• Visiting Utah in the winter isn't for everyone.
• I learned that the hard way in January 2025.
• My first mistake led to the rest.

Gazing out my window at the snowcapped mountains on the train to Utah, I had no idea that I'd already set myself up for regret. Some mistakes were set in motion before I'd even left my apartment.

In January 2025, I flew from my home in NYC to Denver and hopped on a 15-hour Amtrak train to Utah's Silicon Slopes — a tech hub lining the Wasatch Front that includes Salt Lake City, Park City, and the surrounding suburbs.

I spent three days exploring Utah's pocket of luxury amid ski season and left with four regrets.

My first mistake was booking my trip in the peak winter season as a non-skier.

As a first-time visitor to Salt Lake City and Park City, I thought seeing the mountains blanketed in snow would be awe-inspiring — and it really was.

I knew winter would be a popular time to visit Utah since it's a ski hub, but I underestimated how busy it would be. Park City was packed with winter sports enthusiasts.

Skiers and snowboarders crowded the sidewalks lining congested streets in downtown Park City, all suited up — some with gear in tow.

I stopped by the slopes at Deer Valley Resort and spotted long lines of skiers waiting for lifts. I waited in line to ride a funicular up and down the mountain.

Maybe seeing the snow was worth the crowds — I won't know for sure until I visit during another season. But had I realized I'd be visiting during the busiest time of year, I would have pushed my trip to the spring, during the shoulder season.

I didn't pack enough clothing.

Overpacking is a rookie mistake when traveling, so I go to great lengths to avoid stuffing too many outfits into my bag. But this time, I overcorrected.

When packing for a trip that's less than a week long, I typically only bring layers I can wear all at once when needed or mix and match. Since I was traveling in winter, I brought a couple of extra shirts, one additional pair of pants, and zero extra outer layers.

But in January along Utah's Wasatch Front, when temperatures ranged from 24 to 44 degrees Fahrenheit, I needed to wear most of my layers daily.

After bundling up for a flight and a train ride, I felt desperate for fresh layers when I arrived in Salt Lake City.

Doing laundry at the hotel was another mistake.

What do you do when you need clean clothes on the road? Utilizing the hotel's laundry services seemed the most straightforward solution, but I regretted it.

That night, I stayed at the five-star Grand America Hotel, where laundry services were top-tier. My shirts and sweaters were returned to me on hangers, each in an individual hotel-branded bag. Smaller items were wrapped in paper in a cardboard box.

I felt like I was opening a present as I sorted through my clean clothes. It excited me — until I saw the receipt.

I paid $115 for three shirts, two pairs of pants, one hoodie, six undergarments, and one two-piece blazer. It was certainly the most luxurious laundry service I'd ever experienced, but for the same money, I could have bought a whole new outfit — and what a great excuse it would have been to treat myself.

I should have made time for winter activities aside from skiing and snowboarding.

I didn't consider other winter activities I could have enjoyed besides skiing and snowboarding.

I wish I'd taken time to tour Utah Olympic Park in the snow and get a feel for what it was like during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

After my trip, I learned that Park City offers mountain-top snowshoe yoga classes, which I would have loved to try.

Next time I travel to the Silicon Slopes, I'll pack enough clothing and make use of the season's offerings.

The awkward comedian’s performance on ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ has turned him into the internet’s boyfriend. His time in the spotlight, writes Isobel Lewis, has come after years of clever, disorientating stand-up that often leaves his fans wondering about who the man underneath the jokes truly is

The awkward comedian’s performance on ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ has turned him into the internet’s boyfriend. His time in the spotlight, writes Isobel Lewis, has come after years of clever, disorientating stand-up that often leaves his fans wondering about who the man underneath the jokes truly is

The U.S. Army wants to infuse new autonomous capabilities into its current and future fleets of amphibious landing ships and other watercraft. The service is also aiming to acquire up to 100 new purpose-built uncrewed surface vessels (USV). The maritime assets the service has now, often referred to as ‘the Army’s Navy,’ are obscure and generally underappreciated. However, the small force offers an important additional set of naval logistics capabilities, especially for any future fight in the Pacific, which could be further bolstered with optionally-crewed or entirely uncrewed platforms.

Army Maj. Gen. Frederick Crist, head of 8th Theater Sustainment Command (TSC), issued plans for future autonomous watercraft capabilities during a talk last week during a talk at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium. 8th TSC, which has its main headquarters at Fort Shafter in Hawaii, is one of the top formations tasked with managing U.S. military logistics across the Pacific.

“In order to be able to increase theater distribution, we have the two composite watercraft companies, at end state there, west of the IDL [International Date Line],” Crist explained, referring to the Army’s future planned maritime force posture in the Pacific. “We continue partnering with industry to be able to move into autonomous watercraft systems to be able to conduct other means of maritime distribution.”

To take a step back quickly, as part of its broader regional role, 8th TSC also has forward-deployed elements in Japan. This includes the 5th Transportation Company, which is currently organized as what the Army calls a composite watercraft company. As of 2024, the unit had a pair of General Frank S. Besson class Logistics Support Vessels (LSV), as well as 10 smaller Landing Craft Utility (LCU) type vessels and four small tugs, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The Army has eight LSVs, in total, and these are by far its largest and most capable ships. The two youngest LSVs, which were acquired in the mid-2000s, also form a distinct subclass, and their design is optimized for long-distance open-ocean operations, as you can read more about here. It’s not immediately clear which LSVs are currently assigned to the 5th Transportation Company. The unit is also set to receive new Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) landing craft.

Until very recently, the 10th Support Group (Regional), headquartered in Okinawa, was more directly responsible for overseeing forward-deployed Army logistics units in Japan. Earlier this month, the Army performed a so-called ‘reflagging’ of that formation, a largely administrative process that transformed it into the 45th Sustainment Brigade.

As part of the reflagging of the 10th Support Group into the 45th Sustainment Brigade, the Army has also been pushing ahead with plans for “the standup of a second composite watercraft company in Yokohama North Dock,” in the port city of the same name on the Japanese home island of Honshu, Maj. Gen. Crist explained last week. “That end state will have two composite water[craft] companies west of the IDL [International Date Line] under the command and control of the 45th Sustainment Brigade.”

When it comes to the watercraft assigned to these units, “we’re also moving into the autonomous lane,” Crist added. “Just in August, USARPAC [U.S. Army Pacific] had an opportunity to conduct an experiment by retrofitting an existing commercial vessel, the HOS Resolute [sic; HOS Resolution], with a kit to provide autonomous navigation.”

Maritime autonomy firm Sea Machines was able to integrate its SM300 software package on the HOS Resolution in just nine days for this demonstration. The ship is a 257-foot-long offshore support vessel more typically used to support oil and gas rigs. However, it features a stern ramp and four jack-up legs that also make it well suited to loading and unloading cargo at remote beaches.

For years now, the U.S. Marine Corps has also been experimenting with the HOS Resolution and other similar ships more generally. That service has been using the vessels to help refine its new expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations, which are themselves heavily centered on future conflict scenarios in the Pacific. The Marines have brought those capabilities to Army demonstration exercises in the past, as well.

The Army sees the August experiment as a potential stepping stone to integrating increasing degrees into its existing watercraft fleets.

“You could increase the fleet of autonomous vessels by tapping into the existing manned fleet,” Maj. Gen. Crist said. “Put on retrofitting kits to be able to conduct navigation, and then eventually propulsion and engine room activities, and eventually get to a fully autonomous system.”

Even just adding in autonomous navigation capabilities could help reduce the workload for the human crews on Army vessels and provide added margins of safety. Blending autonomy with “propulsion and engine room activities” could improve reliability and reduce maintenance demands. Being able to operate those ships in a fully uncrewed mode, if desired, would open up additional operational possibilities, including just for repositioning ships across the broad expanses of the Pacific.

Reduced manning requirements could be especially attractive for the Army’s ‘Navy,’ which is already a very small part of the service’s overall force structure. Last week, Maj. Gen. Crist also talked about further leveraging traditional crewed vessels owned and/or operated by contractors.

“It’s going to be a broad portfolio of systems of systems,” he said of the overall watercraft vision for the Pacific. “Army watercraft with Army Mariners will be, of course, one aspect of it. We also look for the opportunity to be able to leverage USTRANSCOM’s (U.S. Transportation Command) contracting capability to leverage operational support vessels that are commercially owned and commercially operated. We’re considering ways of being able to have commercial vessels that become manned by Army mariners.”

It is also interesting to note here how extremely similar this all sounds to the modifications the U.S. Navy made to the Spearhead class Expeditionary Fast Transport USNS Apalachicola ahead of its commissioning in 2023. However, despite tens of millions of dollars spent and successful demonstration of autonomous capabilities, the Navy curiously decided to put the Apalachicola into service without any plan to make use of these features operationally. There does not appear to have been any effort to integrate these capabilities more broadly within the Spearhead class since then, either.

Last year, the Navy struck the four oldest Spearhead class ships from its rolls entirely and has put several others on reduced operating status, ostensibly as a cost-saving measure. The service is still acquiring new Expeditionary Fast Transports, including members of the Expeditionary Medical Ship subclass that feature expanded medical facilities. The Spearhead class was born out of a program specifically to meet Army and Marine Corps requirements, and the ships are regularly used to support those services in the Pacific and elsewhere globally.

The Army also wants to expand its fleets of purpose-built uncrewed surface vessels (USV) for use in the Pacific, as well as elsewhere globally. Just earlier this year, Army Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, who preceded Maj. Gen. Crist as head of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, said he wanted to rapidly acquire as many as 100 drone boats. His vision included larger USVs capable of carrying eight to 10 standardized shipping containers.

“I could see those operating in the U.S. PACOM area of responsibility,” Gardner told reporters at a roundtable in June, according to Military Times. “I think that gives you a ton of operations, inventory in motion, easy to respond. And then because they’re autonomous, and we can work with our partner nations forward, you have those berthed up everywhere from Korea to Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, etc.”

“Clearly, [the autonomous vessels] would be forward in the theater, kind of moving supplies, because we have a constant demand for Army watercraft time now, to deliver equipment and supplies forward in the theater,” Gardner added at that time.

One of the inherent benefits of the Army watercraft fleets, and its LSVs in particular, is their ability to help alleviate the need for the U.S. Navy to meet more localized littoral logistics needs, if they are even available to help in the first place. Navy amphibious and military sealift ships would already be heavily strained by high demand during any major conflict in the Pacific or elsewhere globally. This could easily be further exacerbated by threats to those supply lines. All of this has already been underscored this year by pressure on maritime logistics chains in the context of the war with Iran. The Army’s ‘Navy’ also offers valuable additional capabilities and capacity in non-combat contingencies, such as responding to natural disasters.

More generally, the Army has been working to expand its use of smaller USVs, including speedboat-like designs, in various roles. The service has clearly been paying close attention to Ukraine’s very successful use of drone boats in one-way kamikaze attacks, as well as ones armed with guns and rockets and examples configured as launch platforms for surface-to-air missiles and weaponized uncrewed aerial systems (UAS).

The 7th Infantry Division, one of the Army’s main maneuver combat formations in the Pacific, just recently experimented with a Ukrainian-developed Magura-series USV during an exercise in Michigan. That particular USV was configured to launch a quadcopter-type drone. Another member of the Magura family was observed being used in a one-way-attack configuration by U.S. Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group during the annual Balikatan exercise in the Philippines earlier this year.

The Army has also been experimenting with American-designed USVs. The aforementioned recent exercise in Michigan also featured a Saronic Corsair, the same type of USV that the Navy used to rescue the crew of an Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter that went down in the Gulf of Oman in June. Explosive-laden Corsairs were also used to carry out the first known U.S. kamikaze USV attack, which was launched against a coastal target in Iran in July.

During another separate exercise in the Philippines this year, Salaknib 2026, Army forces used unarmed Rampage USVs from U.S. firm Havoc, as seen below. As part of that exercise, the USVs escorted a crewed General Frank S. Besson class LSV to its destination, heading out in front to help spot potential hazards.

“There’s all the work that the Department’s already doing with autonomy and autonomous systems that we look to take advantage of in the [Pacific] theater, as well,” Maj. Gen. Crist said at AUSA.

The Navy and the Marine Corps have both been working to grow their operational fleets of smaller USVs, as well as larger ones, in recent years. At the same time, the Navy has suffered years of setbacks and shakeups in its efforts to operationalize bigger and more capable designs. The service awarded contracts for a total of 30 new medium-sized USVs last month in its latest attempt to reverse that trend.

In September, Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced several new initiatives aimed at further expanding use of uncrewed platforms and advanced autonomous capabilities across the U.S. military and all domains. The Pentagon is presently laying the groundwork for the establishment of an all-new top-level Autonomous Warfare Command (AUTOWARCOM), which it hopes to see come to fruition next year.

What is clear now is that the Army’s vision for future watercraft operations, especially in the Pacific, is increasingly autonomous.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post How The U.S. Army’s ‘Navy’ Aims To Go More Autonomous With Its Vessels In The Pacific appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force says any decision on whether or not to acquire new production F-16 Viper fighters is likely a year or more away. The service’s top officer in charge of force structure planning has also now raised the prospect of using a “spectrum of capability” to eventually supplant aging older-model F-16s. All of this comes as the Air Force has laid out a new vision to have 1,509 combat-coded fighters in inventory, hundreds more than it has now, by 2035, amid questions about whether industry and budgets can keep up.

Inside Defense and Air & Space Forces Magazine were among the first to report on the Air Force’s latest long-term fighter force structure plan late yesterday. This followed a roundtable with Lt. Gen. David Tabor, the service’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs. At the time of writing, an unclassified copy of the report, which was submitted to Congress last week, has not been released publicly. TWZ has reached out for more information.

Tabor said yesterday that the target fleet of 1,509 combat-coded fighters by 2035 would be approximately 40 percent F-35s, 40 percent F-15s (inclusive of F-15E Strike Eagles and F-15EX Eagle IIs) and F-16s, and 20 percent F-22 Raptors and F-47s, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. As an aside, the final expected F-47 fleet size remains unclear, though the Air Force continues to say it plans to acquire at least enough of those jets to replace its 185 F-22s on a one-for-one basis.

The current breakdown of the service’s fighter force structure is 45 percent F-16s, 30 percent F-35s, 15 percent F-15s, and 10 percent F-22s. Last year’s long-term fighter force structure report said the service was aiming for an eventual inventory of 1,558 combat-coded fighters and hoped to hit a milestone of 1,369 aircraft by Fiscal Year 2030. As of the start of Fiscal Year 2026, the Air Force had 1,168 combat-coded fighters, not including 103 A-10 Warthog ground attack jets, which have been part of this force structure planning in the past. The plan now is for the last of the A-10s to be retired by 2030. The new 2035 figure also does not include the hundreds of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones the service wants to have acquired by that time, something we will come back to later on.

Currently, the Air Force expects fighter fleet expansion to be driven by the acquisition of new F-35As, F-15EXs, and F-47s. This was also the case when last year’s fighter force structure report was released. The possibility of the Air Force also acquiring new-production F-16s has come up several times in recent years. Most recently, there were several reports last month that prime contractor Lockheed Martin had made a new pitch to the service for a version of the latest Block 70 version of the fighter, tentatively dubbed the F-16G. New Block 70 and Block 72 F-16s, which differ in what engine they use, are being actively produced at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Greenville, South Carolina. At that time, TWZ did a deep dive into the benefits that this could offer the Air Force.

“There is a spectrum of capability that we might want to replace the F-16s with,” Lt. Gen. Tabor said amid a discussion about the prospect of acquiring new Vipers at the roundtable yesterday, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s not urgent, frankly. What we don’t want to get to is a point where it is urgent, and we haven’t done the homework and decided ‘hey, this is really the right place to be.’ We do have time to churn through that and make sure that we have a good option going forward.”

“We’re not in a position where that decision has to be made immediately,” Tabor added, while acknowledging that “we are very conscious” that older-model F-16s are set to begin reaching the end of their lifespans in the 2030s. He also said any such planning was unlikely to be part of the process of developing the service’s Fiscal Year 2028 budget proposal, which will be released sometime early next year.

The Air Force is “in the initial phases of analyzing options for the next Future Years Defense Program,” a spokesperson for the service had told us last month without specifically mentioning any particular type of aircraft. “At this stage, we have neither defined the precise mission requirements nor the spectrum of options that could fill it.”

When it comes to the current F-16 fleet, the Air Force had 774 Vipers in inventory at the start of Fiscal Year 2026 and expected that number to drop to 768, according to past budget documents. This includes a mixture of subvariants, and not all of them are assigned combat-coded units. The Air Force has been substantially upgrading at least a portion of its existing F-16s, including with the addition of new active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and electronic warfare suites, to ensure their operational relevance for years to come.

The Air Force has also already been taking newer F-16s from squadrons transitioning to the F-35 and using them to replace older Vipers in other units. Last year’s fighter force structure report explicitly highlighted plans to supplant Block 30 F-16s in five Air National Guard formations – three combat-coded squadrons and two training units – with Block 40 and 50 types in this way.

As we’ve previously written:

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

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

…

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

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

You can read our full prior deep analysis on this topic here.

Lt. Gen. Tabor acknowledged many of these exact same points at the roundtable yesterday. He notably described acquiring new F-16s as “maybe the lazy” option, but also one that would benefit from “practically a ready-made aircraft” that is in production now, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“The question is, can industry produce at those levels?” he also said, speaking more generally. “They’ve assured us that they can, and we believe them, but we also actually need to see it manifest.”

In the context of acquiring new F-16s, especially, it is important to note here that Lockheed Martin order books are very full already as a result of demand for these fighters from U.S. allies and partners. The company’s capacity, at least at present, to add a substantial new Air Force acquisition program on top of that is a real question. This, in some ways, mirrors questions that surround Boeing efforts to meet surging Air Force demand for F-15EXs.

On top of all this, the Air Force’s still-evolving CCA plans remain something of a wildcard in these discussions. The Air Force has ordered General Atomics FQ-42 Vengeance and Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury CCAs into production, and is now aiming to have a combined fleet of at least 500 of these drones in inventory by 2032. The service is also still expecting to acquire additional CCAs, which could be of entirely different types, through a second iterative development cycle, or Increment 2, under this program. This is influencing the service’s crewed fighter force structure plans, but the full scale and scope of those impacts remain to be seen.

“CCA is very much a reality,” Tabor said yesterday, per Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It is going to be a part of our future, and there is absolutely a world in which the incorporation of CCAs into the force will mitigate the requirement for the number of fighters. That’s not the CCA that we have right now, but it is advancing very, very rapidly. We’re confident that it will play a major role in future versions of the fighter force structure report.”

The Air Force’s F-22s are currently set to be its first ‘aerial quarterbacks’ for CCAs, with F-35s and F-47s expected to follow. At the same time, TWZ has highlighted previously how CCA could offer particular value when paired with fourth-generation fighters like the F-16. This, in turn, could actually bolster the case for new Viper acquisitions as a more affordable force multiplier.

The Air Force’s ability to secure necessary funding and other factors will play in all this, too. 2035 is a long way off from a budgetary perspective. It also stretches across multiple election cycles, including the one that will decide the next presidential administration, all of which could lead to major changes in defense spending priorities. Congress can and routinely does demand that the U.S. military alter major procurement plans. Just in the past two years or so, legislators have intervened to force the Air Force to move ahead with the acquisition of new E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control planes and to save the U.S. Navy F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program.

In the meantime, the Air Force clearly faces many continued questions about how to balance the need to modernize its fighter fleets while ensuring it retains enough tactical airpower to meet current and future operational demands. Even so, the service says it sees no need to rush to make a decision about whether to choose the “lazy” route of just buying new F-16s.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Any Decision To Buy New-Build F-16s Not An “Urgent” Priority: USAF appeared first on TWZ.

One of the KC-10A Extender aerial refueling tankers the U.S. Air Force retired some two years ago has left the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. This aircraft is one of a set of KC-10As sold to private aerial refueling contractor Omega Air. At least one other potential operator, a still mysterious end user somewhere in North Africa, could also be in line to pick up several ex-Air Force Extenders.

Maxim Loshak, who goes by the handle @az_aviator on X and Instagram, caught the KC-10A leaving Davis-Monthan earlier today. The aircraft currently carries U.S. civil registration number N82247, and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records confirm that Omega Air is the new owner. Online flight tracking data also shows the aircraft subsequently flew to San Antonio International Airport, which is Omega’s main base of operations.

The KC-10A in question previously carried the Air Force registration number 86-0034 and had been in the boneyard since May 12, 2023, per the service’s records. The Air Force acquired a total of 60 Extender tankers between 1979 and 1987, and lost one in an accident in 1987. The very last of the remaining 59 KC-10As was retired in September 2024. The Extender was derived from the three-engine DC-10 airliner and was designed to refuel aircraft using either the boom or the probe-and-drogue method.

As seen in the picture at the top of this story, N82247 notably lacks the KC-10A’s trademark boom under the rear fuselage. This is actually not entirely unexpected. The Air Force had put 10 Extenders up for auction last year in a non-flyable state. Each of the planes was missing a single engine, taken from under one of their wings, for reasons that are still not entirely clear. These particular aircraft were also among the first KC-10As to be retired, and their booms had been stripped to be used as spares for other examples that had remained in service until the type’s final retirement in 2024.

In addition to sourcing the requisite engines, “in order to make them flyable, the winning bidder will need to work with Boeing to obtain a fly-away kit to seal up the area where the boom systems was,” an Air Force spokesperson told us last year while the 10 KC-10As were still up for auction.

Omega Air could fit new booms to this KC-10A, as well as other ex-USAF Extenders it is in the process of acquiring. The company could also leave some of them configured as probe-and-drogue-only tankers. Omega already flies two ex-Dutch KDC-10 tankers, which are broadly similar to the KC-10, as well as another DC-10 converted into a probe-and-drogue-only tanker. The company has several Boeing 707-based tankers, as well.

There is a possibility that some of the KC-10As that Omega is acquiring could be operated in non-tanker roles. Carrying cargo was also a major role for Extender while in Air Force service. Still, this seems unlikely given that aerial refueling is Omega’s primary business. Some of the ex-Air Force Extenders might also be used as sources of spare parts. TWZ has reached out for more information about Omega’s overall plans for its new acquisitions.

Regardless, even in a boomless configuration, ex-USAF KC-10As will be a significant addition to Omega Air’s fleet. Demand for private aerial refueling services, in general, has been ramping up in the United States and elsewhere globally in recent years.

For the U.S. military, private contractors offer a valuable way to reduce demand for and strain on organic tanker fleets to meet non-combat-related aerial refueling needs. This, in turn, helps free up government-owned tankers for combat missions and other higher-priority taskings. Those tankers may also simply not need to fly as much with private companies helping to shift the burden. The ability of the Air Force’s existing tanker fleets, in particular, to meet even peacetime demands has been a growing point of concern for years now. This has been further exacerbated by persistent technical and other issues with replacement KC-46 tankers.

With all this in mind, the Air Force’s decision to retire the KC-10A fleet entirely was and still is controversial. Though the Extenders were certainly aging, they were also highly flexible tankers able to carry greater loads of fuel than the KC-46s that supplanted them.

Omega Air clearly still sees value in the KC-10A. As mentioned, at least one other operator in North Africa is at least interested in potentially acquiring Extenders. Others may yet emerge.

If nothing else, after just over two years, an ex-USAF KC-10A has returned to the skies for a second career in the private sector.

Special thanks again to Maxim Loshak for sharing his picture of N82247 with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Retired KC-10 Extender Tanker Has Risen From Boneyard To Fly Again appeared first on TWZ.

Ukraine continues to struggle with throttling of the speeds at which weapons using the vital satellite communications services provided by the SpaceX Starlink system can operate, and one weapons manufacturer tells us it is rethinking whether to rely on it in the future. As we have previously reported, heavy use of Starlink on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine, including as a means of guiding one-way attackers in the air and at sea, has underscored potential risks of exclusive reliance on Elon Musk’s orbital communications networks in critical tactical tasks.

At issue are complaints by Ukrainian officials that “in various sectors of the front, the equipment ceases to function at speeds of 130–161 kilometers per hour.”

A limit on how fast Starlink terminals on vehicles can travel before the feed is cut off in certain areas impacts a slew of weapons and campaigns, especially strikes on Russian logistics behind enemy lines and in the sea of Asov, as well as the control of defensive interceptor drones critical for taking down Russian long-range one-way attack drones, like the notorious Shahed-136.

The following video shows one such Shahed interception.

The limiting of Starlink/Starshield occurred amid deteriorating relations between the Trump administration and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The latest chill between Washington and Kyiv was sparked by the American leader’s claims that Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure have reduced the supply of diesel fuel to the U.S. and other nations more than the conflict in the Middle East. Trump was upset Ukraine kept hitting these targets despite his demanding they stop.

Exacerbating this issue, Trump on Oct. 9 announced via his Truth Social platform that he had made a deal to purchase diesel from Russia, pivoting away from a years-old Western policy that placed massive economic pressure on Moscow.

Who gave the order to limit the speeds at which Ukrainian weapons using the Starlink/Starshield system operate is unclear.

“The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House,” Reuters reported last week, citing two U.S. officials and a Western official briefed on the matter. “The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed.”

“No such request was ever made by the president,” a U.S. official told us on Monday.

“There has been no change to Department of War policy regarding intelligence sharing or any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine,” a senior Pentagon official responded to our questions about whether the Pentagon imposed the limits and, if so, why.

When we pushed for a more specific response to the Starlink/Starshield concerns, the Pentagon declined comment. However, Tuesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon did not order any changes and that Ukraine violated Starlink’s terms of services.

We reached out to SpaceX as well, but the company did not immediately respond. Last week, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, said that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately” Trump. Musk had previously refused Ukrainian requests to use Starlink against targets inside Russia.

The prohibition against using Starlink inside Russia has drastically limited Ukraine’s ability to strike dynamic targets like mobile ballistic missile launchers and hunt for drone launch sites. However, Ukraine has not had to rely on Starlink in its campaign against oil infrastructure or other fixed targets deep inside Russia which upset Trump in the first place.

Tuesday morning, Zelensky spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and again brought up Starlink/Starshield in addition to other major concerns.

“…the situation with Starlink/Starshield… needs to be restored,” Zelensky urged.

Rubio denied that any assistance was being withheld from Ukraine. Noting that Starlink “is a private company,” the secretary told reporters that Trump is “frustrated…because he doesn’t like to be blamed for things that aren’t true, including accusations that somehow he had ordered intelligence sharing to be cut off. And that’s not true; he’s said that repeatedly.”

This most recent flap isn’t the first time SpaceX and Musk have faced particularly significant criticism over limiting some Ukrainian use of the network. Actions SpaceX took earlier this year to block unregistered Starlink terminals also had major consequences for Russian forces, which were sent scrambling to find alternatives to fill the massive resulting communications gap.

Given the tenuous nature of Ukraine’s ability to use Starlink/Starshield, the Wild Hornets company is reevaluating whether to use the SpaceX system in future endeavors even though, so far, it has experienced few problems with it. Wild Hornets is a major Ukrainian combat drone maker. Among other weapons, it makes the Sting interceptors, designed to defend against Russian Shahed kamikaze drones.

The Starlink/Starshield issue isn’t affecting current operations, a Wild Hornets spokesman told us Tuesday morning. “Our own communications system provides the basic connection to our interceptors,” he said. “Plus, our technology for remote control of the interceptors can use various sources of internet connectivity. True, the military often uses Starlink for this, but in our case, the terminal doesn’t need to be moved at high speeds (it simply provides a connection between the command center and the ground station to which the interceptor is connected—it’s somewhat similar to cell towers).”

Concerns about the reduction in speeds at which Starlink terminals can operate has Wild Hornets thinking about ditching a future project, the spokesman told us.

“But we understand that there are other types of interceptors,” added the spokesman. “For example, some drones carry a terminal on board and need to fly at high speed with it. In such cases, Starlink’s limitations make their operation impossible. From this point of view, it also makes us rethink some of the projects we’re currently working on. For example, launching interceptors from aerial platforms.”

“We’re keeping an eye on the situation,” the spokesman continued. “For our current operations (connections with ground stations), we can use any source of stable internet connectivity. Therefore, various solutions are possible in different locations. However, for these needs, everything is operating normally with Starlink at the moment. As for our plans with new projects, we don’t have a clear decision yet, but we will be testing alternatives.”

The spokesman declined to provide further details about what “alternatives” could look like.

There are a number of ways the lack of Starlink for extended-range drone operations could be mitigated to a degree, but the persistent, reliable, high-bandwidth and compact capability SpaceX provides has no direct alternative at this time. The use of drones that work as line-of-sight relays, which can be daisy chained together electronically with other airborne relays, with a connection spanning dozens or even hundreds of miles to a ground entry point is possible. You can read about this concept here. The use of swarms of balloons to create an active network over a battlespace and using Starlink on those slower moving platforms to relay line-of-sight connections to multiple drones below is another possibility. You can read more about this concept here. But we must stress again, nothing can fully replace Starlink/Starshield and its seamless beyond line-of-sight communications architecture at this time.

“I believe, in any case, depending on a single solution is very risky,” the Wild Hornets spokesman proffered. “Especially if you don’t have full control over it. Especially when it comes to something as critical on the battlefield as communications. That’s exactly why our ecosystem is built around our own communications technology and basically is open to various solutions when it comes to internet connectivity.”

As far as military units are concerned, the commander of the Georgian Legion told us that his forces have been affected by issues with Starlink/Starshield even though the main concerns have been about the speeds at which weapons can travel and still have connectivity. The Georgian Legion is fighting in the heavily contested Kramatorsk region of eastern Ukraine.

“We use Starlink a lot because, in this war, reliable communication is essential,” Mamuka Mamulashvili told us. “It helps us stay connected when everything around us is changing. Of course, we’ve learned not to rely on just one system. There are alternatives, like mobile internet, fiber-optic connections, radio and other satellite systems such as OneWeb. But honestly, none of them can fully replace Starlink in Ukraine right now.”

“The problems were not limited to the speed restriction of approximately 160 km/h,” the Georgian Legion commander pointed out. “Starlink connectivity itself was also intermittent, repeatedly switching on and off. This caused communication disruptions across various drone systems, not just those operating at speeds exceeding 160 km/h. As a result, the impact was broader than the restriction on high-speed interceptor drones. Intermittent connectivity created problems for drone control and communications across multiple systems, affecting their reliability and the ability to carry out missions as intended.”

“We had serious communication problems,” Mamulashvili explained. “At one point, our drone operators were struggling to maintain a reliable connection with the drone systems, which disrupted coordination and made it difficult to carry out missions as planned. When you lose the connection between the operator and the drone, you can lose control of the situation in seconds. We managed to adapt, but it definitely affected our work.”

“We have to adapt and find solutions, as we always do,” the commander said. “This war teaches you one thing every day. You can’t depend on a single technology or expect someone else to solve all your problems. You have to be ready for anything and keep moving forward.”

Russian sources, meanwhile, are gloating over the speed limits placed on weapons using Starlink/Starshield, particularly how it is affecting Ukraine’s mid-range drone attacks that have crippled Russian logistics. As we explained in a previous report, Ukrainian units have relied on the SpaceX system to help extend the range of their drones to reach as far as 150 miles into Russian-occupied territory. The SpaceX system is not used to hit targets inside Russia proper.

The following video shows some of these mid-range attacks.

“Disabling or slowing down Starlink has significantly reduced the enemy’s ability to launch medium-range drone strikes along the ‘Novorossiya’ highway,” influential Russian milblogger Vladimir Romanov reported. The highway, also known as the R-280, is a key link between cities in occupied southern Ukraine and the occupied Crimean peninsula. The road has been a frequent target of Ukraine’s mid-range strike campaign.

“The success of these strikes depends on the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ access to American satellite communication,” Romanov noted. “For the past six months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been attacking civilian transport – trucks, cars, and buses – exclusively through the use of ‘Starshield.’ This means that, for the past six months, American military satellite infrastructure has been used to carry out terrorist acts against Russian civilians, and so on. In other words, the United States is still directly involved in the war with Russia!”

As for how widespread worries among Ukrainian weapons manufacturers are, the Wild Hornets spokesman suggested that his company is not alone. He said he has spoken with other companies relying much more heavily on Starlink/Starshield who have expressed concerns. He pointed to growing interest in the European Eutelsat satellite constellation as an example of companies seeking options, but noted that “of course, creating something like Starlink won’t be easy.”

We’ve reached out to the Ukrainian Brave1 defense technology incubator and the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries (NAUDI) for additional insights into how this issue is affecting Ukraine’s defense manufacturing base.

It will be interesting to see if other Ukrainian weapons companies also consider scrapping plans to rely on Starlink in the future and what architectures will emerge at least as a backstop to it.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post Major Ukrainian Arms Maker Rethinking Future Reliance On Starlink appeared first on TWZ.

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