There are three versions of Saint John’s Book of the Apocalypse, a text that never loses relevance and now seems to presage the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI).
© Josh Edelson (AP Photo/Josh Edelson)
Stories on the color orange, the data center rush, a local hero, the AI labor takeover, and a boy dinner subreddit.
r/BoyDinnerDiaries is a subreddit where men post photos of their often rather sad-looking meals alongside their most private worries. Zack Hauptman carefully explores this unusual place for community and care, meeting the men who are learning to share more than just what is on their plate. We hear a lot about the “male loneliness epidemic,” so it’s heartening to glimpse even a small shift in the other direction.
Others use the forum regardless of whether they have a vast social circle. Robert*, 31, says he has many people to turn to but uses Reddit when he needs to unload his feelings further. “I have an urge to vent when I don’t want to call a friend,” he says. In August, after experiencing repeated rejection from women he was seeing, he decided to post about it online. “I’m at the point where I feel so disappointed and let down but also so grateful that I have the opportunity to learn and grow from all of it,” he wrote alongside a photo of mushy canned tuna in a bowl. “I could talk about it pretty much all the time, but I don’t really want to be doing that,” he says. “Going to the subreddit…it’s like throwing it into the void.”
The inaugural flight-test release of a US air-launched hypersonic weapon over an Australian weapons range demonstrates both nations’ push for standoff hypersonic strike, yet the weapon’s true combat value hinges on whether allied airbases and kill chains can survive China’s long-range fires. This month, multiple media outlets reported that the US Air Force, in partnership […]
The post US-Australia hypersonic push no silver bullet against China appeared first on Asia Times.
Paul Krugman is the greatest econ writer in the world, and also a legendary economist. But I sometimes feel that he has a blind spot when it comes to the value of new technologies. In 1998 he famously wrote: The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that […]
The post What the AI boom is actually doing for Americans appeared first on Asia Times.
Digger is like a mango. It’s an acidic film, but also a bit sweet; outwardly it seems one thing but inside it contains surprises, and it needs time to ripen. Like a mango, its flavor can’t be explained. In fact, it’s better not to even try, says its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu: “The only way to know what a mango tastes like is to put it in your mouth. And you have to put this film in your eyes to understand it, because if I explain it to you, you won’t get it.”
© Mario Guzmán (EFE)
Ukraine is preparing a new sanctions initiative targeting more than 20 Russian businessmen and intends to press for Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman to be placed back under restrictions, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Thursday.
Sybiha, speaking to journalists in Kyiv on 1 October, said the Ukrainian government regarded the European Union’s decision to remove the two men from its sanctions list as unacceptable and had tried to prevent it through both public and diplomatic channels.
“Our response will be asymmetric. You removed two oligarchs, and we will add another twenty,” Sybiha said.
He said Kyiv had prepared a list containing more than 20 Russian businessmen for possible sanctions and was also working to restore restrictions against Usmanov and Fridman.
The minister did not specify which EU legal mechanism Kyiv expects to use. Ukraine cannot itself add individuals to the bloc’s restrictive-measures list, meaning any renewed designation would require action by EU member states.
The EU formally removed Usmanov and Fridman from its sanctions list on 22 September. Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2160 deleted the entries for Usmanov, Fridman and Russian businessman Andrey Falaleev, as well as Redbird Corporate Services Ltd.
At the same time, EU governments extended the remaining individual sanctions for another 36 months, until 22 September 2029. The regime covers more than 3,000 individuals and entities and provides for asset freezes, travel restrictions and a prohibition on EU citizens and companies making funds or economic resources available to those listed.
The agreement marked a significant change to the previous system under which individual sanctions were renewed every six months.
The fate of Usmanov and Fridman had become one of the principal points of dispute during negotiations. EU Today reported before the decision that Latvia opposed a compromise involving their removal while supporting a longer renewal period for the wider sanctions regime.
The eventual agreement nevertheless resulted in both men being removed. EU Today reported on 22 September that the Council had approved the three-year extension alongside their delisting.
Kyiv is now seeking to compensate for that decision through national sanctions regimes while pursuing their possible return to the EU list.
Sybiha said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had approved the Ukrainian approach and that Kyiv was working with partner governments to ensure that restrictions against Usmanov and Fridman remained in force outside the EU framework.
According to the foreign minister, Canada has indicated that it intends to retain its restrictions. Sybiha also pointed to Britain, Japan and Australia as jurisdictions where sanctions remain in place and said Ukraine would seek similar measures elsewhere.
Britain continues to maintain a separate national Russia sanctions regime. The UK government’s current Russia sanctions framework records designations, amendments and removals independently of decisions made by the European Union.
Several EU member states have meanwhile taken or begun preparing national measures following the September decision.
Estonia moved immediately after the EU agreement. Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna signed national sanctions against Usmanov and Fridman on 23 September, saying Tallinn had opposed their removal from the EU list.
Lithuania has also begun using national legislation. Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys asked for both businessmen to be placed on Lithuania’s national entry-ban list for five years. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said it was also preparing legal measures that would allow the freezing of their funds and economic resources.
The dispute has exposed one of the structural features of EU sanctions policy: decisions on restrictive measures require agreement among member states, allowing individual listings to become part of wider negotiations over the continuation of an entire sanctions regime.
Moving from six-month to three-year renewals reduces the frequency with which the broader Russia sanctions list has to return to the negotiating table.
It does not, however, prevent individual names from being added again during that period. Kyiv’s new initiative is therefore likely to focus both on persuading individual governments to introduce national restrictions and on building sufficient support inside the EU for Usmanov and Fridman to be designated again.
Just weeks before its scheduled November IPO, Anthropic is facing growing attention over the potential dangers of its technology. The resignation of former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon on September 8, who wrote on X that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” preceded the company’s threat report on September 10. According […]
The post AI’s apparent danger is its best selling point appeared first on Asia Times.
A contentious civilian nuclear agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia has ignited a sharp debate over Middle Eastern security, laying bare the escalating friction between American nonproliferation objectives and the kingdom’s strategic ambitions. This month, The Washington Post reported that a classified US intelligence assessment shared with Congress found that Saudi Arabia has not […]
The post US nuclear pact puts Saudi Arabia on path to the bomb appeared first on Asia Times.
When Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time on Thursday (September 24), he became the third member of his immediate family to speak from the UN podium. His father, President Ziaur Rahman, addressed the General Assembly in 1980, speaking on self-reliance and regional cooperation. His mother, Khaleda […]
The post Rahman’s UN debut carries family weight, high national stakes appeared first on Asia Times.
Α 50-year-old high school principal suffered a cardiac arrest outside the school in Ilioupoli suburb of eastern Athens during the heavy rain- and thunderstorm hitting the area on Tuesday. Initial reports suggest the cardiac arrest was caused by lightning. Passersby who saw the woman collapsing on the street outside the school immediately called for help […]
The post Woman suffers cardiac arrest during Athens thunderstorm; caused by lighting? appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.
What does it mean to live in a disappearing place? For Pioneer Works’ Broadcast, Brad Bolman, a professor of history and environmental studies at Tulane University, writes about New Orleans, the shifting borders between land and sea, and the political and economic forces that continue to shape the city’s fate in a time of climate catastrophe.
If Los Angeles is the city that has been imaginatively destroyed again and again in film and TV, as Thom Andersen argues in Los Angeles Plays Itself, New Orleans is the one that has been destroyed countless times in reality. We have survived worse and rebuilt before, many insisted. We’re staying.
It was a reaction as understandable emotionally as it was disconnected from environmental reality. But that gap is a feature of life in the Crescent City. As I watched my first Mardi Gras parade this spring, junk falling in never-ending torrents from brightly decorated floats, a friend sympathetically interjected, “This must be driving you crazy.” What they meant was that as someone who teaches about environmental history but isn’t from here, I must be especially affected by the throwaway culture of the city’s most famous fête and its tons and tons of plastic beads, made from the same fossil fuels that are causing sea levels to rise around us.
Showcasing stories from J.B. MacKinnon, Daniel Kolitz, Daniel Shailer, Justin Neuman, and Hanif Abdurraqib.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis triggered an outrage when he proposed that the “unemployment benefits” should last just two months in order to force jobless to take up a work. According to Greek legislation, the unemployment benefit of 526 euros per month increased by 10% for each child runs for maximum 12 months provided that the […]
The post Gov’t spokesman proposes sharp cut of “unemployment benefits” down to just two months appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.
Top Left image: Yemen army – Source, Top Right image Yemen military illustration – Source, Bottom Left image Saudi Mohammed bin Salman with Jeffrey Epstein – source: The Epstein Files, Bottom Right image Saudi Mohammed bin Salman with Donald Trump in the White House – Source.
by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News
The Iran War drastically changed at the end of last week, as Yemen’s Ansarullah-led Armed Forces (Houthis) took control of the country’s western coastline, capturing key positions overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, including the coastal city of Mokha and strategic islands in and around the waterway, and they are now effectively controlling traffic in the Red Sea.
As far as I can tell, this was a complete surprise to everyone, especially to Saudi Arabia and the United States.
It forced the U.S. corporate media to report this, and it dominated the news stream until the fake “AI is going to destroy humanity if we don’t do something about it” narrative took control of the news stream this past weekend.
Saudi Arabia, who has been at war with Yemen since 2014 with the help of the U.S. and using U.S. military weapons, was forced to shut down their East-West oil pipeline, which was allowing Saudi Arabia to bypass the Strait of Hormuz to be able to get oil out of their country.
This pipeline in Saudi Arabia reportedly transports about 4% to 5% of the global oil supply.
Saudi Arabia is now in panic mode, and has reportedly pleaded with the U.S. to help them and start bombing the Yemen forces who have taken control of the Red Sea.
However, it appears that Saudi Arabia never got the memo about one of Trump’s objectives in the Iran War, which was to let Iran destroy the Gulf Nations’ ability to control oil prices through OPEC, while at the same time seizing Venezuela oil amid plans to make America the center of oil sales around the world.
Trump’s response to Saudi Arabia: sorry, you’re on your own.
Scoop: MBS urged Trump to strike Houthis amid Red Sea threat
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called President Trump twice Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis as the Iran-backed group closed in on a vital Red Sea chokepoint, two U.S. officials told Axios.
Trump declined, and U.S. officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now.
Of course, even if the U.S. did want to stop Yemen’s military and protect Saudi Arabia’s interests, it is doubtful that they would even be able to do so, given the depletion of their weapons and military assets as Iran continues to control the Strait of Hormuz.
This very well could be the demise of Saudi Arabia.
And if the Yemen takeover of the Red Sea turns the tide overall in the war against Iran, what will the Evangelical Christians do who are so positive that this war was sanctioned by God, and was to hasten the return of Jesus Christ?
Could this also be the start of the decline of Christian Zionism as well when they realize that the U.S. cannot defeat Iran and force the return of Jesus Christ after all?
Yemen children in refugee camps. Image source.
While estimates of how many people have died in the Yemen conflict with Saudi Arabia, including children, most of whom have died from starvation due to the U.S.-Saudi blockade on their ports, varies, the number is significant, and probably rivals the number of people killed among the Israeli Palestinians, as well as the number of dead Lebanese people killed by the U.S. and Israel.
This was published in 2018, and the situation is obviously far worse today.
YEMEN: 85,000 CHILDREN MAY HAVE DIED FROM STARVATION SINCE START OF WAR
Using data compiled by the UN, Save the Children evaluated mortality rates for untreated cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in children under five years. Using a conservative estimate, the humanitarian aid agency discovered that approximately 84,701 children with SAM may have died between April 2015 and October 2018.[i]
After almost four years since the brutal conflict in Yemen escalated the UN says that up to 14 million people are at risk of famine. That number has increased dramatically since the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition imposed a month-long blockade of Yemen just over a year ago.[ii]
Since then, commercial imports of food through Hodeidah port have reduced by more than 55,000 metric tonnes a month. That’s enough to meet the needs of 4.4 million people, including 2.2 million children[iii]. Any further decline in imports could likely lead directly to famine.
Barak Obama with Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in 2016. Source.
Like so many other stories of unrest in the Middle East, the one in Yemen follows an all-too-familiar path that I am sure ultimately leads back to the U.S. and the “intelligence” agencies like the CIA and Mossad who control world politics ensuring that candidates friendly to the Zionist Epstein agenda rise to power.
The rationale, as it has been used so many times, was to overthrow “dictatorships” and alleged “ruthless” rulers who had ruled for long period of times and replace them with “pro-democracy” leaders, and always ending in disaster for the local populations.
It was this same rationale that took down leaders such as Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and even more recently Bashar al-Assad in Syria, all of whom were replaced by pro-Western leaders aligned with the U.S. (and by proxy, Israel).
What most Americans do not realize, is that while these “ruthless dictators” were portrayed as evil by the U.S., they were very popular in their own countries, and most of them were even elected in landslides, while the U.S. declared those elections “rigged.”
Imagine the U.S. with their highly ethical election system (sarcasm) dictating to foreign governments whether their elections were “fair” or not.
During the “Arab Spring” in 2012, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the first elected president of the Republic of Yemen, suffered the same fate, and was forced from office and replaced with the pro-U.S. candidate Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
When the Houthis struck back at the U.S. puppet regime, the U.S. had no problems with uniting with local groups in the area opposed to the Houthis, but had officially been branded as “terrorist” groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda.
It is very similar to what recently happened in Syria, where a former member of al-Qaeda, the group who allegedly bombed the World Trade Center towers in New York under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, was chosen by the U.S. to lead Syria today, Ahmed al-Sharaa.
But these factions in Yemen were not strong enough to fight back against the Houthis, so starting with President Obama, the U.S. got involved to prop up their puppet government in Yemen.
One for all, and all for one: The U.S. Uniparty political system. Image source New York Times.
The country of Yemen has the unique distinction of being the first country where U.S. citizens were executed by drone strikes by their own government, with no judge, jury, or trial.
President Barak Obama was the first U.S. President known to authorize a drone strike on a U.S. citizen, Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old boy who was in Yemen and whose father was linked to al-Qaeda.
This was headline news back in the day.
Nawar al-Awlaki, eight-year-old American girl executed by a drone strike in Yemen ordered by President Trump. Image source.
When Trump succeeded Obama and took office in 2017, he proceeded to do the same thing, by ordering a drone strike in Yemen that killed Nawar al-Awlaki, an eight-year-old American girl and the daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki. The 16-year-old U.S. citizen killed by Obama was her brother. (Source.)
Since I lived in Saudi Arabia for several years and was a professor at one of their top universities back in the 1990s, I will offer my own opinion on the current leader of Saudi Arabia, which you will be hard-pressed to find from any other western journalist, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS).
MBS was quite young when he came into power, and he reportedly earned a law degree from King Saud University in Riyadh, allegedly finishing second in his class.
I have heard Muslim commentators mention that due to his being educated in Saudi Arabia, rather than going to a Western university, that MBS was better suited and trained to rule Saudi Arabia and not as prone to Western influence.
I strongly disagree.
Back in the day when I was teaching English at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, located in Dhahran, right next to the Aramco oil compound, it was well-known among the faculty back then that if any member of the Al-Saud family came to study at the University and had to complete their first year learning English, that they had basically flunked the English test needed to attend one of the top universities in the U.S. or the UK.
They were not among the “cream of the crop” among Saudi high school students. We had one or two come through during my tenure there, and they were mostly viewed as seeing themselves as “privileged” due to being part of the Al-Saud family, and not very good students at all, preferring instead to go out partying in the desert with their expensive Range Rovers.
So when I read that MBS graduated “second” in his class, I wondered why he did not graduate first, being a member of the Royal family. My best guess is that someone in the Al-Saud family higher up the ladder must have beat him out at the time.
But the true intellectuals and leaders among Saudis probably all graduated from Ivy League schools in the U.S., or from the top universities in the UK.
And of course, MBS is clearly a puppet who has served, first Obama, and now most recently has served as Trump’s lap dog, in my opinion.
So he is hardly against Western culture, even though he was educated in Saudi Arabia.
His rise in power within the Al-Saud dynasty coincided with Donald Trump’s first term (coincidence?).
Mohammed was appointed crown prince on 21 June 2017, following the King’s decision to depose Muhammad bin Nayef and make his own son the heir to the throne.
On the day bin Salman became crown prince, US president Donald Trump called to congratulate him.
Trump and Mohammed pledged “close cooperation” on security and economic issues and discussed the need to cut off support for terrorism, the diplomatic dispute with Qatar, and the push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Mohammed told The Washington Post in April 2017 that without America’s cultural influence on Saudi Arabia, “we would have ended up like North Korea.”
In May 2017, Mohammed launched a purge against competing Saudi business and political elites in an anti-corruption campaign.
On 4 November 2017, the Saudi press announced the arrest of the Saudi prince and billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal, a frequent English-language news commentator and a major shareholder in Citi, News Corp and Twitter, as well as over 40 princes and government ministers on corruption and money laundering charges.
Others arrested or fired in the purge included Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, head of the Saudi Arabian National Guard; Minister of Economy and Planning Adel Fakeih; and the commander of the Royal Saudi Navy, Admiral Abdullah bin Sultan bin Mohammed Al-Sultan.
Those arrested in the Ritz Carlton were the subject of what became called “the night of beating”. Most were beaten, and some were tied to walls in stress positions as part of torture by Saudi agents.
The detainees were threatened with blackmail.
Detainees were denied sleep, had their heads covered, and were beaten.[50] Seventeen had to be hospitalised.[50] After many days, the remaining detainees were moved to Al-Ha’ir Prison, while some released are banned from travelling abroad.
The purge helped centralise political powers in the hands of bin Salman and undermine the pre-existing structure of consensus-based governance among Saudi elites.
The arrests resulted in the final sidelining of the faction of King Abdullah, and bin Salman’s consolidation of control of all three branches of the security forces. It also cemented bin Salman’s supremacy over business elites in Saudi Arabia and resulted in a mass seizure of assets by the bin Salman regime.
Trump expressed support for the move, tweeting
“Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!“
Trump seemingly worked hard in an effort to turn MBS into a full-fledged Zionist and support Israel, but MBS stated that if he did not support the Palestinian right to have their own homeland, his own people would stone him to death.
In 2018, (MBS) voiced his support for a Jewish homeland of Israel, the first time that a senior Saudi royal has expressed such sentiments publicly.
In 2020, Mohammed met with Netanyahu and Israeli head of the Mossad Yosi Cohen in Neom. The United States had been pushing for Israel’s normalisation for some years, calling (in this context) the Abraham Accords the “deal of the century”, but Riyadh rejected reports of progress.
In 2023, there were ongoing U.S. lead negotiations to establish diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Mohammed also said that his country was moving steadily closer to normalising relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords.
Amid the Gaza war, according to reporting by The Atlantic, Mohammed told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January 2024 that he was open to Saudi normalisation with Israel, adding,
“Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do.”
Surveys in the early stages of the Gaza war showed that over 90 percent of Saudis citizens believed that the Arab states should break off their relations with Israel.
In August 2024, Mohammad discussed his fears of facing assassination due to his support for establishing and normalising Saudi-Israel ties, and the threats he received. He believed for any deal, it was important to include a true path to the State of Palestine.
As I reported back in June of 2024, Saudi Arabia made the historical move to not renew an 80-year-old agreement with the United States that established the U.S. Dollar as the world currency to purchase Saudi oil, in return for U.S. military protection.
They saw the handwriting on the wall, apparently, and wanted to be able to sell oil to China in their own currency, the Yuan. See:
This, more than anything, could be the primary reason why the U.S. will not participate in helping them fight back against the Houthis anymore.
And one of the biggest reasons why I believe that MBS may not survive much longer, is because Saudi Arabia has taken most of their $billions made from oil profits during the past few years and invested it in AI technology, in what will probably be the largest financial bubble to burst in the history of the modern era.
We could very well be watching the last stages of the Epstein financial empire crumbling right before our eyes.
This article was written by Human Superior Intelligence (HSI)
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The post The Demise of Saudi Arabia, and Perhaps Christian Zionism? Yemen Shocks the World by Taking Control of the Red Sea first appeared on Health Impact News.
Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) has already flown in formation alongside F-35 fighters during U.S. Air Force testing, company executives have revealed, offering the clearest indication yet that live manned-unmanned teaming work with the fifth-generation fighter is underway.
The disclosure came during a briefing by Anduril executives Jason Levin, senior vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, and Erin Simpson, vice president for Strategy for Air Dominance and Strike, at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending. The executives said the Fury flew alongside F-35s during a July exercise conducted with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. You can read more about that event in our past reporting here.
“We’ve already started flying in formation alongside crewed. I can even say fifth-gen fighters. F-35,” Levin said.
The testing is an important step toward the Air Force’s broader vision for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, in which relatively inexpensive autonomous aircraft are intended to operate alongside and support crewed fighters in contested airspace.
The executives stressed, however, that the F-35 was not yet controlling the Fury during those flights.
“But they’re not controlling it from the crewed fighter yet,” Levin said. “Not yet.”
Instead, the July testing involved Fury operating under its Mission Autonomy system while sharing airspace with crewed fighters, other CCAs, and other aircraft. Anduril says Air Force personnel were able to operate the autonomy system without Anduril personnel directly running the aircraft, although company personnel remained on site in a supporting role.
The company described the progression toward direct manned-unmanned teaming as a “crawl, run, build-up” process.
Anduril says it has already begun work on what it calls “quarterback integration,” referring to the ability for a crewed aircraft to direct or task autonomous aircraft. That work has been conducted in hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop environments as well as on the Fury itself.
“Most of those events will be coming up here in a matter of weeks or months,” Levin said when asked about the timeline for the first quarterback integration with Fury.
Asked whether those events would involve live flying, the answer was unequivocal: “Yes.”
Exactly how an F-35 would control Fury remains part of that ongoing development effort. The executives pointed to work involving integration of the appropriate human-machine interfaces, primarily including tablet-based control from the crewed fighter, at least at first.
The distinction between flying alongside an F-35 and being controlled by an F-35 is important. The former demonstrates that Fury’s aircraft and autonomy systems can operate safely in the same battlespace as a fifth-generation fighter. The latter would represent a much more significant demonstration of the operational concept behind CCAs: allowing a single crewed fighter to employ and manage additional autonomous aircraft as part of a larger force.
Anduril’s July testing went beyond simple formation flying. The company said Fury was conducting Mission Autonomy flights using live sensor data and was operating in airspace shared with crewed fighters and other CCAs. Air Force operators reportedly conducted both relatively basic route and pattern work and more representative tactical scenarios.
The Fury’s work with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit has progressed through two increasingly ambitious phases. During the first exercise in April at Edwards Air Force Base, Air Force personnel were trained to operate the aircraft and were able to launch and recover it using Anduril’s compact Menace-T setup, essentially a pair of ruggedized cases and a laptop rather than a conventional ground-control station.
By the second exercise, conducted at Creech in July, the Air Force had reduced the manpower and infrastructure required further. A single EOU operator could launch and recover the aircraft after only hours of training, while Air Force personnel independently operated Fury’s Mission Autonomy. The aircraft also flew in airspace shared with other CCAs, while the exercise demonstrated disaggregated operations and a rapid “hot reload” in which two operators replaced an AIM-120 AMRAAM with the engine running, reducing the turnaround between sorties to single-digit minutes.
The July exercise also included a live weapons demonstration that Anduril characterized as a complete end-to-end kill chain rather than simply a captive-carry or basic weapons-release test. The Fury launched from Edwards with a single operator and received a track generated by an external source over a beyond-line-of-sight connection. That track was ingested by Anduril’s Lattice AI-infused autonomy software system, after which the operator tasked the aircraft to engage. Fury then launched an AIM-120 AMRAAM and guided the weapon to the target. Anduril described the test as demonstrating the complete kill chain from offboard targeting information, through the aircraft’s mission systems and operator tasking, to an actual air-to-air weapons engagement.
New test footage: first missile shot from YFQ-44A.
— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) July 15, 2026
YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target.
The test, executed out of @EdwardsAFB, represents an important step in turning CCA into an operational capability. pic.twitter.com/70cRIs6uXJ
On the weapons side, the production FQ-44 is being designed around four external hardpoints, allowing it to carry four AIM-120 AMRAAMs for the Air Force’s primary air-to-air mission set. Currently, the demonstration aircraft can carry two. Regardless, the company is also pursuing a much broader weapons portfolio for Fury. Executives said they have already begun integration and fit checks for 500-pound guided bombs, Small Diameter Bombs, low-cost cruise missiles — including Anduril’s Barracuda 500 offering — other air-to-air weapons, rocket pods and targeting pods. Those integrations are intended to give Fury options beyond air-to-air combat, including counter-drone, counter-cruise-missile and air-to-ground/air-surface strike missions. Anduril stressed that these are currently integration and engineering efforts rather than claims that all of those weapons have been flight-tested from Fury. The company also said additional sensors, such as a targeting pod, could be added for some of those missions.
The executives acknowledged that some of the more advanced tactical capabilities remain under development and are being explored extensively in simulation. Those efforts include areas such as sensor fusion, track discrimination and tactical engagements.
The ultimate objective is an aircraft that does not require a large ground-control infrastructure or a dedicated operator for every individual sortie. As previously noted, during the July exercise, Anduril says a single Air Force operator was able to launch and recover a Fury after only hours of training, while other Air Force personnel operated the aircraft’s Mission Autonomy functions.
That same exercise also demonstrated what Anduril described as “disaggregated operations,” with personnel at multiple locations able to operate the same aircraft. The concept is intended to support an Agile Combat Employment-style approach in which CCAs can be dispersed across multiple operating locations rather than relying on a single large ground footprint.
The company has since delivered a Fury aircraft to the Air Force’s EOU at Creech, making it the first CCA to be permanently delivered to the unit, according to Anduril. The service is now flying the aircraft multiple times a day with what the company said is a very limited Anduril presence.
Meanwhile, Anduril says assembly of Fury airframes has already begun at its Arsenal facility, with production aircraft expected to begin coming off the line early next year. The company says it has built the facility and supply chain around a potential production rate of 150 aircraft per year, although that figure is a planned capacity rather than an existing Air Force order. Anduril executives said the company has already advanced procurement of long-lead items and worked with its Tier 1, 2 and 3 suppliers to support that rate, while also examining additional production lines. They emphasized that the current Air Force pricing is based on a substantially lower annual buy than 150 aircraft, but said the Fury’s unit cost is well below $20 million at the quantities currently contemplated. The company also says the production line is designed for relatively rapid reconfiguration, allowing capacity to be shifted between products in weeks rather than the months or years associated with more traditional aircraft production facilities.
Earlier this year, the Air Force awarded contracts for the production of FQ-44A Fury and General Atomics FQ-42A Dark Merlin drones — the latter has now been formally named Vengeance. This sets the service up to operate a split initial fleet of CCAs. As you can read about here, the Air Force is now aiming to have at least 500 CCA in service by 2032, a substantial step up from earlier plans, with the USAF having previously talked about acquiring “over” 150 of these drones by the end of the decade. The 500 target will likely include upcoming increment two CCAs, as well, the requirements of which the Air Force is still working on.
For Anduril, the next major milestone should go far beyond simply putting a Fury and an F-35 in the same formation, demonstrating that a crewed fifth-generation fighter can actually command and employ the autonomous aircraft as part of a live mission.
If Anduril’s timeline holds, that testing could begin relatively soon.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com
The post Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury CCA Has Flown Alongside F-35s appeared first on TWZ.
In our relentlessly optimized world, Justin Neuman calls for more nothing. More time for both adults and kids to engage in free, unstructured play. More opportunities to play games without competition or scoring. More chances to do things without needing to produce outputs or achieve goals. More “transitional spaces” through which we can practice, imagine, and think.
For years, I’ve commuted on foot from Grand Central Station to 14th Street, 30 blocks, give or take. I told myself it was exercise, or that I was saving the subway fare, or that I liked the air. But the truth is I was thinking. Or rather, I was letting thinking happen. The lecture I couldn’t outline at my desk would assemble itself somewhere around 34th Street, the important points falling into sequence with my footfalls, the argument clarifying as if the motion itself were doing the editing. I wasn’t working on the lecture. I was walking in it, the way my kids were playing in Catan.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced projects division has shared all new information about its stealthy Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) type drone design named Vectis, which it first unveiled a year ago. One of the most intriguing details is the true nature of its air inlet configuration, pointing to the premium on survivability the Skunk Works has placed on its CCA offering, especially when compared to other CCA designs.
Vectis has a far more exotic, deeply recessed “submerged” top-mounted air intake than was originally disclosed when Vectis first came out of the shadows. This further underscores the heavy emphasis Skunk Works says it has been placing on its CCA’s ability to stay undetected and live to fight another day. Vectis is also the first tailless CCA design we have seen from a U.S. manufacturer.
Ron Fehlen, Lockheed Martin Vice President and General Manager of Skunk Works, gave TWZ and other outlets an update on Vectis last week ahead of today’s start of the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Skunk Works says work on constructing the first prototype of Vectis – a word that means lever or pole in Latin, and that Lockheed Martin has said reflects the ‘leverage’ the drone offers – is underway now. The goal is to have it flying by the end of next year. There are already plans to build four more prototypes using internal funding.
Check out the Skunk Works’ new Vectis video below:
“It is designed, as you can likely see, to be both survivable and affordable and flexible across the range of missions that our customers need, have needed, and continue to need into the future,” Fehlen said by way of introduction. “The technical specs, as you can imagine, are designed to meet and, in some cases, exceed the customer sets that we are working with and their requirements and their mission needs.”
The basic core of the single-engine Vectis that we have seen now is largely unchanged from what had been shown at the time of the unveiling last year. It is still a tailless drone that has a lambda wing planform and air intake mounted on top of the central part of the fuselage, as well as a prominent chine line around the forward end and a shovel-like shape to its nose. New renderings do show revised positions for various conformal antennas and/or sensor apertures around the central fuselage. These are all established features of low-observable (stealthy) aircraft designs.
Skunk Works’ Fehlen also shared last week that Vectis is approximately 34 feet long and has a wingspan of around 38 feet. As a comparison, the Navy’s two-seat primary jet trainer, the T-45 Goshawk, is roughly 39 feet long by 30 feet wide.
The biggest new detail, as mentioned, is the shaping and position of Vectis’ air inlet. Fehlen stressed that this is actually not a new feature, and has “been a part of the design since the beginning,” but was not reflected in previously released renderings and scale models.
The intake was depicted in the past as having a relatively straightforward configuration. It did appear to have a saw-tooth leading edge, another indication of stealthy design considerations. The visuals we have now show the intake is deeply recessed into the top of the fuselage, sitting behind a downward-sloping v-shaped channel.
Vectis doesn’t have a fully flush-mounted inlet, like what is found on Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone, among other designs, but it is close to it, very loosely similar to what’s found on the B-21. The rear is slightly raised above the v-like pocket where air flows down into the intake. Flush or near-flush intakes offer particular benefits when it comes to low-observability (stealthiness) and aerodynamic efficiency, but are also notoriously problematic, especially in certain flight regimes, as you can read more about here. This is even worse for high-performance aircraft that have a wide operating envelope and have to maneuver at higher angles of attack. The CCA would likely fit into this category, at least to a degree.
When it comes to Vectis, “there’s a lot of different reasons behind it [choosing this submerged intake configuration], but I’ll pick up on a couple here for you,” Skunk Works’ Fehlen explained. “The first is it reduces that frontal drag. So, anything sticking out in the wind, as many – as all of you know, I’m sure, creates drag on the aircraft itself. So, if you want better performance from a range, et cetera, then you need to be able to reduce that drag, and that’s an example.”
“It’s also interesting to me, particularly as the Air Force speaks about Agile Combat Employment, the ACE concept, as you’re aware. There is an advantage to having an inlet on the top of the aircraft if you’re out in more austere environments and you’re concerned about FOD [foreign object debris] pickup off of a runway,” he added.
ACE refers to a set of U.S. Air Force concepts of operations focused primarily on relatively rapid and irregular deployments, particularly to far-flung, austere operating locations, and with the expectation that logistics support could be very limited. The ACE construct is at the very core of the Air Force’s CCA program requirements and its plans for operating those drones in the future.
Fehlen also confirmed that the inlet’s design has to do with survivability, but did not elaborate in any detail, which is unsurprising considering the sensitivities of such design elements. The original Vectis promotional video Lockheed Martin put out last year, seen below, showed an S-shaped duct behind the air intake and exhaust shrouding, which are features designed to further reduce a platform’s signature.
In terms of performance, Lockheed Martin has yet to share any hard specifications it is targeting for Vectis, or disclose details about the engine the design will use. Fehlen did also highlight the drag-reducing performance advantages of the drone’s tailless design, including for maximizing range.
Details about what other capabilities Vectis might have are still limited. Fehlen noted that the design is expected to be capable of both air-to-air and air-to-ground mission sets. In a new computer-generated promotional video, seen earlier in this story, the drones are depicted launching what look to be AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) glide bombs, also known as StormBreakers. The AIM-120 has already emerged as something of a default initial weapon for Western CCA-type drones. The video also confirms Vectis has an internal bay that is able to accommodate at least two munitions, likely the size to accommodate medium-range air-to-air missiles.
In addition, the video shows Vectis as having a traditional electro-optical/infrared sensor turret behind a stealthy faceted enclosure under the nose. When the drone was first unveiled last year, TWZ noted that it could carry a variety of sensors, including compact radars and/or infrared search and track (IRST) systems, which would be particularly relevant in the air-to-air role.
During the press call, Skunk Works’ Fehlen reiterated that Vectis is being designed with an eye toward modularity and open-architecture systems. This, in turn, will make it easier to integrate new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line. Open architecture is at the heart of every CCA offering we are aware of at this time.
Fehlen further highlighted Lockheed Martin’s extensive work to date on advanced autonomy packages and crewed-uncrewed teaming capabilities. This includes the development of the Multi Domain Combat System (MDCX), an “autonomy platform” that is already central to the U.S. Navy’s plans for the carrier-based MQ-25 Stingray. The head of Skunk Works also explicitly called attention to autonomous air intercept testing conducted in cooperation with the Air Force earlier this year using the unique X-62A test jet, and said that work is feeding into Vectis’ development.
On top of all this, Lockheed Martin is already actively laying the groundwork for the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 and F-35 fighters to control future CCA drones, via in-cockpit touchscreen-type user interfaces, likely involving tablets, at least at first.
The new Vectis promotional video also shows a traditional ground control station being used to direct the drones, but with the phrase “managed from anywhere” on the screens, as seen below. Fehlen did say that any specific requirements for autonomy, command and control, and other operational capabilities would be up to individual customers, and that third-party vendors could be involved.
Beyond Vectis’ design and expected capacities, Fehlen touted the speed at which work on the first physical prototype is progressing, and highlighted the use of digital design techniques and advanced manufacturing processes.
“This team, when kicked off, took a design on a napkin, which we will likely frame one day in my office … two months later, they were in the wind tunnel validating the design,” he said. “So, in under two months, we’re already getting in the wind tunnel straight from off of a napkin. We had the first digital build in six months, and the first part release in eight months. So it gives you a touch of a sense for exactly how fast we’re moving.”
“This aircraft was designed in a fully integrated digital environment,” he added. “Really, it’s creating that unbroken digital thread from the design all the way through sustainment.”
There has been much talk over the years about whether the promised benefits of digital engineering have lived up to expectations, with former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall having been particularly critical of the technology being at least over-hyped in the past. At the same time, the use of digital design tools has become increasingly commonplace, including on top-priority U.S. military aerospace projects, and not just at Skunk Works.
“We’ve used advanced design and manufacturing processes developed for many years under our own internal investment … for other Skunk Works programs, we’ve pulled that into this, of course, to continue to advance our manufacturing as well as the advanced design capability,” Fehlen continued. “They’re using real production processes.”
The Skunk Works boss stressed that this approach offers advantages not just for accelerating development and prototype, but also for reducing costs and positioning Vectis to enter full-scale production.
“It gives you the reliance and the confidence as you continue to move forward that you’re ready to off and build these things because you’re using those real production processes,” he explained. “An example of that is a technique that we call minimal tooling determinant assembly. It’s a technique that really enables an increased level of affordability and speed through really reducing the amount of touch labor required and increasing the first pass yield. We’ve seen, in many cases, an 80 percent reduction in labor hours to build up the aircraft itself.”
Fehlen made an indirect reference to flat-pack furniture from IKEA to provide additional context, in extremely general layman’s terms, about what this technique offers.
“That’s what we’re talking about, that idea that it can come together very quickly, limited touch, and limited error. We constrain that to reduce the number of labor hours, which is not just a cost implication, but also buoys the speed and how fast we’re going to be able to produce them,” he said. “You can imagine, as well, there’s a lot of simplification that goes into this. We have significantly reduced the part count. Again, back to simplify the build so that you can have a positive impact on speed and affordability, not new techniques, but we’ve applied them here with vigor to ensure that we are getting to the cost point that the services and our customers need in order to make this system effective.”
In terms of actual unit cost, “we’re always looking at, and, of course, we’re targeting to be [at] the CCA competitive price, so we’re very cognizant of it and make trades associated with that,” according to Fehlen. Vectis is “focused more on the CCA side of the house, and obviously the price points that are highly relevant in that regime, and then, of course, making trades along the way, and to make sure that we can meet it.”
The head of Skunk Works was responding here specifically to a question that mentioned the Air Force’s target of a roughly $20 million unit price for drones acquired under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program once full-scale production is achieved. The service announced in June that it was ordering fleets of both of the Increment 1 designs now in development, General Atomics’ FQ-42A Dark Merlin and Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury. The Air Force has plans for at least one more increment to this program, and has said in the past that it could pursue lower-cost (and less exquisite) designs.
“While not discussing suppliers, you can imagine we are ensuring that all of the decisions we make in the development and then the build out of these aircraft are designed around achieving that competitive cost point, while at the same time maximizing the amount of capability,” Fehlen added. “Those are the things that our customers are looking for, and we put it in a survivable solution.”
“There are some [companies] that are really going down the attritable [route], which defines a different price point than the CCA community has been targeting,” he also noted. Attritable designs are “quite a bit less from a cost point perspective and often from a capability perspective.”
With this in mind, there are still larger questions about where exactly Vectis may fit into U.S. military CCA plans, as well as those emerging from allied and partner air arms globally. Skunk Works has said in the past that it was eliminated from the Air Force’s CCA Increment 1 competition because it put forward a very stealthy “gold-plated” design that was not what the service wanted. Lockheed Martin had also indicated that its view of the capability/cost balance on new CCA-type designs had subsequently shifted very much in the opposite direction. Though it is still not entirely clear, what we’ve learned about Vectis in the past year would seem to signal that the pendulum at Skunk Works has swung back the other way again, at least to a degree.
As an interesting point of comparison, Northrop Grumman had also entered a higher-end design for the Increment 1 competition. In the wake of that loss, the company produced a much more familiar CCA design with a more traditional planform, which is now known as the YFQ-48A Talon Blue.
It’s also worth noting here that Skunk Works had publicly shared a future crewed-uncrewed teaming vision that included multiple tiers of drones back in 2022. This ranged from a cruise missile-like design the company now calls the Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT) all the way up to a concept for what could have been a very low-observable (stealthy) and highly autonomous flying wing uncrewed combat air vehicle (UCAV).
“We listen closely to our customers to deeply understand the operational environment and use those insights and our own analysis to inform the diverse solutions we develop for different mission sets,” Lockheed Martin told TWZ directly after the press call last week in response to a follow-up question about whether the 2022 vision was still relevant and if Vectis had supplanted the upper-tier concept shown at that time. “We continue to evaluate a range of crewed and uncrewed concepts against evolving customer needs.”
“Lockheed Martin Vectis addresses a warfighter need for a survivable, flexible and multi-mission capability, both domestically and internationally,” the company added in its statement. “We’re leaning into that demand, making strategic investments to accelerate Vectis’ progress and maturity and to deliver the capabilities our nation and allies need.”
Publicly, the Air Force continues to eschew any new plans to acquire and field UCAVs in favor of or even in addition to far less exquisite CCAs. The U.S. Marine Corps has so far put forward a similar CCA vision. However, just at the end of last month, the U.S. Navy released new target requirements for what it called a CCA-type drone, but that described something that sounded much more like a UCAV.
Lockheed Martin and a host of other companies globally are being presented with a clearly expanding CCA market, but there is also still obvious interest in higher-tier UCAVs. China, in particular, has positioned itself as the current leader in the stealthy flying wing UCAV space, as well as a dominant actor in advanced combat drone developments more generally speaking. Russia, India, Turkey, and France continue to pursue flying wing UCAVs, as well. That being said, Skunk Works’ Vectis is arguably the closest we have seen to a low-observable UCAV to come out of recent CCA developments.
Regardless, Skunk Works is confident that there is a place for Vectis, together with autonomy and other capabilities it is developing, domestically and internationally, in this future uncrewed air combat ecosystem. It “is a survivable autonomous multi-mission platform, which we believe is the solution needed within today’s operational environment and into the future,” Fehlen said last week.
Skunk Works is committed to “delivering what’s next across … airframes, open architectures, to include artificial intelligence and autonomy, and then crewed-uncrewed integration,” he added. “Make no mistake, it will take advancements across all these areas to get to where our customers are going. We look at the full picture. Vectis is a holistic weapon system from our perspective.”
Altogether, “it’s an urgent need. We know that. We can hear it.”
UPDATE: 3:10 pm EDT
We now have a photo of the full sized Vectis mockup on the floor or Air, Space, Cyber 2026:
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The post Everything We Just Learned About The Vectis Collaborative Combat Aircraft From The Skunk Works appeared first on TWZ.
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