Zelensky et son régime à Kiev sont les « plus grands obstacles à la paix », selon son ancienne porte-parole.
Cela aurait dû faire la une des journaux la semaine dernière, mais cela n’a pas été le cas. L’ancienne porte-parole du pseudo-président de l’Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, s’est vu interdire de s’adresser au Parlement européen.
Pourquoi ? Parce qu’Iuliia Mendel devait livrer des révélations accablantes sur la corruption endémique dans le régime de Zelensky et sur la façon dont la guerre soutenue par l’OTAN dans son pays est une combine pour s’enrichir.
Quelle ironie que un tel témoignage ne soit pas autorisé dans ce qui est censé être le siège de la démocratie et des valeurs européennes. Si la liberté d’expression remet en cause le récit officiel, alors elle est interdite. Le seul récit autorisé est que l’Ukraine est un modèle de démocratie cherchant à adhérer à l’Union européenne et à l’OTAN, mais qu’elle est contrariée par « l’agression russe ». Combien fragile est cette représentation, pour que quiconque ayant un point de vue différent et des faits soit purement et simplement réduit au silence et diffamé comme propagandiste russe ?
Remarquablement, presque aucun média occidental n’a rapporté ce fiasco.
Iuliia Mendel a été conseillère personnelle de Zelensky pour les médias de 2019 à 2021, date à laquelle elle a démissionné, désillusionnée par sa corruption. Elle a observé de près les tractations, le comportement maniaque de Zelensky et de ses acolytes, et son mépris pour la démocratie. Elle décrit son témoignage comme un « devoir moral » de dire à ses concitoyens ukrainiens et au reste du monde la vraie nature de son ancien patron. Qu’il est un escroc aux tendances psychopathiques qui se moque éperdument de la vie du peuple ukrainien. Sa seule préoccupation est de rester au pouvoir le plus longtemps possible et de s’enrichir avec les milliards d’argent des contribuables occidentaux qui sont acheminés vers son régime.
Zelensky et son régime à Kiev sont les « plus grands obstacles à la paix », dit Mendel, qui a donné cette interview à Weltwoche, après avoir été empêchée d’entrer au Parlement européen. La corruption en Ukraine, dit-elle, dépend de la poursuite de la guerre, et c’est pourquoi le régime de Kiev oppose son veto à tout effort diplomatique visant à mettre fin au conflit qui dure depuis près de cinq ans. Quiconque s’oppose à la guerre et appelle à la diplomatie est sanctionné, emprisonné ou envoyé au front pour mourir. Zelensky supervise une junte militaire (que l’Occident appelle « démocratie ») dans laquelle ses sbires traquent les gens dans les rues pour la conscription. Pour échapper au hachoir à viande, ils doivent payer un pot-de-vin pouvant atteindre 20 000 dollars.
Mendel a d’abord fait sensation lorsqu’elle a été interviewée en mai de cette année par le diffuseur américain Tucker Carlson. Dans cette interview, elle a décrit Zelensky comme un dictateur toxicomane émotionnellement instable, bien que dissimulé par ses talents d’acteur d’ancien artiste de divertissement. Les partisans politiques et médiatiques occidentaux, bien sûr, jouent le jeu en fermant les yeux sur cette mascarade et le célèbrent comme un « héros churchillien de guerre ».
Tout cela est une combine méprisable jouée aux dépens des contribuables occidentaux et du peuple ukrainien qui souffre depuis longtemps.
Pour avoir révélé les secrets de son ancien patron, Mendel a été immédiatement inscrite sur la liste noire Mirotvorets, soutenue par l’État ukrainien, comme « propagandiste russe ». Mirotvorets a acquis une triste réputation de liste de morts, car plusieurs personnes qu’elle a blacklistées ont fini mortes. Elle dit qu’elle est interdite de diffusion publique vers ses concitoyens ukrainiens par des entreprises médiatiques occidentales comme Meta/Facebook.
Plus tôt cette semaine, quelques jours avant qu’elle ne s’adresse au Parlement européen, le régime de Zelensky a annoncé des sanctions contre Mendel. Elle ne peut pas accéder aux avoirs ukrainiens et ne peut pas rentrer dans le pays de peur que sa vie soit en danger. Elle craint que sa famille en Ukraine ne soit persécutée, envoyée au front en représailles pour sa prétendue « trahison ».
La décision de lui interdire de parler devant l’assemblée de Strasbourg aurait été prise par la présidente du Parlement européen, Roberta Metsola. Metsola, comme d’autres dirigeants de haut rang de l’UE, tels que la présidente de la Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, et le président du Conseil, António Costa, est une supportrice inconditionnelle de l’Ukraine, acheminant des milliards d’aide au régime.
Mendel apparaît comme une personne d’intégrité, de décence morale et de véritable indépendance. Elle rejette catégoriquement l’accusation d’être « pro-russe ». En effet, dans ses interviews avec Carlson et Weltwoche, Mendel critique vivement la Russie pour ce qu’elle appelle une invasion cruelle de son pays. Il semble parfaitement clair que sa préoccupation constante est d’empêcher la guerre de détruire sa patrie.
Cependant, la guerre ne peut pas être arrêtée parce que le régime de Zelensky et ses partisans européens de l’OTAN sont investis dans sa prolongation. La corruption du régime est mariée à l’idéologie de la russophobie qui est endémique dans l’élite européenne.
Cette perspective a été corroborée par deux autres sources impeccables cette semaine. Comme Mendel, ces deux autres figures sont également ignorées par les médias occidentaux.
Le professeur Ivan Katchanovski de l’Université d’Ottawa a été interviewé par Lena Petrova, dans laquelle il a passé en revue la corruption flagrante et la politique néonazie du régime de Kiev.
Les recherches révolutionnaires de Katchanovski ont révélé comment le massacre des snipers de Maidan, au cours duquel plus de 100 manifestants et policiers ont été tués à Kiev en février 2014, était une opération sous fausse bannière menée par des éléments néonazis et leurs sponsors de l’OTAN, qui a précipité le coup d’État. Le coup d’État a conduit à la prise de contrôle de l’État ukrainien et des forces de sécurité par des forces fascistes, ce qui a à son tour conduit à la guerre avec la Russie en 2022.
Zelensky, qui est nominalement juif, s’appuie sur les forces néonazies pour sa survie politique et la poursuite de la corruption qui sévit au sein du régime. Le professeur Katchanovski, qui est originaire d’Ukraine, souligne que de nombreux ministres, conseillers et hauts responsables judiciaires proches du cercle de Zelensky ont dû démissionner ou fuir le pays à la suite d’innombrables scandales de corruption. Il est difficile de croire que Zelensky ne soit pas lui aussi jusqu’au cou dans le racket. Corruption, guerre et néonazisme sont tous inextricablement liés en raison de l’implication de l’OTAN dans le pays depuis son indépendance en 1991 vis-à-vis de l’Union soviétique après l’effondrement de cette dernière.
Une autre vue corroborante est celle de l’éminent universitaire américain le professeur John Mearsheimer. Il a donné cette semaine un compte rendu très large d’une récente visite en Russie au cours de laquelle il a rencontré de hauts responsables gouvernementaux, des décideurs politiques et des diplomates. Mearsheimer a déclaré, peut-être à la surprise de certains, que lors de ses nombreuses conversations, il n’a décelé aucune animosité profonde envers l’Ukraine ou le peuple ukrainien parmi ses interlocuteurs russes, ni d’ailleurs parmi les Russes ordinaires. « Beaucoup de Russes que j’ai rencontrés ont de la famille en Ukraine… partagent un héritage culturel », a-t-il remarqué.
Mearsheimer attribue la disparition tragique de l’Ukraine et de ses liens historiques avec la Russie à la politique de l’OTAN visant à faire entrer le pays nouvellement indépendant dans l’alliance militaire dirigée par les États-Unis en 2008 avec la Déclaration de Bucarest. Cette politique a garanti que les deux pays seraient désormais sur une trajectoire de collision menant au conflit, qui a finalement éclaté en 2022. L’objectif occidental plus large était d’utiliser l’Ukraine comme proxy pour mener la guerre et déstabiliser la Russie. En bref, pour la « défaite stratégique de la Russie ».
En poursuivant cet objectif impérialiste, l’Ukraine a été infectée par le néonazisme, la corruption et une dictature de facto dirigée par un clown toxicomane qui réprime impitoyablement toute opposition. Des millions de personnes ont été déplacées, tuées et mutilées ; la société et l’économie sont en ruines abyssales.
Mais cette vérité ne doit pas être permise par les idéologues occidentaux et leurs médias contrôlés, qui persistent dans leurs fantasmes russophobes malgré la destruction et la souffrance déchaînées et le danger très réel d’une guerre totale explosant en Europe. Les élites occidentales se livreront à toutes sortes de maux dans leur poursuite de la tentative de vaincre la Russie. L’Ukraine a été totalement détruite par les objectifs impérialistes occidentaux. Et pourtant, la Russie est blâmée comme le méchant dans cette entreprise horrible et criminelle.
The volume of munitions expended in the course of U.S. operations against Iran this year has been and continues to be a hot topic of discussion, and there has been relatively little official data provided on this front. However, now we know that the F/A-18F Super Hornets of the U.S. Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41), the “Black Aces,” launched 421 missiles and bombs during their time supporting Operation Epic Fury.
This new insight into VFA-41’s role in the conflict with Iran comes from a photo of a large board listing the squadron’s weapons expenditures during Epic Fury, via Jeff Rojas, who goes by the handle @jro_photography on Instagram. Rojas also shared pictures recently taken of VFA-41’s Super Hornets. The Black Aces were one of the squadrons assigned to the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been on a marathon deployment since last year. The carrier only left the Middle East region last month and is now set to formally return home to San Diego, California, within days. Per the Pentagon’s official timeline, Operation Epic Fury began on February 28 and concluded on May 5, though U.S. forces have continued to conduct strikes on Iran, on and off, since then.
The complete tally of munitions employed as shown on the board, broken down by type, from greatest to fewest, is as follows:
The total cost of all of these munitions, using available data from U.S. military budget documents, is very roughly $43,646,000, at least. Unit costs fluctuate regularly due to a variety of factors. Furthermore, the exact price tag for different JDAMs can be somewhat difficult to calculate given how the individual components are budgeted.
The JDAM is really a family of kits that turn standard unguided ‘iron bombs,’ which can vary significantly in the kinds of effects they are designed to produce, into warheads for precision-guided munitions. This is exemplified by the (V)2 and (V)4 subvariants of the GBU-31/B mentioned here, which are built using standard high-explosive and bunker-buster bombs, respectively. No specific subvariants of the GBU-32, GBU-38, or GBU-54 were mentioned in the information provided. Standard JDAMs can also only be employed against static target coordinates. The LJDAM kits add a laser guidance component (akin to what is found on Paveway-series bombs) that enables strikes against moving targets.
No specific version of AGM-154 is mentioned, either, but the C and C-1 types, which have multi-stage bunker-busting warheads, are the only ones understood to be in service today. Remaining A variants, which were loaded with 145 small bomblets, were removed from U.S. service in 2008 as a result of new guidelines on cluster munitions issued under President George W. Bush. A planned AGM-154B, which would have contained six “smart” Sensor Fuzed Munition bomblets, was never produced. You can read more about the full JSOW family here.
— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) March 8, 2026
We do not know exactly what targets any of these munitions were employed against. However, a picture that Jeff Rojas grabbed of one of VFA-41’s Super Hornets, seen toward the top of this story and in part below, shows a very interesting broken submarine kill marking, with the added text “Sub Buster.” The jet also has a number of more typical bomb-shaped kill marks.
Iranian naval vessels, including the country’s Russian-made Kilo class and other submarines, were top priority targets during Epic Fury. The U.S. military has previously confirmed that air-launched AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles (likely fired from MQ-9 Reaper drones) and ground-launched Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles were employed against submarines, specifically.
The video montage in the social media post below includes a clip, starting at 0:13 in the runtime, of a Hellfire missile hitting what looks to be a Ghadir class diesel-electric midget submarine in port.
U.S. forces are degrading the Iranian regime's ability to project power at sea and harass international shipping. For years, Iranian forces have threatened freedom of navigation in waters essential to American, regional and global security and prosperity. pic.twitter.com/gIBN02mowh
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 10, 2026
Bunker-busting JDAMs are also known to have been key munitions employed during strikes on targets in Iran during Epic Fury. TWZ previously called explicit attention to the employment of JSOW in the opening phases of the operation, as well. Navy strike fighter squadrons made significant use of SLAM-ERs in strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen last year, too.
Honest Abe is burning through the JSOWs like crazy. https://t.co/rQMZPBnwAz
— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) March 1, 2026
1/ Aside from the launch of F/A-18E/Fs armed with JSOW C/C-1s, the video also shows F/A-18Es armed with SLAM-ER ATAs parked on the fligh deck. https://t.co/3TC4kKIn17 pic.twitter.com/OqQBbRrYGY
— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) March 16, 2025
It is extremely likely that the AIM-9Xs and AIM-120s were fired at Iranian drones, though they could have been launched at incoming cruise missiles, as well. At the time of writing, there are no known or reported instances of U.S. military jets engaging crewed Iranian aircraft in the course of the conflict to date. In 2024, the Navy carried out a crash program that increased the total number of AIM-9Xs that F/A-18E/Fs could carry per sortie, specifically in response to Houthi drone threats. Super Hornets loaded with nine air-to-air missiles are now referred to as “Murder Hornets.”
Notably absent in VFA-41’s tally is any mention of 70mm laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets. Air-to-air optimized versions of the APKWS II are now part of the arsenal available to U.S. Air Force F-16C Vipers, F-15E Strike Eagles, and A-10 Warthogs, and have become the service’s go-to aerial weapon for engaging drones. In February, the U.S. Marine Corps disclosed that it was working to integrate this capability onto its legacy F/A-18C/D Hornets. Whether the Navy has any such plans for the Super Hornet is unclear.
It is also important to remember that this is a discussion of the munitions expended by just one Navy strike fighter squadron. Lincoln‘s air wing includes four strike squadrons, three with Super Hornets and one with F-35Cs, as well as units flying other types of aircraft and helicopters. The carrier was just one part of a much larger array of air, naval, and ground forces that participated in Operation Epic Fury and subsequent operations against Iran. For additional context, consider that the entire Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, including its entire air wing and escorting ships, fired off 770 munitions in total, by the official count, during very active combat operations in and around the Red Sea between November 2023 and June 2024.
All of this speaks to the larger matter of how many munitions the U.S. military has expended in the course of operations against Iran this year, which is now fueling concerns about the sufficiency of remaining stockpiles and what it will take to replenish them.
As such, the tally of munitions launched from VFA-41 Super Hornets offers a very interesting view into that squadron’s contributions to Operation Epic Fury, as well as the full scale and scope of the conflict with Iran.
Special thanks again to Jeff Rojas for sharing the details about VFA-41’s participation in Operation Epic Fury and his pictures with us.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The post All The Weapons A Single Navy Fighter Squadron Launched During Operation Epic Fury appeared first on TWZ.
Germany is moving ahead with plans to give its unusually large F125 frigates a medium-range air-defense capability, helping address one of the most conspicuous weaknesses of a four-ship class that has long attracted attention for having relatively little combat power for its size.
Diehl Defense and Germany’s Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) have signed a contract to adapt and develop the IRIS-T SLM surface-to-air missile system for operational use aboard the German Navy’s F125 frigates. Under the agreement, Diehl will build prototypes and conduct comprehensive test firings intended to validate the system’s integration and performance within the existing F125 architecture. Each frigate will be fitted with two new launchers, each capable of holding 16 missiles, for a total of 32.
“The aim is to make the system mission-capable on the German Navy’s F125 frigates,” Diehl said in today’s announcement. The company described the prototype construction and test-firing phase as necessary to ensure “the seamless integration and maximum performance” of IRIS-T SLM within the frigate’s existing architecture.
The program has moved notably quickly, reflecting the urgency of the requirement.
Germany began examining the feasibility of integrating IRIS-T SLM with the F125 in 2024, with BAAINBw and Diehl studying the technical risks and requirements of adapting the normally land-based system for shipboard use. That effort led to the development of a navalized demonstrator in 2025. In October of that year, the F125 frigate Baden-Württemberg took part in a German Navy Maritime Firing Exercise off Andøya, Norway, carrying an experimental anti-air warfare module based on IRIS-T SLM. Diehl says the module went from concept to firing in less than 10 months and met all established test and evaluation objectives.
The Bundeswehr subsequently reported that Baden-Württemberg fired three live IRIS-T SLM missiles during the exercise. The ship’s radar supplied target data to the missile system, demonstrating the basic integration between the F125’s sensors and the navalized air defense architecture.
The exercise established that the concept could work at sea; the contract signed now is intended to turn that demonstration into a qualified fleet capability.
The German parliament’s Budget Committee approved the adaptation effort on September 23, with the German Defense Ministry describing it as a means of expanding the F125’s self-defense capabilities in response to the current air threat. The ministry also pointed to IRIS-T SLM’s combat experience in Ukraine.
The effort needs to be seen in the context of why the F125 has been such a controversial warship in the first place.
As TWZ examined in 2017, the F125 is a roughly 7,200-ton, 490-foot warship with an unusually small core crew and a concept of operations centered on long-duration deployments, stabilization missions, crisis management, conflict prevention, and international intervention rather than high-end fleet combat. The class was designed to spend long periods away from Germany and operate with relatively modest manpower requirements.
But its armament does not remotely match the size and sophistication of the hull. As completed, the ships were equipped with eight RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, a 127mm gun, remotely operated guns and, for close-quarters air defense, two RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launchers. The F125 has no medium- or long-range surface-to-air missile capability and no organic sonar or dedicated anti-submarine warfare weapon system.
At the same time, the TRS-4D/NR radar and other sensors can see far beyond the engagement envelope of the close-in air-defense weapons, but there is little the ship itself can do with that information against an aircraft or incoming missile at medium range.
Nearly a decade later, IRIS-T SLM is emerging as an answer to at least part of that problem.
Even with IRIS-T SLM, the F125 is well short of being an air warfare destroyer. It also still lacks an organic anti-submarine warfare capability or the kind of large vertical-launch missile battery found on Germany’s F124 frigates.
However, it does fill a gap between the F125’s original short-range defenses and the capabilities of other ships or aircraft operating around it.
IRIS-T SLM is designed as a medium-range surface-to-air system, with an engagement range of around 25 miles and an altitude envelope of approximately 65,000 feet. As shown in the 2025 demonstration, the F125’s radar can feed information directly into the missile system, exploiting the ship’s existing sensor capabilities.
Rather than rely heavily on escorts for protection against airborne threats outside the short range of RAM, an IRIS-T-equipped F125 could at least contribute to its own medium-range air defense. Recent operations in the Middle East have underscored the importance of this in contested maritime environments.
It also gives the ships a more useful role in a task group. The threat environment has changed substantially since the F125’s original concept was drafted. Cruise missiles, drones, loitering munitions, and increasingly sophisticated aircraft mean that even ships operating away from a major naval war can face threats well beyond the range of their existing close-in defenses.
In November 2024, Germany confirmed that the F125 frigate Baden-Württemberg, returning from an Indo-Pacific deployment, would avoid the Red Sea and sail around Africa because of the Houthi missile and drone threat. The German Defense Ministry explicitly cited the ship’s limited air defense capability and its inability to provide an effective air-defense umbrella for itself or its accompanying replenishment ship.
Ironically, the F125’s large hull, extensive electrical power, sophisticated radar, substantial aviation facilities, long endurance and relatively spacious mission areas were always supposed to provide room for a flexible approach to future missions. Yet the class’s original weight and integration constraints made adding major weapons difficult, a concern TWZ also highlighted in 2017.
IRIS-T SLM offers Germany a way to add a meaningful capability without undertaking the much more invasive redesign associated with installing a conventional vertical-launch system. The 2025 demonstration used an AAW module mounted on the ship’s deck rather than a conventional VLS installation, and today’s program is focused on adapting the system to the F125 architecture.
Once IRIS-T SLM is installed, the F125 will still be an unusual frigate. It is enormous by the standards of its mission, optimized for endurance, and lacks some of the weapons traditionally associated with a high-end surface combatant. But it will bring more to a contested fight.
The program should give the class a credible medium-range air-defense role, and provide Germany with a way to get considerably more utility out of four ships whose original design philosophy was always somewhat controversial.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com
The post Germany Is Finally Giving Its F125 Frigates Some More Teeth With IRIS-T SLM Surface-To-Air Missiles appeared first on TWZ.
War is highly probable, but it is not inevitable.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
We are living in an extremely dangerous moment in history. We are also living in an extremely irrational time, at least when it comes to evaluating the mentality, conduct, and words of Western politicians and media in the face of disaster.
On the one hand, Western leaders, pundits, and military commanders clamor with predictions of war with Russia as being imminent. Yet on the other hand, there is an astounding dereliction to avert it. Diplomacy and understanding are boorishly shunned. Indeed, there is an absolutely irrational choice of escalation towards war, especially among European politicians.
Underlying this, of course, is an ideological supremacist belief, a contempt for Russia and other officially designated enemies (China, Iran, and so on), whereby the Western political class sees itself as superior, not as equals. That mentality makes for war and precludes diplomatic engagement and dialogue.
In any objective reading of the situation, there is little doubt that the danger of all-out world war is upon us. Incredibly, for the third time in just over a century, the planet is facing the specter of a massive international conflict. But on this occasion, the outcome would be nuclear conflagration with the extinction of life as we know it. This repeated destruction is a damning indictment of the Western system, its capitalist and imperialist engines for violence, domination and, inevitably, conflict. Surely, such a system should be abolished.
The Doomsday Clock, overseen by the independent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, is at its closest point to midnight in all of 80 years of existence. The clock was inaugurated following the U.S. atomic horror attacks on Japan in 1945. It was meant to serve as a warning of the increasing risk of nuclear war. It is truly a frightening spectacle that today’s danger of global disaster surpasses the many perils that were encountered during the Cold War decades. Today’s tensions surpass even those of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States and the Soviet Union edged towards a nuclear war.
Many Western scholars, legal experts, analysts, and seasoned diplomats have increasingly added their voices warning of the ultimate disaster. We pay respect to the sane voices of people like Alfred de Zayas, Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Johnson, and Scott Ritter, voices in the West that, unlike their political class, are passionately warning of the path to perdition the world is on and needs to urgently get off.
The warning words are flashing like a red light, yet Western leaders keep making decisions and issuing belligerent statements that are driving the world to the precipice.
This week, European politicians have again openly advocated attacking the Russian Federation by blockading Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and NATO chief Mark Rutte (former Dutch premier) have echoed calls from other European politicians to effectively attack Kaliningrad, that is, to attack the Russian Federation. Russia’s nuclear doctrine explicitly states that such an assault compels it to use nuclear weapons in response.
So, why do NATO leaders keep pushing provocation? Such moves are merely an extension of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Their war is a failure. But the Western pro-war politicians cannot admit they are wrong. They are willing to incite a wider war rather than admit defeat and face the political repercussions from their own citizens.
Russia this week issued a grave warning, saying that any attack on Kaliningrad would result in Russian retaliation with nuclear weapons.
Instead of coming to their senses and sobering up, European politicians haughtily dismiss Russia’s warnings as a “bluff” or accuse Moscow of nuclear saber-rattling.
In a plenary address to the Valdai forum in Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin underlined the infernal precariousness.
“If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation – in this case, Kaliningrad, although it could potentially involve other territories as well – the question of Russia using all the weapons at its disposal would inevitably and immediately arise. That is inevitable,” said Putin.
In an ominous assessment of the reckless direction, he noted:
“We must realise that the moment when nothing can be changed any longer may come very quickly and unexpectedly for everyone. The logic of escalating, increasingly harsh retaliatory measures leads to a fatal point of no return.”
The Russian leader is saying that the West’s relentless escalation in words and deeds is leading to an abyss. Incredibly, the Western politicians refuse to restrain themselves. “At the heart of this escalation lie arrogance and overconfidence… The spiral is tightening, and the devastating consequences are growing.”
This appalling dynamic is redolent of the prelude to the First and Second World Wars, when Western political establishments were insouciant about the impending doom.
But a Third World War is truly a point of no return.
“All the more so today, when the arsenals of the world’s leading powers contain weapons capable of destroying all life or, at the very least, reducing the Earth to a catastrophic state,” Putin said.
What is deplorable is the total propagandizing of public discussion in the West. Anyone who dares to speak about the objective historical causes that have given rise to the current tensions is censored or pilloried as a Russian stooge.
There are eminent voices of sanity in the West, as noted above. But they are systematically excluded from public discourse by the mainstream media and academia. The public has to rely on alternative media sources for information. That has, thankfully, energized critical views among citizens in ever greater numbers, who are questioning the whole warmongering policy of inordinate military spending and weapons for Ukraine to fight a futile war against Russia. Notably, this week German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO’s Mark Rutte were heckled and booed when they appeared in public in Muenster, Germany.
Increasing numbers of people understand that we have been pushed to an existential crisis by Western governments (regimes) who took undemocratic, secret decisions to wage war against Russia years ago.
As former British diplomat Ian Proud pointed out in an excellent podcast this week while attending the Sochi forum, the rulers in London made a conscious decision to go to war with Russia as far back as 2014, when the West sponsored the fascist coup in Kiev.
Other Western figures, like former U.S. state planner Victoria Nuland and former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, have also admitted in their own words that NATO deliberately weaponized Ukraine after 2014 for the purpose of confronting Russia. This was before the hostilities erupted in Ukraine in February 2o22.
Thus, the world has been pushed to a nuclear “extinction event” all because of Western policy to pursue confrontation with Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy.
War is highly probable, but it is not inevitable. Western politicians and media, through their arrogance and Russophobia, are certainly doing their worst to make it inevitable. But these criminal elements may not prevail.
There are international structures and laws; there is still diplomacy, albeit abused and trashed; perhaps more importantly, there is mass public opinion against the odious warmongers; and there is a burgeoning social and political uprising against the evidently bankrupt Western political system.
The political elite in the West who are pimping for war may seem dominant, owing to apparently dominant media narratives. But their power is vastly overrated against the huge public opposition to their criminal agenda.
History may rhyme, as with lead-ups to previous infamous wars. This time, however, a crucial difference is that there may be sufficient public awareness so as not to fall for the warmonger ruse of bailing out the rotten system.
We are on the eve of destruction, but there is every sound hope that rather than war, the destruction tomorrow could be that of the Western imperialist system, thereby giving way to a truly better, more just and peaceful world.
Ferries remain docked at several ports in Greece on Friday, October 2, due to gale-force winds reaching 9 and up to 10 Beaufort locally in the Aegean Sea. A sailing ban was imposed at the ports of Rafina and Lavrio in south-eastern Attica on Friday morning, while sailings from the port of Piraeus were also […]
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On a hazy, humid Sunday morning, just before 9:30 a.m. local time, the USS Theodore Roosevelt sailed out of San Diego Bay for a much-anticipated but little-advertised deployment. The Nimitz class flagship of Carrier Strike Group 9 (CSG-9), nicknamed “The Big Stick,” departed on September 27 and is expected to head to the Middle East to relieve one of the two carriers on station supporting operations against Iran, according to USNI News. As is common with deployments from the West Coast, the departure was not announced by the Navy publicly, although there were several unconfirmed claims on social media that highlighted the impending cruise.
The three-ship Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), packed with thousands of Marines who specialize in expeditionary operations, followed Roosevelt’s path out of the harbor the next day. While the Makin Island ARGs ultimate destination is unclear, the Boxer ARG, currently operating in the Middle East, left the United States on March 18 and is due for relief.
Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed CSGs and ARGs, using publicly available open-source information. Check out last week’s report here.
USS Theodore Roosevelt keyed her Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder on at 9:10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on September 27, broadcasting her precise position publicly via MarineTraffic, and got underway less than 20 minutes later with the help of a few tugs. The supercarrier steamed past Point Loma at seven knots before sailing west and picking up speed, topping 24 knots, then made a hard turn south and stopped transmitting on AIS roughly three hours after departing. She briefly flipped AIS back on again, 55 nautical miles southwest of her previous location, but has been dark since.
Three guided-missile destroyers, USS Paul Hamilton, USS Decatur, and USS Carl M. Levin, are part of CSG-9 and will escort the flattop, a Navy official confirmed to TWZ. Rounding out the five-ship CSG is Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser USS Chosin, which will serve as the Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) commander for the CSG. The IAMD warfare commander is responsible for coordinating air defense for the entire strike group − a vital role since Roosevelt will be entering an active combat zone. Tico cruisers have 122 Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells, more than the 90 to 96 that Arleigh Burke destroyers are equipped with, and are being retired without a comparable cruiser lined up to replace the aging fleet; however, the newest Flight III Burke destroyers will take on the air warfare commander role.
The carrier has embarked, or is in the process of taking on, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 11 off the West Coast before beginning the long journey toward the Western Pacific. CVW 11 includes a squadron of stealthy fifth-generation F-35C Lightning IIs, in addition to three squadrons of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and one of EA-18G Growlers. Support squadrons of E-2D Hawkeyes, MH-60R Seahawks, and MH-60S Seahawks are also aboard, as well as a detachment of CMV-22B Ospreys.
USNI News was the first outlet to confirm the deployment and suggests the CSG is headed to the Middle East. “The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group is expected to move to U.S. Central Command to relieve the Japan-based USS George Washington (CVN-73),” they wrote in a report published on Monday.
In response to a request to confirm the deployment, the same Navy official told us: “The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group is underway conducting routine operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations. U.S. 3rd Fleet leads naval forces in the region and provides the realistic, relevant training necessary to execute our Navy’s role across the full spectrum of military operations – from combat operations to humanitarian assistance and disaster response. U.S. 3rd Fleet works together with allies and partners to advance freedom of navigation and overflight, the rule of law, and other principles that underpin security for the region.”
The underway was live-streamed on San Diego Web Cam, which had a few hundred viewers at the peak. TWZ was monitoring the feed at the time after rumors surfaced that a departure was imminent. Notably, Sailors were not spotted manning the rails, which is usually an easy tell that a warship is deploying rather than training. However, several public posts on social media by individual Sailors, as well as their friends and family, pointed to the ship heading on its long-awaited cruise.
Roosevelt has been preparing for the cruise for the better part of a year. The CSG last deployed from January 11 to October 15, 2024, to the U.S. 5th and 7th Fleet areas of responsibility (AOR) in support of Operation Prosperity Guardian. After arriving back home nearly two years ago, the carrier underwent an eight-month Planned Incremental Availability (PIA). Following the PIA, she completed flight deck certification and carrier qualifications from July 23 to July 29, 2025. In 2026, the carrier conducted Composite Unit Training Exercise (COMPTUEX) from April 14 to May 15, and then steamed to Hawaii for the large-scale, biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise from June 24 to July 28. Most recently, Roosevelt completed a brief pierside availability prior to deploying, as TWZ first reported.
In February, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane told reporters at WEST 2026 that a medium unmanned surface vessel (MUSV) would deploy with the strike group for the first time. During COMPTUEX and RIMPAC, the Roosevelt CSG drilled alongside Leidos’ MUSV Seahawk, which TWZ was the first to report. We asked the Navy to confirm whether an MUSV would accompany the group, but have not received a response. As of publication, Seahawk was still pierside in San Diego, and it’s unclear if the drone boat will operate with the CSG or remain in San Diego.
The three-ship Makin Island ARG, with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) embarked, got underway for a deployment on September 28, a Navy official also confirmed to USNI News. In addition to the flagship Wasp class amphibious assault ship (LHD), USS Makin Island, two San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ships (LPD), USS John P. Murtha and USS Anchorage, left on the same day and round out the expeditionary group.
No destination has been formally announced. However, there is an obvious candidate for relief: the Boxer ARG. Currently on station in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) AOR supporting blockade and interdiction operations in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, the group has been deployed since mid-March. The amphibious fleet is notorious for experiencing maintenance issues, and these ships have been pushed hard without a port call in months. Amphibious ships move slower than carriers, and if CENTCOM turns out to be the final destination, the Makin Island ARG would have to hustle to arrive before November.
Makin Island embarks short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B Lightning IIs, assigned to the “Wake Island Avengers” of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211, and MV-22B Ospreys with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 364 (Reinforced). The Bravos recently conducted a simulated airstrike off the coast of California.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao flew out to the flight deck of USS Abraham Lincoln as she was sailing eastbound in the Hawaiian Islands operating area, en route to her homeport in San Diego. “Today, our warfighters aboard USS Abraham Lincoln demonstrated the overwhelming capacity and capability that they brought to bear on our adversaries for the last 10 months,” he wrote in a post on Sunday.
USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., a destroyer that escorted Lincoln throughout the 10-month deployment, peeled off and moored at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Monday. “Over the course of 300 days, Frank E. Petersen Jr.’s crew conducted 45 replenishments-at-sea, sailed over 85,000 nautical miles, safely transferred over 7,544,486 gallons of F-76 fuel and 175,288 gallons of JP-5 fuel, and completed 1,094 hours of flight quarters,” according to a press release. The statement also confirmed that the warship served as IAMD commander for the group. The destroyer defended against more than 100 missile and drone attacks, Stars and Stripes recently reported.
Petersen Jr. and USS Michael Murphy became the first U.S. warships to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began when they entered the Persian Gulf in April in support of mine-clearance efforts.
Lincoln is now 314 days into her deployment and less than two weeks shy of surpassing the 326-day record USS Gerald R. Ford set in May. Approximately 2,000 nautical miles separate Hawaii from Naval Air Station North Island, but assuming a straight shot, it does not appear Lincoln will break the record.
Two crew members from an EA-18G Growler embarked on the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) were rescued after ejecting due to an arresting gear failure, the Navy announced in a statement. The incident took place on Monday around 6:18 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time as the vessel was underway off the coast of Virginia.
The aviators, assigned to the “Zappers” of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 130 and attached to CVW 3, “safely returned to the ship and are being evaluated by medical personnel,” according to the release. The “Dusty Dogs” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 7 recovered the crew using MH-60S Seahawk helos.
Four shipboard personnel “were also injured during the mishap and are receiving medical care,” the Navy said. “One Sailor is being transported to a Norfolk-area hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries,” according to the original statement. In total, eight sailors were evaluated by the ship’s medical team.
The cause of the accident is still under investigation, and it’s unclear whether the aircraft was lost or if there was any damage to the carrier. TWZ has reached out to the Navy to find out more details.
Eisenhower wrapped an extended 15-month PIA earlier this year in April. The flattop had been pierside at Naval Station Norfolk since September 2 after being at sea for 12 days completing Fleet Replacement Squadron and Training Command Carrier Qualifications (CQ) in the Virginia Capes and Jacksonville operating areas. She got underway again on the afternoon of September 28, based on public AIS data, for Tailored Ship’s Training Availability, Final Evaluation Problem, and CQ, one of the final steps before onloading ammunition for COMPTUEX, where the full strike group certifies for deployment.
Ike is working up in preparation for a future deployment scheduled for the first half of 2027, TWZ previously reported.
Multiple news outlets in Thailand reported Tuesday that USS George H.W. Bush and destroyer USS Delbert D. Black, which have both been in the Middle East in support of operations against Iran, will make a port call in Phuket in early October. If such a transit occurs, this would leave one carrier, the USS George Washington, on station in the U.S. 5th Fleet AOR for the first time since April. The Navy has not formally made an announcement, and TWZ has not verified the accounts.
The reports are based on a meeting that representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Thailand allegedly held with the Patong police to discuss security protocols during the stop. “The visit has prompted coordination between Thai authorities and US officials over security, public order, and the movement of visiting military personnel during shore leave,” Phuket News wrote. According to the article, Patong police met with two deputy assistant defense attachés, Lou Pham and Robert Robinson, to discuss the visit. U.S. personnel were advised to comply with Thai laws during their stay, a specific request that may have been triggered by the recent visit of Lincoln.
There are conflicting accounts of when Bush would arrive in Phuket’s deep-sea port, but the visit will likely last five or six days, which is similar to Lincoln’s recent port call in the Southeast Asian country. If the timeline holds, it means Bush is likely already en route from her station in the Arabian Sea, where the CSG was most recently operating as of September 25, according to DVIDS. The Bangkok Post and Thai Examiner also reported the upcoming visit.
Notably, the reports do not mention any of the other warships that have been part of the Bush CSG in the past, including USS Donald Cook, USS Ross, USS Mason, or USS Princeton. The composition of the Bush CSG has shifted throughout the cruise.
Overall, four U.S. carriers are deployed (with one heading home), three are working up in various states of readiness, three are in current or upcoming maintenance, one is being used primarily for training before deactivation next year, and the future USS John F. Kennedy, the second Ford class carrier, has received preliminary acceptance ahead of delivery in spring 2027. Two amphibious ready groups are deployed, one is forward-deployed, three are working up or in port, and three are in maintenance.
Note: Positions are general approximations. Non-deployed LHA/LHD amphibious warships are not shown.
Contact the author: ian@twz.com or @ianellisjones
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The Houthi takeover of parts of the Red Sea gives the armed group a new platform to challenge global shipping. The group has taken over the port of Mocha, the island of Mayyun, and the Zuqar and Hanish archipelago about 160km north of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. These areas were previously controlled by Yemeni government […]
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The Navy has announced plans to buy 30 new drone boats, 10 from each of three companies, under its Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) program. The deals are an important step forward for the Navy’s latest attempt to field larger USVs after years of setbacks and shakeups, but it remains to be seen when these new capabilities might actually become operational.
Galliano Marine Services, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), and Saronic Technologies each received so-called Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements in relation to the MUSV program today. OTA is a contracting mechanism designed to support rapid prototyping and other research and development work without having to use more traditional and often lengthy processes.
The awards “mark a significant step forward in translating the strategic vision into a tangible fleet capability,” Chris Miller, the Navy’s Acting Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (DRPM RAS), told TWZ and others at a media roundtable earlier today. “Each agreement is for the procurement of 10 MUSV at an average procurement cost of $40 million per vessel.”
Saronic and HII submitted their Marauder and Romulus designs, respectively, to the MUSV Phase I competition. Galliano Marine Services, which does business as Edison Chouest, does not appear to have announced its entrant publicly. At a unit cost of $40 million, the total price tag for 30 MUSVs, regardless of type, would be $1.2 billion.
“Production will begin immediately at shipyards in Loreauville, Houma, and Franklin, Louisiana, with deliveries starting as early as the fourth quarter of [Fiscal Year] 2027,” Miller added.
To take a step back quickly, the Navy has used a variety of definitions for what qualifies as a “medium” USV over the years. It’s also important to note that the Navy already fields several speedboat and jet ski-type USVs operationally that are capable of performing various different missions, including employment as one-way attack munitions.
Threshold MUSV program requirements the service put out in March included a range of at least “2500 nm [nautical miles] at 25 knots while carrying a 25 MT [metric ton] load on the payload deck in NATO STANAG 4194 Sea State 4.” Sea State 4 is characterized by wind speeds of 17 to 21 knots and wave heights between four and eight feet, per that NATO standard. The MUSVs also had to be able to carry forty-foot equivalent units (FEU) containerized payloads and refuel at sea at a rate of “2,000 gallons per minute of fuel through deck connections.” Various other operational and sustainment requirements were laid out at that time, as you can read more about here.
The OTAs announced today were awarded “following successful at sea testing” under Phase I of the MUSV program, according to a press release the Navy put out today. A total of seven companies competed in this initial phase, with the others being Birdon, Leidos, PacMar Technologies, and Sea Machines. That work was conducted under an earlier round of OTAs.
“The testing evaluated, among other things, the vessel’s ability to see and understand the surrounding maritime environment, how well the vessels navigated autonomously according to the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea, and the vessel’s ability to conduct a long-duration mission,” the Navy’s Miller said at the roundtable earlier today. “The demonstrations had to prove that the designs were mature enough to meet the Navy’s operational standards and our requirements.”
In terms of the long-duration mission requirements, “the test was that they had to be able to execute [over] roughly 26 hours and over 360 nautical miles with only a single input during that time from a C2 [command and control] station allowed,” Milleter further explained. “So, it basically demonstrated that the vessel could run for an excess of 24 hours at an extended range with very minimal input from the actual operator from a C2 station. This provided basically our input and our ability to assess how truly autonomous the functionality was of the platforms.”
Overall, the OTA awards “were based on the optimal mix of autonomy, performance, design, production schedule, and cost,” he added.
The MUSV Phase II contracting notice outlines additional parameters, including that submitted designs cannot be more than 295 feet (90 meters) long or displace more than 5,000 metric tons. The USVs also have to be able to accommodate “at least 2x Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) [containerized payloads] weighing 24,000 kg each and consuming 25 kW each” and be “capable of executing multi-day unmanned operations of at least 10 days.” The drone boats need to be “operable in NATO STANAG 4194 Sea State 4 and survivable in Sea State 6,” as well. The full lists of threshold requirements and desired attributes are reproduced below.
In addition, “to be considered for this Call for Solutions, the proposed MUSV must be ready for operational demonstration at the time of solution submission,” according to the Phase II contracting notice. “An MUSV requiring substantial modifications for the production platform compared to the as-demonstrated platform will not be considered.”
“The Phase II solicitation allows entrants to compete and existing vendors to submit updated product blocks and modular payload configurations,” Miller, the Acting DRPM RAS, said today. “Testing evaluations will begin as early as November 16th, and proposals will be assessed on a continually rolling basis over the next five years.”
Miller also drew attention to the elimination of the speed and at-sea refueling targets previously outlined in Phase I.
“What we learned from Phase I is that as you increase the speed requirements and some of these other things, it does present certain challenges for industry,” according to Miller. “So I’m trying to actually find the sweet spot in the market where there is healthy competition, and there’s opportunities, and we can have more things that potentially are dual use, both military and civilian.”
So far, the Navy has only offered limited insights into exactly what specific mission sets it wants the MUSVs to perform, even initially.
The “MUSV Phase I requirements were closely tailored to fulfill operational requirements for a specific mission set focused on demonstrated ability to carry containerized payloads while meeting specific vessel performance requirements for speed and range,” Miller said during today’s roundtable. “However, there is an ever-increasing demand signal that we must be ready to meet. To ensure scalability across the broader mission sets and to support our joint force, we issued a formal call for solutions for MUSV Phase II integration and testing.”
He also stressed that the modularity of the designs being acquired now would allow for the continued evolution of their capabilities as time goes on.
With the focus on containerized payloads, “honestly, inside you could have a sensor, you could have repair equipment for ships,” Rebecca Gassler, who was the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (PAE RAS) until August, also told TWZ and other outlets back in March. “You could have any number of payloads inside those, and you basically are able to just swap them on.”
In announcing the new OTAs today, as well as discussing the Phase II MUSV plans, the Navy also highlighted continued opportunities for the other companies that had been involved in Phase I.
“Leidos, PAC MAR, and Sea Machines were determined to complete the project provided for in their prototype other transaction agreement and will receive a $15 million award as part of the previously established terms of the prototype OTs,” the Navy’s MUSV announcement today adds. “Alongside the OT awardees, will be accepted onto the Drones.mil hosted Maritime Marketplace, where they are now eligible to receive follow-on production agreements from authorized acquisition authorities across the DOW [Department of War].”
Birdon did not complete the required testing. Based on the terms of the Phase I OTAs, Galliano, HII, and Saronic will also receive $15 million awards and be included in the marketplace. The aforementioned Phase II CFS is intended “to expand its acquisition pipeline through a Maritime Marketplace to broaden offerings and satisfy future MUSV mission sets,” as well, per the Navy.
The Navy stressed the importance of this open-ended “marketplace” model as a way to accelerate the acquisition process when it first outlined the MUSV program to the public back in March, as you can read more about here. Just last week, the service also established a new Robotic and Autonomous Systems Warfighting Development Center (RASWDC) to serve as a focal point for “the development, operational integration, and employment of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) across the maritime domain,” to include the MUSV effort.
The Drones.mil marketplace also extends to all branches of the U.S. military and beyond just USVs. Miller today did highlight the potential for possible cooperation with other services on drone boat efforts through this framework. He also said the Navy might be willing to consider additional acquisition strategies, including leasing uncrewed platforms, in the future.
Larger USVs have long been seen as key to bolstering the U.S. Navy’s overall operational capacity above the waves, and doing so in a cost-effective and rapidly producible manner. They are also viewed as central to enabling new, more distributed concepts of operations designed to help expand operational coverage and reduce the vulnerability of crewed ships, especially in any future high-end fight in the Pacific with China.
“Unmanned technology is redefining operations and providing our combatant commanders with unprecedented scale, persistence, and risk tolerance,” the Navy’s Miller said at the roundtable.
At the same time, as mentioned, the Navy has attempted to acquire operational fleets of larger drone boats in the past without success. Today, the service’s capabilities in this regard remain limited to a pocket force of still largely experimental optionally-crewed designs.
Since the Navy first unveiled it in March, MUSV has already faced certain hurdles. This includes a major leadership shakeup in August that saw PAE RAS Rebecca Gassler, the first person to ever hold that post, removed from her post after just eight months for reasons that are still not immediately clear.
In July, it also emerged that Blue Water Autonomy and Saildrone had filed suit against the Navy over being left out of Phase I of the MUSV competition. The companies alleged that the service did not follow its own selection criteria. That lawsuit is still ongoing. Blue Water Autonomy, among others, had also previously made investments in response to requirements the Navy had laid out for a previous effort called the Modular Surface Attack Craft (MASC) last year. The MUSV program has now fully supplanted MASC.
In speaking at the roundtable today, Miller acknowledged potential budget limitations and other hurdles that could still impact MUSV going forward. “I’m trying to be prepared depending on where that demand goes,” he said.
As said at the start, today’s MUSV announcement is an important new step forward for the Navy’s efforts to acquire fleets of larger USVs, but the service still has to transition these efforts into operational realities.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
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The Navy has identified the aircraft type at the center of last night’s mishap aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The service said the incident involved the crew of an EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jet who were forced to eject after the aircraft experienced an arresting gear failure while trying to land. This took place about 6:18 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Monday as the vessel was off the coast of Virginia.
The Growler crew, attached to the “Zappers” of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 130, was “promptly recovered by search-and-rescue personnel assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 7. Both aviators were safely returned to the ship,” the Navy added. The cause of the mishap is still being investigated.
The two aviators and two additional sailors injured on the flight deck were flown to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth for follow-on evaluation, the Navy explained. Another sailor was flown to a Norfolk-area hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. All told, eight sailors had to be evaluated by the ship’s medical personnel following the incident.
Air traffic control audio has emerged indicating that the injured sailor flown to the area hospital was transported to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
DSTY613 (MH-60S) brought the injured into Sentara Norfolk General Hospital last night.
— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) September 29, 2026
Audio via @liveatc and tracking via @ADSBex https://t.co/V1o0nyB70R pic.twitter.com/hmNLb0fcQN
It is unclear at the moment whether the aircraft was lost or if there was any damage to the carrier itself. We have reached out to the Navy to find out more details.
The failure of an arresting wire is one of the worst nightmares carrier-based fixed-wing naval aircrews and sailors on deck can face. The wire turns into a falling steel whip that can cut a person in half as it slices through the air across the flight deck, and usually, the aircraft it broke away from, ends up in the sea as it doesn’t have enough airspeed or time to get airborne again. You can read more about this type of mishap in our past reporting here.
The mishap took place as Eisenhower was working up in preparation for a future deployment scheduled for 2027, which TWZ previously reported. This followed an extended 16-month Planned Incremental Availability (PIA) that wrapped in April. The carrier had been pierside at Naval Station Norfolk since Sept. 2 after completing a 12-day underway for Fleet Replenishment Squadron and Training Command Carrier Qualifications in the Virginia Capes and Jacksonville Operating Areas.
Eisenhower got underway again on the afternoon of Sept. 28, according to ship spotters, for a Tailored Ship’s Training Availability and Final Evaluation Problem. That’s one of the final steps before onloading ammunition for the Composite Unit Training Exercise, when the full strike group gathers to complete pre-deployment training.
Contact the author: howard@twz.com
The post Navy Identifies EA-18G Growler As Type Involved In Mishap Aboard USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Last Night appeared first on TWZ.
The U.S. Navy’s schedule for getting USS Connecticut, one of its prized Seawolf class nuclear attack submarines, back into service has slipped into next summer. The boat suffered severe damage, especially to its bow, in a collision with an underwater seamount in the South China Sea in 2021. The service had previously hoped that repairs would be finished before the end of this year, and planning is also now underway for the submarine’s retirement in 2031. This would mean it could serve for just four years before being pulled from service once and for all.
“USS Connecticut (SSN 22) is currently undergoing a complex Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability (EDSRA) at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility. Current work consists of structural and systems restoration and required lifecycle maintenance,” a Navy official told TWZ today. “The Navy’s target completion date for the availability is the summer of 2027. PSNS & IMF is dedicated to executing this work with the highest standards of safety, technical accuracy, and craftsmanship to ensure the ship returns to the fleet ready to take its place at the tip of the spear in defense of our nation’s interests.”
USS Connecticut is the second of just three Seawolf class submarines commissioned between 1997 and 2005, the others being USS Seawolf and USS Jimmy Carter. The Jimmy Carter, which came last, is a one-of-a-kind subvariant of the design that is optimized for underwater espionage missions. However, the Seawolf and Connecticut also feature advanced capabilities compared to other submarines in the Navy’s inventory today, and the service utilizes all three for a variety of specialized tasks, for which they are in very high demand.
After USS Connecticut hit the seamount in October 2021, the submarine first limped to Guam, and then made its way to San Diego in southern California. From there, it headed north to the Puget Sound area, where it has been ever since. The Navy’s investigation into the incident put heavy emphasis on how a weak command environment and lax attitudes toward the performance of key tasks had put the submarine on a path to the accident, as you can read more about in detail here.
The EDSRA formally began in February 2023. At that time, the Navy projected that the repairs would be completed in September 2025. By July 2023, the schedule had already shifted to early 2026, according to Naval News. In July 2025, the service confirmed to TWZ that the timeline had moved again to the right, to late 2026.
The exact reasons for the delays are unclear. TWZ has stressed the particular complexities of major repairs to any of the Navy’s trio of Seawolf class submarines in our past reporting on Connecticut. As we wrote in 2023 around the start of the EDSRA:
“As for the USS Connecticut, as the images show, her state remains relatively the same, at least in terms of what is visible, compared to when she arrived over a year and a half ago. Her sonar dome is still missing and, clearly, the boat has been idle for some time, with huge sections of its anechoic coating missing from its sail.”
“Major repairs to the submarine’s bow, sonar, and other underside structure components will be challenging as the Seawolf class is long out of production. On top of that, just three boats were ever built, with one being a heavily modified sub-type in its own right, the highly secretive USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23). In the past, similar damage has been fixed by leveraging spare parts and entire sections of decommissioned submarines of the same class. That simply is not an option in this case.”
The Navy’s 2025 Fiscal Year budget proposal highlighted exactly these broader issues in seeking funds for spare bow domes “for use in the event replacement is required,” separate from the incident with the USS Connecticut. The original sustainment strategy for the Seawolf class did not include these items, which have a “three plus year lead time” to produce.
With the EDRSA, the Navy is also taking the opportunity to conduct a deep overhaul of USS Connecticut, which could include the integration of various upgrades. The Navy’s budget documents have long highlighted efforts to modernize key systems on all three Seawolf class submarines, some of which were first designed in the 1970s.
How much the repairs and accompanying overhaul will cost is also not clear. In 2021, Congress approved $40 million for “emergency repairs” for Connecticut and an additional $10 million for a new bow dome, but the full price tag is expected to be far steeper. The Seawolf class submarines were extremely expensive to procure in the first place, costing approximately $3.1 billion apiece in 1983, or some $10.6 billion in 2026 dollars. This was due in large part to the truncated order, from 29 down to three, as a result of post-Cold War drawdowns.
Depending on when repairs to the USS Connecticut are actually finished, the Navy could find itself for at least a time with just one Seawolf class submarine in active service. USS Seawolf is currently scheduled to start a routine maintenance availability next May, which will then run through February 2030, per Navy budget documents. As mentioned, the Navy is now also planning to inactivate USS Connecticut in 2031, making it the first Seawolf class submarine to be retired, per its most recent annual shipbuilding plan.
The service still has plans to acquire a new class of attack submarines, which has been discussed in the past as something closer to a true successor to the Seawolf class than the Virginia class boats being procured now. However, these new submarines, currently referred to as SSN(X), are not expected to arrive until the mid-2040s at the earliest. Between now and then, the Navy is set to acquire a one-of-a-kind seabed warfare version of the Virginia, which could well take over for the USS Jimmy Carter, as you can read more about here. In August, the service announced that stretched Block IV and V Virginia class submarines with Virginia Payload Modules (VPM) will now be categorized as guided-missile types (SSGN), as well.
When it comes to USS Connecticut, the Navy remains committed to getting the highly capable submarine back to the fleet after being sidelined for nearly five years now. At the same time, the boat has now already entered the twilight of its career, with just four years of active service life left if the current repair schedule holds.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The post Heavily Damaged Submarine USS Connecticut Now Won’t Return To Service Until 2027 appeared first on TWZ.
On Sunday, NBC News reported that Marines were injured during an Iranian cruise missile attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Sept. 14. The network’s sources said the Marines were not on a U.S. Navy ship, but they did not identify which vessel they were on. However, a former Royal Mail vessel that at one point was being converted into a floating armory stands out as a strong possibility.
While much remains unclear about the Sept. 14 incident, there was only one vessel known to have been struck that day, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) and a maritime security official we spoke with. The ship was eventually identified by several maritime media outlets as the M/V St. Helena. Again, the St. Helena’s involvement remains unconfirmed, but the ship’s interesting background is of particular note.
“Eight U.S. Marines were injured two weeks ago when an Iranian cruise missile attacked the ship they were operating on in the Strait of Hormuz,” NBC reported, citing three U.S. officials. “The Marines were not seriously injured, but they sustained smoke inhalation and possibly traumatic brain injuries, as they had symptoms of concussions, such as headaches, the officials said.”
“The Marines, seven of them enlisted and one officer, all returned to duty soon after the Sept. 14 attack, the U.S. officials said,” according to the network. “The officials said the Marines were operating as part of a battalion landing team during the Iranian anti-ship cruise missile attack.”
TWZ cannot independently confirm that Marines were on board the St. Helena or that they were injured. We reached out to the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) for more information. The Pentagon referred us to CENTCOM, and CENTCOM declined comment.
The incident took place amid an uneasy truce between Iran and the U.S. broken up by sporadic Iranian attacks on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, the U.S. military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ships, during which it has struck several for trying to bypass that effort as well as in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping. Negotiations between Washington and Iran have ebbed and flowed, and U.S. President Donald Trump is once again mulling a choice between continuing talks or renewing large-scale attacks.
As we noted earlier in this piece, after the vessel was struck, several maritime industry trade publications identified it as the St. Helena.
“Iran has attacked a historic former British Royal Mail passenger ship in the Strait of Hormuz,” TradeWinds News reported on Sept. 15, a day after the incident. “Maritime security sources identify the 6,800-gt St Helena (built 1989) as the latest vessel to be hit by an ‘unknown projectile’ in the war-torn waterway. The attack was reported late on Monday, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations, which cited a ‘verified source’ for the incident without identifying the vessel.”
“UKMTO has received a time late report of an incident within the Strait of Hormuz,” the organization reported on Sept. 15, citing an incident that took place a day earlier. “A verified source has reported that a vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile.”
“There is no reported damage or environmental impact,” UKMTO added. “Authorities are investigating.”
UKMTO WARNING 135-26
— UKMTO Operations Centre (@UK_MTO) September 15, 2026
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According to Lloyd’s List, the ship was being operated by the Ambrey maritime security firm at the time it was struck. Ambrey declined to comment.
Shipping expert Sal Mercogliano and open-source investigator Tom Bike were among those suggesting the St. Helena could have been the vessel at the heart of the NBC report.
So piecing together the evidence it appears that the US may have converted St Helena into a armed merchant cruiser.
— Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping)
The Marines looked at putting Armed Guards on board commercial ships three years ago as reported by @USNINews.
Add modular/containerized weapon systems,… https://t.co/48lJ1BDMfs
Exactly what the St. Helena was doing at the time it was struck is unclear; however, the ship has had a very unusual past.
The vessel entered into service in 1990 and “sailed between Cape Town, South Africa and Saint Helena and Ascension Islands, carrying both passengers and cargo, some of which was Royal Mail, earning her the rare RMS designation,” according to Cruise Arabia and Africa.
The St. Helena was Britain’s last working postal ship, according to Maritime Executive. After it was retired in 2018 because it was no longer needed for that function, things got really interesting.
Two different organizations took over the vessel, including, as we noted earlier in this story, a company that was planning to use it as a floating armory in the Middle East.
“Renamed MNG Tahiti, the 103-meter (340-foot) ship is being readied by her new owner MNG Maritime to become a floating armory working in the Gulf of Oman,” Maritime Executive wrote on April 22, 2018. “She will deliver security guards and weapons to vessels sailing through the region and is expected to be operational in her new role in the next few months.”
It is unclear what happened to that plan. However, two years later, an off-road racing series called Extreme E said that it “secured exclusive use of the former Royal Mail ship in 2018.” After that, the ship underwent “an extensive refurbishment process, which has included total overhaul of steelwork, engines, generators, propellers, interior and cabin space, and more, making it not only fit for purpose, but also as efficient as possible ahead of its new mission.”
The ship was “specifically designed to transport all the infrastructure and equipment the Extreme E needs for their race weekends,” the organization stated. The plan was to have the ship serve “as its freight and logistics hub due to her versatility and ability to carry and unload a mixture of cargo, like all 10 of the championship’s ODYSSEY 21’s [electric off-road racecar], as well as team members and guests. This was also fit with a Science Laboratory so research can be conducted enroute to the race locations.”
Both the St. Helena and MNG Tahiti have the same international shipping identification number of IMO 8716306, according to the MarineTraffic website.
On Sept. 17, 2024, the St. Helena was put up for sale, according to Horizon Ship Brokers. The current ownership is unclear. We reached out to Horizon Ship Brokers for more details.
Last year, the saga of the St. Helena took a new turn. A company called Terra Nova Expeditions chartered the vessel for Antarctic cruises, but those plans were scrubbed last month because the vessel was stuck in the Persian Gulf and was no longer available for the Antarctic sailing season.
It was last tracked via its transponder near Dubai nearly two months ago, according to MarineTraffic.
While we can’t confirm that Marines were onboard when St. Helena was hit, Marines have been training for this exact mission set. USNI News reported in 2023 that a “force of 100 Marines, newly trained by Navy personnel,” stood ready “to respond, if ordered, to provide armed security aboard foreign commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
Those Marines were members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) embarked on the three-ship Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), USNI added at the time.
It is unclear if those plans are still in place and if Marines in the region have actually been ordered to provide armed security for foreign vessels sailing through or near the strait. Regardless, Marines could be quickly trained to take on this mission set and have drilled for ship boarding and searches for years, especially special operations and specially-tasked units. CENTCOM declined to comment when we asked if there are U.S. personnel embarking on commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
At the same time, it is possible that the unique attributes of St. Helena made it a convenient host ship for sea base operations for U.S. forces in the region specifically for this crisis. Adapting commercial vessels for exactly this purpose has a long history around the Strait of Hormuz, as it was a central facet of the Tanker Wars during the 1980s, that saw U.S. forces operate from barges in the region. Today, commercial vessels remarkably similar to St. Helena operate in similar roles, especially in support of special operations and interdiction operations.
Once again, we have no idea what the ship’s mission was at the time of the incident and if Marines were simply helping it transit safely out of the Persian Gulf or something more, but the attack did expose the fact that individual Marines are more involved with activities in this tumultuous body of water than it may seem.
Contact the author: howard@twz.com.
The post Claims Swirl Around U.S. Marines Injured Aboard Mystery Vessel Attacked In The Strait Of Hormuz appeared first on TWZ.
Fincantieri Marine Group, which developed the cancelled Constellation class frigate for the U.S. Navy, says it sees a possible new opportunity in the service’s latest small surface combatant plans. At least three foreign frigate designs are already under review for possible Navy service, as is the prospect of having them built overseas, as part of a study expected to wrap up next month. Fincantieri wants to once again add the FREMM design, which the Constellation was based on, to the Navy’s options. The shipyard, which is a subsidiary of its Italian namesake, made significant investments in shipyard infrastructure in the United States and supply chains as part of the Constellation debacle, but it is not clear if that will be enough to make a new pitch attractive.
USNI News first reported on the possibility of a new Fincantieri frigate pitch to the Navy yesterday after an interview with CEO George Moutafis. TWZ also spoke at length with Moutafis about the failure of the Constellation class program earlier this year, and we have reached back out to the company for more information about new prospects now.
“Right now the Navy and the [Trump] administration could find the right type of dialog with us to set [development] up in a way that enables quick setup and swift construction without letting design spirals get in the way,” Moutafis told USNI News. “Accept the design that is and works well, and start work on it to get units out there for the fleet.”
In addition, “Moutafis said the supply chain the shipyard built during the Constellation could be applied to Fincantieri’s FREMM EVO design with few modifications to avoid the design churn that led to the cancellation of the Constellation,” according to USNI News.
The Constellation class was derived from the Franco-Italian FREMM, a multi-purpose frigate designed to offer a mix of anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-surface warfare capabilities. The explicit intent of the program had been to acquire a frigate based on an established, in-production ‘parent’ design, to which only relatively minor changes would have to be made, helping to reduce cost and risk. In the end, Constellation only had 15 percent design commonality with FREMM, causing delays and other issues that directly contributed to its cancellation. However, the Navy’s demand for smaller surface combatants has not gone away. We will come back to this all in a moment.
Fincantieri unveiled FREMM EVO (for “evolution”), along with an order for two of them for the Italian Navy, in 2024. In July of this year, Portugal announced it would also be buying three FREMM EVOs.
As designed, the FREMM EVO is close to 472.5 feet (144 meters) long, is some 64.6 feet (19.7 meters) at its widest, and displaces 6,500 tons with a full combat load, according to Fincantieri’s website. Its hull dimensions and displacement are essentially unchanged from the Italian subvariant of the baseline FREMM. The EVO will have a new superstructure configuration and a host of new capabilities.
The most notable new feature on the EVO version is set to be a new Leonardo Kronos Dual-Band Radar (DBR). The Kronos DBR combines the C-band Kronos Quad and the X-band Kronos StarFire into a single system with four paired sets of active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) positioned around the superstructure. In general, combining radars in this way can offer advantages for performing a variety of different tasks and doing so simultaneously. The ability to fuse data from both arrays together can help produce high-fidelity target tracks and other benefits. At the same time, DBRs have historically presented complexities that can cause serious difficulties with both integration and operation.
Among other things, the DBR is set to give the FREMM EVO expanded capability to knock down incoming ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of flight using Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles. Anti-ship ballistic missiles have become a threat that navies globally could realistically encounter in future conflicts, even against smaller nation states or non-state actors. There is a trend emerging worldwide now in the development of new anti-ballistic missile defenses to protect individual warships, as well as help defend other naval assets and interests ashore. Baseline FREMM frigates can already fire Aster 30 missiles, as well as Aster 16s, from any of their 16 Sylver vertical launch system cells at the bow end of the ship. EVO has space allotted for the integration of additional VLS cells, but it is unclear whether any current customers are pursuing that option.
In terms of armament, like the baseline FREMM, the EVO configuration will also have deck-mounted launchers for eight anti-ship cruise missiles, two triple torpedo tubes, two turreted 76mm guns, and various smaller automatic cannons and machine guns.
FREMM EVO is to feature improvements to other parts of its sensor package, as well as electronic warfare and communications suites, compared to the baseline design. This will all be tied into a SADOC 4 combat management system (CMS) from Leonardo.
On top of all this, this new FREMM configuration will have a new dedicated suite of counter-drone capabilities, another threat category that is very real now, and that only continues to expand in scale and scope.
“FREMM EVO represents a milestone both in confirming the ability to combine maturity and innovation in its EW systems that will be on board, and for the first naval supply of an advanced anti-drone counter capability,” ELT Group, which is supplying components for the counter-drone suite, said in a statement back in 2024, according to Naval News. “The latter will allow both the detection, recognition and identification of drones and their soft-kill counter. The project of a naval CUAS arises from the expertise acquired by Elettronica in this capacity for several years now, which have led to the development of sophisticated Artificial Intelligence algorithms developed specifically for countering the threat posed by drones.”
When it comes to a new pitch to the U.S. Navy, FREMM EVO does have the benefit of being an in-production design. As mentioned, Fincantieri had also been working to expand its facilities at the Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin to build similarly-sized Constellation class frigates before that program was cancelled. The shipbuilder has relevant established supply chains to feed into that yard, as well, as Moutafis highlighted to USNI News.
In speaking to us earlier this year, Moutafis also talked about important lessons learned from the Constellation program, which he felt were already having a positive impact the U.S. Navy way of doing business.
“Some of those lessons learned out of Constellation are being manifested in the things that the Navy has been rolling out the past few months – a new approach that empowers PAEs [Navy Portfolio Acquisition Executives] to make decisions, to minimize change, to embrace innovation and new technologies,” he said. “All these elements that we see now being rolled out, I think to a certain degree, connect back to lessons that have been learned out of the Constellation class journey.”
“Figure out what you want to prioritize, to what extent you want to prioritize schedule, and what’s the best way to say this,” he added when asked for specific examples of what he was talking about. “When you know when you need something delivered and at what pace, then enable the right level of decision-making. Because otherwise – I don’t want to sound this the wrong way – but perfection sometimes is the enemy of more than good enough.”
“Going beyond the Constellation class, now the needs are for vessels to be out there for the warfighter as soon as possible. For sure, we will see many cases where it will be considered that a vessel with these capabilities – even though potentially, in some areas, it may not have enough tons of steel on its sides, or whatever – it will be good enough to assist the warfighter as they head into harm’s way,” he also added at that time. “Those trade-offs are now being placed at the PAE level, allowing Navy leaders at that level to make the right decisions – figuring out whether to continue going down a design spiral versus just moving out with production and enabling us to have the right capabilities on time for the warfighter.”
When Moutafis spoke with us, the Navy had already unveiled a new FF(X) frigate program and announced plans to buy examples of a design derived from the Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Legend class National Security Cutter for the U.S. Coast Guard. Those frigates will notably lack a VLS array, at least initially, along with other features that were seen as critical to Constellation class. The Navy has outlined plans to offset the more limited baked-in capabilities of the FF(X)s with add-on containerized weapon systems and companion fleets of uncrewed surface vessels. All of this has already prompted significant debate about the operational utility of these small surface combatants, as TWZ has previously explored in detail.
In August, President Trump put out a memo that, in part, directed then-Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao to “submit a plan … that includes timelines and resourcing requirements, for a new competitive acquisition approach for surface combatants with sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties.” The memo also outlined an acquisition strategy referred to as the “Finland Model,” in which foreign shipbuilders would have to make major investments in U.S. enterprises and hire American workers as part of any future contract, even if an initial tranche of vessels is built overseas. This, in turn, has led to the aforementioned foreign warship study ongoing now, which is reportedly exploring the merits of Japan’s Mogami class, the South Korean Chungnam class, and the Istanbul class from Turkey, in-depth profiles of which you can find here.
Whether or not the U.S. Navy will pursue the acquisition of any of the ships it is studying now, or whether it might be willing to consider additional pitches from Fincantieri or other shipbuilders, remains to be seen. If it is to be successful, any new attempt to leverage an in-production foreign frigate design will have to take concrete steps to avoid falling into the same design change pitfalls as the Constellation class. The Navy’s struggles with solidifying designs early and keeping changes to a minimum during development and initial production have impacted several domestic naval shipbuilding efforts, too.
For Fincantieri, while the Navy played a central role in the failure of the Constellation program, there is the additional matter of whether the service is interested in any way in the optics of not only going back to the same shipbuilder, but the same underlying parent design (FREMM).
Some members of Congress have been very vocally pushing back on any plan that involves production in foreign shipyards. This is despite long-standing concerns about the capacity of U.S. shipyards and persistent hurdles to growing that industrial base. In this context, a new offer to build frigates domestically at Marinette Marine could find welcoming ears, but Fincantieri is also already on contract to build new Medium Landing Ships (LSM) for the Navy at this same yard. LSM is another program the service has also been trying to accelerate after years of delays.
It’s also unclear what any additional frigate procurement program might mean for the existing FF(X) frigate program, and what level of additional competition there might be for shipbuilding resources, as a result.
“In terms of which path we go – I’m not going to get ahead of that process – but [studying all options is] essentially what we’re doing,” Navy Rear Adm. Casey Moton, head of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Maritime (PAE-M) office, also said at the American Society of Naval Engineers Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium last week, according to USNI News. “I am not going to get ahead of what we are doing in response to the presidential memo.”
“We just went through CDR [the critical design review] on the Flight I [of FF(X)], and so we’re doing some pre-production activities with HII to help prepare for that material,” Moton also noted. The Navy has said in the past that it is aiming to have the first FF(X) frigate in the water by 2028.
The Navy’s fleet of Arleigh Burke class destroyers “gets used with a very high demand signal combatant commanders. The Navy can’t operate with only one size of ship,” Rear Adm. Brian Metcalf, Deputy PAE-M, also said in an official video in June, further underscoring the general demand for these new smaller surface combatants. “The [FF(X)] frigate will fill that gap. They can be used in less contentious waters. They can be used as high-value escorts. There are all kinds of things the frigate can fill the gap for and allow destroyers to execute the high-end mission set.”
Signs that a new foreign-designed frigate could be in the Navy’s future have already been growing. The service may have a clearer vision for how to proceed, and whether there might be room for additional pitches from Fincanterai and others, after the review it is working through now is complete.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The post Shipbuilder Behind Failed Constellation Class Wants Back Into The U.S. Navy Frigate Business appeared first on TWZ.
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