Nearly a month ago, we reported on a uniquely configured vessel that was far along in its construction at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard on Changxing Island in Shanghai. The intentions behind this design appeared to be as an uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) mothership, capable of deploying a handful of very large vehicles or many more smaller ones via its stern garage door and well deck. Its large pylons would be used to lift the vessels up and down out of the water and to different levels in the ship. Now it appears China has not just one, but two of these vessels nearly complete.

Make sure to read our initial report on this vessel configuration for full context by clicking here.

The new image was taken in Guangzhou and the vessel has a near identical shape, but with smaller proportions and minor changes to its overall moldline, compared to the larger one in Shanghai. This new vessel appears to be about a third smaller overall than its counterpart. The lift towers number six in total instead of six larger ones and six smaller ones on the Shanghai vessel. Regardless, the major design features are all there, including the flight deck and hangar behind the forward superstructure, the location of the smokestacks, and so on.

While two of these assets could still be considered largely intended for experimental use, a growing fleet would have increasing tactical and even strategic importance. Being able to easily launch and recover large numbers of UUVs, or a few very large ones, far from Chinese shores would provide an asymmetric capability. A fleet of ships that is dedicated to deploying, recovering, and tending to these systems, some of which can remain on patrol for very long periods, would be a major indication of how important China sees UUV operations as part of its future strategy.

There have been rumors that these vessels are part of a larger overall program that will see more ships with similar capabilities constructed. Once again, this would be a strong indication that these vessels’ utility will go beyond testing and limited operational use cases. The launch and recovery of large UUVs remains a conceptual work in progress for the U.S., with nothing similar in the U.S. Navy’s inventory, as we discussed in our original post.

Large long-range UUVs can be used for many tasks, from mapping the sea floor to hunting submarines and ships to searching for mines to launching cruise missiles and drones to being turned into immensely destructive weapons in their own right that can circumvent traditional strategic defenses. For China, providing a credible threat to America’s outposts deep in the Pacific and even the U.S. seaboard would be on the table.

There is speculation online as to where exactly this vessel was built. The first place that came to mind is Guangzhou Shipyard International’s (GSI) facilities on Longxue Island, just southeast of the city of Guangzhou. GSI is a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC). It is here that many of China’s most unique vessels are born. These include drone test ships of various kinds, massive beach landing barges, and giant supply ships. Upon closer review of archival satellite imagery, we can say for certain that GSI did build this ship. An image from October 2nd shows it peeking out of a covered graving yard area at the facility prior to launch.

The emergence of two of these large UUV tenders in such a short period of time underscores China’s major bet on the technologies they will support. If more ships are added to the currently known fleet of two, a clearer picture of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s large UUV plans, and its expeditionary potential, will come into focus.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

The post Second Chinese Submarine Drone Mothership Emerges appeared first on TWZ.

Army leaders preparing for a potential fight in the Pacific told us that some of the biggest lessons they’ve learned from the war in Ukraine and America’s now-paused fight against Iran are to move around assets that you can and find a better way to camouflage those that you can’t. While seemingly common sense, these lessons come from watching how war is now waged. The ubiquity of drones in Ukraine providing constant overwatch and strike capabilities, and U.S. troops killed and equipment destroyed or damaged by massive Iranian barrages on static installations are informing changes to how the Army trains, equips and operates.

These conversations took place during the recently wrapped Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) annual convention in Washington, D.C., which TWZ attended.

“A lot of the things that are happening right now in terms of long-range fires, integrated air and missile defense, and the lessons that we’re learning from them, we’re able to bring a lot of that to our potential challenges in the Pacific,” Gen. Ron Clark, commander of U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC), told us at a media roundtable. “Specifically, I am thinking through mobility and camouflage. So it’s one of those age-old Army forgotten sciences of how to hide in plain sight and how to camouflage ourselves from observation, because the ability to be able to see surface entities is almost ubiquitous.”

“Our ability to be able to use electronic warfare, to be able to use just good old-fashioned camouflage, and the ability to deceive our adversary is a must,” Clark added. You can read more about the U.S. military’s camouflage and deception efforts in our story here.

As we have frequently reported about the Ukraine war, both sides have been using a variety of “old-fashioned” tactics to duck, dodge and hide. They range from practices like smokescreens to hide from drones to updates on measures from the past like paint schemes designed to obfuscate vehicles and other equipment from AI-enabled targeting systems.

 As tough as things have been for Ukraine and for U.S. forces in the Middle East, the challenges will be even greater in the Pacific, Clark warned.

In Europe and the Middle East, “it’s not a near-peer adversary that we will be working against,” said Clark, referring respectively to Russia and Iran.

“Whereas in our theater, it absolutely is,” the USARPAC commander noted in a reference to China without naming the country. “So our ability to scale that and to think through the problem sets of how do we fight Type One, Type Two UAS? How do we think through ballistic missile defense holistically in the region? We spend a lot of time working with the joint force for solutions associated with that. How do we maneuver inside an archipelagic environment?”

For the Army, any fight in the Pacific will require soldiers to be able to hop islands and move through vast swaths of ocean, constantly hunted and frequently inside the Chinese weapons engagement zone. Clark said that the Army’s organic fleet of ships like landing craft, small tugs, and modular causeway systems operated by the service’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command will be vital for maneuver.

The Army, however, is struggling to keep its aging fleet of 70 of these vessels in the water and it got rid of a number of others over the years. Concerns about this underappreciated force have been something TWZ has raised for years.

“But we also have to be able to conduct tactical maneuver with forces on the ground that can provide long-range precision fires, as an example, and then move so that fires, radars, sensors are not easily targeted,” Clark added. “Because if they can see you, they can hit you. And if you know they have an opportunity to return fire, they will. So our lessons that we’re learning are, in some cases, are very, very relevant. In some cases, we can learn from some of the changing characteristics of war.”

Still, the wide-open plains and dense cities of Ukraine are quite different from the beaches and jungles of the Pacific, Clark reminded us.

“The way we generally fight does not equate specifically in the Ukraine piece to the maneuver that you would see out of U.S. forces if deployed in a conflict like that,” the USARPAC commander explained. “To be able to use operational maneuver and tactical maneuver in a way that it’s not just simply drone on drone or firing long range fires at one another at scale for an extended period of time. We find our way to work through that problem set and maneuver to positions of advantage and to prevail.”

Ukraine’s 115th Mechanized Brigade has released new footage showing a VB-140 Flamingo interceptor drone attacking a Russian Mi-28 attack helicopter in flight.

The drone approaches from above and flies directly into the helicopter’s spinning main rotor. It’s unclear whether… pic.twitter.com/GCb9FodXG3

— Special Kherson Cat (@bayraktar_1love) October 16, 2026

Regardless of the terrain, the ubiquity of drones in the Ukraine war has made maneuver and resupply deadly endeavors, with much of the front lines bogged down with limited territorial advances by either combatant.

When we pushed further on that point, Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and United States Forces Korea, weighed in.

“To be able to move with sensors everywhere at all times causes us to achieve positions of advantage from distributed locations,” Brunson pointed out. “So the fight is: you look at maneuver. You might maneuver to a position of advantage, knowing that you’re going to change that again. The ability to utilize not only joint sensors but joint effectors, if you will, joint fires, to be able to use those things from different positions changes the shape of the operating environment.”

The bottom line, he added, is that “maneuver is always going to be maneuver. You’re going from A to B, but you might go from A to A1 to A2 to A3 to get to B, and that’s what I think we realize in this distributed fight that’s going on in Ukraine, and so we continue to watch to see what lessons might be coming back into” effect.

In part reacting to lessons learned from Ukraine and the Middle East, the Army is also changing how it trains, Clark stated. In South Korea, he said the service has to get out of the habit of concentrating so heavily on just two annual major training exercises.

“We recognize… that largely the two big exercises every year in Korea focus on large command posts,” Clark proffered. “We’ve got to move away from that. So what we intend to do is take advantage of the knowledge that we have of the threats that exist or that prevail in the Ukraine fight.”

Clark said these discussions are underway with his deputy commander, Republic of Korea Army Gen. Sungmin Kim.

“We talk about how we would operate in a distributed fashion. You know as well as I do, there’s a location that we go to to train every year in Korea, and we stay in that place,” Clark said in response to a question from another reporter. “What would it look like if we train from Jeju all the way up to Gyeonggi Province in the north? What would that look like, just with our headquarters alone?”

“So just imagine,” Clark postulated, “if we train across the entirety of the peninsula, and got ourselves in the shape where we would say [to North Korea], ‘You can’t utilize the things that you’ve learned in the fight and the battlefield in Ukraine on us, because we learned the same lessons and we’ve distributed ourselves in such a way that we don’t make ourselves the target. We won’t be moored in place,’ and that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about positional advantage. It might not be the same place to the continuum. It might not be the same place when you’re in crisis or conflict or competition. We might have to change that, and that’s what we’re learning.”

Another lesson from Ukraine that Army leaders should be paying attention to, said another panelist, is how both sides are using aerial and ground drones to supply frontline forces and evacuate the wounded because human efforts have now become too deadly, thanks to drones.

“I think you also can’t talk about Ukraine without talking about autonomy,” said Tara Murphy Dougherty, CEO of a company called Air, which provides AI-based sustainment solutions to the Army.

“One of the advantages that you get from using simulation and automation, and really using models and compute in order to create convoy plans, as opposed to humans with Excel spreadsheets, is you are able to do many fewer actual convoys because you’re using all of your capabilities so much more effectively and efficiently,” Dougherty posited. “And while it’s an indirect example, I think it does tie to soldier protection because you’re putting fewer soldiers out there in vulnerable settings. I see that not as an end-goal outcome; we need convoys.”

Ultimately, however, the Army will have to advance what Ukraine and Russia are doing with the deployment of aerial drones and uncrewed ground vehicles for logistics by creating “convoys” of autonomous vehicles.

“I see the end goal outcome as having as many autonomous convoys as possible, and we’ve heard today already at this event some of those ideas,” the CEO added. “In the interim, until we get to more autonomy in medevac and more autonomy in convoys when it’s non-soldier material that’s going out to the battlefield, let’s try and put fewer out there while actually getting more material and capability into the force where it needs to be.”

The Iranian missile and drone barrages on fixed U.S. bases across the Middle East have created some very costly lessons for American forces. As we noted earlier in this story, several troops were killed and critical air defense radars, aircraft and other important equipment were destroyed or damaged. U.S. installations across the region have also suffered damage.

In another media session, we pressed Army officials operating in South Korea about what they learned from watching the destruction caused by Iran and what they are doing to address it.

You can see a satellite image of damage to a U.S. radar site in Jordan below:

NEW: The radar for a THAAD system was struck and apparently destroyed in Jordan while two other THAAD radar systems may have been hit in the UAE, satellite images show – w/ @ThomasBordeaux7 https://t.co/qiuWVQgyda

— Gianluca Mezzofiore (@GianlucaMezzo) March 5, 2026

“We certainly are watching what’s happening, and we are learning from what is happening in Operation Epic Fury,” Lt. Gen. Joseph “Joe” Hilbert, commanding general of Eighth Army, stationed in South Korea, told us. “We’re learning what’s happening in Ukraine, and we are working through changes in our own tactics and techniques and procedures to be able to react to those threats and to be able to defend against them.”

For more details, he turned the microphone over to Col. Rosanna “Ro” M. Clemente, commander of the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in South Korea.

“Drawing from those lessons learned, a lot of it is trying to understand how our systems are being hunted by the adversary,” she told us. “So, strictly into all of our training plans, and as we conduct our own internal exercises, all of our air defenders are practicing something as simple as mobility and survivability jumps, which is being able to reposition and displace your systems to different alternative locations based on any type of threat warnings that we receive. They’re very, very well trained. I think all of our soldiers know how to move their systems extremely, extremely well. They move them quickly, and they are able to move them and reposition them into different locations across the peninsula that still maintains that ballistic missile defense coverage.”

In addition, “we also have to rely on the other pillars of integrated air and missile defense, most specifically the passive defensive measures that we also have in place,” she added.

Those measures involve “a little bit more than just hardening – but a couple of other techniques that we’ve learned from the Russia-Ukraine war in terms of deception, how to move things around, create distractions, and make sure that we create different types of dilemmas for the adversary in terms of where our capabilities are and where are they positioned to protect its defended assets.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post What The Army’s Pacific Commanders Are Learning From Ukraine And Iran Conflicts appeared first on TWZ.

Nerendra Modi intende forgiare un nuovo cittadino indiano, un nazionalista di Bharat, il nuovo e al contempo antico nome che ha imposto all’immensa e plurale nazione, prima al mondo per abitanti e terza per capacità economica, deciso a realizzare tale chimerica utopia, non disdegna di utilizzare tutte le leve del potere, anche in modo spregiudicato.

Segue nostro Telegram.

Arrestare settemila studenti è certamente un segno di debolezza, il tutto con un dispiegamento di cinquantamila soldati delle forze dell’ordine e militari, come a inizio ottobre 2026 a Delhi e in altre città a fronte del movimento di protesta che ha saldato insieme i giovani scesi da mesi nelle piazze per rivendicare un futuro e non l’insulto di “scarafaggi”, loro tributato dal ministro all’istruzione poi costretto alle dimissioni, termine trasformatosi nella definizione del loro movimento politico, il Partito del Popolo degli Scarafaggi, unitosi con i rappresentanti di tutti gli altri partiti dell’opposizione, decisi a rigettare i nuovi elenchi elettorali che hanno fatto sparire, è vero, alcuni indiani deceduti, ma anche molti del tutto vivi e vegeti, eppure sgraditi, spesso perché musulmani, con la capziosa giustificazione che non sarebbero cittadini indiani, quando lo sono da sempre, registrati nell’anagrafe nazionale e in quella elettorale, impropriamente accusati di essere immigrati bengalesi che si camuffano da indiani.

Le manifestazioni sono state aperte, in testa ai cortei, dai “resuscitati”, ovvero i presunti morti, in realtà in ottime condizioni fisiche e mentali, insomma quasi un gogoliano ribaltamento delle celebri “Anime morte”, infatti in questo caso non si contano nei censimenti i morti, ma si fanno sparire i vivi.

Delhi resta in stato d’assedio, le manifestazioni sono state generalmente vietate, tuttavia Nerendra Modi, dopo quasi tre lustri di potere incontrastato e di politiche di totale deregolamentazione neoliberista e ultra – induista, deve fare i conti con l’insofferenza ogni giorno crescente e manifesta di ampi settori della società.

D’altronde tanto accanimento interno contro gli oppositori è inteso a ovviare anche alla modesta estate del primo ministro, il vertice dei BRICS organizzato nella capitale indiana è stato un mezzo fallimento. Nessuno degli attuali promotori del multipolarismo si fida di lui, essendo un amico fraterno di Israele, nonché in combutta economica e militare con gli emiratini, a loro volta al servizio dell’imperialismo occidentale contro gli iraniani e in Sudan e Burkina Faso in azione contro i governi legittimi e contro i progetti di cooperazione di quelle nazioni con Cina e Russia.

Le politiche di Modi sono tutte orientate ad abbandonare la storica vicinanza alla causa palestinese dei tempi del non – allineamento indiano, privilegiando piuttosto la cooperazione nel settore degli armamenti con l’entità statuale israeliana, amplificata, come emerso dal trionfale discorso di Modi alla Knesset nel febbraio 2026, dalla profonda affinità tra il sionismo e l’estremismo induista propugnato dal Bharatiya Janata Party.

Al vertice kirghiso dello SCO, l’Organizzazione per la Cooperazione di Shanghai, di fine agosto Modi è stato relegato ai margini della fotografia ufficiale, mentre il presidente ospitante si stringeva al centro con il primo ministro pakistano, oltre ovviamente a Vladimir Putin e a Xi Jinping.

L’indiana Via del Cotone poi, visti i conflitti che incendiano tutta l’Asia Occidentale, sono sempre più aleatori, buoni soltanto per la mistificazione mediatica messa in campo dai media europei in funzione anti – cinese.

Le manifestazioni hanno per altro rovinato la festa per l’avvento, un quarto di secolo fa, il 7 ottobre 2001, al potere di Modi nel Gujarat, continuazione della parossistica celebrazione del suo 76° compleanno lo scorso 17 settembre, festeggiato con manifestazioni e pellegrinaggi.

La stampa d’opposizione ha insistito piuttosto nel ricordare come, solo un anno dopo il suo insediamento nel 2002, Modi abbia scatenato nel Gujarat una caccia al musulmano senza precedenti, un’ondata di violenza che ha mietuto almeno un paio di migliaia di morti, fatti la cui brutalità è rimasta tragicamente e traumaticamente nel ricordo collettivo.

Il vero dato che spaventa il primo ministro è il fatto che mobilitazioni di così grande portata non attraversano il vasto paese dai tempi di Jawaharlal Nehru e successivamente di sua figlia Indira Gandhi, tuttavia quelle erano manifestazioni a sostegno e non contro il capo di governo, nel primo caso per sostenere il Movimento dei Non Allineati, nel secondo per sottolineare la soddisfazione popolare per l’alleanza con i sovietici, volta a trasformare l’India in una potenza atomica.

Il nazionalismo indù del BJP, ovvero Bharatiya Janata Party, di Nerendra Modi sta invece tentando una rottura netta con tutto quel passato, immagina la nazione come capace di proporre sullo scenario internazionale una propria egemonia, se non esattamente imperialistica, certamente verso un mondo indiano – centrico. Anche in questo caso le aspettative di Modi si scontrano con la modestia delle relazioni stabilite con le vicine nazioni nello spazio eurasiatico e ugualmente negli altri continenti, mentre la proposta multipolare sino – russa risulta largamente condivisa dalle nazioni del Sud Globale.

La narrazione ufficiale di un Nerendra Modi quale figlio di un venditore di tè  dalle origini estremamente umili, è parallela alla lunga militanza nel Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, ovvero la Lega Nazionale dei Volontari, organizzazione ultra – induista fondata nel 1925, nota per la sua feroce adesione al sistema delle caste, molto prossimo ai criteri di discriminazione dei sistemi  fascisteggianti della prima metà del XX secolo. È stata quella infatti la scuola sociale e politica nella quale da giovane si è formato, rafforzando la devozione che tanto lui quanto i dirigenti e i militanti del suo partito portano verso l’assassino del mahatma Gandhi, ovvero Nathuram Godse, il quale proprio grazie a Modi dal 2020 ha un santuario che ne ospita le ceneri e che è meta di pellegrinaggio per tutti gli attivisti del Bharatiya Janata Party, lo stesso primo ministro si è recato più volte a Pune, mostrando convinta adesione alle ragioni nazionalistico – induiste, anti – pakistane e anti – musulmane che hanno ispirato quel gesto omicida compiuto il 30 gennaio 1948 a Nuova Delhi.

Alcune iniziative promosse dai suoi sostenitori nel corso dei festeggiamenti di settembre – ottobre più che aumentare la considerazione del primo ministro, hanno rasentato il ridicolo, nel piccolo stato del Tripura il governatore locale Manik Saha ha imposto, con vivo disappunto delle famiglie, alle bambine e ai bambini di tutte le cinquemila scuole di partecipare a concorsi di disegno e di scrittura in lode di Nerendra Modi. Il risultato è che dopo un decennio di egemonia induista lo stato di Tripura ha tutta la possibilità di tornare ad essere governato dal Fronte di Sinistra, guidato dal Partito Comunista Indiano – Marxista (CPI-M) e dai suoi alleati. Tuttavia questo fenomeno può apparire estremo, ma non isolato, in Rajasthan, lo storico partito dei Gandhi, il Congresso, oggi all’opposizione, ha criticato le direttive rivolte a studenti e insegnanti di tutti gli istituti scolastici statali e privati per la partecipazione alle celebrazioni per il primo ministro.

Proprio il Congresso sottolinea e documenta ampiamente come sia imbarazzante investire tanti denari pubblici per celebrazioni fuori luogo, quando, a detta dello stesso primo ministro, ancora molte siano le aree, non solo rurali, in cui mancano i servizi igienici e il collegamento, almeno per i villaggi più remoti, alla rete elettrica, il tutto mentre gli indiani scendono in piazza per protestare e al contempo gli attivisti del Bharatiya Janata Party scorrazzano in bus collettivi e motociclette da Varanasi a Vadnagar, città natale di Modi nel Gujarat, con gigantografie del primo ministro ed enormi bandiere arancioni.

Anche i conflitti in corso in ogni landa del pianeta stanno assestando un duro colpo alla dottrina ultra – liberista di Modi, il quale fondandosi sulla massima deregolamentazione e la più spregiudicata libertà per i capitali, con il drammatico risvolto di scarsissime tutele per i lavoratori, non rispettando mai le organizzazioni sindacali e le normative ambientali, ha accresciuto il Prodotto Interno Lordo prima del Gujarat, poi di tutta l’India, con una crescita ancora al 7% per l’anno fiscale 2025/2026, tuttavia è abbastanza evidente che l’economia nel 2026/2027 segnerà un brusco ridimensionamento, complicando di molto la vita di quel terzo di indiani che vivono di un lavoro nel settore precario o in quello informale, già molto poco avvantaggiati dalla crescita degli anni passati, tra questi lavoratori molti sono musulmani, cristiani, dalit, ovvero appartenenti alla casta degli intoccabili, e adivasi, i popoli nativi che quasi nessuno conosce e ricorda, ma sommano nell’insieme almeno cento milioni di persone, non è un caso che la modesta lotta alla povertà abbia visto piuttosto accrescere profonde e pesanti divaricazioni sociali, con una ristretta minoranza sempre più abbiente.

Il governo per altro è stato ferocemente contestato per quasi tutto il 2026 anche dagli agricoltori, il movimento dei lavoratori della terra è infatti riuscito a impedire l’introduzione nel settore di leggi smaccatamente liberiste e penalizzanti i produttori diretti.

I venti di opposizione non appaiono impensierire per il momento il governo, tuttavia l’epoca dei trionfalismi, come quando nel gennaio 2024 Modi ha presieduto la sfarzosa inaugurazione del colossale tempio di Ram nella città di Ayodhya, anche in questo caso come altre volte edificato sul luogo di una preesistente moschea, appaiono se non irripetibili, del tutto lontani.

North Korea says it has test-fired two types of submarine-launched strategic cruise missiles off its east coast, in what appears to be the first time its bizarre Hero Kim Kun Ok submarine has been seen at sea in a publicized manner. If the vessel truly was the launch platform, the tests would mark its first confirmed weapons trials and a potential step toward operational service. Unveiled with considerable fanfare in 2023, the Hero Kim Kun Ok has been billed by Pyongyang as a centerpiece of its future nuclear-armed navy, but its operational status and actual capabilities have remained unclear.

The launches took place Wednesday, October 14, with state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reporting the activity earlier today. North Korea said the tests were intended to assess the readiness of its underwater combat systems, improve the Navy’s ability to execute strategic missions, and demonstrate the reliability of its deterrent. Along with imagery of the cruise missiles, KCNA released one photo of the Hero Kim Kun Ok underway, which you can see at the top of this story.

KCNA did not otherwise identify the submarine involved or disclose the missiles’ ranges, flight paths, or performance. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it had detected and tracked the launches from before firing through the cruise and terminal phases. A JCS spokesperson said one missile type was launched from a vertical launch system and another from a torpedo tube. This would match the imagery we are seeing, it would also match the Hero Kim Kun Ok’s unique capabilities. The South Korean military assessed that the launches came from a submarine but did not initially identify the vessel publicly.

There remains a possibility that the 3,000-ton-class Hero Kim Kun Ok was not actually involved in launching the missiles. North Korea has long used underwater platforms for test missile launches and has paired these with images of an actual submarine for propaganda purposes. However, the JCS confirming they came from a submarine would lend additional credence to the possibility Hero Kim Kun Ok did indeed launch the missiles. If this is the case, it would indicate that North Korea has begun validating weapons systems aboard the submarine ahead of deployment. At the very least, we can confirm that the Hero Kim Kun Ok is now sailing, although South Korean and U.S. intelligence would be acutely aware of its movements and it could have been in at-sea testing for years now, we just don’t know.

North Korea unveiled the submarine in September 2023, describing it as its first “tactical nuclear attack submarine” and one of the Navy’s core offensive platforms. At the launching ceremony, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying that arming the Navy with nuclear weapons “brooks no further delay.”

Nevertheless, many questions remain about the submarine’s design and operational prospects. Overall, it remains a heavily modified derivative of a Cold War-era Romeo class diesel-electric submarine — nearly an antique by today’s standards — rather than a purpose-built guided missile submarine. Previous imagery shows 10 missile launch tubes concealed in the prominent ‘turtle back’ aft of the sail, in addition to torpedo tubes, although the precise configuration, usable capacity, and operational status of those systems remain uncertain.

The absence of publicly reported weapons tests from the vessel over the following years raised questions about its development. Analyst Shin Jong-woo of South Korea’s Defense and Security Forum told Reuters that the latest launches suggested combat-system testing for operational deployment was underway. He also suggested that North Korea may have resolved technical problems and could also test a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) before the vessel enters service. North Korea has previously presented SLBMs of increasing size, but has lacked a suitable submarine to launch them from.

Missile launches while the submarine is submerged represent a more demanding and operationally relevant capability than firing from the surface.

At the same time, a missile launch of any kind demonstrates only part of the capability required for a submarine like this to be effective at all. An operational submarine must also be able to deploy reliably, remain sufficiently difficult to detect, maintain its weapons, and execute missions under realistic conditions.

A vertical launch system (VLS) can provide dedicated capacity for certain missile types — potentially much larger ones — and may enable faster launches or larger salvos than a configuration relying exclusively on torpedo tubes. Torpedo tubes offer an alternative launch method, but with different constraints on weapon dimensions, handling, and firing procedures.

The forward four tubes are larger than the rear six on the submarine’s ‘turtle back.’ This would allow the boat to carry multiple types of missiles, possibly including a mix of short-range and longer-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs).

Testing both systems would be consistent with an effort to validate multiple elements of the submarine’s weapons architecture.

North Korea has pursued submarine-launched missiles for years. In March 2023, it reported a submarine-launched cruise missile test from the older 8.24 Yongung submarine. In January 2024, Pyongyang said it had fired Pulhwasal-3-31 strategic cruise missiles from that same vessel. The earlier sub is in the 2,000-ton-class and is understood to have only one or two vertical launch tubes.

North Korea’s description of the weapons as “strategic” cruise missiles should also be treated cautiously. North Korea’s long-range cruise missile program is well established and a nuclear payload is a major part of its ambitions, but how mature or reliable a nuclear warhead is for this application at this time isn’t clear. Regardless, ground, surface, and now subsurface-launched cruise missiles are a key part of North Korea’s broader deterrent architecture.

According to reports, Wednesday’s activity was the first publicly reported underwater North Korean missile-testing event since the January 2024 launch.

Compared to the 8.24 Yongung submarine, the Hero Kim Kun Ok has a larger hull and additional vertical launch tubes, but it still uses very dated diesel-electric propulsion, which presents hugely different endurance, acoustic, and operating constraints compared with nuclear propulsion or even modern diesel-electric submarine capabilities.

As to the expectation that Pyongyang may test an SLBM from the submarine before deployment, this would be a likely milestone toward North Korea fielding a credible sea-based nuclear deterrent.

North Korea is also pursuing a separate nuclear-powered submarine project, unveiled as under construction in March 2025. Its completion and operational timeline remain uncertain. Nuclear propulsion is a much bigger challenge, but if perfected, such a boat would be of considerably greater value, especially as a second-strike capability.

The latest submarine tests come amid a broader series of North Korean weapons demonstrations, including reported hypersonic missile tests on September 20 and October 3, as well as tactical ballistic missile launches earlier in October.

The sequence is consistent with Pyongyang’s effort to diversify its delivery systems and complicate military planning for South Korea, the United States, and Japan.

The activity also carries a diplomatic message. North Korea has repeatedly insisted that it will not abandon its nuclear weapons while the United States maintains what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy. It has also rejected the suggestion that adjustments to U.S.-South Korean military exercises would be sufficient to change the underlying relationship.

The tests also follow North Korea’s rejection of an apparent diplomatic opening from U.S. President Donald Trump after Washington sought to reduce tensions surrounding a U.S.-South Korean military exercise.

A submarine able to launch missiles from less predictable locations complicates defensive planning for South Korea and the United States. The challenge extends beyond intercepting missiles after launch to detecting and tracking the submarine before it reaches a potential firing position. Even a partially capable vessel places additional demands on potential adversaries.

Were things to ‘go hot’ on the Korean Peninsula, any submarine capable of carrying strategic weapons would be at the top of the targeting list for Pyongyang’s adversaries. A submarine based on the archaic Romeo class design would be fairly easy to track from the time it leaves its berth. This is especially the case bearing in mind the sophisticated nature of South Korea’s anti-submarine capabilities.

Future submarines will become increasingly more challenging, however. That problem could intensify if future North Korean boats make more use of Russian assistance in developing their capabilities. Submarine technology is supposedly part of the payment to Pyongyang for its help in the war in Ukraine. This could become a much larger problem, even if Moscow were to provide North Korea with advanced Kilo class boats, for example.

For now, provided that the Hero Kim Kun Ok launched the missiles, which seems most likely, this would indicate that North Korea is advancing weapons integration aboard a submarine intended to expand its offensive naval capabilities. The fact that the Hero Kim Kun Ok is now at sea also signals progress toward deployment.

Whatever the ultimate operational effectiveness of the Hero Kim Kun Ok and its emerging missile armament, Pyongyang continues to demonstrate incremental improvements to its submarine forces.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post North Korea’s ‘Hunchback’ Submarine Makes First At-Sea Appearance For Missile Tests appeared first on TWZ.

The South Korean government has released images from its first successful test of a domestically developed hypersonic boost-glide vehicle. This includes shots of the vehicle impacting the water at the end of its flight. A weapon of this kind would give South Korea a significant new way to hold targets in North Korea at risk amid an ever-deepening arms race on the Peninsula.

South Korea’s Presidential Office, more commonly referred to as the Cheong Wa Dae or the Blue House, announced the test in a Korean-language press release yesterday. The Blue House initially released a video of President Lee Jae Myung and others observing the test from a conference room at the Anheung Proving Ground, which is located in South Chungcheong Province on the country’s western coast. South Korea’s Agency for Defense Development (ADD) manages testing at Anheung. A series of still images from the test itself was subsequently posted on the Blue House’s website.

Included in the still image gallery are shots showing the launch of the missile, a formal name for which has not yet been disclosed, from a wheeled transport-erector-launcher on a platform sitting just off the coast. The low resolution of the pictures makes it hard to tell whether the missile and/or the TEL are of an existing South Korean design or are based on one. We will come back to this later on.

As mentioned, there are also pictures of the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle hitting the water. At first glance, the vehicle looks to have a broadly conical design with stabilizing fins at the base. However, at least one of the fins looks to be truncated. Closer inspection of the available images shows further indicators that might point to it actually having a more wedge-shaped design with a distinct top and bottom, though it is still not definitely clear given the low resolution. Conical boost-glide vehicles are generally understood to be easier to design, relatively speaking, than wedge-shaped ones. Historically, hypersonic boost-glide vehicles of any kind have proven to be technically complex and challenging to turn into viable operational weapons, even by countries with extensive past experience with their development.

“This test launch was conducted to verify, for the first time, the vehicle’s core technologies in a hypersonic flight environment: the performance of ultra-high-temperature heat-resistant materials, guidance and control capabilities, and the ability to perform irregular flight maneuvers at low altitudes,” the Blue House said in its release yesterday, per a machine translation of the Korean text. “The HGV [hypersonic boost-glide vehicle] successfully separated after ascending to the target altitude and executed its planned flight path within the hypersonic environment without any issues.”

With all this in mind, the fact that the vehicle just remained intact through to impact is noteworthy. At the time of writing, South Korean authorities do not appear to have disclosed more specific details about the test, including how far the boost-glide vehicle traveled before hitting the water or what peak speed it reached. Important questions also remain about how the vehicle is guided during the mid-course and terminal phases of flight, challenges that do not appear to have been addressed by this particular test.

In general, unpowered hypersonic boost-glide vehicles need to be brought first to an optimal altitude and speed. This is typically achieved using a sufficiently sized rocket booster, with existing ballistic missile designs often serving as a starting point.

Once released from the booster, a boost-glide vehicle flies along a relatively shallow flight path within the Earth’s atmosphere. The vehicle is able to maneuver along the way, sometimes erratically, while traveling at hypersonic speeds, generally defined as anything about Mach 5.

All of this sets hypersonic weapons of this kind apart from traditional ballistic missiles, even ones with advanced maneuverability capabilities, which all follow a broadly arcing trajectory to their targets. The combination of speed, flight trajectory, and maneuverability offered by hypersonic boost-glide vehicles creates distinct challenges for opponents. They are hard to spot and track, let alone attempt to intercept, and there is less time for defenders to react overall. This ability to penetrate enemy air defenses and cover ground rapidly makes these weapons particularly attractive for strikes on very high-value and time-sensitive targets.

“The HGV [hypersonic boost-glide vehicle] is a ‘key strategic asset capable of changing the game on the battlefield,’ as its unpredictable flight trajectory and overwhelming speed allow it to launch surprise strikes against key strategic targets during contingencies,” the Blue House’s release explicitly noted, again according to a machine translation.

With all this in mind, South Korea does have an entire family of domestically-produced ground-launched ballistic missiles that could be suitable starting places for launching an unpowered hypersonic boost-glide vehicle. President Lee was notably shown a TEL for the country’s newest Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile at Anheung yesterday, though no explicit connection has been drawn between that weapon and the hypersonic test. The Hyunmoo-5 is itself still a relatively new development, having only entered service around the end of last year.

When it comes to new South Korean arms developments, the Hyunmoo-5, which entered service around the end of last year, has been and continues to be a major point of discussion by itself. It is officially categorized as a short-range design, despite how big it is (35 tons gross weight), which is said to be due largely to the equally substantial size of its warhead (17,000 pounds). Past reports have raised the possibility that it could be capable of flying out to intermediate ranges if the warhead weight were reduced. Short-range ballistic missiles are defined as ones with ranges between 190 and 620 miles (300 and 1,000 kilometers), while intermediate-range ballistic missiles can hit targets out to between 1,864 and 3,418 miles (3,000 to 5,500 kilometers). Medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) fall in between these two categories.

With its massive unitary warhead, the Hyunmoo-5 already gives South Korea an important new way to hold deeply buried and otherwise hardened targets in North Korea at risk. This fits in directly with the country’s broader Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) policy, as TWZ has previously written:

“While the Hyunmoo-5 has been widely reported as a future pillar of the KMPR, its specific ability to penetrate deeply buried bunkers, such as those used by the North Korean leadership, the same functions mean that it can also fulfill elements of the ‘kill chain.’ In this way, it could be used as part of a pre-emptive strike, to try and knock out North Korea’s launch capability by targeting its hardened command-and-control facilities and missile storage areas.”

By virtue of the very high speeds they reach in the terminal phase of flight, hypersonic boost-glide vehicles also offer bunker-busting benefits on top of the other aforementioned advantages they bring to the table.

In addition, the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle test reflects a broader arms race that has been expanding in scale and scope for years now. South Korea is also developing an air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile, seen in the composite image below, as well as new air- and sea-launched ballistic missiles, the latter of which will be loaded on new surface warships and submarines.

Though there are always questions about the actual maturity and viability of the designs, North Korea continues to churn out its own new missile developments. This includes two separate test launches of purported new hypersonic designs just in recent weeks. Tit-for-tat missile launches are not entirely uncommon on the peninsula, but there are limits to how quickly a test like the one South Korea conducted yesterday involving an emerging technology can reasonably be staged.

Friction between the North and South has been at a particular high point, in general, following an incident on September 21, in which three South Korean troops were injured along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), as well as the United Nations Command (UNC) on the Peninsula, have said a North Korean landmine placed in violation of the Armistice Agreement was to blame. South Korean authorities have demanded an apology and raised the prospect of some form of action in response, though President Lee has more recently sought to downplay the situation. The government in North Korea has denied the accusations and threatened an “immediate and powerful counteraction” should South Korea seek to retaliate.

An operational hypersonic boost-glide vehicle capability would also expand South Korea’s capacity to challenge opponents regionally beyond North Korea. Though the regime in Pyongyang represents the most proximate national security threat to the country, China and Russia have also been growing points of concern for South Korean authorities in recent years.

“We must secure our national security through our own strength,” President Lee said after yesterday’s hypersonic test, per the Blue House’s release. “The government must not rest on today’s success but must further advance the technology so that the hypersonic glide vehicle can establish itself as a robust strategic asset safeguarding our future security.”

South Korea’s very public test of its new hypersonic boost-glide vehicle underscores the country’s still-expanding efforts to broaden its options for striking even the best-defended targets in North Korea, as well as projecting power elsewhere regionally. At the same time, it remains to be seen when the South Koreans may field a real operational capability in this regard.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post First Look At Hypersonic Boost-Glide Vehicle Just Tested By South Korea appeared first on TWZ.

After nearly seven years of waiting, Taiwan has received the first two aircraft from its long-delayed purchase of 66 new-build F-16C/D Block 70 fighters from the United States.

The two single-seat F-16Cs, serials 6727 and 6728, touched down at Chihhang Air Base near Taitung on October 2. They are the first factory-new fighter aircraft delivered to Taiwan in 25 years and mark the beginning of the aircraft acceptance and integration phase of the Republic of China Air Force’s (ROCAF) so-called Peace Phoenix Soaring project.

The two jets have also had an unusually eventful trip to Taiwan.

They began their journey to the island on August 17, flying from Lockheed Martin’s production facility in Greenville, South Carolina, to Hawaii. The aircraft were subsequently forced to remain there for more than a month after an unexpected issue prevented them from continuing across the Pacific as planned. The reasons for the delay have been the subject of considerable speculation, including weather and tanker availability.

The two jets finally departed Hawaii again on October 1, stopping in Guam before making the final leg to Taitung today.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo said today that more of the aircraft will arrive before the end of the year, although he did not provide a specific number.

Taiwan receives first 2 F-16V Block 70 fighter jets

Taiwan took delivery Friday of the first two of 66 F-16V Block 70 fighter jets purchased from the United States, with the aircraft landing at Chihhang Air Base in the eastern county of Taitung at around noon. pic.twitter.com/hbqdV6io26

— Focus Taiwan (CNA English News) (@Focus_Taiwan) October 2, 2026

The 66-aircraft purchase is worth approximately $8 billion. Taiwan originally expected deliveries to begin much sooner, but production-line adjustments, supply-chain problems, and software issues contributed to delays. COVID, too, had an impact on the production line.

The program’s delivery schedule has slipped repeatedly. Defense Minister Koo said in March, May, and again through his deputy in June that the first aircraft were expected to arrive by the end of September. That deadline passed without an F-16 reaching Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense acknowledged in late September that development and production of the aircraft’s new electronic warfare self-protection system had also been a factor.

The Block 70s are being equipped with L3Harris’ AN/ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield electronic warfare suite, and the system was not yet fully through its development and production process when the first aircraft were otherwise ready for delivery. L3Harris announced on September 3 that it had completed production of the first 35 Viper Shield systems, underscoring that the electronic warfare equipment was itself still moving into production as Taiwan’s fighters were approaching delivery.

Taiwan chose to acquire the AN/ALQ-254 rather than the AN/ALQ-257 electronic warfare system used on U.S. Air Force F-16s.

Lawmakers have questioned whether the system meets requirements associated with earlier work to modernize earlier F-16A/B Block 20 fighters to the F-16V standard. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Koo argued that those requirements applied to the earlier Block 20 upgrade rather than the new Block 70 purchase. Other international F-16 Block 70 operators are also using Viper Shield.

Taiwanese officials have defended the decision, citing the specific requirements of Taiwan’s F-16 fleet and associated procurement considerations. The system is intended to provide the new fighters with a modern electronic warfare and self-protection capability against increasingly sophisticated radar and missile threats.

There are also still questions about when the Viper Shield system itself will be fully ready.

Weapons deliveries have also not kept pace with the aircraft themselves.

Taiwan is receiving AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles as part of the F-16 package, with 200 ordered. The C-8 version incorporates upgrades from the U.S. Air Force’s Form, Fit, Function Refresh (F3R) effort, including new electronics and improved electronic-counter-countermeasures intended to make the missile more capable in a heavily contested electromagnetic environment. For Taiwan, the missile will provide the new F-16s with a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air weapon that can be cued by the aircraft’s AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), as well as other sources of targeting information through the F-16’s networked systems.

The AIM-120C-8 is particularly relevant as Taiwan fields more F-16s against China’s increasingly capable fighter fleet, which includes aircraft equipped with long-range air-to-air missiles such as the PL-15.

Taiwan’s F-16 Block 70s will also be armed with the AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), intended for attacks against enemy air defense systems. According to Roy Choo, a defense journalist and TWZ contributor, the first of the new AGM-88F (remanufactured from U.S. Air Force AGM-88B) missiles arrived in Taiwan back in 2022, for the F-16V fleet.

The major gap is the AGM-154C Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The precision glide weapon is intended to give Taiwan a longer-range strike capability against ground targets without requiring the launching aircraft to fly directly over heavily defended areas. According to the latest reporting from Taiwan, deliveries of the AGM-154C have been held up by delays on the U.S. production line and may not begin until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. Existing stocks of these weapons were also heavily used in Operation Epic Fury.

The two aircraft now sitting at Chihhang are significant for another reason. Unlike Taiwan’s existing F-16V fleet, they are new-production aircraft rather than older fighters that have been upgraded.

Taiwan received 141 F-16A/B Block 20s that were upgraded to the F-16V configuration under a separate modernization program completed in 2023. The new Block 70s incorporate many of the same technologies — including the APG-83 — but are built from the ground up as new aircraft.

The Block 70s will also bring a significant new passive-sensing capability to Taiwan’s F-16 fleet. Under a $328.5-million U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract awarded to Lockheed Martin in February, Taiwan is receiving the company’s IRST21 Legion-ES infrared search and track system. Designed specifically for the F-16, the long-wave infrared sensor can passively detect and track airborne targets without emitting radar energy. That gives the aircraft another way to search for and track threats while reducing its own electromagnetic signature. The IRST21 also gives the F-16s a passive way to detect and track low-observable targets, potentially providing another means of finding Chinese stealth aircraft without relying solely on radar.

In 2019, Lockheed Martin displayed a model of a Block 70 F-16 with what appeared to be a podded IRST system on one of its chin stations at the biennial Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in Taiwan:

The mysterious IRST pod at TADTE – https://t.co/avpx5djZMM pic.twitter.com/86lqxu6fN6

— Alert 5 (@alert5) August 16, 2019

The new fighters will therefore complement Taiwan’s upgraded F-16A/Bs while expanding the overall number of modern F-16s available to the ROCAF.

The timing matters.

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft operate around Taiwan on an increasingly routine basis, forcing the ROCAF to maintain a persistent air-defense posture. The additional F-16s will provide more aircraft for missions ranging from air defense and counter-air operations to maritime strike.

The F-16V fleet is also being tested for a more specialized intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance role. The ROCAF has recently been conducting flight and systems integration testing of the MS-110 advanced reconnaissance pod, part of its Phoenix Scout project. The service plans to acquire six pods to replace older reconnaissance equipment. Based on the DB-110 digital sensor architecture, the system combines visible-light and infrared imaging with long-range, day-and-night reconnaissance, and real-time image transmission, allowing imagery to be passed more rapidly to ground command and intelligence elements. Integrating the pod with the F-16 and associated ground systems will give Taiwan another means of monitoring activity around the island and its surrounding waters.

But Taiwan remains heavily outnumbered across the Taiwan Strait.

China is fielding an increasingly sophisticated combat aircraft fleet that includes the J-20 and J-35 stealth fighter, large numbers of advanced fourth-generation fighters, airborne early warning and other force-multiplier aircraft, and a growing variety of uncrewed systems.

And the F-16s will face the same fundamental problem as Taiwan’s other combat aircraft in a major conflict: staying operational.

China possesses extensive missile and air capabilities that could threaten Taiwan’s airbases, aircraft shelters, fuel supplies, command-and-control infrastructure, and other elements needed to keep fighters flying. You can read more about how the ROCAF would likely go to war with China in this previous in-depth feature.

Basing the new F-16s at Chihhang Air Base, operated by the 7th Tactical Fighter Wing, is significant, Choo told us.

“The basing of the aircraft at Chihhang allows the ROCAF to readily project air power south and eastwards, especially over the Bashi Channel, which is one avenue PLA can gain access to the Philippine Sea and beyond,” he explained. “Previously, ROCAF fighters from other bases maintain QRA detachments there”

The F-16 delivery today is only the beginning of a much larger effort to get all 66 aircraft into Taiwanese service.

According to the latest information from the ROCAF, 63 F-16C/D Block 70s remain in various stages of production and delivery in the United States, with some already moving through the handover process. The remaining aircraft will be delivered according to production, flight-test, and acceptance milestones before being ferried to Taiwan.

Once the full order is delivered, Taiwan will operate more than 200 F-16s when the new Block 70s are combined with its existing fleet.

That will give the ROCAF a considerably larger force of modern F-16s, with substantial commonality between the upgraded F-16V fleet and the new-production Block 70s.

The aircraft will still need to go through Taiwan’s acceptance procedures, while pilots and maintenance personnel complete the necessary conversion and training work. The new jets will then be progressively incorporated into the ROCAF’s operational units.

Remarkably, the arrival of the first Block 70 fighters today marks the first delivery of new fighters to Taiwan since 2001, when the last of the 150 F-16A/B Block 20s were delivered.

“The ROCAF’s surviving fleet of 139 F-16s, 53 Mirage 2000s, and 129 F-CK-1s was largely inducted in the 1990s, when Taiwan held the upper hand in the cross-Strait air-power balance,” Choo explained. “Even then, there remained a requirement for additional fighters, prompting the island’s first formal request to purchase 66 F-16C/Ds during the 2006 Monterey Talks.”

“By the late 2000s, these fighters were approaching the limits of their combat effectiveness as the PLA air fleet expanded in both size and capability. Fortunately, substantial upgrades began to be rolled out to the F-CK-1s and F-16s from the 2010s.”

In the wake of the 2019 acquisition of the F-16C/D Block 70s, questions arose over the aircraft’s asymmetric value as the Taiwan military increasingly focused on developing a plan for asymmetric capabilities in response to the PLA’s growing combat power.

“However, developments in recent years have underscored the continued importance of a capable fighter fleet not least for policing Taiwan’s airspace amid the PLA’s sustained gray-zone air operations around the island,” Choo added.

The timing of today’s arrival is also notable.

The aircraft reached Taiwan just days after U.S. President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. The delivery comes amid questions in Taipei about the future pace of U.S. arms transfers, after Trump said in May that a proposed $14-billion Taiwan arms package was being held in abeyance. He had approved an $11-billion package in December 2025.

Washington continues to say that its policy toward Taiwan has not changed.

Beijing, for its part, continues to oppose U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and regards the island as part of Chinese territory.

It has taken nearly seven years to get the first two F-16C/D Block 70s, to Taiwan. But their arrival marks the first step in a major modernization of the ROCAF’s F-16 fleet, adding new-production fighters with improved radar, electronic warfare, sensors, and weapons to a force that is already operating upgraded F-16Vs.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Taiwan’s First F-16 Block 70s Have Finally Arrived appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. government set off conventional explosives inside a tunnel deep in the Nevada desert this week in a test designed to replicate a so-called “decoupled” nuclear detonation. Data collected is now being used to help improve methods for detecting this kind of nuclear testing. Just earlier this year, American authorities accused China of using decoupling to conceal new nuclear tests despite the country’s stated moratorium on such activities.

The test, which involved the use of chemical high-explosives and radiotracers, was conducted yesterday inside P Tunnel in Area 12 of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSA), according to a press release from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSS, which is situated within the boundaries of the U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), is used for a wide variety of testing purposes today. An agency under the Department of Energy, NNSA’s main jobs are to oversee the development and production of nuclear weapons, as well as manage America’s nuclear deterrent stockpile.

“This experiment is especially focused on further enhancing the U.S. capabilities to detect a ‘decoupled’ explosion,” per NNSA’s release. “Data collected from the experiment will be used to validate scientific models and refine algorithms that are critical to U.S. nuclear explosion detection efforts.”

“Just as a stealth aircraft looks smaller on radar, decoupling can greatly muffle the signals detected by nuclear detection sensors, making a large explosion appear smaller,” the release explains. “In a conventional, or ‘coupled,’ underground nuclear test, a device is placed deep in a hole in close contact with the rock, allowing much of the explosion’s shockwave to reach sensors. In a decoupled test, by contrast, the device is detonated inside a large underground chamber, substantially reducing the explosion’s seismic signature.”

“In this experiment, researchers gathered measurements using a broad suite of advanced sensors, including accelerometers, seismometers, infrasound sensors, electromagnetic sensors, chemical and radiotracer samplers, and meteorological sensors,” it adds. ”Together, these measurements will improve scientists’ understanding of the signatures produced by underground explosions and strengthen the United States’ ability to detect and characterize nuclear explosive events.”

The U.S. already maintains a U.S. Atomic Energy Detection Systems (USAEDS) network, which is overseen by the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). USAEDS is made up of more than 3,600 sensors positioned around the world. USAEDS is also tied in with the International Monitoring System (IMS), which is managed by the organization responsible for overseeing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). AFTAC also supports the mission to monitor for potential nuclear testing globally using a fleet of specially configured WC-135R Constant Phoenix aircraft. In addition, those planes are used to help keep watch for unusual spikes in atmospheric radiation that could point to nuclear or radiological accidents or other incidents leading to the spread of potentially dangerous radioactive material.

With regard to the USAEDS network specifically, “once a disturbance is detected underground, underwater, in the atmosphere or in space, the event is analyzed for nuclear identification, and the findings are reported to command authorities,” according to AFTAC’s website.

As mentioned, the U.S. government has accused its Chinese counterparts of using decoupling to conceal new nuclear testing, and NNSA’s press release draws explicit attention to these allegations. At the annual Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland, in February, Thomas DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said that China had conducted at least one such test at Lop Nur on June 22, 2020. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) subsequently said the IMS had not detected an event matching that description at that location on that date. For its part, the Chinese government has denied the accusation.

The social media posts below include satellite imagery showing activity at Lop Nur that could point to new nuclear testing activities in recent years.

参考
Satellite Imagery Analysis of China’s Alleged 2020 Nuclear Test at Lop Nurhttps://t.co/aafvU5Szh7
CSIS 20260213
ROLES SAT ANALYSIS No.7　中国に核実験実施の動き ー Lop Nur核実験場の画像分析 ーhttps://t.co/n66yYk0hLg
ROLES 20250522

— KAROTASU (@type36512) May 24, 2026

While China is a signatory to the CTBT, the country has never ratified it. The Chinese government last acknowledged a critical-level nuclear test in 1996, after which a self-imposed moratorium was put in place, at least publicly. As an aside, the United States has also signed, but never ratified, the CTBT, and has a similar self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992. It is worth noting that the treaty does not ban so-called sub-critical testing, which involves fissile material, but does not result in a full-fledged nuclear reaction.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration has been holding new talks with the Chinese government regarding various aspects of the country’s massively and rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, including the testing allegations. That story immediately preceded a state visit by China’s President Xi Jinping to Washington, D.C., to meet with Trump.

“The discussions between American and Chinese officials have centered on measures to reduce nuclear risks and haven’t been aimed at negotiating a formal arms-control pact, an effort Beijing has sharply rebuffed in the past,” according to that report. “The Trump administration has begun to highlight the possibility of implementing new verification measures.”

“Independent experts say seismic instruments might be placed on or near test sites,” The Journal‘s story also noted. “Another possibility, which was floated during the Biden administration, is to install radiation-detection equipment at test sites.”

NNSA’s announcement about the test at the Nevada National Security Site is certainly an example of the development underway already of new means of verification that could be deployed at sites around the world.

The United States has separately accused Russia of conducting lower-yield nuclear testing in secret in the past. Russia is a signatory to the CTBT and had previously ratified it. In 2023, President Vladimir Putin revoked that ratification in line with the provisions of a law passed by the country’s parliament, or Duma.

President Trump has also floated the idea of the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing in response to Russian and Chinese activities, though other U.S. officials have downplayed the possibility of doing so. The United States is otherwise in the midst of a huge nuclear modernization effort that impacts the air, sea, and land-based legs of the deterrent triad. American authorities are also now pursuing these efforts in an environment fully unbounded by relevant arms control agreements following the sunset of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) earlier this year.

The Russian government has said it is ready to conduct new nuclear tests if the United States pursues this course of action. The last official nuclear test in Russia came in 1990 right before the fall of the Soviet Union.

“It takes nuclear expertise to detect nuclear activities and experiments like these [to] ensure America remains unmatched in detection,” NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams said in a statement yesterday in light of the test in Nevada. “The Trump Administration has made it clear that the United States will lead from a position of strength. You cannot evade American innovation. With this experiment, we are sending a clear message: under this administration, America will never be outmatched.” 

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post U.S. Mimics “Decoupled” Nuclear Detonation By Blowing Up A Tunnel Conventionally appeared first on TWZ.

For the past six months or so, a curious-looking vessel with a very boxy superstructure has been taking shape at a shipyard in the Chinese city of Shanghai. A new satellite image lends credence to an earlier assessment that this is a mothership to support China’s growing fleets of ever-larger submersible drones, though it could also have other roles.

TWZ obtained the image of the ship in question, which was taken on September 10, from Vantor. Since then, it has also received an overall coat of gray paint, pointing to future service with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It is some 669 feet (204 meters) long and around 98 feet (30 meters) at its widest. In terms of basic length and width, the vessel being built now is very roughly comparable to China’s Type 071 amphibious warfare ship. However, it appears to be much taller overall than the Type 071.

The new ship has been under construction at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard on Changxing Island in Shanghai since at least April. This yard produces a variety of naval vessels, including surface combatants and amphibious assault ships, as well as commercial designs.

The September 10 image, which shows the ship from the stern, is interesting for a number of reasons. It notably confirms that the design not only has a well deck, but that it is sized around what looks to be a large cradle-like platform visible in the shot. The very roughly 164-feet (50-meter) long rectangular platform has an arch-shaped structure at one end and two teardrop-shaped ones at the other, as well as six pillars, three on each side, in between. The teardrop-shaped structures, in particular, point to the platform being at least a semi-submersible, as they would help with stability and otherwise guide the flow of water while being pulled along.

The satellite image also clearly shows six large struts extending from the top of the stern end of the superstructure, each one which is paired with a shorter strut, for a total of 12. Earlier this month, independent naval analyst H.I. Sutton, who tracks undersea warfare developments in particular, posited that these struts could be used to lower a platform or some other similar structure below the hull of the ship. He also assessed that they could be used as part of a larger system capable of moving payloads between decks internally. This would help account for the configuration of the core superstructure, especially how high it is all the way from the front to the back. Overall, signs point to the inside of the superstructure being largely hangars and other open work spaces, allowing for multiple large UUVs to be carried and supported. Individual UUVs would be launched and recovered, one at a time, via the cradle.

In making his assessment, Sutton drew specific attention to a previously shown rendering of a proposed Chinese scientific research vessel with a roughly similar strut-based system at the stern for deploying submersibles and other large payloads. However, on that design, the system was entirely exposed rather than contained with an extended superstructure.

The platform seen immediately behind the ship being built at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard aligns with Sutton’s assessment about the purpose of the struts. At the same time, launches and recoveries could also be conducted in a more traditional manner via the well deck. The design of the cradle-like platform would seem to suggest the latter option is at least part of the plan.

The general idea of launching and recovering payloads through the bottom of the hull of a ship, including through moon pools, is hardly new. As another point here, Russia is known to have highly specialized mothership submarines that can carry crewed midget submarines and large uncrewed submersibles attached underneath their hulls, and that are also capable of launching ultra-long-range nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed torpedoes. The idea of deploying and retrieving large UUVs via well decks using cradle-like systems is something being explored by other navies globally, including in the United States. All that being said, a large specialized ship built for the purpose of launching and recovering very large underwater vehicles in an operational capacity is unique.

The image from September 10, as well as other recent views of the ship, highlight other features that are now taking shape. This includes a large opening on the starboard side, which could be for launching and/or recovering lifeboats or other watercraft, or moving payloads to and from the pier while docked, as well as a multi-pronged mast on top of the bridge. An additional part of the ship’s superstructure extends behind the bridge area, and there is what looks to be a hangar inside. There is no attached helipad present now, but one could well be added later on somewhere on top of the superstructure. Many naval auxiliaries, as well as commercial ships designed for offshore support and other specialized tasks, have open helipads on raised frames attached to different parts of the superstructures.

Though there is growing clarity about the ship’s design, many questions do remain about the full breadth of its intended purpose. In Sutton’s view, the PLAN has a need, just in general, for a dedicated mothership to support its growing uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) fleets. The PLAN is pursuing various tiers of UUVs to perform a host of different missions, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as mine-laying, special operations support, and even launching direct attacks on enemy vessels. Larger and larger UUV designs have been steadily emerging in China, which could require more specialized launch and recovery options to be feasibly employed operationally, especially from other vessels at sea. Deployment and retrieval at sea could, in turn, support very long duration missions far from China’s own shores.

“With smaller UUVs, even up to 20 meters like the AJX-002 and HSU-100 paraded in Beijing last year, they are road mobile. Truck mounted cranes should be sufficient for getting them in and out of the water making operations much simpler. With these latest, much larger XXLUUVs [extra-extra large uncrewed underwater vehicles] however, China will start to need dedicated port facilities,” Sutton wrote previously on his website. “Until now China has been using floating docks to house the two XXLUUV prototypes being tested on Hainan. One of these docks was purpose built while the other may have been taken up from general use.”

China's naval unmanned systems.

Consisting of (in order), AI enabled unmanned submersible (HSU-100), used for detection and attack.

Unmanned patrol boat.

Unmanned mine-laying/attack submersible (AJX-002), this was previously mistaken for a nuclear powered torpedo.
Because the… pic.twitter.com/Mlj55XLNBH

— Zhao DaShuai 东北进修 (@zhao_dashuai) September 3, 2025

“This arrangement also has a significant drawback: each floating dock can only carry a single XXLUUV,” Sutton added. “Or if more than one, then they both need to be placed in the water at the same time. Because the whole dock floods, there cannot be one undergoing maintenance while another is being launched or recovered.”

A mothership vessel able to discreetly deploy and recover large uncrewed and crewed submersibles and other large payloads underwater could be tasked with more specialized missions, including cutting cables, retrieving objects from the seabed, and other kinds of undersea espionage. There is overlap here with more benign roles, such as submarine rescue, salvage, and even deep-sea scientific research. There is also the matter of servicing an expanding array of Chinese underwater infrastructure, including sensor and communications networks. As something of a corollary, Russia’s spy ship Yantar is officially described as an oceanic research vessel. In China, the line between military and non-military assets and capabilities, including ships, is often very blurry, to begin with, as TWZ regularly highlights. This dichotomy was observed right at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard around the end of last year after pictures of a commercial cargo ship being used to showcase a new family of containerized weapons, sensors, and other systems went viral online.

It is also worth pointing out that the boxy and largely enclosed design of the ship now being built at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard will inherently make it difficult to observe any activities onboard. This will have the additional knock-on effect of helping keep any payloads, as well as the crew, shielded from the elements. This could be valuable for operations in harsher locales, including waters in and around the Arctic, an ever-more strategic part of the world where China is working to be more engaged.

We also do not know if the apparent mothership vessel is intended to be a one-off or part of a larger class. It could be a stepping stone to broader plans or be part of an already extensive fleet of bespoke naval auxiliaries, as well as unique ostensibly commercial vessels, in service in China today. The PLAN’s aforementioned UUV ambitions will bring along significant test and evaluation requirements, as well as the need to support actual future operations.

If nothing else, evidence is only growing that the new ship under construction at the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard is intended to serve, at least in part, as a mothership for large submersible drones.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post China Appears To Be Building A Mothership For Large Uncrewed Submarines appeared first on TWZ.

Chinese authorities have reportedly taken possession of an F-35 cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door that were inexplicably diverted to Hong Kong while being shipped from Australia to the United States. The incident appears to have left physical components that incorporate aspects of the fighter’s low-observable design in the hands of a country that has spent years doing whatever it could to gain information on the aircraft and America’s stealth technology secrets in general.

So, what does all this mean? Let’s put it in perspective.

The parts in question were being shipped by UPS from Australia to the United States in late May, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg. The components from a Royal Australian Air Force F-35A were being sent to the United States for inspection and possible repair or disposal.

F-35 sustainment procedures explicitly cover the movement of F-35 parts, including unserviceable components, through the program’s logistics network. The U.S. Air Force’s transportation guidance directs F-35 shipments outside the Defense Transportation System to follow approved Joint Program Office procedures. In other words, moving an unserviceable Australian F-35 component to the United States for inspection, repair, or disposition is consistent with the normal sustainment process.

What is highly unusual is where this particular shipment ended up. F-35 components moving through an established international logistics system apparently stopped in South Korea, and were then routed to Hong Kong. Chinese authorities subsequently took possession of the parts and have not returned them, according to the sources cited by Bloomberg.

“For security reasons, we can’t discuss the status of specific shipments or our shipping procedures,” Lockheed Martin told us in response to a request for clarification about the incident. The company added that it “follows all U.S. regulations established by the Department of War and regulated by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) regarding the shipment of aircraft components. Our teams handle every shipment with the utmost diligence and safeguards to ensure the integrity of the F-35 program and the security of our allied partners.”

The Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office has acknowledged a “shipment issue” involving F-35 components and said U.S. authorities and industry partners are working to recover them and investigate what happened.

Lockheed Martin, UPS, and the Pentagon have not publicly provided a detailed account of how the shipment was diverted or what happened to the parts after they reached Hong Kong.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles also confirmed that Canberra was aware of the incident and was working with the United States and Lockheed Martin.

Marles has sought to play down the potential security implications of the components, saying his understanding was that the shipment did not contain sensitive equipment or sensitive parts. That does not by itself answer the more specific question of what could potentially be learned from these particular pieces of an F-35. After all, not every physical component of an F-35 is necessarily highly classified or capable of revealing meaningful information about the aircraft’s design. At the same time, a cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door involve structures, materials, interfaces, tolerances, and treatments that all have to work within the aircraft’s low-observable design. If radar-absorbing material or other specialized treatments remain on the components, that could potentially make them far more sensitive from a technological exploitation standpoint.

The condition of the parts is also unknown. We do not know how much of their coatings or other treatments remain intact, whether Chinese authorities have examined them, or what information could actually be extracted from them in their current state.

Above all else, there is little specific information in the public domain about what F-35-related technical information Chinese intelligence already has acquired over the years, what physical components or materials it may already possess, or what additional information could be gained through espionage, cyber operations, industrial access, observation of deployed aircraft, or other means.

Without these facts, it is impossible to gauge what damage could have been done by this loss. Still, viewed in a vacuum of those unknowns, simply having an F-35 canopy and weapons-bay door in Chinese possession represents a significant loss of control over sensitive physical hardware — there is no way around that reality — and the severity of that loss could be substantial depending on the physical state of the parts.

The circumstances are particularly sensitive because, as we mentioned in the opening of this article, China has pursued multiple avenues for acquiring information on the F-35 for many years, with publicly documented cases involving cyber operations, technical information, supply chains, and human expertise. Some aspects of China’s subsequent stealth aircraft designs have also prompted comparisons with U.S. aircraft, although claims that China simply ‘cloned’ entire aircraft are not supported by the available evidence.

China And The F-35: A History Of Espionage

In 2014, U.S. authorities charged Chinese businessman Su Bin with conspiring with two other Chinese hackers to break into the computer systems of U.S. defense contractors. Prosecutors alleged that the group targeted information on aircraft including the F-35 and F-22. The alleged hacking campaign ran from 2009 to 2013.

Su Bin later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. The Justice Department’s 2026 case against former Air Force fighter pilot Gerald “Runner” Brown connects the two cases. Prosecutors allege that Brown used a co-conspirator to negotiate his work training Chinese military pilots with Su Bin.

Brown, a retired U.S. Air Force major who spent more than 24 years in the service, subsequently worked as a contract simulator instructor training U.S. military pilots on the A-10 and F-35. In February 2026, the Justice Department charged him with providing and conspiring to provide unauthorized defense services to Chinese military pilots.

CASE UPDATE from @NewYorkFBI: Former U.S. Air Force Pilot Arrested for Providing Defense Services to the Chinese Military https://t.co/JhwhJHS83v@FBILouisville @FBIIndianapolis and @FBILosAngeles provided assistance in this case. pic.twitter.com/3KElqci05y

— FBI (@FBI) February 25, 2026

According to the criminal complaint, Brown traveled to China in December 2023, where he allegedly began training People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) personnel. Prosecutors say he also answered questions about the U.S. Air Force for three hours on his first day in China. Brown has been charged, and the allegations have not been adjudicated. He is one of multiple former Western aviators alleged to have provided training services and/or intelligence to Beijing.

The Honeywell case provides yet another example, this time involving the defense industry’s supply of technical information.

In 2021, the State Department reached a $13-million administrative settlement with Honeywell over alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Honeywell had voluntarily disclosed alleged unauthorized exports and retransfers of ITAR-controlled technical data.

The case involved 71 engineering drawings containing dimensions, geometries and layouts for manufacturing castings and finished parts used across multiple aircraft, engines and military systems. The State Department said the unauthorized exports and retransfers involved Canada, Ireland, Mexico, China, and Taiwan.

Among the systems covered by the drawings were components associated with the F-35 and F-22. The case did not allege that Honeywell deliberately sought to provide China with sensitive military technology; rather, it concerned alleged violations of export-control requirements.

There has also been a physical supply-chain precedent.

In 2022, F-35 deliveries were temporarily halted after the Pentagon discovered that a magnet in the aircraft’s Honeywell-built turbomachine pumps —which provide critical power functions to the jet — contained a cobalt and samarium alloy produced in China. The material itself was not considered a security or flight-safety threat, but the discovery demonstrated how difficult it can be to maintain complete visibility over a global supply chain involving thousands of companies and multiple tiers of subcontractors.

Taken together, these cases demonstrate several different pathways through which China has appeared in the F-35 security story: cyber theft, unauthorized technical-data transfers, supply-chain exposure, and alleged exploitation of former Western military expertise.

The Hong Kong incident would add another major category: physical access to actual F-35 components.

These are only some of the publicly documented examples. There is no public way to know the full extent of information or physical material Chinese intelligence may have acquired over the years, but is very likely far larger in scope than what is available in the open source.

Chinese Access Concerns Have Shaped F-35 Export Policy

The security issues surrounding the F-35 are significant enough that concerns about China have affected not only how the United States protects F-35 technology, but where Washington is willing to export the aircraft in the first place.

The proposed sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirates became deeply entangled in U.S. concerns about Abu Dhabi’s growing military and technology relationship with China.

Washington had approved a potential package involving 50 F-35As, but U.S. officials and lawmakers expressed concerns about Chinese intelligence activity and technology in the UAE. Among the broader concerns were Chinese telecommunications infrastructure and the possibility of Chinese military or intelligence access to facilities associated with advanced U.S. weapons. A Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report later cited the potential presence of Chinese intelligence collection capabilities and military facilities in the UAE as risks to the proposed F-35 sale.

The issue has now resurfaced with Saudi Arabia.

The State Department recently approved a potential $24.3-billion sale to the Kingdom involving 48 F-35s and associated equipment. But U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly warned that China’s military and technology relationship with Saudi Arabia could create opportunities for Beijing to obtain sensitive F-35 information.

According to reporting based on U.S. officials familiar with intelligence assessments, a Defense Intelligence Agency report raised concerns about Chinese military access to Saudi bases, Chinese technology in Saudi telecommunications infrastructure, and whether secure facilities could be maintained for F-35 operations. The assessments also questioned whether Saudi Arabia would limit contact between Chinese military and intelligence personnel and F-35-related sites.

What Could The Components Reveal?

As we noted earlier, there is no way to gauge the intelligence impact of the loss at this stage. The central unknown of what China already knows about the F-35, and what it may already have in its possession — especially related to these components — is the key variable here.

Regardless, an F-35 canopy and weapons-bay door can provide information that cannot otherwise be easily obtained and gives a different level of fidelity in terms of material exploitation than what construction data and blueprints alone could.

The F-35’s low observability is the product of an extremely complex combination of airframe shaping, construction materials, external coatings, manufacturing tolerances, speciality apertures, and more.

A canopy is a particularly demanding part of any stealth aircraft. It has to satisfy optical and structural requirements while also controlling radar reflections. The cockpit is historically a major source of radar reflectivity, including the pilot’s helmet. Therefore the canopy’s materials, construction, interfaces, and specialized treatments can be critical to the aircraft’s overall low-observable performance, and especially from the critical frontal aspect.

The F-35’s canopy has been an ongoing work in progress for many years. It has had chronic material issues, especially when it comes to delamination. Multiple iterations spread over two decades have recently resulted in a major improvement of the issue. The tight balancing act of keeping the canopy transparent enough, while controlling the F-35’s stealthy signature and having that mix of materials be robust enough to last for a reasonable amount of time has been a major investment for the program. If the canopy is of a later variation, that loss alone could be substantial and could help China with their own low-observable canopy development programs even if they already had original information on the F-35’s canopy original design dating back years.

The F-35’s canopy has been a notorious work in progress, specifically the low observable coating/delamination issue which has improved a lot in recent years with new materials and processes. So no, you do NOT want to lose that in to China! https://t.co/9V0jdRAiwA

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) September 19, 2026

The F-35’s weapons-bay door has its own sensitivity issues. It is effectively a major section of the aircraft’s outer shell, with its structure, edges, interfaces, tolerances and treatments all having to function without creating unacceptable radar signatures. Its construction and material attributes can be reasonably extrapolated for the rest of much of the F-35’s outer mold-line. Above all else, if the radar absorbent material remained intact on the door, that would signify a major loss when viewed without any understanding of what China already knows about the F-35’s radar absorbing surface treatments. Historically speaking, RAM technology is among America’s closely guarded material sciences secrets.

For the time being, Australian officials have said they do not understand the parts to be sensitive. The investigation will ultimately have to establish what the components actually contain and what could be learned from them.

The incident comes at a moment when China’s own stealth fighter efforts are undergoing an extraordinary expansion.

The PLAAF is now operating the J-20, China’s first operational fifth-generation stealth fighter, in increasingly large numbers. The smaller J-35 is also moving toward broader service, including a carrier role for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

China has also moved into what Western observers generally describe as sixth-generation fighter development.

Two new tailless combat-aircraft designs emerged publicly in December 2024. One is the large Chengdu aircraft commonly referred to as the J-36, while the other is associated with Shenyang and is variously called the J-XDS or J-50. Both have continued flight testing and yielded several prototypes with individual refinements.

The exact capabilities and eventual operational roles of these aircraft remain uncertain. They are developmental designs, not established operational equivalents of the F-35 or other sixth-generation systems. However, China is clearly building an increasingly broad ecosystem of fifth- and next-generation low-observable combat aircraft, both crewed and uncrewed. In the latter category is a growing number of stealthy drones, including long-endurance types.

China didn’t likely need physical access to an F-35 canopy or weapons-bay door to develop the J-20, J-35, or its next-generation aircraft. But additional information about how a mature Western stealth aircraft handles materials, coatings, interfaces, manufacturing, and the integration of those elements can still have great potential value to an industry developing its own systems. This includes technologies intended to counter the U.S. combat aircraft and their low-observable characteristics.

The F-35 has been produced in large numbers, is operated by a growing coalition of countries, and has been subjected to years of testing and operational experience. Its low-observable design represents decades of accumulated U.S. research and industrial know-how. At the same time, the global scale of the program inevitably makes control over sensitive information more complicated. More aircraft, more maintainers, more industrial partners, and more international logistics mean more points at which information and physical hardware have to be controlled. Over time, a program of this size will see an erosion in its secrets, but a major loss can drastically accelerate what should be a more gradual and controlled decline in security.

The potential intelligence value of the components also has to be considered in the context of foreign material exploitation, or FME. Major military powers maintain dedicated capabilities to recover, examine and characterize foreign weapons, aircraft, sensors, materials and other equipment. The objective is not necessarily to reproduce an entire system. More important is determining how something is built, what materials and manufacturing techniques are used, how individual components perform, and where industrial strengths or limitations may lie.

That is why countries have historically gone to extraordinary lengths to recover even crashed or damaged pieces of sensitive military hardware. The bigger the prize, the more risk an intelligence service would be willing to take in order to realize a recovery.

The sensitivity surrounding the physical remnants of an F-35 is not new. When a Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-35A disappeared over the Pacific in 2019, the search quickly became more than a rescue operation. U.S. and Japanese forces mounted an extensive effort to locate the wreckage, with U.S. Navy P-8A aircraft and a destroyer joining the search. TWZ noted at the time that even scattered F-35 wreckage could expose valuable technological secrets, while the aircraft’s location on the seabed raised the prospect of an underwater espionage and recovery operation.

USFJ is supporting @MoDJapan_en search & rescue efforts for missing F-35A w/@US7thFleet P-8A aircraft & @air_fifth coord. @USForcesJapan continues to hope for the safe recovery of the pilot @JASDF_PAO pic.twitter.com/9E7x6QZxpY

— U.S. Forces Japan (@USForcesJapan) April 10, 2019

That concern has also been evident in subsequent F-35 recovery operations. In 2022, the U.S. Navy recovered an F-35C from roughly 12,400 feet in the South China Sea after a carrier landing accident, removing the possibility that the aircraft could be accessed by another country.

pic.twitter.com/JvQZErAAK0

— OedoSoldier (@OedoSoldier) January 27, 2022

Unanswered Security Questions

At this point, there is no public evidence that the Hong Kong diversion was a deliberate Chinese intelligence operation, although it is certainly possible. It is also unclear whether Chinese authorities have examined the F-35 parts or what level of new and useful information has been recovered from them.

If, as reported, Chinese authorities have taken possession of the parts and have not returned them, that would be an extraordinary development. If the diversion was genuinely the result of a shipping or logistics error, the outcome would itself be extraordinary. It would raise serious questions about the security controls surrounding the movement of F-35 hardware even without evidence of deliberate interference.

The timing is also notable. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington this week for a state visit with President Donald Trump, with the two leaders meeting amid broader disputes involving technology, security, and the future of U.S.-China relations. Whether the F-35 shipment comes up directly in those discussions is not known, but it would be an obvious subject for U.S. and Chinese officials to address through diplomatic channels.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, accompanied by the President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan." pic.twitter.com/hyPHOBC99Q

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 24, 2026

For now, however, the central question remains how the parts got there. Until that is answered, we won’t know if this was a simple logistics failure or a deliberate intelligence operation. And beyond that, what China already knew about the components it now may have in its possession — a question we may never truly get an answer to.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post F-35 Canopy And Weapons-Bay Door Loss To China: Separating Fact From Fiction appeared first on TWZ.

Taiwan has provided the first public look at its new 105mm 8×8 mobile gun system in action, with the domestically developed vehicle engaging moving and stationary targets during a live-fire demonstration in southern Taiwan. The vehicle is being developed as Taiwan continues to modernize its ground forces in response to the growing capabilities and increasingly frequent military activity of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around the island.

During the demonstration, held by the Republic of China Army (ROCA) at a training area in Tainan today, the vehicle reportedly engaged a moving target at approximately 0.75 miles and a stationary target at around 0.6 miles. It also fired against targets positioned 90 degrees to the side of the vehicle while operating on a gentle slope, demonstrating the gun system’s ability to engage targets while the vehicle is positioned on uneven terrain.

pic.twitter.com/dn6lHDbf5k

— 青年日報 Youth Daily News, ROC(Taiwan) (@YDN_NEWS) September 23, 2026

Eight wheels. Six-wheel steering. One 105mm gun.
Definitely not your average ride.#ROCArmedForces #MobileGunSystem#MadeInTaiwan pic.twitter.com/oaHsyMNtev

— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, ROC(Taiwan) (@MoNDefense) September 23, 2026

The vehicle subsequently fired its 7.62mm coaxial machine gun simultaneously with its main gun as part of a scenario intended to demonstrate engagement of multiple targets, including simulated amphibious assault vehicles.

台灣105公厘獵豹輪型戰車實彈射擊https://t.co/cHaXthUCfA pic.twitter.com/aKBBzoVsKz

— 新‧二七部隊 軍事雜談 (New 27 Brigade) (@new27brigade) September 23, 2026

An apparent weapon malfunction was also recorded during the demonstration. One of the 105mm rounds initially failed to fire, according to reports. The crew waited approximately two minutes in accordance with safety procedures before reloading the weapon, after which the vehicle fired normally. Maj. Gen. Chen Chien-chung, head of Taiwan’s Arsenal 202, the Production and Manufacturing Center of the Armament Bureau, said an investigation would be conducted into the misfire.

The 155 mm infantry fighting vehicle showcased to media before entering production phase. pic.twitter.com/DBhs66aw5Q

— Taepodong (@stoa1984) September 23, 2026

Despite the incident, the demonstration provided an important look at a vehicle that Taiwan is developing specifically around the country’s geography and battlefield requirements, including a potential amphibious invasion by the Chinese PLA.

A new direct fire support variant of the Clouded Leopard 8×8 infantry fighting vehicle was first publicly displayed at the Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in 2023. It passed initial combat readiness testing with the ROCA in October 2023, and it was authorized for mass production in April 2024.

The production configuration has undergone significant changes since then.

Its height has been reduced by approximately 12 inches, bringing the overall vehicle height to below 9 feet 10 inches. Its turning radius has also been reduced from 36 feet to 26 feet. The reduction in turning radius was achieved by providing steering to three pairs of wheels, rather than two pairs on the earlier configuration.

Those changes are especially relevant to Taiwan, where large sections of the island feature restrictive terrain, dense urban development, narrow roads, drainage channels, and other obstacles that can limit the movement of heavy armored vehicles.

Taiwanese officials specifically highlighted the system’s suitability for culverts and urban areas, as well as the challenging terrain of Hualien and Taitung on the island’s mountainous east coast.

The vehicle’s principal weapon is a 105mm gun. The weapon can fire the general-purpose ammunition already developed for tank guns, in addition to ammunition developed specifically for the new system. The ROCA displayed armor-piercing, anti-personnel, and training ammunition during the demonstration. The gun also offers useful ammunition commonality with Taiwan’s older, but still active M60A3 and CM11 tanks.

That compatibility potentially gives the vehicle access to an existing ammunition ecosystem while allowing Taiwan to develop specialized rounds for its particular requirements.

Against a PLA assault, the 105mm system would provide mobile direct firepower against amphibious vehicles, armored personnel carriers, fortifications, and other ground targets, complementing Taiwan’s heavier tanks and other anti-armor weapons. Its wheeled configuration also allows the vehicle to rapidly reposition along Taiwan’s road network, giving commanders a mobile source of direct firepower that could respond to amphibious landings and reinforce threatened sectors.

The system falls into the same broad category as other modern 8×8 mobile gun systems, including Italy’s Centauro family and Japan’s Type 16 Mobile Combat Vehicle.

Less successful was a mobile gun system version of the U.S. Army Stryker, also with a 105mm gun, but the service divested that in 2021 because of problems with its dated cannon and autoloader. The U.S. Army then received the M10 Booker Combat Vehicle. Armed with a 105mm main gun, the Booker is a tracked vehicle with a much higher degree of armor protection and off-road mobility, but this, too, was canceled in 2025, amid cost and weight increases.

A wheeled 105mm gun system can provide substantial direct-fire capability while offering advantages in road mobility and potentially lower logistical demands. It also lacks the combination of protection, cross-country mobility, and heavy armament associated with a tracked main battle tank.

For Taiwan, this kind of vehicle provides a comparatively compact armored platform able to move rapidly between positions and bring heavy direct firepower to areas where larger vehicles could face mobility constraints.

If fighting reaches Taiwan’s cities, the ROCA regularly trains for the challenges of urban warfare. The service has also demonstrated unusual measures to conceal and protect its armored vehicles, including disguising tanks and other vehicles as scrap piles or civilian construction equipment to complicate PLA targeting.

The vehicle’s development is also being influenced by the threat of battlefield drones. Taiwanese military officials say the system is expected to receive additional counter-drone capabilities before entering mass production. One planned modification is an anti-drone cage around the vehicle.

More ambitious changes could involve the installation of a larger-caliber automatic weapon. Reportedly, the vehicle could eventually receive another machine gun or larger-caliber automatic cannon, with the 30mm M230 chain gun identified as one possible option. The proposed weapon could use canister-type ammunition designed to disperse numerous fragments against small drones.

Adding dedicated counter-drone equipment to the mobile gun system would therefore give the vehicle another role beyond direct engagement of conventional ground targets.

The prominence of counter-drone measures in the planning of the vehicle also reflects the increasingly contested environment in which Taiwan’s armored forces would have to operate. In a conflict with China, armored units have to operate under the threat of persistent surveillance and attacks from a wide range of uncrewed systems, making concealment, mobility, dispersion, and organic counter-drone capabilities very important to any change of survival. Questioning just how long any armor would last in a full-on invasion scenario is absolutely relevant. As we have seen in Ukraine, the drone threat alone has sidelined even the most capable armor. At the same time, Taiwan is working toward its own drone-heavy battlefield doctrine, part of a broader plan to turn the island into a “hellscape” for any invading force.

Overall, the September 23 demonstration offered a useful glimpse into the thinking behind Taiwan’s indigenous armored vehicle program.

As part of a wider modernization of ROCA armor, the service has also received 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, broadly equivalent to the M1A2 SEPv3 version — or System Enhancement Package version 3 — which you can read more about here.

With production of 178 series examples of the new vehicle scheduled to begin in 2027, Taiwan’s new 105mm mobile gun system is moving toward becoming a significant component of the island’s domestically produced armored fleet.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post This Is Taiwan’s New 105mm 8×8 Mobile Gun System appeared first on TWZ.

China’s Chengdu Aircraft Corporation continues to press ahead with the development of its ‘J-36’ next-generation tailless heavy tactical jet. Recent flight testing has offered interesting new views of the still-evolving stealthy design from the top and behind, prompting discussion about the aircraft’s features. There has also been talk recently about whether the jet might receive a laser directed-energy weapon at some point in the future.

The J-36 first broke cover, along with another next-generation tailless tactical jet design generally referred to as the J-XDS, back in December of 2024. There are understood to be at least four, and possibly five, J-36 prototypes flying now. A number of significant changes between prototypes have already been observed over the past two years, as you can read more about here.

The most recent video of a J-36 test flight, seen in the social media post below, began circulating online yesterday. The footage shows the aircraft coming in to land, providing good general views of the uniquely three-engined jet with its two-seat, side-by-side cockpit configuration, especially from the rear aspect. What is seen underscores a previously observed total revision of the exhausts from a trough style to a two-dimensional thrust-vectoring configuration akin to what is found on the U.S. F-22 Raptor. This and other significant changes to the design, including the addition of divertless supersonic intakes (DSIs) all around, not just on top, first emerged last year. The clip also offers a good reminder of just how wide the aircraft is overall.

Obviously one of the best video recordings of the J-36 so far seen during landing approach … But can anyone read the number under the cockpit? https://t.co/cmQ0AkdsdO

— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) September 22, 2026

As this particular J-36 passes by, it can be seen to have a lighter-colored radome, as well as at least one relatively large lighter-colored section on top of the dorsal air intake. A similarly colored radome was first spotted on what is said to be the fourth prototype back in July. This coloring could point to the installation of actual radar in the aircraft’s nose. In TWZ‘s first in-depth analysis of the J-36 back in 2024, we assessed that the jet’s very broad radome area could house an absolutely massive primary array.

The lighter section on top of the fuselage could be an aperture for a conformal antenna tied to a beyond-line-of-sight communications and data-sharing suite. In 2024, we posited that the heavyweight J-36 could serve as an intelligence-gathering and communications relay platform in addition to performing tasks more typically associated with tactical combat jets. Reliable and multi-faceted connectivity would be key for employing the J-36 as an airborne controller for advanced air combat drones, as well.

Another J-36 flight testing video that emerged on Monday, seen below, offers an additional view of the top of the jet, showing multiple lighter-colored sections that would appear to be additional conformal apertures for various antennas. There is a lighter-colored rectangular outline painted around part of the intake on top of the center of the fuselage, as well. The jet’s full paint scheme includes lighter-colored leading and trailing edges, which are critical structures on low-observable (stealthy) designs that often contain additional antenna arrays. Overall, the two-tone coloring is very much in line with what is seen on operational J-20 fighters in Chinese service today. The original J-36 prototype, at least, has notably worn a splinter-type camouflage paint scheme.

China's J-36 sixth-gen fighter asserting its dominance in the sky.

My prediction, the J-36 will gain initial operational capability before the American F-47 take its maiden flight. pic.twitter.com/SLmjqZ76Aw

— Zhao DaShuai 东北进修 (@zhao_dashuai) September 21, 2026

Whether or not the two recent video clips show the same J-36 prototype is unclear. The possibility has now been raised that Chengdu may be using a single serial number (36011) on at least some of the J-36 prototypes, a decision that could have been made for counter-intelligence and/or deliberate misinformation/disinformation purposes.

Much still remains unknown about the current or expected future capabilities of the J-36. Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) did have a placard at its booth at the 14th China International Defence Electronics Exhibition earlier this month that has prompted questions about whether the jet could be equipped with a laser directed-energy weapon. Chengdu falls under the umbrella of AVIC, which is a state-run enterprise. The Chinese-language placard in question describes a “laser weapon tracking system” with a power rating of “*00” kilowatts and a weight of “less than” 837.7 pounds (380 kilograms), per a machine translation. The way the power rating is written appears to mean that it is in the hundreds of kilowatts, which would put it firmly in a class capable of doing physical damage to objects, such as incoming missiles and drones.

Furthermore, an associated graphic shows a turreted system and a computer-generated rendering of a J-36 projecting a beam. The render appears to be from a video that depicts a J-36 using a laser to destroy other aircraft. Another computer-generated video that shows a J-36 using retractable lasers to shoot down incoming missiles has been circulating online since at least last year.

This appears to be a screenshot from this video, via rednote user @阿中CN. https://t.co/NX1zDOLw2v pic.twitter.com/673Zl41MM1

— 笑脸男人 (@lfx160219) September 17, 2026

It is not immediately clear how official either of the clips depicting laser-armed J-36s might be, or whether they at all reflect real planned capabilities. The full placard presented at the China International Defence Electronics Exhibition, as seen in the video below, shows a variety of different laser systems, and not just for aerial applications.

AVIC has confirmed that the J-36 fighter jet is equipped with a laser defense system. pic.twitter.com/4PrSqAfOQK

— Modern War Explained (@FPDefenseNews) September 17, 2026

The fielding of operational laser directed-energy weapons capable of inflicting any real physical damage has historically proven to be very challenging, and even more so within the size, power-generation, and cooling constraints presented by modern combat jets. As an example, the U.S. Air Force spent roughly a decade working on a podded laser weapon system that tactical jets could use to swat down incoming missiles under its Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) program. In 2024, the service confirmed SHiELD had “concluded” without achieving its goal of an actual flight test. That same year, the Air Force cancelled plans to test a laser weapon system on an AC-130 gunship.

Despite important U.S. strides more recently when it comes to fielding ground-based and naval laser weapon systems, “there’s nothing that’s on the shelf right now that we are ready to put onto an airplane,” U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Douglas Wickert, the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), told TWZ and other outlets just last week at a roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Tuesday. “The solid-state lasers and the power density and the different ways that you actually – there’s actually a lot of secret sauce in that. How do you make the beam, and how do you form the beam, and how do you pulse the beam, and all that’s in development.”

‘There’s development of the laser itself, but now the power and thermal management system has progressed so much that we can provide the power needed,” Dr. Michael Gregg, head of AFRL’s Air Warfare Directorate, said at the same roundtable. “We’ve also had new designs and engines that we know have the power … to direct that power in certain areas. So, from a system perspective, it’s much more feasible because everything has matured over the last decade.”

China has certainly made substantial investments of its own in laser and other directed-energy weapon capabilities across domains in recent years, and this is clearly an area of interest for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in general. When it comes to the J-36 specifically, TWZ has explicitly highlighted in the past how the three-engine configuration could be particularly useful for producing sufficient power to support a host of advanced and electricity-hungry sensors and other capabilities, including directed energy weapons.

Larger questions remain about the exact set of roles the J-36 is expected to fill, as well. The basic design is certainly optimized for straight-line performance, combat radius, and payload rather than maneuverability and agility. The jet has already caused a significant amount of debate just when it comes to taxonomy, as it does not seem to fit inside traditional definitions of ‘fighters’ and ‘bombers,’ something we have explored in detail previously.

“According to Yang Wei – chief designer of the J-20 –, the new [J-36] fighter can penetrate heavily defended airspace that the J-20 and comparable F-22s or F-35s must avoid, placing it a generation ahead,” Andreas Rupprecht, an analyst specializing in Chinese military aviation and TWZ contributor, wrote in a post on LinkedIn last week. “With lower RCS [radar cross section], high speed, and the capacity to control more drones, it could act as a node and command center for systems including J-20s and, especially, unmanned aircraft, while attacking high-value targets from stand-off range with long-range weapons.”

“The type could therefore represent a new class of ‘fighter,'” he added. “Online terms include ‘theater-level deep-penetration command combat aircraft’ and ‘high-performance fighter,’ analogous to a cruiser ranking above a destroyer within the Navy. Recent evidence gives this theory new weight and warrants continued monitoring.”

The J-36, as well as the J-XDS, reflect a larger burst of next-generation air combat developments in China in recent years. This includes an array of new crewed and uncrewed aircraft designed for operations from bases on land, as well as from the PLA Navy’s (PLAN) growing fleet of aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibious assault ships. The Chinese aviation industry’s development of a growing array of flying-wing uncrewed aircraft, some of which are very large, has been particularly notable.

In turn, there is something of an emerging gap between these developments and the pace at which the U.S. military is moving along similar lines, at least publicly. Boeing’s sixth-generation F-47 for the U.S. Air Force is not expected to take to the skies for the first time until 2028, though preceding demonstrator designs have been flying for years already. The U.S. Navy still has yet to officially announce a winner of its F/A-XX next-generation carrier-based fighter competition, and the current timeline for that program producing an operational aircraft is unclear.

As an aside, based on what has emerged publicly to date, there are signs that the F-47 may reflect a distinctly different design philosophy that puts greater emphasis on maneuverability compared to the J-36, and even likely the J-XDS. As mentioned, the J-36 certainly seems much more focused on payload, range, and level flight performance. In July, TWZ published a deep dive exploring why the U.S. Air Force would pursue a sixth-generation fighter with rear-swept wings, canards, and other features despite steady trends in the opposite direction visible in Chinese designs and ones elsewhere globally.

Regardless, U.S. officials have downplayed questions about China’s gaining ground in the air combat arena, or even surging into the lead in certain areas, in the past. “Chinese sixth-generation aircraft are in the nascent stages of development and expected to be operational by 2035,” the Pentagon wrote in its most recent annual report on military and security developments in China, which was published in December 2025.

In the meantime, the J-36’s design is already steadily being refined, and the total fleet of prototypes has been growing, offering new insights into the aircraft’s expected capabilities and roles.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post China’s Recent J-36 Heavy Stealth Tactical Jet Testing Offers New Insights Into Its Evolving Design appeared first on TWZ.

North Korea has released imagery of what appears to be a flight test of an updated version of its Hwasong-11Ma hypersonic missile, nearly a year after the weapon first appeared publicly at a military technology exhibition in Pyongyang.

The September 20 test involved a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) booster fitted with a hypersonic glide vehicle, according to photographs released by North Korean state media. A display screen visible in the imagery identifies the weapon as the Hwasongpho-11Ma-1, or Hwasong-11E-1 in the equivalent English-language designation.

The test was conducted from the east coast near Anbyon County, south of Wonsan, an area North Korea has repeatedly used for missile testing. The launch site allows missiles to be fired eastward over the Sea of Japan, providing a relatively controlled area for testing short- and medium-range systems.

South Korean and Japanese authorities say they detected two launches on September 20, with the first occurring at approximately 3:00 p.m. local time and the second several hours later.

North Korean photographs show the missile being launched from a coastal location, with Kim Jong Un and senior missile officials observing the test. Kim’s daughter, Kim Ju Ae, also appears in the imagery.

North Korea displayed a mock-up of what it called the Hwasong-11Ma at its Defense Development-2025 exhibition in October 2025. The design uses the basic architecture of the Hwasong-11 family, known in the West as the KN-23 family, but substitutes a distinctive glide wedge-shaped vehicle for the conventional warhead arrangement.

North Korea claimed another hypersonic missile test that same month, but did not release launch imagery clearly connecting that test to the Hwasong-11Ma. The missile was subsequently shown again during a military parade in Pyongyang.

The latest “-1” designation suggests an iterative evolution of the Hwasong-11Ma, although Pyongyang has not explained what modifications it represents.

Based on the imagery, the new configuration also includes a modified launcher, with the missile carried on a six-axle transporter-erector-launcher (TEL). When the Hwasong-11Ma was first shown, it was mounted on a five-axle TEL. The latest vehicle also appears to incorporate modified retractable covers around the missile.

It remains unclear whether the new TEL represents a standardized operational vehicle or a test configuration.

Preliminary illustration of the new launch vehicle for North Korea's hypersonic missiles. pic.twitter.com/dZ31LA1cbn

— Tal Inbar (@inbarspace) September 22, 2026

As with previous North Korean weapons announcements, the country’s state media claims need to be treated very cautiously. Pyongyang has a long record of publicizing weapons systems and test results that cannot be independently verified, while some of its purported hypersonic tests have left outside analysts unable to determine whether the advertised maneuvering performance was actually demonstrated.

Perhaps the most revealing test-related imagery comes from a display screen photographed at the launch site.

Kim Jong Un and his daughter can be seen watching the screen, which shows the apparent flight trajectory of the Hwasong-11Ma-1. The displayed path initially follows a ballistic trajectory before descending and then performing a pull-up maneuver, regaining altitude before continuing toward the target area.

That type of trajectory is consistent with the basic concept behind a hypersonic glide vehicle. The booster provides the initial velocity and altitude, after which the unpowered glide body follows a relatively shallow, atmospheric flight path at hypersonic speeds, while maneuvering rather than following a simple ballistic path.

The graphic is useful for understanding what Pyongyang says the weapon is designed to do, but it does not independently demonstrate that the missile actually followed the depicted trajectory.

The flight data visible on the display provides some unusually specific figures.

Enhancing the original image released by North Korea allows for an excellent view of the HS-11Ma hypersonic glide missile trajectory, providing altitude and speed data. Note: Slight inaccuracies in the numbers may occur due to the use of AI tools. pic.twitter.com/M4LkfF5VYu

— Tal Inbar (@inbarspace) September 22, 2026

According to the North Korean imagery, the missile traveled 908.2 kilometers (564.3 miles), reached an altitude of 35.8 kilometers (22.2 miles), and remained in flight for approximately 445 seconds, or 7.4 minutes.

The display gives a velocity of 2,146 meters per second, equivalent to roughly 4,800 mph. That is hypersonic velocity in the aerodynamic sense, but speed alone is not what makes a hypersonic glide weapon particularly challenging to defend against. More consequential parameters include sustained controlled flight, maneuverability, guidance, and accuracy.

Other portions of the display appear to show additional points along the flight, including different times, altitudes, and speeds. None of these figures have been independently verified.

The claimed range is particularly noteworthy because it does not match the publicly reported tracking data from South Korea and Japan.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea launched two SRBMs from the Wonsan area on September 20. The missiles were assessed to have traveled approximately 450 and 600 kilometers, respectively.

Japan similarly reported two launches, assessing the first at approximately 440 kilometers and the second at approximately 590 kilometers, with maximum altitudes of roughly 60 and 70 kilometers.

Those figures are substantially different from the 908.2-kilometer distance shown on North Korea’s display.

The discrepancy does not necessarily establish that either side’s data are incorrect. The North Korean figure could represent a different measurement of the flight path, or could correspond to a portion of the test that was not reflected in the public South Korean and Japanese assessments. It is also possible, if not highly probable, that Pyongyang selectively presented or altered the data.

South Korean analysts have already raised questions about the unusually long distance displayed by North Korea. Yonhap reported that experts suggested Pyongyang may have altered the figure to portray the test as more successful.

Regardless of the range actually achieved in this test, the Hwasong-11Ma/Ma-1 is significant because it represents an attempt to combine a relatively compact SRBM with a maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle.

The underlying Hwasong-11 family is a well-established North Korean missile design. In its KN-23 configuration, members of the family have also been used by Russia against Ukraine. By placing a glide vehicle on this type of booster, Pyongyang could potentially give a regional strike weapon a flight profile substantially different from that of a conventional ballistic missile. The Hwasong-11Ma/Ma-1 also uses a solid-fuel booster, allowing for faster launches than earlier liquid-fuel designs.

In principle, the Hwasong-11Ma/Ma-1 could give North Korea an additional hypersonic strike option against more heavily defended targets in South Korea. Having road-mobile TELs would also provide greater operational flexibility despite their relatively limited range, while making it more difficult for adversaries to locate and track the launchers.

A genuine boost-glide weapon creates significant challenges for defending forces since the sheer speed of the weapon bypasses most air defenses. Its trajectory can also become less predictable after the boost phase. Maneuvering at lower altitudes could also reduce the time available to detect, track, and engage the weapon.

However, the available imagery does not establish the extent of the vehicle’s maneuverability, its ability to maintain controlled flight, its accuracy, or the reliability of the complete missile system.

North Korea has made similar claims about its hypersonic weapons in the past.

Pyongyang says it has flight-tested multiple hypersonic boost-glide vehicle designs since at least 2021, but there continue to be questions about what degree of actual capability the country has achieved in this regard. Viable wedge-shaped boost-glide vehicles have historically been extremely difficult to design and then bring to an operational state.

The challenge is not simply reaching hypersonic speed. A weapon has to sustain controlled flight and maneuverability under extreme thermal loads, while also overcoming demanding materials-science, guidance, and navigation requirements. The terminal phase is harder still. Accurately finding and striking a moving target, particularly a ship, requires a highly capable seeker and guidance system. Integrating a nuclear warhead introduces another layer of engineering and weapons-design challenges.

Those demands have made hypersonic weapons a major technological challenge for the United States and other major powers. China is currently widely regarded as the leading country in deploying and developing operational hypersonic systems, although important questions remain about the capabilities and maturity of individual weapons.

Pyongyang said it first flight-tested a wedge-shaped hypersonic glide vehicle in 2021 aboard the liquid-fuel Hwasong-8, before pairing a similar-looking vehicle with the solid-fueled Hwasong-16B intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in 2024.

VIDEO: Korean Central Television (KCTV) broadcasted footage of North Korea successfully testing the new "Hwasong-16B" hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/VNdhLAeyyK

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) April 3, 2024

In its coverage of the latest test, North Korean state media initially avoided identifying the weapon, describing the event as a successful trial of a “new-type weapon” that it said was significant for the rapid development of weapons technology.

Kim said the development would give adversaries an “incurable headache” and deliver what he described as a “cruel and unavoidable blow.”

Tal Inbar, the head of the Space and UAV Research Center at Israel’s Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies identifies the Hwasong-11Ma/Ma-1 as a “very significant weapon, bringing hypersonics to the operational/tactical arena and [posing] a challenge to … air and missile defense systems.”

Whatever the exact achievements of the test, the imagery points to continued development of a weapon North Korea first publicly displayed nearly a year ago. The appearance of a new, six-axle TEL, a potentially modified missile, combined with the apparent flight test, suggests that the Hwasong-11Ma/Ma-1 program has progressed since its initial public unveiling.

What remains uncertain is how much of that progress represents a genuine improvement in operational capability.

The latest test therefore provides another indication of the resources and attention Pyongyang is devoting to hypersonic weapons, but the available evidence is still insufficient to determine how closely the Hwasong-11Ma-1’s actual performance matches the capabilities depicted by North Korean state media.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post North Korea Tests New Hwasong-11Ma Hypersonic Missile appeared first on TWZ.

Recent satellite imagery of a shipyard in northeastern China offers interesting new insights into the country’s next-generation submarine developments. The images notably show a pumpjet propulsor and other features worth examining on an example of what is generally described as a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarine, or SSN.

TWZ has obtained a new image taken on September 18 of the submarine in question, which is being built at the Bohai Shipyard in Huludao, from Vantor. Janes reported on this submarine earlier today, based on a separate Vantor image from September 1. The outlet also described the boat as a Type 095, a commonly used, but still unofficial designation. This is something we will come back to later on.

As mentioned, the pumpjet propulsor immediately stands out in both images. This is also understood to be a feature on the Type 093B nuclear-powered attack submarine, a significantly improved variation on that earlier design, which first emerged in the early 2020s. Compared to traditional exposed propellers and more basic shrouded types, pumpjets offer benefits for quieter operation and efficiencies, especially at higher submerged speeds.

The recent imagery also highlights the submarine’s X-shaped stern plane arrangement. This is not found on the Type 093B, which is considered to be something of a bridge between that class and the next-generation design. Broadly speaking, an X-shaped configuration offers advantages when it comes to enhanced maneuverability, efficiency, and safety, which can be particularly useful in littoral environments. It can also provide benefits when it comes to acoustic signature reductions across significant parts of the submarine’s operating envelope compared to the cruciform stern planes.

Another Chinese submarine design that emerged in 2024, currently referred to as the Type 041 or Zhou class, and that is understood to feature a hybrid nuclear/conventional propulsion system, also has an X-shaped stern configuration. The first known example of the Type 041 came to light after it appeared to have sunk in a shipyard.

An X-shaped stern arrangement also looks to be a feature on yet another new class of submarine that appeared at the JN (Jiangnan) Shipyard in Shanghai earlier this year. Initial reports also suggested that the design lacked a traditional sail. However, it has been confirmed that it has a sail, but that is very small proportionally to the overall size of the boat. Truncated sails can offer performance and other advantages, but there are trade-offs.

The image of the submarine that Janes obtained also notably shows an open rectangular-shaped section aft of the sail. The September 18 image that we received from Vantor shows a structure placed over that section of that submarine, obscuring ongoing work on that part of the boat. The Type 095 is widely expected to feature some type of vertical launch system (VLS) array able to accommodate a variety of anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, as well as potentially hypersonic types. The Type 095 is also sometimes referred to as a guided missile submarine, or SSGN, as a result. The open area seen in the September 1 shot could be where the VLS array is set to be fitted. It might also provide access to the reactor compartment or another area of the submarine.

The clearest photos we have on the Type 095 SSN!

As we can see, there is one confirmed chamber than could physically fit about 18-24 VLS Cells. There is a big chance that more than one VLS Chamber exists, with an estimate VLS count from 24-48+ VLS pic.twitter.com/0ZJ8gsl4su

— PLA Military Updates (@PLA_MilitaryUpd) September 21, 2026

Interestingly, the September 18 image also shows what look to be at least two relatively large circular openings, side-by-side, at the bow end of the submarine in front of the sail, the purpose of which is not immediately clear. There is a possibility these could also be for vertically launching munitions or other payloads. As a point of comparison, U.S. Virginia class nuclear attack submarines, starting with the Block III version, have two large-diameter Virginia Payload Tubes (VPT), one in front of the other, in the bow in front of their sails. At the same time, the openings on the submarine in Huludao also appear to be in a position that is very close to where the submarine’s main sonar array would be installed, and they could be tied to that aspect of the design, too.

“I think it’s too early to be sure about the VLS configuration from publicly available imagery. I realize people assume the large rectangular space halfway behind the sail is the VLS, but I am not sure this is the case and I’d caution to jump to conclusions. The space could also be related to work on the reactor compartment,” Alex Luck, a naval analyst who closely tracks submarine and Chinese navy developments, told TWZ. “With Type 093B, the VLS after launch was initially covered with a tarp, and then the installed launchers were readily visible quite quickly during the fitting-out process. The work process may change with these newer boats, but the different appearance during launch and fitting out needs to be considered in that regard.”

“I do expect Type 095 to have a VLS of some sort, but I am not sure as of yet what the configuration would look like, or where exactly it is located,” he added.

The bigger outstanding question may be exactly what type of submarine is currently being built now at the Bohai Shipyard. Based on a review of additional imagery from Planet Labs’ archive, the boat appears to be around 394 feet (120 meters) long. When the first example of what was assessed to be a Type 095 emerged in Huludao in February, it was estimated to have a length of roughly 361 feet (110 meters). The ‘small sail’ design that broke cover earlier this year in Shanghai is also estimated to be some 394 feet/120 meters long based on available imagery, but also looks to be narrower than the boat presumed to be a Type 095 in February.

“One significant question is the nature and difference between the boat launched by Bohai in February, and the two newer hulls launched in late May/early June both by Bohai and at Jiangnan in Shanghai,” Luck, the naval analyst, also told TWZ. “Specifically, we do not quite know whether they are for different operational roles, or rather a two step development for one final configuration of a new SSN. I think the latter is at least plausible.”

“A related question then is what boat we are looking at now with the new imagery, i.e. the February boat or the newer hull Bohai had launched,” he continued. “Without exact and reliable measurements that question for now is unresolved in the public discourse. For now we need more, and more detailed imagery, including of the different boats together, to clarify these aspects.”

“This [September 1] image reinforces my impression that the boat launched in February may have been a one off not including the full spec featured on the notional 095A launched by Bohai and Jiangnan in late May. We’ve already seen both versions side by side in Bohai,” Luck also wrote on X after Janes‘ published its report.

This image reinforces my impression that the boat launched in February may have been a one off not including the full spec featured on the notional 095A launched by Bohai and Jiangnan in late May. We've already seen both versions side by side in Bohai. https://t.co/wBMkB1gmSQ

— Alex Luck (@AlexLuck9) September 21, 2026

Regardless, the emergence in recent years of so many new, more modern submarines, and across what appear to be several distinct classes, is significant. It is no secret that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is working to significantly expand the size and capabilities of its submarine force with a clear eye toward extending operations further and further out in the Pacific, at least. In the past, U.S. officials have publicly said the overall quality of newer Chinese submarines has been getting closer in parity to American designs.

“The PLA Navy is executing a significant strategic shift from diesel-electric to all-nuclear construction, representing a fundamental departure from historical construction patterns,” U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Mike Brookes, head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote in prepared remarks ahead of a hearing before members of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March.

In particular, the Type 095, as well as the new Type 096 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, “represent next-generation platforms expected to enter service during the late 2020s through 2030s,” Brookes also wrote at that time. “These submarines will incorporate substantial advancements in nuclear reactor design, sensor performance, weapons integration, and noise quieting technologies.”

Submarine modernization efforts are just one aspect of a larger effort by the PLAN to expand its capabilities above and below the waves. Chinese shipyards have also been producing ever-more capable aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, destroyers, frigates, and more in recent years, as well. The pace of China’s construction of new surface ships and submarines has also been growing, creating a particularly significant and still-widening disparity in this regard with the U.S. Navy. This is something that has become increasingly concerning, as TWZ routinely highlights.

Work in Huludao, as well as shipyards elsewhere in China, is certainly already revealing interesting new insights into China’s next-generation submarine efforts.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Chinese Next-Generation Submarine Developments Spotted In New Satellite Imagery appeared first on TWZ.

Earlier this year, an Iran-linked actor used Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence model to scrape and analyze data with the aim of helping target U.S. naval forces in the Middle East. A group in Yemen – very likely Iranian-backed Houthi militants – also used Claude to assist with work on guidance systems for ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

These are just some of the revelations about how adversaries and other malign actors have been using one of the premier pieces of AI software being developed in the United States that were contained in a new report Anthropic released late yesterday. The 154-page document also details instances where Claude was used directly and indirectly to support intelligence gathering and surveillance, cyberattacks, influence operations, and even worrisome biological research over the past eight months. In addition to Iran and Yemen, the human actors behind these activities were based in Russia, China, and a host of other countries.

Anthropic has shared details about what it calls the “misuse” of its models in the past, but describes the new report as its “most detailed” to date. The company has clearly been cataloging these case studies, and has assigned each one a control number. Though the entire contents of the report are cause for concern, the explicit attempt to use Claude to target American forces, as well as to develop new higher-end missiles and other military technology, are particular standouts and signs of what’s to come, as we will highlight below.

GTG-30005: Military reconnaissance

GTG-30005 is the case study dealing with the targeting of U.S. naval forces, and the summary is as follows:

“In another investigation, we identified and disrupted an Iran-nexus threat actor that used Claude to collect and analyze publicly accessible data to develop targeting recommendations against US naval forces in the region. The threat actor used Claude to compile targeting handbooks, through a Python pipeline the threat actor built with Claude’s assistance, to identify and track naval positions based on open-source information. The compiled material included a roster of US personnel scraped from captions on public military photographs; publicly accessible ship and aircraft transponder identifiers; commercial satellite-imagery query scripts; and an inventory of public websites that exposed US naval movements. The threat actor also directed Claude to compile vulnerability research on shipboard systems, cataloging known CVEs in maritime VSAT terminals, Cisco communications equipment, and industrial control products.”

“We banned the actor’s account, developed detections to reduce the risk of future misuse, and shared threat intelligence with government authorities to disrupt the threat.”

How exactly Anthropic defines the term “nexus” here is not immediately clear, and other entries in its new report also use “state-nexus” in addition to country-based variations. However, in this specific case, an addendum is added to the entry that explicitly says that the same account was separately tied to “domestic mass surveillance” software development work “for Iranian state systems,” clearly pointing to an actor directly linked to the regime in Tehran.

Whether or not any of the data collected and analysed here was directly used to subsequently carry out attacks on U.S. forces is unknown. However, there have been media reports just in recent weeks that Iran has been increasingly trying to strike American warships. Those same reports have raised questions about how the country has been prosecuting those operations given its limited capabilities and capacity to track maritime targets far from its shores. The possibility that Russia or China could be supplying targeting data has been put forward.

The use of AI technology by nation-state armed forces to develop target sets and engage them is already known to be growing globally. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been a pioneer in this regard, but the U.S. military, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and others are also known to be developing and fielding these capabilities.

U.S. military officials have also voiced increasing concern in recent years about the ability to track the movements and disposition of U.S. military assets and personnel using publicly available pictures and other data. There has been much talk, in turn, about how to balance transparency and operational security.

GTG-87001: Disrupting a Yemen-based guided weapons engineering cell using Claude to develop guidance software

Anthropic’s new report details an instance where an individual in Yemen used Claude as part of missile guidance work, which is given the control number GTG-87001.

“We identified a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen running three weapons development programs: a guided rocket that used a commodity phone-class flight computer with final-phase homing guidance; a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated range goal above 2,000 km; and a multi-variant missile (referred to as the “R2000” set) that included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant.”

“The actors used Claude Code in place of human software engineers to develop the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) software that steers and stabilizes a flying vehicle. For example, they used Claude to integrate an open-source autopilot onto a phone-class flight computer, writing the control and position estimation software, tuning the control settings, running a firmware build pipeline, and performing a flight simulation. The actors managed several Claude instances at once, assigning each one a role, much as a lead would delegate work on a small engineering team: the actors tasked one instance with writing the code, another with research, and a third with reviewing the code the first instance produced.”

“Our safeguards blocked many of their requests, but not all of them. The actors used a variety of tactics to evade our safeguards, including hiding their goals and the products the software was meant for, and they split their work across multiple sessions so no single session revealed their full intent.”

“These actors carried out a sustained effort to develop guided weapons, including using Claude to design guidance software. We do not have evidence the actors succeeded in fielding an operational device; but they did test-fire a guided rocket. This field test appears to have failed: within hours, the actors returned to Claude to work out why it failed.”

“We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We banned accounts associated with the actors and shared threat information with public- and private-sector partners to mitigate risks posed by the actors. Nevertheless, we have evidence that the actors had already built an offline simulation toolkit that does not rely on Claude or other engineering computing environments such as MATLAB.”

As mentioned earlier, the report does not name the Houthis, but that group has historically been based primarily in the northern end of Yemen. It is also the only entity in the country known to have active missile development programs, which are conducted with critical support from Iran.

Whether this particular work directly resulted in any new capabilities is unknown. Anthropic notes that there looked to be at least one failed test launch before the accounts were banned, which would have occurred sometime after the beginning of this year, based on the stated cutoff dates for the report. By the end of 2025, the Houthis had already amassed a wide array of very real ballistic missiles, including types with at least claimed ranges of 2,000 kilometers (approximately 1,242 miles). The group also has a variety of cruise missiles and one-way attack drones that it has employed operationally.

Still, being able to leverage Claude could only have helped any domestic missile development efforts in Yemen, which might help reduce dependency on Iran, at least to a degree. Furthermore, developing functional hypersonic glide vehicles capable of prolonged stable flight has historically been notoriously difficult, even for entities with extensive relevant knowledge bases on an organizational level.

GTG-17001: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to draft a fire control specification and acquisition documents for undersea warfare

Use of Claude in foreign military endeavours goes beyond the Middle East, as evidenced by case study GTG-17001. This involved a Chinese actor conducting work related to a naval counter-torpedo defense system.

“We identified a China-based threat actor who used Claude to advance three parallel tracks of work on an anti-torpedo weapons system:”

• “First, the actor used Claude to draft a Chinese-language specification for an anti-torpedo fire control system (the core logic that aims and times an anti-torpedo weapon’s response). The document was written to win approval from a Chinese defense manufacturer, which would move the work on to technical certification and operational testing.”
• “Second, the actor used Claude to produce a Chinese-language technical proposal of more than 200 pages, accompanied by an executive briefing deck.”
• “Third, the actor used Claude to benchmark their own system against specific US anti-torpedo and anti-submarine programs based on publicly accessible information. They then generated a Chinese-language briefing on US Navy systems derived from open-source reporting.”

“The actor presented themselves as an original equipment manufacturer in the US defense sector. We assess the actor was associated with a Chinese defense industry manufacturer aiming to produce a weapons specification and acquisition proposal for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.”

“The actor used Claude to write the acquisition proposal, refining it over many drafts. After each draft, the actor instructed Claude to role-play a hostile expert reviewer to critique the proposal, then used that feedback to sharpen the next version. In parallel, the actor used Claude to build pieces of the anti-torpedo weapons system’s fire control software and a test matrix to validate them.”

“The operational lift the actor achieved was a function of using Claude to automate complex technical outputs. The actor leveraged the model to compress the development timelines for the certification registry, compliance documentation, and automated fire control logic. The actor also accelerated the traditional human review cycle by having Claude critique the acquisition proposal across multiple rounds of review while role-playing a persona.”

“We uncovered this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We cannot attribute the activity to a specific entity or actor. But we have banned the account for violating our Supported Regions Policy and our Usage Policy, which prohibits weapons design and development, and incorporated our investigative findings into our safeguards to mitigate the risk of future misuse.”

Anthropic’s report does not name the U.S. programs leveraged here, but does note the information in question was publicly available. Anti-torpedo systems for surface warships and submarines have been an area of significant interest for the U.S. Navy for years now. Those developments have also produced compact torpedo designs for use in other applications.

The PLAN’s interest in these same kinds of capabilities is not at all surprising. Underwater threats and countermeasures to them, broadly speaking, would play a central and vital role in any future conflict between the United States and China across the broad expanses of the Pacific.

GTG-27005: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to engineer an autonomous military drone swarm

Another case study, GTG-27005, details the use of Claude by Russian actors working on drone swarming technology.

“We identified likely freelance Russia-based threat actors who set out to build a full-stack autonomous first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drone swarm. The actors used Claude Code to write and test the code and save it directly into the actors’ own project files. In addition to Claude Code, the actors used a software-in-the-loop simulation stack and a rented graphics processing host for model training. They called the operation ‘DronDoc’ or ‘Serafim.'”

“The actors used Claude to build the core software system, including the drones’ shared swarm memory and fault-tolerant coordination logic (FTCL); an onboard small language model to govern attack, observe, and return-to-base behaviors; a terminal guidance software system to steer drones to their target (using the onboard camera) and issue the call to detonate; a control-link geolocation module to find opposing drone operators; a passive acoustic detection layer; and low-level logic for the drones’ programmable chips. The actors designed the platform for autonomous lethal engagement; the onboard model could select targets (including a ‘person’ target class) and issue detonation commands without a human in the loop. The actors’ activity—including flashing the low-level firmware to live development boards, provisioning single-board computers, and wiring up a simulation environment over a mesh network—confirmed that they were using real hardware-in-loop testing within their sessions.”

Many were surprised yesterday by the news that a Russian fiber-optic FPV drone flew into Kramatorsk and attacked a car.

But there is nothing surprising here. The war of 2025 is already very different from the war of 2024.
From LBZ to Kram — 20 kilometers. Enemy FPVs can fly even… pic.twitter.com/hTfhJFPcxZ

— Richard Woodruff (@frontlinekit) October 6, 2025

“The actors trained a computer vision classifier on scraped Ukrainian combat footage, splitting the target classes into “enemy” and “friendly,” and allow-listing Russian systems. They also repeatedly used a fixed coordinate in Donetsk Oblast as the demonstration strike point, with front-line cities and corridors in Ukraine as the mission geography.”

“The actors created their accounts between late 2025 and early 2026 and started the operation in mid-May 2026. The actors circumvented our geographic access controls by routing traffic through commercial virtual private servers.”

“We assess the actors were a small, specialized freelance team doing a mix of civilian and military work, not a Russian state entity. We identified nine accounts associated with this group; eight were used only for ordinary freelance work, not weapons-related software development. Based on our investigation, we assess the actors had ties to a regional university with a federal research center associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. The actors claimed to have received funding from Russia’s Advanced Research Foundation, National Technology Initiative, and Ministry of Defence, though we cannot verify those claims. We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development, we banned accounts associated with the actors, and have incorporated our investigative findings into safeguards to reduce the risk of future misuse.”

Anthropic’s report included a table, reproduced below, detailing different types of drones and other capabilities that were fed into the model as part of this work.

Also, while Anthropic said it could not confirm any direct ties in this instance to the Russian government, the work described here is fully in line with capabilities that have already been demonstrated to varying degrees in Ukraine in the past few years. TWZ has been very closely tracking developments on both sides of the conflict when it comes to new automated targeting and swarming capabilities for shorter- and longer-ranged kamikaze drones. In 2024, we also published a detailed feature outlining a coming revolution in drone warfare, signs of which were already emerging then, thanks to AI and the ever-lowering barrier to entry for leveraging that technology.

GTG-17002: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to build targeting software for electronic warfare and air defense suppression

The last case study in the Conventional Weapons section of Anthropic’s new report, GTG-17002, covers electronic warfare-related work by a Chinese actor, with a particular focus on potential air defense targets in Taiwan.

“We identified a China-based actor who used Claude’s chat, coding, and agentic work tools to design, build, and iterate on a Chinese-language suite of about 16 modules for electronic warfare, using the electromagnetic spectrum to detect, jam, or deceive an opponent’s radar and communications, and for suppressing an opponent’s air defenses.”

“The actor used Claude to build the software system, from the underlying logic to the user interface, and iterated through 12 versions. This included implementing and optimizing the system’s radar detection and jamming physics, generating a vulnerability analysis module, and drafting Chinese-language targeting instructions. The software suite the actor built analyzed an opponent’s radars, surface-to-air missile sites, command posts, and communications nodes, then computed their detection coverage, assessed the effectiveness of jamming, ranked targets by value and vulnerability, including which to suppress first, and determined how best to assign jammer sorties to targets across multi-day campaigns. The suite also ranked which of an opponent’s assets to suppress first, and modeled specific engagement envelopes, including those of Patriot and THAAD-class [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] systems.”

“Mid-project, we observed the actor change the simulation’s default scenario to 12 targets in Taiwan. The targets included a command bunker in Taiwan, an early warning radar site, Patriot and Tien Kung [surface-to-air missile] batteries, major air bases, and a regional combatant command headquarters.”

“The actor also ran a self-hosted model on an internal network alongside Claude and connected the software suite to this model through a tool-use integration.”

“Based on our investigation, we assess the actor is a China-based defense and military-industrial researcher. Account-level metadata and content flagged by our safeguards indicated the actor was linked to PRC research institutions, including the PLA Academy of Military Sciences. We detected this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development, we banned accounts linked to the actor, and have incorporated our investigative findings into our safeguards to reduce the risk of future misuse.”

An accompanying table, seen below, mentions several specific types of U.S.-made air defense radars, as well as the Link-16 datalink network, as having come up in the course of this work. Electronic warfare variants of the Chinese Y-8 and Y-9 aircraft, as well as the J-16D electronic warfare jet, and what appears to be a reference to the Golden Eagle drone helicopter, are also mentioned.

The suppression of enemy air defenses is an essential part of any modern air campaign, whether conducted independently or as a part of a larger operation. This would be no less critical in any military intervention against Taiwan from the mainland, or any other larger-scale conflict the PLA might find itself in.

Guardrails and ethics

Beyond the details in any of the specific case studies, Anthropic’s new report underscores growing broader concerns about guardrails for the use of AI and general ethics surrounding the technology. As noted in the instances above, Anthropic has also implemented various safeguards to try to block access to Claude from certain regions and/or to prevent the model from conducting certain types of work. At the same time, what the company has now shared makes clear that those protections can still be circumvented to a significant degree, at least for now.

For its part, Anthropic has been publicly supportive of transparency laws and regulation, at least within the United States. The company also notably made tweaks to certain Claude models earlier this year to address U.S. government cybersecurity concerns.

Starting in December 2025, Anthropic has also been very publicly embroiled in a dispute with the Pentagon over the potential use of Claude to support mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapon systems. This subsequently led to the company being designated a supply chain risk, and limitations being imposed on the use of that model within the U.S. military and elsewhere across the U.S. government. Anthropic is continuing to fight that action in court. However, just yesterday, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said the U.S. military had scaled back the use of Anthropic’s products in support of classified work by 90 percent.

Anthropic is still a designated Supply Chain Risk at @DeptofWar and for the Defense Industrial Base. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

— Under Secretary of War Emil Michael (@USWREMichael) September 3, 2026

The concerns about ‘misuse’ outlined in Anthropic’s new report apply, in general terms, to publicly accessible models being developed by other companies, too. There have already been publicly disclosed instances of AI agents themselves engaging in hacking and other malign behavior in order to complete assigned tasks, raising additional questions about security and public safety, not to mention ethics.

TWZ has noted in the past that America’s adversaries are likely to be less worried about ethics, in general, when it comes to AI. Anthropic’s new report also shows there are few bounds to what state-aligned or even non-state actors might seek to use this technology for, including the development of potential weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, AI models like Claude are not going away, and developments continue to advance at an ever-quickening pace, opening the door to further proliferation. Developments are rapidly intermingling globally, with companies in China notably leveraging models created in the U.S. to further their own work, which is then released publicly. The technology will increasingly become more integrated and critical to most aspects of military operations and weapons development, alongside its commercial and civilian applications. It is just as much a superweapon as anything else, and the country with the more capable models, and the willingness to deploy them, will have a major edge in future conflicts.

With all this in mind, it seems very plausible, if not probable, that the case studies described in Anthropic’s new report are just the tip of an approaching iceberg that will need a concerted effort to tackle.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Adversaries Using Claude AI To Target Americans And Develop Missiles Is A Sign Of What’s To Come appeared first on TWZ.

After pulling into Thailand looking very much like it just spent 286 days at sea, the U.S. Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln is now getting much-needed TLC. When the Lincoln arrived in the Thai port of Laem Chabang on Sept. 2, it had so-called “running rust” and algae caked all along the sides of the hull. Other parts of the ship, especially around the edges of the flight deck and sponsons on either side, also looked rough. The ship’s condition was a stark, visible reminder of the hardships endured by the carrier and its crew during a long deployment that included a key role in the war against Iran.

Video emerged on social media of local workers cleaning the carrier. Two of them can be seen on a scaffolding platform, dressed in silver-colored protective clothing, yellow helmets, face shields and black boots, spraying the side of the big ship. You can see that most of the rust, as well as all of the green swath of algae, was removed from the section where they are working.

The camera also pans across the ship, showing the extent of the work still needed. 

Those recent viral rust photos/footage of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in Thailand overstated the story.

Yes, the hull looked rough in pictures, but the ship itself was never in question, that's the part the headlines skipped.

Today at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand, local… pic.twitter.com/b8SP2oyrJZ

— Comandante (@commandante_) September 4, 2026

It is unclear whether this work had already been scheduled as part of routine maintenance or whether it had been ordered after images of the ship emerged showing its rough condition. The ship was a huge focus of attention even before it got to Thailand.

Lincoln and Carrier Strike Group 3 took part in the opening salvo of strikes on Iran on February 28 as part of what the U.S. military dubbed Operation Epic Fury. Lincoln and the rest of the strike group continued to support Epic Fury and subsequent operations against Iran for months thereafter. The decision was finally made to rotate the carrier out of the region last month following a raft of reports of severely flagging morale and mental health among the crew. One sailor had to be rescued last month after deliberately jumping overboard. There were reports that at least one other individual onboard had attempted to do the same. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others, have pushed back on concerns about mental health and other issues on the ship.

Interest in the Lincoln flared up anew after it arrived in Thailand due to its condition, as well as intense curiosity about how the crew would fare in a Thai port call after being at sea for so long.

As we noted in our initial story about the Lincoln’s arrival in Thailand, running rust on U.S. Navy ships has sparked criticism over the years, including from President Donald Trump. This is in part due to the negative optics of such visible wear and tear on American naval vessels, especially during calls in foreign ports.

“It’s terrible. I think they should be ashamed,” John Phelan told members of Congress at a hearing last year, when he was then-nominee for Secretary of the Navy, after being shown pictures of a very worn-looking Arleigh Burke class destroyer, the USS Dewey, during a stopover in Singapore. “Would you want to go on that ship?”

One driving factor in the condition of ships like Lincoln is the operational tempo of deployments, a Navy official noted earlier this year.

“We know what to do, but we choose not to do it,” Mark Lattner, director of the Navy’s Ship Integrity and Performance Engineering, Naval Systems Engineering Directorate, said in January during a panel at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium that TWZ attended. “And we choose not to do it because there’s always some other problem I’ve got to fix. I don’t have time. Our corrosion can wait. And so we don’t implement the fixes.”

Finding a solution to the Navy’s rust problem became one of Lattner’s main missions in the wake of the fallout from Trump’s late-night texts to Navy officials demanding answers about the condition of the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Dewey after he saw pictures of it covered in running rust as it pulled into Singapore last year.

Port calls offer critical time to fix long-standing issues and resupply the ship of pretty much everything you can think of, from jet fuel to food. So it’s no surprise that the Lincoln would be swarmed with support personnel and supplies while much of her crew enjoys being on land once again for a few days.

It’s unclear how long the clean-up work on the Lincoln will last or how much of it will be finished by the time the ship and crew leave port. Either way, from what we have seen so far, it will look much better leaving Thailand than when it arrived.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post USS Abraham Lincoln Is Getting A Badly Needed Scrubbing While In Thailand appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln is now in Thailand for a much-deserved and highly publicized liberty port call. The carrier had gone 286 days without making such a stop, with much of that time spent executing grueling combat operations against Iran. The ship has been run very hard, relying on at times a rickety conveyor of sea replenishments to continue operating for months on end, and it has the scars to show for it. The Lincoln looks very much worse for wear, with so-called “running rust” and algae caked all along the sides of the hull, as well as around the edges of the flight deck and sponsons on either side. It’s something of a startling appearance for one of the most powerful ships on the planet and a major symbol of U.S. power projection, but it is also a reminder of what the vessel and its crew have endured for months on end.

The Lincoln arrived in the Thai port of Laem Chabang earlier today. The carrier did make a stop in Guam in December 2025 and reportedly made another one somewhere in the Middle East in July. However, in both cases, these have been characterized as brief logistical stopovers that did not offer any real opportunity for personnel onboard to disembark. Thai media reports say the carrier is expected to remain in Laem Chabang through the end of the weekend.

“Our arrival in Laem Chabang provides a well-deserved opportunity for our Sailors and Marines to rest and recharge. It also underscores the strong and enduring partnership and alliance between the United States and Thailand,” Rear Adm. Robert E. Loughran, commander of Carrier Strike Group 3 (CSG-3), said in a statement in a press release today. “What this strike group has accomplished is truly historic. I could not be prouder of the exceptional professionalism and expertise demonstrated by every member of this team during our operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.”

Lincoln and its strike group had left port in San Diego in November 2025 for what was originally expected to be a routine cruise in the Pacific. The carrier, its air wing, and escorts were subsequently directed to the Middle East and arrived in that region in January 2026.

CSG-3 took part in the opening salvo of strikes on Iran on February 28 as part of what the U.S. military dubbed Operation Epic Fury. Lincoln and the rest of the strike group continued to support Epic Fury and subsequent operations against Iran for months thereafter. The decision was finally made to rotate the carrier out of the region last month following a raft of reports of severely flagging morale and mental health among the crew, which we will come back to later.

Two of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers assigned to CSG-3, the USS Michael Murphy and the USS Spruance, are still understood to be operating in the Western end of the Indian Ocean. A third destroyer in the strike group, the USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., accompanied the Lincoln to Thailand and is now docked in a separate port in Sriracha, near Laem Chabang. The Ticonderoga class cruiser USS Robert Smalls also helped escort the carrier, and that warship “also arrived in Map Ta Phut, Thailand for their own scheduled port visit,” according to the Navy.

As mentioned, Lincoln definitely looks like it’s been at sea more or less continuously for the last nine and a half months or so. Pictures and videos of the ship in Laem Chabang seen throughout this story plainly show big dark rust stains all around the hull and other similar signs of wear elsewhere. There is also a bright green ring of algae layered on the hull at the waterline. While carriers have very large crews and usually keep the ship’s appearance up relatively well while on cruise, there is only so much that can be done out of port on particularly long deployments, where all resources are focused on sustained high-tempo combat operations.

Running rust on U.S. Navy ships has been something of a lightning rod for criticism in recent years, including from President Donald Trump. This is in part due to the negative optics of such visible wear and tear on American naval vessels, especially during calls in foreign ports.

“It’s terrible. I think they should be ashamed,” John Phelan told members of Congress at a hearing last year after being shown pictures of a very worn-looking Arleigh Burke class destroyer, the USS Dewey, during a stopover in Singapore. “Would you want to go on that ship?”

Phelan was testifying at the time regarding his nomination to be Secretary of the Navy. At the time, he said that President Trump had already been texting him in the middle of the night regarding the issue. Phelan was subsequently confirmed and served as the Navy’s top civilian until he was unexpectedly fired in April, reportedly over disagreements regarding the new Trump class battleships and other more general friction within the administration,

Lincoln‘s current condition is, of course, an extreme case that is the result of very specific operational circumstances. The carrier has already been in the news for weeks now due to the aforementioned morale issues, which family members of those onboard have been very vocally calling attention to through the media. One sailor had to be rescued last month after deliberately jumping overboard. There were reports that at least one other individual onboard had attempted to do the same. President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others, have pushed back on concerns about mental health and other issues on the ship. In a statement shared on social media on August 16, Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), acknowledged, but still downplayed, the seriousness of the mental health situation, in particular.

At the same time, the carrier’s marathon deployment is indicative of larger shipbuilding, readiness, and other issues that the Navy continues to struggle with. Strains on the service carrier fleets in particular have been steadily building for years and are now becoming a low-level crisis. The USS Gerald R. Ford wrapped up a historic 326-day-long deployment in May. The Navy has publicly said that the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is set to begin its latest cruise soon, could be away from home for at least eight months. The longer the ships remain deployed, the longer they typically have to spend in port afterward, further compounding the situation with each passing day during months-long extensions. This all has very worrisome cascading impacts on even routine maintenance cycles, let alone deep overhauls and upgrade efforts, as well as personnel management matters, as we have explored in detail in the past.

“It’s my earnest attempt to really try to keep those [deployments] at seven months,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s top officer, said during a question-and-answer session at Fort Meade, Maryland, Monday, which was livestreamed. He also said he wanted a Navy “that can sustain a seven-month deployment and still give our combatant commanders the amount of naval force they need to accomplish their missions, solve their key operational problems, and make sure they have all the naval force necessary to do what they need to do.”

Caudle had notably acknowledged concerns about strains on the Ford while speaking to TWZ and other outlets at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium back in January.

The Lincoln‘s visibly worn state certainly draws new attention to the stress on America’s carrier fleets as personnel onboard are now finally getting a much-earned reprieve in Laem Chabang.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USS Abraham Lincoln Looks Like It’s Been Through Hell After 286 Days At Sea appeared first on TWZ.

Chinese state-run shipping company COSCO has been using concealed systems on its vessels to gather signals intelligence around North American, European, and Asian coastlines for decades, it has been alleged. Similar claims have been made in the past, and overlap between nominally civilian enterprises in China and the country’s military and intelligence services is well established at this point.

Reuters first reported on the use of COSCO ships as discrete signals intelligence platforms earlier today, citing two unnamed officials within President Donald Trump’s administration.

“The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. assessment of the Chinese program, said COSCO has a decades-long intelligence-collection partnership with Beijing,” according to the report. “The arrangement allows China to collect communication signals from vessels ​and aircraft operating across Europe, North America and Asia, they said.”

It is worth noting here that China’s National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, includes a specific provision that requires all organizations and citizens within the country to support state intelligence work as required. It also obligates the state to protect entities that do so.

“The advanced equipment aboard the ships is intended to enable China ​to gather information about ‘military communications technologies and encryption developments,’ one of the officials said,” Reuters‘ story today added. “The officials did not detail the type of equipment COSCO ships were allegedly using, but said they were ‘sophisticated signals intelligence collection’ platforms, not routine communications hardware.”

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., unsurprisingly denied these assertions, according to that outlet.

Purpose-built signals intelligence suites can range widely in size and shape, as can their capabilities. They can be very small and basic or far more elaborate systems. Even the latter could be concealed as modern commercial ships, which already feature lots of antennas.

What might happen to intelligence collected by the ships is unknown. At the very least, systems onboard could record the data, which could then be batched out when safe to do so, either physically or via transmission. Basic passive signals suites can also run autonomously, or even be controlled from anywhere in the world if the ship is connected via satellite communications (SATCOM). High-bandwidth SATCOM is very common now on ships around the globe.

Personnel on the ship could also operate the systems, and even process receptions of interest. It might be possible to fit the ships with suitable datalinks to then transmit the collected data in near-real-time to other nodes, including ones back in China, for further analysis and exploitation.

Reuters‘ sources said scooping up data on “military communications technologies and encryption developments” was a priority for the commercial vessels turned spy ships. Signals intelligence can take many other forms, from emissions from radars to communications chatter. Depending on what is collected and how, specialists can use that information to glean details about how systems function, as well as insights into standard operating procedures and other details. This is especially true when multiple forms of intelligence are fused together. Generally speaking, signals intelligence is routinely used to help build out so-called ‘electronic orders of battle’ detailing the disposition and capabilities of an opponent’s forces, especially air defense and command and control networks.

As mentioned, this is not the first time claims in this general vein have emerged, either. At least some evidence has been presented in the past, through open-source analysis. Reuters‘ sources directed that outlet to a report published last year by the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College exploring exactly this topic in relation to China’s quasi-military maritime militia. The maritime militia is made up of ostensibly civilian fishing fleets, but has direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese Coast Guard. It is routinely used to harass and intimidate foreign vessels in disputed waters, especially in the South China Sea.

“Undergirding these operations is a cadre of maritime militia intelligence specialists called ‘information personnel.’ Information personnel are organized into force contingents that support operational militia forces,” according to that report. “Most have day jobs in the fishing industry, but many hale [sic; hail] from other sectors, including marine shipping and even maritime law enforcement units.”

“It is more likely than not that PRC [People’s Republic of China] vessels operating overseas have already begun embarking information personnel to serve intelligence collection and reporting functions. In the case of China’s fishing fleet, serving this foreign intelligence collection function could be as simple as adding a new duty to the ‘information personnel’ that already embark aboard some distant-water fishing vessels,” that report added. “Aside from their primary responsibilities of tallying and reporting production numbers, serving as experts on international and national fisheries regulations that affect their work, and handling interactions with foreign officials while at sea and in port, they might also be tasked with collecting and reporting military and political intelligence while operating overseas.”

“Similar processes may already be in place in the commercial shipping industry,” it continued. “For instance, Guangxi province’s Beihai city has built up its ranks of maritime intelligence specialists by recruiting from among marine shipping personnel.”

No explicit mention is made in the report about signals intelligence gathering.

In the past year or so, there have been multiple reports that Russia is also using its so-called ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tanker ships in a secondary role as intelligence-gathering platforms. The primary job of those vessels is to help the Kremlin evade sanctions.

There is other tangential evidence that also lends credence to today’s report from Reuters. As mentioned, in the midst of still mysterious drone swarms that harassed U.S. Navy ships off the coast of southern California back in 2019, U.S. authorities at least explored the possibility that a Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier, the M/V Bass Strait, might have been a launch point. It remains unknown, at least publicly, whether the Bass Strait or another nearby ship might have been the source of the harassment, or if it came from somewhere else, potentially further away. TWZ was the first to report on this detail as part of a deeper investigation into these incidents, which came amid a spike in news about claimed sightings of what are now commonly referred to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). We have been saying for years now that, while some UAP sightings do remain unexplained, many more are likely to have been drones (as well as balloons), which foreign governments could be using for intelligence gathering and other malign purposes.

It’s also worth noting here that intelligence collection from international waters and airspace is a practice that nation state armed forces and intelligence agencies globally, including those in the United States, engage in regularly with varying degrees of openness. Leveraging nominally civilian ships, as well as aircraft, for these purposes is hardly new.

Despite the official denials to the Reuters piece today, it would be hard to imagine Chinese authorities not making use of commercial ships for this purpose, if possible, given that major deepwater ports worldwide are often dual-purpose civilian/military facilities. Radar sites and other critical facilities are often positioned along or near coastlines. Cargo ships and tankers often pass by major exercises and under major military operating airspace, where they could scoop up critical data.

With commercial ships already plying their routes, this would also just offer the Chinese government ways to readily bolster maritime intelligence-gathering capacity at low cost and low risk. China’s commercial fleets dwarf any other on Earth, making their presence commonplace and providing many opportunities to hide these operations.

A 2021 report published through the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) Tearline Project also highlighted the possibility of Chinese-owned facilities at ports around the world being used for intelligence gathering or even for launching non-kinetic attacks, including electronic warfare jamming. It specifically noted how COSCO’s facility in Belgium’s Port of Zeebrugge is “in close proximity to a Belgian Naval Base and thus could fulfill additional militarized requirements.”

Concerns about land owned by Chinese companies and nationals being used to collect intelligence or for other purposes have become an increasingly hot topic of discussion in the United States in recent years.

Reuters‘ piece does not say what, if any, steps U.S. authorities have taken or may be planning to take now to monitor for or take more active countermeasures against Chinese-flagged ships being used for intelligence gathering, despite this being said to be a decades-old practice. The report does note that “the Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to China’s military in January 2025, a designation that carries serious reputational costs for companies ​as well as U.S. government procurement ​bans, but does not entail ⁠formal sanctions.”

Though no hard evidence has yet been provided, Chinese authorities using cargo ships as additional discreet signals intelligence-gathering assets is very plausible, and would certainly seem to be an issue that should be taken seriously, if it is not already being addressed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

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The first of Japan’s two new cruiser-sized Aegis System Equipped Vessels (ASEV) is continuing to take shape, recently receiving its huge main integrated mast, giving the vessel a new and remarkably imposing silhouette. The four very large fixed arrays for the ship’s powerful AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar will eventually be integrated onto this structure. The ASEV’s stated primary mission is missile defense, but Japanese authorities plan to give the vessels additional counter-drone, anti-ship, and land attack capabilities in the future. Tomahawk cruise missiles are notably set to be added to the ship’s arsenal down the line.

The ASEVs are large surface combatants, set to be some 620 feet long, have a beam (the widest point of the hull) of some 82 feet, and a standard displacement of 12,000 tons. For comparison, Japan’s largest surface combatants today, its Maya class destroyers, are just over 557 feet long, have a beam of some 73 feet, and a standard displacement of around 8,200 tons. It is worth noting here that the size of new and advanced destroyers, often optimized for anti-air warfare missions, has been trending upward globally in recent years. This, in turn, has caused the line between destroyers and what have more historically been categorized as cruisers in certain cases.

The first ASEV was laid down at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI) shipyard in Nagasaki in July 2025. The second was laid down in February of this year at Japan Marine United Isogo shipyard, which is situated in Yokohama City near Tokyo, according to a past report from Naval News. The Japanese Ministry of Defense is currently aiming to have the first of these vessels in service before the end of the country’s 2027 Fiscal Year, which runs from April 2027 to March 2028. The second is expected to follow in the 2028 fiscal cycle, which extends into 2029.

Significant progress in the overall construction of the first ship has been made just this year. The addition of the main mast structure, installed on top of the main superstructure, as seen in pictures at the top of this story and below, has drawn particular attention in recent weeks.

Japanese are very fast with ship building.

March 26 and today. ASEV-class destroyer.

190 m hull, SPY-7 Aegis, 128cell Mk 41 VLS. SM-3 for ballistic missiles, SM-6, plus Japan’s long range Type 12 SSM. pic.twitter.com/RQZixtqWwe

— 信濃 Æýà (@Shinano_AEya) August 30, 2026

The especially large size of the ASEV’s integrated mast is driven by that of the AN/SPY-7(V)1 active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar from Lockheed Martin. Each one of the radar’s four rectangular arrays is reportedly around 14 feet (nearly 4.3 meters) tall. This would put them in the same general size category as the arrays for Raytheon’s AN/SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) found on U.S. Navy Flight III Arleigh Burke class destroyers. That being said, the pictures we have now raise the question of whether the AN/SPY-7(V)1 arrays are bigger than previously assessed. The AMDR is another notably large design heavily optimized for missile defense.

The size and location of the mast provide a centralized, elevated position for the AN/SPY-7(V)1’s large arrays, which will also require significant power generation capacity and thermal management to keep everything cool. This is a notable departure from the placement of the arrays on the main superstructure on existing Japanese destroyers, as well as the U.S. Arleigh Burke class, and offers an unobstructed, elevated line-of-sight to the horizon. Beyond the ballistic missile defense mission, this view farther out over the horizon would be important for tracking and engaging low-flying drones and cruise missiles, which might be targeting the ship itself. This is something we will come back to later on.

“With five times the tracking capability of the SPY-1, it [the AN/SPY-7(V)1] counters lofted trajectories and simultaneous multiple ballistic missile threats,” according to a machine translation of a section of the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s 2026 defense policy white paper, which was released earlier this month.

The passive electronically-scanned array (PESA) AN/SPY-1 was the first radar to be paired with the Aegis Combat System, and both were first introduced in the 1970s. Variants of the SPY-1 are still found on a variety of U.S. and foreign Aegis-equipped warships, including Japan’s Kongo, Atago, and Maya class destroyers.

The AN/SPY-7(V)1 is also a derivative of the U.S. military’s static, land-based Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Alaska. Japan also originally planned to employ the AN/SPY-7(V)1 on land at a pair of Aegis Ashore missile defense sites. However, that effort was subsequently cancelled, with the ASEV emerging to fill the resulting gap.

Additional versions of the AN/SPY-7 with much smaller arrays are also being integrated onto new F110 Bonifaz class frigates for the Spanish Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy’s forthcoming River class destroyers (also known as the Canadian Surface Combatant). The use of the AN/SPY-7(V)1 on the ASEV could impact decisions regarding new radars for other future and existing Japanese warships. Raytheon is also pitching versions of its increasingly popular AN/SPY-6 family for use on a successor to the Kongo class and for refit on the Maya class, according to a recent report from Naval News.

When it comes to the ASEV, as already noted, the AN/SPY-7(V)1 is central to the ship’s main stated missile defense mission. As the name makes clear, the ship will also feature the Aegis Combat System. The vessel will be capable of “remote engagement and guidance against anti-air targets tracked by other vessels” via a “Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC),” per the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s most recent annual defense white paper.

The video below provides details about the U.S. Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) developments, which are likely very similar to what Japan has planned for the ASEV.

In terms of armament, when the ASEVs first enter service, their main weaponry is expected to be a mix of variants of the Standard Missile-3 and -6 (SM-3 and SM-6). The SM-3 family is designed to engage ballistic missile threats during the mid-course portion of their flights while they are traveling outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. The SM-3 also has a demonstrated anti-satellite capability. The SM-6 is a multi-purpose missile that was originally designed with an anti-air focus. It can be used to target incoming ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of flight and also has at least a degree of capability for engaging hypersonic weapons. SM-6 can be used in a surface-to-surface mode, including against ships, as well. Japan is also a partner in the U.S.-led development of a new Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), which is being designed specifically to intercept unpowered, but highly maneuverable hypersonic boost-glide vehicles.

SM-3, SM-6, and future GPIs will be loaded into either of the ASEV’s two Vertical Launch System (VLS) arrays, one at the bow end and another toward the stern. Each one of the ships will have a total of 128 VLS cells. For comparison, Japan’s Maya class destroyers, as well as the U.S. Navy’s Flight IIA and III Arleigh Burke class destroyers, have 96 VLS cells apiece. The U.S. Navy’s Ticonderoga class cruisers each have 122 VLS cells, and 128 is also the number of VLSs currently expected to be found on the future Trump class battleships.

At the time of writing, Japanese authorities do not appear to have explicitly mentioned plans to arm the ASEVs with other missiles when they first enter service. That being said, any VLS array capable of accommodating SM-3s and SM-6s should be able to fire a variety of other weapons, including shorter-ranged SM-2s and Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM), which the ship could use for more localized air and missile defense, as well as protecting the ship itself.

Renderings and models of the ASEV do show the design also armed with a five-inch naval gun in a turret on the bow, along with two Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems (CIWS) and other automatic cannons for point defense.

As mentioned, while missile defense is the immediate focus for the ASEVs, there are already plans to significantly expand their capability to engage other ships and targets on land. Tomahawk cruise missiles and a new, extended-range version of the Type 12 anti-ship cruise missile are set to be added to the arsenal of these vessels in the 2032 timeframe, according to the latest official Japanese defense white paper.

Japanese authorities want the ASEVs to eventually be able to help fend off waves of enemy drones, too. High-energy laser-directed energy weapons are set to be integrated onto the ships down the line to help address those threats. The overall size and other general characteristics of the ships would leave the door open to the possible addition of high-power microwaves and other capabilities in the future.

TWZ has long noted that the ASEVs will bring huge new boosts in naval air and missile defense and long-strike capability to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces. The vessels also reflect a significant evolution in post-World War II Japanese doctrine, toward what officials currently frame as a “stand-off defense” construct that remains within the bounds of the country’s current pacifist constitution.

Just with SM-3, SM-6, and GPI, the ASEVs will offer an important addition to the air and missile defense bubbles around Japan’s home islands and outlying territories in the face of growing geopolitical friction with China and Russia, two countries that are increasingly cooperating militarily. The vessels will also add to Japan’s deterrent against long-standing and still evolving threats posed by the regime in North Korea, which has its own close ties to the Chinese and Russian governments. All three of these nations continue to expand their arsenals of ever-more capable ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles. Long-range one-way-attack drones are another growing part of the equation, with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and fighting in the Middle East in recent years underscoring just how real a threat they pose.

With the addition of Tomahawks, the ASEVs, along with other Japanese warships, will gain the additional ability to threaten counterstrikes against targets on land (and potentially at sea) at least around 1,000 miles in any direction. As part of the broader stand-off defense strategy, the Japan Self Defense Forces is developing new land-based long-range strike capabilities, including hypersonic missiles, as well.

It is worth noting that with current plans to acquire only two ASEVs, these will be high-value but also low-density assets, which will have to be very deliberately deployed for maximum effect. They will also stand out as top-priority targets in any future conflict, and will need to be protected as such.

It is possible that the roles and missions of the ASEVs, just like their designs, could evolve further as time goes on. The threat ecosystem facing Japan will continue to evolve, likely more rapidly, in the coming years. The country is also expanding its naval capabilities in other ways, and with an eye toward more blue water operations. This includes expanded light carrier capabilities through refits of existing Izumo class ships. Anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles, among large volumes of more traditional threats, could see the ASEVs used as escorts, even if experimentally. While just two hulls are barely enough to keep one on patrol to protect Japan, more could be built for expeditionary applications.

Regardless, the ASEVs are set to be a major addition to the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force’s fleets that will have big ramifications. From the progress that is visible at the shipyard in Nagasaki, MHI looks to be well on track to deliver the first of these ships next year or two.

Special thanks to @kensakai9310 on X, who also goes by “Sakai,” for sharing recently taken pictures of the first ASEV under construction at MHI’s yard in Nagasaki with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

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The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is rapidly expanding a secretive airbase in the northwest of the country that is loosely akin to America’s top-secret proving ground at Area 51. The facility is used to test experimental platforms and next-generation combat aircraft, sporting one of the longest runways in the world at 16,400 feet. It has transformed from a relatively austere and remote airstrip into an increasingly sprawling People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flight-test center over the past few years, and there is no sign that construction will slow anytime soon. In fact, it’s accelerating, and one of its newest features is of significant interest.

Satellite imagery taken by Planet Labs on August 27, 2026, shows the scale and scope of the buildout in high-resolution detail.

The installation is located near the infamous Lop Nur Nuclear Test Base in the desolate, arid Xinjiang autonomous region of northwestern China. Lop Nur is the PRC’s primary testing facility for nuclear weapons and where China detonated its first nuclear device, codenamed Project 596, in 1964, becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power.

Last year, TWZ spotted both of China’s sixth-generation stealth fighter designs, the J-36 and J-XDS, at the base for the first time − far from the home airfields of their respective manufacturers, Chengdu and Shenyang. Before supporting the development of advanced air combat technologies, the facility was linked to military space development efforts and testing reusable space planes as far back as 2020. At that point, the site was nothing more than a 3.1-mile runway with a small hangar and a few scattered vehicles.

In 2023, the main apron was significantly expanded, and a new large hangar was added. In 2025, new hangars were added on both sides of the main ramp area via extensions. These shelters appeared to be optimized for tactical fixed-wing aircraft. Not long after those facilities were complete, the two 6th-generation fighter aircraft showed up. The pace of further construction ramped in May 2025 and hasn’t let up since. The time-lapse below visualizes the gradual, then all-at-once progression over the past six years.

“New taxiways, aircraft turning pads, hangars and possible fuel-storage infrastructure substantially increase the airfield’s capacity to support aircraft movements and sustained flight-test activity,” Damien Symon, a geo-intelligence researcher and friend of TWZ, told us. Symon assisted TWZ in identifying the new structures.

Several key areas of the site have been reshaped since the beginning of the year, marked on the annotated graphic near the top of this story.

Below the southern end of the runway, construction is moving fast on a new taxiway extension running parallel to the runway, connecting it to the central apron and main hangar. The nearly completed route will allow additional aircraft to move more freely without having to back-taxi on the runway, which is a huge problem for higher operations tempos and more complex sortie launches and recoveries.

“Of particular interest are several large aircraft hangars in the southern section of the airbase, each measuring approximately 80 by 40 meters (262 by 131 feet),” Symon said of the three hangars grouped together that are being constructed on the south ramp. A fourth appears on its own just farther south on the apron, with different dimensions. The hangars, with direct access to the new southern taxiway, are sized to accommodate all of the tactical and strategic aircraft in the PLA’s current fleet. For scale, the PRC’s only strategic bomber in active service, the Xi’an H-6, has a wingspan of approximately 108 feet. But what’s already flying operationally isn’t the focus of these new facilities, it’s a unique class of aircraft, some of which are in testing now and more will be in the future.

The hangars’ wide proportions are similar to those of new ones found at China’s other secretive major test airbase in Xinjiang, located near Malan, which is largely focused on unmanned aircraft. The buildout comes as two massive stealth flying wing drones are in flight testing and we await the H-20 stealth bomber. It remains unclear where the H-20, which still hasn’t made a public appearance, will be tested. However, Lop Nur would be an ideal locale considering how sensitive the program is, and these new hangars could very well be in preparation for its arrival. It’s also worth noting that this installation appears more focused on crewed platforms, not drones, like at Malan. So sending the H-20 here for at least part of its test program would make sense, although this is just speculation at this time.

Broad construction continues behind the central apron area, with several buildings that were in development late last year now completed. A cluster of prefabricated containers arranged in tight rows for storage and accommodation has appeared since our last review. The additional laborers, materials, or equipment could be housed there to support the aggressive pace of development, as a much larger workforce would be required to speed up the construction process. Excavation and construction have started at other locations nearby, but they are in the early stages of development and their future purpose is unknown. Farther east, on the outskirts of the facility, a concrete batching plant with wash-water ponds and segregated aggregate stockpiles was recently built.

Grading is underway for another taxiway that will connect the central apron to the northern part of the main runway. The latest imagery suggests that concrete has just started to be poured. A circular pad with a 400-foot diameter has taken shape at the northern end with direct access to both the runway and the main base, which TWZ assesses to be an engine run and turnaround pad. If a shelter were added, it could also act as a “scoot and hide” area for keeping sensitive test articles from being seen by satellites passing overhead. An apron extension near the circular pad is also under construction, with at least two large hangars being built there, although they will have more traditional proportions compared to the four wide ones on the south ramp.

Additionally, Symon identified possible fuel-storage infrastructure under construction that would “further expand the base’s aviation-support capacity.” If confirmed, “the additional infrastructure could support a higher sortie rate and longer periods of sustained flight activity, consistent with an expansion in the scale or tempo of operations at Lop Nur,” he added.

The facility is clearly in the process of taking on a very important role in China’s advanced aerospace development ecosystem, and its significance will only grow as it expands to accommodate more, and bigger, airframes. With the hangar additions we are seeing, major programs are about to migrate there, even on a detachment basis, for extensive testing. The new southern hangars, in particular, suggest the PLA expects to be testing aircraft with far wider wingspans in the not-too-distant future.

Contact the author: ian.ellis-jones@recurrent.io or on X @ianellisjones

Author’s note: Special thanks to Damien Symon for assisting with the imagery analysis, be sure to follow him on X at @detresfa_

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Indonesia is about to become the second Southeast Asian country to operate an aircraft carrier, nearly three decades after Thailand became the first with HTMS Chakri Naruebet. The latest addition to the region’s small carrier club is the former Italian Navy carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, which departed Italy earlier this week, bound for Indonesia, where it will eventually become KRI Gajah Mada. Indonesian Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Muhammad Ali confirmed the ship’s departure on Tuesday.

Garibaldi is expected to spend more than 20 days making the journey from Italy to Indonesia, passing through the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Italian frigates are accompanying the carrier during the transit.

According to Admiral Ali, the ship is scheduled to reach Indonesia between September 15 and 20.

The carrier will retain its Italian identity throughout the voyage, sailing as Giuseppe Garibaldi under the Italian flag until the formal transfer, when it will be renamed and placed under Indonesian command.

Commissioned in 1985, Garibaldi was initially described as a “helicopter cruiser” before being redesignated as an aircraft-carrying cruiser in 1989 and receiving the Italian Navy’s AV-8B Harrier II jump jets. The ship subsequently served as Italy’s flagship and later shifted toward amphibious operations and command-and-control duties after the larger Cavour entered service.

At around 13,850 tons full load, Garibaldi combined a relatively compact aviation capability with a multirole weapon and sensor fit, at least in its early period of service. Its armament historically included two octuple launchers for Sea Sparrow/Aspide surface-to-air missiles, four Otomat Mk 2 anti-ship missiles, two 2 triple torpedo tubes, and three twin Oto Melara 40mm guns.

Indonesia is acquiring the ship through an intergovernmental grant arrangement rather than purchasing it through a conventional commercial transaction.

Although it has spent almost four decades in Italian service, the ship offers considerable flexibility, combining a large aviation facility with the ability to serve as a command and support platform.

Jakarta says it plans to use the ship primarily as a helicopter-capable aviation platform, with aircraft from the Indonesian Navy, Air Force, and Army expected to operate from its deck.

Ahead of the ship’s arrival, preparations have included establishing a training facility at Juanda Naval Air Station/International Airport in Sidoarjo, East Java. Here, the large outline of a carrier flight deck has been painted on an apron/helipad area on the southern side of the installation, to familiarize naval pilots and deck crews with carrier flight-deck procedures.

Thailand’s experience provides useful context here. When Chakri Naruebet entered service in 1997, it was configured to operate AV-8S Harriers as well as helicopters. The Harriers were subsequently retired, leaving the ship to perform a much broader range of roles, including helicopter operations, disaster response, training, and VIP duties. TWZ has previously examined that unusual evolution in detail.

Once in service, Indonesia will likely operate the Gajah Mada as a mobile aviation base. This will allow helicopters to provide transport, surveillance, logistics, search and rescue, disaster relief, and potentially anti-submarine warfare and amphibious support capabilities over much greater distances than when operating from land bases, and in much larger numbers than operating from other Indonesian Navy vessels.

The potential mission set is particularly relevant for Indonesia, whose territory stretches across thousands of islands.

Occupying a strategic position at the southern end of the South China Sea, Indonesia is also locked in a maritime dispute with China, including incidents in which Chinese fishing boats accompanied by Chinese Coast Guard vessels have entered Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea. The tense situation as regards China seems to be driving something of a defense spending spree in Indonesia, with high-profile acquisitions including French-made Rafale fighters and submarines.

Meanwhile, in peacetime, disaster response is also a significant consideration for Indonesia. The Gajah Mada will be able to bring helicopters, personnel, supplies, and command-and-control capabilities to areas where local infrastructure has been damaged or where access is otherwise difficult.

The ship is also likely to take part in maritime security missions and regional deployments including multinational training exercises.

There is potential for Indonesia to adapt the warship for drone operations too, something that Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri has previously proposed. While Indonesia has not announced such a capability as part of the ship’s initial configuration, it has acquired Turkish-made Bayraktar TB3 drones, which have demonstrated operations from carrier decks.

As well as Turkey’s Anadolu, which has evolved into a platform for operating drones after Turkey lost access to the F-35B program, other navies are similarly experimenting with integrating uncrewed aircraft into helicopter-carrier-sized ships, reflecting a broader shift toward using large flight decks for mixed crewed and uncrewed aviation. The trend includes experiments with fixed-wing drones on amphibious assault ships, including in China and the United States.

For Indonesia, a future combination of helicopters and drones could provide the Gajah Mada with persistent surveillance and potentially strike capabilities without requiring the country to develop a conventional fixed-wing carrier air wing.

How extensively Indonesia eventually makes use of any of its capabilities will depend on its ability to sustain the ship and build the associated aviation infrastructure and expertise.

The Indonesian Navy is constructing the warship’s future base in Lampung, on the southern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The facility is expected to be finished around the time the ship arrives and operational by the end of September.

The ship’s formal transformation into an Indonesian warship is planned for September 25. A commissioning and flag-changing ceremony is scheduled for that date, with President Prabowo Subianto expected to attend and officiate.

At that point, the carrier will become KRI Gajah Mada, taking its name from the famous Majapahit-era military commander and statesman.

The Navy plans to include the ship in celebrations marking the 81st anniversary of the Indonesian National Defense Forces, or TNI, in October.

Thailand’s experience with the Chakri Naruebet, which only very rarely goes to sea for any length of time, underscores the fact that buying a carrier is the relatively easy part. Creating a sustainable carrier aviation capability around it is much more challenging.

Nevertheless, the Gajah Mada gives Jakarta something it has never previously possessed: a large, dedicated maritime aviation platform capable of carrying helicopters from multiple services. As such, it could prove useful across a wide spectrum of missions.

Ciontact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

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