The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit’s (31st MEU) recent deployment to the Middle East marked the first time the United States Marine Corps (USMC) used its Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept in a combat setting, the service confirmed to TWZ on Thursday. At its core, EABO involves relatively small groups of Marines quickly establishing bases of operation in forward areas, often within the enemy’s weapons range. During operations in the fight against Iran, Marines refueled and rearmed their own aircraft, as well as those from the joint force, at these austere locales. They also set up remote sensing locations, among other actions from the EABO playbook.

This employment of EABO for Epic Fury is a highly significant development. After years of progressively evolving the EABO playbook, it was no longer an experimental exercise. This meant that Marines were forward deployed in a contested area in a region where established bases were taking heavy fire from Iranian missile and drone barrages. Troops were killed in some of these attacks and U.S. aircraft, buildings and equipment were damaged and destroyed across the Middle East. Pushing aircraft from the MEU, as well as the joint force, to FARPs (forward arming and refueling point) would have been a relevant asset preservation tactic as well as one that would help accelerate combat operations, and it’s exactly what EABO is meant to do.

The 31st MEU’s six-month deployment began in January in the Pacific, before the unit was ordered to the Middle East in March, returning to Okinawa, Japan, in July. That’s where it is stationed as the USMC’s only continuously forward-based MEU.

“This was the first time we were able to implement EABO in combat operations since the concept was created for the force,” Capt. Steven J. Keenan, a USMC spokesperson, told us. “We have practiced it many times, but this was a first for supporting a Joint Force named operation with forward FARPs and forward bases that supported joint ops and combat power sustainment.”

EABO was first introduced in 2020 by then-Commandant Gen. David Berger in his Force Design 2030 plan for the future of the Corps. It was created with a fight against China in mind, especially utilizing small Pacific islands. The idea is to have highly mobile, low-signature forces deployed forward in austere, contested or potentially contested maritime locations. The mission is to “support sea control operation, conduct sea denial operations within the littorals, contribute to maritime domain awareness, provide forward command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, and counter-targeting capability and forward sustainment,” according to the Marines.

The news of the first activation of the EABO concept in combat came Wednesday during a media roundtable with Col. Chris P. Niedziocha, who commanded the 31st MEU during its deployment to the Middle East in support of Operation Epic Fury. Now director of the USMC Expeditionary Warfare School, Niedziocha discussed EABO and a range of other operations during that deployment, including boarding vessels during the blockade of Iranian ports.

The 31st MEU was embarked aboard the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), which consisted of the America class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans, and Whidbey Island class dock landing ship USS Rushmore. You can read more about the ARG/MEU and its assets in our initial story about the deployment to the Middle East here.

“You’re starting to see this has been validated,” the colonel said of the EABO concept during the roundtable TWZ attended virtually. “It’s still nascent, but we actually, for the first time, demonstrated what we thought we were able to do, which I think is pretty exciting. And then things like forward arming and refueling to extend the operational reach of aircraft and expeditionary reloading, and then the ever-present logistic challenge of doing something like that. So that’s pretty significant.”

“We successfully implemented critical Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), establishing sensor expeditionary advanced bases and forward arming and refueling points (FARPs) where none existed,” the colonel added. “Through our forward logistic elements, we proved that an agile Marine Air-Ground Task Force can sustain itself and generate ready, lethal power in contested maritime environments, directly setting the theater for follow-on joint forces.”

One of the objectives of the FARPs was to reduce reliance on the Marines’ fleet of KC-130 aerial refuelers and serve as jumping-off points for its F-35B Lightning II fighters.

“There was all manner of tankers all the time, but the FARP is to extend the operational reach, and if you can do it, you reduce the load on that,” Niedziocha noted. “Because there’s some aircraft that are basically for expeditionary austere operations, especially the F-35B,” the Marine Corps’ variant of the aircraft designed for short take off and vertical landing. 

“There are some trade-offs associated with the Bravo,” Niedziocha pointed out, using a slang for the jets. “There’s less internal fuel, but you have the lift [system], which gives you the option to do these kinds of things. So, the goal there was to walk that fine line between providing the full sortie over wherever you needed it, and keeping the ships far enough away to make them as survivable as possible.”

In addition to the F-35Bs and other aircraft organic to the 31st MEU, the FARPs were also used by Army helicopters, Keenan told us. Imagery posted on the Pentagon’s image distribution site also showed U.S. Army Gray Eagle drones and Marine MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft were included.

Niedziocha did not provide details about where the FARPs were set up, but a U.S. defense official told us they were “disaggregated throughout the Middle East.” The official declined to provide further information, citing operational security concerns since they are still being used.

“Throughout the deployment, the Tripoli ARG and 31st MEU successfully conducted over 1,600 mishap-free flight hours of combat aviation missions, including precision strikes, transporting 800,000 pounds of cargo, and moving 5,000 personnel,” a 31st MEU overview of the deployment explained. “The units also provided sustained combat support to joint force operations by delivering critical intelligence and refueling over 300 aircraft ashore and underway.”

The colonel also didn’t provide details about the sensor expeditionary advanced bases. According to the Marines, “a sensing expeditionary advanced base (SEAB) brings together coastal surveillance radars, electronic sensors, and Marines ashore to extend maritime domain awareness, complementing the radars and sensors already at work aboard naval ships off the coast.”

“When SEAB systems identify surface vessels in nearby sea lanes, small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) operators launch their platforms to visually identify and track the contacts,” the Marines added. “Sensor data and imagery are transmitted in real time across the blue-green command network to decision-makers.”

This capability could have been used to track Iran’s remaining fleet of small boats that it has used to harass shipping and mine the Strait of Hormuz, as well as larger vessels trying to transport oil. Other sensors, like radars and counter-drone systems, could also help identify incoming threats and provide general situational awareness. The EABO concept was employed as part of the 31st MEU’s larger role in supporting the blockade and mine clearance efforts.

The 31st MEU interdicted four vessels during the deployment, three of which led to boardings. On April 19, Marines boarded the MV Touska; on April 28, the MV Blue Star III; and on May 19, the MT Celestial Sea.

The Touska was boarded after USS Spruance fired multiple 5-inch rounds, targeting the engine room and disabling the vessel’s propulsion. The crew of the vessel was retained for about two weeks before being repatriated.

Niedziocha told us that none of the crews offered any resistance.

“At two in the morning, when 30 Force Reconnaissance Marines fast rope onto your vessel, [you are] just compliant with a capital C. They did exactly what they were directed to do. The overmatch that you put onto that vessel is pretty surprising. And then there’s overwatch provided by UAS and manned aircraft, so you create this bubble around the vessel. So yeah, they complied.”

You can see the Touska being boarded in the following video.

The U.S. just released a video of its forces boarding and seizing the Iranian container ship M/V Touska near the Hormuz Strait after it tried to break the U.S. naval blockade pic.twitter.com/FpB2obb3jY

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 20, 2026

Two years ago, as the EABO concept was maturing, TWZ was invited to get an exclusive look at how an advanced EABO concept would be put into action, including how squadrons operated the F-35B out of an austere combat environment while generating combat sorties. It was an unprecedented and exclusive peek into the EABO playbook and what a real fight in the Pacific with the USMC’s most advanced fighter aircraft could actually look like. You can read about that in our story here. It appears the operations in the Middle East mirrored this exercise closely.

Now back in Japan, the ARG/MEU is getting ready for a new deployment, said the colonel.

“We got back to Okinawa, I think July 22nd, and they had already begun their workup cycle in earnest to be on the water in early January to go out and do another Iron Fist [training exercise] with the Japanese, and then long periods of a crisis response,” said Niedziocha, who relinquished command in August before moving on to his new role. “Just being there, present in the First Island Chain to partner with your allies, demonstrates the resolve and commitment to deter whatever needs deterring.” 

As noted earlier in this story, the EABO concept was designed with a Pacific fight in mind. Its first combat employment in the Middle East clearly offers lessons that can now be adapted to enhance EABO operations globally.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post USMC Used Its Expeditionary Operations Playbook In Combat For First Time During Epic Fury appeared first on TWZ.

In July, Saudi Arabia joined the US-Israeli war on the West Asia region with strikes on Yemen. The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces retaliated by launching a maritime blockade alongside attacks targeting vital Saudi interests.

The renewed fighting between the two West Asian nations resulted in Ansar Allah’s takeover of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha last week and the liberation of all the group’s prisoners held by Saudi-backed forces on Yemen’s western coast.

Ansar Allah’s seizure of Mokha seaport is reshaping regional and global geopolitics, particularly because it serves as a primary gateway to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and coincides with developments in the Strait of Hormuz.

As these major shifts underscore, Yemen holds immense strategic geopolitical significance.

Situated on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula and overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Yemen represents a vital chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean

Consequently, internal political developments in Yemen can have global political and economic repercussions.

This fact, in turn, has put Yemen in the crosshairs of the US-led Western imperialist bloc and their allies in West Asia, which have endeavored to subjugate the country through a devastating decade-long war and blockade. 

The origin of this war coincides with the emergence of Ansar Allah, beginning when the group managed to take control of large swathes of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

The rise of Ansar Allah

Ansar Allah was first established in the early 1990s in the northern Yemeni governorate of Saada as a cultural and educational organization called Al-Shabab al-Mumin (the Believing Youth).

Initially, the organization introduced itself as an unarmed theological movement aimed at reviving and preserving Zaydi Shia Islam and countering the threat of state-backed Sunni Salafism, which sought to uproot the Zaydi religious identity in its homeland of Saada.

From its inception, the movement opposed the government, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, accusing it of corruption and criticizing its ties to the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia.

Tensions between the group and the government drastically escalated following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was at that time that the group adopted the slogan (Death to America, Death to Israel), during mass protests opposing the war on Iraq.

These slogans posed a political threat to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was attempting to position his government as a key ally in the “US War on Terror” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. As a result his government led a brutal crackdown on protesters.

Security forces and riot police suppressed protests using live ammunition, tear gas, and batons, and arbitrarily detained hundreds of political activists, students, and opposition organizers without trial.

In 2004, tension between the Al-Shabab al-Mumin and the Yemeni government boiled over, sparking a series of six internal conflicts known as the Saada Wars. 

These clashes began with the government’s assassination of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s founder, and triggered five subsequent rounds of fighting that lasted until 2010. The followers of the group became widely known as the Houthis ever since. 

Saudi Arabia reportedly engaged in the Saada wars by providing immense financial, political, and material support to the Yemeni government. Saudi intervention in Yemen escalated in 2009 with a direct military incursion and unilateral airstrikes against positions held by the Houthi movement.

In 2011, the group joined nationwide demonstrations, calling for the overthrow of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was then that the Houthi movement formally adopted the name Ansar Allah (Supporters of God). 

The ousting of Saleh weakened the central government and triggered a sweeping power vacuum, which allowed Ansar Allah to rapidly expand its territorial dominance. By 2012, the Yemeni movement consolidated firm control across the Saada governorate and large swathes of northern Yemen.

In early 2012, vice president to Saleh, Abed Rabbu Mansour, Hadi became the President of Yemen via a transition framework brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as he was  considered as a quiet consensus figure. Hadi was also strongly backed by the Obama administration. 

In late 2014, Ansar Allah allied with forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh against the transitional government headed by Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The fighting that followed led to Ansar Allah’s seizure of the capital Sanaa, forcing Hadi to flee the country.

2015-2022: The Saudi-led coalition’s protracted war against Yemen

From exile in 2015, Hadi requested the Saudi-led coalition to intervene in the conflict, opening the door to one of the bloodiest prolonged wars in West Asia. A conflict that, according to UN estimates, resulted in 377,000 deaths by 2022. 

Saudi Arabia was the main pillar of the coalition, leading the military campaign dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm” with a massive force, including extensive warplanes and ground troops.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also played a key role by commanding ground and air operations particularly in southern Yemen and along the critical coastal strip.

Bahrain took part in the operation with 12 fighter jets (some sources say 15), and deployed ground troops in the southern Saudi borders to protect Saudi Arabia from Ansar Allah’s attacks. Meanwhile, Kuwait contributed with 15 warplanes.

At the beginning of the campaign, Qatar participated with roughly 1,000 ground troops, armored vehicles, a dozen fighter jets, and transport helicopters until it was expelled from the coalition in June 2017 over a diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt.

Jordan and Morocco contributed six fighter jets each, while Sudan under deposed president Omar Al-Bashir sent three aircrafts and thousands of ground troops. Furthermore, Senegal committed 2,100 troops.

Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France provided logistic and intelligence support, such as aerial refueling for coalition jets, technical assistance, military equipment, coordination support, and maritime surveillance.

The 2022 UN-brokered truce de-escalated the war rather than ending it

In April 2022, the United Nations announced an official two-month nationwide truce agreement, which temporarily halted cross-border attacks, ground and air operations, and allowed fuel imports into ports held by Ansar Allah. It also reopened commercial flights from Sanaa International Airport after years of sea, land, and air blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia. 

Rather than completely removing the blockade, the agreement only resulted in the partial easing of restrictions, while regions under the control of Ansar Allah have continued to face a near-total blockade.

Read more: Yemen demands Saudi-led blockade on the country be lifted immediately

The agreement was renewed in June and extended a second time in August 2022 for an additional two months before it lapsed in October. 

Regional developments reignited the conflict (2023-2026)

In November 2023, Ansar Allah launched a ban on all Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in retaliation for Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza.

About one month later, the group significantly expanded the ban to include all ships heading to Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality or flag.

The ban continued until October 2025, despite waves of deadly airstrikes launched by the US, UK, and Israel on Yemen.

An Omani-mediated ceasefire deal between the US and Ansar Allah was reached in May 2025. The deal stipulated halting Ansar Allah’s attacks on US ships in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, and ending US aggression on Yemen, without preventing the Yemeni resistance movement from launching attacks or naval operations against Israel. 

This same period saw a shift in the conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah from active military engagement toward a tense, fragile diplomacy.

In early 2026, friction between the two major pillars in the anti-Ansar Allah coalition – namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE – surfaced as different Yemeni groups backed by the two countries clashed, apparently over territorial control in Yemen.

Read more: Tensions in Yemen: Are Saudi Arabia and the UAE becoming frenemies?

The US-Israeli war on Iran has drawn Yemen back into the regional conflict

Although Ansar Allah was established as an independent Yemeni movement, it evolved into a key component of the Axis of Resistance over time. This alignment was driven by mutual ideological foundations, shared anti-imperialist ideology, and deep strategic and military cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah.

Despite its affiliation with the resistance alliance, Ansar Allah chose not to get involved in the recent regional war waged by the US and Israel against Iran, for ostensibly strategic considerations and military coordination tactics with its allies.

Read more: Reflections on the US-Israeli multi-front war in West Asia: How the Axis of Resistance remains resilient

However, because the United States and its allies in the region seemingly view the current war as an ideal opportunity to dismantle the Axis of Resistance, Saudi Arabia decided to resume its aggression against Yemen by attacking Sanaa International Airport in July. The attack aimed to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.

Consequently, Ansar Allah launched retaliatory attacks on Saudi interests inside Saudi Arabia and on Yemeni soil. It further declared a maritime blockade against Saudi-linked commercial vessels passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, demanding Riyadh end its decade-long blockade on Yemen.  

Concurrently, ground clashes over territorial dominance between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces intensified, leading to key victories for the Yemeni group. Escalations have persisted up to the time of publication.

On Wednesday, September 16, Saudi Arabia accused Ansar Allah of attempting a drone attack against the city of Mecca, the holiest city for Muslims, located in western Saudi Arabia.

Ansar Allah dismissed Saudi accusations as false, saying that they reflect a “desperate attempt to mobilize public opinion.”

As the US-Israeli war on West Asia continues to reshape geopolitics, Ansar Allah’s emergence as a regional force has placed Yemen at the center of a struggle that may define the future of West Asia.

L'ombrello di sicurezza americano in Arabia Saudita si sgretola tra carenza di missili e accordi segreti in Oman. Riyad guarda ai BRICS per un nuovo ordine.

Daniel Shailer embeds with the tiny separatist group “Shetland First,” whose members believe the Shetland Islands were never legitimately ceded to Scotland. Its 83‑year‑old leader, Stuart Hill—shipwreck survivor, serial litigant, self‑proclaimed weather‑controller—is such a compelling eccentric that Shailer ends up as absorbed in Hill’s own story as in the broader currents of populism on these remote isles.

Previously, Hill has focused on relatively esoteric points of history and legalese. Now, on the advice of his chief campaign advisor, ChatGPT, he is meeting people where they are: should council tax go up while official salaries get bumped? Is it fair to live in fuel poverty at the footsteps of Britain’s largest onshore wind farm?

‘There are all these injustices, and once you read the history, you can see a basic injustice,’ Hill says. ‘Everybody seems to be kind of comfortable with it, but at the same time there’s a basic undercurrent of dissatisfaction.’

The U.S. State Department today approved the possible sale of 48 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The proposed deal, worth an estimated total cost of $24.3 billion, was announced as the Kingdom is in the midst of a fierce fight against the Houthi rebels of Yemen. It marks a major policy shift, with Washington previously being unwilling to export the advanced stealth fighters to Arab states and will likely serve as a reminder at a very challenging time for the Saudis of the unique security capabilities that only the U.S. can provide them.

In addition to the jets, which will be conventional takeoff and landing variants, Saudi Arabia has requested 49 Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines, support and other items.

Despite concerns from Israel that providing Saudi Arabia with the advanced fighters will tip the balance of power in the region, the proposed sale of this equipment and support “will not alter the military balance in the region,” the State Department noted. 

The United States has a requirement to maintain Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge, which essentially guarantees that Israel will be prioritized for advanced U.S. weapons ahead of Arab states in the region. Among these advanced weapons, the stealthy F-35 is highly prominent.

You can read our past feature about the wide-ranging impacts of an F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia here.

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” the State Department wrote. “The proposed sale will improve Saudi Arabia’s capability to deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense, and improving interoperability with U.S. forces, and other regional and NATO forces.  The proposed sale will also augment Saudi Arabia’s operational aircraft and enhance its air-to-air, and air-to-ground self-defense capability.  The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment and services into its armed forces.”

In November, “President Trump approved a major defense sale package, including future F-35 deliveries, which strengthens the U.S. defense industrial base and ensures Saudi Arabia continues to buy American,” according to the White House.

Trump has pushed for closer ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and wants the Kingdom to join the Abraham Accords initiative. This is a set of agreements that establish normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and different Arab states. Doing so would be a major breakthrough, following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and others.

A Saudi F-35 deal was also discussed under the Biden administration, as part of a broader deal that sought to normalize the Kingdom’s relations with Israel.

This is a developing story.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post F-35 Sale To Saudi Arabia Approved By State Department appeared first on TWZ.

Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force are once again discussing new-build F-16s. The development comes as the service grapples with a fighter fleet that is simultaneously aging, shrinking, ballooning in sustainment cost and being called upon to do more. This also comes at a time when the Air Force is now investing heavily in the F-15EX, another fourth-generation type it hadn’t bought for many years after committing to an all stealth future fighter fleet in the 2000s.

According to Aviation Week, the company has proposed an aircraft called the F-16G, an enhanced derivative of the F-16 Block 70. The proposed configuration reportedly incorporates conformal fuel tanks, 600-gallon wing tanks, an infrared search-and-track (IRST) system, a Sniper targeting pod, and a drag chute. All of these features have appeared on previous F-16s in one form or another. Lockheed is positioning the new version as a potential replacement for USAF F-16 units whose existing aircraft are approaching the end of their useful lives.

The Air Force, for its part, says that it has not yet settled on either the requirements or the options for addressing the problem. As it stands, the service has not committed to buying any new F-16s. The proposal is nevertheless notable because it follows an earlier round of discussions in which the Air Force was already examining whether a new-build F-16 could help address the growing fighter gap.

In December 2025, Inside Defense reported that the Air Force had reached out to Lockheed Martin about pricing for Block 70 F-16s — the current export standard. The conversations were described as exploratory, with no firm procurement plan, but the reporting established that the idea had moved beyond a purely theoretical discussion. One congressional aide told the publication that officials were looking at ways to “plug their holes” as part of their future force-structure planning.

A new Viper variant based on the Block 70 would be cheaper than replacing an aging F-16 with an F-35, while allowing the Air Force to retain much of the infrastructure, training, and experience associated with the existing aircraft. This is a major advantage as the F-35’s unique infrastructure and support requirements are a costly addition to the aircraft’s base price tag. An even bigger factor is unrelated to acquisition and bed-down costs: a Block 70 is far cheaper to sustain and operate over its service life than an F-35, a difference that compounds significantly across a fleet. 

The idea of a new Viper buy had already reached the highest levels of Air Force leadership several months earlier.

In May 2025, Sen. Tom Cotton asked then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin about the possibility of buying a U.S.-configured “Block 80” F-16 if Congress provided additional funding. Allvin did not endorse the proposal, but he did not dismiss it either, saying he needed to examine the time required to adapt the Block 70 design, where a U.S. aircraft could fit into Lockheed Martin’s production line, and what the industrial base could support. He also noted that the existing Block 70/72 line was already heavily occupied by foreign military sales.

At the same hearing, Allvin acknowledged the broader force-structure logic, saying the Air Force needed both the high-end capabilities required for an Indo-Pacific fight and other fighters that “may not need to be as sophisticated as our fifth-generation, sixth-generation.” He also emphasized that the first increment of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) was intended to augment rather than replace crewed fighters like the F-16.

Taken together, the developments show that the concept has remained alive through the Air Force’s evolving force-structure debate.

The Numbers Game

At first glance, the idea of buying new F-16s for the Air Force in the late 2020s might seem puzzling. The F-16 entered U.S. service in the 1970s, and the Air Force stopped buying new examples for itself more than 20 years ago. The established plan has been to replace the legacy F-16 fleet with the F-35A. For a long time, the service’s stated ambition was ultimately an all-stealth tactical fighter force — but that vision has already largely melted away as budget, operational and industrial-capacity realities have set in.

Today, the fighter fleet is still far older on average than it needs to be and legacy fourth generation types, minus a handful of new F-15EXs, are now well over 20-years old at the youngest. The oldest of these aircraft are increasingly challenging and costly to support. Meanwhile, the F-35 has had its fair share of successes and challenges, but replacing all of the USAF’s oldest fighters with JSFs in a timely and efficient manner, and operating those aircraft over future decades, looks increasingly problematic. The F-47 is also on the horizon, but that aircraft fits a different capability set more aligned with the F-22 than the F-16 and will come at a much higher cost than any fighter currently being procured.

Above all else, the problem is that the Air Force’s fighter challenge is one of numbers.

The service’s 2025 long-term fighter force-structure assessment concluded that it needed 1,558 combat-coded manned fighters by 2035 to reach what it considers a low-risk operational posture. The Air Force had only 1,098 fighters in its inventory as of May 2026, below the statutory minimum of 1,145.

At the same time, the service is trying to retire old aircraft, expand F-35A procurement, introduce the F-47, acquire additional F-15EXs, and field large numbers of CCAs. Those programs address different requirements, but they all compete for money, industrial capacity, personnel, and infrastructure.

For the Air Force, the question has not simply been whether the F-16 remains militarily useful, but also whether the aircraft provides a possible answer to a capacity shortfall, while also dealing with delays in F-35 deliveries, and the retirement of the A-10, blowing another hole in the inventory. Meanwhile, some older F-16s that had been expected to leave the fleet are instead receiving upgrades, including a new radar and electronic warfare suite, to keep them flying longer.

That creates a difficult transition period. The Air Force wants to retire aging fighters, but it also needs to keep enough aircraft available while their replacements arrive. The F-16 keeps reappearing because it offers a way of addressing at least part of that problem with a very well known commodity and without requiring every legacy fighter to be replaced by an F-35 or F-15EX.

The Production Line Matters

There is another reason the F-16 procurement idea refuses to disappear: Lockheed Martin already has an F-16 production line operating in the United States.

The Greenville, South Carolina, facility was established to produce Block 70/72 aircraft for foreign customers and is now the world’s only F-16 production facility. The Air Force helped establish the line as part of its broader effort to sustain the F-16 industrial base through foreign military sales. The line moved there after the massive Lockheed Martin plant at Fort Worth, Texas — where the F-16 had been built for decades — transitioned fully over to F-35 production.

So, buying new F-16s would not require reviving a dormant production line or spinning up an entirely new aircraft program. The basic manufacturing infrastructure already exists, and the additional work required for a U.S.-specific aircraft may end up being minimal — potentially amounting to little more than taking an existing Block 70 and tweaking it, rather than a large-scale new engineering, testing, and weapons-integration effort.

The Air Force has been aware of that possibility for years. In 2021, then-Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Will Roper argued that the service should consider the new F-16 production line as part of its capacity solution. Roper specifically pointed to the upgraded capabilities available from the South Carolina production line.

However, Greenville is not an empty production line waiting for a U.S. customer. Lockheed Martin’s F-16 facility already has a substantial Block 70/72 backlog for foreign operators, with the company reporting more than 100 aircraft in the queue and continued potential for additional international orders. It’s also unclear how much the facility could realistically be expanded, since it was designed around a relatively more modest foreign military sales production volume rather than the kind of surge a large U.S. order could require. Still, the USAF could step in and buy up open slots, which would also ensure the line stays open for the foreseeable future, which has major strategic and industrial protection benefits.

That brings us back to Gen. Allvin’s question in May 2025 about where a U.S. aircraft could fit on the production line. Even if the Air Force decided to buy the jets, it would have to compete for production capacity with an established international order book while developing whatever U.S.-specific configuration, testing, and integration work it requires.

This Is Not Your Dad’s F-16

The proposed F-16G is also significant because it is not simply another upgraded F-16C/D like the USAF already has.

Lockheed’s proposed configuration reportedly would add conformal fuel tanks and 600-gallon wing tanks, along with an IRST, and the latest Sniper targeting pod, as well as a drag chute. All of these systems are already fielded and available today rather than requiring new development.

Those additions point toward an aircraft intended to provide even more basing flexibility, range, persistence, weapons and sensing capability than the current F-16, which had already grown into a medium-weight fighter years ago. That is relevant to how such an aircraft might actually fit into the future Air Force.

A contemporary F-16 is already a very different proposition from the aircraft that entered U.S. service decades ago. Modern AESA radars, electronic warfare systems, digital architecture, datalinks, advanced cockpit interfaces and weapons have substantially expanded its capabilities. The proposed F-16G would push that evolution further, but, like the F-15EX, it would still occupy a different part of the spectrum from the F-35 and whatever eventually emerges from the F-47 program.

That distinction could be useful in a larger force. An F-35 provides capabilities, particularly its combination of stealth and advanced sensor fusion, that an F-16 can never reproduce. But the Air Force does not conduct every mission in the most heavily defended portion of an adversary’s airspace. Homeland defense, training, defensive counter-air, a range of strike missions, and operations in permissive or partially contested environments don’t necessarily require the same characteristics as a penetration mission against an integrated air defense network. In a major conflict, no fighter will fight alone, either. Far from it. Operation Midnight Hammer, the B-2 strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, provides a salient example here, with F-16s flying deep into the country along with F-22s and F-35s, to clear the way for the B-2 strike force. By now, the Air Force is well-versed in leveraging the total-force fourth-and-fifth-generation mix, and it has discovered that they complement each other in unique ways that can be an advantage, not just compensation for lack of capability.

As far as the drag chute, that is a highly relevant addition to the USAF’s F-16 capability set. The chute would allow for the F-16 to better execute Agile Combat Employment (ACE), which includes operating from austere airfields within the enemy’s weapons engagement zone. The F-16 can get off the runway pretty quick, but landing is a different story. The chute can help greatly in this regard.

There is no question that an F-16 is not a replacement for an F-35. But it could help the Air Force better allocate its limited inventory of increasingly expensive fifth-generation and future sixth-generation aircraft while also maintaining a much larger overall fighter fleet.

CCA Changes the Calculus for Fourth-Gen Jets

One factor that is easy to overlook is Collaborative Combat Aircraft. CCAs are not just a complement to fifth- and sixth-generation fighters, they can also breathe new relevance into fourth-generation types like the F-16. Pairing stealthy, and even optionally expendable CCAs with a fighter like the F-16G could substantially boost its survivability and lethality by pushing sensing, shooting, and some of the risk forward onto uncrewed platforms, extending the F-16’s combat relevance even into higher-end scenarios where it would otherwise be at a disadvantage. In that sense, CCA may end up being arguably as relevant to fourth-generation aircraft as it is to fifth-generation ones.

In other words, CCAs are a positive factor in the F-16G’s business case.

While the F-22 and F-35 are slated to get CCAs first, the F-16G can be built ready to interoperate with them, which could be a massive force multiplier to what would be the most affordable crewed tactical asset in the inventory. CCAs can eventually be used to also help augment F-16Gs operating in a homeland defense mission and other more mundane roles as well.

The Guard Argument

New Block 70s could make particular sense for the Air National Guard.

The Guard continues to operate F-16s in large numbers, meaning that its personnel, facilities, simulators, and maintenance infrastructure are already built around the aircraft. A new-build F-16 could therefore replace an aging F-16 without requiring the same organizational transition associated with converting a unit to an entirely different fighter, and especially a highly complex fifth-generation type with all its unique support requirements.

That has financial implications beyond the aircraft itself. Replacing an existing F-16 squadron with Block 70s would reduce construction costs and training requirements because much of the existing infrastructure and expertise could be retained.

The Air Force would still have to pay for the aircraft and sustainment, but it would not be starting from scratch in terms of operating infrastructure, while the modernized fourth-generation capabilities of an F-16G would still mark a step forward for the Guard over its older F-16s.

It’s worth noting there has also been discussion of replacing more aging F-16s with additional F-15EXs instead. That path, however, is more expensive on both the acquisition and operating-cost side, and it would still require units to convert to a different airframe rather than simply recapitalizing in place.

Viper Refreshed

A new F-16 offers a fresh and highly mature airframe — one with a full service-life ahead of it, on the order of 12,000 flight hours without the need for structural upgrades — double that of the original F-16. This is compared to existing F-16s in the inventory with the decades of wear and fatigue already accumulated on them, with structural upgrades keeping them in the air. That difference in remaining structural life is arguably the single biggest advantage a new-build aircraft has compared with extending an existing one.

Dumping more money into existing F-16s is becoming questionable. Service life extensions and technical upgrades can only go so far and supporting these jets is becoming harder as parts dry up and suppliers who made them are long gone. A new airframe would give the Guard many decades of highly efficient service and the piece of mind for future force planning that goes with it.

Also, just like F-15EX, the development of the Block 70 F-16 has already been paid for largely by foreign customers over many years. It is as off-the-shelf of a solution as it gets and that is a very attractive proposition to an air arm trying to balance its books.

Above all, F-16 sustainment and operating costs run far below the F-35’s — a gap that already holds true even with older F-16s, and one that would widen further with new-build jets.

The Argument Against Simply Buying More F-35s

One seemingly obvious alternative would be to accelerate F-35A procurement. But the F-35 is not simply another fighter that can be substituted one-for-one whenever an F-16 reaches the end of its service life. That would also be difficult to do in practice. F-35A production is effectively capped and there are dense order books, and the well-documented troubles with the Block 4 upgrade are a huge factor pushing the Air Force to look at alternatives like the F-16G in the first place.

The Air Force’s current force-structure plans call for significantly more fighters overall, while the service is simultaneously pursuing F-35As, F-15EXs, and the F-47.

Among the reasons why a modernized F-16 might be considered alongside those programs are concerns not only about the cost of those aircraft, but also about the timing of F-35 deliveries, something that has been disrupted by well-publicized problems with Joint Strike Fighter upgrades. At the same time, keeping older F-16s active through upgrades is an increasingly unattractive way of managing the shortfall.

The issue is therefore less about choosing the F-16 instead of the F-35 than about deciding whether the Air Force should use both aircraft for different portions of the force structure.

The service is already doing something along these lines with the F-15EX. It has accepted that a modernized fourth-generation aircraft can have a role alongside the F-35 and the F-22, rather than requiring every new fighter to be stealthy.

A new F-16 would extend that logic to a lower-cost segment of the fleet, potentially allowing the Air Force to use F-35s where their particular capabilities are most valuable while maintaining additional capacity with a less expensive aircraft.

What Could Happen Next?

Even if Air Force leaders conclude that the F-16G makes operational sense, Congress would still have to decide whether it is worth funding.

The December 2025 reporting identified the central problem: lawmakers would want the service to demonstrate that buying new aircraft is preferable to continuing to upgrade the F-16s it already owns. They would also have to weigh the proposal against the F-35 and CCA programs.

If an existing F-16 can be kept operational with a relatively inexpensive upgrade, a new aircraft has to justify its acquisition cost and the additional long-term sustainment burden. But if maintaining an increasingly old F-16 fleet doesn’t save large sums of money over the long haul, the new Block 70 variant begins to look more compelling.

There remains a substantial gap between Lockheed Martin pitching the F-16G and the Air Force actually buying it. The service told TWZ that it is “in the initial phases of analyzing options for the next Future Years Defense Program.” The Air Force spokesperson added: “At this stage, we have neither defined the precise mission requirements nor the spectrum of options that could fill it.”

That is consistent with the status described by Inside Defense nine months earlier. At the time, the Air Force had no plans to procure Block 70s, and the discussions with Lockheed were described as exploratory. Even if senior officials ultimately favored the aircraft, Inside Defense reported that the program could not appear in the Future Years Defense Program until at least fiscal 2028 because the FY2027 budget process was already too far along.

The F-16G therefore remains a proposal rather than a program. But the persistence of the idea is itself significant. It should be noted that the F-15EX buy emerged out of very similar machinations, with the benefits proving to be undeniable.

The new proposal would let some Guard and Reserve units swap their F-16s for vastly improved F-16s — the same logic that drove the F-15EX buy — while also keeping the Greenville line hot, which is a significant benefit in its own right. And it accomplishes both in the most efficient way possible: not just in acquisition cost, but in sustainment cost, which is really the more problematic burden of the two. In the end, this points to another glaring reality check for the all-stealth-force concept, a vision the Air Force has effectively already abandoned.

The Air Force has spent years describing the F-35 as the replacement for its F-16 fleet, yet it now has to contend with aging F-16s, delayed or constrained fighter production, a larger stated requirement for total fighter capacity, and the lengthy transition toward the F-47 and uncrewed combat aircraft. In that environment, a new-build F-16 provides an option that sits between extending legacy aircraft and buying the most sophisticated — and expensive — fighters available.

Regardless, there are so many priorities facing the force right now, buying new F-16s will be a challenge at every turn, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become too compelling of a proposition to accept. Still, many will argue that every dollar should be invested in higher-end fighter and uncrewed platforms that are more survivable against America’s primary pacing threat, China. That country is rapidly evolving its own air arm with stealth fighters and advanced uncrewed aircraft. Stepping back to the F-16 while facing down such a threat can appear to be counterproductive when taken at face value. At the same time, the F-16 is already slated to stay in the inventory by the hundreds for decades to come, which does take some of the bite out of that argument.

In the end, it is remarkable that the F-16 was supposed to have left the U.S. fighter equation years ago. Instead, every time the Air Force looks closely at the gap between the fighter force it has and the force it says it needs, the aircraft somehow finds a way back into the conversation.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post New-Build F-16s For The USAF Is An Idea That Won’t Go Away, For Good Reason appeared first on TWZ.

It is rarely a good sign when European politicians open their speeches by quoting Charles Dickens. So alarms should have sounded the moment European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared this to be the best and the worst of times at the start of her State of the European Union address on September 16.

Things went downhill from there: the EU leader painted a picture of the region that stands in complete contrast to the general experience of its people, amounting to a summary of the bloc’s worst achievements.

“Von der Leyen has achieved the feat of not mentioning a single measure to help Europeans cope with the soaring cost of living across Europe, at a time when an ever-growing number of people are now forced to choose between housing, food and transport,” said Manon Aubry, Co-President of The Left in the European Parliament.

“Fiscal sustainability” and concern for businesses

In the lengthy address, von der Leyen laid out what she considered the EU’s successes, including raising military spending by almost 80% over the past five years and “reducing dependence” on Russian fossil fuels. However, this interpretation does not correspond to what people are experiencing, as outlined by The Left in a dedicated dossier. Growing military spending benefits only the arms industry. And attempts to replace cheaper Russian gas have essentially boiled down to committing to more expensive and environmentally devastating US LNG imports.

While recognizing growing energy prices, von der Leyen offered no tangible response to this problem plaguing EU households. On the other hand, she demonstrated notable concern for businesses, signaling the continuation of eroding labor and environmental protections along the lines implemented by right and far-right parties at the EU level.

Read more: Peter Mertens: “Don’t be afraid, seize the opportunities of 2026 with both hands”

The likelihood of maintaining the status quo was also noticeable when von der Leyen turned to the deadly wildfires that hit Europe this summer, devastating communities from Belgium and France to Spain and Greece. Trade unions and progressive analysts have warned for years that fire preparedness is severely impaired by a lack of planning and, specifically, shortages of firefighters. Yet there was no commitment in the address to invest more in essential public service workers. Instead, the EC President referred to the ongoing need for overall “fiscal sustainability” – meaning Europeans should expect no relief from austerity programs.

“The best of times is clearly reserved for billionaires, multinational energy companies, and war profiteers,” remarked Member of the European Parliament Marc Botenga from the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA). “The other side of the coin for workers: austerity and rising prices.”

The EU’s failed foreign affairs policy

Based on the vision tabled by von der Leyen, there is also little to look forward to in Europe’s international and trade policy. “It’s hard to think of an area where the EU has been more inactive and less effective than in foreign affairs,” The Left wrote, referring to the union’s ongoing disregard of international law in relation to the genocide in Gaza and its approach to the Trump administration. 

“The President has praised Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, she has stood with Trump as he bombed Tehran and the European Commission has sided with the USA as they brought the global economy to a standstill in the Strait of Hormuz,” the progressive bloc warned.

The EU’s relationship with the US has continued to be one of submission, with elected regional leaders going to great lengths (unsuccessfully) to appease Donald Trump. Even when the region announced it would stand firm against US threats – in Greenland or on tariffs – this did not translate into practice.

In the context of von der Leyen’s speech, this boiled down to announcing Canada would become the “first associate member of the EU” and listing trade agreements signed with India, Mercosur, and Indonesia – met by the people of these countries with understandable concern.

Read more: Indian left opposes free trade agreement with EU, calls it “wholesale surrender” of country’s economic interests

Von der Leyen’s speech showed no sign of breaking with disdain towards nations outside the West. In addition to continuing animosity toward China, it offered a glimpse into plans involving countries rich in critical materials. The EC President announced the launch of a European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials – designed to secure and stockpile supplies for Europe’s industry and defense – with obvious implications for mineral-rich territories like Ukraine, Greenland, and several African countries. For the more skeptical listeners, this also carried weird echoes of the East India Company.

The State of the EU’s vision, it goes without saying, comes with further promises of an even stricter migration framework – on the pretext of situations like the one experienced in Ceuta earlier this year – that allow the erosion of basic human rights like asylum. Von der Leyen’s speech pledged even more finances for Frontex and suggested that outsourcing migration enforcement to third countries will continue, as endorsed by recent EU legislation.

“This policy of externalizing migration control has contributed to grave human rights violations, arbitrary detentions and systematic violence against people on the move,” The Left warned, calling for a union rooted in solidarity rather than violence and militarization.

Macklemore said he will be donating the entirety of his $1 million net earnings from Sheeran's tour to organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people.

Macklemore said he will be donating the entirety of his $1 million net earnings from Sheeran's tour to organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people.

A Infraestruturas de Portugal adjudicou por 1,27 milhões de euros (ME) a estabilização do talude da EN2 no Espinhaço de Cão, em Abrantes, prevendo iniciar os trabalhos no terreno até final de outubro e concluí-los no início de 2027. “A empreitada foi adjudicada em regime de conceção/construção no dia 3 de setembro, pelo valor de 1.269.996,50 euros, com um prazo de 120 dias”…

Source

The Pentagon has reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin to lay the groundwork for stepped-up production and delivery of new AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missiles (JATM) to the U.S. military and allied air arms in the coming years. The AIM-260 is still in development, but the head of the Air Force Test Center also touted efforts to further accelerate that work just earlier this week. From the start, the U.S. military has presented JATM as especially critical for ensuring China, with its own growing array of longer-range air-to-air missiles, does not gain an edge in future air combat.

The new framework agreement announced today “is critical to ensuring long-term demand signals flow to key suppliers, allowing Lockheed Martin and the munitions supply chain to invest in manufacturing capacity, workforce, and production efficiencies,” according to a Pentagon press release. “It establishes a framework for future Multi-Year Procurement (MYP) of JATM, executing congressional authority to secure the nation’s highest-priority missile systems.”

“This agreement forms the foundational agreement for a multiyear procurement contract, pending Congressional approval, that provides long-term demand to strengthen and expand the defense industrial base for the program,” according to a separate release from Lockheed Martin.

In response to questions from TWZ, the Pentagon declined to comment on the projected number of JATMs covered under this agreement, as well as estimated costs and delivery schedules.

U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors are expected to be the first types to fly operationally armed with AIM-260s. Integration on other platforms, such as variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Air Force’s forthcoming F-47 sixth-generation fighter, is expected to follow. JATM, which is designed to have the same general form factor as the existing AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), has been discussed as part of the arsenal for the Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, as well.

The releases today from the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin confirm that the new framework deal also includes planned foreign military sales of AIM-260s. Australia, one of America’s top allies, is the first confirmed international customer for the JATM, and plans to integrate the missiles on its F/A-18Fs, F-35As, and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets. The Royal Australian Air Force’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat CCA-type drones, initial versions of which are already capable of firing AIM-120s, might be another AIM-260 launch platform in the future.

The AIM-260 remains in development, with the Navy and Air Force test communities supporting that work.

“We are accelerating weapons development from high-end air dominance weapons like the JATM to hypersonic strike systems like the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, head of the Air Force Test Center (AFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base in California, told TWZ and other outlets at a media roundtable yesterday. The roundtable took place at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“We’re actively testing JATM, and it’s progressing along its program path. In test, we are working through the development stages there,” Massaro added. “So, we’re testing it in [sic] the ground with models, like I mentioned. We’re testing it in the air on aircraft. So, from a performance standpoint, I’ll hold on to that from an operational security perspective. But we’re happy seeing where it’s going, and we expect that to be a key piece of capability for our warfighters to have.”

“Just from a testing perspective, we’re always looking at making sure that we’ve got the throughput,” he added when asked if he could talk about challenges or other issues AFTC has run up against in work on the AIM-260. “So, from a test perspective only, infrastructure and throughput to make sure that we can get things out … and make the testing happen. But I’m not, from a capabilities perspective, worried about the system.”

It is unclear when the first operational AIM-260s may begin entering the U.S. inventory. When the program was first disclosed to the public in 2019, the stated goal was to start fielding the missiles in 2022. There were also reports in late 2025 that funding issues had caused a three-month delay, based on a fact sheet distributed to some members of the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services. The committee later said that the information was incorrect.

Work to date on JATM has been conducted under a heavy veil of secrecy, with the existence of the program only being announced in 2019. The first public glimpse of the missile only emerged in May of this year. Beyond the aforementioned size requirement and that the new missile will offer significantly greater engagement range over the AIM-120, details remain limited. Readers can learn more about what we do know so far here.

What is clear is that the growing reach of Chinese air-to-air missiles has been a key driver behind the JATM program, with Air Force officials having explicitly mentioned the PL-15 in the past. China continues to pursue even longer-ranged and otherwise more advanced air-to-air missiles, as you can learn more about in this past TWZ feature. The Air Force has previously raised the prospect of a general threat ecosystem that includes anti-missiles with ranges of up to 1,000 miles emerging by 2050.

The AIM-260 is not the only longer-ranged air-to-air missile known to be in development in the United States, either. In 2024, the Navy revealed it had begun fielding an air-launched version of the surface-launched Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), called the AIM-174B Gunslinger, at least on a limited level. Just in August of this year, the service disclosed the existence of another very long-range air-to-air missile, the AIM-424 Malice, which has already reached the flight testing phase of development.

An Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine last month that the service was “closely following” the Navy’s work on the AIM-424. In June, the Air Force itself shared details about another potential future air-to-air missile, dubbed the Air Force Long Range Weapon (AFLRW), including a target requirement for a maximum range of at least 1,000 nautical miles.

Based on past experiences with public disclosures about the AIM-260, AIM-174B, and AIM-424 programs, additional work on advanced longer-range air-to-air missiles is certainly ongoing in the classified realm.

Today’s announcement about the new framework agreement, together with Brig. Gen. Massaro’s brief update yesterday, makes clear there is a continued commitment to JATM amid a still-growing field of new, longer-range air-to-air missiles.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Pentagon Cuts New AIM-260 Air-To-Air Missile Production Deal, Testing Accelerating appeared first on TWZ.

Quer receber os textos desta coluna em primeira mão no seu e-mail? Assine a newsletter Ligando os pontos, enviada toda quinta-feira. Para receber as próximas edições, inscreva-se aqui.

No último sábado, em São Paulo, vi uma peça de teatro que me tocou profundamente. Se chama Mi Madre y El Diñero, do dramaturgo, ator e diretor mexicano Anacarsis Ramos e sua companhia Pornotráfico. A peça faz parte do Festival Ibero-Americano de Artes Cênicas Mirada e mostra de maneira contundente as dificuldades de uma mulher que, após 60 anos trabalhando, ainda sofre com a falta de dinheiro.

Esta “personagem” é Josefina Orlaneta e é a mãe do autor. Ela começou a trabalhar com apenas cinco anos de idade vendendo lanches na rua e, em seis décadas de vida, exerceu mais de 40 ofícios. O espetáculo é uma tragicomédia no qual, em hora e meia de duração, faz sentir que conhecemos como ninguém a protagonista. E de fato a encontramos em carne e osso pois é ela mesma, a senhora Josefina, que atua ao lado de seu filho. Seu último emprego, portanto, ela nos conta com muita graça, é ser atriz!

Esta peça vem na onda da autoficção, um gênero que na literatura tem conquistado espaço e corações. No palco, essa forma de narrar se mostrou extremamente eficiente para explicitar o contexto econômico em que a vida de uma trabalhadora pobre se desenrola na virada dos séculos XX e XXI. O texto torna palpável a desigualdade que marcou a trajetória de Josefina.

Quando ela, por exemplo no início dos anos 2000, consegue finalmente alguma estabilidade ao abrir um pequeno mercado, não demora muito para que as lojas do Oxxo acabem com seu sonho. Oxxo é a cadeia mexicana que agora domina muitos pontos de comércio em São Paulo, sufocando pequenos negócios.

O próprio autor e diretor, ao contracenar com a mãe, faz um comovente discurso em que diz (mais ou menos com estas palavras): se chegou aos 66 anos ainda sem dinheiro, a mãe não deveria considerar-se uma fracassada, mas sim uma vítima do sistema econômico. Anacarsis conta que decidiu fazer a peça (e assim conseguiu convencer Josefina a participar) para levar sua mãe a viajar pelo circuito internacional dos festivais de teatro. Quem sabe, ele diz, ganharão algum dinheiro. A considerar o sucesso entre o público, espero mesmo que estejam recebendo um bom dinheiro; terminamos todos aplaudindo de pé.

Mas por que afinal estou falando de uma peça de teatro em uma coluna que deveria falar de meio ambiente? Bem… a resposta está no final da peça, quando o diretor confessa que apesar de ter convencido a mãe pela promessa que poderiam embolsar algum din-din, sua maior intenção era mesmo denunciar o modelo econômico que exclui uma parcela da população. Um modelo que mantém países, estados e bairros sempre na periferia das oportunidades.

Ligando os pontos, a questão que logo me deixou inquieto foi a geografia em que a peça ou a vida de sua personagem principal se passa. Josefina e sua família quase sempre viveram em Campeche, um dos estados mais pobres e violentos do México. Suas cidades na costa do Golfo do México não têm o glamour de destinos turísticos próximos como Playa del Carmen e Cancun, que são parte da mundialmente conhecida Riviera Maia e promovem seus luxuosos resorts nas águas azuis do Caribe.

Em Campeche, nos anos 1970, foi encontrado o maior campo de petróleo em alto mar do México. Esta descoberta transformou a economia do país de maneira radical, tornando-o menos rural e um dos principais exportadores de petróleo. Naquele momento, o campo descoberto foi considerado a segunda maior reserva de hidrocarbonetos do mundo, apenas atrás de reservas na Arábia Saudita. Isso ajudou a consolidar a empresa nacional de petróleo, a Pemex, e atraiu as grandes do setor ao país: Chevron e ExxonMobil.

E vejam a ironia, o primeiro poço a ser explorado levou o nome de Cantarell, em homenagem do pescador que avistou uma mancha negra de petróleo saindo do mar, no local onde a Pemex tinha uma sonda de pesquisa. Esta homenagem a ele parou por aí, pois, como tantos outros pescadores, ele morreu na pobreza depois que a atividade petrolífera em alto mar acabou com a pesca em Campeche.

O Brasil também descobriu sua “mina de ouro” há cerca de duas décadas, quando a Petrobras iniciou a exploração do Pré-Sal. Os royalties fluíram para cidades e estados. O principal estado a se beneficiar foi o Rio de Janeiro. Pergunto: quantas Josefinas ainda existem no Rio que não viram a cor do dinheiro da exploração do petróleo? Mulheres que lutam em empregos mal pagos para manter as suas famílias.

Agora, estamos vendo o mesmo enredo a se descortinar na foz do rio Amazonas. Bem na frente dos nossos olhos uma corrida pelas riquezas que supostamente sairão da exploração em alto mar. Essa expectativa já alterou a vida do Oiapoque, cidade mais ao norte do país e que abrigará as bases para a extração do ouro negro. Reportagens da BBC e da Folha de São Paulo nos contam sobre um fluxo migratório que gera sobrecarga nos serviços públicos, além de invasões de terra e desmatamento para criação de novos bairros.

Eu poderia fazer uma peça de teatro listando todos os projetos de “desenvolvimento” do Brasil que não deixaram nada além de um legado de destruição e miséria. Mas acho que seria uma peça entediante, para não dizer deprimente. Vou deixar o teatro ao Anacarsis enquanto, inspirado por sua obra, levanto esta questão: o que acontecerá com a economia da costa amazônica se aqui, como no México, a exploração do petróleo causar vazamentos em alto mar? Basta lembrar que é na foz do rio Amazonas que está uma das maiores atividades pesqueiras de todo o Brasil.

Na minha coluna de estreia, eu falei da maldição dos recursos naturais e como ela está presente em muitos países que têm petróleo e minérios. Há muita riqueza, mas o povo vive na pobreza. Países em que, como Josefina, crianças começam a trabalhar muito cedo. Na peça, eu fiquei arrepiado ao ouvir a protagonista contar que sua primeira lembrança quando criança era aquela em que ela já trabalhava nas ruas.

Será que, daqui a 60 anos, vamos ter que contar as histórias de muitas Josefinas? As Josefinas brasileiras que neste momento não estão vendo a cor do dinheiro deste modelo de desenvolvimento feito apenas para os verdadeiros donos do dinheiro?

Forty years ago, archaeologist Lucien Basch and researcher Michal Artzy published a set of 19 ship graffiti carved into the walls of Kition Kathari, an archaeological site beneath the modern city of Larnaca on Cyprus’s southern coast. Ever since, those images have been cited as textbook examples of Late Bronze Age maritime iconography in the […]

Hace cuarenta años, el arqueólogo Lucien Basch y la investigadora Michal Artzy publicaron un conjunto de 19 grabados de barcos en el yacimiento de Kition Kathari, en la bahía de Lárnaca, al sur de Chipre. Desde entonces, esas imágenes se citaron como ejemplos clásicos de la iconografía naval del Mediterráneo oriental durante la Edad del […]

Greece’s Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis has been reiterating since Monday morning that he will seek to enhance patients’ protection by installing an QR Code at the entrance of private doctors’ practices. Though his smart phone the apparently tech savy “patient will be able to confirm whether the practice is legal or not,” Georgiadis said. Surprise! […]

The post QR Code to be installed at private doctors’ practices, says Health Minister appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.

APDPróstata alerta que o acesso a tratamentos inovadores pode demorar até dois anos e meio e que 62% dos hospitais públicos falham tempos de resposta garantidos em oncologia. A Associação Portuguesa de Doentes da Próstata (APDPróstata) alerta para as “desigualdades regionais no acesso ao tratamento do cancro da próstata em Portugal”, o tumor mais frequente […]

If you are in San Francisco trying to follow the goings-on in your neighborhood or within city hall, you may have come across The Dissent. The website brands itself as “an AI newsroom” with work “reported, edited, and produced by named agents.” Its founder and publisher Dakota Carrasco — a real person, and, incidentally, an analyst at the notorious investment firm BlackRock — published text on the site’s “about” page saying, “Local journalism has been quietly consolidated and hollowed out.” Carrasco’s statement did not note the role of Carrasco’s own industry in that decline, nor did it acknowledge the irony in choosing this name for a website based on a technology that steals and repackages the intellectual output of others.

The Dissent’s website, which currently appears to be down, even included a masthead with bios for its non-human “staff” (the AI agents whose names appear alongside articles). Neighborhood “reporter” Casey Wong (who is not a real person) has a bio that reads, “I notice the texture of a block — who’s been here 30 years, who’s just moved in.” Of course, there’s no mention of how an AI agent might glean that information, but (actual) news outlet Mission Local has noted that, to fill its pages, The Dissent relies heavily on summarizing the work published in other sites by real human journalists.

Once, The San Francisco Standard reported, The Dissent did appear to follow up on a tip in a Reddit thread to break a story about a business closing, but “the agent appears to have hallucinated the claim that it had reached out to the owner for comment.”

The development of an AI newsroom in San Francisco, which is home to many of the tech billionaires attempting to reshape society, is certainly concerning for those of us who care about journalism. But The Dissent is not the only news outlet to have tried using AI to crib the journalism of real human workers. These AI newsrooms get a decent share of attention, and their harms are critical to point out. But they are also part of a broader problem: the undermining of how we share and receive factual information.

Earlier this year, Google made an announcement that could further destabilize the already precarious journalism industry by using its infamous search feature to prioritize AI summaries from Google Gemini, rather than directing people toward external links to news outlets like ours.

You might not have noticed the deep scale of this change, but you probably have noticed what writer Cory Doctorow refers to as the “enshittification” of Google search — the preponderance of spam, the push toward sponsored results, and the overwhelming sense that the internet no longer works the way it once did.

On June 9, when we sounded the alarm about the increased AI implementation within Google’s search function and the suppression of journalism that would surely result, it was too early to know exactly how much these changes would impact Truthout. Google had announced the changes on May 19 and we were still collecting data.

Before the change, our traffic from Google was 27 percent of our overall traffic: Exactly 2,604,280 people visited Truthout via Google in 2025. Given our experience with Facebook traffic abruptly declining by 90 percent in 2018, following sudden changes in the social media platform’s algorithm (including for example, Facebook’s decision to no longer regularly show Truthout’s posts to the more than 800,000 people who had followed Truthout’s page out of a desire to see them), it seemed reasonable to worry about losing as much as half our Google traffic. In our June op-ed, we wrote, “If even half of that 27 percent disappears, it will have a devastating impact on our journalism.”

At the time, we were hopeful that it wouldn’t be that bad. After all, wasn’t Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil”?

We later learned, however, that Google has quietly stepped back from its infamous motto, even removing it from the opening lines of its Code of Conduct while its parent company, Alphabet, Inc., ignores it entirely.

We now have three full months of data since Google’s change, and the numbers are worse than we anticipated. Overall readership that comes to Truthout through Google is down 54 percent against last year. The number of new readers who discover Truthout via Google searches is down 49 percent, and returning users from Google are down 51 percent.

We lost 15 percent of our readership overnight. This was a readership we painstakingly built over decades, and it vanished because Google chose corporate greed over a healthy democracy.

At Truthout, we anticipate a loss of roughly $500,000 in online revenue as a result of this massive traffic plunge in the next year alone.

We know Truthout is not the only news organization taking a massive hit amid Google’s abrupt decision to prioritize showing internet users AI summaries instead of relevant news articles. Our peers in independent media and beyond — including among grassroots base-building organizations that depend on traffic — are struggling to stay above water.

As we wrote when Google’s AI changes were first announced, nobody wants this. People have overwhelmingly said they’d rather not get their news through an AI chatbot, and they recognize that there’s a pretty good chance the information they get from chatbots is not accurate. In fact, U.S. voters dislike AI as a whole, poll after poll has found. But Big Tech is increasingly treating its users as potential sites of profit and subjects to be managed, rather than people looking for the information they need to function as informed members of society. And they’re able to get away with it because, for so long, the importance of factual information and the people who ensure we have access to it have both been devalued by our political and economic systems.

A dystopian infringement on our access to information isn’t just some looming threat — we’re actively living through it.

The repercussions of this devaluation become more relevant by the day. As people try to find and share truthful, accurate information about the many crises that have been unleashed on us — foodborne disease outbreaks, vaccine science, disasters induced by the climate crisis, and immigration policing raids in their communities, for starters — they may be greeted with a torrent of loose facts or outright disinformation. Corporate news outlets and those owned by billionaires have repeatedly shown their willingness to capitulate to Donald Trump. Paywalls and subscriptions, which some outlets need in order to survive, mean that critical reporting is put behind a fence. A dystopian infringement on our access to information isn’t just some looming threat — we’re actively living through it.

Journalism has always been a crucial node of democratic practice; after all, how can we make decisions about what our society should look like if we don’t actually know the facts of what’s happening around us?

The AI-ification of news is making that increasingly clear. When AI “news outlets” and AI summaries are not busy plagiarizing real journalists, they are often instead regurgitating information from company press releases.

Is this the future of news that we imagine? Can we trust a website created by a BlackRock analyst to accurately report on the company that employs him? Can we trust Google’s AI search to accurately tell us about privacy controversies concerning Gmail, or about safety ratings for Google-owned Waymo self-driving cars? Limiting our avenues for finding accurate, factual information is a real threat to democracy.

Yet we are rapidly tunneling toward that future. Searches on Google for the term “Google Zero” have increased by 190 percent. The term, coined by tech journalist Nilay Patel in 2024, imagines a time when Google acts solely as a direct answer machine instead of an index of the web. Using Google’s own tools to analyze Truthout’s traffic, we can see that traffic from Google is currently at “Google 46,” meaning that we’re now seeing only 46 percent of our pre-AI Google traffic numbers.

We’ve seen the way tech companies’ devaluation of journalism has impacted our ecosystem in the past. Eight years ago, Facebook made up over 40 percent of Truthout’s traffic. Over the last decade we’ve seen that number decline to under 3 percent — not because the urgency or professionalism of our journalism decreased in any way, but because Facebook decided to stop showing our articles to the people who had expressly signed up to read them. We know from our experience with Facebook that once democracy and journalism are in the crosshairs of corporate greed, circumstances only get worse. We fully expect to be staring down Google Zero in the next couple of years.

Given these mounting, overlapping AI crises, how can we take action? We’re the first to admit that sometimes, this issue can seem so overwhelming and all-encompassing that one’s first reaction is an assumption of inevitability. That line of thought goes: AI (even in its most damaging forms) is here to stay, so we must simply get used to it. However, this mindset is exactly what tech companies are counting on to fuel the AI takeover. Rejecting it is the first step to pushing back.

When it comes to Google Search and Google’s default reliance on AI summaries for news and information, a full recognition of the inadequacy and danger of the problem is urgently necessary. An AI summary drawn from a few mainstream sources — plus Reddit, Wikipedia, and corporate press releases — will inevitably leave out crucial truths and perspectives, particularly those of marginalized and oppressed groups, resistance movements, independent and firsthand sources, and those critical of the tech companies responsible for AI’s harms. Similarly, relying on Meta-promoted posts for the latest on what’s going on in the world places a crucial lever of democracy — our ability to read, process, and discern current events — firmly in the hands of the algorithm (and, thus, mega-powerful corporations).

What might a broad and honest recognition of these realities lead to? We imagine it might lead to a different way of reading the news: one that won’t look entirely unfamiliar. What if, instead of relying on notifications and scrolling, we returned to bookmarking our favorite news sites and reading their homepages each morning?

What if we discerningly subscribed to trusted news sources, whether over email or in print, and read their publications as a first-line route to information? What if we took care to read whole articles (not just headlines or quick videos) and then shared them with friends, accompanied by our own thoughts?

If the journalistic sources for influencers’ facts disappear, thanks to lost traffic and revenue, what are we left with?

It wasn’t long ago that these were standard practices for many of us in left and progressive circles. A mass return to longer, slower, more reflective reading is possible, and we can each consider our capacity to take it on, individually and among our circles of friends and colleagues.

This might also require us to take a critical look at our engagement with, and reliance on, influencers — including on the left. According to the American Press Institute, “More than half of all American teenagers and adults (57 percent) now report getting news and information from influencers at least sometimes, and fully 81 percent of those ages 13-17 report getting news and information from influencers.”

We don’t need to renounce our dependence on the thoughts and analysis of leftist social media icons we trust, but we do need to recognize that their information comes from somewhere: They draw from journalism — which generally comes from independent publications and news organizations that are staffed and resourced — in order to provide their commentaries. If the journalistic sources for influencers’ facts disappear, thanks to lost traffic and revenue, what are we left with?

For individual readers, foundations, and concerned policy makers, the mandate in this department is clear: Supporting independent journalism is key to maintaining both day-to-day knowledge of the world and factual sources for research, both of which are essential to democracy.

There’s no magical shortcut, no silver-bullet strategy that will solve the dire threats to our society’s informational infrastructure. Material support for journalism outlets is necessary now, particularly as online readership tumbles off an AI-shaped cliff.

Of course, individual readers play a crucial role here. For institutional funders and potential major donors, we believe it’s worth assessing how journalism fits into your portfolios, and why liberal and progressive funding for this indispensable democratic puzzle piece has been consistently slashed, even as the right wing unabashedly bankrolls its own media.

If we all recognize that we have a stake in the looming threats to independent journalism’s very existence, it shouldn’t only affect our individual reading choices; it should also drive us toward collective action. Fortunately, the possibilities for mass movements abound, as people around the country rise up against Big Tech companies through diverse and creative channels.

Environmental justice activists, Indigenous rights organizers, rural communities, and even disgruntled former Trump supporters are banding together to oppose data centers, and in many places, they’re winning.

Child advocacy groups and impacted teens and caregivers drove the push that resulted in last month’s massive win against Meta, in which the company is instructed to make sweeping changes to its addiction-driving practices.

Rank-and-file workers are challenging AI from a labor vantage, and pushing their unions to act.

The more we can plug into these resistance efforts, the less inevitable an AI-dominated future becomes.

As a backlash against generative AI has spread across social media, even the most dominant platforms have acquiesced to a few changes. Corporate accountability activists are sounding the alarm on Big Tech’s runaway political spending, and are calling for renewed efforts to overturn Citizens United and implement state-level reforms. The more we can plug into these resistance efforts, the less inevitable an AI-dominated future becomes.

Finally, let’s allow ourselves to access our outrage at the injustice wrought by tech companies’ attacks on our rights, humanity, and any vestiges of remaining democracy. A recent study by Social Change Lab found that when it comes to AI, “the emotion most strongly associated with action was not fear or anxiety, but anger.”

Every week brings a new encroachment of AI into our lives. This is terrifying, but it should also be motivating: We all have a stake in this struggle. Don’t let AI take over our search results or our lives without a fight.

Le Parti communiste français condamne avec la plus grande fermeté l’arrestation et le placement sous mandat de dépôt de Justin Koné Katinan, quatrième vice-président du Parti des peuples africains — Côte d’Ivoire (PPA-CI) et ancien ministre. Cette arrestation fait suite à une conférence de presse du 3 septembre 2026, où Justin Koné Katinan dénonçait la responsabilité […]

L’article Côte d’Ivoire : libération immédiate de Justin Koné Katinan et de tous les détenus politiques est apparu en premier sur .

King Charles III on Thursday urged several senior tech leaders to make sure that artificial intelligence remains under control and in the service of people and the planet.

King Charles III on Thursday urged several senior tech leaders to make sure that artificial intelligence remains under control and in the service of people and the planet.