For the first time, the US Navy has deployed an uncrewed surface vessel (USV), or a sea drone, alongside a carrier strike group (CSG), accelerating the integration of cost-effective autonomous systems into high-end naval operations.
Speaking at an Army conference in Washington, DC, on October 14, 2026, the Acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao announced that the Navy has deployed a Leidos USV with the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group (CSG) headed to the Middle East.
“Right now, the Roosevelt carrier strike group just deployed on Oct. 8 with a medium-sized unmanned surface vessel,” Cao noted.
“This is the first carrier strike group to ever deploy with a large-sized unmanned surface vessel, and this is a force multiplier. Imagine having more guns out there,” he added. Notably, Cao did not name the sea drone, but media reports citing informed officials identified it as the Leidos Seahawk, a 145-ton, 42-meter-long medium USV reportedly built to sail long distances uninterrupted for months
Leidos describes the Seahawk as a medium-displacement unmanned surface vessel (MD-USV) with a composite trimaran hull. It is roughly 135–137 feet long, with a full-load displacement of about 145 tons, and a fuel capacity of around 14,000 gallons.
It is designed for extended autonomous operations with limited human intervention and uses Leidos’ Autonomous Vessel Architecture (LAVA) for navigation, perception, collision avoidance (COLREGs-compliant), and other functions.
“Seahawk is substantially larger than other US Navy USVs and has significantly increased capabilities compared to smaller USVs in terms of range, seakeeping, and payload capacity. Seahawk is designed to operate with minimal human involvement, providing a forward-deployed, rapid-response asset in the global maritime surveillance network,” Leidos stated.
The company reportedly delivered the Seahawk USV to the United States Navy in 2021.
The Seahawk will likely conduct electronic warfare missions and information, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations rather than serve as an armed combatant. Notably, the carrier’s deployment to the Middle East comes as US President Donald Trump weighs fresh strikes on Iran.
Israel Reverses U.S. Apache Drawdown in Post-October 7 Policy Shift, Signs Deal For 12 AH-64E Helos
Earlier this month, he told Time magazine that the US military could ramp up bombing of Iran after the November 3 midterm elections.
The arrival of the USS Roosevelt would bring the number of American aircraft carriers available in the region to three by late October, joining the USS George H.W. Bush, USS George Washington, and the USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group.
As for the Leidos USV, the Navy had already practiced at-sea refueling with the Seahawk vessel and integrated it during this year’s Rim of the Pacific exercise. However, moving this unmanned system from trials into real-world operations could mark a crucial step in shaping the US Navy’s future strategy.
The presence of the large autonomous vessel in a carrier strike group marks an important step in the US Navy’s future operations. Interestingly, it comes amid a growing presence of uncrewed systems in the ongoing Middle East conflict.
In June 2026, for instance, a Saronic Corsair drone boat operated by the US Navy’s Task Force 59 was used to locate and rescue two crew members after an AH-64E helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz.
This first-of-its-kind rescue mission involving sea drones took about two hours, as the EurAsian Times reported at the time.
Separately, the US Navy used one-way attack sea drones in combat for the first time in July 2026 to strike coastal Iranian military targets.
The US Navy has admitted that unmanned vessels have been extensively deployed in the clearance of mines from the Strait of Hormuz, which has remained under a de facto closure imposed by Iran for over seven months.
These incidents signal a broader appetite within the US Navy to delegate crucial combat tasks to unmanned vessels.
For example, although CSGs are the centerpiece of American naval power projection, adversaries also view them as high-value targets. Therefore, introducing a USV could let the Navy deploy a medium-sized autonomous vessel closer to threats at sea, keeping sailors out of the danger zone.
Moreover, adding a USV to the carrier strike group would enhance the US Navy’s sensor coverage and maritime awareness, reducing dependence on crewed vessels.
Cao’s remarks about having more firepower likely reflect the US Navy’s broader strategy to integrate uncrewed vessels with heavy ships.
In February this year, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle, presented his “Fighting Instructions” framework, outlining plans to employ a “hedge force strategy” that aims to leverage unmanned technology and develop a range of tailored options that fall outside the scope of the conventional carrier strike group model.
Since the specifics of this strategy and its structure are currently still being worked out, the deliberate pairing of medium USVs with carrier strike groups may be an early expression of the approach Caudle underscored. The USV’s performance with the Theodore Roosevelt group could potentially inform how subsequent strike groups are configured, accelerating the path toward more medium USVs in the fleet.
The US Navy’s increasing integration of sea drones into established combat practices may have been influenced by Ukraine’s use of these systems to decimate the Russian Navy.
Ukraine has emerged as a pioneer in sea drone technology, showing how relatively simple, affordable technology can neutralize expensive naval assets. In fact, Iran itself has extensively deployed these vessels to launch frequent operations against the US as well as the tankers trying to transit the Hormuz Strait in violation of the Iranian blockade.
The US, for its part, wants to leverage the asymmetric advantage of autonomous systems in combat when facing adversaries that can threaten its state-of-the-art warships.
If the Seahawk demonstrates reliable integration, endurance, and utility, it may accelerate the Navy’s ability to field hybrid strike groups that combine the decisive power of a carrier air wing with the distributed, lower-risk presence of autonomous vessels.
This assessment may, in turn, inform strategies for combat in other, more contested theatres, such as the Indo-Pacific, where the US faces a Chinese threat.
With a smaller but more advanced fleet, the US can use large numbers of attritable unmanned platforms for sustained surveillance, chokepoint control, and harassment without tying down manned ships.
Against that backdrop, lessons from this first operational pairing may shape concepts of operations (CONOPS), help tailor force packages, and inform the broader shift toward distributed maritime operations, all of which are meant to complicate targeting in a contested environment by near-peer adversaries.
The post First Time — A U.S. Carrier Strike Group Sails with a Medium USV as USS Roosevelt Leads the Way appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
“Yemen did not want this war, but we are bringing the fire back to Saudi Arabia.”
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The Saudi kingdom is facing the danger of collapse from soaring war costs as Yemeni air strikes ramp up, hitting its northern neighbor’s capital and industrial centers with impunity.
Yemeni journalist Hussein al-Bukhaiti says the corruption and arrogance of the “House of Evil” is culminating in historic defeat. Its U.S. patron seems unable to avert the coming collapse.
Despite decades of the U.S. selling weapons worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the Saudi rulers, the regime seems shockingly exposed, with no viable defenses. Yemen’s missiles are striking Saudi Arabia at will. The panicky rulers are pleading with the United States and Europe for help.
Yemen’s armed forces are taking the war to Saudi Arabia, striking its airports, imposing a no-fly zone over the entire state and shutting down its vital oil industry.
“The Saudis cannot stop our drones and hypersonic missiles… we are taking the war to them,” says Sanaa-based Hussain al-Bukhaiti.
With no oil exports, Al-Bukhaiti reckons the Saudi rulers are facing an existential nemesis. Many observers have long predicted that the autocratic Saudi kingdom, created by the British Empire, is awaiting downfall from its ossified and family-run power structure.
Speaking from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, Hussain al-Bukhaiti described the Saudi monarchy as “a house of glass” that is now being shattered by air strikes that cannot be defended against.
“Yemen did not want this war, but we are bringing the fire back to Saudi Arabia.”
Western politicians and media are portraying the conflict between the two Arab Peninsula countries as being caused by recent aggression from the Ansar Allah-led Yemeni government.
Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid international airport was attacked on October 10 with ballistic missiles that killed several people. Other Saudi airports have also been hit. This has led international airlines to suspend flights.
The state-owned Aramco oil industry has also been blasted with missiles. Fires are raging at major facilities, including at the main base of operations in Dammam on the Persian Gulf coast.
Following the missile strike on Riyadh airport at the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump and all European leaders condemned an “act of terrorism” by Yemen.
Hussain al-Bukhaiti pointed out the gross hypocrisy of European governments not condemning the thousands of Saudi air strikes on Yemen that have occurred since 2015. These governments still remain silent about the ongoing Saudi atrocities against Yemeni civilians. The European Union even declares “solidarity” with Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi monarchy, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, started the war with unprovoked attacks in March 2015. The aggression was enabled by the United States, Britain, and France supplying warplanes, bombs, and intelligence.
These Western powers continue to arm and direct the Saudi regime in its war against Yemen.
Since 2015, there have been thousands of Western-backed air strikes on Yemen, resulting in more than 20,000 mainly civilian deaths.
“They hit everything, schools, hospitals, water-treatment plants, farms, homes, wedding and funeral halls,” says Al-Bukhaiti.
In addition, over 400,000 Yemenis have died from starvation and diseases caused by a blockade on the country imposed by Saudi Arabia and its Western backers for over 10 years.
He says the war reignited in July 2026 after the Saudis broke a four-year truce signed in 2022 by bombing Sanaa international airport. There was no condemnation by Europe of the Saudi violation then.
What Yemen is doing to Saudi Arabia now is but a taste of what the House of Saud inflicted on Yemenis since 2015 with Western support.
The Yemenis this week rejected a reported Saudi proposal for a short-term truce because they see it as just a ploy by the Saudis for rearming and regrouping in a losing situation.
For the war to end, Saudi Arabia must respect Yemen’s sovereignty and stop interfering in its internal affairs.
However, Hussain al-Bukhaiti thinks that the United States will double down and escalate its military involvement in Yemen with a full-blown war. This is not primarily to support the Saudi monarchy, he believes, but rather to prop up the Israeli regime.
Yemen has inflicted huge damage on the Israeli state since it intensified the genocide against Palestinians in October 2023. Yemeni air strikes have repeatedly struck Tel Aviv despite American air defenses.
An expanded U.S. war in Yemen might seem surprising given that Trump has made such a mess of his reckless aggression against Iran and may not have the military forces at his disposal.
But Al-Bukhaiti believes the issue is beyond Trump’s choice. Washington is locked in with the Zionist regime and will do whatever it takes to salvage Israel from defeat. Yemen represents the biggest threat to Israel from the cutting off of its shipping in the Red Sea.
“We are ready for the war that is coming,” he warns.
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London is terrified of the prospect of losing America’s support for the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, so it’s doing everything in its power to prolong it.
Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst
President Donald Trump was never really a fan of the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky. Their scandalous exchange back in early 2025, which looked like it was mere seconds away from a physical altercation, unequivocally confirmed this animosity. Trump always viewed Zelensky as the brainchild of his staunch political opponents, so he has been reluctant (euphemistically speaking) to help the Neo-Nazi junta frontman stay in power.
Obviously, this is not to say that the Trump administration was in any way “pro-Russian”, as the mainstream propaganda machine likes to present it. Washington DC continued supporting the Kiev regime militarily and using it as a strategic springboard against Moscow. This includes everything from ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) support to weapons shipments.
President Trump reneged on his promises to end the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict “in 24 hours”, leading to further escalation. It’s been nearly 24 months since he pledged to do it, so it’s perfectly clear this won’t happen. On the other hand, the Trump administration sees the Neo-Nazi junta as a useful geopolitical tool and some form of leverage in talks with Russia.
Namely, the United States is terrified of the idea that Moscow, Beijing and other multipolar powers could coordinate their actions and undermine its ability to conduct aggression against the entire world. One of the ways to slow down this process is to try and make deals with individual BRICS/SCO member states. Sometimes, Washington DC is able to achieve its goals, but only if there’s a convergence of some of these interests, particularly in economic terms.
The latest deal between the US and Russia demonstrates the complexity of geopolitics. Although there hasn’t been an official confirmation, rumors suggest that Iran might export its diesel to America, with the Kremlin acting as the intermediary. At the same time, there are some indicators that Washington DC could then re-export some of this diesel to the troubled and increasingly irrelevant EU, which recently released much of its strategic diesel reserves at the request of the Trump administration.
Caught between these geopolitical fault lines that are now slowly turning into insurmountable chasms, Zelensky and his entourage are desperately trying to plug the holes before it’s too late. Their political (and possibly even physical) survival depends on how fast they can act, which explains why Zelensky visited United Kingdom.
Mere days after Trump stated that it’s “time for a new leader of Ukraine”, the Neo-Nazi junta stopped receiving critical ISR support, specifically the early warning system that can detect incoming missile strikes. Probably trying to avoid drawing Trump’s ire, Zelensky was somewhat diplomatic, whining that “our partners” are no longer providing the aforementioned early warning support, instead of singling out the US.
Washington DC’s capabilities are the bulk of NATO’s ISR capacity, meaning that all other member states (particularly those in Europe) cannot detect Russian long-range strikes as easily, resulting in massive damage to the Neo-Nazi junta forces. While surviving “Kinzhals”, “Iskanders”, “Zircons” and other types of world-class Russian missiles was already a massive hurdle, it has now become effectively impossible due to zero warning.
Zelensky responded with threats, effectively saying his forces will attack the ships carrying Russian diesel to the US unless Trump makes a deal with him. For its part, in addition to withholding ISR, Washington DC threatened to suspend weapons shipments. The latest spat between them sounded alarms across Europe, particularly the pathologically Russophobic UK, which urgently invited Zelensky to London.
Terrified of the prospect of losing America’s support for the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, the “Perfidious Albion” is doing everything in its power to prolong it. Something similar happened back in the early days of the special military operation (SMO), when the then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson urgently flew to Kiev to ensure Zelensky opts out of the already signed deal with Russia.
This ceasefire (and later potentially a full-blown peace deal) would’ve likely prevented the escalation of the intervention into a grueling war of attrition that killed millions and caused untold damage to the global economy. Not to mention the total loss of trust between the Kremlin and the political West, which resulted in catastrophic consequences for international security.
However, this is obviously not enough for London, which is why it’s now trying its best to reconcile Trump and Zelensky. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham actually said so, insisting it’s “his job to repair bridges between Ukraine and the United States” ahead of a meeting with Zelensky at Downing Street. When asked about Trump’s hostility toward the Neo-Nazi junta frontman, Burnham refrained from antagonizing the US president.
Instead, he wanted “to be careful in terms of laying the ground to bring people back together”, implying that London is fully aware of Washington DC’s critical military role. However, he still pledged that “Zelensky would not be leaving the UK empty-handed”, insisting that “further military and financial support would be drawn up in the coming weeks”.
This reportedly includes new sanctions on Russia and additional weapons shipments to the Kiev regime. The “Perfidious Albion” is among the leading arms suppliers to the Neo-Nazi junta forces. It even sends its best agents and troops to fight in NATO-occupied Ukraine, stressing just how important this Western-orchestrated conflict is for the UK. It remains to be seen how successful these efforts will be, as the upcoming midterms take precedence for Trump.
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Lacking the material conditions to challenge Chinese industrial supremacy, the European Union insists on turning its economic difficulties into a justification for a new escalation of hostilities.
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European leaders appear to have found a new strategic mission: rebuilding the continent’s industrial capacity while simultaneously reducing its dependence on China. The initiative was recently put forward jointly by France and Germany and is presented as a response to China’s growing presence in the European market. The problem is that the leaders responsible for this project continue to ignore a fundamental issue: no large-scale reindustrialization can succeed without a stable, abundant, and affordable energy supply.
Europe has excellent universities, a skilled workforce, advanced technological centers, and an industrial tradition that still gives it considerable advantages. However, these assets cannot function in isolation. Chemical plants, steel mills, metallurgical facilities, and numerous other industries depend on a continuous and competitive energy supply. Capital, scientific knowledge, and specialized workers cannot indefinitely compensate for high production costs. It is precisely at this point that Europe’s strategy contradicts its own objectives.
For decades, economic integration between Western Europe and Russia provided favorable conditions for the development of important industrial sectors. Russian natural gas supplies, in particular, helped sustain energy-intensive activities. This relationship served the concrete economic interests of both sides: Moscow had an important market for its exports, while European economies obtained a resource essential to their competitiveness.
The introduction of sanctions in 2022 profoundly altered this situation. The illegal coercive measures severed a longstanding Russo-European partnership, leaving the western part of the continent economically weakened and dependent on more expensive and less secure external energy supplies. Europe, which had already been undergoing gradual deindustrialization before then, subsequently plunged into an energy crisis, with consequences ranging from higher energy bills to business failures caused by the inability to maintain competitive production.
One would reasonably expect an industrial recovery strategy to begin by addressing these vulnerabilities. Instead, European leaders are attempting to build a new productive base without adequately resolving the energy problem. Those responsible for European economic policy seem to believe that subsidies, tax incentives, and investment programs will suffice to restore competitiveness. Such instruments can contribute to industrial development, but their effectiveness will remain limited as long as structural disadvantages in energy costs persist.
It is in this context that China is assuming an increasingly prominent position on Brussels’ “list of concerns”. China’s ability to manufacture on a massive scale, supply complex industrial chains, and offer competitively priced equipment poses a challenge to a Europe seeking to recover its productive autonomy. Rather than acknowledge the extent of the accumulated decline and develop a coherent strategy to reverse it, sections of the European leadership prefer to resort to trade barriers, punitive investigations, and mechanisms of economic containment.
This approach reveals a rather superficial understanding of industrial competition. Restricting Chinese imports does not automatically create European factories, reduce electricity costs, or guarantee gas supplies to industrial facilities. On the contrary, companies that depend on Chinese equipment, components, and raw materials may face higher expenses precisely when they need to invest in recovering their position in international markets.
The Russian question makes this situation even more delicate. Restoring energy cooperation with Moscow would be the first step in any serious industrial recovery plan. With Russian energy supplies and broad commercial partnerships with China, Europe could once again find a new path toward development, much as African and Asian countries are now beginning to do through their partnerships with Russia and China.
Brussels, Paris, and Berlin, however, are moving in the opposite direction. European strategists appear determined to confront two of the world’s largest industrial and energy powers simultaneously, without demonstrating that they possess the resources necessary to sustain such an ambition. First, they undermined a fundamental energy relationship with Russia. Now, they risk turning China into a permanent trade adversary.
Ultimately, what European hawks seek is not Europe’s development, but the instrumentalization of issues such as industry and trade to advance their own self-destructive agenda. Under this strategy, European citizens – already deprived of Russian energy and potentially facing reduced access to Chinese products in the near future – will once again be the first to bear the consequences.
In a major policy reversal of its pre-October 7 Apache drawdown plans, Israel has signed a deal with the United States to procure 12 Boeing AH-64E Apache Guardian helicopters.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced the deal on October 14, with deliveries expected in the early 2030s. Israel has not officially disclosed the deal’s value, but Israeli media reported it is expected to cost around US$ 1 billion.
Interestingly, the deal was announced nearly nine months after the US government approved the sale of up to 30 Apache helicopters to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) for an estimated USD 3.8 billion.
Israel has not disclosed if and when it will place the follow-on order for 18 more Apache attack helicopters, approved under the US government’s foreign military sale (FMS) program in February this year.
“The helicopters, scheduled for delivery at the beginning of the next decade, are of the Echo variant, the newest and most advanced model of the helicopter,” the Defense Ministry said.
According to the FMS agreement announced in February, the AH-64E will be delivered with mast-mounted Northrop Grumman AN/APG-78 Longbow fire-control radars and manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) receivers.
This latest version adds a dedicated maritime strike capability and nearly doubles Apache’s stand-off range by increasing the range of the Northrop Grumman AN/APG-78 mast-mounted fire-control radar from 8 to 16 km.
The Apache AH-64E can fire the Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-surface missile, the Rafael Spike Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) missile, which will extend its stand-off firing range beyond 25 km, Stinger air-to-air missiles, Hydra rockets, and can rake targets two km away with 1200 rounds of 30mm milk-bottle-sized cannon ammunition.
The AH-64E models, equipped with advanced radar, sensors, and fire-control systems, can detect, identify, and engage targets at long range, including in adverse weather and poor visibility.
According to manufacturer Boeing, they also provide aircrews with significantly improved situational awareness compared with older models.
“The procurement of the Apache helicopters is a critical step in the IDF’s force buildup, one that will strengthen its operational capabilities against a wide range of threats and contribute to the security of the State of Israel in the years to come,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
Notably, the agreement was announced within a week after Israel missed the deadline to sign, and the US reportedly threatened Jerusalem that it would prioritize other foreign customers if Israel did not sign immediately.
Despite changing battlefield requirements, Apache attack helicopters remain in high demand, and nearly half a dozen countries have signed deals for over 150 new-build Apache AH-64Es in the last five years, including Poland, Saudi Arabia, India, and Morocco, with Boeing in advanced talks with countries like Kuwait, Egypt, and South Korea for the sale of these helicopters.
However, many experts question the rationale behind investing billions of dollars in expensive attack helicopters in the era of drone warfare, where they’re vulnerable to cheap, mass-produced FPV drones, shoulder-fired MANPADS, or even SHORAD (Short-Range Air Defense) missiles.
Interestingly, in the years leading up to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, the Israeli Air Force was itself planning to reduce its attack helicopter force, primarily AH-64 Apaches, including potentially closing one or more squadrons over rising maintenance costs.
Before the 2023 Hamas attacks, the IAF operated two Apache squadrons, the 13th “Hornet” and 190th “Magic Touch”. The 13th Hornet Squadron flies the AH-64D, and the 190th Magic Touch Squadron flies the AH-64A; both are based at Ramon Air Base in the Negev Desert.
A General Staff decision in the early 2020s called for shutting down one of the two Apache squadrons, which would have cut the attack-helicopter fleet by more than half.
The force cited aging platforms, with some IAF Apaches flying for over 35 years, high maintenance costs, and a broader doctrinal shift toward unmanned aerial platforms and drones.
However, following the Hamas attacks, the IAF not only reversed its decision to shut down one of the two Apache Squadrons, but also decided to expand its attack-helicopter fleet.
So, why did Israel reverse its policy on attack helicopters following the 2023 Hamas attacks?
The October 2023 Hamas terror attacks were one of the biggest security failures in Israeli history.
These security lapses and the failure to respond promptly prompted deep introspection and major defense policy reviews in Israel.
One of the major lessons for Israel was that Apache attack helicopters remain highly relevant and are often the most viable platform for responding to certain security contingencies.
In January 2024, Israeli media JNS reported that in light of the current and future threats to Israel and the lessons learned from the current war in Gaza, the Israeli Air Force is expected to grow dramatically and devise a new plan to procure four squadrons of advanced fighter jets, two squadrons of combat helicopters, and a refueling aircraft.
It also plans to procure two squadrons of advanced Apache helicopter gunships, it said.
“The delay in responding to Hamas’s attack in the initial hours of the war and the frequent use of close ground support during the fighting made it clear that a larger fleet of combat helicopters was needed. Therefore, it was decided to immediately initiate proceedings for the purchase of one Apache squadron, and subsequently also a second squadron,” it said.
Notably, since then, Israel has already ordered six Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tankers for US$ 2.4 billion and 25 F-15IAs for US$ 5.2 billion. Now, Israel has ordered 12 Apache AH-64E attack helicopters.
In 2025, Israeli news media platform YnetNews reported that the IAF has issued a new order, called “Thunder,” which details steps to be taken to deal with another large-scale infiltration attempt from Gaza.
“As part of the changes, minimum readiness levels for surprise infiltration scenarios have increased 2.5-fold, including attack helicopters, transport helicopters for moving forces, drones, and fighter jets,” it said.
The report noted the usefulness of attack helicopters in providing close air support to ground forces and in countering surprise, large-scale infiltration attempts.
Israeli business daily Calcalist reported that Apache AH-64E combat helicopters are intended to increase firepower and improve the Air Force’s response time to surprise attacks.
“October 7 sharpened our understanding that in many combat scenarios, attack helicopters still hold a distinct advantage over Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs),” a former senior Air Force official told Calcalist.
“There is a huge advantage in having a battalion commander on the ground able to speak directly with a pilot hovering over the combat zone to coordinate precise, high-intensity strikes, capabilities an RPA simply cannot match.”
Apache attack helicopters also proved their worth in the war in Gaza following the Hamas attack.
Israeli defense officials commended Apache’s performance in the October 7 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza, saying the line-of-sight advantage offered by the helicopters was essential for identifying attackers, striking swiftly, assisting ground forces, and thwarting early-morning abduction attempts.
Eitan Ben Eliyahu, a retired Maj. Gen. and former Commander of the Israeli Air Force said: “This is a lesson from the war in Gaza. After it appeared that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were pushing attack helicopters out, making them seem obsolete on the battlefield, the lesson learned during [the war] was different.” The last two years of war have shown that the Apaches “remain a vital necessity on the battlefield, particularly in urban warfare and commando operations.”
A report in The Jerusalem Post noted that senior Israeli defense officials said limited helicopter numbers, combined with the need to cycle aircraft through refueling and rearming, strained operations during prolonged, high-tempo fighting.
They said the experience reinforced the need for longer range, heavier payload, improved survivability, and better networking with forces on the ground.
Notably, newer AH-64E models support heavier fuel and weapons loads, improved durability, and a reduced acoustic signature, which can make the aircraft harder to detect by sound.
Additionally, the ability to control multiple drones from the helicopter offers pilots more options for reconnaissance and targeting while staying in the fight.
Commenting on the continued relevance of Apache combat helicopters in the era of drone warfare, Indian Air Force veteran Air Marshal Anil Chopra (retd) in a previous EurAsian Times article explained, “The main reason attack helicopters will not disappear is that they fill a niche that very few platforms can fill. They are the only 350 KMPH missile carriers that can hide behind trees, pop up, and literally shoot and scoot.”
“Apache helicopters are still the most survivable, efficient, and formidable flying anti-tank platforms available to militaries. They also have significant roles as anti-UAV and anti-attack helicopters,” Air Marshal Chopra added.
The October 2023 Hamas attacks, ironically, gave a new lease of life to Apache attack helicopters in the Israeli Air Force.
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Macron’s France: 15% approval, war prep with Russia, now dissolving Soral’s E&R for “extremism.” Elections loom. Romania-style manipulation?
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Macron is, today, quite possibly, the most unpopular president on the planet, with only 15% approval, according to an Ipsos BVA-Cesi poll. Under his command, France faces economic stagnation (0.6% growth in 2025) and indebtedness (120% of GDP). Under Macron, France has also seen the accelerated deindustrialization of the country, with industries accounting for only 9% of GDP, the lowest level in the European Union, and not surprisingly, purchasing power has plummeted, with half of French people saying their income only covers the essentials and only 70% of citizens of working age currently holding a job.
As if that were not enough, in approximately 10 years of Macron’s government, approximately 4 million immigrants entered the country (many of whom do not work but receive social benefits); an amount that makes economic absorption as well as the ethnocultural assimilation of newcomers impossible. Naturally, linked to the immigration失控 are crime rates, the formation of slums in urban centers, and increased social tensions. Many ethnic French people feel demographically replaced in their homeland, and not by chance, everything indicates that Marine Le Pen will (finally) win the French presidential elections in 2027.
We do not know what the results of a Le Pen presidency would be and it is reasonable to be skeptical about it, but clearly France’s current course is extremely dangerous, including in its foreign policy.
Gradually, over the last 2 years, numerous signs have begun to appear that Macron would be preparing the country for a war with Russia. The French government created a voluntary military service and approved the expansion of the permanent armed forces to 275,000 men, as well as a budget increase for defense. General Fabien Mandon, of the General Staff, stated in 2025 that France should prepare for a high-intensity conflict with Russia within three to four years, and now in September 2026 Macron declared that France “could” become a target of explosive drones. Constantly, too, one hears speeches about the need to transform the French economy into a “war economy.”
Therefore, it may be surprising to many (but not to us) that amid all this that has been happening in the country, the Macron government still finds time for the implementation of a censorship and repression apparatus of totalitarian levels.
Its new victim is the association Egalité et Réconciliation (Equality and Reconciliation), created by sociologist and writer Alain Soral. The association identifies as “left-wing nationalist” and has as its main slogan “left of work, right of values,” appealing to an overcoming of the false dichotomy between left and right and, even more importantly, for a national reconciliation among all social sectors; in recent years, it has been involved in the Yellow Vests protests, in some activities linked to the National Rally party (despite, simultaneously, maintaining a posture of “constructive criticism” against certain Zionist and liberal tendencies present in the party) and in pro-Palestinian activism.
It happens that, on October 9, the Interior Minister of Macron’s government, Laurent Nuñez, announced the opening of a dissolution procedure against the association Egalité et Réconciliation, under the accusation of “political extremism.” Its legal team was given a deadline of 1 week to defend itself, and the decision on the matter should occur, still, in October.
Alain Soral himself is a figure of high nonconformist spirit, which is why he has already been the victim of countless judicial persecutions – dozens in fact – mostly for “opinion offenses,” that is, for critical comments against specific people or “protected minorities.” In convictions, Soral has already accumulated millions of euros to be paid in indemnities to various globalist NGOs, an obviously unpayable sum, as well as having already been imprisoned several times, also for the same reasons. The judicial persecution was so intense that Soral had to exile himself from his homeland, first in Switzerland and then in Russia.
Now, beyond the official justifications, for what reason would the French State ban a relatively small organization with few financial resources?
It is possible to analyze the “angle” of Alain Soral’s presence in Russia in more than one sense. First, because by being in Russia Soral finally became immune to the constant judicial persecution and threats of imprisonment he suffered in France, while at the same time continuing to take an active part in the French political and cultural debate, even from a distance. In this, he was able to exercise and expand his influence, “under the protection of the Russians,” which certainly feeds the typical current paranoias of the French elite about a Russian “informational war.”
There is, however, also an internal aspect. Recently, Alain Soral has again been much discussed by the French media for two reasons. One is the “Bardella case,” which concerns the discovery of supposed “politically incorrect” writings by Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally party, and the information that in his youth Bardella’s main intellectual influence was Alain Soral. The second is an opinion poll indicating that 15% of French men under 35 years of age identify with Soral’s ideas.
This, on the eve of the presidential elections, represents a significant risk for Macron and for the French establishment. Although, apparently, there is no chance of victory for any candidate against Le Pen, we cannot doubt the possibility of manipulation of the electoral process, as happened in Romania.
This silencing is even more concerning due to the fact that Soral and E&R are practically the only socially and culturally relevant figures in France today who defend national reconciliation and who avoid inciting internal tension, promoted by the most Islamophobic elements of the RN and by the very leadership of Mélenchon’s LFI with its “army” of antifa and immigrants.
Federal authorities are investigating potential fraud in her family's immigration paperwork and have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives
© Reuters
The US Navy F-35C Lightning II aircraft made its first-ever arrested landing and takeoff aboard its newest Ford-class aircraft carrier. This milestone marks a major step for the US jet that initially struggled with hook-related flaws that complicated landings during ground tests.
On 13 October, an F-35C from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 (“Salty Dogs,” NAS Patuxent River) made the first arrested landing aboard the Pre-Commissioning Unit (PCU) John F. Kennedy (CVN-79).
The aircraft reportedly used the unique EMALS and AAG electromagnetic launch-and-recovery systems to perform arrested launches and recoveries from CVN-79 as part of Aircraft Compatibility Testing (ACT).
ACT lets engineers examine how the ship’s equipment interacts with specific aircraft types while gathering data to confirm those systems function as intended.
The US Navy released photos of the event showing two F-35C aircraft with tail numbers 401 and 403—one landing on the carrier deck, and the other flying with an inert Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb carried externally. Later, another set of images and a video were posted on social media, showing the F-35C launching from the deck of the John F. Kennedy on the second day of ACT.
The US Navy took the preliminary acceptance of the carrier on 29 September 2026, after sea trials the previous month. Preliminary acceptance allows at-sea testing, training, and proficiency building before the carrier is commissioned and put into service.
This arrested landing and subsequent catapult launch marked the first time any F-35C had operated from a Ford-class ship, the largest and most advanced fleet of aircraft carriers in the American armory.
The lead ship, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has never embarked the F-35C for sustained operations because the carrier was reportedly delivered without the full set of modifications needed to sustain stealth-fighter operations due to cost-saving measures.
Earlier in June 2019, former Navy spokesman Capt. Daniel Hernandez said that although Ford-class carriers were built to launch and recover the F-35C fighter jet, they still needed upgrades such as stronger jet blast deflectors to protect the deck from hot exhaust during launches, as well as designated areas for aircraft operations.
Instead of the F-35C, the USS Gerald R. Ford hosts air wings mainly equipped with F/A-18E/F and Growler variants for its current combat posture.
The US Navy has flown the F-35C only from its Nimitz-class carriers so far. The aircraft completed its initial at-sea testing aboard the USS Nimitz in November 2014. USS Carl Vinson was the first to deploy the jet operationally, and USS Abraham Lincoln was the first to use it in combat.
However, the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee later ordered in FY2020 that the Navy must not accept the CVN-79 USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier until it can embark the F-35C. This makes the latest arrested landing and takeoff special.
This test is a key step in validating F-35C integration with the Ford class, especially because these carriers use electromagnetic catapults and advanced arresting equipment, replacing the Nimitz class’s steam-powered launch and conventional arresting systems.
Interestingly, however, this key milestone comes as US President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace electromagnetic catapults—designed for finer control, reduced airframe stress, higher sortie rates, and better support for a wider range of aircraft—with steam catapults.
In fact, the President signed a national security memorandum in August, giving the Pentagon leaders two months to come up with “a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of” the USS Doris Miller, also a Ford-class aircraft carrier.
Nonetheless, putting F-35C jets on USS John F. Kennedy is a major breakthrough for the US Navy’s upcoming combat posture as regional security threats multiply across theatres. The F-35C Lightning II brings stealth, advanced sensors, sensor fusion, and long-range strike capability that older fighters, such as the Super Hornet, lack.
More than a decade ago, the F-35C struggled with its arresting hook system (AHS), which had a well-documented design issue, as reports in 2012 noted, citing a leaked JSF Concurrency Quick Look Review dated 29 November, 2011.
The report noted that the stealth fighter couldn’t board a carrier because of these tailhook design issues.
It stated that the F-35C failed to engage the MK-7 arresting gear during particular tests at NAWC-AD (Naval Air Warfare Center – Aircraft Division) Lakehurst, with a poor score of 0 successes in 8 attempts.
This was despite testing at a regular airport, not a real carrier, where an aircraft may face inclement weather, a pitching deck, adjacent obstructions, low fuel, and no alternate airfields, among other challenges.
At the time, reports noted that the core issue was the short longitudinal distance—about 7 feet—between the main landing gear tires and the lowered tailhook point. Low-observability, or stealth, requirements drove this geometry, forcing the Arresting Hook System into a recessed bay with doors to preserve the aircraft’s outer mold line and minimize radar cross-section, according to the reports.
For comparison, the F/A-18 placed the main landing gear-to-tailhook distance at about 18.2 feet. Additionally, the tailhook point design had limited ability to scoop low-positioned cables.
A Lockheed Martin official later said the company traced the F-35C’s trouble catching a carrier’s arresting gear wires to the tailhook design. “The good news is that it’s fairly straightforward and isolated to the hook itself,” said Tom Burbage, the F-35 program manager at the time. “It doesn’t have secondary effects going into the rest of the airplane.”
Burbage said that the rest of the tailhook system design, including the bay and doors that hide the device and other auxiliary hardware, was sound. “What we are trying to do is make sure that we got the actual design of the hook is optimized so that it in fact repeatedly picks up the wire as long as the airplane puts itself in position to do that.”
He explained that the fundamental limitations of creating a stealth fighter also caused the hook issue, adding that the company faced the rare challenge of designing the first-ever naval stealth fighter jet with a tail-hook that had to be concealed when not in use.
He also noted that the tail hook had to be installed farther forward on the jet’s ventral surface than on other naval aircraft because it had to fit within the F-35’s outer mold line. As a result, the hook behaved differently than it did on previous fighters like the F/A-18.
The way the wires react as the jet passes over them is a dynamic factor in the F-35, and the wire responded in a sine wave pattern.
“The time differential between when the main gear rolls over the cable and the time the hook picks up the cable on a more conventional airplane is more time for that wave to damp out,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying. “In the case of the F-35, one of our design constraints is that the hook just has to be closer to the main landing gear than on a conventional aircraft because of the requirement to hide it inside the airplane,” he added at the time.
Later, engineering investigations identified three primary factors: the aircraft’s constrained geometry, a suboptimal hook-point shape, and inadequate hold-down performance. Additionally, it found that a faulty or inadequately validated wire-dynamics simulation model contributed to the original design assumptions.
The Joint Strike Fighter program addressed the issue by redesigning the hook point and improving the hold-down damper, along with other refinements such as improved upstroke damping and strength. The revised system underwent successful shore-based testing, including dozens of roll-in arrestments, enabling the first at-sea arrested landings on USS Nimitz in late 2014, followed by a rigorous testing regime.
Notably, Ford-class ships use the newer Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) rather than the legacy MK-7 hydraulic system. However, the successful trap and launch close the loop on more than a decade of work that began with the original hook’s total failure.
As the EurAsian Times previously explained, the F-35C offers significantly greater range over other F-35 variants, larger internal weapons bays, and superior endurance, making it ideal for long-range operations from the vast ocean.
These stealthy warplanes are nearly invisible to enemy radars and can penetrate even the most advanced air-defense systems. They have advanced sensor fusion to create a shared battlespace picture for the entire air wing and can conduct precision strikes or intercept threats, as demonstrated by the Iranian drone shootdown earlier this year.
The F-35C can carry over 5,000 pounds of internal weapons or over 18,000 pounds of combined internal and external weapons. This lets the US Navy use external armaments to increase lethality when needed or operate in stealth when required.
Not just that, the aircraft can also operate as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) asset, sharing information with all networked ground, sea, and air assets in the battlespace
The post After 0-for-8 Tailhook Failures, F-35C Completes Landmark Arrested Landing Aboard USS John F. Kennedy appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
Barely weeks after rejecting Saudi Arabia’s request to join the air campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, US President Donald Trump is rethinking his decision and has suggested that he may join the war against the Iran-backed Houthis.
The latest Houthi strikes on Saudi targets have revived a long-running American dilemma in Yemen — one that stretches back to the October 2000 bombing of the US Navy warship, which killed 17 U.S. sailors.
At least 25 people have been killed in Houthi drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s airports in recent weeks.
Separately, Houthis have occupied key port cities on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, threatening to choke the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, another key oil shipping route in the Middle East.
The rising Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, a key US ally in the Middle East, the threat of choking another global oil-supply route ahead of the US midterm elections, and the death of an American citizen have created a dilemma for President Trump on whether to open a new front in the Middle East.
Following the strike on Riyadh airport, Trump suggested that the US might join the Saudi war against the Houthis. “We may. We’re gonna look at it … We’ll make a decision. We move very quickly,” Trump replied on October 12 when asked whether Washington is considering joining the Saudi War against the Houthis.
Notably, last month Trump rejected the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s request to join the Kingdom’s war against the Houthis.
However, the decision to open a new front against the Houthis will not be an easy one, as Trump realizes that the war in Yemen could become another quagmire for the US when it is already tied down in the Iran War since February this year.
Trump launched Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis in March 2025, barely two months after taking the oath in January last year. The U.S. launched a major air and naval campaign after the Houthis resumed Red Sea attacks following the breakdown of a Gaza ceasefire.
Over the course of the next three months, the US struck over 1000 targets in Yemen, including radar systems, air defenses, missile and drone launch sites, manufacturing facilities, and some leadership targets.
However, the US abruptly ended the campaign in May, after agreeing to an Oman-brokered ceasefire. Houthis agreed to stop attacking U.S. vessels; the US halted strikes.
Trump later described the deal as Houthis “capitulating” under pressure; however, analysts disagreed as the ceasefire agreement did not cover Israel, the country that participated with Washington in bombing Houthi targets.
A New York Times investigation later revealed that Trump agreed to the ceasefire as the costs of the war exceeded $1 billion in munitions alone.
The US also lost three F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets and more than 15 MQ-9 Reaper drones in the campaign; however, it did not substantially weaken the Houthi position in Yemen.
However, the US involvement with Yemen goes much further back.
The US’s two-decade-long ‘War on Terror’ began after the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in 2001.
However, that was not the first time that Osama bin Laden-led terrorist group had attacked Americans or U.S. interests.
Just one year earlier, on October 12, 2000, al-Qaeda carried out a suicide boat attack on the USS Cole, a US Navy guided-missile destroyer, while it was refueling in the port of Aden, Yemen.
The blast killed 17 American sailors and wounded nearly 40 others. It also tore a roughly 40-foot-wide hole in the ship’s hull near the waterline.
The crew’s damage-control efforts saved the vessel.
The US destroyer, en route to the Persian Gulf, was making a prearranged fuel stop at the port of Aden, Yemen, when the attack occurred.
Before al-Qaeda used civilian airliners to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it used a small inflatable boat as a suicide bomb to strike the US Navy destroyer.
In fact, the USS Cole bombing was al-Qaeda’s second attempt to target a US Navy vessel near a Yemeni port.
The investigation revealed that the USS Cole bombing followed an unsuccessful attempt on January 3, 2000, to bomb another US Navy ship, the USS The Sullivans.
In this earlier incident, the terrorist boat sank before the explosives could be detonated; however, the boat and the explosives were salvaged. The Navy refitted the boat, tested the explosives, and reused them in the USS Cole attack.
The extensive FBI investigation ultimately determined that members of the al Qaeda terrorist network planned and carried out the bombing.
By the end of 2000, Yemeni authorities had arrested several suspects, including Jamal Muhammad Ahmad Al-Badawi and Fahad Muhammad Ahmad Al-Quso, two of the alleged masterminds of the USS The Sullivans and the USS Cole plots.
Al-Badawi and Al-Quso, known al Qaeda operatives who trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, were later killed in separate U.S. airstrikes.
However, the US failed to anticipate that such suicide attacks could be replicated on a much grander scale by using aircraft to attack US buildings.
It also failed to infiltrate al-Qaeda ranks to uncover plans for further attacks on the US.
Less than a year after the USS Cole bombing, al-Qaeda struck again, this time on US soil, executing the deadliest terror attack inside the US in history.
The Cole attack was part of al-Qaeda’s escalating campaign against the US after the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings.
It demonstrated al-Qaeda’s ability to strike a major U.S. military target overseas and served as a powerful propaganda victory.
The 9/11 Commission Report noted that the USS Cole attack “galvanized al-Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.”
Bin Laden ordered a propaganda video featuring a reenactment of the blast, training-camp footage, and calls to jihad.
The 9/11 Commission Report also noted that the planning for both the USS Cole attack and the 9/11 attacks took place during al-Qaeda’s summit in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000.
In retrospect, it’s clear that the USS Cole bombing was al-Qaeda’s warning to the US that more such attacks are coming; however, Washington failed to read the warning.
Yemen, in fact, was a major base for al-Qaeda before the rise of the Ansar Allah movement (precursor to the Houthis) in the early 2000s.
Osama bin Laden’s family also came from Yemen’s Hadhramaut region, and he saw the country as strategically important because of its weak central authority, remote tribal areas, and geography.
Al-Qaeda in Yemen was also responsible for the 1992 Aden hotel bombings targeting hotels used by US Marines en route to Somalia.
Aden hotel bombings were one of the first al-Qaeda terrorist attacks against the US.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was al-Qaeda in Yemen, and now it’s the Houthis; Yemen has been serving as a base for anti-US activities in the Middle East for over three decades now.
The post As Trump Weighs Joining War on Houthis, A Throwback To Yemen Bombing That Shook U.S. Navy! appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
Moral relativism applies only to Amerindians – never to Europeans. History needs positive values, not dogma.
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Last month, historian Mary Del Priore required a police escort to launch História das Mestiçagens no Brasil (A History of Racial Mixing in Brazil), a collection of essays she co-edited with Gian Melo. Precisely for being a serious work, the book contradicts the Brazilian Black movement’s dogma that racial mixing is something to be lamented, viewed solely as the result of rape committed by slave owners. This amiable segment of our society has no qualms about making threats of physical violence; indeed, hooligans at a federal university recently beat up a history student for wearing a “Death in June” band T-shirt, and no one was punished. Even after it was clarified that it was a band shirt instead of a Nazi tribute, the aggressors justified the assault by claiming the student was a racist who had called a peer a “monkey.”
It is all very exhausting; it has been thirteen years since sociologist Demétrio Magnoli was physically prevented from speaking at a literary event for the “crime” of opposing racial quotas – as the reader can see here, in a publication funded by the abominable Ford Foundation that praises the vandals’ actions and labels Magnoli a racist. At this point, one sighs and asks: Quousque tandem? How much longer?
In history, as in science
In the previous article, I noted that, starting in the 19th century, the scientific establishment discarded the Christian concept of a mathematically inclined Creator and tacitly instituted materialism – a framework compatible with both the deism of certain Enlightenment thinkers and the atheism of Darwinists. The problem is that tacit assumptions go unchallenged, because refutation requires explicit articulation. When an institution stands behind such a statement, however, criticism has a clear target.
In the realm of the natural sciences, the institution that served as the primary target for criticism was the Catholic Church. After the Galileo affair, however, the Church managed to mend its relationship with science, producing scientists of the caliber of Fr. Lemaître. Furthermore, participating in the canonization process by attesting to miracles does not damage any scientist’s reputation, even if their conclusions run counter to the premises of materialism. Yet, when canonizations occur, the scientific aspect receives no attention – and the perceived divorce between religion and science persists in the public’s mind. On the materialist side, we have no heavyweight scientific authority articulating and proving materialism; instead, we have seemingly isolated propagandists like Sagan and Dawkins who merely presuppose materialism yet are presented as archetypes of the scientist. Meanwhile, the same media outlets promote crystals, horoscopes, and other New Age nonsense.
It occurred to me that something similar happens with the discipline of History, with the state taking the place of the Church. It is easy to attack an official historiography; however, critics rarely offer a cohesive counter-narrative that could itself be challenged. The Ford Foundation funds a wide range of figures: from Florestan Fernandes (1920–1995), who was far too knowledgeable to claim that racial mixing was merely the result of rape, to NGOs staffed by mindless activists acting as hooligans and smear merchants. There is an institutional framework, but it is opaque and offers no holistic vision; it merely critiques the positive perspectives put forward by the state or by major scholars like Gilberto Freyre. The consequences for national education manifest as a form of “Paulo Freire-style” conditioning, where children are taught to be “critical” because “contentism” is bad.
Decolonial uncriticality
The result is that arrogant presumption so characteristic of the woke: they objectively know nothing – since there is no “contentist” curriculum – yet they feel entitled to lecture the world because they are “critical.” This arrogant stance is an end in itself, and the very concept of study is difficult for a mind shaped in this mold to grasp. As for objectivity, it is openly criticized.
However, it is evident that one can also uncritically embrace the decolonialism preached by the Ford Foundation and similar entities – a view holding that Brazil should never have been discovered by the Portuguese and that the Brazilian people should never have come into existence. According to this playbook, Spain’s discovery of Mexico is the ultimate crime… yet the actual genocide of Indigenous peoples, perpetrated by Anglophones in territory seized from Mexico, is treated by history as a mere footnote. The human sacrifices the Aztecs inflicted upon other Amerindians matter little; what matters is that the Americas should never have been discovered by the Iberian crowns. It is not even a discovery, they claim, but an “invasion.” Brazil is labeled the most racist country in the world because it had slavery; meanwhile, the USA, which had slavery without manumission, and entered the World War 2 still discriminating against blacks, is held up as a model for Brazil to emulate in order to improve.
Adoption by a competent historian
It is possible to subscribe to this tacit creed unthinkingly without being a stupid or incompetent person – quite the contrary. Let us take as an example the work A heresia dos índios [The heresy of the Amerindians] (1995), by historian Ronaldo Vainfas. In the case at hand, the historian’s herculean task is, armed with anthropological insights gained in the 20th century, to consult the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition to reconstruct a fragment of 16th-century Brazilian reality based on a crazy story found in the trial records.
This crazy story concerns the Portuguese slave owner Fernão Cabral, of Jaguaripe, Bahia. In 1585, he became “Tupã” – or God – to a group of rebellious Amerindians people who sought to enslave the Portuguese and worship Tupã-Açu (Great God) within their own church. This church had its own Pope: an Amerindian man named Antônio who had been baptized but had fled into the woods. Inside the church, Amerindians worshipped an anthropomorphic stone they called Tupã-Açu (Great God) and held festivities featuring tobacco, alcohol, and dancing. Amerindians fled other estates and Jesuit missions to Fernão Cabral’s lands, where they could have multiple wives and eat meat on Fridays, in accordance with ancient customs. Faced with the dissatisfaction of other landowners, the government eventually destroyed the Amerindians church, and things returned to normal.
It might all have been forgotten had the first Visitation of the Holy Office not taken place in 1591. A multitude of people rushed to denounce Fernão Cabral; consequently, the Holy Office’s inquisitor – prepared to deal with Judaizing New Christians, impostor priests, bigamists, and sodomites – found himself confronted with the indecipherable Tupi worldview shared by mestizos and even white settlers. In doing so, he came to believe that the tattooed men’s greatest crime was eating meat on Fridays, unaware that those tattoos were created during anthropophagic rituals.
Unsubstantiated moralizing
Undoubtedly, this is a monumental undertaking, one beyond the reach of the “woke” activist. Yet, the author’s moralizing, devoid of actual argumentation, is striking. The epigraph sets the tone: “Peoples and indigenous groups vanished from the face of the earth as a consequence of what is today called, in a sheepish euphemism, the encounter between Old World and New World societies.” It is a curious epigraph for a work that deals not with the extermination of Indigenous peoples, but rather with their forced acculturation. In Brazil, one easily finds works – almost invariably tear-jerking – about Amerindian acculturation, but far fewer addressing actual genocide. Words lose their meaning.
Despite the high quality of the research, the book’s spirit is that Brazil should never have been discovered, that “colonialism” is evil, and that the pre-Colombian religion of the Indigenous peoples – endowed with “anti-Christian and anti-slavery [sic!] content” – was good. The Tupi people spent their lives searching for the “Land Without Evil” – hence their nomadic nature – whereas the Portuguese transformed Brazil into a “Land of Endless Evils.” Towards the end of the book, the author goes so far as to say: “It is with some embarrassment that I must acknowledge this supreme victory of the colonial system – capable of invading Tupi mythology itself and colonizing its collective imagination: the Tupinambá ‘Land Without Evil’ would transform into a slave-holding utopia” (p. 277). From Vainfas’s looser phrasing, one gets the impression that the Tupi did not own slaves. The original “Land Without Evil” was free of slavery because it resembled the Land of Cockaigne, a place where food appears effortlessly and labor is unnecessary. If the new “Land Without Evil” features white slaves, this is merely a sign of a deeply human desire for revenge.
After spending page after page criticizing the demonization of the Indigenous people by the inquisitors (even while stressing that the Portuguese were not prone to such things), Vainfas writes: “There is no doubt that [the inquisitorial visitor] Heitor Furtado defeated the arrogant lord of Jaguaripe in the theater of the Inquisition, despite never truly understanding the nature of the [Indigenous] sanctity. It sufficed for him, however, to label it idolatry and, consequently, heresy; it sufficed to force Fernão Cabral to bow before him – the visitor – pleading for mercy. In the Baroque theater of the Inquisition, the performance of heresy mattered more, I believe, than the victory of the faith” (p. 238, emphasis added). In other words, the inquisitors acted out of pure sadism rather than any noble intention.
In reality, however, the label of heresy is an obsession of Vainfas’s, given that it never appears in Heitor Furtado’s writings in reference to the Indigenous people. Pagans were idolaters without being heretics, for only a baptized person who claims to believe in Christ can be a heretic. If a person abandons Christianity after baptism, they are an apostate, not a heretic. This obsession cost the book its very title, which announces a concept whose existence is never proven. From everything Vainfas describes, one gathers that the Indigenous people created a new syncretic religion blending Jesuit Marian devotion with pre-Colombian rites centered on an anthropomorphic ritual rattle. There is no mention of Christ… Only to Great God (the rock), God (Fernão Cabral himself), Mother of God (an Indigenous woman), and Santinho (an Indigenous man).
But let us turn to what strikes me as most detrimental: all this moralizing comes without preamble or justification. Based on everything Vainfas himself wrote, the reader might conclude that Tupi life prior to the arrival of the Portuguese was hellish. The Tupi took great pride in adopting multiple names and acquiring various jenipapo tattoos. Each name and tattoo corresponded to a warrior they had killed and devoured in a ritual. Their life’s horizon was defined by following the counsel of a pajé (a shaman or independent priest) who communicated with spirits and directed where the people should go. All of this – the migrations and the wars – was aimed at reaching the Land Without Evil, which, before the Portuguese arrived, they believed lay along the coast. Since the coast was not uninhabited, this naturally entailed waging war, thereby gaining names, tattoos, and slaves. Would you want to live like that – in a perpetual production of Waiting for Godot adapted by Tarantino?
Is such a way of life dignified? Vainfas dislikes slavery. So do I. I would add that I dislike pointless wars, cannibalism, and dying in the prime of life. Did Tupi society have any prospect of putting an end to these ills? Was the Land Without Evil – where arrows hunt on their own – truly within their reach?
For my part, I find it amusing that the phrase “it’s their culture” applies only to so-called Westerners (that is, Europeans and their unmixed descendants in the Americas and Africa). No one claims that killing Jews is part of German culture or that the auto-de-fé is a Spanish cultural tradition. Moral elevation is demanded of Europeans. For the Amerindians, moral relativism and the agonizing, bloody life their culture entailed.
Assessment based on available data
A relevant point – which I have addressed previously here at SCF – is that the Spanish model of overseas occupation was far more institutional and state-driven than the Portuguese one; the Portuguese model, in turn, was far more institutional and state-driven than the Dutch. While the Spanish Inquisition maintained tribunals in the Americas, the Portuguese Inquisition, even under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, had none. Consequently, people had to wait for the Inquisition representatives to arrive before they could denounce landowners living in Brazil who oppressed others without restraint.
Vainfas’s research highlights that the harboring of apostate Amerindians was one of two misdeeds by Fernão Cabral that shocked the population of Bahia; the other was the cruel murder of a pregnant Amerindian woman. Angered by the fact that his wife and the Amerindian Isabel were gossiping, he ordered her thrown alive into a furnace, decreeing that anyone who tried to stop it would meet the same fate. Her pleas to the Virgin Mary were to no avail. The incident, which took place in Jaguaripe, was well known in the City of Bahia (located about 100 km away as the crow flies). Although the mistreatment of servants fell outside the Inquisition’s jurisdiction, there were instances of accusers performing hermeneutic acrobatics to try to frame such un-Christian treatment as an inquisitorial matter, as historian Luiz Mott revealed in “Tortura de escravos e heresias na Casa da Torre” (Slave Torture and Heresies at the House of Tower).
Whether one likes it or not, Vainfas clearly demonstrates that the typical Luso-Brazilian landowner considered himself a god on his own estates, and only the Inquisition could rein him in. Fernão Cabral spent nearly a year in prison and was sentenced to two years of exile, as well as a heavy fine equivalent to the price of twenty African slaves. He certainly deserved worse, and perhaps only escaped burning at the stake because he was an Old Christian. Still, it was something. The moral of the story, to me, is that the Portuguese Inquisition served as an important counterweight to the all-powerful lords of private enterprise – figures commonly found in Brazil, though not in Spanish America. Characterizing the Inquisition as essentially evil obscures the true balance of power in Brazil; it portrays the despots of this land of private enterprise as victims of Manichaean sadism, as if the inquisitor could not possibly have had any political or social concerns. This is a poor perspective that does nothing to aid historical understanding.
Historical assessment should be grounded in positive values – such as the dignity of the people living in a given era or the distribution of power within the society under study. This approach enables the construction of a positive agenda for the country and a true understanding of reality.
The simplest test for recognizing a collective pathology is to ask each of its members whether they would choose on their own to do what the group is doing.
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A pipe and an ocean
A gas pipeline is a pipe. It connects a gas field to a consumer, crosses a few borders, and, once built, transports energy at a very low cost per unit. A supply chain that starts at Russian gas fields, goes through an American contract, crosses the Atlantic on a LNG tanker, and arrives at a European regasification terminal does the same thing but with more steps, more markups, and more friction. No engineer, no accountant, no student of economic geography would choose the second option if they could choose the first. And yet that is where Europe seems headed: according to recent reports, Russian energy could return to European markets with an American stamp on it and a higher price tag attached.
I argue that this situation cannot be explained by Washington’s cunning—which certainly exists—nor by Brussels’ weakness—which certainly exists as well. It stems from a cognitive distortion shared by governments, institutions, and much of the public, which has rendered a geographical truism invisible. I call it the pathology of the absurd: the state in which a system continues to follow its own internal rules even as they produce an outcome that none of its individual components, taken on its own, would ever have wanted. The technical term for this mechanism is collective bias—that is, an error in judgment that does not stem from the stupidity of individuals but from the way a group convinces, rewards, and punishes itself.
How to lose a war without fighting it
A methodological clarification before proceeding. No official documents have been released yet (a treaty, an MoU, nothing public); what has been documented is scant and carries almost symbolic weight. Trump announced that Russia will supply the U.S. and global markets with over 300,000 metric tons of diesel immediately, another 500,000 in November, and one million shortly thereafter. Converted to barrels, that’s about 5.9 million in total—one-fifth of global consumption in a single day—and just over a week’s worth of Russian exports at last year’s rate. As a market transaction, it is insignificant, but as a political signal, it is quite the opposite.
Because politically speaking, the implications are much deeper. Moscow has lifted the ban on diesel exports that had been in place since July. Trump stated that the time has come for Ukraine to have a new president and proclaimed an “energy truce” effective immediately. According to an account by a U.S. official, the peace plan being developed by the White House and several European capitals would freeze the front along the current line of control and provide security guarantees comparable to NATO’s Article 5, a reconstruction mechanism entrusted to the World Bank and BlackRock, and a pipeline to bring Russian gas and oil back to Europe, with profits split between Moscow and Kyiv. Washington, meanwhile, is reported to have suggested suspending intelligence sharing and the PURL mechanism if Kyiv continues to strike Russian refineries.
Zelensky stated that the announcement of the truce was news to him and that Kyiv was awaiting details. Lavrov rejected the idea of a pause; Peskov spoke of ongoing contacts. If we leave it to the “theologians of journalism” to debate whether the chicken or the egg came first, we can focus on what lies behind the facts—namely, that Russian energy will return to Europe through a framework negotiated by Washington, which is a likely prospect in the medium term, with moderate confidence regarding the trajectory and low confidence regarding the details. And, it must be said, anyone reading these pages as the chronicle of a fait accompli is misreading them.
By “energy war,” we mean the contest over who sets the price, the route, and the rules governing a continent’s energy flows. In this contest, Europe set out in 2022 convinced it was fighting a moral battle; it cut off supplies from Russia, presenting the decision first as a necessary sacrifice, then as a strategic victory. The assessment after four years tells a different story: Europe has lost its cheapest and closest supply source, has rebuilt its dependence elsewhere, and the United States—which in the meantime had become the continent’s main supplier of liquefied natural gas—has gained both influence and profit margins as a result. When the European Parliament decides that, as of January 1, 2027, even the last remaining shares of Russian energy will be phased out of the Union’s energy mix, the circle will be complete, and the phase-out will be total—just as the other side of the Atlantic prepares to do business with Moscow.
In the tradition of classical geopolitics, this issue has an age-old name. Europe is the western peninsula of the vast Eurasian continent, and its natural logic of supply is continental: pipelines, long-term contracts, and interdependence with those to the east. The Atlantic logic is maritime, consisting of ships, terminals, and spot prices. Mackinder and Spykman, though by different paths, had understood that whoever separates the two systems profits from both sides of the divide. One need not adopt the entire theoretical framework of the Eurasianist school to recognize that geography does not negotiate here, and that for four years European institutions have acted as if it could.
The intermediary model
According to the model that has emerged so far, the United States would acquire Russian energy assets—starting with Lukoil’s foreign division—through an initial payment and a share of the profits, and could purchase, on competitive terms, the hydrocarbons that Europe no longer buys, in order to resell them to Europeans at full price. Washington’s interest is explicit and evident even in the most cautious sources. Trump faces midterm elections, an energy crisis triggered by the aggression against Iran, rising diesel prices, and low approval ratings. On the other hand, the American consumer has no reason to distinguish between Russian diesel and any other diesel.
What matters is the role assigned to Europe. Officials from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany were present at the talks in Florida. Their task is to ensure post-war security, finance reconstruction through instruments designed elsewhere, and, in the long term, open their own energy markets to a Russia that has, in the meantime, forged a direct relationship with Washington. They are the guarantors and the clients; they do not appear among the beneficiaries of the profits. When the diesel agreement was announced, the Europeans expressed irritation yet remained at the table—which is a good summary of where they stand.
And there is also a strange, biting irony in all of this: Nord Stream—which Washington did not want built and which was sabotaged—would be reactivated under a draft U.S. agreement, and the gas flows that Europe lost as a result of that sabotage would once again pass through U.S. intermediaries. If the pipeline were reactivated, Europe would pay to get back what it already had, at a price set by those who neither produce nor consume it. Pure madness.
Why it’s a pathology, not a mistake
We are facing a collective cognitive bias that has evolved to the point of becoming pathological. And it is not a simple “error in judgment,” since an error is corrected when it is discovered, whereas a pathology persists because it is sustained by the very structures that should be curing it. I identify four such structures, each of which is rational when viewed from within.
The first is moralization. Sanctions began as a tool and have become an identity. Anyone who today proposed reopening direct channels with Moscow would be seen as a traitor, not as an accountant. The accounting objection, however well-founded, has no place in the debate. The second is sunk costs: after years of sacrifices imposed on citizens and businesses, admitting that the plan was flawed costs more—in political terms—than continuing to pay the consequences. The third is the delegation of rationality. If Washington is the one to reopen the channel, no European government will have to admit it was wrong. The premium that Europe would pay to the intermediary is, in essence, the price of not having to admit the mistake. It is a bill that leaders present to their constituents under the heading of “security.”
The fourth is the institutional asymmetry between those who decide and those who pay. A parliamentary vote on sanctions generates immediate visibility for those who cast it, while the cost is spread across millions of utility bills and thousands of industrial plants, faceless and without a specific date. In such a system, the most convenient choice for any decision-maker is almost always the loudest one. There’s no need to hypothesize about a hidden agenda or secret plan to explain the outcome. Washington’s interest is stated openly and perfectly clear; Europe’s blindness is structural. These are two phenomena of different natures that have ended up interlocking.
The most serious criticism of this interpretation comes from countries bordering Russia. For Warsaw, Riga, or Vilnius, dependence on Moscow’s energy is not a matter of price but of exposure. The year 2022 demonstrated that an energy supply can be cut off, and the extra cost paid to diversify sources is an insurance premium like any other—or at least that is what the EU has tried to convince the countries of Northern Europe, spinning the fairy tale of a better world that would soon arrive, achieved through military victory alongside Kyiv. A fascinating fairy tale, to be sure, but one that holds up only to a certain extent. Insurance makes sense when the premium is limited and when the insurer does not profit from the occurrence of the loss. Here, the insurer is also the main beneficiary of the rift between Europe and Russia, as evidenced by the very fact that it is about to mend that rift when it suits its interests. Furthermore, dependence on the United States is a form of dependence like any other. The threats to suspend intelligence sharing and the PURL mechanism with Kyiv—if confirmed—show that Washington makes its available supplies contingent on its current political objectives.
Anyone who thinks that using energy as leverage applies only to Moscow has a selective memory. If Europe were to re-enter the Russian market through American intermediation, it would compound its vulnerabilities: it would be dependent on Russian energy and on the American infrastructure that delivers it. In other words, this objection justifies diversification, but it does not justify the decision to never negotiate on its own.
Scenarios and indicators
We can discern three plausible developments, with a 6- to 12-month timeframe—assuming we manage to get through this winter.
The first is the consolidation of U.S. mediation: sanctions eased in phases, Russian assets acquired by U.S. and Gulf operators, and energy flows returning to Europe under contracts that Europe did not draft. This is the most optimistic scenario, though with only moderate confidence. The second is the failure of the agreement, with Moscow refusing a ceasefire, Kyiv continuing to strike refineries, and Washington shifting its focus elsewhere; Europe would be left with high prices and no supply channels. This is a possible outcome, roughly equally likely. The third is a direct overture from Brussels or certain capitals toward Moscow—highly unlikely in the short term, for the political and psychological reasons already outlined.
Four indicators will help determine which of these scenarios unfolds: the text of any agreement setting the sanctions timeline; the name of the party holding the contracts for Lukoil’s international assets; the status of Nord Stream, if and when it is included in an official draft; The outcome of the U.S. midterm elections, which weigh on the entire situation more than Brussels cares to admit.
Added to these is a factor of uncertainty regarding the U.S. counterpart: the energy agreement does not resolve the structural weaknesses of the U.S. economy, ranging from public debt to rising interest rates to debt-financed artificial intelligence companies. A partner with such finances—and such a packed political calendar—is a mediator who offers little guarantee of longevity.
The simplest test for recognizing a collective pathology is to ask each of its members whether they would choose on their own to do what the group is doing. No European government official responsible for energy policy, if questioned in private, would say that buying Russian energy in Washington is the best solution. They would, it seems, provided that others are the ones making the decision.
The true price of a pipeline is the cost of the pipeline itself.
Everything else that is added—and that Europe would pay—reflects the cost of a choice that has never been made openly.
So far, no one has asked that question on the floor of the chamber.
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