While rumors are swirling all over Europe that the Russians are planning to attack some NATO members, Lithuania has been mentioned, the rumors are not in a vacuum and don’t depend on statements by Russian leaders, especially their anger with the UK sending long range drones and cruise missiles for Ukraine to attack Russian territory.

The immediate focus is Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad, when it was part of Prussia, was previously known as Konigsberg. It is a strategic Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, but it is not physically connected to Russian territory or to Russian controlled lands. It was awarded to Russia in 1945 at Potsdam as part of the postwar settlement. During the Cold War, Kaliningrad was surrounded by Communist Poland and Communist Lithuania, both then Warsaw pact members. But today both Poland and Lithuania are independent, NATO members and significantly hostile to Russia. For Russia to support Kaliningrad it relies on land and rail access from Belarus across the Suwalki corridor, which has been recently fraught by attempted blockages and closures initiated by Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad can also be supported by sea, but the Russians have lost significant leverage in the Baltic, especially after once-neutral Sweden and Finland joined NATO. Kaliningrad also has an air terminal that appears well defended by air defense systems including the S-400 air and missile defense system, and Pantsir which is a short range system useful for knocking down drones and cruise missiles.

Recently a heavy concentration of specialized NATO aircraft are operating in international airspace near Kaliningrad, a clearly provocative move by NATO. The deployment featured a simultaneous flight of E-3 AWACS airborne early warning and control planes, an American EA-37B Compass Call II electronic warfare aircraft, an ARTEMIS II reconnaissance platform, and by American, Norwegian, and Polish fighter units. The advanced EA-37B is a powerful intelligence-gathering and electronic warfare platform, suggesting preparations for a NATO strike launched at Kaliningrad.

Responding to the NATO operations, Russia’s Baltic Fleet has conducted tactical air-defense exercises simulating enemy air raids against the Baltiysk naval base. These drills involved Su-30 multirole fighters, Mi-24 combat helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles acting as hostile elements. The Baltiysk Naval Base is located on the Vistula Spit, Russia’s main ice-free base on the Baltic. It includes surface combatants, diesel-electric submarines, naval aviation, and coastal defense missile systems (such as the Bastion and Bal systems) designed to project power across the Baltic approaches and enforce anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) coverage over neighboring NATO airspace.

These mutual operations have raised tension levels very high between NATO and Russia. While the US has supported the military operation around Kaliningrad, Washington also is concerned that there is a growing risk that actual fighting could break out that might involve Russian attacks on Poland and Lithuania, or even farther back NATO bases in Germany and the UK.

There is no public evidence beyond what has been seen around Baltiysk, but there is growing preparation by the Russians including moving nuclear weapons to Belarus. At the tail end of August (27th to 29th) Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko held a working meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow followed by official talks with President Vladimir Putin at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. The Kiev Post reported that the Lukashenko-Putin meeting focused on security coordination and strategic cooperation.

Neither NATO, the US or the Russians have reported any troop movements related to the Baltics or Eastern Europe. While NATO claims the Russians are preparing a major mobilization, the Russians deny that, and even the Ukrainians, including the GUR (military intelligence) do not think that is the case.

There have been a number of other provocations such as attacks on manufacturing and supply facilities in Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Slovakia, alongside a thwarted attack involving an explosives-packed drone discovered near a cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany. Similarly there have been a number of disruptions of underseas cables in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere, attributed by NATO to operations conducted by the so-called Russia-backed Shadow Fleet of tankers and container ships. While not all the provocations were of Russian origin, there is a growing list of incidents that point back to Moscow.

Underlying all the military activity, there is a growing sense that the Ukraine war is reaching a crisis moment. Kyrylo Bogdanov, the former head of Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR) and now advisor to Zelensky recently said that that Ukraine cannot afford to mobilize fewer than 30,000 personnel per month just to maintain its current defensive capabilities and force structure on the front lines. In other words, Ukraine is losing up to 30,000 front line soldiers each month and cannot replace them. While Russian losses no doubt are also high, the Russians have a large pool of active duty soldiers available, although there are rumors that young people are leaving Russia to avoid a bigger mobilization. But young people cannot leave Ukraine, and there are fewer and fewer willing to go to war, leaving Ukraine in a crisis. Recently the Ukrainians are talking about drafting large numbers of women for combat duties. That manpower crisis is compounded by the short supply of critical weapons, so much so that Ukraine’s artillery lacks ammunition and artillery tubes and weapons are in short supply. Milbloggers (including Ukrainians) also report field shortages of drones, which Ukraine uses in massive numbers. Compounding the mess, key air defense systems and interceptors, especially Patriot, have practically disappeared. The Russians carried out a deadly attack on August 29 in the Bucha district, west of Kyiv that destroyed a warehouse where some of the few remaining Patriots and other weapons were stored. Located in a civilian district, the resulting explosions as the ammunition in the warehouse exploded, killed 37 people (perhaps more), and sparked a political crisis in Ukraine as it became clear that the Ukrainian army was hiding ammunition in populated areas. The attack was bad enough that President Zelensky accepted responsibility and launched an investigation.

Recalling that Zelensky recently fired his defense minister and his army commander Oleksandr Syrsky, it is not clear how much longer the Ukrainians can stay in the fight. From a strategic point of view this raises the question of whether NATO can come to the rescue, but doing so would require a consensus that does not currently exist, and a military capability that is weak and ill equipped and poorly supported. For the US, which no longer considers itself to be a key backer of Ukraine, and is increasingly wobbly on NATO, a war in Europe would be a political and military disaster, and physical involvement in Ukraine would be just as bad.

Like Ukraine, the US is very short on warfighting material including air defense systems, ammunition, and smart weapons.

In the past year or longer, US intelligence (based mostly on UK and NATO assessments) focused on the idea of damaging Russia enough to force Putin and his army out of the war. That explains the drone war against Russia, along with sabotage operations deep inside Russian territory, and multiple assassinations, especially of Russian military officers. But the CIA-MI6-NATO strategy, backed by a major propaganda effort, seems to have fallen short of its goal. There is little or no evidence that Russia is ready to make major concessions or to pull out of Ukraine. It is interesting that Elon Musk has refused the use of his Starlink system for Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, explaining that Musk could not see how these attacks would bring an end to the war.

The fact that now the propaganda has shifted to the Russian “threat to Europe” suggests that US and NATO intelligence are trying to jack up support to continue the war in Ukraine in order to avoid a bigger war in Europe. While the logic here is, sadly, murky, it represents a growing angst that Ukraine is about to implode.

In the midst of all this, and arriving on a huge military transport, CIA Director John Radcliffe apparently hoped to speak directly to Putin. But Putin was not ready for any meeting and left it to the head of the SVR (Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service), Radcliffe’s opposite number, Sergey Naryshkin. The message from Radcliffe was to propose how to end the Ukraine war.

There are various reports, many claiming to be authoritative, but none of them are reports directly from the meeting in Moscow (which may have lasted eight or nine hours). If Radcliffe just wanted a ceasefire, or Russia to pull out of Ukraine, that would take ten minutes of his time and ten minutes for translation. Even the Russian reply could have been brief.

But the long meeting implies a lot more was on the table. The Ukrainians, who have backchannels to the Russians (after all, their service was created by Russia and trained over the years by Russian operatives), say that the US offered to pull all US troops out of Europe in exchange for freezing the war in Ukraine.

If the Ukrainian report is true, it would open the door to a wide ranging discussion between the US and Russia. Getting the US out of NATO would be a major Russian victory, an historic one since NATO grew out of the Cold War. On July 1, 1991, in Prague the Warsaw Pact was officially disbanded after 36 years (founded in 1955). It was Russia’s answer to NATO (founded in 1949). Unlike the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, and no longer facing an opposing alliance, NATO began a huge territorial expansion, which the Russians saw, and still regard, as threatening. Of course, pulling US troops out of Europe would not end US participation in NATO, but it would be a huge strategic shift.

Russia’s focus, as far as it can be understood, is to avoid being surrounded by hostile states, backed by the US. So if this was the offer by the US side, it was highly significant.

But what does “freezing” the war in Ukraine mean in practical terms? The Russians are skeptical that Zelensky would accept a real freeze, and Russia believes Zelensky will agree only to a time-limited ceasefire under which he could rebuild his army and recruit adequate manpower.

Some reports indicate that the Russians may have suggested removing the Zelensky government completely and replacing it with an internationally backed administration for Ukraine. Such a government might pave the way for the two adversaries to reconcile differences and sort out territorial, military, political and cultural conflicts.

With Europe’s current crop of political leaders and their strong commitment to Zelensky, any deal as discussed in Moscow would fail to get support in Europe. However, European leadership is on the cusp of change in the UK, France and Germany (perhaps also Italy), meaning that a new crop of European leaders may take a more flexible approach in future. At the same time, the US commitment to NATO has increasingly wobbly support in Washington, where there is no desire to keep supporting Ukraine or backing up the alliance. The White House unhappiness with the European response on Iran has simply made things worse.

It isn’t clear if Radcliffe’s mission has changed anything, but maybe it has set in motion a process that could result in helping to end the Ukraine conflict.

The idea of a dying Ukraine is not part of the popular press. But there is growing evidence Ukraine cannot continue the war much longer.

The CIA Director departed from Joint Base Andrews in a C-17A Globemaster under the control of the 89th Airlift Wing located at the base. The flight started out in Charleston and departed Andrews on August 23rd. The exact time of departure was not announced. If it was heading straight to Moscow from Andrews the flight time would be between 9.5 and 10.5 hours. However, the plane landed in Riga, Latvia at Riga International Airport, which is about 525 miles from Moscow. Apparently it landed on August 24th and stayed overnight in Riga, departing for Moscow the next morning. The C-17 then flew to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport where Ratcliffe arrived at the VIP area. US Embassy supplied vehicles picked him up on the tarmac and his caravan was later observed transiting in Moscow. There is no word that any Russian official greeted Ratcliffe.

The C-17 used by Ratcliffe was specially equipped with a Roll On Conference Module (ROCC) that offers secure working space and sleep accommodations.

Even after Ratcliffe’s C-17 arrived at Vnukovo, the Kremlin seemed unaware of the visit, including Putin’s own office. In fact, the visit was only acknowledged after Ratcliffe left Moscow. Then the Kremlin said that Ratcliffe met with the Russian intelligence service, but not with Putin.

There are a few matters that deserve attention.

The first is that the US asked Zelensky to halt all drone operations over Russian territory for a few days, in order to clear the airspace over Russia. Had the drone strikes not been halted, the C-17 would not have flown into Moscow. The Russians also had to tell their air defense operators about the C-17 and not to shoot at it.

Ratcliffe’s departure to Moscow took place before his visit to Moscow was cleared by the Russians. The Ratcliffe trip was very urgent and Ratcliffe was aiming at a very high level meeting. It can also be supposed he wanted to see Putin.

It would seem that the decision for the C-17 to stop in Riga was an enroute choice because the Moscow authorities had not cleared either the aircraft arrival or the visit itself.

To say the least there was confusion and uncertainty in Moscow and it is possible that Ratcliffe needed help to get the Kremlin to approve the mission. It would be a good guess that help came from the White House, perhaps from President Trump speaking directly to Putin, and that the call cleared the way for the meeting in Moscow. This suggests that the Russians were far from happy about Ratcliffe’s visit. Putin did not meet with Ratcliffe, although Tass reports that he was “in the loop.” Exactly who Ratcliffe met with has not been officially disclosed but likely it was Sergey Naryshkin who heads Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Last year Ratcliffe had talked to Naryshkin by phone (March 2025) mainly about crisis resolution.

Context

To send the CIA Director on an unannounced and unplanned trip to Moscow is unprecedented. The most famous “secret” trip to Moscow was by Henry Kissinger on October 21, 1973. It was in the midst of the Yom Kippur war and Kissinger was asked to come by the Soviet leadership (specifically General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin). The Russians feared Israel was about to overrun the Egyptian army (maybe even march on to Cairo). Egypt was Russia’s top client, and because of the military situation, the Russians were threatening the use of Russian troops or the use of nuclear weapons to save Egypt. Kissinger would be asked to get Israel to stop and pull back, end the entrapment of Egypt’s Third Army in the Sinai which was surrounded by the IDF led by Ariel Sharon, and not expand their operations aimed at Cairo (which was largely undefended).

Today there is much tension between Moscow and Washington, exacerbated by the UK’s support for deep strikes on Russian territory. The Russians have threatened retaliation and there have been plenty of reckless statements by Russian politicians pressuring Putin to retaliate. The Kremlin has issued warnings about “inevitable consequences.”

Yet the British actions probably would not prompt Ratcliffe to go to Moscow.

There are recent reports that Russia is on the verge of a major military mobilization to win the war in Ukraine. A Russian mobilization could trigger a wider war in Europe. From public reporting it is clear there is talk in Russia about a Russian military push to defeat the Ukrainian army, but even if there was hard evidence collected by the CIA, it would not be a Ratcliffe task to “warn” the Russians about doing so. In any case, a mobilization would take time and recruits would need training. This does not seem to fit into Radcliffe’s urgent mission.

It is possible the CIA has intelligence about the internal situation in Ukraine and Ratcliffe came to Moscow to warn that the US and NATO would not tolerate a takeover of Ukraine by Russia. While much of the US press is flooded with “success” stories based on Ukrainian information, there are plenty of signs that Ukraine’s problems, even survival as a state, are growing worse. Compounding this is Zelensky’s hard line on Russia and lack of negotiating flexibility, now more stressed by internal political pressure including demands for elections. Corruption also plagues Zelensky’s government. On top of all this, Zelensky dismissed his defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov and fired the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, hardly the sort of thing you do in the middle of a war.

Meanwhile Ukraine lacks air defenses, and its finances are in shambles. Russia’s shutdown of the ports in and around Odessa have dealt a significant blow to Ukrainian agriculture and materials exports. The Greater Odesa hub (which include Odesa proper, Chornomorsk, and Pivdennyi) serves as Ukraine’s primary maritime gateway to the Black Sea where 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural crops (wheat, corn, barley and sunflower oil) are exported to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Ukraine will lose $2.5 billion in exports and its farmers will suffer. (The reaction in Europe will be different because cheap Ukrainian grain exports hurt farm production in Europe.)

The Russians, no doubt, would tell Ratcliffe that their intention is to settle the future of the annexed Ukrainian territories, not to replace Zelensky and his government or take over Ukraine. But Moscow may have said that a more Russia-friendly Ukrainian government would facilitate a negotiated settlement of the conflict. No doubt the Russians would say, as they have often, that Russia has no territorial ambitions either in Eastern Europe or the Balkans but would like to see a mutual reduction of tension in the border areas backed up by negotiated agreements to reduce threats.

But Moscow would also have warned Ratcliffe that Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory will be met by harsh Russian measures.

Ratcliffe spent around 8 hours in Moscow. How much of that time was in dialogue with his Russian interlocutors we do not know.

Could a Ratcliffe mission convince the Russians not to topple Zelensky and his government? Or stop Moscow from a push to take over Ukraine, if it wanted to do so. Or replace Zelensky with a Moscow-friendly regime?

Now, 35 years later, the Pentagon is nervous that Russia might use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or attack NATO.

In June, 2023 Russia deployed Iskander-M missiles with nuclear warheads to Belarus, more as a warning to Poland and NATO than due to Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. Reports also say Russia has been modifying Belarus’s Su-25 aircraft to carry nuclear gravity bombs. Poland (and Lithuania) have threatened Russian access to Kaliningrad, and the Poles and Lituanians have contended that Russia is also storing between 50 and 100 nuclear warheads in the enclave. Kaliningrad, previously Königsberg, was the military hub of the Prussian state. Under the Potsdam Agreement in 1945, the northern part of East Prussia—including Königsberg—was annexed by the Soviet Union, its German population was largely expelled, and the city was subsequently renamed Kaliningrad. It is connected to Belarus by a thin strip of territory along the Polish-Lithuanian border called the Suwalki gap or corridor. The city and the corridor is a flash point of strategic significance for both Russia and NATO.

Today the United States has a small arsenal of so-called tactical nuclear weapons, mainly in the form of the B-61 gravity “dial a blast” air delivered bombs. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby is currently leading a team updating US nuclear policy, focusing on refining flexible options for the President, particularly at the regional level.

Colby and his colleagues do not have many options if their approach is to strengthen “flexible options” at the “regional level.” Aside from the B-61 and a few US Navy weapons (including Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles that can be equipped with a small, 5.7 kt warhead), almost all fielded US tactical weapons have been retired and the majority of their nuclear warheads dismantled.

The one possible exception, if you believe the Russian assessment, are dual purpose Mk-41 launchers in Europe. These can be used either for SM-3 air defense interceptors or for Tomahawk cruise missiles. The US has two major locations in Romania and Poland. Since 2014 the US has been operating an Aegis Ashore system at Deveselu, Romania. It features 24 MK 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells. At Redzikowo, Poland the US has a mirror Aegis Ashore system with the same number of VLS cells. Meanwhile the US is implementing mobile, trailer-mounted MK 41 launchers in Europe. The mobile system is called Typhon, and is an emerging deep strike system (not air defense). The NATO center for Typhon is in Germany.

The US says that the Tomahawk is a conventionally armed cruise missile. The mobile, ground-launched nuclear Tomahawk variant—the BGM-109G Gryphon—was retired and fully destroyed much earlier, by 1991, to comply with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces [INF] Treaty. The US withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019. The Naval version (TLAM-N) warheads were destroyed between 2010 and 2013. Both used variants of the W-80 nuclear warhead. An updated version of the W-80 warhead is designated for the Air Force’s upcoming AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile (which is air launched). It is planned to have a “dial a yield” weapon ranging from 5 kt. to 150 kt.

The Russians believe that the US is significantly increasing its tactical nuclear posture in Europe and likely do not regard the “retirements” of nuclear armed Tomahawks as reflecting their own intelligence assessments on the availability of nuclear warheads for Tomahawks.

The Pentagon generally divides US nuclear weapons (and their delivery systems) into two broad categories, namely strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Strategic weapons are primarily delivered by long range ballistic missiles, either land based or by ballistic missile submarines (”Boomers”). Their purpose is to destroy an adversary’s ICBMs (and other ballistic missile and bomber assets) and to obliterate operations centers in key locations including cities such as Moscow or Beijing. The US Minuteman III, located in underground silos, has nuclear warheads (W-78 or W-87) with a yield between 335 and 350 kt. (Compare this to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs with much smaller blast yields. Hiroshima’s uranium bomb, called Little Boy, is estimated around 13 kt., Nagasaki’s Fat Man plutonium bomb 21 kt. or less.)

The US Atomic bombing of Japan was a city busting exercise. The US Minuteman system is primarily aimed at destroying underground silos by creating massive overpressure over top of the buried silos, destroying the underground missiles.

The strategic competition between the US and USSR was over whether either side was trying for a first strike capability, meaning the ability to neutralize the enemy’s nuclear strike capability. The US always contended it was not aiming for a first strike system, and often accused the Russians as trying to do so.

Tactical nuclear weapons were originally thought of as a way for smaller NATO forces to stop a Soviet attack in Europe based on the image of tens of thousands of Warsaw Pact forces including tanks, armored fighting vehicles and troop transports, and massive artillery flowing through the Fulda Gap into Germany and the heart of NATO. Tactical nuclear weapons, including land systems like the Honest John and the Lance missile, and nuclear gravity bombs delivered by NATO aircraft, were supposed to block a Warsaw Pact mass attack.

The value of tactical nuclear weapons was greatly diminished by the build up, on the Soviet side, of short and intermediate range ballistic missile systems that could knock out almost all of NATO’s military assets and destroy major cities. Perhaps the most worrisome development in the 1980s was Russia’s SS-20 mobile intermediate range ballistic missile that threatened Europe. It carried a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. Europe had no air defenses to deal with the SS-20, and still lacks integrated air defenses almost half a century later. The SS-20 was scrapped (along with the Pershing II) under the INF treaty. But modern cruise missiles like the Islander, used heavily in Ukraine, have replaced it. Iskander can be equipped with nuclear warheads with yields in the range of 50 kt.

At its peak the US had a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, mostly tactical. In 1967, the United States nuclear weapons stockpile reached a total of 31,255 warheads. The U.S. weapons included nuclear artillery shells (like the 155mm and 8-inch projectiles), short-range ballistic missiles (such as Honest John, Sergeant, and Corporal), anti-submarine rockets, nuclear depth charges, surface-to-air missile warheads (like Nike Hercules), atomic demolition munitions (ADMs), and thousands of tactical gravity bombs deployed with dual-capable aircraft in Europe and Asia. Today the US has deployed some 100 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe (including Turkey). These weapons can be launched by designated US fighter aircraft and from aircraft belonging to some NATO partners.

Russia has fewer tactical nuclear warheads in its arsenal. While the numbers are far from reliable, the Russians probably have 1,500 to 1,900 warheads but these can equip a greater variety of land, sea and air platforms. China has even fewer, although numbers are hard to come by. Instead China has focused on ballistic missiles (short, medium intercontinental). From the mid-1980s the US paid minimal attention to China’s nuclear arsenal, but that is rapidly changing as China could mount credible threats against US allies and friends in the region, including the growingly volatile confrontation brewing over Taiwan.

We do not, of course, know what the latest Pentagon assessment of US nuclear forces will recommend. But the Pentagon does understand that the Russians are growingly frustrated with the SMO in Ukraine and attacks by swarms of Ukrainian drones on sensitive targets inside Russia. President Putin has warned that Ukraine has opened a pandora’s box in its drone and missile attacks on Russian territory. The Russians also are warning NATO countries, especially the UK, that its active participation with Ukraine targeting Russian cities could mean war with Russia and its consequences.

Relations between Russia and the UK are deteriorating. In July Russia recalled its UK ambassador and is not replacing him. Meanwhile the US has not made any effort to pull back from the escalating confrontation between America’s key NATO ally and Russia, leaving it to the Russians to take the next step. Nor has Washington apparently pressured Ukraine to de-escalate their drone and missile war with Russia.

Will this lead to either Russia or NATO to consider using so-called tactical nuclear weapons? The Pentagon clearly is worried.

The reason for the long deployment traces to a lack of deployable aircraft carriers. Despite 11 US aircraft carriers in service, the Lincoln was made to stay on station because there was no easy replacement available. The problem meant that most US carriers were being repaired, or crews needed training, or both. Thus most of the fleet was grounded and deterrence was gravely weakened as a result. With the return to port of the Lincoln, the carrier problem has grown even worse and deterrence further compromised.

The Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) has long been regarded as a highly successful aircraft carrier and the ship received many awards for performance and excellence over the years. The carrier was commissioned in 1989 and features two nuclear reactors.

Were the complaints legitimate? There is clear evidence that conditions on the carrier were deteriorating, important maintenance had been deferred, and at sea resupply of the ship was irregular and slow at best.

The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier serving as the flagship for Carrier Strike Group 3 (CSG-3). Though its deployment was originally slated to conclude around May 2026, it was extended indefinitely to support ongoing operations, including the enforcement of maritime restrictions and air-defense missions in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

The Lincoln includes Carrier Air Wing 9 (CVW-9). It operates strike fighter squadrons flying F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, F-35C Lightning IIs, electronic attack aircraft (EA-18G Growlers), and early-warning turboprops (E-2 Hawkeyes), alongside MH-60R/S Seahawk helicopters. Supporting it is Destroyer Squadron 21 (DESRON 21) consisting of Guided-missile destroyers providing layered air defense (AEGIS), anti-submarine capabilities, and land-strike options.

Onboard there are 3,200 sailors responsible for operating the nuclear reactors, navigation, engineering, maintenance, and daily shipboard functions. In addition there are 2,480 personnel (including pilots, maintenance crews, and support specialists) assigned to manage and service the aircraft on the carrier. There also are the crews of the destroyers and other ships part of the carrier task force. Destroyer Squadron 21 includes the USS Spruance, USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., and USS O’Kane , each with 300 to 400 crew. A carrier task force also includes one or two nuclear attack submarines.

Total personnel strength across the entire Carrier Strike Group usually falls between 6,500 and 7,500 officers and sailors.

While some crew onboard the Task Force ships other than the carrier can, and sometimes are, rotated, carrier personnel are not rotated. There are no backup crews to run the carrier.

Going as far back as the 1960s, the US Navy experimented with rotating crews as opposed to rotating hulls. In the early 2000s the Navy experimented with a Sea Swap program, only to find it problematic administratively and operationally. The Navy does swap out crews on submarines (Blue Gold system), and the Navy can sometimes rotate ships in a carrier task force (but not the carrier). Lurking behind the theory of swap outs are two realities: Navy recruitment falls short on adding qualified sailors even while eligible crew members leave the service; training is said to be far behind operational requirements, either because of a lack of capable personnel, or not having enough trainers. Recent reports (2025) say that the Navy is about 20,000 crew short.

Beyond a shortage of personnel, the Navy is short on aircraft carriers. In 1991 during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 (Battle Force Zulu), when an unprecedented four aircraft carriers operated simultaneously inside the Persian Gulf including the USS Midway (CV-41, retired in 1997), USS Ranger (CV-61, decommissioned 1993), USS America (CV-66, decommissioned 1996) and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), the US today has only three carriers at sea. These are the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS George H.W. Bush, and the USS George Washington. On August 22nd or shortly thereafter, the Lincoln will be heading back to North Island, San Diego where it will undergo maintenance. The George Washington, which is homeported at Fleet Activities Yokosuka in Yokosuka, Japan, is now enroute to to replace the Abraham Lincoln, leaving the entire Pacific region without an aircraft carrier task force. At the present time there are no US Carriers in the North or South Atlantic, the Caribbean, or the Mediterranean.

By law the US Navy is required to have 11 aircraft carriers. Most of those currently in service are Nimitz-class carriers. Its flagship, the USS Nimitz is scheduled for retirement in 2027, followed by the USS Eisenhower in 2030 (at its retirement date it will have served for 53 years). The newer Ford class carriers, the first to feature electronic (not steam) catapults, are supposed to begin replacing Nimitz carriers. The first of the lot, the USS Ford is is currently in port undergoing major maintenance following a 326-day deployment including extensive structural repairs to address damage caused by a major fire in the ship’s main laundry spaces that occurred back on March 12. Probably two carriers (not the Ford) currently in port could be activated in a crisis.

It isn’t clear how President Trump’s directive on steam catapults will impact the Ford-class carrier program.

The Lincoln carrier is the recipient of many awards including the Arleigh Burke Award where the carrier was recognized as the most improved command in the Pacific Fleet, the Navy E-Ribbon for battle effectiveness, and the Captain Edward F. Ney Memorial Award for food service excellence. The Lincoln also won the retention excellence award multiple times, demonstrating that over the years it maintained strong crew morale. The fact that its canteen food services was highly regarded in the past could indicate either the current problems were linked to supply shortages and not to food preparation, or the performance of the food service staff has deteriorated. It is unlikely there was a food service performance deficit: competition for food service excellence in the Navy and other military services is very strong.

The Lincoln is likely to spend many months, perhaps longer, under repairs when it reaches San Diego. Naval shipyards face severe capacity constraints and backlogs. When a carrier like the Lincoln accumulates accelerated wear-and-tear on catapults, arresting gear, flight deck infrastructure, and engineering plants, standard maintenance periods frequently stretch from several months to over half a year (and can extend much longer if deep depot-level overhauls or combat system upgrades are simultaneously due).

If aircraft carriers and naval task forces remain critical to US power protection and to deterrence, then the Navy needs to step up efforts at sailor recruitment and training, as well as improving carrier maintenance both at sea and in home port. Significant investment is needed. The US Navy should be able to keep more than two or three carriers operational at any time and ought not to have to scramble if there is a national emergency.

The recent battlefield record helps us understand the current situation. The Abrams turned out to be something of a failure when deployed in small numbers in Ukraine. Out of the original 31 tanks sent by the United States, open-source intelligence tracking and defense assessments indicate that a vast majority—approaching or exceeding 25 to 27 vehicles—have been documented as destroyed, severely damaged, or abandoned/captured.

Similar bad results came for the German-designed Leopard (all models) and the British Challenger 2. Over 70+ Leopard 2s (various models like the 2A4 and 2A6) were pledged and delivered by European partners (including Germany, Poland, Canada, Sweden, Spain, and others). Open-source trackers (like Oryx) and military analyses confirm that at least a couple of dozen Leopard 2s have been visually confirmed as destroyed, abandoned, or heavily damaged, maybe more. Earlier Leopard models suffered even higher losses.

Out of the 14 Challenger 2 British tanks originally donated by the United Kingdom to Ukraine in 2023, open-source intelligence trackers (such as Oryx) and defense reports confirm that multiple units have been lost or destroyed in combat. How many, exactly, isn’t known. The tanks were, in any case, hard to support and its non-standard ammunition (120mm rifled as opposed to NATO’s 120mm smooth bore) was a supply problem, already complicated by poor logistical support and inexperience in servicing western hardware.

In Ukraine western main battle tanks proved vulnerable to FPV drones and anti-tank weapons, plus landmines and other kinetic weapons. Tanks were generally too heavy for muddy roads and fields, lacked adequate armor and were not equipped with active protection systems.

The new version of the Abrams is supposed to get around some of the problems of current-day tanks. It will be far lighter than the existing Abrams, which weighs between 64 and 66 metric tons (71 short tons). It will scrap the existing turbine power plant for a hybrid power pack (although lithium batteries add a new vulnerability). It will have “built in” active protection. The tank turret will no longer be manned, and the tank will (for the first time) have an autoloader (a standard equipment on Russian tanks).

We won’t know much more about the survivability of the “new” Abrams for many years, as the design itself still is unproven and the Army has no combat experience with the new model, even prototypes.

Meanwhile tanks have suffered significant attrition in the Ukraine war and there is some question whether a manned heavy tank, no matter how sophisticated, can live and be effective on the modern battlefield.

What Tanks Bring to the Battlefield

Tank operations have not evolved too far since World War II. The main use is to rapidly punch through heavily fortified enemy lines, trench networks, and prepared defenses where light infantry and wheeled vehicles stall. A tank combines heavy composite armor, all-terrain mobility, and a large-caliber cannon that can fire high-explosive or kinetic-energy rounds to demolish concrete bunkers, pillboxes, and enemy armor with pinpoint certainty. This creates immediate physical and psychological shock among opposing forces.

Tanks are typically used in combined tank and infantry operations and modern tanks are increasingly networked to make them more effective. Tanks play a significant role anytime there is a battlefield breakthrough because they can break up enemy formations using their firepower and mobility.

One of the facts of life for Russia, Ukraine and for NATO is that battle tanks will play a reduced role in any realistic scenario of a future war in Europe. Europe simply has too few tanks, most widely dispersed, to add much offensive weight to the battlefield. The US would have to ship Abrams tanks from inventory and get them forward to battle zones, a major logistical challenge. The poor record of all NATO tank platforms suggests that current generation tanks probably cannot successfully withstand the combined arms of a well-equipped adversary.

The Russians are not in much better shape. Their tank losses in the Ukraine war have significantly depleted Russian war reserves. The loss of experienced and well-trained tank operators is also a limiting factor on Russia, especially if Russia’s leaders decide to expand the Ukraine war into eider war in Europe. With half their active army tied down in Ukraine, and with armor supplies limited, predictions that Russia will fight in Europe soon seem unconvincing. Russia losses of tank crews estimates place total tank crew casualties (killed, wounded, or captured) in the 10,000 to 12,000+ range.

Active Protection Systems

Most European, American and Russian tanks used in Ukraine do not have active protection systems (APS). The US has bought around 400 Israeli-made Trophy active protection systems for Abrams tanks, but (so far as is known), none of the tanks supplied to Ukraine were so-equipped. Very recently, the Russians have been shipping the Arena-M APS on tanks to be deployed in Ukraine. At present not much is known about how effective Arena-M is in that war and there are only a handful of Arena-M equipped tanks in the field so far.

Israel originally developed the first successful APS to deal with Russian anti-tank weapons. Trophy was designed to destroy these weapons before they could explode and damage or destroy a tank. Trophy has a reported operational success rate exceeding 90% to 95%. Since its first combat interception in 2011 and extensive use across multiple conflicts in Gaza and other high-intensity environments, it has successfully thwarted hundreds of incoming projectiles.

Trophy recently has been upgraded to make it capable against drone threats, by improving detection and tracking and making Trophy more capable against drop-down FPV drones. This is still a work in progress and, as Israeli companies are demonstrating, needs to be combined with other counter-drone technologies including jammers, cope cages, nets and emerging technology to deal with fiber optic drone threats.

Future Combat

It is clear that modern battle tank tactics must be revised to deal with modern battlefield threats, especially suicide drones used in large numbers. The shortcoming of Arena-M, for example, is that once it exhausts its ammunition it cannot be reloaded in the field, leaving the tank vulnerable to multiple FPV drone strikes. Estimates are that between 10 and 20 FPV drone hits will severely damage or destroy a tank.

Another Arena-M problem (less so with Trophy) is that it intercepts threats very close to the tank hull, meaning that a lot of shrapnel envelops the tank and the area around it. This makes close coordination with infantry nearly impossible.

Given today’s technology and the evolution of the battlefield, today dominated by drones and fire and forget weapons, the use of manned heavy tanks as frontline weapons may no longer be feasible because of the vulnerability of the platform and the loss of competent and experienced tank operators.

While there are many experiments with robotic platforms to supplement or replace tanks, neither the US, Europe or Russia have firmly committed to them. The US Army, for example, is looking for networked, cheaper, semi-autonomous robotic combat vehicles that act as force multipliers, absorbing the highest risks of scouting, logistics, and breakthrough assaults.

One of the technologies likely to be used is autonomous vehicle sensors and software from civilian applications such as taxis and trucking routes. Top companies include Waymo and Zook (Amazon), Baidu (China) and Tesla. The challenge is to convert battlefield experience (including the lack of roadways and the challenge of automatically categorizing threats) with the technology developed for commercial use. Self-driving technology will have to become self-protection technology capable of recognizing and destroying threats.

Given the rise of AI, the significant improvement of sensors, and the potential to coordinate robotic systems with overhead loitering surveillance drones, fully robotic drones with firepower from guns and missiles could soon revolutionize the battlefield yet again.

The best face to put on the situation is that some in the Pentagon leaked information that US stockpiles of critical weapons were dangerously depleted. The urgency in the leak came from the possible renewal of hostilities against Iran and the fear that it would become close to impossible to defend against Iranian missile and drone strikes if supplies ran out. Others think the leaks were inspired by Iran war opponents trying to scuttle a decision to resume attacks against Iran.

In any case, the metrics are the metrics and they are not good.

The supply shortage in the Iran war took place because US production of weapons fell behind current needs. The US emptied its war supplies supporting Ukraine, without accounting for what would happen if the shelves were empty.

Two of the most important land-based air defense systems, THAAD and Patriot, reportedly are in dangerously short supply. U.S. and allied forces have expended close to 80% of total U.S. THAAD interceptor stocks relative to pre-war inventory levels. At least two to three AN/TPY-2 X-band radars—the primary radar component for the THAAD system—have been confirmed damaged or destroyed in Middle Eastern host countries following Iranian targeted strike operations including the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base (Jordan) where a U.S. Army forward-deployed AN/TPY-2 radar was destroyed by a drone strike; at the Prince Sultan Air Base (Saudi Arabia) where high-resolution satellite imagery confirmed an AN/TPY-2 radar array and its support shelter sustained heavy fire damage from a precision strike, disabling the unit’s tracking capabilities, and in the UAE at al-Ruwais where additional strikes targeted radar facilities tied to the regional THAAD network near al-Ruwais, causing operational degradation.

Meanwhile, Patriot air defense systems operated by U.S. and allied forces have sustained both physical damage and operational degradation. In Bahrain satellite imagery confirmed that Iranian precision strikes hit and destroyed key components of a U.S.-supplied Patriot battery at Riffa Air Base, alongside damage to hardened structures at the site. Defense assessments (including analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies) highlight that coalition forces expended approximately 65% of their total PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptor inventories. The U.S. entered recent operations in the Middle East with an estimated total of over 2,300 to 2,500 PAC-3 interceptors. Over 1,500 PAC-3 interceptors have been expended in defense against ballistic missiles and drone salvos, maybe more. Distributed across active U.S. Army Patriot batteries, 800 remaining rounds average out to roughly 13 PAC-3 interceptors per battery—enough to load only about two launchers out of a standard 6-to-8 launcher battery setup. An additional 400 older PAC-2 interceptors remain in reserve, though these rely on blast-fragmentation rather than “hit-to-kill” kinetic impact, making them less effective against advanced ballistic threats.

PAC-3 Patriot interceptors are made by Lockheed in Camden, Arkansas. Lockheed produces around 600 rounds per year although under new US government contracts Lockheed is working to expand production. There are, however, a number of bottlenecks including production of the advanced seeker head for the missiles (made by Boeing) and manufacture and curing of the missile’s dual-pulse solid fuel rocket engines.

Boeing’s Huntsville, Alabama plant is the sole manufacturer of the active Ka-band millimeter-wave radar seeker for the PAC-3 MSE. The end-to-end lead time for a PAC-3 MSE interceptor is roughly 24 months for missile assembly and up to 30 months for component procurement and propellant curing. A seeker ordered today takes over two years to clear testing, integration at Lockheed Martin, and field deployment.

Global demand for Patriot interceptors (combining PAC-2 GEM-T and PAC-3) stands at a backlog of over 4,300 rounds—representing roughly 7 years of output at pre-surge production rates.

The U.S. Army’s inventory of MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) is virtually depleted, following sustained operational expenditures in West Asia and military transfers to Ukraine. Reports based on internal Pentagon data indicate that U.S. forces have fired more than 1,300 ATACMS since early 2026, leaving the overall inventory at “virtually zero” or “rock bottom”. ATACMS production has been phased out and is being (slowly) replaced by PrSM, a longer range guided missile. PrSM is still in low rate initial production. From an operational point of view, until PrSM ramps up production, the army cannot support the precision-missile part of the HIMARS system. This means no more supplies either for Ukraine, the Persian Gulf or sensitive locations, especially Taiwan and Korea. ATACMS forms a core component of South Korea’s Kill Chain and Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) frameworks—part of the military’s “Three-Axis” strategy to conduct rapid, precision counterbattery strikes against North Korean long-range artillery, bunker complexes, and missile sites near the DMZ. The US Marines also thought they could use ATACMS to stop a naval invasion of Taiwan, but without supplies this isn’t possible.

155mm Ammunition

The global supply of 155mm artillery shells remains under extreme strain. The 155mm artillery shell is widely considered the single most important heavy ground-fires munition in modern land warfare. Standardized across NATO and allied militaries, it serves as the backbone of tactical and operational fire support.

Years of high-intensity consumption in Ukraine, operational usage in West Asia, and multi-national stockpiling efforts have drawn down Western inventories to historic lows. Over the past four years, the U.S. War Department has drawn down its 155mm reserves by over 3.6 million rounds—with over 3 million transferred to Ukraine, 112,000 used for internal training/testing, and 218,000 transferred via Foreign Military Sales (FMS). A new $469 million automated facility in Mesquite, Texas (operated by General Dynamics OTS) was intended to forge 30,000 projectile bodies per month. The OTS contract was halted after three years and the three new manufacturing plants in Mesquite failed to produce a single round. The US Army is trying to work with a new contractor for 155mm shells, but it is years away from expanding manufacturing much beyond what existing factories produce.

Implications

The 155mm debacle is just one of many roadblocks that will slow US rearmament. There are plenty of other problems including critical supplies, critical materials, sunset components, production bottlenecks, and significant skilled labor-shortage issues.

Meanwhile the US is trying to patch up its procurement system and throw money at the shortages. If this ends up in another 155mm debacle, the implications are grave.

Optimistically, manufacturing adequate supply inventories will require around 5 to 10 years and in some cases for major systems (ships, submarines for example) a lot longer. On balance, the US will be in a weapons’ deficit for at least a decade.

The lack of enough military supplies will severely compromise US security policy in the years ahead. If key allies are unable, unwilling or too slow in building up their own stockpiles, critical alliances will be compromised to the point of becoming nonfunctional. US potential adversaries will almost certainly test the United States, jacking up pressure along the fault lines of the international system. Results could include the complete collapse of Ukraine, a Chinese military operation against Taiwan, or efforts by North Korea to gain a stranglehold over South Korea. The US may find its presence on the peninsula too dangerous to be continued as US forces stationed there face a nuclear threat.

The US still has some significant assets. The US retains strong, superior airpower still unmatched by China and Russia. American command and control systems are significantly improved, and are being augmented by artificial intelligence and better sensors. The US leads most other countries in battlefield systems integration. But, while trying to catch up, US land forces remain short on critical supplies such as anti tank weapons and artillery and are behind in fielding tactical and mid-range strike drones. The Navy looks capable on paper, but the fleet is ageing, new construction is weak and slow, and reliance on aircraft carriers remains an issue. If China proliferates its counter-carrier weapons to its allies and friends, the US fleet could find itself in real trouble. Even US carriers in far-distant Guam are at risk. The US relies on a sea triad made up of carriers, Arleigh Burke class destroyers with AEGIS air defense systems, and nuclear attack and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). It takes 7 to 12 years to build a single nuclear submarine.

In addition, the US has failed in protecting US defense systems and technologies from compromise. Sloppy or non-existing security measures over the past three decades have left US systems at severe risk, and there is no sign whatsoever that Washington has any incentive to plug the leaks and punish the transgressors. This failure amounts to a massive scandal. There isn’t a Chinese military system that has not benefited from ripping off American technology. The only real differentiator is China is much better at industrializing weapons than the United States, and light years ahead of Europe.

It is easy to forget that US power is mainly predicated on expeditionary forces, something like the UK in World War 1 and World War 2. Expeditionary forces need to be constantly supported and supplied. In World War 1 including the Battle of Mons and the Battle of Le Cateau—the small, professional force of roughly 80,000 men, the UK expeditionary army was nearly exhausted by the end of 1914, though it successfully helped stop the German advance at the First Battle of the Marne. Britain paid a very high price, particularly in France and Belgium. 887,858 total military deaths and over 1.6 million wounded, with the vast majority of these European theater casualties occurring on the Western Front in France and Flanders.

In World War 2 Britain’s expeditionary force fared poorly. During the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk and the campaign in France, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) suffered roughly 66,000 to 68,000 total casualties—including around 11,000 killed, 14,000 wounded, and over 41,000 captured or missing. They also abandoned nearly all their heavy equipment, trucks, and tanks.

The US does not have a separate expeditionary army or, looked at another way, the US Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force are almost entirely expeditionary by design. The US maintains troops in Europe, the Middle East, in Korea and Japan and keeps bases outside the United States for land, air and naval forces. In terms of fighting strength, the US has around 160,000 to 175,000 troops stationed outside the United States, with the most important located in Europe, South Korea and Japan. A significant setback at any of these locations would be, under any circumstance, extremely painful. The US would either have to try and reinforce deployed forces, or rescue them. In an era of missiles and drones, getting supplies and reinforcements through will be a significant challenge.

Under current conditions, the US needs to redesign its defense posture, significantly improve defense production and augment vital stockpiles, and evaluate how it can support US allies and US interests during the coming decade of supply shortages. At the same time, America’s allies have to do vastly more for their own security simply because the coming decade is fraught with risk and danger.

The next decade could be the most challenging for peace and security since the end of the Cold War.

Russia and Ukraine often tout new products sold to the public as wunderwaffen. Soon it becomes clear that their role in the war is minimal, and the advertising moves on.

Russia has launched two new products that promise a lot. But can they deliver?

The first, and perhaps the most important, is a new satellite communications system called Rassvet 3 (”Dawn”). It is Russia’s answer to Starlink, Elon Musk’s fabulous network of between 10,870 to 10,890 satellites. Ukrainian frontline forces rely heavily on Starlink for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR). It enables live video streaming from reconnaissance and strike drones, real-time fire adjustments for artillery and rocket systems, and encrypted coordination between unit commanders and troops in the trenches.

The Russians were using Starlink until Elon Musk shut them down in early February, 2026 by implementing a combination of geofencing and terminal “whitelisting” to cut off Russian usage.

This forced Russia into trying to replicate broadband battlefield connectivity some other way. Initially the Russians turned to “mesh networks” --essentially linking platforms (mainly UAVs) to provide broadband connectivity. To achieve this, Russia scaled up the integration of small, digital mesh modems (frequently using frequency-hopping spread spectrum / FHSS technology in the 1.3–1.5 GHz band) into strike and reconnaissance drones.

Mesh networks on drones and on ground nodes work, but not without problems. They are generally limited in coverage, so different mesh networks need to be maintained to provide coverage. Because signals are processed and reprocessed, delays happen (called latency). Latency is a very bad thing if you are guiding a suicide drone to a target or warning about an incoming threat. Mesh networks also continually transmit, so the enemy can easily detect them, and respond either with jamming or by destroying the node.

Starlink, because it uses hundreds of satellites at a time, has very little latency (20 – 50 ms) and the multiplicity of satellites makes jamming difficult. The most common jamming approach is to blank out signals in a specific battle area provided there are capable jammers available. (Starlink uses very high radio frequencies typically used by radars, including the Ku and Ka bands. Starlink also links satellites with laser communications, which are not jammable.)

As Ukraine began to attack Russian drones with innovative technology such as the Zirka counter drone which uses artificial intelligence and, once launched, operates autonomously, the Russians could not be sure mesh networks would survive.

This led to the development of the Rassvet-3 (”Dawn”} satellite system. The first 12 to 15 satellites are already operational and Russia is rushing to build portable ground terminals so Rassvet can work on the battlefield.

Russia’s 12 to 15 satellites do not even come close to Starlink’s 10,000 in orbit. In fact, as of today, the coverage over Ukraine is around two to three communication windows per day, each lasting between 1 and 1.5 hours. This is enough to work out bugs and test the satellite array, but not enough to provide sufficient coverage to meet the Russian army’s tactical needs. Russia launched another 16 satellites on July 19, but we do not yet have information on them. Russia’s goal is to have 156 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026.

Like Starlink, Rassvet-3 (which is in a somewhat higher orbit) uses Ka and Ku bands and supports inter-satellite laser communications (demonstrating data speeds up to 10 Gbit/s in testing) and support the 5G NTN (Non-Terrestrial Network) standard for direct satellite-to-cellular connectivity. Rassvet provides encrypted military data relay, drone command-and-control links, and secure backhaul—filling the operational gap left after Russian access to Starlink was blocked.

Rassvet was developed by the private Russian technology firm Bureau 1440 (a subsidiary of the Yadro technology group) under the government’s broader Sfera space program, the project has been elevated to a top strategic priority for Moscow. YADRO is the flagship subsidiary and primary revenue generator of IKS Holding (ИКС Холдинг). IKS Holding is funding ~329 billion rubles (~$4 billion USD) of the total budget out of its own commercial capital, parent revenues, and private credit lines. Telecom giant MegaFon initially seeded the project in 2020 with 6 billion rubles, and Russian banking giant VTB Group acquired a 15% stake in 2021 for 2 billion rubles before the project was restructured under IKS Holding. The Russian federal government committed 102.8–116 billion rubles ($1.26–$1.3 billion USD) through its national “Data Economy” roadmap (”Advanced Space Systems and Services for the Period up to 2030”). Federal funds directly subsidize launch vehicle integration aboard Soyuz-2 rockets via Roscosmos, orbital frequency licensing, and manufacturing infrastructure for subscriber ground terminals.

The Rassvet project, therefore, is unique from an ownership and financial perspective and represents how Russia is finding ways to support high priority defense programs combining private sector and public investment.

Bureau 1440 also is charged with manufacturing terminals. Many of the components for the terminals are sourced in China and are COTS (commercial off the shelf systems). Terminal manufacturing could be a bottleneck for the Russians.

Because Rassvet is still in early days and not yet in widespread use, it remains to be seen if the system can meet its goals and provide the functionality the Russian army needs for Ukraine. If it is successful, the Russians will have a functional alternative to Starlink to support military operations in Ukraine. Thus, the Rassvet project is real and not advertising. Once fully functional (end of 2026 to mid-2027), Russia will be able to match Starlink on the battlefield.

Jamming Starlink Over Russian Territory

Ukraine has been hitting critical infrastructure in Russia both to retaliate for Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and military targets, and as part of a Ukrainian effort to embarrass the Russian government with heavy costs at home that, the campaign appears to hope, forcing the Russians to the bargaining table with major concessions Ukraine could potentially accept. (Russia has retaliated in part by destroying gas stations in Ukraine. There are localized fuel shortages in Russia because of Ukrainian attacks.)

While the Russians are able to shoot down many Ukrainian drones, enough of them get through and past Russian air defenses to create serious trouble for the Russian government, especially as Russian leaders keep emphasizing they are winning the war.

Independent analysts say that in the Moscow region and Crimea, where the Russians have layered air defenses, between 80% – 90% Ukrainian drones are Intercepted. In heavily defended airspace (such as around Moscow or major military hubs), Russian air defenses and EW jamming stop the vast majority of incoming long-range UAVs. In less well defended places, a higher percentage get through.

Since most Ukrainian long range drones use both GPS and Starlink, Russia has been seeking to improve its jamming capability, understanding that jamming Starlink is challenging.

Russia is introducing a new jammer system dedicated to jamming Starlink. Called Volna (”Wave”) Kupol (”Dome”) Garant, it was developed by the Crimean-based firm Rossiysky Kupol LLC. Rossiysky Kupol (often styled in Russian media as AO Русский Купол or Russian Dome). Kupol is a Crimean-based defense electronics contractor that has emerged as one of Russia’s primary private entities developing tactical counter-drone and counter-satellite electronic warfare (EW) hardware. Kupol sells hardware directly to localized command structures, regional administrations, and defense units rather than going through traditional long-term state military acquisition pipelines. (US defense officials should take note of this sales approach as it eliminates red tape and delays in getting a product from the factory to the soldier. It also may account for lower cost by removing testing and evaluation processes that often are costly, although there is some risk incurred in doing so.)

Kupol features a trailer-mounted uplink satellite jammer explicitly tailored to disable Starlink receivers overhead. Kupol is designed to form a wide RF suppression shield against NATO-standard and commercial Ukrainian drone frequencies over a 20 km radius. The Volna Kupol Garant array uses eight parabolic dish antennas distributed across six mobile trailers. Each dish is enclosed under a protective, egg-shaped composite radome. Rather than electronically shifting the beam across a flat array phase matrix (as AESA does), each dish uses physical motor mounts to mechanically rotate and track low-Earth orbit (LEO) Starlink satellites as they move across the sky.

Kupol chose not to use AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Arrays) technology for its jammers although AESA would have been preferable. AESA arrays excel at multi-beam agility and rapid electronic scanning without moving parts, but they require advanced Gallium Nitride (GaN) or Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) Transmit/Receive (T/R) modules—components that are scarce and heavily sanction-restricted in Russia. However, while relying on far older technology, Kupol claims it has achieved the focused Effective Radiated Power (ERP) required to reach LEO satellites (~500 km altitude) using simpler, commercially available RF components.

The Kupol problem is the limited coverage of each system, meaning that to protect critical infrastructure these units would need to be positioned close to the protected site. The cost of doing this in a complex, industrialized nation such as Russia, could be prohibitive. Each Kupol unit costs $1.5 million (very little in western terms but a heavy cost if hundreds of units are needed).

There isn’t much information on how effective Kupol is against Starlink. However, the fact that Ukraine has targeted deployed systems suggests Kupol does work. Whether Russia can afford to deploy enough systems, and whether Kupol (a small company) can produce enough systems, are unanswered questions.

It is not likely that Rassvet or Kupol will dramatically change the war in Ukraine in Russia’s favor. But both systems offer solutions and improvements that were lacking. Moreover, both come out of the private sector, demonstrating that independent companies may be best positioned, even in Russia, to develop and manufacture badly needed military equipment.

Netanyahu says the project timeline is ten years.

However, Israel faces significant constraints based on historical precedents and current resource limitations:

- Historical Precedent: While past domestic projects like the Nesher and Kfir saw success, the Lavi project was cancelled in 1987 because soaring costs threatened other critical military programs.

​The Nesher was Israel’s first domestic aircraft based on the French Mirage 5. It used a French Snecma jet engine, but also included Israeli and US components. The Nesher was an effective platform in Israeli services until it was replaced by the Kfir. It also was updated and sold to Argentina and was used with some success against British ships in the Falklands War.

​The Kfir was a Nesher follow-on, this time with more US avionics and with a US General Electric J-79 powerplant, the same engine that powered the US Phantom F-4. The Kfir was exported to Columbia, Ecuador, Sri Lanka and the US. Ecuador retired its Kfir fighters in 2012 after 30 years in service. Sri Lanka has seven remaining Kfir aircraft still in service. These were updated and modernized in Israel this year.

​The Lavi never entered operational service. The Lavi project, which was an all weather fourth generation plus platform, incurred heavy cost overruns tying up over half of US foreign assistance funds in the early and mid 1980s. Internally there was opposition to the Lavi in Israel’s army because Lavi was shortchanging important projects including the Merkava tank and air defense systems. At the same time, US companies worried that the Lavi was a low-cost alternative to the F-16 and F-18. US aerospace companies lobbied the Pentagon and Reagan administration to halt funding support for the Lavi. In the end the Israeli cabinet killed Lavi in a dramatic 12 to 11 vote (with one abstention) in 1987.

Later it was claimed Israel sold Lavi technology to China where the technology was allegedly used in China’s J-10 program.

​It is important to note that, despite a growing opposition in and outside Israel over the Lavi program, the US never stopped providing parts and equipment for Lavi.

There is still fallout over the Lavi cancellation which some in Israel regard as a major missed opportunity and damaging to Israel’s aerospace industries. There also is legitimate alarm that Israel’s friends and allies could cut off military supplies at any time, endangering the Jewish state. There is plenty of precedent for that worry. The Obama administration and Biden administration cut off important military supplies to Israel including Hellfire missiles, bombs, JDAM kits, tank ammunition, helicopters and other defense hardware. Similarly the UK recently stopped some 30 vital exports to Israel including parts for the F-16. The French meanwhile have deliberately interfered with supply chains of military hardware going to Israel and have blocked Israel’s access to important industrial defense exhibitions including Eurosatory and the Paris Air Show. Recently, Israel was alarmed by hostile statements from some in the Trump administration, especially Vice President J.D. Vance.

- Power Plant and Supply Chains: Any domestic stealth fighter or UCAV would require a propulsion system from Europe or the United States​, with the US most likely a supplier. A new Israeli fighter would also compete directly with US defense companies like Lockheed​, Boeing and General Dynamics, potentially requiring a US joint venture to mitigate opposition​ or some deal with the US limiting exports.​

- Financial and Industrial Bandwidth: The immense cost could strain the Israeli economy and impact other vital programs, such as air defense systems and smart weapons manufacturing. Furthermore, major defense firms like IAI, Elbit, and Rafael are already heavily burdened with existing orders and current security demands.

The UCAV Alternative

A UCAV platform may be a more realistic option, as Israel is already networking advanced drones with the F-35 (Adir). A UCAV offers significant advantages, including the ability to pull extreme G-loads beyond human endurance and enhanced stealth capabilities by eliminating the cockpit canopy.

While Israel possesses strong ​combat experience, artificial intelligence​ know-how, and systems integration, a UCAV project would still require a US power plant. Additionally, the US is already developing its own “loyal wingman” Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, slated for initial operation around 2030.

​The US “loyal wingman” (F-47) is designed to enhance the combat lethality of the F-35 and de-risk the F-35 against deep high value targets such as air defenses and command and control stations. It also is aimed to later support the emerging NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance) sixth generation fighter that supposedly will replace the powerful F-22.

​F​uture of an Israeli Stealth and UCAV Project

Ultimately, Israel lacks the resources, manufacturing depth, and financing to simultaneously develop a domestic stealth fighter and a new UCAV from scratch. A more viable alternative may involve converting existing platforms into UCAVs. Israel faces critical strategic decisions ahead regarding the future of its local military aerospace manufacturing​, and its leaders will have to see what is affordable and realistic for its military needs and its defense industrial base.

Odds are Israel will not build a stealth fighter from the ground up, and may rethink a UCAV to suit its requirements and cost impact.

The meeting was planned ahead, hence the US and Russian flags were prominently displayed. Yet the discussion was brief: between 35 and 37 minutes. While there were a number of topics, the main focus was Ukraine.

We do not have a readout of the meeting and both Rubio and Lavrov prefer not to disclose what took place in any detail. Even so, there was a dramatic moment when Secretary Rubio told Lavrov that the understanding seemingly reached in Anchorage between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, was dead. According to what Rubio said in a follow on press briefing, Anchorage failed because Ukraine would not accept it. “You can’t have a peace deal,” Rubio said, unless both sides agree to it, and the Ukrainians would not agree to it,” Rubio said.

Rubio went on to say in his press conference that the US still was willing to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but new ideas were needed if there was any possibility of moving forward. At the moment there is nothing new (or even old) on the table.

Anchorage Framework

The US tabled a number of idea in Anchorage and the Russians accepted them, something Mr. Putin represented as important Russian concessions intended to move negotiations forward.

Anchorage covered four main points. The first was a frontline freeze including territorial trade-offs.

The military freeze had two components. In Donbas (the eastern front) Ukraine would pull its forces out of the remaining fortified areas in the Donbas, and Russia would completely pull out of non-annexed northern pockets in Kharkov and Sumy.

In the southern front, the line of control would be frozen in Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions.

The freeze would not resolve the question of the future of these territories, which would be left to future negotiations and agreements.

The second main component of the Trump-Putin discussion was NATO membership for Ukraine. Ukraine has long been promised NATO membership under NATO’s Membership Action Plan. Among the provisions of that plan are for an applicant to meet core democratic standards, holding formal accession talks, and securing unanimous ratification from all current member states. At Anchorage, the US offered either to indefinitely bar or postpone Ukraine’s formal accession into NATO. Neither Putin or Trump apparently discussed security guarantees by various NATO members already agreed, nor did Putin and Trump apparently take up the significant NATO operational presence in Ukraine.

The third component at Anchorage was a US willingness to phase out some unspecified sanctions on Russia including tariffs on Russian energy and trade.

Finally Putin and Trump discussed the status of Russian language use in Ukraine (which the Zelensky government has mostly banned) and safeguards for the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which the Ukrainians regard as subversive.

Anchorage Not a Settlement

Anchorage was tabled by the US as a way to end the fighting and to resolve at least one of Russia’s main concerns, namely Ukraine in NATO. The US proposals did not take up formal boundaries for Russian-annexed territories, nor did it speak to how to prevent future fighting. In short, Anchorage was an initial part of a long term peace process aimed at halting the fighting.

Has Ukraine Gained the Upper Hand in the Fighting?

The Putin-Trump meeting in Anchorage took place during a moment (August, 2025) where the consensus view was Russia was gaining in Ukraine leading to Mr. Trump’s belief that Ukraine should want a deal to avoid future battlefield setbacks.

The reality at the time is that Ukraine resisted and enlisted its European backers to fight Trump.

Since then Ukraine has launched a massive drone war, on the battlefield with FPV (First Person View) drones and against Russian territory using swarms of long range suicide drones. The Ukrainians have targeted Russia’s critical infrastructure including refineries and storage depots, military airfields, air defense installations, even third country ships in the Black Sea, some delivering oil and others supplies. Such attacks have created a gasoline crisis in Russia, and burdened the already fragile Russian economy. Ukraine’s aggressive drone operations are partly a response to Russian targeting of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, and are designed to break morale in Russia and undermine Russia’s leadership credibility, ultimately aimed at gaining a full Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.

There are two significant effects of the Ukrainian campaign. On the battlefield Ukraine has managed to force major changes on the Russian side, leading to much reduced scale military operations to prevent heavy manpower losses, but also significantly slowing Russia’s ability to gain ground. Beyond the battlefield, Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory have demonstrated sophisticated routing and targeting to try and avoid Russian air defenses, most likely with extensive NATO assistance using overhead sensors including satellites. The Russians have increasingly had to rely on volunteer air defense crews and continue to struggle to contain Ukrainian drone attacks. Russia is also retaliating with stepped up operations in Odesa, including port facilities and ships, and against Kiev.

Problems Ahead for Ukraine

While Ukraine has demonstrated some formidable drone capabilities, it is facing some significant issues in terms of supplies that could shift the battlefield in Russia’s favor.

The supply problem breaks down into two parts: the supply of critical parts for Ukrainian drones and the supply of precision weapons including air defense systems. The first primarily involves China; the second the US and, to a lesser extent, Europe.

Kiev fields two distinct drone categories: FPV drones whose role is critical on the battlefield and long range drones aimed at Russian territory and Crimea.

FPV drones are typically plastic or composite quadcopters powered by electric motors. In 2025 Ukraine used around 3 million FPV drones. Current reports suggest Ukraine is using 10 to 15 thousand drones daily. In recent months Russia has been targeting drone manufacturing facilities in Ukraine, as well as warehouses and distribution points, but there is not much hard evidence that Russian operations have meaningfully impacted Ukraine’s use of FPV drones.

Between 85 to 90 percent of the components powering Ukraine’s FPV drones come from China. These include power systems (such as lithium ion cells, high discharge LiPo batteries and power distribution boards), brushless electric motors for propulsion and servos, and electronic speed controllers and flight controller boards, CMOS navigation cameras, thermal sensors, fiber optic dispensors and basic RF transceiver modules.

In addition there are some supply issues for factories in Ukraine and in Europe that are supporting Ukraine. Included here are neodymium rare earth magnets for motors, synthetic graphite for battery anodes, and specialized carbon fiber coming exclusively from China.

Similarly Russia depends on China for its drone supplies. Even the Pentagon has given waivers so US drone producers can support US War Department needs.

Ukraine buys most of its components from third country intermediaries because China, after protests from Russia, restricted its domestic drone makers from directly exporting to Ukraine. But these so-called restrictions are just a way to jack up the price for parts and to enrich friends of the Chinese regime. China has made no effort to account for the millions of parts it is shipping that fuel the war effort. Should China get beyond its usual corruption and clamp down, Ukraine would be out of business on the battlefield.

The long range drones are different since they use gasoline powered engines and there is less dependence on China. Moreover, the quantities are far less. Even so, electronics are important and some of the engines come from China.

The second category are precision weapons and, for Ukraine, especially air defense interceptors. Those supplies are critical, and it may be in the short term irreplaceable. ABC reports that the total US pre-Iran war stockpile of major air defense missile types is estimated at approximately 11,850 units. During the war, between 3,710 and 4,510 munitions were expended — roughly 31–38% of the entire pre-Iran war arsenal. The heaviest consumption fell on JASSM (1,100+), Tomahawk (1,000+), Patriot (1,060–1,430), THAAD (190–290), SM-6 (190–370), SM-3 (130–250), and new PrSM (40–70).

Ukraine does not have Tomahawk, THAAD or SM-6 or SM-3. It has a couple of European air defense systems (although supply is a major issue) and it has Patriot. But a Patriot without interceptor missiles is useless. It is unlikely the US can continue to supply Ukraine other than a handful of interceptors, and even that would take away from urgent needs for our allies in Europe and the Middle East.

In the Middle East the the United States maintains its own forward-deployed Patriot batteries across Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq to protect American personnel and allied bases. In addition the following countries in the region operate Patriot: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Egypt. In addition, NATO (Germany, Greece) operates Patriot systems in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Should the fighting resume with Iran, the number of Patriot interceptors in the region will soon reach critically low levels. This directly impacts Ukraine and its ability to protect key areas, especially Kiev and Odesa.

Ukraine Future

Ukraine probably can ignore peace initiatives that would leave Russian forces on Ukrainian territory, at least for a short while. But the supply crisis is closing in and it will significantly impact Ukraine’s defenses and ability to hold territory and fend off Russian missile and drone attacks. How soon will Ukraine’s situation turn critical? If the fighting resumes in Iran, only a few months for air defenses. If the Chinese crack down on supplies for drones to Ukraine, even sooner.

Meanwhile there are no new ideas for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine conflict.

My beautiful and brilliant wife Shoshana passed away on Thursday afternoon, July 16 after a long struggle with cancer.

It is a great loss to me and to our family and friends.

She was truly a woman of valor and a loving mother and grandmother.

-Steve Bryen

Ukraine will buy 16 Rafale fighter jets and (probably) four SAMP/T NG air defense systems.

The Rafale F4 fighter jet, the latest model, costs between €80 million and €100 million (approximately $87 million to $108 million USD) per copy. The SAMP/T NG system is expensive. For a foreign nation buying a complete, all-inclusive package (including the Ground Fire 300 radar, launchers, command-and-control modules, logistics, training, and initial spare parts), a single SAMP/T NG battery costs between $700 million and $1 billion USD (€650 million to €900 million).

The fighter jets will be supplied with weapons, but which ones and how many were not spelled out.

In addition, no prices were announced for the licenses to produce the Aster 30 interceptor missiles, SCALP Storm Shadow long range cruise missiles, or the AASM glide bomb. It is likely the licensing will be based on a percentage of the commercial value of each item, although that needs clarification.

It isn’t unreasonable to think that the French expect to reap a harvest of between $4 and $8 billion or even more since France will have to supply components and spares.

There are, as they say, not a few problems.

For example, Italy is in line to procure SAMP/T NG units for Italy’s own defense needs. The Italian requirement almost certainly conflicts with the limited French manufacturing capability for SAMP/T systems. Either Italy gets them delivered by 2030, or Ukraine gets them delivered in the same time frame, but not both. Even though the manufacturing consortium, Eurosam, has agreed to increase manufacturing, nothing much is known of the time line or who will finance a production expansion.

Who will pay the bill? Certainly not the French. France will demand that the EU pick up the tab, thus enriching France at the expense of nearly everyone else in Europe. One can predict significant headwinds from European governments who will oppose underwriting the French Republic. Indeed, the lack of finance may turn the entire “deal” into a non-starter when reality smashes into Macron’s face. The only question is how long it will take before there is political pushback on supporting France’s defense industry at the expense (more or less) or everyone else. What France will offer their EU and NATO counterparts is unknown.

Macron, of course, was looking to get one up on Trump, which is the real political basis for the France-Ukraine “deal.” Even the Trump proposal is full of potholes, the biggest one of all being that the Trump administration expected NATO to pay for the Lockheed license for Patriot interceptors. It is unlikely NATO will pay, just as NATO is not likely to underwrite the French deal.

At the end of the day the real loser, of course, is Ukraine. It will be a long time, if ever, a factory in Ukraine is churning out major American or French weapons. The French deal starts out with a whimper, not a bang. Pity poor Emmanuel.

The PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) is the premier hit to kill air defense missile used by the US and by many US allies. It played a major role in the Iran conflict.

The proposed arrangement for Ukraine has two parts: a political agreement to give Ukraine a license to manufacture PAC-3 interceptors; a short term supply of PAC-3 interceptors from US inventory, “to bridge the gap.”

Ukraine is confident it can manufacture PAC-3 missiles under license.

Today the only production of PAC-3 missiles outside the United States is in Japan where Mitsubishi Heavy Industries produces them under license.

The designation “PAC-3 Interceptor” is important. The US is focusing on expanding the production of PAC-3 MSE interceptor missiles, which have significantly greater range and other improvements compared to the PAC-3. While it needs clarification, it appears President Trump offered PAC-3 but not PAC-3 MSE to Ukraine.

The US and Ukraine will soon start “technical talks” where many of the major issues, still undecided, can be addressed.

The MSE variant represents a comprehensive redesign optimized to defeat more complex, faster tactical ballistic missiles and hypersonic threats. There are many changes to the MSE. One of them is to go from a single pulse to a dual pulse rocket motor. The MSE’s motor can ignite its first pulse to clear the launcher and accelerate toward the target area, then coast before igniting a second pulse later in flight. This provides a critical burst of kinetic energy right during the terminal phase, allowing the missile to pull high-G maneuvers against actively evading or high-velocity incoming threats.

It is not clear if the MSE version can defeat Russia’s hypersonic missiles such as the Kinzhal, Zircon or Oreshnik. The PAC-3 version would face problems against the Kinzhal and Zircon and probably not be able to stop the Oreshnik.

The US is struggling to manufacture a significant number of PAC-3 missiles (standard ones and MSE versions). The US Army requested an unprecedented 2,798 PAC-3 MSE interceptors and the Navy requested an additional 405 modified variants for AEGIS ships, both part of the FY 2027 Budget Request. There are serious questions if these procurement targets can be met.

Lockheed Martin is the license holder for the PAC-3 interceptor. However, Lockheed depends on some 400 suppliers including Boeing, which manufactures the all-important sensor package for the missiles and Rocketdyne that makes the rocket engines. Even when there are no supplier problems, it takes Lockheed two years to manufacture a missile. However, many of the suppliers have fallen way behind in producing critical components, including Boeing and Rocketdyne.

Mitsubishi is a solid aerospace company with lots of defense manufacturing experience including meeting US requirements for defense products. At the present time, Mitsubishi produces around the same rate as Lockheed, but in much lower numbers. Last year Mitsubishi delivered 30 PAC-3 MSE interceptors. The company claims it could increase production to 60, but it is prevented from doing so because critical supplies, especially missile seekers from Boeing, are in short supply.

The US has asked Mitsubishi to increase production to 100 missiles assuming supply chain problems are resolved and if Mitsubishi can increase its staff and production capacity.

Keep in mind that typically two PAC-3 interceptors are fired at each target to raise the probability of a kill (although we do not have reliable kill probabilities against different threats). This means Mitsubishi’s annual production is a drop in the bucket given the multiplicity of threats and the proliferation of enemy missiles, cruise missiles and drones.

There are no hard numbers on the currently remaining inventory of PAC-3 missiles in the US inventory. The numbers are classified. All we have are guesstimates.

The US and its Gulf allies fired a large number of PAC-3 missiles in the war with Iran. On top of that Ukraine used large numbers of Patriots to fend off Russian missile and drone attacks.

The US inventory size is variously estimated by defense specialists at around 2,000 to 2,500. Even taking into account the US effort to ramp up manufacturing, the build time and supply issues suggest that the US can’t really augment its inventory significantly before 2028 at the earliest, and more likely not until 2030.

If Ukraine starts from scratch with a Lockheed license, and possibly given some priority in the supply chain (which is not a sure thing), Ukraine can only hope to produce PAC-3 interceptors starting in 2029 to 2030. If the scale is similar to Mitsubishi, and Ukraine can manage the technology demands and produce enough skilled labor, the output will fall far short of Ukraine’s military requirements.

There is a lot of risk in Ukraine producing PAC-3 interceptors. Risks include Russian penetration of manufacturing know-how and technology, theft of critical components, and exposure to attack from Russian missiles and drones. Increasingly Russia is targeting known Ukrainian defense factories, and one would think a PAC-3 production line would be a prime target for the Russians.

There is also a question of who will pay for a Ukrainian factory. The Trump-Zelensky agreement did not cover the financial issue, but the US will be requesting NATO countries to foot the bill.

Ukraine has few options for sophisticated air defenses. Europe has some, but in short supply and with their own set of bottlenecks. There also is increasing resistance in Europe to part with critical air defenses, especially because the US has little of its own to spare and is pulling back from its NATO defense responsibilities. Other possible sources include South Korea, but whether South Korea has a system that can perform as well as Patriot isn’t certain. Another possibility is Israel, but Israel manufactures in partnership with US companies including Lockheed, Raytheon (RTX Corporation) and Boeing, and Israeli supplies are also down because of the recent Iran wars.

The US Army is working on a Low Cost Interceptor (LCI) program which would supplement Patriot and other air defense systems. The project is in a very early stage, but it aimed to produce low cost rocket motors, low cost seekers, cheaper fire control and guidance software, and easier integration for battlefield use.

LCI could be very attractive for Ukraine and Ukraine is in a good position to participate if the US allows foreign companies to be involved in the program (which is essential for it to be successful). It might be a more productive solution for Ukraine and a 4 to 6 year time frame for a possible LCI is about the same as trying to produce small numbers of PAC-3 interceptors domestically.

Many pundits, including some genuine regional experts, have been trying to figure out why Trump abandoned the effort in Iran, embraced the most hated regime in the region and beyond, and is offering billions of dollars as compensation to Iran allegedly in exchange for access to Iran’s enriched uranium (something Iran keeps telling him that it will never happen).

Some think that reports apparently from the CIA and DIA told Trump that America’s great bombing campaign did not really liquidate Iran’s missiles and drones, and that further bombing would not change the situation appreciably. So even though Trump in public said we had crushed the Iranians, his intelligence agencies told him the contrary. Is this what pushed Trump to change course?

Trump shifted from a bombing campaign to a blockade to facilitate negotiations. That was on and off again for a while until Trump gave in to every Iranian demand. Supposedly that was going to reopen the Straits of Hormuz and get the oil flowing from the region. So far, despite Trump signing a strongly pro-Iran agreement, it has not happened.

Trump blundered badly when he let the Iranians also tie any deal to getting Israel to pull out of Lebanon, a conflict started under orders from Tehran that has caused substantial harm in northern Israel. Trump blamed it all on “Bibi” Netanyahu.

Some think that the blockade was causing huge economic harm, especially in Europe (and the Europeans have mainly refused to back the US and Israel in the Iran conflict). These are the same Europeans who expect that the US will defend them in case of conflict with Russia, but who spend a pittance on defense themselves. Europe has a combined GDP of nearly $28 Trillion dollars, compared to the US at $31.9 Trillion, so they have plenty of money (but absurdly small armies). Consider that the US can deploy 200,000 troops simultaneously while Europe probably can deploy 50,000, maybe less (since they have got to get them where they are going and Europe has limited lift capacity). By way of contrast, Russia has deployed around 750,000 in Ukraine.

Europe has voluntarily shut down Russian gas and oil. The Germans also scrapped their nuclear power plants. And someone blew up three quarters of the Nordstream pipeline. There would be no crisis on energy had they not done this.

The pattern of Trump’s behavior in regard to Iran is no different than what he has done in Venezuela, would like to do in Cuba, tried to do in Gaza, and is trying to do in Ukraine.

In Gaza Hamas is still in control and is not disarmed. The entire deal is mostly a fake, and the Gaza problem is not solved so long as Hamas is in control.

In Venezuela there was a real opposition capable of bringing the country back to democracy and purging Venezuela of the corrupt thugs running the place. The thugs are still in power and there are still political prisoners jailed in that country. Venezuela is not free, it is just selling its oil with the assistance of US oil companies. The Maduro group is still running the place (and even paying Maduro’s legal bills in New York). They win. Freedom and democracy takes it on the chin. The opposition has been put back in its hole.

What about Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Crown Prince of Iran? Trump did not support him, never gave him a chance. What about the 40,000 killed by the regime because they wanted to get rid of the Mullahs and the IRGC? Too bad. While the US said it was coming to their aid, it never happened.

The handwriting was on the wall with Venezuela, so there is no surprise here.

The US spent a lot of effort, along with key allies, especially the British, to get rid of Putin and break up Russia, opening it up to divide and rule and capital investment. Didn’t work, at least not yet. So now we and our European allies are arranging the bombing of Russia, perhaps to force the Russians into a deal. Meanwhile we have side talks with Russia on economic incentives.

Trump’s deal with Iran, as absurd as it is, is popular among voters and Trump’s presidential stock has gone up in public opinion. His deal with Venezuela is not seen as negative. The Gaza deal is a bust. The Ukraine war continues. Americans care about gasoline prices and the cost of food, not about other countries.

In the long term President Trump has reinforced geopolitical instability and taught a harsh lesson to those who believed he was a modern-day savior and warrior against totalitarianism. The US image is deeply harmed, maybe irrevocably.

Drones have not only become a potent battlefield weapon but they also have deep strike capability. Ukraine has used them to stymie Russia on the battlefield and to destroy high value targets on Russian territory, including critical infrastructure and important military installations. The Ukrainians have scored victories against Russian strategic bombers and AWACS aircraft, destroyed long range radars that are part of Russia’s nuclear defense force, and blown up oil installations and port facilities as well as significant parts of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine’s use of uncrewed surface vehicles at sea has allowed Ukraine to strike Russian ships, port infrastructure, and Russian bases, such as Sevastopol.

Typically Ukraine launches drone attacks in waves and swarms. To draw off enemy fire, mixed into the lethal drones are decoy drones that are mainly glued together plywood and plastic machines. The Russians do the same thing, although Russian attacks deep in Ukraine also include long range ballistic and cruise missiles.

Drone war is not confined to Russia and Ukraine. Iran has launched large numbers of drones, many of them aimed at US military operations and the US fleet operating in the Gulf Region. Between February and March, 2026 Iran fired around 1,000 to 1,500 drones at US and allied facilities and infrastructure, including political targets, and at US Navy and Marine ships at sea. Iran has claimed it hit the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72 aircraft carrier)—with dense salvos of drones and missiles, fiercely denied by CENTCOM. The Houthis in Yemen have repeatedly claimed to have hit and forced the retreat of the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea using long-range kamikaze drones. The Houthis have also used drones, including uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) against commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and have done so repeatedly.

Hezbollah also is using drones in unprecedented numbers, particularly in the northern Israel and southern Lebanon areas. Hezbollah utilizes sophisticated tactics, gets lots of operational help from Iran, and increasingly deploys fiber optic drones. Hezbollah’s drone supply chain is a highly decentralized, multi-tiered network. While Iran is the absolute strategic architect, the actual acquisition of parts relies on global dual-use procurement pipelines, front companies, and domestic workshops hidden inside Lebanon.

Drone interception rates, claimed and real, are insufficient to balance the damage that can be caused by a drone. Russia, for example, is able to stop around 70% to 85% of attacking drones, facing around 150 to 300 drones over its territory every night. The US and Israel probably do better statistically, but the drones that get through are proving to be very costly and, in Israel’s case, damaging to citizens and soldier’s morale.

Meanwhile, the US has failed to shut down Russia’s, Iran’s and proxy’s supply networks (and in fact has hardly tried to do so). Russian and Iranian weapons often are found stuffed with US components along with myriad parts from Asia (particularly but not exclusively) China. Instead the US and its allies and friends are focusing on counter-drone systems as a solution to the drone challenge.

Counter Drone Technology

Counter drone technology is evolving very quickly, but there are significant hurdles countering both long range and short range threats.

Drone Killers

Both Ukraine and Russia have developed drone killers which are in fact specialized drones that hit incoming lethal drones and destroy them. The Ukrainian system that is locally produced has shown considerable promise and Ukraine is now marketing the product in the Middle East and to NATO.

The Ukrainian solution that has gained the most attention is called Sting. It was developed in Ukraine by a volunteer engineering group called Wild Hornets. It is a bullet-shaped 3-D printed aerodynamic frame featuring a pursuit speed of 213 mph (343 km/h) and a service ceiling of around 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). Its operational radius is about 20 km (12.4 miles). It is equipped with a home-built thermal imaging camera so it can take down enemy drones at night. The Sting interceptor costs $2,100. Ukraine has developed a number of specialized interceptor brigades (e.g., the 412th Nemesis Brigade), claiming a 95% success rate. The system is operated by a pilot but the latest versions feature autonomous interception using an automation layer in the Sting software. The AI computer vision module can lock onto the silhouette of an enemy drone, such as the Geran 2, and navigate autonomously relieving the pilot of target responsibility.

Ukraine uses a system called Hornet Vision, a remote control architecture, meaning the pilot/operators can be far away from the front line, so the Russians cannot target them easily.

Ukraine has a number of advantages over the Russians. It has remote operators/pilots who are good at what they do. It can locally source important drone components, especially thermal imagers. It has talented software engineers with high motivation. And it has considerable battlefield experience.

Sting is an explosive drone, so handling it carries some risk. The drone apparently has a kill switch that blows up the Sting if it misses its target.

Sting is best at going after major long range threats such as the Geran 2 (Russia’s variant of the Iranian Shahed 136). It may not be effective against short range systems since the timeline for intercept is too long, especially for fiber optic drones. Likewise, Sting may not be capable against the jet powered version of the Geran because it is too slow, but it is unlikely Russia can deploy many Gerans with jet engines.

Russia’s Sting is called Yolka (Fir Tree)

Yolka is a man-portable kinetic interceptor drone that costs around $500 to manufacture. It weighs a mere 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs.) and has a pistol-gripped launcher. Yolka has optical sensors and an AI processing module that eliminates the need for a continuous radio link. It flies at around 300 km/h (186 mp/h) and it is designed to destroy the rotors/propellers of quadcopters and small drones. As far as is known, Yolka is not integrated with other counter-drone systems, or even with radars or other sensors.

Russia faces three problems with Yolka. The Russians are having problems producing Yolkas in sufficient quantities which may indicate supply chain problems. Russia is also short on pilots and faces difficulty training qualified operators. The system is most effective in daylight where an operator can see the incoming threat. It does not work at night (unless the threat is illuminated), and it depends on good weather for operator visibility. Unlike the Ukrainian Sting, Yolka can’t be remotely operated at present so the operators are vulnerable if they are located on the front lines (where they must be outside, not in bunkers).

Yolkas could be deployed around sensitive locations such as military bases and critical infrastructure installations. Whether Yolka without an explosive warhead can knock out a drone larger than a plastic quadcopter isn’t clear. However, future versions of Yolka could be adapted with blast fragmentation warheads to help protect fixed sites.

Russia is mostly depending on other far more expensive ground based systems such as Pantsir. Pantsir units are, however, in short supply, and there are thousands of high value targets in Russia Ukraine can attack. Pantsir also is less and less a battlefield weapon, mainly due to the fact that its radar is a beacon for Ukrainian weapons.

Sensors and Integration

A key factor in counter drone operations is detection and target management. Stand alone systems are hunt and peck, and can be overcome by mass attacks. Sophisticated sensors and target management, meaning integration of counter drone systems into a coherent defense cluster, is a critical ingredient in reducing drone threat effectiveness.

Counter Drone sensors come in different flavors. The classical model was electronic detection and jamming. Today’s battlefield is loaded with various electronic countermeasures that can block data links, spoof or block GPS, or derail operator/pilot communications. Modern drones use various techniques to fight against jamming operations such as frequency hopping radios sometimes with encryption, specialized hard to jam modem antennas, and software that can detect spoofing attempts. More recently, drones are using autonomous operating software with pattern recognition and terrain following, automatic evasive maneuvering, and artificial intelligence to improve capability. Starlink terminals and mesh networks also have significantly reduced the effectiveness of jamming and, in the case of Starlink, improved operational range.

At the level of the battlefield, drones operated using fiber optic “wires” or cables provide operators with very high bandwidth imaging that can’t be jammed. The main limitation is range.

If a drone can’t be detected through radio frequency sensors, then detection must rely on radar, optical systems and sound sensors.

There are many different types of radars for drone detection. Some of them are millimeter wave (MM wave), FMCW or Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave radars, X and Ku-band pulse doppler radar and Passive Coherent Location radar. Especially interesting is Micro-Doppler radar. Micro Doppler radars can detect the blade signatures of drones, meaning that it can be 100% certain it has sensed a drone and not a bird or other object.

Automated optical systems also are increasingly playing an important role, especially against “silent” (i.e. fiber optic) drones. The best of these fuse multiple bands of the electromagnetic spectrum into a single Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) gimbal to handle variable atmospheric conditions. These include Short Wave Infrared systems (SWIR). Unlike visible light, SWIR can penetrate heavy fog, smoke, battlefield haze, and marine glare. It relies on reflected light (rather than thermal emissions), providing sharp, high-contrast imagery that allows AI classifiers to discriminate drone materials (like carbon fiber or specialized plastics) from natural clutter. There also are medium and longer range systems that require sensor cooling. Such thermal sensors detect the friction heat generated by a drone’s electric motors, spinning rotor hubs, or internal battery packs.

Audible sensors listen for the sound of drones. Using microphone arrays Instead of a single microphone, audio systems deploy specialized geometric configurations of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) or high-sensitivity condenser microphones. By calculating the microsecond differences in time-of-arrival across the array, the system executes digital beamforming to determine the exact azimuth (bearing) and elevation of the sound source.

Different sensor platforms need to be integrated. The integration task is managed by Edge AI (such as Anduril’s Lattice operating system) running automated Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The idea is not only to track a threat, but to assign a solution such as a laser kill system, a jammer, or a kinetic kill system and to keep updating information so that the kill system can follow and destroy the threat or to task another kill system if the first one fails.

Conclusion

Counter drone technology is rapidly evolving and becoming more capable. The idea is to close the intercept gap from current-day 70% to 85% to 99%. Solutions must evolve that can handle mass enemy drone deployments, evolving threat technology, and work both on the frontlines and against long range attacks.

Most importantly, counter drone networks need to be deployed rapidly. It will probably take at least another five years before fully integrated systems, with the latest sensors and interceptors, are widely available, properly supported, and operating teams are trained and experienced. If the 99% target can be reached, the drone threat will be more managed and far less lethal.

The Armenian Radio story reflects the condition of Great Britain today, not the Soviet Union of past years. The British military is out of everything, it even lacks bullets.

While the UK pretends to be a great power, it has a broken down army, a fleet with submarines that can’t submarine, and frigates that can’t frigate. Yet, despite these massive deficits, the UK promotes the war in Ukraine vociferously, thinking (one supposes) that as long as the Ukrainians are fighting and dying, the less the UK has to worry about defending itself. As a member of NATO it depends on the United States for its survival, and on the “special relationship” it may have squandered under Keir Starmer. The near collapse of Britain’s fighting capability, including its dreadful lack of reserves and stockpiles, is paralleled by what looks like internal social collapse: a cultural crisis that is altering the UK, not for the better.

The overall mess has now led to the resignation of the UK’s defense secretary, John Healey. Healey is a long-time Labor politician and Starmer stalwart. He is not a defense expert and has no particular national security background. Healey reportedly demanded £18 billion in new funding to patch the critical structural holes in the armed forces (such as the idled submarine fleet, escort ship shortages, and munitions stockpiles). The Treasury and Downing Street ultimately offered only £13.5 billion, with officials noting that only £10 billion of that was actually “new” money. While Starmer previously pledged a long-term goal of hitting 3% of GDP on defense, Healey’s resignation letter revealed that the Treasury’s actual plan would only see defense spending reach 2.68% by 2030. Healey stated bluntly that this “falls well short of what is required for defense and the country at this dangerous time.”

• At the end of the Cold War (1991), the British Army stood at roughly 155,000 active troops. Today, that number has dropped to approximately 72,500—the lowest level since the Napoleonic era. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (RAF) have seen similar cuts, shrinking by 25% and 40% respectively since 2000.

• The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has consistently missed recruitment targets. Privatized recruitment contracts have faced severe bureaucratic delays, causing applicants to drop out. Furthermore, social attitudes toward the military have shifted significantly among younger generations, hampering standard recruitment efforts.

• Physical and mental health conditions mean that more than a fifth of remaining regular forces are classified as “not fully deployable” or completely undeployable.

The US has around 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers in Europe, more than the entire British army. US troops are better equipped and far better supported despite the huge distance between the US and Europe.

The level of UK support for NATO, defined as on or near the alleged front lines, is minimal. Roughly 800 to 1,000 British soldiers (typically an armored or mechanized infantry brigade combat team subunit equipped with Warrior infantry fighting vehicles or Challenger tanks) is stationed in Estonia. In Poland the UK maintains a smaller cavalry troop presence (usually around 150 personnel) integrated into the US-led NATO battlegroup in Orzysz. While the UK is able to surge troops for NATO exercises, it is notably weak in supporting the Baltic States and Poland. The UK does provide intermittent RAF Typhoon deployments to bases in Lithuania, Estonia, or Romania.

Britain’s navy is in poor shape. There is a severe availability crisis for the hunter-killer submarine fleet. The Royal Navy has an operational availability rate of 0% for its deployed attack submarines. All of them are undergoing repairs. Britain’s ballistic missile submarines, Vanguard-Class (Strategic Deterrence / SSBN) also are barely operational. The UK operates four Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines based at HMNB Clyde (Faslane) in Scotland. They maintain the UK’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD). Under a doctrine active since 1969, at least one British nuclear missile submarine is hidden underwater at sea every single second of the year. Each carries American-made Trident D5 strategic ballistic missiles, armed with British-manufactured nuclear warheads. Commissioned in the 1990s with a 25-year design life, these boats are ancient and wearing out. Maintenance overhauls that used to take months now take years, forcing the remaining active crews into grueling, record-breaking deployments (sometimes exceeding six months underwater) just to keep a single boat on patrol.

The UK has not had funds to procure enough F-35B aircraft for its aircraft carriers. The UK simply does not own enough F-35Bs to fully stock even one carrier’s maximum flight deck capacity (~36 to 40 jets) purely with British airframes. To project maximum power during major deployments, British carriers routinely embed US Marine Corps F-35B squadrons alongside the Royal Air Force/Royal Navy joint squadrons to fill the empty spots on the flight deck.

British carriers also don’t have adequate fleet support. They have had to rely on NATO assets, especially the US, for escort duties. This is critical to protect carriers from enemy submarines and from missile and drone attack. Whether British carriers, without integrated escort, are supportable in combat scenarios is an open question.

The situation is also dire in the surface fleet, especially type 23 frigates (Duke Class). The operational readiness of the escort fleet is under intense strain. Only a single Type 23 frigate (HMS St Albans) was actively working up or operating at sea, with the remainder immobilized in various stages of maintenance, refit, or crew reallocation. A notable portion of the remaining force is locked in extended upkeep blocks to keep them structurally sound and safe for sea. HMS Kent, for example, entered a major, planned deep maintenance and modernization cycle to sustain its baseline utility through the late 2020s. To plug gaping personnel deficits across the fleet and preserve resources for incoming platforms, the Ministry of Defence prematurely retired HMS Argyll and HMS Westminster. HMS Westminster was decommissioned despite recently undergoing a massive, multi-million-pound refit, because the Navy could not sustainably crew the vessel while simultaneously preparing personnel for future platforms.

The UK has severely depleted its previously inadequate weapons stockpiles. So, too has the United States, but the difference is the US is stepping up defense manufacturing (as best it can with an obsolete defense manufacturing infrastructure) while the UK lacks funds and willpower to increase defense production. The failure to meet financial targets (that led to the Defense Secretary’s resignation) means that the road ahead is full of potholes. A related problem is that the UK has been moving much equipment to Ukraine, but this cannot be sustained. NATO is hoping, along with the Ukrainians, that their drone strategy will keep the Russians contained and force a negotiation that will end Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory. But this is a big wish, and drone “dominance” will sooner or later end as new counter-drone solutions get fielded.

The recently published UK Strategic Defence Review outlines a 10-year roadmap aimed at shifting the country toward true “warfighting readiness” rather than just looking good on a parade ground. The Defence Review is a solid assessment of Britain’s dire defense situation. It is unlikely under the current UK government that the Defence Review recommendations will be followed, or that funds will be found to change the current mess.

With plummeting defense capabilities, sooner or later UK politicians (and the supporting cast of defense experts) need to adjust to reality and rethink the country’s national security strategy. With a de minimis security role in NATO and empty stockpiles, the UK should be thinking more about home defense and less about power projection. In short, the UK needs to redefine its defense strategy from top to bottom.

As things now stand, the UK has a big hole in its defense bucket. It cannot continue without radical change in its plans and strategy.

For the above reason, I am not able to contribute new articles right now.

I hope this is a temporary situation that will be remedied soon.

Thank you for your understanding.

ICEYE is a Finnish-American aerospace and data company that designs, builds, and operates the world’s largest constellation of SAR satellites.

Repositioning five Cosmos satellites is an unprecedented move.

According to Integrity ISR, ICEYE-X36 was launched March 4, 2024 from Vandenberg on a SpaceX Falcon 9. It’s registered under ICEYE US, has a mass of ~90 kg and is one node in a 44+ satellite constellation that Ukraine can task. However, it is clearly the most important satellite for Ukraine.

According to reports, ICEYE-X36 has been a game changer for Ukraine. It is a synthetic aperture radar satellite (SAR) that has all but revolutionized the battlefield, enabling the identification of enemy equipment, tracking of troop movements, and being able to identify even camouflaged equipment and command and control assets under virtually any weather conditions. ICEYE-X36 has a ground resolution of 16 cm (6.3 inches), so even a footprint is visible from space.

ICEYE-X36 is owned by Ukraine, and Ukraine operates it with significant help from NATO and from NATO companies, helping Ukrainian analysts to sort out the received imagery. According to the most recent report, ICEYE-X36 has produced 4,100 images, located 238 air defense and signals intelligence units, successfully targeted 153 fuel depots, and 17 Russian naval bases.

This is a capability the Russians cannot match, although Russia has a SAR satellite of its own, but only one. The Russian satellite was launched in late December, 2025. It is called Obzur-R (”Survey”). It is not a microsatellite like ICEYE-X36. It was developed by Roscosmos and TsSKB-Progress and features a Kasatka-R X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar with a claimed resolution of 1 meter (almost 40 inches). It is supposed to operate from 5 to 8 years and Russia claims it will eventually produce three more Obzur-class SAR satellites. Obzur-R weighs between 3.5 and 4 tons (3,629 kg).

Russia has been tracking and occasionally challenging NATO surveillance space and aircraft systems, including manned aircraft and drones. The UK Ministry of Defense released information on May 20 about an encounter between a British surveillance platform (RC-135W Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft) and Su-35 Flanker-E and Su-27 Flanker Russian fighter jets over the Black Sea in mid-April. The Su-35 closed the distance to the Rivet Joint so aggressively that the wake turbulence or proximity sensors triggered the British aircraft’s onboard emergency defense systems, automatically disabling its autopilot. The Su-27 performed six separate close-range passes directly across the nose of the Rivet Joint. At its closest point, the Russian fighter cut within 6 meters (19 feet) of the unarmed reconnaissance plane. Rivet Joint intercepts and analyzes electronic signals to provide real-time battlefield intelligence.

Most experts believe that the Russian Cosmos satellites, now very close to ICEYE-X36, are likely positioned for what the trade calls a Rendezvous and Proximity Operation (RPO). Technically, the Russians could threaten ICEYE-X36 in a number of ways, ranging from actually destroying it, blanking out its solar panels that power the SAR system, to jamming the ICEYE radar using microwaves, lasers, or other methods. (Exactly why the Russians committed 5 Cosmos satellites to shadowing ICEYE-X36 is unclear.)

There have been intelligence reports that Russia may be planning a major offensive, perhaps even an invasion aimed at Kiev that could possibly involve Belarus. Such an offensive would emulate the invasion route that began on February 24, 2022, but would somehow be successful in taking Kiev.

Despite the reports, at present there is no hard evidence to support the claim, although the ICEYE-X36 encounter sounds as if it is preparatory to something big.

The Russians have been mostly bogged down for some time on the battlefield. Over the past year or longer, a key focus for Russia has been to force concessions from Ukraine by crushing its civilian infrastructure, especially power generation, transmission systems, and other critical infrastructure elements. To do this Russia has launched missiles and Shahed drones in large quantities. Yet despite destroying a significant part of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, especially in the east, Ukraine has not been willing to actually negotiate with Russia and, in particular, offer any “land for peace” proposals. It seems fair to say that the Russian campaign failed to move the Ukrainian political needle in the direction of a deal, and in fact probably moved Ukraine to take a very hard line (sometimes frustrating Washington that has been anxious to broker a deal). In fact, bombing campaigns have generally failed to lead to settlements.

Meanwhile the Russian army has been stymied by the massive tactical drone capabilities Ukraine has used, and the increasing ability of Ukraine, with ICEYE-X36 and NATO operational and planning help, to cause serious damage in western Russia, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Putin faces a significant dilemma because Russia’s strategy is failing. A palm reading of the Russian President’s hand suggests he faces a near existential challenge to his government’s survival, something that would not have been guessed a year ago. While Russia certainly has some tactical options to try and restore their army’s battlefield initiative, and a good size reserve force it can commit, the outcome is likely to be both bloody and uncertain. Blinding ICEYE-X36, should Russia decide to do it in the context of a large-scale military operation, is now on the table, but doing so probably won’t change the algebra of the war.

The rise of the drone as a potent technology for warfare is not the first time that technology emerged to shake up great and small powers alike.

Here are two examples from the ancient Near East that were revolutionary.

The Composite Bow

The chariot dramatically changed warfare, particularly as chariot design improved to make its cabin more secure and stable. Because of its war fighting utility, the chariot remained a factor in warfare for a thousand years or more. It enabled war fighters to flank their enemy, disrupting their foot soldier formations, forcing them to turn their ground divisions to face the mobile attackers. Later, as the chariot itself was hardened and became an assault weapon, chariots could spearhead charges against infantry, breaking up lines and paving the way for ground assaults.

Chariots usually had a crew of two or three warriors. One was responsible for driving the chariot. Another carried a heavy axe, a spear or both; the third was armed with a bow and arrow.

The bow and arrow is a very ancient weapon, known for more than 10,000 years. It was essential for hunting as well as for war. But, as archers surely knew, there were problems that plagued this weapon. The bow was subject to breakage, either snapping or cracking which made it worthless. So too was the bow string, made of animal gut, likely to fail at the most inopportune moment. Fighting range was limited and accuracy was poor because of the shock to the structure when the bow string was pulled back hard and released. The “snap” was moderated by transversal forces on the string, creating twist in the released arrow that would throw it off course unless compensated by an experienced archer.

The invention of the composite bow improved archery and was a key to giving the chariot archers greater range, better accuracy, and more killing power since an arrow launched from a composite bow at a target could penetrate a hard target up to three inches.

There is debate about the origin of the composite bow; whether it initially was a Sumerian or Akkadian invention, or whether it was Canaanite. It was surely a vital weapon for the Hyksos which, along with their chariots, overpowered Egypt’s military forces.

The composite bow is made from wood, horn sinew and fish bladder. The secret is the fish bladder which, when prepared and cooked down, forms durable glue, the epoxy of the ancient war fighter.

The fish bladder is how a fish raises and lowers himself in water, by holding or releasing water. The bladder itself is primarily a collagen material, and the best fish bladders for the collagen glue are found in carp, sturgeon, catfish and cod. Today fish bladders are processed into Isinglass (essentially the concentrated collagen of the bladder) and are used for clarifying beer and wine. Isinglass also was used in the Renaissance in “Court Plaster” which was a sticky material that could be used on walls and ceilings. More recently, Isinglass is used to treat wounds without the need for additional dressing. Thus an ancient material is playing a new role in the rapid treatment of wounded soldiers.

The advantage of glue based on the fish bladder is that it is stronger and can stand more torsion effects than glue made from beef sinew scrapings either from an animal’s gut or from the surface of leather. We don’t know whether bow makers in the Middle East produced their own Isinglass, or if it was imported. Certainly, for chariot and composite bow making, many of the woods needed to manufacture the bow had to be imported. The production of a composite bow was a slow process. Wealthy property owners paid by tribal chiefs managed bow and arrow production and used slave labor to do the manufacturing. Some believe that the production of a good composite bow could take a year’s work. This suggests there were many hands involved in bow and arrow making and that production was a vital part of a well organized and disciplined community that was hierarchically organized.

Iron for Weapons

The period historians call the Bronze Age began around 3,300 BCE and ended with the collapse and disintegration of trading networks and some of the major powers of the time around 1200 BCE. Bronze is a durable alloy made from copper, arsenic or tin. It was revolutionary because it turned a soft material, copper, into a malleable metal, bronze that could be used for spear tips, arrow heads, swords, axes, pikes and armor (helmets and body armor). In the ancient near east, the most significant source of copper was Cyprus, although copper was also extracted elsewhere, especially in the Arabah Valley (Timna/Faynan), and in the Sinai Peninsula.

Alloying copper with arsenic had two major drawbacks: it was not effective for longer weapons, especially swords, and arsenic fumes were poisonous, resulting in the deaths or impairment of workers making bronze and shaping bronze weapons. The full transition to tin came about roughly in 1500 BCE thanks to an overland and overseas trade network that could import tin from Kazakhstan and Afghanistan or (later) from Britain (Cardiff). Bronze military hardware and agricultural tools were affordable by rich nations and helped define great power relations especially in the late Bronze period.

But between 1200 and 1000 BCE the trade system that supplied copper and tin fell apart, although not all the reasons for the collapse are known. With that collapse, other forces emerged. One of the great challengers were the Sea Peoples who raided many of the trading centers and eventually controlled what today is modern Israel. Among the Sea People were the Philistines.

The Philistine coalition was made up of five city states: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gaza, Ekron, and Gath—situated on the southern coastal plain of ancient Canaan (modern-day Israel/Gaza), from about 1200 BCE to 700 BCE.

There were dozens of other settlements in ancient Canaan, including the Hebrew tribes that were mainly concentrated in the hilly areas of the region (which inhibited the use of chariots by the Philistines). The Biblical story of Samuel, Saul and David takes place at this time and it centers on Philistine control of bronze and iron making.

Book 1 of Samuel (the Hebrew Torah does not separate Samuel into two books) Chapter 13 says: “There were no blacksmiths in the land of Israel in those days. The Philistines wouldn’t allow them for fear they would make swords and spears for the Hebrews. So whenever the Israelites needed to sharpen their plowshares, picks, axes, or sickles, they had to take them to a Philistine blacksmith. The charges were as follows: a quarter of an ounce of silver for sharpening a plowshare or a pick, and an eighth of an ounce for sharpening an ax or making the point of an ox goad. So on the day of the battle none of the people of Israel had a sword or spear, except for Saul and Jonathan.”

In a nutshell the Philistines controlled the Hebrew tribes by denying them weapons. This forced the tribes to rely on a thriving black market that was trading mostly bronze and copper weapons in exchange for agricultural products and slaves. But Philistine arms makers were also smelting and forging iron, a metal that was far cheaper than bronze that did not need external trade networks. It was the renegade David from the tribe of Judah who allied with the Philistine King Achish in Gath, giving him access to the secrets of iron making.

While David’s access to Philistine iron making is still debated by experts, archeology tends to confirm that once he was king of Israel, perhaps even during the five year period when he was king only of Judah, iron making nearby was likely under David’s control. This is found in the site known as Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified 10th-century BCE city in the Elah Valley, provides significant evidence of early iron technology, with 47% of its metal assemblage being iron alongside bronze. The excavators of the site identified Khirbet Qeiyafa as a Judahite settlement built on the border of the Kingdom of Judah. The excavators of the site suggest that Khirbet Qeiyafa manufactured “typical Judean curved swords.”

Like drones today, Iron making know-how made it possible for David, as the head of the Hebrew tribes, to challenge Philistine control, eventually leading to a political settlement between the Israelites and Philistines. One element of this settlement was that the elite palace guard protecting David consisted of 600 Gittites from Gath.

Iron for armaments was a revolution in military affairs. Without iron for weapons, David might well have lost his struggle with Saul and failed to build a consolidated monarchy based in Jerusalem.

These ancient revolutions in military affairs suggests that massive changes can be brought about by new and innovative technology, just as the drone today appears to be changing the nature of modern warfare.

The US clearly made some major blunders, despite far superior air defenses and sophisticated command and control systems. Most spectacularly, the US lost two AWACS aircraft, one totally destroyed and the other possibly unrepairable, and three F-15 fighter jets, downed by “friendly” fire. The US also “missed” an Iranian jet that did substantial damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait.

The AWACS Story

The Airborne Warning and Control System is one of the most important US systems for the long range detection of enemy aircraft, missiles and ships. The US fields two versions: the E-3 Sentry and the E-2 Hawkeye.

The E-3 is a land-based four engine jet that is built on the old Boeing 707 narrow-body airframe. The last Boeing 707 was retired from commercial service in the United States in 1983.

The E-3 is a true battle management system. It features a large 30 foot radome mounted on the rear section of the aircraft body. By contrast, the E-2, which can be both land and sea based, is a twin engine turboprop and a tactical early warning aircraft. It has a crew of 5, compared to the E-3 which has a crew of between 17 and 33 (13 to 29 specialists), depending on the mission.

The E-2 is operated by the US Navy and mostly provides early warning and control for the US fleet.

The E-3 is operated by the US Air Force. The first production of the E-3 was in 1975 and production ended in 1992. The aircraft that was totally destroyed in Saudi Arabia was unit 81-0005 was manufactured in 1981.

The size of the US E-3 fleet has been rapidly declining as many of the jets are no longer repairable. By the time of the start of the recent conflict with Iran, the US had around 10 AWACS that were deployable, although keeping them functioning is a major challenge. On February 28, the US moved six AWACS to Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia and 2 to al Dhafra air base in the UAE. Another four were stationed in Europe, at Mildenhall in the UK and Ramstein in Germany.

The decision to move the better part of the functioning E-3 AWACS fleet to Saudi Arabia and the UAE was a major blunder, one that the Pentagon should have understood but chose to ignore.

The Russian AWACS Fleet

The US operating through NATO played a major role in destroying a significant part of Russia’s AWACS fleet in the Ukraine war.

Russia operates an AWACS platform directly copied from the US E-3, called the Beriev A-50 (NATO name, Mainstay). In 2024 two were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses and in 2025 two more were either damaged or destroyed by drone attacks on Russian air bases. Like the US AWACS, the Russian A-50 fleet has been contracting as airframes wear out, leaving between 8 and 15 operational. The losses in the Ukraine war (over Ukrainian territory, the Sea of Azov, and at bases in Russia) significantly impact Russian warfighting operations.

Russian exposure of their A-50s, especially at forward bases on Russian territory, was a military error that was avoidable.

The US role was in tracking the Russian AWACS platforms and in assisting Ukraine in locating them.

The Iranians needed little encouragement to go after the US deployed AWACS, and they got targeting information from Russian and Chinese satellites, including a Chinese “commercial” satellite. These assets provided hard information on the precise location of the US AWACS aircraft.

The TEE-01B Chinese satellite is made and operated by the Chinese company, Earth Eye. This model satellite features a resolution of half-meter (1.6 feet). Log files show that the IRGC used this satellite to target the Prince Sultan Air Base on March 13, 14, and 15, exactly when the first wave of strikes began.

At least two of the AWACS aircraft were parked on the tarmac at Prince Sultan. There were no hardened shelters for the E-3s, as the aircraft’s radome is too high to fit into any existing shelters.

The reason given for the forward deployment is that it allowed the E-3s to operate for longer periods on station than if they were deployed further back.

The alternative would have been to use air to air refueling for the AWACS. Whether refueling tankers were available is uncertain, as tankers were heavily used to support fighter aircraft, bombers and other command and control assets.

Prince Sultan has sophisticated air defenses including Patriot PAC-2 and PAC-3 MSE and THAAD (including the An-TPY-2 radar, similar to the one Iran destroyed in Jordan) plus CRAM. Even so, the base was hit by swarm attacks and the E-3s were not repositioned or cleared from the facility. How much early warning the US force had, if any, isn’t known.

The destroyed E-3 suffered a precision strike that targeted the radome on the aircraft. Some say it was hit by a missile, possibly the solid-fueled Khaibar-Shekan, a third generation IRGC missile that is maneuverable in its terminal phase. This medium range ballistic missile features a 550 kg (2,205 lbs.) warhead. It is also possible the AWACS was hit by a modified Shahed drone, since the blast size (as shown in photos) appears smaller than the damage likely caused by a 2,000 pound warhead.

In the background of the Iranian strike there is a strong sense that the attack was a Russian revenge operation as much as it was important to Iran’s war objectives. If it was a drone, it may have been like some of the modified Russian Gerans with a Starlink terminal, because Starlink terminals are not banned in Iran as they are in Russia. Alternatively, either the drone or a missile could have been equipped with pattern matching technology, enabling it to accurately strike the E-3. Iran has proven in the past it can accurately target fixed sites with drones and cruise missiles, as it did in the Abqaiq and Khurais attack in eastern Saudi Arabia in 2019.

The F-15 Shootdowns

One of the heaviest losses in the war was the destruction of three US F-15s that were shot down over Kuwait on March 2nd. Initial reports suggested they were hit by Kuwaiti operated Patriot missiles, but it became clear that in fact a single Kuwaiti F-18 aircraft downed all three F-15s in a 30 second engagement using Aim-9M missiles.

The Aim-9M is a short range “all aspect” air-to-air missile with an advanced infrared (heat seeking) sensor. The F-15E is not equipped with Missile Warning Sensors (MWS) for infrared threats and therefore the aircrews received no cockpit warning that a missile was in flight. One of the missiles hit the right engine of one F-15 and another hit the rear section of another F-15 from the side.

It is debatable that the F-15s could have evaded the Aim-9s even if they received a warning. All three pilots ejected and were rescued.

Kuwait operates both the F-18 (legacy and newer models) and the Eurofighter. The legacy F-18 (F/A-18C/D) is the model that knocked out the three F-15s. It appears the Kuwaiti operator thought the F-15s were Iranian F-5s or partially home built Iranian F-5s called Kowsar. This is the aircraft that got past air defenses on March 1st and bombed Camp Buehring in Kuwait, causing extensive damage.

If the pilot was looking for F-5 Kowsars on March 2nd, then it is possible both pilots and air defense operators understood that the F-5 Kowsars could get through and cause significant damage.

The US and Kuwaiti aircraft and air defenses use advanced IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) systems (specifically Mode 5 IFF). IFF when operating properly should lock out a friendly aircraft from an attack. Mode 5 uses codes that are shared daily and encryption so the codes can’t be compromised. Some have suggested that the IFF was turned off in the Kuwaiti F-18, possibly because heavy jamming made it unreliable. Or IFF frequencies could have been jammed. Even so, the F-18 radar should have registered the F-15s as “green” or friendly, but apparently did not. Instead the F-15s may have shown up as “red” on the F-18’s radar screen.

Modern radars use threat libraries to identify aircraft, missiles and drones. The libraries match the radar image and related information to the library listed threats.

One thing is clear, the Kuwaiti pilot did not request ground clearance to fire his missiles. He had time to do so, and it is far from clear the pilot was following established procedures.

The F-5 Kowsar Incident

Camp Buehring is a critical U.S. Army installation located in the Udairi Desert in northwestern Kuwait, approximately 25 miles from the Iraqi border. On March 1, 2026

at 4:15 AM an Iranian F-5 or modified F-5 Kowsar took off from a base in southwestern Iran, crossing the Persian Gulf at very low altitude to avoid radar detection. Less than half an hour later it entered Kuwait’s airspace and less than ten minutes later reached Camp Buehring. It was not intercepted by air defenses and carried out a bombing attack. The strike caused massive damage to the base’s command center and warehouses. Six U.S. soldiers were killed, and nearly 60 others were wounded. Confirmed damage included multiple structures housing equipment from Army Prepositioned Stocks-5 (APS-5), a CH-47 Chinook destroyed on the ground, and several other tactical vehicles damaged; craters on the main airstrip and satellite communications (SATCOM) nodes degraded or knocked out.

It isn’t clear why the F-5 was not detected or intercepted. It successfully returned to Iran. One contributing factor possibly was radar ducting, a problem over Persian Gulf waters. During the March 2026 strikes on Prince Sultan Air Base, Iranian Kowsar jets and drones utilized “ducting holes.” By flying at specific low altitudes during intense ducting periods, they stayed within blind zones where ground-based Patriot radars could not “see” them, despite being technically within the radar’s range. It isn’t known if this was a factor in the Camp Buehring attack.

While it isn’t clear if radar ducting contributed to the Camp Buehring strike, the US had the technological capability to “find” the Iranian strike aircraft.

The US has many aircraft with look down shoot down radars. Look down, shoot down radars can “see” aircraft and drones from above. Until the early 1980s this was not possible because radars would encounter heavy ground clutter when trying to look down. However, the US Air Force designed a special computer capable of sorting out radar ground clutter from moving objects using a mathematical radar processor (utilizing fast Fourier transform computing). American fighter jets such as the F-15 and F-16 and F-35 have look down, shoot down computers, as do AWACS aircraft.

Exactly why the F-5 Kowsar was not detected remains a mystery. While it may have been able to sneak across the Persian Gulf, exactly how it evaded air and ground based systems is concerning. Did Iran find a hole or gap in US and allied defense systems? It should be remembered that the US designed the Tomahawk cruise missile to fly nap of the earth tree top level to get under Russian radar coverage. Iran was certainly familiar with US Tomahawks. The US fired 850 Tomahawks at Iranian targets over a four week period.

The US rushed a number of systems to Gulf bases after the F-5 incident and related drone and missile attacks. The most noteworthy were M-SHORAD systems (Stryker-based) to provide mobile, 360-degree protection. M-Shorad uses Stinger missiles and is supposed to be capable of knocking out low flying aircraft like the F-5 Kowsar, assuming it can detect the aircraft.

By May, Iran’s Kowsar aircraft were mostly destroyed on the ground by US B-2 bombers and F-35s. Until then, the Kowser served as Iran’s Tomahawk.

Lessons Not Necessarily Learned

There is no perfect war and losses are inevitable. In the big picture, the US did very well in the Iran conflict, but inevitably mistakes and oversights happened. One feature that may have escaped notice is that Iran, despite its limitations, was very resourceful and carried out effective strikes against US bases, destroying important equipment and costing lives. Iran also had important outside help from China and Russia. Both countries provided intelligence, command and control support and important equipment (even during the conflict). Both continue to do so with supplies arriving by ship, aircraft and overland.

The telephone discussion turned to Ukraine, probably at President Trump’s initiative, suggesting that a ceasefire in Ukraine would be a good thing. Mr. Putin apparently offered to implement a cease fire during Russia’s Victory Day celebration that takes place on May 9th, followed by the Immortal Regiment remembrance, where thousands of Russians walk with placards of their relatives lost in WW2, which claimed the lives of 27 million Russians.

Since the Ukraine war, western nations have boycotted the Victory Day celebration and the Immortal Regiment that follows the military parade.

There are a few things to notice about this year’s program. The first is that no weapons will be shown in the parade, neither tanks, nor missiles.

Victory parades in Russia first took place starting in June, 1945 and intermittently thereafter until 1995 when the parade was made an annual event celebrated on May 9th. In the west we used to celebrate VE Day (Victory in Europe day) on May 8th, the day Germany surrendered. But when the surrender was signed it was already May 9th in Moscow, so Russia’s Victory Day was held on that day.

Some US presidents attended Russia’s Victory day celebration including Bill Clinton (1995) and George Bush (2005). At least at the official level, President Trump did not receive an invitation from the Kremlin to attend this year’s parade.

The lack of a formal invitation to Trump is not surprising, as recently the Russians have mostly invited allies such as China and Belarus and assorted Central Asians and African leaders.

President Trump has been pushing Mr. Putin to make a deal on Ukraine. Trump says he understands that for all practical purposes, Russia has won its war with Ukraine.

In an interesting article in Moscow Times, published on April 30, points out that both Presidents appear to agree that the problem of finding a solution is in Kiev and in Europe.

Trump’s own position also is fragile, as the US Congress, especially after the King’s speech, is inclined to push for more military support for Ukraine to fight the Russian, not less. The King had nothing to say about a peace deal in Ukraine because Europe, including the UK, do not want one. They want the US to back them up militarily, even after spurning any support for the US operation in Iran and condemning US Middle Eastern policy. It seems, however, Trump still has his eye on a deal, and he wants to bring Russia along by asking Moscow to compromise on key issues including territories, cease fires, and security arrangements for Ukraine. Trump is offering, in exchange, new nuclear arms deals with Russia and economic support for Russia’s economy.

It is very hard to tell how evolved the Trump-Putin engagement is at present. Long phone calls and a pattern of continuing engagement on economic and strategic matters, suggest there is progress.

Assuming there is movement and that certain parts of a deal could be revealed, the May 9th parade may be the opening Trump is seeking. Some form of US participation would change the dynamic, so while May 9th as a key event is strictly speculation, it is sitting there to be used if that is the decision in the White House and Kremlin.