NEWS

In early August, a Pentagon official stood in front of reporters and conceded something the department almost never says out loud: the world’s best-funded military cannot out-produce a country under invasion. Travis Metz, deputy director of the Defense Innovation Unit, put a number on it. Ukraine will manufacture six to seven million small first-person-view attack drones this year — roughly 500,000 a month, built in garages, repurposed furniture factories and basements within range of Russian glide bombs. The Pentagon’s own flagship drone program, a $1.1 billion initiative branded Drone Dominance, will have ordered fewer than 200,000 drones, cumulatively, by February 2027. Metz’s response was not defensive. It was aspirational: “I see no reason why we shouldn’t… be the world champions of this as well.” The gap he was describing is not a technology gap. It is a speed gap, and speed is the one metric wartime industry cannot fake.

The instinct is to read this as a story about Ukrainian ingenuity, and it is one. But it is also the epilogue to a specific American failure. In 2023 the Pentagon launched Replicator, a program to field “multiple thousands” of autonomous systems within 24 months to counter China. By its August 2025 deadline it had delivered “hundreds,” not thousands, after burning through roughly $1 billion — undone by drones that were unfinished at selection, software that could not command large numbers of different systems at once, and a Switchblade loitering munition priced above $100,000 a unit. Washington’s answer was not to slow down and fix the model; it was to bring in the Department of Government Efficiency to override procurement rules and reclassify small drones as disposable supplies rather than regulated weapons systems. Meanwhile, Russia’s own Shahed and decoy drone output is reportedly climbing toward several hundred, and by some Ukrainian estimates up to a thousand, units a day. The war that forced Ukraine to mass-produce cheap drones is the same war exposing how slowly America still moves.

Why the gap isn’t about money

Start with unit economics, because they explain most of the gap. A Ukrainian FPV drone can be built for as little as $300 to $500 — an airframe, a camera, a battery and a warhead, assembled by hand and flown once. The Pentagon’s comparable systems have historically cost orders of magnitude more, not because the components are better but because they were designed inside an acquisition culture built for exquisite, low-volume platforms like fighter jets, where every part is sourced, tested and certified over years. Layer onto that a July 2026 rule requiring a “wholly domestic” supply chain — no Chinese-made motors, no Chinese battery packs — and the honest tension becomes visible: the policy meant to make American drone production more secure is, in the near term, also what makes it slower and more expensive to scale. Metz’s own explanation was blunt: it is “much harder to get from zero to 200,000” than to expand an existing line. Ukraine skipped that problem by never centralizing production in the first place — thousands of small, dispersed workshops that are individually replaceable and collectively enormous.

The deeper obstacle is not money but structure. Replicator had no dedicated budget line, was bounced between the Defense Innovation Unit and a newly created Defense Autonomous Warfare Group under Special Operations Command, and repeatedly selected systems that existed as concepts rather than finished products, in a rush to hit an artificial 24-month deadline. Congress, by its own research service’s account, has struggled to get basic cost and capability data out of the program. This is what forced DOGE’s intervention: not a shortage of appropriated dollars, but a procurement system engineered for careful, low-volume exquisiteness trying to behave like a wartime factory floor, and failing at both.

The strongest objection to treating this as a straightforward American failure is that the comparison is not apples to apples. Ukraine’s FPVs are disposable, short-range and built for a static front line; American planners are chasing autonomy, jamming resistance and long-range swarm coordination for a Pacific theatre defined by vast distances rather than trench lines, and that ambition costs more and takes longer to get right. That is a fair distinction — but it does not rescue the record. Years and a billion dollars into that more ambitious bet, the Pentagon still lacks software able to command mixed fleets of different drones, while Ukrainian manufacturers are already fielding AI-assisted terminal guidance on sub-$500 airframes, refined through thousands of real combat sorties a month. The ambition gap did not produce a capability lead. It produced the same failure as the cost gap: exquisite requirements colliding with a timeline the requirements were never built to meet.

Which is why the Pentagon’s actual fix looks nothing like a bigger budget. Six Ukrainian manufacturers, including F-Drones and General Cherry, are now required to form joint ventures with American companies — near Toledo, Ohio, and in New Hampshire — as a condition of future Pentagon orders. Washington is not just buying drones. It is importing the production model, and with it the tacit admission that the expertise now runs the other way.

Three ways this goes

What happens next depends on whether the joint-venture model actually transplants Ukraine’s manufacturing tempo onto US soil, or just its branding.

Base case (roughly 50 percent probability). The Ohio and New Hampshire joint ventures scale gradually. By 2027–28, US-based output climbs into the low hundreds of thousands annually — a real improvement, but still an order of magnitude below Ukraine’s current pace, held back by the domestic-sourcing rule’s cost premium. The program becomes a credible proof of concept for a future Indo-Pacific contingency rather than a fix for any current shortfall, and “Drone Dominance” quietly redefines success downward to match what it can actually deliver.

Downside case. The DOGE-driven bypass of standard testing repeats Replicator’s failure mode at greater scale: units purchased without adequate vetting turn out unreliable in the field, a GAO or inspector-general report documents it, and Congress reimposes the very procurement safeguards that were just stripped away. Combined with a Chinese-component ban that keeps unit costs well above Ukrainian levels, US output stalls again, and the gap that Metz conceded in August widens rather than closes by the time it next matters.

Upside case. The joint-venture model works as intended — not just as a purchasing arrangement but as a transplant of Ukrainian manufacturing culture, its dispersed micro-factories, rapid iteration and tolerance for combat-tested imperfection, into the American industrial base. That model, proven on drones, becomes the template for how Washington arms the next partner already fighting a war, whether Taiwan or a Baltic state: not a slow pipeline of finished stockpiles shipped from the continental United States, but manufacturing capability transplanted onto the partner’s own soil, and now, in this instance, onto America’s.

The takeaway

So: what does the mismatch reveal? Not that Ukraine builds better drones — the Pentagon never disputed that its own designs, on paper, are more capable. It reveals that capability on paper is not the same as capability in time, and that the American defense-industrial base, even backed by an executive order, a billion-dollar program and a DOGE override of its own rules, still cannot mobilize at wartime tempo on its own. The fix Washington has actually reached for is not more money. It is outsourcing the missing ingredient — speed — to the one partner that has been forced to master it under fire. That is the real admission, and it may be the more durable one: the next time the United States arms a country fighting a live war, it may look less like supplying an ally and more like apprenticing to one.

Watch for: whether the Ohio and New Hampshire joint-venture lines are shipping US-assembled drones at anything close to Ukrainian unit costs by the next Gauntlet test cycle at Fort Carson. If the “wholly domestic” sourcing rule keeps American-made units several multiples more expensive than their Ukrainian counterparts, the joint ventures will have transferred the branding of Ukraine’s drone war without transferring its speed.

The U.S. Air Force is looking for a new family of aerial targets that can replicate an extremely broad range of airborne threats, from small drones operating in swarms to stealth fighters, large uncrewed aircraft, strategic bombers, and airborne early warning aircraft.

The service wants these targets to be realistic enough to challenge modern sensors and weapons, but inexpensive and simple enough that they can be routinely risked, and even destroyed, during testing.

The requirements are laid out in a new Air Force Request for Information (RFI), which calls for a family of systems capable of representing the “full range of airborne threats, spanning from inexpensive ‘hobby drones’ to the most advanced adversary fighter and large-scale aircraft.” Responses are due September 28.

The service says the next-generation systems should be sufficiently inexpensive and straightforward to manufacture that they can be “treated as attritable or expendable when required.”

That represents a significant departure from the economics of certain existing aerial targets. The Air Force’s QF-16 full-scale aerial target, for example, is based on a converted fighter aircraft, and can be crewed when required. It solves the problem of putting a full-sized, high-performance target in the air, but consuming an F-16 for a test is fundamentally different from losing a purpose-built target designed to be produced and expended in quantity. The service also uses purpose-designed drones of many kinds as targets, as we will come back to later.

Test Missile Fired at Boeing’s QF-16

The new effort is also deliberately open to approaches outside the traditional defense-industrial base.

The RFI calls for industry proposals “including commercial, modified commercial, dual-use, and non-developmental solutions.” The government is “particularly interested in non-traditional, commercially derived, or dual-use solutions” that can offer advantages in “cost, scalability, and simplicity over legacy systems.”

That language suggests the Air Force is not necessarily looking for another clean-sheet aircraft program. Instead, it appears interested in exploiting existing commercial technologies, manufacturing methods, propulsion systems, electronics and other readily available components to produce targets in significantly larger numbers and at lower cost.

The proposed systems would cover several distinct threat categories, with requirements changing substantially depending on what the target is intended to represent.

For advanced fighter aircraft, the Air Force wants targets capable of “supersonic capabilities (up to and exceeding Mach 1.6 at 40,000 feet)” along with high-agility and high-G combat maneuvers.

Reflecting the need to mimic more advanced threats, including stealthy ones, the Air Force says the new targets should also provide precise low-observable radar cross-section profiles, multispectral infrared signatures, active radio-frequency emissions, and integrated electronic-attack capabilities.

That could be particularly important for testing weapons and sensors against fifth-generation-type threats — and what might come after. A conventional subscale target can reproduce aspects of an aircraft’s flight behavior, but it does not necessarily reproduce the radar, infrared, electromagnetic or electronic-warfare environment presented by a sophisticated combat aircraft.

The Air Force has been trying for years now to acquire new full-size target drones, or ones that can at least mimic real fast-moving tactical jets. As in the new RFI, the goal has also been for those drones to have stealth and other more modern features, or the ability to simulate those capabilities with a high degree of fidelity. So far, however, despite the launch of programs such as the 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT), progress in this regard has been extremely limited.

A different set of requirements are outlined for targets representing C-130-sized multi-engine aircraft.

Here, the RFI calls for “matching the physical scale, slow subsonic flight envelopes, and propeller or turbofan propulsion characteristics of larger multi-engine aircraft.”

Those targets would need representative physical volume as well as basic RF and IR emissions and realistic radar returns. The Air Force specifically says these characteristics are intended to help verify missile-seeker guidance and assess warhead lethality against large-airframe targets.

For still larger aircraft, such as strategic bombers and AEW&C platforms, the emphasis shifts toward physical scale and signatures. The service wants targets capable of reproducing the “massive physical dimensions, multi-spectral thermal signatures, and heavy-aircraft radar strategic threats” associated with these aircraft.

That requirement highlights one of the limitations of today’s subscale aerial targets. A small drone can be made to generate a particular radar return, but there are important differences between artificially reproducing a signature and putting a target into the test environment that physically occupies something approaching the volume and presentation of the aircraft being simulated.

The proposed family would also encompass multiple classes of uncrewed aircraft.

For Group 5 UAVs, the targets should be capable of operating at altitudes up to 50,000 feet.

Group 3 and Group 4 targets would need to fly at approximately Mach 0.5 to 0.8 and maneuver at between 3 and 6 Gs.

At the other end of the spectrum, Group 1 and Group 2 targets should fly below 150 knots and be capable of operating in swarms.

The inclusion of swarm operations reflects the fact that the Air Force wants at least part of the new target family to be able to reproduce the massed airborne threat that small uncrewed systems can present.

That could allow weapons and sensors to be evaluated against scenarios involving numerous inexpensive targets rather than a single isolated aircraft.

The Air Force has operated remote-controlled aerial targets for decades, but many of its existing systems represent very different approaches.

The BQM-167A, which entered service in 2007, is a subsonic subscale target roughly 20 feet long with an 11-foot wingspan. It is inexpensive relative to a fighter-sized aircraft, but its physical dimensions are nowhere near those of many of the aircraft the Air Force may need to replicate.

At the other end of the scale, converted QF-16s provide a full-scale target with genuine fighter performance, making them useful for testing against fourth-generation fighter-type threats.

But a converted F-16 is expensive to operate, cannot be expended in large numbers, and increasingly falls short when it comes to replicating a fifth-generation stealth aircraft, let alone a strategic bomber, an airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, or a mass of inexpensive drones.

The new RFI appears designed to bridge that gap, and potentially eliminate it altogether by creating multiple classes of targets optimized for different threats.

Significantly, the effort put the requirement for targets to reproduce the characteristics that modern weapons and sensors use to find and defeat aircraft in the foreground.

That suggests the targets are intended to support testing across the entire kill chain, from initial detection and tracking through seeker acquisition, guidance, and terminal engagement.

There is also a strong emphasis on simplicity and scalability.

A target that costs almost as much as the system being tested is of limited value if the objective is to conduct repeated, realistic engagements. A target that can be manufactured cheaply enough to be routinely expended, meanwhile, would enable much more aggressive testing and larger numbers of test scenarios.

While it is relatively straightforward to produce a low-cost drone, the challenge will be producing one that can fly above 40,000 feet at supersonic speed, perform high-G maneuvers, generate controlled low-observable radar signatures, reproduce multispectral IR characteristics and conduct electronic attack.

The Air Force is therefore effectively asking industry to find the sweet spot where high-fidelity threat representation and mass-produced affordability intersect.

If it succeeds, the resulting target fleet could look very different from today, with the Air Force employing a family of relatively inexpensive systems that can be configured to represent almost any fixed-wing aircraft that might be encountered.

As well as training, the same family of drones could support development and evaluation of radars, infrared sensors, electronic warfare systems, air defense networks, and other technologies against a much broader range of realistic airborne threats.

The breadth of the requirement is noteworthy. If it achieves its goals, it could allow the Air Force to replicate large numbers of future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) as well as simulating swarms of small drones and barrages of one-way attack drones, reflecting the expected scale and diversity of future air warfare.

The new requirement ultimately calls for targets that can reproduce the speed, maneuverability, size, radar signature, infrared signature, electromagnetic emissions and electronic warfare capabilities of an increasingly diverse range of aircraft, while being cheap enough that losing them is an acceptable cost of testing and training.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Barcelona ‌begin their La Liga title ⁠defence ⁠and bid for a third successive crown with a 5-0 ⁠victory at Elche.

Spanish champions Barcelona have cruised to a 5-0 win over Elche in their La Liga opener, with Raphinha and Fermin Lopez scoring twice each and Anthony Gordon setting up two goals on his debut.

After watching Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid defeat Espanyol 2-1 on Saturday with a late winner, Barca’s display on Sunday warned the Portuguese coach that the Catalans will not relinquish the title easily.

Karim Adeyemi also found the net on his debut as Barca made light work of a vulnerable Elche side at Martinez Valero Stadium.

Hansi Flick started with several regular starters on the bench as they continue to get up to speed following the World Cup.

Teenage winger Lamine Yamal, a key part of the triumphant World Cup Spain squad, did start on the right but was far from his best, though it did not matter given Barca’s otherwise sparkling display.

Raphinha was cut down in the box by Victor Chust and stroked home the resulting penalty after 14 minutes to get Flick’s team on their way.

Eric Garcia was sharp at the back to ward off a threatening Elche attack, while Barca’s Gavi caught the eye in midfield – admittedly more for his pink haircut to celebrate Spain’s triumph than for his performance.

Rapid winger Adeyemi, playing on the left, started shakily but grew into the game and doubled Barca’s lead before the break after Raphinha unselfishly set him up.

In the second half, former Newcastle United winger Gordon, on as a substitute, teed up Raphinha for his second, and then supplied Lopez for Barca’s fourth in an electric and impressive cameo.

Youngster Xavi Espart played in Lopez, who endured a difficult summer after missing Spain’s World Cup triumph through injury, for his second to seal Barcelona’s comfortable triumph.

Flick’s high-line defence showed the occasional sign of its usual frailty, but goalkeeper Joan Garcia did well when called on to keep a clean sheet.

Raphinha told reporters after the game that “whether a game is easy or hard depends on us.

“If we start playing at the maximum level, we’re likely to win. It was a very tough game, but we did our job.”

Castelion, a startup begun by former SpaceX employees, has provided the first view of its Blackbeard hypersonic weapon. The first look at what has been billed as a lower-cost missile comes as the company announces that it has secured $1 billion in new financing, which it says will help get its first hypersonic weapon into production as part of its ambitious manufacturing strategy. While hypersonic weapons have very attractive qualities, they are extremely expensive and that cost will likely keep them from being bought in large quantities or used against wider target sets. Castelion is focused on trying to shift that, building hypersonic capabilies that can be bought in large quantities and used more freely, even if they have reduced performance.

A profile photo at the company’s headquarters reveals a weapon with a ballistic missile-like booster, on top of which is mounted an unpowered hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). The booster brings the HGV to the desired velocity and altitude before releasing it toward its target. The concept is in contrast to air-breathing cruise missiles capable of traveling at hypersonic speeds. Hypersonic speed is generally defined as anything above Mach 5, which larger ballistic missiles also reach in the course of their flights. More precise performance figures for Blackbeard are lacking, but Castelion has previously hinted it could hit targets out to just under 500 miles.

Both stages of the weapon have cruciform fins, while the HGV features a prominent ‘chine’ line along the length of its body, and a slightly beaklike nose. The trolley on which the weapon is mounted provides some idea of its overall size. The blue stripes seen on each stage normally signify that a munition is an inert, non-explosive round utilized for training or tracking purposes. This would indicate a real (unarmed) missile rather than a dummy or mockup.

The company has previously said that it was aiming to have a more finalized Blackbeard design by 2027, so there is still potential for more design changes to come. We have reached out to Castelion for more information.

Castelion has previously released images of various missiles with very different, far more simple designs, which it has said “are representative of the low-cost internally developed test vehicles we use to enable rapid subsystem design iteration and to ground our performance models in real-world test data.”

OCTOBER 5, 2025

Two more development flights completed Sunday.

Each test validates vertically integrated subsystems and components from new suppliers nationwide – tightening the link between engineering and manufacturing to deliver capability faster. pic.twitter.com/t4tKM2cPx9

— Castelion (@Castelion) October 7, 2025

Some of these earlier experimental configurations also look to feature tail sections that are at least heavily inspired by, if not lifted directly from Standard-series surface-to-air missiles as used by the U.S. Navy and other navies globally.

Castelion yesterday also announced it had received Series C financing, comprising $800 million in equity financing and $250 million in committed financing. The equity round values Castelion at approximately $13 billion.

The company says it will use the funds as it transitions from development and flight testing toward producing Blackbeard in significant quantities.

Castelion claims the weapon is the first hypersonic strike system to be designed from the outset to be substantially less expensive and easier to manufacture at scale than traditional high-end missile systems.

“Deterrence depends on unapologetic American strength; highly capable weapon systems that adversaries fear produced in quantities they can’t imagine at a price taxpayers can afford,” Castelion CEO and co-founder Bryon Hargis said.

Another flight test in the books – this time @Spaceport_NM. Our second flight in the past 30 days.

The best way to stay ahead of your adversary in a prolonged competition is to have faster learning cycles than they do. pic.twitter.com/9n776j8XWr

— Castelion (@Castelion) February 19, 2025

The company says Blackbeard has gone from a clean-sheet design to a program of record in less than four years, with fielding targeted for 2027. Castelion has also secured more than $500 million in U.S. military contracts over the past 18 months.

A major part of the company’s strategy is its Project Ranger campus in Sandoval County, New Mexico. Castelion describes the roughly 1,000-acre facility as the largest dedicated hypersonic missile manufacturing site in the United States. The company previously committed more than $250 million of its own capital to infrastructure at the site and says it will now invest hundreds of millions of dollars more to expand production capacity.

That emphasis on manufacturing is central to how Castelion distinguishes Blackbeard from many existing hypersonic programs. The company has designed the weapon and its production processes around the expectation that large numbers will eventually be required.

“There’s a manufacturing renaissance underway and this round turbocharges American production of Blackbeard,” Hargis said. “Designed in California, built in New Mexico, supplied from small and large businesses across the United States; Blackbeard is an example of what America can do when private capital and Government work together.”

In May of this year, the Pentagon outlined plans to acquire at least 10,000 Blackbeard missiles, as well as a similar number of lower-cost cruise missiles, over the next three years.

These framework agreements are part of a larger effort to rapidly expand U.S. reserves of long-range, standoff weapons and, at the same time, strengthen the defense-industrial base so manufacturers can keep producing those weapons at a high rate over the long term.

The U.S. Army has made clear it is interested in employing Blackbeard in a ground-launched mode, as you can read more about here. Army budget documents confirm it is pursuing Blackbeard aggressively, but through a phased approach that offers multiple off-ramps. The service has previously talked of firing Blackbeard from new uncrewed launcher vehicles, as well as from existing M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers. How many Blackbeard missiles are compatible with each of these launch systems is unclear.

“The mission of Blackbeard Ground Launch (GL) is to attack/neutralize/suppress/destroy using hypersonic missile delivered precision fires (seeker based) against time sensitive moving targets and hardened targets at a much-reduced cost per missile than currently exists in the Army inventory,” the Army stated in its proposed budget for the 2026 Fiscal Year. “Blackbeard Ground Launch (GL) is an affordable, mass-produced hypersonic weapon designed for mid-range precision. The Army will leverage advancements in technology, materials, and cost-effective production methods to provide superior capabilities through fast, iterative design cycles, flexible hardware development, and modern manufacturing practices.”

Meanwhile, earlier this year, Castelion announced receipt of a contract from the Navy to integrate Blackbeard onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet carrier strike fighter and transition the system to an early operational capability in 2027. This will involve extensive system safety and certification testing, flight testing, and other integration activities related to carrier-based operations. This development may well be connected with halting plans for an air-launched, air-breathing hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile. A version of Blackbeard could also find its way onto Navy ships and submarines, as well as ground-based launchers, as we have discussed in the past.

In fact, the Army has also said that the ground-launched version of the weapon that it expects to receive will leverage an “existing air-launched, extended-range Blackbeard design,” without providing more information.

The U.S. Air Force has also awarded Castelion contracts in the past in relation to long-range strike weapon concepts, and TWZ has previously reached out to that service for more information.

Regardless, Castelion’s ambitions extend beyond Blackbeard. The company says it has been developing a much longer-range precision strike weapon for several years and will now accelerate its development and testing. That system is intended to reuse technologies, components, and manufacturing techniques developed for Blackbeard.

With a huge demand signal from the Pentagon, Castelion is also working on defensive systems based on the same development and manufacturing philosophy. The company says those efforts are focused on lowering costs, increasing production rates, and providing greater magazine depth for air and missile defense.

The strategy responds to the fact that the U.S. military’s growing interest in hypersonic weapons has been accompanied by persistent questions about production capacity and cost. Hypersonic systems are technically demanding, but the ability to manufacture them in meaningful numbers is ultimately just as important as demonstrating that an individual weapon can fly.

Castelion is betting that a different approach to development and manufacturing can change that equation.

“Castelion is at the forefront of defense manufacturing in the nation,” said Tom Ochinero, chairman and founding partner of Interlagos Capital, which provided some of the equity financing. “They’re building the capabilities to produce thousands of hypersonic weapons a year, something the U.S. has never seen before.”

This reflects a steadily growing U.S. military-wide push toward lower-cost precision munitions that are relatively simple to manufacture, while also drawing on non-traditional defense contractors to develop and produce them. Such efforts are widely viewed as essential to building up stockpiles in an economically sustainable manner ahead of a major contingency, such as a large-scale conflict in the Pacific with China, and ensuring a steady supply of weapons throughout a prolonged war.

The next test of this model will be whether Castelion can translate its relatively rapid development timeline into sustained production at the scale it is promising. With Blackbeard targeted for fielding in 2027 and a new generation of longer-range and defensive systems already in development, the company is positioning itself as much as a defense manufacturer as a missile developer, but this remains very much an unproven concept in this notoriously tricky area.

The new view of Blackbeard at Castelion’s headquarters offers a glimpse of the hardware at the center of that effort.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

United States President Donald Trump’s unpredictability isn’t strengthening the US position in the Iran war, as “the Iranians have no reason to believe anything Trump tells them”, argues Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University.

Walt tells host Steve Clemons that the war is now in a “hurting stalemate” where “neither side really wants to escalate; they’re just waiting for the other side to crack”.

On the Palestinian-Israeli front, Walt doesn’t see an opening for a genuine political solution, as neither US party is willing to exert pressure on Israel, where “there’s still a very strong commitment to ‘Greater Israel’”.

Big news has broken out of the Tailhook Association’s convention in Reno, Nevada this weekend. The Navy has disclosed the existence of an all-new very long-range air-to-air missile, the AIM-424 “Malice.” An image released by the Navy taken last April shows a Super Hornet from Navy Air Test And Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23) loaded with four of the weapons. Another image shows the missile installed in an F-35C’s weapons bay.

The news of the new missile was first reported by our friends Brian Everstine and Steve Trimble over at Aviation Week.

The AIM-424 Long Range Air-to-Air Missile (LRAAM), which is already deep in testing, is meant to arm F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, F-35C Joint Strike Fighters and the upcoming F/A-XX next-generation naval fighter. The missile is clearly larger and significantly farther-reaching than the long-serving AIM-120 AMRAAM and the new AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, which shares the AIM-120’s general mold-line. It isn’t known where Malice slots in next to the very far-reaching AIM-174B “Gunslinger,” which was adapted from the Navy’s surface-launched SM-6. According to Aviation Week, the missile is a two-stage design, which should result in extreme range and very high-speed.

The Pentagon has been interested in multi-stage air-to-air missiles for years and is now floating the goal of developing extreme-range air-to-air weapons that can reach out to the 1,000-mile mark in the years to come. This number is seen as critical to surviving future enemy anti-access capabilities of equal reach and to take advantage of very long-distance kill chains that will dominate future combat.

In addition, closing the air-to-air missile gap, specifically with China, and attempting to leap significantly in front of the PLA’s capabilities in this regard, has become a top priority for the Pentagon. A multitude of classified programs to develop new and more capable air-to-air missiles have been well underway and now we are seeing yet another example of this work in the form of Malice. One of these secretive programs, the Long-Range Engagement Weapon (LREW,), date back at least a decade, which also point to the development of multi-stage air-to-air weapons.

While we don’t know for certain the manufacturer that built this weapon or if this is its only configuration,

It also isn’t clear if this new weapon has other secondary modes, such as anti-ballistic missile and/or air-to-surface capabilities, nor what types of flying targets it is intended to destroy. For instance, is it capable of hitting maneuverable fighters at extreme distances as well as lumbering force multiplying support aircraft? Again, we don’t know at this time.

We will be doing additional analysis reporting on this weapon soon, stay tuned.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

UPDATE:

We now have a specifications page from the Navy. The highlights include a weight of 1500 pounds (roughly three times that of an AIM-120), and a range in excess of 250NM. Keep in mind that these figures may be intentionally skewed for counter-intelligence purposes, as is often the case, in particular the range figure. Regardless, this weapon possibly sits in between the AIM-260 and the AIM-174B Gunslinger in terms of range, and closer to the latter. We also know the missile is built by Raytheon.

The product page reads:

The Department of Navy is developing the Air Intercept Missile (AIM)-424 Long Range Air to Air Missile (LRAAM), a next-generation missile intended to strengthen fleet defense and maintain a decisive air domain overmatch against advanced threats. Also known as Malice, LRAAM directly supports the Department’s contribution to integrated deterrence by increasing range, lethality, and combat effectiveness for Marine and Naval aviation forces that are defending our fleets, our interests, and our homeland.

LRAAM sustains the Department’s first look, first shot, first kill advantage by providing our aviators greater reach, greater survivability, and greater tactical flexibility in the air-to-air fight. Built for 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th generation platforms, LRAAM is designed for the air wing of today and the future.

Specifications

Primary Function: Air-to-Air Missile

Contractor: Raytheon

Propulsion: Solid-propellant rocket motor

Length: 13.5 feet (4.11 meters)

Diameter: 13.5 inches (0.34 meters)

Wingspan: 26.2 inches (0.67 meters)

Weight: 1500 pounds (680.4 kg)

Range: In excess of 250 nm (463 km)

Warhead: Blast fragmentation

*Author’s note, similarities of the design to a Boeing concept was removed due to the manufacturer being disclosed by the Navy

Chinese media and intelligence are closely following the exodus of the American Central Intelligence Agency CIA personnel, particularly the months-long wait for new retirees to receive their financial entitlements. The agency is facing what it describes as an unprecedented number of retirements as the Trump administration seeks to reduce its workforce. Chinese media and intelligence perspectives on this unprecedented exodus of CIA officers align with their own. The delayed payments are a key focus, with both China and the US focusing on exploiting these developments to highlight institutional weaknesses within the American administration and the declining effectiveness of espionage against Beijing. Beijing is using the CIA exodus and delayed retirement payments to cast doubt on the efficiency of American institutions, targeting disaffected and dismissed intelligence operatives to gather information. This is achieved by promoting the idea of ​​the US administration’s collapse and attracting these affected security professionals to bolster Chinese counterintelligence capabilities.  Here, Beijing is exploiting the widespread layoffs and dismissals within the CIA and other US federal agencies, turning the affected employees into valuable assets to bolster Chinese counterintelligence capabilities. The Chinese strategy focuses on transforming these dismissed experts from defenders of US national security into offensive tools that expose Washington’s vulnerabilities.

The most prominent trends in official and semi-official Chinese commentary and analysis regarding the dismissal of CIA personnel can be summarized as follows: (Chinese mockery of the China-defeat strategy and the backfiring on the strategist). This is the same point made by Chinese media reports, such as the official Xinhua News Agency, which indicated that the Trump administration had previously announced that its restructuring and hiring freeze aimed to focus on China-defeating and the trade war. However, the actual result was the dismissal of skilled and experienced personnel within the CIA. This exposes the structural failures of the US, and Chinese media highlighted the crisis as evidence of administrative chaos within the United States. The pressure to downsize the federal government has paralyzed the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This has left Washington unable to even pay the pensions of its retired spies on time.  Here, Chinese intelligence, military, political, strategic, and media circles seized upon this crisis to promote the idea of ​​eroding American national security and the golden opportunity it presented for counterintelligence. Chinese think tanks and intelligence agencies seized upon internal American warnings that leaving thousands of former intelligence officers without income for months made them easy targets for infiltration. Beijing interpreted this as a tacit admission of the fragility of institutional loyalty within the American system in the face of financial pressures. Beijing viewed it as evidence of American administrative disarray and a prime example of the brain drain of accumulated expertise. Chinese analyses, assessments, and evaluations focused on the fact that the deferred resignation and contract buyouts programs have prompted senior analysts and field officers within the CIA (those with extensive networks and deep knowledge of Asian affairs) to abruptly leave the service, creating an intelligence gap that will be difficult to fill in the near future.  From the Chinese perspective, this exposes the American narrative of transparency and efficiency and reinforces the idea of ​​the political manipulation of intelligence. Therefore, China is exploiting this unprecedented crisis within the CIA to bolster its ongoing narrative that US intelligence agencies have become tools in partisan political conflicts within Washington. Beijing views the mass exodus as a reflection of the professional officers’ lack of confidence in the administration’s political direction. Beijing is using this as part of a counter-propaganda strategy, with Chinese media outlets employing these facts to send messages to the international community, developing countries, and the Global South, suggesting that the United States, which seeks to impose its global security hegemony, is suffering from severe internal divisions that prevent it from managing its fundamental sovereign affairs efficiently and professionally.

Regarding the Chinese political and media exploitation of the CIA staff exodus crisis, the Chinese media machine promotes these crises as evidence of the collapse and disarray of the US federal administration model. It exploits the inability of US institutions to meet their financial obligations (to portray Washington as incapable of protecting even its most sensitive agencies). Therefore, Chinese intelligence, analytical, and strategic circles employ propaganda to highlight the fragility of job security and social stability within US decision-making circles. Furthermore, China strategically and intelligence-wise exploits this internal US crisis. Chinese intelligence agencies monitor these vulnerabilities to target former employees or those facing termination. Beijing offers inducements or clandestine channels of communication through consulting and research fronts to ensnare individuals who are psychologically and financially distressed. China also exploits the frustration resulting from delayed pensions or forced layoffs to facilitate infiltration, counter-recruitment, and the acquisition of sensitive secrets.

Chinese intelligence, such as the Ministry of State Security (MSS), operates through specific and deliberate mechanisms. The MSS, which oversees Chinese intelligence operations, exploits vulnerabilities such as fractured loyalty, financial weakness, and psychological and material incentives. Beijing focuses on federal officers and probationary personnel who have been laid off from the CIA and harbor resentment, bitterness, and a desire for revenge against their former superiors. Chinese intelligence, analytical, and strategic circles then work to support these individuals to fill the financial gap. The sudden loss of a job for a security officer with high financial obligations creates fertile ground for recruitment, as China offers substantial and enticing financial incentives to secure their loyalty. Chinese intelligence circles are also actively employing digital recruitment through front companies. These are sham consulting firms. Beijing is establishing networks of consulting companies, think tanks, and fake recruitment agencies that appear Western and 100% legitimate to target talent on LinkedIn. Through these platforms, Chinese intelligence officers target former CIA employees who are seeking employment on well-known job search platforms like LinkedIn. They use disguised accounts, sometimes employing artificial intelligence, to apply for jobs. Then begins the process of gradually extracting information. The relationship starts with requests for ordinary, non-classified (publicly available) research in exchange for lucrative financial rewards to build trust. The employee is then gradually drawn into providing sensitive information and moving to encrypted communication platforms.

Here, Chinese intelligence agencies work to feed their counterintelligence efforts with tactical information. When China succeeds in recruiting a compromised American security operative, it doesn’t just seek international secrets but focuses on acquiring high-quality information that serves its counterintelligence apparatus. The most prominent of these is uncovering the methods of operation of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Understanding American recruitment mechanisms, how spies are planted, and methods of vetting and infiltration. Identifying profiles and characteristics (profiles) to understand the psychological and behavioral traits the CIA seeks in informants, which helps China detect potential spies within its own territory or within the People’s Liberation Army early on. This also involves uncovering technical and cyber vulnerabilities by identifying the encryption tools and systems used by US agencies, thus giving Chinese counterintelligence the ability to fortify its networks and penetrate counterespionage operations.  Exploiting the absence of exit briefings, Western and American intelligence reports have revealed that some federal employees who were hastily discharged did not undergo standard exit briefings. This procedural gap left employees without direct warnings or clear reporting mechanisms should they be approached by hostile entities. Beijing exploited this as a golden opportunity to operate with minimal oversight. In response to this risk, US security agencies, such as the FBI and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center NCSC), issued heightened security alerts and shut down and blocked dozens of fake websites belonging to Chinese recruitment networks targeting discharged CIA employees.

England bowler Brydon Carse is under investigation after he was reportedly involved in an incident at a nightclub in Derby on Saturday, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has confirmed.

Videos circulating on social media on Sunday appeared to show Carse in handcuffs, being led away from a club by four police officers.

The Durham bowler, who is England’s squad for the second Test against Pakistan this week, was seen with team-mate Matthew Potts.

“We are aware of an incident which is reported to have taken place in Derby last night, and are currently investigating,” an ECB statement read.

“We will provide a further update when possible.”

More to follow.

Each time we travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we first go to listen.

In Bunia, we have met dozens of community representatives: survivors, women, young people, local organisations, health workers and leaders from affected areas. Their message is direct: involve us. We know our communities. We know where families seek care, how information moves and why trust is breaking down. Give us the means to help drive the response. They are right.

Ebola spreads through communities and communities hold the knowledge required to stop it. They can identify illness early, alert health teams, help identify and trace contacts, challenge dangerous rumours and support families through access to treatment and safe, dignified burials. The response always moves faster when communities lead alongside national authorities and health workers.

One hundred days ago, the government of the DRC declared the country’s 17th Ebola outbreak, following confirmation of the Bundibugyo virus. WHO subsequently declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, followed by Africa CDC’s declaration of a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security.

The scale of the emergency is immense. As of August 21, the DRC has reported 5,290 confirmed cases and 2,516 deaths across 56 health zones. This is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded and it is moving faster than any previous one. It is being fuelled by insecurity caused by decades of armed conflict that have undermined law, order and social services, and displaced more than a million people.

At the centre of the response are the people who show up every day. Health workers care for patients. Laboratory teams identify the virus. Contact tracers follow its path. Community health workers build trust where fear and misinformation have taken hold. Burial teams help families honour their loved ones safely and with dignity.

They are working under extraordinary pressure, often in insecure and hard-to-reach areas. Some have contracted Ebola in the line of duty.

Their service must be met with action: safety, protective equipment, training, sufficient medical supplies, timely payment, psychosocial support and access to rapid diagnosis and high-quality supportive care if they fall ill. The safety of frontline workers is central to stopping transmission.

The response has made progress. Under the leadership of national authorities, Congolese responders, WHO, Africa CDC and partners have expanded surveillance, deployed laboratories, supported treatment centres, reinforced infection prevention and delivered essential supplies.

Neighbouring Uganda has interrupted locally acquired transmission of the virus. Several health zones in northern Ituri and South Kivu provinces in the DRC have also interrupted transmission. These experiences prove that the outbreak can be stopped more quickly when rapid detection, decisive national leadership and close cooperation with communities break the chains of transmission.

But the continued emergency in the rest of Ituri province and five other provinces demands urgently scaled-up action.

To turn the corner, surveillance teams are being expanded and equipped to detect cases early and rapidly identify contacts. Safe clinical care and infection prevention measures are being increased wherever people seek treatment.

More risk communication and community engagement teams are being deployed to reach out to communities to empower them to participate in the response and address barriers to care. More safe and dignified burial teams are working to prevent transmission associated with deaths. Special efforts are being made to reach vulnerable populations and communities in insecure and hard-to-reach areas.

But despite all these efforts, more is needed. We need to scale our response by two to three times current capacities, across all the response pillars.

Health facilities also require urgent protection from infection. As of August 20, 158 health workers have been infected and 45 have died. Every facility in an affected or high-risk area needs trained staff, protective equipment, clean water, sanitation and functioning infection-prevention systems.

National and local teams need predictable funding for surveillance, laboratories, treatment, logistics, infection prevention and community engagement. Frontline workers must be paid on time. Local organisations need direct support to work consistently with communities. Supplies must arrive before stocks run out.

Delayed financing costs lives. Fragmented financing leaves gaps. Ebola exploits both. On the ground, we at WHO and Africa CDC have established tight integration among health and relief organisations working with the government. Donors therefore need to support and enhance that integration, rather than back siloed and disconnected efforts.

Cross-border coordination also must remain strong. People move within and between countries to trade, work, study, seek care and support their families. Borders must serve as bridges for coordinated public health action. This does not require closing borders or imposing blanket travel and trade restrictions. Such measures can disrupt response operations and livelihoods without stopping transmission. The priority is coordinated surveillance, rapid information-sharing and prepared health services along movement routes.

The first 100 days have made the priorities clear.

Find every case. Follow every contact. Break every chain of transmission, protect every health and frontline worker, save lives and ensure that no community is left behind. Bring testing and treatment closer to every affected community. Bolster cross-border coordination. Scale up international support. Turn every pledge into action.

WHO and Africa CDC will continue working with the DRC, neighbouring countries, communities and partners to deliver on these priorities. Our responsibility is to bring the full strength of international and continental cooperation behind the nationally-led response.

Uganda and areas in DRC have shown how the course of the outbreak can be turned, through rapid detection, decisive action and close cooperation with communities. But these measures must be delivered at scale. Success depends on sustained national leadership, continental solidarity and international support. We must rise to this challenge, together.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Major routes between Manchester and Birmingham, which passes through Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry and Wolverhampton, along with routes from Leeds to York, Cheltenham to Cardiff and Glasgow to Edinburgh, are all affected.

Services to Plymouth and Penzance are also disrupted with customers relying on Great Western Railway operators as a replacement.

“We are working closely with relevant partners and will provide further updates as soon as possible,” a CrossCountry spokesperson said.

While the operator usually calls at more than 100 stations, it said that the only route expecting a “near-normal” service was between Peterborough, Cambridge and Stansted Airport.

The company apologised to passengers affected and said tickets were being accepted by other operators.

Customers are entitled to Delay Repay compensation if their train is delayed by 30 minutes or more, while those who choose not to travel can claim a refund for their journey.

Only state-approved parties loyal to President Tokayev permitted to take part amid a sweeping constitutional overhaul.

Voters are heading to the polls in Kazakhstan’s snap parliamentary election, which critics say will strengthen the power of the president.

Polling stations opened at 7am local time (02:00 GMT) and are scheduled to close at 8pm (15:00 GMT). More than 12 million of Kazakhstan’s 20 million people are eligible to vote.

The election will usher in a new 145-member unicameral legislature that is expected to be dominated by supporters of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who has led the Central Asian country since 2019.

Constitutional overhauls earlier this year abolished Kazakhstan’s upper house in favour of a one-body parliament. Officials claim the change will give parliament more weight in political decision-making, having previously been confined to a mostly auxiliary role.

However, only seven state-approved parties, all loyal to Tokayev, have been allowed to put forth candidates.

The constitutional changes also reset term limits to allow Tokayev to run again in 2029.

The 73-year-old was the chosen successor of longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled for almost 30 years from the 1990s. But he broke with his predecessor amid cost-of-living protests in 2022 that led to the deaths of 238 people, and has since touted a reform agenda called “Just Kazakhstan”.

A former Soviet state, Kazakhstan balances relations with China, Europe and Russia, with Tokayev navigating recent tensions over Moscow’s war with Ukraine.

Kazakhstan is oil-rich and makes up about 2 percent of daily world supply, mostly exporting to European countries through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to Russia’s port of Novorossiysk.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion will not be playing singles, but could team up with her older sister Venus for doubles.

Serena Williams will team up with Carlos Alcaraz to create a powerhouse mixed doubles pair on her return to the US Open.

The US Tennis Association announced on Saturday that Williams and Alcaraz had been given a wild card into the tournament. The mixed doubles main draw begins on Tuesday, with the winning team sharing $1 million.

It will be Williams’s first time playing at the US Open since 2022. The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion returned to tennis this summer.

“Let’s gooooo!” Alcaraz posted on X, with a fire emoji and tagging Williams.

Williams is not planning to play singles in New York. The USTA had been holding one women’s wild card, presumably in case Williams wanted it. However, the tournament announced on Saturday that it had been given to American Sofia Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion.

Williams played singles at Wimbledon but sustained a knee injury in her first-round loss. She played doubles with older sister Venus at the Cincinnati Open, and they could still opt to play together at the US Open.

Alcaraz announced this week he would return to defend his US Open singles title after being sidelined since April with a right wrist injury.

Serena Williams won a mixed doubles title at the US Open even before winning any of her six singles titles there. She teamed for the 1998 championship with Max Mirnyi, who now works with top-ranked woman Aryna Sabalenka.

The mixed doubles tournament is far different now, as the USTA revamped it last year to make it a two-day, 16-team event it hoped would draw top singles players.

Few are bigger than Williams and Alcaraz, the two-time US Open men’s champion who is ranked number two.

The USTA also announced a number of updates to the field after some players withdrew from the competition.

Americans Jessica Pegula and Taylor Fritz will team up, after their previous partners, Jack Draper and Elena Rybakina, pulled out with injuries. The teams of Emma Navarro and Tommy Paul, along with Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik, were given the remaining two wild cards into the main draw.

Diana Shnaider remains in the field and will be given a chance to find a new partner after Daniil Medvedev withdrew.

US Open mixed doubles teams: Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic, Pegula and Fritz, Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud, Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli, Amanda Anisimova and Learner Tien, two-time defending champions Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, Alex Eala and Felix Auger-Aliassime, Leylah Fernandez and Frances Tiafoe, Taylor Townsend and Alexander Zverev, Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils, Williams and Alcaraz, Muchova and Mensik, and Navarro and Paul.

The remaining two spots will be determined through an eight-team qualifying tournament on Monday.

The USTA gave wild cards to the teams of Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev, and Peyton Stearns and Christian Harrison, to be part of that field.

It is otherwise largely made up of the traditional doubles specialists who lost out on the chance to play in the US Open last year, with direct entry based on the players’ combined singles ranking.

Caracas, August 22, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly unanimously approved on Friday the Law on the Promotion and Protection of Housing Construction, a reform establishing updated rules for the construction and commercialization of residential properties.

The legislation, which replaces the Law Against Real Estate Fraud from April 2012, consists of four chapters and 40 articles establishing rules for purchase and sale contracts, construction company responsibilities, and oversight mechanisms under the Ministry of Housing and Habitat.

“This is a law that protects real estate developers and companies dedicated to housing construction while also protecting homebuyers so they can gain access to housing quickly and preventing any situation that undermines their right to acquire a home,” National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said on social media.

The initiative was backed by opposition parties alongside the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV). COPEI deputy Miguel Salazar stated that the legislation creates “great expectations” and “strengthens the legislative ecosystem that protects the real estate sector.”

The law has been sent to Acting President Delcy Rodríguez for final approval before being published in the National Gazette.

The newly endorsed legislation establishes a series of conditions for real estate developers to meet before beginning to pre-sell housing units, including proof of land ownership, municipal approval of the preliminary project, and mechanisms to protect funds contributed by buyers.

The law also establishes a unified registry for real estate projects and provides a financial protection mechanism. Funds deposited through an escrow arrangement may only be released once the development has obtained the corresponding permits. Companies must also detail the characteristics of the homes and the construction schedule in each contract.

The law also establishes fines for delays in submitting documents, permit failures, non-compliance with regulations, and violations of preventive measures, among other offenses.

At the same time, the legislative project establishes incentives for private sector constructors such as greater flexibility to set prices, an end to a prior existing 24-month deadline for completing certain projects, and modified conditions benefiting sellers should buyers fail to make payments.

The bill also eliminated the lending banks’ liability in case the real estate project is not completed. For buyers, the change removes one of the parties they could potentially hold accountable in case the purchased home is not delivered.

Venezuelan authorities have moved to improve conditions for private real estate companies and landlords in the wake of the 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24, leaving some 17,900 people homeless, particularly in La Guaira state. On July 14, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez estimated that 25,000 homes would be needed to accommodate those who lost their houses.

The government has assigned 335 apartments to displaced families since the earthquake. Acting President Rodríguez has pledged to deliver 4,000 homes before December and reach 10,000 by the end of 2027. Venezuelan authorities have likewise created a credit program for housing purchases and provided loans to condominium boards for repair works.

The legislative initiative favoring real estate developers came on the heels of the Residential Property Lease Law approved on July 31. Authorities presented the project’s goal as improving conditions for landlords to put their properties on the market.

The law allows landlords and tenants to freely and independently establish contractual terms and rental rates and sidelines the state’s housing superintendency SUNAVI. The bill allows rents to be paid in national or foreign currency and establishes a three-month rent limit for deposits.

In addition, landlords and tenants have access to multiple mediation mechanisms, including conciliation centers, arbitration, the intervention of local peace justices, or municipal court proceedings. Tenant organizations had recently denounced recurrent landlord practices of bringing trespassing criminal charges as a way to force evictions.

At the same time, the new law acceded to a long-time demand from real estate lobbies in fast-tracking evictions. Landlords can rescind the rental agreement if tenants are two months behind on rent, have illegally sublet the property, or have given it a different use than the one agreed to, among other conditions.

The 2011 law regulating housing leases, which was approved by former President Hugo Chávez and is highly protective of tenant rights, remains valid for existing contracts, while all rentals signed in the future will be governed by the new law. However, local media have reported on a spate of evictions after the new law was enacted.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

Bitkine, Chad – For Ache Kodo, seeing a doctor once meant saving money for the journey.

Living in Bitkine, in central Chad, she said a medical visit could mean paying for transport, the consultation and other costs of travelling to a larger town.

Now, she can consult a doctor remotely through a Telemedan kiosk closer to home.

“Telemedan changed how my family accessed healthcare services,” Ache told Al Jazeera. “It was difficult before, as it involved me saving money to travel just to see a doctor. Now I’m able to do it on time with fewer costs from where I am. It has also enhanced my economic status.”

For people in rural Chad, distance can be as much of a barrier to healthcare as the shortage of doctors themselves. Medical facilities and specialists are concentrated in larger towns and cities, leaving many communities far from basic services.

Abakar Mahamat grew up with that reality.

“The problem wasn’t only the lack of doctors,” he said. “It was also the distance between those doctors and the communities that needed them.”

In 2021, he launched Telemedan, a telemedicine initiative designed to bring consultations closer to communities where electricity, internet access and medical infrastructure are limited.

“Instead of asking people to travel hundreds of kilometres to find a doctor, I wanted to use technology to bring the doctor closer to them,” Abakar told Al Jazeera.

A clinic powered by the sun

The kiosks run on solar panels and batteries, allowing them to operate without reliable grid electricity.

A local operator registers the patient and takes basic measurements using equipment including blood-pressure monitors, glucometers, thermometers, pulse oximeters and electrocardiogram (ECG) machines.

The doctor joins remotely, appearing on a screen as the operator assists with the examination.

Telemedan says its kiosks can also be equipped with diagnostic tools including stethoscopes, temperature sensors and, in some cases, ultrasound equipment. A trained local operator helps patients use them.

The system is designed for places where internet access may be unreliable. Patient information can be stored locally and synchronised when connectivity returns. An Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) service allows people without internet access to book appointments and access health information.

Depending on the location, the kiosks can connect through mobile networks or satellite links.

“We want to see that the absence of reliable electricity or the internet should not mean the absence of healthcare,” Abakar said.

The cost of getting to a doctor

Abakar said some journeys for medical care can cost $200 or more once transport, accommodation, logistics and medical consultations are included.

Telemedan consultations cost between $2 and $15, depending on the service.

For Abakar, the issue is also about what families can afford to give up to obtain care.

“A patient should not have to choose between seeking medical care and being able to feed their family,” he said.

From pilot to wider network

Telemedan began as a pilot and has expanded with support from grants and institutional partnerships, including Chad’s Ministry of Public Health and Prevention.

Abakar said the initiative now has 37 kiosks across 11 provinces and has reached an estimated 143,000 people.

Telemedan has also begun using artificial intelligence to help screen for diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that can damage vision. The initiative says the technology is intended to assist healthcare professionals rather than replace them.

But a remote consultation has limits.

A kiosk cannot provide emergency treatment or perform every examination. Patients who need specialist care, laboratory tests, medicines or hospital treatment still have to reach the next level of the health system.

Can the kiosks last?

Telemedan’s expansion comes as Chad develops its wider digital health system.

Youssouf Silay, an assistant to the coordinator of Chad’s National Digital Health Programme, told Al Jazeera that the country’s National Health Development Plan for 2022–2030 identifies digital health as a way to expand access to care.

Chad established the National Telemedicine Programme in 2021 and launched its National Digital Health Programme in 2023, Youssouf said. The Ministry of Health is also developing a legal and regulatory framework for digital health services.

“The objective is to promote innovative solutions that can improve access to healthcare, particularly in areas with limited medical and energy infrastructure,” Youssouf told Al Jazeera. “Solutions such as solar-powered telemedicine kiosks can contribute to this effort by bringing healthcare services closer to underserved populations.”

But putting a kiosk in a village is only the beginning.

The equipment has to keep working. Connectivity has to be available. Local operators need training. Doctors need to be there when patients call. And people who need care beyond the kiosk need a way to reach it.

Each kiosk costs about $10,000, according to Abakar. Telemedan sells the units to governments, public health programmes and partner organisations, which then operate them. The model means patients are not paying for the infrastructure itself.

Telemedan says it wants to reach one million people in rural communities across sub-Saharan Africa.

A solar-powered kiosk cannot replace a hospital. It cannot replace a doctor in every circumstance.

But it can shorten the distance between a patient and the health system.

“We want Telemedan to become a sustainable layer of healthcare infrastructure, not simply a collection of technology projects,” Abakar told Al Jazeera.