The top U.S. Air Force officer in Europe, who also serves as the NATO Allied Air Command leader, said he has been tasked with enacting new alliance plans to defend against cruise missiles and drones. He was responding to questions about a drone that NATO had to shoot down after it entered Lithuanian airspace overnight. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday morning that the incident was “part of a broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe, testing our readiness and our resolve.”

The drone incursion into Lithuania took place against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine and amid a spate of so-called ‘hybrid’ or ‘gray zone’ actions Moscow has been accused of carrying out throughout Europe, including a recent attempted drone attack on the Leipzig-Halle airport in Germany.

“I don’t know what’s in the mind of Putin or his fielded forces about those one-way attack drones or even cruise missiles, like we’ve seen enter Polish airspace just a few months ago. In July, we had an AS-23 cruise missile enter Poland,” Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe/U.S. Air Forces Africa (USAFE), and Commander of the Allied Air Command, said in response to a question about the drone shootdown over Lithuania. He was speaking during a media roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending.

Hinds added that while he doesn’t “know the why behind” the drone incursion into Lithuania, he has been tasked by U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, who serves as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), “to fully implement EVA [Enhanced Vigilance Activity] Eastern Sentry and now its Standing Defense Plan 12000, which gives the nations the capabilities that they need to defend their airspace against either one-way attack drones like the one that you described last night, or a cruise missile.”

EVA Eastern Sentry is a mission NATO stood up in September 2025 after “an unprecedented number of Russian drones and planes violated the airspace of several NATO Allies,” according to the alliance. “Allies are contributing additional capabilities and assets to NATO’s deterrence and defense – for instance, more fighter jets, helicopters, transport aircraft, air defense systems, surveillance aircraft and frigates – and improving the coordination of these assets through NATO.”

Standing Defense Plan 12000 is a new plan for integrated air and missile defense across the alliance. Grynkewich introduced the concept during testimony to Congress in March.

Hinds acknowledged that Russia could be testing the alliance.

“It’s not about the small UASs; that’s typically a national responsibility, and it could be probing,” the Air Force general noted. “Regardless of the intent behind it, what we want to be prepared for is the second that a one-way attack drone or a cruise missile is first and foremost detected – hopefully well before it enters NATO territory – we want to know it. We want to know where it’s coming from. We want to have the capability to sense it. We want to be able to have the C2 [command and control] systems to be able to decide what to do about it, and then have the right kit to be able to act.”

Despite an integrated air and missile defense system that includes Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries, NATO currently is primarily “using air power” against drones and cruise missiles “and that’s not putting us on the right side of the cost curve,” Hinds stated. “But we want to get there.”

Using NATO jets to take down drones “is very effective, just like what you saw last night, and many other times,” but not necessarily efficient, Hinds explained. 

“I think there’s been at least five other cases of allied nations providing air power to shoot down one-way attack drones,” he proffered. “I want to get to the point where we’re doing it efficiently, using lower-cost interceptors, hopefully ground-based, and in some cases air-based that are cheaper to use, so we’ll see what the intent may be. Intelligence organizations are going to provide us with that intelligence later on, but I just don’t know yet.”

You can see one of those NATO jet engagements with drones in the following video.

It should be noted that Europe is starting to follow the American lead in using less expensive laser-guided, air-to-air rockets as drone-killing weapons. TWZ was the first to report about the use of 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) rockets by the U.S. The U.K. Royal Air Force announced in May of this year that its Typhoons were now equipped with APKWS rockets while the French recently tested their own 68mm laser-guided rockets from Rafale fighters.

As the threats have evolved, NATO has “transitioned away from air policing, and we’ve transitioned to air defense for some specific reasons,” the general pointed out. “One is readiness. Air policing is a readiness decrementing mission that the alliance has done for years. There’s also an assurance mission that we did for 32 nations. That’s transitioned to air defense now. Air defense means we have the right kit, multi-domain, to be able to be put in the right place based on indications, warnings, or real threats, like you saw last night, inside of the Baltic nations, to be able to respond decisively and quickly.”

“There’s also a deterrence value there,” Hinds added. “So if Russia does fly a one-way attack drone or a cruise missile, they know that we’re going to be in the right spot to be able to detect it and then defend against it.”

“These are limited incursions, right? Small numbers. Here’s what I see: hybrid activities may, in fact, only be one of the few levers that Putin has available to him, because he sees that he does not have an advantage in geography, domain, or readiness,” Hinds suggested.

“Think about that,” he urged. “So what are we seeing? We’re not seeing a massing of forces across the opposite side of Finland, a new NATO nation. We’re not seeing a massing of forces whatsoever in any domain opposite of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia. You’re seeing a significant number of one-way attack drones in the Black Sea targeting Ukraine. Some of them are entering Romania. What you’re not seeing is a direct confrontation in geography. We’re not seeing direct competition in domains. And I think Putin knows that we are ready. I know he knows that we’re a defensive alliance. I know he knows that we have an advantage in every domain against them, and I think that’s likely why you’re seeing things like what you’re seeing with hybrid activity.”

Though below the level of armed conflict, these Russian activities raise the potential for something worse, Hinds posited.

“The risk about hybrid activity, from my perspective, is it could lead to escalation, and that’s where I hope that we get back towards deterrence again, and that the nations they’re going to decide to do what they want to do when it comes to these hybrid activities,” the general said. “Some of them are law enforcement. Some of them are military responses, and that’s up to the nations to decide how they’re going to deal with that. Not me.”

“But what I owe General Grynkewich is to ensure that we are demonstrating our deterrence each and every day, and we’re doing that effectively across all domains,” Hinds added. “And to ensure that Putin knows that if he tries something against the alliance, that we will be there, and we’re ready to win decisively if challenged.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post NATO Air Commander Details Thinking Behind The Alliance’s New Air Defense Plan appeared first on TWZ.

Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu presents Fair Labour Mobility package © European Union

The European Commission has unveiled what it calls an ambitious “Fair Labour Mobility” package aimed at making it easier for people to work across EU borders while strengthening protections against exploitation and fraud.

The proposals would allow workers to prove social security and health insurance entitlements digitally and make qualifications easier to understand and recognize. The Commission estimates the measures could generate €6 billion in benefits by 2040.

Central to the package is a European Social Security Pass, or ESSPASS, enabling people to request and receive documents such as the European Health Insurance Card and the A1 certificate for posted workers online. Documents could be stored in the EU Digital Identity Wallet and verified by national authorities.

Brussels is also proposing faster recognition of professional qualifications. Procedures for regulated professions, including doctors and nurses, with the aim of reducing the target processing time from three months to five weeks.

Recognition of qualifications obtained outside the EU would also be streamlined, with common standards intended to cut average processing times from 14 months to four months.

The European Federation of Nurses Associations (EFN) has welcomed the Commission’s plans for recognising qualifications from outside the EU, arguing that they bring greater transparency to a labour market already heavily reliant on internationally recruited healthcare professionals.

EFN Secretary General Paul De Raeve said recruitment from third countries was already well established and frequently organised through bilateral arrangements between governments. Denmark, he noted, has gone considerably further, establishing a school in Delhi to prepare Indian nurses for work in Denmark, including Danish-language training.

“This is going on,” De Raeve said, arguing that international mobility cannot simply be prevented when European health systems need staff and qualified professionals want to move. In the short term, he said, overseas recruitment is also difficult to avoid given that educating a nurse takes around four years.

For De Raeve, an important improvement in the Commission proposal is therefore not simply facilitating recruitment, but putting it within a clearer European framework. The proposed directive would establish common rules for recognising qualifications obtained outside the EU, including aligned documentation requirements.

It would also provide stronger mechanisms for checking whether qualifications are genuine and meet European standards. Training programmes and institutions seeking access to automatic recognition would undergo EU-level assessment, potentially including independent review, site visits and direct examination of training environments.

De Raeve particularly welcomed this approach, pointing to the risks of fraud in diploma accreditation. Having universities and training institutions formally assessed and certified would give regulators and employers greater confidence that somebody arriving with a qualification has been trained by a legitimate institution to an appropriate standard.

He also welcomed plans to reduce administrative delays for individual professionals.

For nursing, De Raeve argued, faster recognition and stronger verification could help Europe recruit internationally without lowering professional standards, while replacing opaque bilateral arrangements with more consistent EU-level rules.

The proposals still require approval by the European Parliament and EU governments. Key measures would then be phased in over several years, with improvements to the Labour Authority expected during 2028–2030.

Lockheed Martin has unveiled a modular airframe concept for its stealthy and combat-proven AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family that could support multiple configurations, launch methods, and sensor packages while making use of the existing JASSM and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) production infrastructure. Highly survivable, the missiles are an incredibly important and staple weapon for the U.S. military, and for select export customers.

Called AGM-158 FLEX, the new concept is centered on a common airframe with interchangeable components. Lockheed Martin says it has invested more than $35 million of its funds in the effort so far, including airframe design, testing, prototype production, subsystem qualification, and work with suppliers.

The company says the FLEX design will use removable nose sections that can accommodate sensor suites associated with the AGM-158 family. A removable boat tail would allow the same basic airframe to be configured for different launch methods, including air, surface, and subsurface launch. That would open the AGM-158 architecture up to ground-, ship-, and submarine-launched applications, although Lockheed Martin has not provided details on the specific launchers, platforms, or configurations envisioned. It’s worth noting the LRASM has been tested in vertical launch configuration for vessels equipped with the Mk 41 launch system.

In addition to the Navy vertical launch tests, the idea of moving the JASSM family beyond its traditional combat aircraft launch platforms is not new. The Air Force’s Palletized JASSM concept, better known as Rapid Dragon, has demonstrated the ability to deploy JASSM-ER from palletized launchers carried inside cargo aircraft, using an expendable airdrop system. FLEX takes a different approach by building those kinds of launch options into the airframe architecture itself, with modularity supporting various launch configurations for the same basic weapon.

For aircraft-launched weapons, Lockheed Martin says FLEX will retain compatibility with current and future JASSM and LRASM launch platforms.

The company is also proposing multiple airframe lengths. A 206-inch configuration is associated with the supersized JASSM-XR, while a 168-inch version is consistent with the dimensions of JASSM-ER. Lockheed Martin says JASSM-XR will be the first configuration of the FLEX airframe.

The AGM-158 family has already grown well beyond the original JASSM. The AGM-158A is the baseline stealthy air-launched land-attack missile, with a publicly reported range of roughly 230-330 miles, while the AGM-158B JASSM-ER uses a more efficient engine and additional fuel to roughly double that reach, to around 575 miles or more.

Alongside the land-attack variants is the AGM-158C LRASM, which uses the JASSM airframe but substitutes a sophisticated imaging infrared anti-ship seeker, electronic support measures, datalink, and other capabilities, for operations against heavily defended surface combatants.

Finally, the much larger JASSM-XR is being developed with a substantially stretched fuselage to carry more fuel and a larger 1,000-pound-class warhead, with a range expected to approach or exceed 1,000 miles. This would give it a similar striking capability as the Tomahawk cruise missile, although in a stealthier package.

Beyond range and launch options, the company is pitching its new FLEX concept as a way to simplify future upgrades. Components could be replaced as they become obsolete or new capabilities become available without necessarily requiring a completely new missile design.

That approach could have an industrial-base advantage, particularly as the United States seeks to increase production of long-range weapons. Lockheed Martin says FLEX would use the existing JASSM/LRASM production line, supply chain, mission-planning infrastructure, and software ecosystem rather than establishing an entirely new manufacturing and support architecture.

The company says its JASSM/LRASM production infrastructure includes a 225,000-square-foot facility opened in 2022 with increased automation and a robotic paint line.

Notable, however, is the fact that FLEX is being proposed at a time when the U.S. Air Force is pursuing affordable mass as a key priority.

For example, as part of a slew of low-cost cruise missile offerings, the service has been moving ahead with the Extended Range Attack Munition, or ERAM, a new air-launched missile explicitly intended to provide a relatively low-cost, rapidly producible standoff weapon. The Air Force conducted a live-warhead ERAM test in January of last year, less than 16 months after the program received its initial contract, and described the weapon as a means of generating mass against fixed targets. ERAM is understood to have a range of between 150 and 280 miles, putting it below the reach of the baseline JASSM, let alone the JASSM-ER or XR.

However, the emerging class of lower-cost weapons are intended very much more to complement than compete with JASSM. While the Air Force plans to buy thousands of the cheaper missile, the JASSM will still be needed to take up the higher end of the cost and capability list.

Lockheed Martin mentions that FLEX should “unlock future cost savings,” but this sounds more about giving customers the ability to swap out components and upgrade capabilities on existing missile rounds, to avoid obsolescence, rather than facilitate mass production.

As it stands, JASSM has evolved into a family of increasingly capable and longer-range weapons, but those capabilities necessarily come with a different set of cost and production considerations than a weapon designed from the outset around large-scale production. Lockheed Martin’s announcement does not disclose a target unit cost for FLEX, nor does it explain how the eventual cost of a FLEX-derived weapon would compare with a baseline JASSM or LRASM. The unit price of the latest subvariants of the JASSM-ER is around $1.2 and $1.5 million, according to official budget documents.

The new weapon is a way of getting more variants and launch options out of the established JASSM/LRASM architecture, potentially with less development work than creating entirely new weapons. Whether that translates into enough savings or production capacity to satisfy the military’s growing demand for large numbers of standoff weapons remains to be seen.

For Lockheed Martin, the proposal also offers a way to extend the relevance of the AGM-158 family as the company and the Pentagon pursue additional range, new launch platforms, and potentially new launch methods.

The flexibility of the missile could be particularly relevant to the Agile Combat Employment concept, and the wider U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific, where forces are expected to operate from a larger number of dispersed and potentially austere locations. A common missile architecture that can be adapted to different launch platforms and different target sets could allow weapons to be positioned and employed across a distributed force rather than tying particular missile variants to particular launchers.

The original JASSM/LRASM has also become a significant export weapon, with Australia, Finland, Poland and several other U.S. allies cleared to acquire variants of the missile. While the advanced capabilities of the weapon have seen its export opportunities carefully controlled, FLEX could potentially open up the market to more customers, including less-advanced, ‘sanitized’ versions.

Lockheed Martin’s announcement provides few details on FLEX’s eventual cost, production rate, schedule, or specific performance beyond the stated airframe dimensions. For now, the concept demonstrates that the company is seeking to create a more adaptable architecture around an established missile family, one that has played a critical role in numerous operations since its introduction.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Lockheed Flexes To Modular AGM-158 JASSM Missile Concept appeared first on TWZ.

For years, the right across the West has noted that mass immigration has been a boon for left-wing parties, which are essentially importing a new voting base. Sweden’s latest election appears to once again affirm this view, with the left narrowly winning the election, in large part due to their overwhelming support from those with a non-European background in Sweden.

Sweden’s 2026 election produced one of the narrowest results in recent memory. With roughly 94.7 percent of votes counted, the center-left opposition holds 176 seats against 173 for the parties backing outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

The left-wing Social Democrats remain the largest party at 28 percent, enough to put Magdalena Andersson in position to try to form a government.

A striking pattern in SVT’s VALU exit poll helps explain how the result took shape, with 70 percent of voters of non-European origin backing the left-wing bloc of Social Democrats, Left Party, Greens, and Center.

“VALU shows a very clear political dividing line. Among voters with non-European backgrounds, S, V, MP, and C together receive 70 percent, while the Tidö parties receive 27. This is a voter group whose party sympathies differ sharply from the electorate as a whole – and which therefore has significance for the long-term electoral math,” wrote Swedish political scientist and author Daniel Schatz on X.

VALU visar en mycket tydlig politisk skiljelinje. Bland väljare med utomeuropeisk bakgrund får S, V, MP och C tillsammans 70 procent, medan Tidöpartierna får 27.

Det är en väljargrupp vars partisympatier skiljer sig kraftigt från väljarkåren som helhet – och som därför har… pic.twitter.com/m6J7pz2ySV

— Daniel Schatz (@drdanielschatz) September 13, 2026

VALU defines the group as people who themselves, or whose parents, grew up outside Europe. Their votes broke down for the Left at 21 percent, Social Democrats at 38 percent, Greens at 7 percent, and Center at 4 percent.

Before the election, the leader of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, also wrote that the left’s strategy is to gain votes from Swedes with a foreign background even as they lose votes from native ethnic Swedes:

“It’s about power. The Social Democrats’ decades-long campaign for increased immigration from the Muslim world has never been a coincidence. On the contrary, it seems to be a long-term strategy. The election promise from Magdalena Andersson to grant citizenship to up to 100,000 immigrants, based on the old and undemanding regulatory framework, should be seen in the same light,” he wrote.

Det handlar om makt.

Socialdemokraternas mångåriga kamp för ökad invandring från den muslimska världen har aldrig varit en slump. Tvärtom tycks det vara en långsiktig strategi.

Vallöftet från Magdalena Andersson att ge uppåt 100 000 invandrare medborgarskap, utifrån det gamla… pic.twitter.com/Tz2jrUfzVP

— Jimmie Åkesson (@jimmieakesson) August 26, 2026

“When Swedish voters flee the party, you need votes from elsewhere, and mass immigration from the Muslim world then appears to be an attractive way to circumvent the will of the Swedish people,’ he added.

In 2022, Swedes with a foreign backgroun already attracted around 68 percent of this electorate. Earlier surveys of Muslim voters had placed combined support for the Social Democrats, Left and Greens near 85 percent, with the Social Democrats alone above 61 percent. This slice of the electorate has expanded rapidly over the years.

About 13 percent of eligible voters, close to 1 million people, now have non-European origins, up from just over 3 percent in 2002 and 0.3 percent in 1982.

Many arrived from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia through asylum, family reunification and earlier, more open immigration rules.

Sweden does not record religion in official statistics, yet estimates indicate that Swedish citizens from Muslim-majority countries number in the hundreds of thousands. Together, with other voters of non-European background, they form a reliable base for the left even as much of the rest of the country has shifted toward tighter immigration and crime policies.

Remix News reported on polling already six years ago which showed that a majority of Swedes wanted to tighten immigration substantially. While the native ethnic Swedish population has swung to the right, foreigners have incentives to vote for the left to ensure their families and fellow countrymen can arrive in Sweden unimpeded. Foreigners are also more likely to benefit from social welfare, which left-wing parties promote.

The overwhelming vote for the left from those with a non-European background has been seen across the Western world. In Germany, for instance, the Left Party has proposed giving voting rights to all foreigners who have lived in Germany for five years, regardless of whether they have citizenship. Similar proposals have been put forward by other left-wing parties in the country.

The post Sweden’s left narrowly wins national elections, 70% of Swedes with non-European background backed the left appeared first on Remix News.

When the Allied powers of World War II drafted the United Nations Charter, they sought to establish a global system of collective security. Its aim was to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” With its adoption, all UN member states undertook to settle disputes exclusively by peaceful means. Decisions on the use of force were to be taken collectively (initially by eleven and now by fifteen members of the UN Security Council).

Yet the UN Charter contains an exception—the so-called ‘enemy states clause’ in Articles 53, 77, and 107—that has largely been forgotten today. It grants the former Allied powers the right to take military action against the former Axis powers without a Security Council mandate, in order to prevent renewed aggression from the former Axis powers. With the UN Security Council expressly excluded from this provision, each of the former Allies is free to assess for itself whether a former Axis power is once again adopting an aggressive stance.

By far the most important Axis powers to which the ‘enemy states clause’ referred were Germany and Japan. But does this clause apply to these countries today, more than 80 years after the end of WWII? The German government answers this question with an unequivocal ‘no.’ However, the legal situation does not appear unambiguous.

The German government argues that the ‘enemy states clause’ has long become obsolete. It refers to the 1995 UNGA Resolution 50/52, which “recognized that, having regard to the substantial changes that have taken place in the world, the ‘enemy State clauses’ have become obsolete.”

The German government points to the fact that reunified Germany is now one of the peace-loving members of the United Nations. Even before that, it argued that the four Allied Powers had waived their special rights vis-à-vis Germany in the 1990 Two-Plus-Four Treaty, including the right arising from the ‘enemy states clause’.

But do these arguments hold water? Here are a few considerations.

1. The ‘enemy states clause’ was never removed from the UN Charter.

The wording of the 1995 UNGA Resolution 50/52 does not indicate that ‘enemy states clause’ is now permanently invalid. Following a report from the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization which recommended deletion of the clauses, the Resolution only “expressed its intention to initiate the procedure to amend the Charter, with prospective effect, by the deletion of the ‘enemy State’ clauses from Articles 53, 77 and 107.” However, there has been no follow-up resolution. Hence the text of the UN Charter remains unchanged.

If, at some time in the future, Germany were no longer regarded as a peace-loving state, could the ‘enemy states clause’ be applied again? There is no clear-cut answer to that.

2. Resolutions of the UN General Assembly are not legally binding.

UN resolutions are generally of a recommendatory nature. Under the UN Charter, binding decisions can, in principle, only be taken by the Security Council. However, there has never been a Security Council resolution formally repealing the ‘enemy states clause’. The relevant provisions therefore remain in the text of the Charter.

3. Removing the clause would require an amendment to the UN Charter.

Removing the ‘enemy states clause’ would require a formal amendment procedure in accordance with the rules of the Charter. This would presumably also require ratification of this amendment by all UN member states. Nothing of the sort has happened, and the relevant articles therefore remain in force.

4. The Two-Plus-Four Treaty cannot amend the UN Charter.

Whilst the 1990 Two-Plus-Four Treaty is a legally binding treaty under international law, a treaty between Germany and the four Allied powers cannot decide on an amendment to the Charter. Nor does the Treaty contain any reference to an explicit repeal of the’ enemy states clause’ in the UN Charter.

5. Russia could potentially terminate the 1990 Two-Plus-Four Treaty.

Russia could argue that Germany has violated the spirit and letter of the Two-Plus-Four Treaty, for example, by participating in NATO’s war against Yugoslavia in 1999, stationing its troops in Lithuania, or establishing NATO military structures on the territory of the former GDR. 

In view of the growing tensions between Germany and Russia, the ‘enemy states clause’ could regain political significance in this conflict.[1] Russia might attempt, as it has already warned, to use it as justification for a military operation against German production facilities manufacturing long-range drones for Ukraine. It could argue that by supporting Ukraine militarily, Germany has effectively become part of the confrontation. Furthermore, Russia could point out that the German Government has developed a new military strategy directed exclusively against Russia. Worse, it could be argued that the last German military strategy was drawn up in 1939 and led directly to WWII.

By applying the ‘enemy states clause’—or even merely threatening to do so—Germany could find itself haunted by its past. Can Germany count on international support in such a scenario?

The German Government should not only consider the possibility of this clause’s enforcement but remember that, given its past, it has a special obligation to work towards a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine war, to avoid its escalation, and not to exacerbate political tensions. At the time of increasing military confrontation in Europe, it would be reasonable—and prudent—to re-establish dialogue with Russia and seek ways to de-escalate the situation.