another indication that long-range precision fires are moving from a capability concentrated among Europe’s largest military powers toward a broader requirement across NATO’s highly strategic eastern flank.
Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) announced it had awarded a sole-source deal to Anduril, valued at $15,711,445.50, for an unspecified number of Pulsar-Ls, yesterday. This follows a statement of intent the Command put out last month. Anduril first unveiled Pulsar-L, a lightweight addition to its larger Pulsar family of electronic warfare systems, in April 2025.
The Marine Corps had 150 baseline personnel carrier variants of the ACV (or ACV-Ps), as well as 21 command-and-control ACV-C versions, in inventory as of April 2026. The default armament for ACV-P currently is just a single .50 caliber M2 machine gun in a remote weapon station on top of the hull. The service’s goal is to eventually acquire 389 ACV-Ps and 33 ACV-Cs, as well as 152 ACV-30s with new 30mm cannon-armed turrets and 34 ACV-R armored recovery vehicle variants. The ACV family has already supplanted the Marine Corps’ previous fleet of tracked Assault Amphibious Vehicles (AAV).
From left to right, an Amphibious Combat Vehicle command and control variant (ACV-C), a 30mm cannon-armed ACV-30, and a standard ACV personnel carrier version (ACV-P). The ACV-R recovery variant is not shown here. USMC/Sgt. Alexis Sanchez
“The Anduril Pulsar-L system is a platform-integrated omni-directional SK C-UAS [soft-kill counter-uncrewed aerial systems] with a combined sensor/jammer package that detects, tracks, identifies, and defeats radio frequency-dependent Group 1 and Group 2 Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs),” MARCORSYSCOM wrote in a justification for the sole-source contract, which was also released yesterday. “Additionally, the system provides counter positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities.”
The U.S. military definition of a Group 1 drone is any design weighing up to 20 pounds, that is able to fly up to an altitude of 1,200 feet, and that can reach speeds of up to 100 knots. Group 2 is the next tier up, encompassing types with gross weights between 21 and 55 pounds, that can get up to an altitude of 3,500 feet, and hit top speeds of up to 250 knots. Kamikaze drones and other small weaponized types that fall into Groups 1 and 2 are used on a daily basis in Ukraine to attack armored vehicles, as well as unarmored vehicles and personnel. These are threats that have been steadily expanding to other hotspots globally, and that we will come back to later on.
Furthermore, “the Pulsar-L is the only solution capable of being mounted on the ACV to provide a mobile and organic means to effectively and simultaneously execute the entire kill-chain against hostile UASs in the deployed land and maritime/littoral environment while not exceeding the limited ACV space, weight, and power claim allotted to the SK C-UAS solution,” according to MARCORSYSCOM. “This will provide the ACV with an essential defensive capability, directly contributing to increased survivability and force protection while not sacrificing the mobility and operational tempo of the ACV.”
A row of Marine ACVs seen during training. USMC
Pulsar-L is already “in use by the Special Operations Command due to the system’s low weight, proven performance in engaging multiple UASs, and simultaneous execution of the full kill-chain while static or on the move,” the justification document adds. “Additionally, it is the only known commercially available system that meets the minimum requirement to rapidly identify and respond to emerging UAS technologies and tactics without frequent updates to predefined threat data libraries. The Pulsar-L is the only solution that uses machine based learning to continually adapt to these ever-changing threats without requiring vendor updates, allowing the warfighters to continually be effective in the fight.”
The latter point here is a particularly important consideration for electronic warfare systems, in general, which need to be able to accurately detect, categorize, and respond to different waveforms to be most effective. The emergence of new waveforms, as well as changes to how existing ones are emitted, together with new tactics, techniques, and procedures, can all negatively impact a system’s performance. Historically, the process of responding to those developments with updates to built-in threat libraries has been lengthy and complex. The conflict in Ukraine has shown that the cycle of new developments in the electromagnetic spectrum and then the need for new countermeasures can be regularly measured in weeks.
The U.S. military has been heavily investing in so-called cognitive electronic warfare capabilities to help automate and otherwise accelerate various aspects of this process. The ability of a particular electronic warfare suite to adapt autonomously in real-time, even in the middle of operations, has been viewed as the absolute ‘holy grail’ of this concept, which you can read more about here. How exactly Pulsar-L leverages machine-learning and artificial intelligence to this end, and the speed with which it can adapt to changing threats, is still not entirely clear.
Regardless, “there is an unusual and compelling need for the rapid deployment of SK C-UASs to forward-deployed ground units as Marines currently lack the ability to conduct self-defense against emerging UAS threats,” the justification document stresses. “Failure to deliver this capability places Marines at unnecessary risk, potentially leading to mission failure and loss of life, and hampers the Government’s ability to keep them safe during forward deployments.”
MARCORSYSCOM’s justification for the sole-source deal to Anduril does not otherwise elaborate on the urgent requirements that drove the deal, which it says were only formalized on April 7. That is notably roughly a week after the United States and Israel first launched major combat operations against Iran, which is a prolific developer and user of various tiers of weaponized drones. There is no explicit confirmation of any link, but Iranian drones, as well as missiles and other capabilities, have been a real threat to U.S. forces in the region. We have also just gained more insights recently into how forward-deployed Marine Corps elements contributed to those operations. Counter-drone capabilities would also be especially critical in any future amphibious landing operation, wherever it might occur.
Marines prepare to load an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) onto a KC-130J aircraft somewhere in the Middle East in July 2026. USAF
All that being said, threats posed by armed Group 1 and 2 drones are not at all limited to Iran and the Middle East, nor are they new. They are only likely to become a more ubiquitous feature in the hands of nation-state armed forces and non-state actors in conflict zones globally as time goes on. The nature of these threats is also expanding significantly in scale and scope, especially when it comes to more automated targeting capabilities, thanks heavily to the increasing democratization of AI-driven technologies, something TWZ has explored in depth in the past.
A number of other significant developments in this arena have emerged from the conflict in Ukraine, where electronic warfare systems are heavily employed against drones. This includes the introduction of physical fiber-optic control links that cannot be jammed, as well as the use of mesh-like and often ad-hoc networks to increase resiliency.
The fighting in Ukraine has also underscored the threat that even small kamikaze drones pose to armored vehicles, including types that are far more heavily protected to start with than the Marine Corps’ ACVs. As mentioned, Ukrainian forces have been sidelining their M1 Abrams and other main battle tanks in the face of constant drone attacks.
MARCORSYSCOM’s justification for the Pulsar-L order makes clear that this is just one part of a larger plan to boost the ACV’s defenses.
“Marine Corps program of record for SK C-UAS is planned to initiate in FY27,” the document mentions toward the very end. “The components of this future program will be procured through full and open competition as it is expected that advanced non-kinetic and SK defeat technologies should be mature by this time.”
Another look at a Marine Corps ACV-P, showing the general configuration of these vehicles today. USMC
“We’re constantly looking at what the next generation of APS is and how we can get that onto the [ACV] platform in a lightweight form factor,” Chris Melkonian, the Marine Corps’ Program Manager for Advanced Amphibious Assault (PM AAA), told TWZ and other attendees at the annual Modern Day Marine exposition in April.
Improved “situational awareness, that’s kind of a gateway to counter-UAS, in terms of the ability to sense your environment,” Melkonian also highlighted at that time. “Take all that video on board and then be able to feed that into [a] counter-UAS system.”
Additional “overhead protection right now is a critical thing that we’re working on right now for this platform,” he added. The practice of adding on anti-drone armor screens on armored vehicles (and now other platforms), especially to protect against top-down attacks, first emerged in Russia in the lead-up to the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, the installation of this kind of so-called ‘cope cage’ type armor has now become a global trend, including in the U.S. military.
When it comes to the Marine Corps ACV fleet, the rush order for Pulsar-Ls is an important new step in boosting those vehicles’ defenses against threats that exist now. At the same time, drones are increasingly calling the role of armored vehicles in future conflicts into question.
Last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman cryptically teased plans for a new high- and fast-flying X-plane with a silhouette of an aircraft that immediately drew comparisons to the famed SR-71 Blackbird as a backdrop. In our report, we looked at what it could mean, including the possibility of reviving the SR-71, or at least using it to inform or even cobble together a new airframe. Now it turns out that an SR-71 that had been on display at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center for years is suspiciously missing.
Steve Trimble, Aviation Week‘s defense editor and friend of TWZ, was first to report the disappearance of the former NASA SR-71, also known by the tail number 844, at Armstrong. That facility is collocated with Edwards Air Force Base in California. Trimble’s piece says that satellite imagery shows the jet has not been seen since at least May 17. The aircraft in question, which originally carried the U.S. Air Force serial number 61-7980, was the last Blackbird produced and the last one to fly, taking to the skies for the final time in 1999.
A satellite image taken in 2018 showing SR-71, tail number 844, on display outside of the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. Google Earth
“The current disposition of the aircraft is unclear, but Aviation Week sources suggest that the aircraft was moved into a hangar earlier this year for an inspection,” according to the story. “The presentation and the disappearance of the display SR-71S with the 844 tail number for NASA raises the possibility of a return-to-flight program after a more than 26-year-long hiatus.”
Another look at SR-71 tail number 844 during its service with NASA. This picture was taken on October 31, 1997, during a flight in support of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE). NASA
The presentation mentioned above is the one NASA’s Isaacman gave last week at the annual All-In Summit in Los Angeles, California, during which he shared the SR-71-esque silhouette.
“In the service of the first A [aeronautics] in NASA, we are rebuilding our X-plane fleet. The X-59 is researching quiet supersonic flight, but it’s just the beginning,” he said at that time. “As NASA recommits to flight test and works alongside industry to push the boundaries of airframe and propulsion design, it will not be long before NASA once again is flying as high and as fast as we had in decades past, and then even more.”
Isaacman has made expanding NASA’s X-plane fleets a top priority since taking charge of the agency last year.
“You sure that’s a Blackbird?” the NASA administrator said during a live interview that immediately followed his remarks after the image was brought up, but did not offer any further clarification.
NASA Administrator showed this image during a presentation last week while talking about plans for new X-planes. NASA
“NASA has a long history of building and flying experimental aircraft that push the boundaries of what is possible,” NASA told TWZ directly when asked for more information. “As Administrator Isaacman has said, we want to see more X-planes flying in the years ahead, developing the technologies that will allow us to fly higher, farther, and faster than we have in decades. We look forward to sharing more as those efforts progress.”
We have reached back out to NASA in light of Aviation Week‘s report.
“As for bringing a Blackbird back into operation for high-speed testing, which is now at the forefront of military aeronautics (and civilian to a lesser degree) after decades of being sidelined, that would be a very challenging operation. The SR-71s are long retired and have been placed in museums and other display areas. While the Pentagon could technically claw some of them back from their ‘on loan’ status, reconstituting even one of them would be a major undertaking as the entire support ecosystem that once sustained them has been gone for decades. Still, having a Mach 3+ capable jet for testing would be a highly relevant tool in a new age of high-speed flight exploration.”
“On the other hand, building a new test aircraft that aims higher and faster than the SR-71, but may be based on its ‘DNA,’ is certainly possible. Such an aircraft could leverage material science, avionics, flight controls, and engines that are seven decades more modern than its progenitor. Technology demonstrators in this class could also already exist in the classified domain. NASA could possibly assume ownership of one after the Pentagon declassifies it, as well.”
“Regardless of how such an exotic aircraft is obtained, one of the biggest differentiating factors could be that a NASA aircraft is piloted by a human onboard, instead of it being a drone, but an uncrewed aircraft is possible too.“
Aviation Week‘s report today notes that tail number 844 would probably be the best available candidate for returning to flight status. In addition to being the last produced and the last to fly, NASA previously upgraded it, including with “an automated digital flight and inlet control system to virtually eliminate the Blackbird’s problem of violent engine unstarts at high speed.” It has also been sitting in a controlled area in the Mojave Desert that is great for preservation.
It is also worth pointing out here that Isaacman is personally aware of the time and resources it takes to reconstitute high-end vintage military aircraft. He founded private ‘red air’ aggressor firm Draken International, making him once the owner of the world’s largest private air force stocked with old jets. His own private collection includes a demilitarized, ex-Ukrainian two-seat MiG-29UB that he flies regularly. He has also been working to restore a former Royal Air Force swing-wing Panavia Tornado F2 interceptor, which would be the most complex private military jet flying, if or when it returned to working condition.
At the same time, the SR-71 is in a completely different category, having been the very definition of a high-demand, low-density asset even at the very peak of its service life with the Air Force. Only 32 of these jets were ever built, and they were notoriously complex and expensive to operate and maintain. The aircraft’s Pratt & Whitney J58 turbojets ran on JP-7 fuel that is no longer in regular production. After 9/11, the possibility was raised of returning a Blackbird to service to support the Global War on Terror, but doing so was projected to cost between $40 and $45 million – and that was just two years after 844’s last flight.
There is also a possibility, in line with Isaacman’s comments last week, that 844 could re-merge in a substantially different, reworked form. There is even the potential it could be retrofitted for uncrewed, or at least pilot-optional, flight. Any such conversion effort would also be a major undertaking, as would sustaining the resulting bespoke jet. As we noted earlier, NASA could also use the SR-71 at Edwards to help inform other future designs.
At the same time, maybe this is all a coincidence and the SR-71 in question is getting some other form of TLC, but its months-long absence is certainly a curious development in light of the current push for new X-planes under Isaacman’s leadership.
Update: 11:00 PM ET –
NASA has now provided TWZ with the following statement in response to our queries for more information about SR-71 tail number 844:
“NASA has a long history of pushing the boundaries of experimental aviation, and we continue to explore opportunities to build on that legacy. As Administrator Isaacman has said, we want to see NASA flying higher, farther, and faster than we have in decades. We recognize the interest in the SR-71 and its remarkable history at NASA but have no additional information to share regarding the aircraft at this time.”
Update: 9/25/2026 ET –
It has come to our attention that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman made additional comments regarding the SR-71 at the EAA AirVenture airshow in July.
“There was a time that a lot of the technology that you see demonstrated here in the F-22 Raptor, like thrust vectoring controls, fly-by-wire, was pioneered by NASA. This is during the days when we had X-planes that included the SR71 Blackbird,” Isaacman said during a speech at the event. “We’re rebuilding our X-plane uh portfolio. We’re going higher, we’re going faster, until we blur the lines between in and out of the atmosphere, and that’s underway right now.”
“I’d say that NASA intends to field an exciting, inspiring, and technologically useful portfolio of X-planes, and I want us to go higher and faster than we’ve ever gone before,” he added during a subsequent question-and-answer session when asked specifically about any plans for a new crewed hypersonic aircraft or a successor to the SR-71. “We’ll see if we can pull anything off in the next handful of years, but, yeah, that is an area of great interest from a developmental perspective.”
Isaacman’s full speech at EAA AirVenture 2026 and the subsequent question-and-answer session are contained in the video below. The SR-71 comes up at 7:35 and 36:35 in the runtime.
The SR-71 also came up during a separate panel discussion at the AirVenture show, which included Isaacman.
“What aircraft that you haven’t flown would you like to try?” a member of the audience asked.
“SR-71 Blackbird,” Isaacman chimed in first without any hesitation.
The other panelists agreed.
“Do you have the power to bring that back then, Jared? That’s the next question,” the panel’s moderator added.
“That’s classified,” Isaacman responded.
The full panel discussion can be found in the video below. The exchange above starts at 1:00:50 in the runtime.
In a live television interview Thursday night Paris time, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was sending an unspecified number of troops and equipment to Saudi Arabia to protect the Yanbu energy hub, located on the Red Sea.
“This is the agreement we have finalized with the Saudis,” Macron explained. “We are going to send military resources, that is to say, soldiers, radar systems and defense systems, to protect this site — not to get us involved in any conflicts, but to protect this site.”
The French leader did not elaborate on the exact equipment he would send, how many troops, or when they would arrive. Nor did he address what would happen if French personnel were killed or injured or equipment damaged or destroyed. We have reached out to the French Embassy for further details. Based on his mention of radars and seeing that the threat to Saudi oil infrastructure is almost entirely from aerial attacks from drones and missiles, these will likely be air defense forces.
Nous agissons pour protéger nos compatriotes des conséquences de la crise au Moyen-Orient. Objectifs : sécuriser les approvisionnements et faire baisser les prix à la pompe. pic.twitter.com/kvrgHcV4E4
An infographic illustrating how Saudi Arabia has diverted oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. (Photo by Murat Usubali/Anadolu via Getty Images) Anadolu
Before Macron’s announcement on Thursday, the Houthis claimed they had carried out two more waves of attacks on Saudi targets, including one on the Saudi Aramco facility in Yanbu, “using a number of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones.”
In addition, the Houthis claimed they struck Riyadh.
Earlier in the day, the Houthis said they struck “enemy command and control centers, operations rooms, weapon depots, missile launch platforms, and military sites belonging to Saudi-led enemy formations in Jizan,” a Red Sea port city.
“The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen said on Thursday that it had shot down six ballistic missiles fired by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, in what appeared to be one of the largest cross-border attacks by the group since its conflict with Saudi Arabia [flared back up],” The New York Times reported.
The missiles were aimed at the Saudi cities of Taif and Yanbu, Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, claimed on X. “Escalations and violations by the terrorist Houthi militia will be dealt with firmly,” he stated, without specifying where the missiles were intercepted.
TWZ cannot independently verify any of these claims.
Today’s attacks are the latest in the escalating conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, the Houthis imposed a blockade on the Bab al-Mandab Strait (BAM) and began striking Saudi ships in the southern part of the Red Sea as well as critical energy terminals on that body of water and Saudi refineries. Iranian proxies have also struck the vital East-West pipeline that carries oil to the Red Sea to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran vastly curtailed shipping after the launch of Operation Epic Fury. The East-West pipeline reportedly reopened after being shut down following a long-range drone attack.
The stark reality facing Macron is that if Saudi oil infrastructure and transport nodes near the Red Sea are destroyed or the pipeline that feeds it is shut down for months, the last major oil lifeline from the region — and especially to Europe — will be closed off, sparking a deeper energy crisis.
Iran has already severely curtailed the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel attacked it on Feb. 28. The movement of oil has been further impeded by a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. However, transits have been increasing as of late, thanks in large measure to U.S. military escorts that U.S. Central Command claims have allowed more than a billion barrels of crude to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Still, the traffic is far below what it was before the war broke out.
Having both the Strait of Hormuz largely closed and energy exports out of the Red Sea shut down simultaneously is a nightmare scenario. By Thursday evening Eastern time, the per-barrel price of Brent crude oil shot up to nearly $107, according to OilPrice.com. It had fallen below $100 per barrel just two days earlier.
Given all this, the French president sought to offer reassurance about oil supplies, according to France 24.
“He said he had carried out ‘intense diplomatic activity,’ meeting in recent weeks with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Nigeria, all hydrocarbon suppliers, to ensure France keeps receiving the same volumes,” the publication noted.
“We have replenished gas stocks and also oil stocks” for the months ahead, the French president also said.
“Escalating tensions in the Gulf could have negative consequences here in the UK—such as rising prices, disruptions to energy supplies, and increased costs for British businesses,” the U.K. Defense Ministry (MoD) explained in announcing the deployment. “The Houthis pose a threat to stability in the Middle East; therefore, it is in the UK’s national interest—economically and in terms of security—that they do not succeed in their aims.”
“We unequivocally condemn Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and our position is clear: both Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government have the right to self-defense,” the ministry added.
The jet will operate from a U.K. air base in Cyprus and will begin air-to-air refueling operations in the coming days, the BBC reported.
A Royal Saudi Air Force Voyager aerial refueling jet. (Air Tanker)
The French and British deployments contrast decisions by the U.S. and other nations not to get involved with the Saudi-Houthi fight.
Last week, Trump turned down a direct plea from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Kingdom’s de facto leader, to attack the Houthis. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Turkey, which signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia, have yet to provide any direct military aid. The pact holds that an attack on one is considered an attack on all; however, it doesn’t stipulate exactly what actions should be taken.
The security situation in Yemen has drastically deteriorated since the launch of Epic Fury after the Houthis joined the U.S.-Iran conflict on the side of their major supporter.
The Houthis have been directly attacking Saudi Arabia over claims that the kingdom has imposed a blockade on them. Beyond that, the mostly dormant civil war between the Houthis and internationally recognized Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, reignited in the wake of Operation Epic Fury. The Houthis have made large territorial gains in the renewed conflict, including capturing the port city of Mokha and two key islands in the Red Sea. This has strengthened the Houthi hold on the BAM. You can read more about that in our story here.
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 civil war in Yemen erupted in 2014 and expanded a year later when a Saudi-led coalition joined forces with the government ousted by the Houthis. The fighting between Saudi-led forces and the Houthis largely abated after a tenuous ceasefire took hold 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. The United Kingdom was another significant player in that air campaign.
Meanwhile, exacerbating concerns about the flow of oil from the Red Sea, “a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned Thursday that Iranian forces and their Houthi allies in Yemen could respond to any new U.S. attacks by opening ‘a new front’ in its war with the U.S. by targeting energy supplies in the Red Sea,” CBS News reported.
The statements came after U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday once again threatened Iran.
“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” Trump asked rhetorically. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”
Trump added that he believed he would make a peace deal with Iran after the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, which will decide the control of Congress.
Trump to the UN: "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly? Do I drive them into hell?" pic.twitter.com/cIYBO1Mp3w
The fact that France is sending forces to Saudi Arabia is an ominous development and another indication that the current spate of unrest that began with Epic Fury does not appear to show any signs of ending anytime soon.
For the past six months or so, a curious-looking vessel with a very boxy superstructure has been taking shape at a shipyard in the Chinese city of Shanghai. A new satellite image lends credence to an earlier assessment that this is a mothership to support China’s growing fleets of ever-larger submersible drones, though it could also have other roles.
TWZ obtained the image of the ship in question, which was taken on September 10, from Vantor. Since then, it has also received an overall coat of gray paint, pointing to future service with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It is some 669 feet (204 meters) long and around 98 feet (30 meters) at its widest. In terms of basic length and width, the vessel being built now is very roughly comparable to China’s Type 071 amphibious warfare ship. However, it appears to be much taller overall than the Type 071.
The new ship has been under construction at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard on Changxing Island in Shanghai since at least April. This yard produces a variety of naval vessels, including surface combatants and amphibious assault ships, as well as commercial designs.
The September 10 image, which shows the ship from the stern, is interesting for a number of reasons. It notably confirms that the design not only has a well deck, but that it is sized around what looks to be a large cradle-like platform visible in the shot. The very roughly 164-feet (50-meter) long rectangular platform has an arch-shaped structure at one end and two teardrop-shaped ones at the other, as well as six pillars, three on each side, in between. The teardrop-shaped structures, in particular, point to the platform being at least a semi-submersible, as they would help with stability and otherwise guide the flow of water while being pulled along.
The satellite image also clearly shows six large struts extending from the top of the stern end of the superstructure, each one which is paired with a shorter strut, for a total of 12. Earlier this month, independent naval analyst H.I. Sutton, who tracks undersea warfare developments in particular, posited that these struts could be used to lower a platform or some other similar structure below the hull of the ship. He also assessed that they could be used as part of a larger system capable of moving payloads between decks internally. This would help account for the configuration of the core superstructure, especially how high it is all the way from the front to the back. Overall, signs point to the inside of the superstructure being largely hangars and other open work spaces, allowing for multiple large UUVs to be carried and supported. Individual UUVs would be launched and recovered, one at a time, via the cradle.
In making his assessment, Sutton drew specific attention to a previously shown rendering of a proposed Chinese scientific research vessel with a roughly similar strut-based system at the stern for deploying submersibles and other large payloads. However, on that design, the system was entirely exposed rather than contained with an extended superstructure.
The rendering of the proposed scientific research vessel with a system for deploying payloads at the stern that features four struts. Chinese internet via H.I. Sutton
The platform seen immediately behind the ship being built at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard aligns with Sutton’s assessment about the purpose of the struts. At the same time, launches and recoveries could also be conducted in a more traditional manner via the well deck. The design of the cradle-like platform would seem to suggest the latter option is at least part of the plan.
The image from September 10, as well as other recent views of the ship, highlight other features that are now taking shape. This includes a large opening on the starboard side, which could be for launching and/or recovering lifeboats or other watercraft, or moving payloads to and from the pier while docked, as well as a multi-pronged mast on top of the bridge. An additional part of the ship’s superstructure extends behind the bridge area, and there is what looks to be a hangar inside. There is no attached helipad present now, but one could well be added later on somewhere on top of the superstructure. Many naval auxiliaries, as well as commercial ships designed for offshore support and other specialized tasks, have open helipads on raised frames attached to different parts of the superstructures.
Though there is growing clarity about the ship’s design, many questions do remain about the full breadth of its intended purpose. In Sutton’s view, the PLAN has a need, just in general, for a dedicated mothership to support its growing uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) fleets. The PLAN is pursuing various tiers of UUVs to perform a host of different missions, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as mine-laying, special operations support, and even launching direct attacks on enemy vessels. Larger and larger UUV designs have been steadily emerging in China, which could require more specialized launch and recovery options to be feasibly employed operationally, especially from other vessels at sea. Deployment and retrieval at sea could, in turn, support very long duration missions far from China’s own shores.
“With smaller UUVs, even up to 20 meters like the AJX-002 and HSU-100 paraded in Beijing last year, they are road mobile. Truck mounted cranes should be sufficient for getting them in and out of the water making operations much simpler. With these latest, much larger XXLUUVs [extra-extra large uncrewed underwater vehicles] however, China will start to need dedicated port facilities,” Sutton wrote previously on his website. “Until now China has been using floating docks to house the two XXLUUV prototypes being tested on Hainan. One of these docks was purpose built while the other may have been taken up from general use.”
A Chinese AJX-002 UUV, or a mockup thereof, seen ahead of a major military parade in Beijing in 2025. Chinese internet via X
China's naval unmanned systems.
Consisting of (in order), AI enabled unmanned submersible (HSU-100), used for detection and attack.
Unmanned patrol boat.
Unmanned mine-laying/attack submersible (AJX-002), this was previously mistaken for a nuclear powered torpedo. Because the… pic.twitter.com/Mlj55XLNBH
“This arrangement also has a significant drawback: each floating dock can only carry a single XXLUUV,” Sutton added. “Or if more than one, then they both need to be placed in the water at the same time. Because the whole dock floods, there cannot be one undergoing maintenance while another is being launched or recovered.”
A mothership vessel able to discreetly deploy and recover large uncrewed and crewed submersibles and other large payloads underwater could be tasked with more specialized missions, including cutting cables, retrieving objects from the seabed, and other kinds of undersea espionage. There is overlap here with more benign roles, such as submarine rescue, salvage, and even deep-sea scientific research. There is also the matter of servicing an expanding array of Chinese underwater infrastructure, including sensor and communications networks. As something of a corollary, Russia’s spy ship Yantar is officially described as an oceanic research vessel. In China, the line between military and non-military assets and capabilities, including ships, is often very blurry, to begin with, as TWZ regularly highlights. This dichotomy was observed right at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard around the end of last year after pictures of a commercial cargo ship being used to showcase a new family of containerized weapons, sensors, and other systems went viral online.
It is also worth pointing out that the boxy and largely enclosed design of the ship now being built at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard will inherently make it difficult to observe any activities onboard. This will have the additional knock-on effect of helping keep any payloads, as well as the crew, shielded from the elements. This could be valuable for operations in harsher locales, including waters in and around the Arctic, an ever-more strategic part of the world where China is working to be more engaged.
We also do not know if the apparent mothership vessel is intended to be a one-off or part of a larger class. It could be a stepping stone to broader plans or be part of an already extensive fleet of bespoke naval auxiliaries, as well as unique ostensibly commercial vessels, in service in China today. The PLAN’s aforementioned UUV ambitions will bring along significant test and evaluation requirements, as well as the need to support actual future operations.
If nothing else, evidence is only growing that the new ship under construction at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard is intended to serve, at least in part, as a mothership for large submersible drones.
Chinese authorities have reportedly taken possession of an F-35 cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door that were inexplicably diverted to Hong Kong while being shipped from Australia to the United States. The incident appears to have left physical components that incorporate aspects of the fighter’s low-observable design in the hands of a country that has spent years doing whatever it could to gain information on the aircraft and America’s stealth technology secrets in general.
So, what does all this mean? Let’s put it in perspective.
The parts in question were being shipped by UPS from Australia to the United States in late May, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg. The components from a Royal Australian Air Force F-35A were being sent to the United States for inspection and possible repair or disposal.
A Royal Australian Air Force F-35A from 75 Squadron taxiing at RAAF Base Tindal, Northern Territory. Australian Defense Force
F-35 sustainment procedures explicitly cover the movement of F-35 parts, including unserviceable components, through the program’s logistics network. The U.S. Air Force’s transportation guidance directs F-35 shipments outside the Defense Transportation System to follow approved Joint Program Office procedures. In other words, moving an unserviceable Australian F-35 component to the United States for inspection, repair, or disposition is consistent with the normal sustainment process.
What is highly unusual is where this particular shipment ended up. F-35 components moving through an established international logistics system apparently stopped in South Korea, and were then routed to Hong Kong. Chinese authorities subsequently took possession of the parts and have not returned them, according to the sources cited by Bloomberg.
F-35 canopy component replacement at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Ridge ShanSecretary of War Pete Hegseth autographs the weapons bay door of an F-35 at Lockheed Martin Air Force Plant 4, in Fort Worth, Texas. DoW photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza
“For security reasons, we can’t discuss the status of specific shipments or our shipping procedures,” Lockheed Martin told us in response to a request for clarification about the incident. The company added that it “follows all U.S. regulations established by the Department of War and regulated by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) regarding the shipment of aircraft components. Our teams handle every shipment with the utmost diligence and safeguards to ensure the integrity of the F-35 program and the security of our allied partners.”
The Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office has acknowledged a “shipment issue” involving F-35 components and said U.S. authorities and industry partners are working to recover them and investigate what happened.
Lockheed Martin, UPS, and the Pentagon have not publicly provided a detailed account of how the shipment was diverted or what happened to the parts after they reached Hong Kong.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles also confirmed that Canberra was aware of the incident and was working with the United States and Lockheed Martin.
Acting Prime Minister and Minister for Defense, Richard Marles, accompanied by Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Stephen Chappell at RAAF Base Edinburgh, South Australia. Australian Defense Force
Marles has sought to play down the potential security implications of the components, saying his understanding was that the shipment did not contain sensitive equipment or sensitive parts. That does not by itself answer the more specific question of what could potentially be learned from these particular pieces of an F-35. After all, not every physical component of an F-35 is necessarily highly classified or capable of revealing meaningful information about the aircraft’s design. At the same time, a cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door involve structures, materials, interfaces, tolerances, and treatments that all have to work within the aircraft’s low-observable design. If radar-absorbing material or other specialized treatments remain on the components, that could potentially make them far more sensitive from a technological exploitation standpoint.
The condition of the parts is also unknown. We do not know how much of their coatings or other treatments remain intact, whether Chinese authorities have examined them, or what information could actually be extracted from them in their current state.
Above all else, there is little specific information in the public domain about what F-35-related technical information Chinese intelligence already has acquired over the years, what physical components or materials it may already possess, or what additional information could be gained through espionage, cyber operations, industrial access, observation of deployed aircraft, or other means.
Without these facts, it is impossible to gauge what damage could have been done by this loss. Still, viewed in a vacuum of those unknowns, simply having an F-35 canopy and weapons-bay door in Chinese possession represents a significant loss of control over sensitive physical hardware — there is no way around that reality — and the severity of that loss could be substantial depending on the physical state of the parts.
The circumstances are particularly sensitive because, as we mentioned in the opening of this article, China has pursued multiple avenues for acquiring information on the F-35 for many years, with publicly documented cases involving cyber operations, technical information, supply chains, and human expertise. Some aspects of China’s subsequent stealth aircraft designs have also prompted comparisons with U.S. aircraft, although claims that China simply ‘cloned’ entire aircraft are not supported by the available evidence.
China And The F-35: A History Of Espionage
In 2014, U.S. authorities charged Chinese businessman Su Bin with conspiring with two other Chinese hackers to break into the computer systems of U.S. defense contractors. Prosecutors alleged that the group targeted information on aircraft including the F-35 and F-22. The alleged hacking campaign ran from 2009 to 2013.
Su Bin later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. The Justice Department’s 2026 case against former Air Force fighter pilot Gerald “Runner” Brown connects the two cases. Prosecutors allege that Brown used a co-conspirator to negotiate his work training Chinese military pilots with Su Bin.
Brown, a retired U.S. Air Force major who spent more than 24 years in the service, subsequently worked as a contract simulator instructor training U.S. military pilots on the A-10 and F-35. In February 2026, the Justice Department charged him with providing and conspiring to provide unauthorized defense services to Chinese military pilots.
According to the criminal complaint, Brown traveled to China in December 2023, where he allegedly began training People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) personnel. Prosecutors say he also answered questions about the U.S. Air Force for three hours on his first day in China. Brown has been charged, and the allegations have not been adjudicated. He is one of multiple former Western aviators alleged to have provided training services and/or intelligence to Beijing.
The Honeywell case provides yet another example, this time involving the defense industry’s supply of technical information.
In 2021, the State Department reached a $13-million administrative settlement with Honeywell over alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Honeywell had voluntarily disclosed alleged unauthorized exports and retransfers of ITAR-controlled technical data.
The case involved 71 engineering drawings containing dimensions, geometries and layouts for manufacturing castings and finished parts used across multiple aircraft, engines and military systems. The State Department said the unauthorized exports and retransfers involved Canada, Ireland, Mexico, China, and Taiwan.
Among the systems covered by the drawings were components associated with the F-35 and F-22. The case did not allege that Honeywell deliberately sought to provide China with sensitive military technology; rather, it concerned alleged violations of export-control requirements.
A U.S. Air Force F-22 (nearest camera) flies alongside an F-35A. U.S. Air Force photo by Lt. Sam Eckholm
There has also been a physical supply-chain precedent.
In 2022, F-35 deliveries were temporarily halted after the Pentagon discovered that a magnet in the aircraft’s Honeywell-built turbomachine pumps —which provide critical power functions to the jet — contained a cobalt and samarium alloy produced in China. The material itself was not considered a security or flight-safety threat, but the discovery demonstrated how difficult it can be to maintain complete visibility over a global supply chain involving thousands of companies and multiple tiers of subcontractors.
Taken together, these cases demonstrate several different pathways through which China has appeared in the F-35 security story: cyber theft, unauthorized technical-data transfers, supply-chain exposure, and alleged exploitation of former Western military expertise.
The Hong Kong incident would add another major category: physical access to actual F-35 components.
These are only some of the publicly documented examples. There is no public way to know the full extent of information or physical material Chinese intelligence may have acquired over the years, but is very likely far larger in scope than what is available in the open source.
Chinese Access Concerns Have Shaped F-35 Export Policy
The proposed sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirates became deeply entangled in U.S. concerns about Abu Dhabi’s growing military and technology relationship with China.
A 34th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron F-35A conducts inflight refueling above the United Arab Emirates. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Kat Justen
Washington had approved a potential package involving 50 F-35As, but U.S. officials and lawmakers expressed concerns about Chinese intelligence activity and technology in the UAE. Among the broader concerns were Chinese telecommunications infrastructure and the possibility of Chinese military or intelligence access to facilities associated with advanced U.S. weapons. A Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report later cited the potential presence of Chinese intelligence collection capabilities and military facilities in the UAE as risks to the proposed F-35 sale.
The State Department recently approved a potential $24.3-billion sale to the Kingdom involving 48 F-35s and associated equipment. But U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly warned that China’s military and technology relationship with Saudi Arabia could create opportunities for Beijing to obtain sensitive F-35 information.
According to reporting based on U.S. officials familiar with intelligence assessments, a Defense Intelligence Agency report raised concerns about Chinese military access to Saudi bases, Chinese technology in Saudi telecommunications infrastructure, and whether secure facilities could be maintained for F-35 operations. The assessments also questioned whether Saudi Arabia would limit contact between Chinese military and intelligence personnel and F-35-related sites.
What Could The Components Reveal?
As we noted earlier, there is no way to gauge the intelligence impact of the loss at this stage. The central unknown of what China already knows about the F-35, and what it may already have in its possession — especially related to these components — is the key variable here.
Regardless, an F-35 canopy and weapons-bay door can provide information that cannot otherwise be easily obtained and gives a different level of fidelity in terms of material exploitation than what construction data and blueprints alone could.
The F-35’s low observability is the product of an extremely complex combination of airframe shaping, construction materials, external coatings, manufacturing tolerances, speciality apertures, and more.
U.S. Air Force 325th Maintenance Squadron low-observable maintainers work on an F-35A at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, in August 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Victoria Moehlman
A canopy is a particularly demanding part of any stealth aircraft. It has to satisfy optical and structural requirements while also controlling radar reflections. The cockpit is historically a major source of radar reflectivity, including the pilot’s helmet. Therefore the canopy’s materials, construction, interfaces, and specialized treatments can be critical to the aircraft’s overall low-observable performance, and especially from the critical frontal aspect.
The F-35’s canopy has been an ongoing work in progress for many years. It has had chronic material issues, especially when it comes to delamination. Multiple iterations spread over two decades have recently resulted in a major improvement of the issue. The tight balancing act of keeping the canopy transparent enough, while controlling the F-35’s stealthy signature and having that mix of materials be robust enough to last for a reasonable amount of time has been a major investment for the program. If the canopy is of a later variation, that loss alone could be substantial and could help China with their own low-observable canopy development programs even if they already had original information on the F-35’s canopy original design dating back years.
Evidence of the F-35’s canopy delamination issue on an early example of the F-35B. Crown Copyright
The F-35’s canopy has been a notorious work in progress, specifically the low observable coating/delamination issue which has improved a lot in recent years with new materials and processes. So no, you do NOT want to lose that in to China! https://t.co/9V0jdRAiwA
The F-35’s weapons-bay door has its own sensitivity issues. It is effectively a major section of the aircraft’s outer shell, with its structure, edges, interfaces, tolerances and treatments all having to function without creating unacceptable radar signatures. Its construction and material attributes can be reasonably extrapolated for the rest of much of the F-35’s outer mold-line. Above all else, if the radar absorbent material remained intact on the door, that would signify a major loss when viewed without any understanding of what China already knows about the F-35’s radar absorbing surface treatments. Historically speaking, RAM technology is among America’s closely guarded material sciences secrets.
A Belgian Air Force service member inspects the open weapons bay of an F-35A at Luke AFB, Arizona. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Tekorey Watkins
For the time being, Australian officials have said they do not understand the parts to be sensitive. The investigation will ultimately have to establish what the components actually contain and what could be learned from them.
The incident comes at a moment when China’s own stealth fighter efforts are undergoing an extraordinary expansion.
The PLAAF is now operating the J-20, China’s first operational fifth-generation stealth fighter, in increasingly large numbers. The smaller J-35 is also moving toward broader service, including a carrier role for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
Aircraft maintainers clean the fuselage of a J-20 fighter during the Changchun Air Show in the Jilin Province of China, in September 2025. Photo by Zhang Xiangyi/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
China has also moved into what Western observers generally describe as sixth-generation fighter development.
Two new tailless combat-aircraft designs emerged publicly in December 2024. One is the large Chengdu aircraft commonly referred to as the J-36, while the other is associated with Shenyang and is variously called the J-XDS or J-50. Both have continued flight testing and yielded several prototypes with individual refinements.
The exact capabilities and eventual operational roles of these aircraft remain uncertain. They are developmental designs, not established operational equivalents of the F-35 or other sixth-generation systems. However, China is clearly building an increasingly broad ecosystem of fifth- and next-generation low-observable combat aircraft, both crewed and uncrewed. In the latter category is a growing number of stealthy drones, including long-endurance types.
China didn’t likely need physical access to an F-35 canopy or weapons-bay door to develop the J-20, J-35, or its next-generation aircraft. But additional information about how a mature Western stealth aircraft handles materials, coatings, interfaces, manufacturing, and the integration of those elements can still have great potential value to an industry developing its own systems. This includes technologies intended to counter the U.S. combat aircraft and their low-observable characteristics.
The F-35 has been produced in large numbers, is operated by a growing coalition of countries, and has been subjected to years of testing and operational experience. Its low-observable design represents decades of accumulated U.S. research and industrial know-how. At the same time, the global scale of the program inevitably makes control over sensitive information more complicated. More aircraft, more maintainers, more industrial partners, and more international logistics mean more points at which information and physical hardware have to be controlled. Over time, a program of this size will see an erosion in its secrets, but a major loss can drastically accelerate what should be a more gradual and controlled decline in security.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 production line at Fort Worth, Texas. Lockheed Martin photo by Alexander H Groves
The potential intelligence value of the components also has to be considered in the context of foreign material exploitation, or FME. Major military powers maintain dedicated capabilities to recover, examine and characterize foreign weapons, aircraft, sensors, materials and other equipment. The objective is not necessarily to reproduce an entire system. More important is determining how something is built, what materials and manufacturing techniques are used, how individual components perform, and where industrial strengths or limitations may lie.
That is why countries have historically gone to extraordinary lengths to recover even crashed or damaged pieces of sensitive military hardware. The bigger the prize, the more risk an intelligence service would be willing to take in order to realize a recovery.
The sensitivity surrounding the physical remnants of an F-35 is not new. When a Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-35A disappeared over the Pacific in 2019, the search quickly became more than a rescue operation. U.S. and Japanese forces mounted an extensive effort to locate the wreckage, with U.S. Navy P-8A aircraft and a destroyer joining the search. TWZnoted at the time that even scattered F-35 wreckage could expose valuable technological secrets, while the aircraft’s location on the seabed raised the prospect of an underwater espionage and recovery operation.
That concern has also been evident in subsequent F-35 recovery operations. In 2022, the U.S. Navy recovered an F-35C from roughly 12,400 feet in the South China Sea after a carrier landing accident, removing the possibility that the aircraft could be accessed by another country.
At this point, there is no public evidence that the Hong Kong diversion was a deliberate Chinese intelligence operation, although it is certainly possible. It is also unclear whether Chinese authorities have examined the F-35 parts or what level of new and useful information has been recovered from them.
If, as reported, Chinese authorities have taken possession of the parts and have not returned them, that would be an extraordinary development. If the diversion was genuinely the result of a shipping or logistics error, the outcome would itself be extraordinary. It would raise serious questions about the security controls surrounding the movement of F-35 hardware even without evidence of deliberate interference.
The timing is also notable. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington this week for a state visit with President Donald Trump, with the two leaders meeting amid broader disputes involving technology, security, and the future of U.S.-China relations. Whether the F-35 shipment comes up directly in those discussions is not known, but it would be an obvious subject for U.S. and Chinese officials to address through diplomatic channels.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, accompanied by the President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan." pic.twitter.com/hyPHOBC99Q
For now, however, the central question remains how the parts got there. Until that is answered, we won’t know if this was a simple logistics failure or a deliberate intelligence operation. And beyond that, what China already knew about the components it now may have in its possession — a question we may never truly get an answer to.
Ukraine claims it has recently regained about 125 sq. km. of territory near the town of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region during what has been dubbed Operation Vivaldi. Rodion Kudryashov, a Ukrainian colonel and deputy commander of the Third Army Corps, offered some insights into this offensive and what made it different.
Though the operation is still ongoing, the success of Vivaldi began long before any troop movements, Kudryashov explained in an editorial he published in Ukrainian Pravda.
Ukraine is making advances near the town of Lyman, located in the Donetsk region. (Google Earth)
“After the Third Army Corps was formed, we changed the command system of its subordinate units,” he noted. “Some brigades came to the corps after very heavy fighting, with losses, manning problems and, most importantly, eroded trust in their leadership.”
Third Army Corps Commander Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletsky “then set out one of our key principles: a commander must be responsible for the entire cycle, from training a soldier to the result on the battlefield,” Kudryashov pointed out. “In some places that meant replacing a commander. In others it meant restructuring a staff or strengthening the NCO chain. In some cases we had to build, almost from scratch, processes that on paper should have been working long ago.”
At issue was changing the culture from a more rigid Soviet-era model, with a cumbersome chain of command, to a modern, more flexible one better suited for the current conflict.
“A modern commander has to handle an enormous flow of information and make decisions quickly,” the deputy commander proffered. “He has to understand what unmanned systems, logistics, reconnaissance and adjacent units can do, while not smothering initiative at lower levels with endless approvals. An army where every decision takes hours to travel up and down the chain loses to an army that makes the same trip in minutes.”
Once those changes were put in place, the Third Army Corps had to first stop Russian advances in the sector before it could move forward.
VIVALDI
GoPro footage from Ukrainian assault troops who took part in the Vivaldi counteroffensive, which resulted in the liberation of five settlements in the Lyman direction. pic.twitter.com/2SVXSKlEX0
“When the corps took over its area of responsibility, our first task was not an offensive,” the officer said. “We had to stop the situation from deteriorating and stabilize the forward edge.”
“The enemy was pressing. In some sectors our combat formations were losing cohesion,” he underscored. “The Russians were actively using infiltration tactics: small groups seeped between positions, massed in our rear, threatened logistics and gradually eroded the defensive line.”
“We had to stabilize the forward edge and stop the infiltration,” Kudryashov said. “We had to rebuild command, put in commanders capable of making decisions, form new teams and reconstitute units. We had to set up the surveillance-and-strike system and sustain the front line. We had to stockpile ammunition, drones and other resources, understand the enemy, and plan the next step before the previous one was finished. Only after that could we move forward.”
By June, the corps was able to secure the front “in the sector from Borova to Lyman and eliminate the enemy’s infiltration zones,” Kudryashov continued. “That sounds less impressive than the word ‘offensive,’ but no offensive ever happens without it.”
“You cannot plan a complex operation if you don’t know where your forward edge will be tomorrow,” the deputy commander extrapolated. “You cannot build up forces if your logistics are constantly under threat. And you cannot form a strike group if your units are always forced to patch new breaches. So the first phase of ‘Vivaldi’ was not an advance at all. It was creating the conditions that made an advance possible in the first place.”
Once the front was stabilized, the next step was shaping the battlefield for the offensive. The corps’ unmanned systems units went to work against Russian logistics, striking a pipeline and depots. That forced the enemy to change its fuel and lubricant supply routes.
Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps released new footage of search-and-strike operations on the Lyman front. FPV drone operators from the 60th Mechanized Brigade’s FATUM unit targeted Russian armored vehicles, a Grad multiple rocket launcher and personnel. #Ukrainepic.twitter.com/1iNG7z2N1c
“The operation also involved the corps’ brigades, its reconnaissance and unmanned units, and attached forces from the SSO (Special Operations Forces), GUR (Defense Intelligence) and DPSU (State Border Guard Service),” the deputy commander said. “To counter infiltration, a joint headquarters was set up to coordinate special and reconnaissance units at the tactical level under a single concept.”
“In my view, this is one of the main characteristics of modern war,” he further stated. “It is not 10 strong units that each fight well on their own. It is 10 different elements that start working as one system at the right moment.”
An interesting new detail from Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps about Operation Vivaldi on the Lyman axis.
The Corps says Ukrainian forces carried out a flanking maneuver and, for the first time, airlifted unmanned ground vehicles behind Russian lines, while also suppressing Russian… https://t.co/ZEq8C75bN4pic.twitter.com/KgKcZ0Zs2P
The influential, Kremlin-connected Rybar Telegram channel has acknowledged Ukrainian gains in this sector.
“In the first half of summer, Russian units gradually advanced in Lyman,” Rybar wrote this morning. “However, in August, the enemy launched counterattacks and, by the first week of September, regained some positions, and also began attempts to recapture Shandryholovo and Zarechnoye.”
“The enemy did not inflict significant losses on Russian troops, as the concentration of units of the West group of forces in the salient remained relatively low,” Rybar added. “However, later, the UAF deployed reserves to launch an offensive towards Zherebets in order to align the front along the water barrier and return it to the configuration of the end of 2025.”
rybar now saying the 144th division is still falling back. the 3rd corps is still advancing and destroying an entire army group as they move. this is historic. pic.twitter.com/2jOa8KR9oA
Though the battle is still in flux, Kudryashov said there are lessons the rest of the Ukrainian military should heed.
“Winning one battle is not yet winning the war,” he said. “The enemy is learning too. He changes tactics, looks for weak spots and tries to scale what works for him.”
“So our task is to be faster, not only in physically moving forward but also in our ability to see, think, decide and put into practice what delivers results,” the deputy commander avowed. “And to do everything possible so that our soldiers pay the lowest possible price for every next kilometer of Ukrainian land.”
The Latest
On the battlefield, in addition to the gains Ukraine has made near Lyman, it has also largely been able to hold off Russian advances across the front lines. Here are some key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War assessment of frontline operations:
Sumy: Russian forces recently conducted an infiltration mission east of Sumy City, and they continue to conduct glide bomb strikes against frontline settlements in northern Sumy Oblast to set conditions for future offensives.
Kharkiv: Russian forces continued offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast and in the Borova, Kupyansk and Velykyi Burluk directions on Sept. 21 and 22 but did not advance.
Donetsk: Ukrainian forces reportedly continue counterattacks in the Lyman direction, including southeast of Lyman, as Russian forces are attempting to use redeployments to stabilize the area. Russian forces continued offensive operations east and southeast of Slovyansk near Rai-Oleksandrivka and toward Mykolaivka and Fedorivka Druha on Sept. 21 and 22 but did not advance. During this period, they also tried to advance in the Novopavlivka and Oleksandrivka directions but made no gains, as Ukrainian forces counterattacked in both areas.
Zaporizhia: Ukrainian forces recently advanced or maintained positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Kherson: Neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces reported ground activity in the Kherson direction on September 22.
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 22, 2026: The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) falsely claimed that Russian forces have encircled Dobropillya — an intensification of the Kremlin’s cognitive warfare campaign alleging encirclements across various sectors of the… pic.twitter.com/yMoAcyVIme
In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly this afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Russia to end its war and said it was paying a heavy price — and exacting a terrible toll — for little territorial gain.
“This ridiculous and never-ending war with Ukraine must be ended,” the Ukrainian leader urged. “I do not know a single world leader who would say otherwise. I do not know anyone who is openly for this war, except one man.”
He was referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for almost five years now, Russian generals have been trying to carry out Putin’s crazy order to seize our eastern land, the Donetsk region,” Zelensky continued. “And just this year, from January through August, the Russian army lost 248,964 people on the battlefield in Ukraine in eight months. Twenty-one countries in the world have smaller populations… than the number of Russian troops lost in just eight months.”
“It’s madness, but they still keep going there to die because that is what Putin wants,” Zelensky suggested. “After losing so many people, Russia managed to capture just over 1,000 square kilometers of our land this year, and we have already liberated a significant part of it. Russia is a country that already has 17 million square kilometers of its own land without any Ukrainian territory, by the way. So to add another 1,000 square kilometers, Putin is paying with 248 people for every kilometer. Does anyone still think that he is reasonable? And moderate?”
“Russia’s leader, Patient Zero, the man from whom this war began and spread into the world, becoming the largest war in Europe since World War II, will inevitably leave this war,” Zelensky proffered. “But the longer Putin is able to wage war, the more evil he will leave behind in this world. Today, nothing in war works the same way it did, by the way, in 2022, except the courage of people.”
Russian missile and drone barrages have “caused damage, but they didn’t break us,” the president proclaimed. “We build our defense. What is really difficult for us now is Russian ballistic missiles and their new jet-powered Shaheds — Iranian technologies.”
Residential buildings stand against the backdrop of smoke from a Russian attack on Kyiv. (Photo by Bohdan Diev/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images) Tatyana Kudel’s’ka
“Just imagine this: since the beginning of this year, Russia has already used more than 2,100 missiles of different types again against us, against Ukraine, our people and our children,” Zelensky stated. “More than 950 of them were ballistic missiles. In eight months of this year, Russia used 63,000 attack drones of different types against Ukraine, our people, and more than 7,700 of them were jet-powered Shaheds, truly destructive and very dangerous weapons. Just think about it. The Russians launch jet-powered Shaheds every hour, every hour, against our cities, our economy, our infrastructure. Our combat aircraft are fighting them 24/7, and this is part of Russia’s strategy to create a new threat every hour, to make life harder for the economy and to disrupt people’s lives, and to stop children from being able to study, to study at school.”
Speaking at the Sixth Summit of the International Crimea Platform in New York on Wednesday, Zelensky said the return of Crimea is a condition for any return to normal relations with Russia.
“Disrespect for international law began in 2014, when Russia entered Crimea,” the Ukrainian leader stated. “There can be no full return to normality without Crimea, the restoration of security, the protection of people and lives, the release of prisoners held by Russia, and a return to the fundamental principles of international law. Territorial integrity matters, state sovereignty matters, and human lives matter. And Russia must learn this.”
Tuesday, Zelensky met with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Among the topics of their three-hour meeting were a path to end the war and a renewed discussion about the licensing of Patriot air defense interceptors so they can be built in Ukraine. The country is struggling to defend against Russian ballistic missiles because of the dearth of these munitions.
“Just had a positive and productive meeting with President Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly,” the Ukrainian leader stated on X. “Both the United States and Ukraine want this senseless Russian war to end before winter. We discussed possible de-escalation steps that could pave the way to diplomacy.”
“I am grateful that, in parallel with this, our teams continue to work on launching the production of Patriot interceptor missiles in Ukraine,” Zelensky noted. “This is exactly what will help protect lives if Russia rejects negotiations and continues to rely on ballistic terror against our people this winter and beyond. We also discussed other bilateral and multilateral issues, including the winter air defense package for Ukraine. Thank you to President Trump, his team, and all the American people for their support.”
I just had a positive and productive meeting with President Trump @POTUS at UNGA. Both the U.S. and Ukraine want to see this senseless Russian war ended before winter. We discussed potential de-escalatory steps that can open up the way to diplomacy. I am grateful that in the… pic.twitter.com/Ayvsj9It3m
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 22, 2026
For his part, Trump said negotiations about Patriots are ongoing but offered no commitments.
“We’re talking about that,” Trump stated. “We’ll be talking about that now. If you would have come in at the end, we would have had an answer. But we’ll be talking about that. I mean, we talk about it all the time. Very capable people, really amazingly capable people.”
This isn’t the first time the two leaders have talked about a Patriot licensing deal. The issue came up back in July. As we noted at the time, such a deal faces big challenges.
First of all, it could face bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles, like getting congressional approval. Major security concerns exist, not just by having license production of a very sensitive weapon in Ukraine but also having to do with whatever facility will perform the work, which would become a top target for Russia. Even if they got the clearance to move forward, delivery of new weapons will still take years due to the time it takes to build the facility and to source long-lead components.
Even Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s biggest arms makers, currently produces only about 650 PAC-3 MSE interceptors a year, or just shy of two per day. However, under a contract with the Pentagon inked in January, Lockheed is committed to boosting Patriot PAC-3 MSE annual production to 2,000 in the years to come.
You can read more about the headwinds a Patriot licensing deal would face, even if it were to come to fruition, in our initial story here.
A Patriot interceptor. (DOW) Department of Defense
Ukraine’s president also confirmed that “Kyiv is ready to agree to an energy truce on the condition that Russia does not attack its energy, electricity and heating infrastructure as well as its water supplies,” CNBC reported. “Trump has previously called on Ukraine to stop targeting Russian oil refineries with drone strikes, which he says are ‘hurting the world’ as fuel supply disruptions from the Ukraine and Iran wars propel U.S. diesel prices to a record high.”
Ukraine’s repeated attacks on Russian oil infrastructure is having a major impact.
“Russian refinery throughput fell to 3.8 mb/d, its lowest level in more than 20 years and roughly 30% below a year earlier,” according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). “Reported gasoline output is down by 20% compared with 2025 levels, while diesel production is estimated to have fallen by nearly 30%, prompting the government to restrict fuel exports to protect domestic supplies.”
Amid the U.N. General Assembly meeting, strikes by both sides continued.
“At least 16 people were killed and 59 others injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day, as Russia launched several waves of ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight,” the Kyiv Independent reported, citing local authorities.
“Two people were killed and eight others injured in Kyiv, where Russian ballistic missiles struck the capital in three waves overnight,” the publication added. “Residential buildings, a maternity hospital, energy, and logistics infrastructure were among the sites damaged, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.”
“Russia launched 282 attack drones of various types overnight, including jet-powered drones, as well as Zircon anti-ship missiles and Iskander-M, S-400, and KN-23 ballistic missiles,” the news outlet stated, citing the Ukrainian Air Force. “Ukrainian air defenses shot down 227 aerial targets, including 219 drones, four Zircon missiles, three ballistic missiles, and one Banderol munition. Strikes were recorded at 13 locations, while debris from downed targets fell at 10 locations.”
A difficult night for Ukraine as Russia continued attacking our civilians, launching a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv, and attacking Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions with drones. The air raid alert in Kyiv was turned on at 3:28 a.m. and hasn't turned off since.
Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy infrastructure continued.
“Over the past 24 hours, two oil refineries were hit – one in Bashkortostan and one in the Samara region. There were also strikes in the Black Sea,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry stated on X. “We are taking the war back to where it came from. We are bringing peace closer for Ukraine. I thank the units involved for their precision.”
I thank our warriors for the results they achieve every day in carrying out Ukraine’s long-range sanctions. Over the past 24 hours, two oil refineries were hit – one in Bashkortostan and one in the Samara region. There were also strikes in the Black Sea.
In an effort to defend against Ukrainian attacks, Russia continues to use netting to protect its energy facilities. You can see a recent example in the video below.
After more frequent Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries and fuel depots, Moscow and the Moscow region decided to cover potential targets with anti-drone nets.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubband Zelensky this morning “signed an Agreement on Enhanced Defense and Security Cooperation under the Drone Deal format,” the Finnish Defense Ministry said in a statement. “It will enable defense materiel cooperation between the two countries.”
“The agreement will enable Finland and Ukraine to transfer technology and knowledge, pursue research, development and innovation cooperation and promote joint manufacturing and drone technology development between their industries,” the MoD stated. “Another objective is to simplify administrative processes, for example regarding the granting of export authorizations, to make the transfer of defense materiel and technologies between the two countries as efficient as possible.”
Finland and Ukraine take their defence cooperation to the next level
Today, we signed a drone deal with @ZelenskyyUa. The agreement enables, among other things, the joint production of defence materiel. Defence sector companies in Finland are ready, and the joint effort can now… pic.twitter.com/UUh2kZPPpk
With electronic warfare interfering with how drones controlled by radio frequencies operate, Ukraine is testing a new system of small radio beacons placed on the ground that allow drones to navigate without GNSS — including missions deep inside Russia. While many systems might not need this fix, some of the lower-end drones might.
Ukraine is testing and scaling this technology as part of a layered navigation system designed to keep drones autonomous in heavily jammed environments.
“The concept is quite simple,” the BBC wrote. “If the enemy jams the signal coming from above—specifically from GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) satellites, which determine the precise coordinates, speed, and time of any object on Earth—then specific points must be created to provide that same signal from below.”
The idea is to guide the drones by triangulating their location.
“To achieve this, special small devices—radio beacons—are either installed on the ground or air-dropped across a specific area. Their coordinates are known; thus, when a drone flies through the area, it receives coordinate data and signal transmission timing from several beacons. From there, it is a matter of basic geometry: the UAV calculates its own spatial position using data on the distance to the beacon and its altitude above the ground.”
GPS can be jammed. Ukrainian drones still need to fly.
A new beacon network is helping solve that problem.
Small radio beacons placed on the ground allow drones to navigate without GNSS or a constant communications link — including missions deep inside russia.
In the age of robots, uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) are playing a larger role in combat. The following video shows one UGV rescuing another one by pushing it back on its wheels.
A Ukrainian logistics UGV comes to the rescue of its overturned teammate, helping get the stranded ground robot back on its wheels. pic.twitter.com/q7d5I2tyOe
The last A-10 Thunderbolt II assigned to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, left the installation on September 22. The departure marks the end of nearly five decades of Warthog operations, including tactics development and testing, at the Air Force’s most high-profile fighter base. It also reflects a broader shift in which close air support expertise and some associated missions are supposedly being distributed among the F-15, F-16, and F-35 communities, although the move is controversial, to say the least.
Nearly 70 airmen assigned to Nellis gathered along the flight line to salute the aircraft as it departed. The final takeoff closes a chapter that began in 1977, when the first A-10 arrived at the base, which subsequently became a major center for developing and refining the aircraft’s operational employment.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Kyle S. Adkinson, a weapons and tactics officer assigned to the Nevada Air National Guard’s 232nd Combat Training Squadron, conducts pre-flight checks on an A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Annika Schermerhorn
Over the decades, Nellis-based units worked on the A-10’s software, avionics, and precision weapons capabilities, while the U.S. Air Force Weapons School’s 66th Weapons Squadron trained more than 300 A-10 weapons officers through approximately 100 classes. Many of the tactics in the A-10’s playbook emanated from the base.
The A-10’s departure consequently represents more than the retirement of another aircraft from a Nellis ramp. It also marks the end of a dedicated training and institutional ecosystem that developed around an aircraft specifically designed for close air support.
Earlier this year, Jamie Hunter of TWZ visited the U.S. Air Force A-10 Weapons Instructor Course as it was in the process of closing down, as documented in these exclusive videos:
The Air Force is now attempting to carry at least some of that expertise into a force built around multirole fourth- and fifth-generation fighters.
“We are maintaining the culture of the A-10 by involving as many other fighter communities involved in the close air support mission,” Lt. Col. Ridge Flick, commander of the 66th Weapons Squadron, said. “We are also training F-15 Eagle, F-35 Lightning II and F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots to take on some roles we have had in combat search and rescue.”
U.S. Air Force Maj. Kyle S. Adkinson, right, a weapons and tactics officer assigned to the Nevada Air National Guard’s 232nd Combat Training Squadron, salutes Senior Airman Segio Lopez, a crew chief assigned to the 757th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, before a flight at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Annika Schermerhorn
The A-10 was developed specifically for close air support, with its design emphasizing survivability at relatively low altitude, weapons employment against ground targets, and the ability to persist in the vicinity of friendly forces. In contrast, the F-16C/D and F-15E/EX were developed primarily as multirole fighters, while the F-35 combines strike, air-to-air, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and networking capabilities with a low-observable design.
Rather than replacing the A-10 with a single successor, the Air Force is therefore distributing elements of its former mission set across several aircraft and communities. The service insists its close air-support capability is not being reduced as the Warthog fleet retires, but at the very least the transition does represent a significant change in how that capability is generated and employed.
U.S. airmen assigned to Nellis Air Force Base salute an A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft at Nellis AFB, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Annika Schermerhorn
Regardless, the USAF’s claim that the impact of losing the heart of the A-10’s braintrust will not dramatically impact key mission sets in a negative manner has been viewed with extreme skepticism by some. It’s not uncommon for subject matter experts to believe the close air support and ‘Sandy’ aircrew recovery mission braintrust that the Warthog community represents is a far bigger loss than the aircraft itself, and that the USAF is not prepared to preserve this critical expertise, regardless of the service’s stated intentions.
The end of A-10 operations at Nellis also put what may be the final nail in the A-10’s coffin, as reconstituting these operations would be very challenging and costly. All this points to the Warthog being on its final glide path to retirement, once and for all.
You can read all about this controversy in our past special feature linked here.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Kyle S. Adkinson, a weapons and tactics officer assigned to the Nevada Air National Guard’s 232nd Combat Training Squadron, taxis an A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Annika Schermerhorn
Beyond the redistribution of Nellis’s A-10 pilots, the transition is also affecting the maintainers who supported the base’s A-10 fleet. Airmen assigned to the 757th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron’s Thunder Aircraft Maintenance Unit are being reassigned to other squadrons and airframes, including the F-35 and F-16. The Air Force is consequently moving not only personnel, but also decades of experience maintaining an aging and structurally demanding aircraft into programs supporting newer fighters.
For Staff Sgt. Eva Kehn, a weapons load crew chief with the 757th AMXS, the end of the A-10 era has an especially personal dimension because of her family’s connection to the aircraft and to aviation.
A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft takes off from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Annika Schermerhorn
“Working on the A-10 is meaningful to me because that is something that I share with my grandfather,” Kehn said. “I’m very excited to have that new chapter and bond over that again with my grandfather.”
Kehn is transferring to an F-35 unit at Nellis, where that connection will continue in a different form. Her grandfather is now a civilian F-35 instructor, giving the two an opportunity to remain professionally connected even as the A-10 disappears from the installation.
U.S. airmen assigned to Nellis Air Force Base salute an A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft at Nellis AFB, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Isabella Borrillo
Master Sgt. Aaron Edmonds, an aircraft section chief with the 757th AMXS, is also moving on from the Warthog after spending the past five years maintaining the aircraft. Edmonds previously worked on the F-16 earlier in his career and will now return to the Viper community.
“It’s a bittersweet moment,” Edmonds said. “I enjoyed my time with the A-10, but I’m excited because this departure marks the closing of one chapter and the start of another.”
Edmonds said the experience gained on the A-10 should be carried into the next aircraft rather than left behind with the airframe. “The advice I would give airmen who are transitioning from one airframe to another is to be open-minded, willing to learn and carry on the great work ethic from your previous aircraft over to your new one,” he said.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Kyle S. Adkinson, a weapons and tactics officer assigned to the Nevada Air National Guard’s 232nd Combat Training Squadron, taxis an A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Isabella Borrillo
With the A-10 no longer present at Nellis, at least some of the expertise attached to it is being incorporated into a fighter force in which other aircraft types can contribute to the close air support mission in very different ways. An F-35, for example, can use its sensors and networking capabilities to identify and share information about targets and the battlespace, and it can go where other fighters can’t. An F-15 can contribute heavier weapons and longer endurance, among other capabilities, depending on the mission. This is not exactly new, either, as all types of aircraft provided CAS during the Global War on Terror-era, although the masters of exactly how to do it and how to execute the critical airborne forward air control (FAC-A) mission existed in the A-10 community. Still, the resulting force will be considerably different from the one centered on the Warthog, even where the underlying requirement to support troops on the ground remains.
A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft takes off from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Sept. 22, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Isabella Borrillo
The ongoing retirement of the A-10 is bringing a fundamental change in how the Air Force organizes and executes the missions for which the Warthog became synonymous. Nellis will remain an important center for developing those capabilities, even though the aircraft around which that expertise was built is no longer part of the equation.
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