NEWS

“I want to talk a little bit about forward [forces] and air base defense. Let’s be clear, we got our rear-end handed to us from drones and other vehicles, aerospace vehicles, if you will, including three F-5s that took off in Iran and flew low level and dropped bombs on an airbase,” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck just declared during a panel discussion today centered on counter-drone defenses at the annual Space & Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, at which TWZ is in attendance. Before his retirement in 2024, VanHerck served as head of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

“That’s embarrassing as an airman to me to say that happened,” VanHerck added, noting that this was the first time in decades U.S. forces had been subjected to an aerial attack of this kind.

A series of reports, as well as unconfirmed claims from Tehran, state that Iranian F-5s targeted Camp Buehring in Kuwait on an extremely dangerous low-level bombing mission. The attack reportedly came on or around March 1, just three days after U.S. and Israeli forces began launching combined strikes on Iran.

At the time of writing, the U.S. government still does not appear to have officially confirmed the Iranian F-5 strikes on Camp Buehring. TWZ has reached out to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in light of VanHerck’s remarks today, and the command declined to comment.

NBC News was first to report on this attack in a story in April, citing anonymous U.S. officials. At that time, the outlet also said only that a single Iranian F-5 had struck Camp Buehring. American forces have been present at this base continuously since the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In June, Iranian state media outlet PressTV aired a segment with additional claimed details about the operation, as well as interviews with what were said to be the pilots who took part. That report said that a trio of heavily refurbished Iranian F-5s, known locally as Kowsars, had been sent on the mission. Iran acquired a fleet of 166 F-5E/Fs from the United States in the 1970s under the regime of the Shah. How many of those jets were still operational to any degree when the latest conflict broke out on February 28 is unclear. The Iranian Air Force was heavily targeted by U.S. and Israeli forces from the start.

According to PressTV, the F-5s flew to Kuwait from Iran at extremely low altitudes, at times below 50 feet, and at high speed to evade detection, including by E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) jets flying above. The pilots maintained radio silence the entire time.

The PressTV report also claimed that pilots followed a route specifically designed to avoid Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries and other air defenses at Camp Buehring. Though this remains unconfirmed, it is worth noting that Patriot has known limitations when it comes to its engagement envelope. New capabilities are being developed for the system now to expand its flexibility to address targets approaching from different vectors, as well as ones that have already passed overhead. Without the aid of some type of look-down sensor capability, ground-based air defense systems more broadly cannot see through the horizon or topography, either.

Furthermore, the PressTV report claimed that F-5 strikes caused broader chaos and confusion that contributed to a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet fighter shooting down three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle combat jets. Americans and Kuwaiti authorities acknowledged this friendly-fire incident at the time, which thankfully did not result in any fatalities, but have yet to offer an official explanation for how it occurred.

Many questions remain about how Iranian F-5s would have been able to ingress and egress from Kuwait unscathed, and successfully drop unguided bombs on Camp Buehring in the process. It’s unclear where the jets launched from, and it is very possible they needed to carry significant extra fuel in external tanks just to have made the trip to and from Iran in the first place. This would also have impacted their top speed and capacity to carry ordnance.

As an aside, a pair of Iranian Su-24 Fencer swing-wing combat jets also attempted to strike targets in Qatar on March 2, but that would have been a much shorter trip across the Persian Gulf. Those jets were also shot down by Qatari F-15s before they could reach their destination.

Qatari MoD released statement noting that the QEAF downed two Iranian Su-24MK strike aircraft. Would be interesting to know which asset(s) shot them down.

“Qatar Emiri Air Force successfully shot down two (SU24) aircraft coming from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” https://t.co/ZNCaOQ7xA7 pic.twitter.com/vspjHQnDi8

— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) March 2, 2026

In addition to the sensors associated with Patriot and other air defense systems on the ground, as well as E-3s in the air, the U.S. military has spent years developing a more integrated air and missile defense network with allies and partners across the Middle East. It is also worth noting here that Iran very actively targeted air and missile defense radars in the region early in the conflict, something we noted was its own separate wake-up call, as you can read more about here. This raises a question of what else Iran may have brought to bear in support of this operation. Iranian forces could have launched additional missile and/or drone strikes against sensors, command-and-control nodes, and other sites to help clear the way. Electronic warfare, cyber attacks, and/or deception of various kinds could have been employed, as well.

During the panel today, VanHerck said he did not believe any of this should have come as a surprise, and that it speaks to larger issues surrounding base defense facing the U.S. military today.

“People are like, ‘How come that happened? We got surprised.’ No, we didn’t get surprised,” he said. “What happened was we had two services pointing fingers at each other, and nobody made a decision on whose mission and role responsibility that was, candidly.”

Whether VanHerck’s comments here reflect his specific understanding of what happened during the attack on Camp Buehring in March, or if he was speaking more generally, is unclear. The two services he refers to here are the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. As part of the delineation of official roles and responsibilities after the Air Force was split from the Army in 1947, the latter service was given the lead role in defending both services’ bases against aerial attacks. Today, the Army has a broader responsibility for ground-based air and missile defense across the joint force, abroad and at home, as well.

“The department needed to say it is this service or that service’s responsibility moving forward,” VanHerck continued today. “I’m not taking sides in that. The bottom line is, we didn’t make the decision, we accepted risk, and now we’re paying the price of that risk that we accepted, candidly.”

Now, “the Air Force chief has stood up and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to take that mission on,’” VanHerck also noted. “What we can’t have happen in the next year is a bifurcated solution where you have Patriots and THAADs [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems] operating up here, and you have counter-drone … down here, and they’re not fusing data and sharing C2 [command and control] and collaboration. That can’t happen, and we’ve got to make sure we get together and don’t allow that to happen.”

The Air Force is still very early in the process of taking on more responsibility for defending its facilities against aerial threats from the ground, and has been focusing first on acquiring and fielding new counter-drone and counter-cruise missile capabilities. Similar developments may now be afoot in the Marine Corps, particularly when it comes to ballistic missile defense. The Marines are already in the process of fielding a host of new and improved lower-tier anti-air and counter-drone systems.

For its part, in recent years, the Army has acknowledged significant gaps in its air and missile defense capabilities and capacity, especially when it comes to addressing drone threats. The service is also fully aware of the strains on its higher-end Patriot and THAAD units after decades of persistent operational demands in response to crises globally. TWZ has repeatedly called attention to concerns about the ability, or lack thereof, of the Army’s Patriot force to adequately meet operational demands now, let alone in the event of a future high-end fight against an opponent like China.

The PATRIOT Missile in Action

All of this is now further wrapped in a succession of reports that U.S. stockpiles of anti-air interceptors for Patriot and THAAD, as well as other critical munitions, are now very worryingly low after months of fighting with Iran. This follows heavy expenditures of surface-to-air missiles and other weaponry by U.S. and allied forces in the course of other conflicts and crises in recent years. Efforts to replenish those stocks, as well as expand other air and missile defense capabilities and capacity, are underway now, but are still years away from yielding real fruit.

When it comes to Iran’s reported F-5 attacks on Kuwait earlier this year, much remains unknown and unconfirmed. However, it is certainly the opinion of retired Gen. VanHerck that it should be taken seriously and speaks to the urgency with which much bigger problems with the U.S. air and missile ecosystem need to be addressed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Spain’s World Cup-winning captain Rodri is returning to his homeland after Man City agree transfer to Barcelona.

Manchester City have accepted a 65.4 million pounds ($88.47m) bid from Barcelona for their World Cup-winning Spain midfielder Rodri, British media have reported.

The 2024 Ballon d’Or winner has agreed a four-year deal with the Spanish champions, Sky Sports said on Sunday, and will head to the Nou Camp to complete the transfer next week.

Rodri won 12 major honours at City, including four Premier League titles, two FA Cups, three League Cups and the Champions League after 298 appearances in seven seasons at the Etihad Stadium.

Rodri, who joined City from Atletico Madrid for a then-club record 62.8 million pounds (about $80m) in 2019, had one year left on his contract and City had wanted him to sign an extension.

The 30-year-old missed City’s 3-0 loss to Arsenal in the Community Shield on Sunday, having only returned to the club’s training ground on Friday following minor back surgery.

The fatal incident reportedly took place amid a rush of devotees at a temple in India’s Bihar state.

At ‌least six people have died, and ⁠several have been injured, in a “stampede-like” incident caused by a falling electricity pole at the Ashok Dham temple in Lakhisarai, in India’s eastern ⁠state of Bihar, according to officials.

“It is being said that an electric pole fell there and people were electrocuted, which led to a stampede-like situation,” Shivam Kumar, ⁠a senior police officer, ⁠told news agency ANI on Monday. “We can tell you the exact reason only after verifying everything.”

The incident occurred amid a rush of devotees at the temple to offer water to the Hindu god Shiva during the holy month of Shravan, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

At least five people ⁠were injured in the incident, a senior official told ⁠Reuters news agency, as videos from ANI showed relatives gathering in hospitals as rescuers brought in people.

“The incident at Ashok Dham in Lakhisarai is extremely tragic and heartbreaking. I am deeply distressed by the news of the devotees’ deaths in the accident,” Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary wrote on X.

“My heartfelt condolences go out to the bereaved families. The administration has been given necessary instructions to ensure proper and prompt treatment for the injured,” he added.

India’s history of crowd accidents includes ‌30 deaths at the giant Maha Kumbh festival last year, when tens of millions gathered ‌to‌ bathe in sacred waters.

As Messina celebrated the Sicilian holiday of Ferragosto, thieves struck the MuMe museum to steal the masterworks by Antonello da Messina.

Thieves have stolen four Renaissance masterworks by Antonello da Messina valued at up to 80 million euros ($93m) from the MuMe Regional Interdisciplinary Museum in the Sicilian city of Messina in Italy.

Cultural officials and Italian media reported the theft on Sunday, saying the heist occurred at about 9:50pm (19:50 GMT) the day before, during Sicily’s major Ferragosto holiday.

Italian news outlet Il Giornale dell’Arte said that the perpetrators had exploited the citywide distraction of the traditional Vara procession, which drew police and large crowds to central Messina.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported that the thieves cut through metal perimeter fencing along Viale Annunziata to gain access to the grounds. They then forced open a side door to enter the gallery halls. Once inside, the group breached an armoured glass display case to extract a small, double-sided tempera panel dating back to 1465-1474.

The portable devotional piece features the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan Monk on its front and Christ in Pieta on its reverse. Originally part of the Wilhelm Soldan collection from 1930, it was acquired by the Sicilian region at a Christie’s auction in 2003 following its formal attribution to Antonello.

The perpetrators also dismantled all five remaining tempera-on-wood panels of the historic San Gregorio Polyptych. Commissioned in 1473 by Abbess Fabria Cirino for the monastery of Santa Maria, which was subsequently destroyed in Messina’s 1908 earthquake, the altarpiece stands as the only surviving masterpiece by Antonello that remained in his hometown. The thieves made off with three key sections of the piece.

Italian outlet Repubblica reported that the thieves abandoned the remaining two panels depicting Saint Benedict and Saint Gregory resting against a wall near the museum grounds.

‘A real movie-style heist like at the Louvre’

“We are devastated by what happened. They were two of Antonello da Messina’s most important and best-known works,” museum director Marisa Mercurio told Italian news agency ANSA.

Local Culture Councillor Enzo Caruso told outlet Il Tirreno: “Nobody in Messina could have imagined a real movie-style heist like at the Louvre.”

Caruso said that international interest in Antonello’s oeuvre had expanded after Italy’s Culture Ministry purchased his Ecce Homo painting for $14.9m earlier in the year.

Lynda Albertson, CEO of the ARCA art crimes research association, told La Repubblica that “stealing an Antonello may be far easier than selling one” given the high visibility and historic footprint of the stolen panels.

She explained that high-profile art of this kind rarely gets sold, often spending years traded within the criminal underworld as leverage for other illegal activities.

Born in Sicily around the year 1430, Antonello da Messina stands as one of the defining masters of the early Italian Renaissance. Because few of his works survive today, his surviving paintings are considered irreplaceable cultural treasures.

The theft follows a separate case days earlier in Parma, northern Italy, where police recovered three stolen works by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse valued at roughly $11.5m.

When the general in charge of protecting American skies found out that drones had been swarming over Langley Air Force Base, he was hardly shocked. It was the kind of threat now retired Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck said that he and his predecessors had been warning about for years. TWZ was the first to report the December 2023 incursions over Langley, one of a select few bases hosting F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, and a particularly important installation for supporting the United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) missions to defend the U.S. homeland, including protecting the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C. For nearly a decade, we have been documenting drone incursions over sensitive U.S. military and civilian sites, warships and more.

VanHerck was in charge of both commands when drones of a still-mysterious origin began flying over the Virginian installation. He offered some lessons learned from that experience on Wednesday, during a panel at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium (SMD) in Huntsville, Alabama, attended by TWZ. VanHerck provided no new details about who was operating the drones. However, he did describe the frustration of knowing something like this could happen and the helplessness U.S. military installation commanders at the time were feeling about their inability to defend against such incursions.

“The first lesson I would tell you is there were no surprises, at least for myself and the team at NORAD/NORTHCOM and others,” VanHerck said of learning about the Langley incursions, which began on the evening of Dec. 6, 2023. “We’ve been articulating — my predecessors had been articulating — that this threat was here, it was real, it was now, and we weren’t ready for it.”

VanHerck said that two years before the Langley incursion, he expressed his frustrations to Lloyd Austin, defense secretary at the time.

“I actually had told the Secretary of Defense on the 16th of December 2021 that I lacked the domain awareness to really do my mission,” the retired general explained. “That we lack access to capabilities and capacity, timely access in the homeland to do the mission, not only for a drone threat but more broadly all threats.”

“Maybe the most important one,” he said he told Austin, “is that we’re not set up to fight in and from our own land. We make an assumption that we’re going to take the fight somewhere else, and it’s going to occur on somebody else’s land. And the fact is, it’s ready to happen here right now.”

The lack of domain awareness over the homeland is a topic TWZ has frequently raised over the years, but that U.S. officials would not admit to it or address until after the Chinese spy balloon floated over much of the country in 2023 before being shot down off the Carolinas.

As we described in our original story, a base official at the time told us that Langley “first observed UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] activities the evening of December 6 [2023] and experienced multiple incursions throughout the month of December. The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration. None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions.”

Beyond not having the means to detect and defeat incursions like the ones over Langley, VanHerck said he didn’t even have the authority to do so. It was not NORAD/NORTHCOM’s mission, VanHerck proffered. It was up to the individual services.

“But their responsibility and authority stopped at the fence line at the base, and immediately thereafter, it was really unclear to everybody whose responsibility and authority was it just outside the base,” the retired general noted.

“Our installation commanders didn’t feel empowered,” VanHerck remembered. “They really felt a lack of trust. That ‘hey, if I take action, am I going to be covered for taking action and shooting something down that might be a civilian drone, but it might be a hostile drone?’ And so there was a lot of work to be done in that aspect, on the policy side and the authority side.”

VanHerck said that the pressure to act mounted after the so-called Jersey Drone incidents, which we were also the first to report. For a few months beginning in November 2024, thousands of people began reporting mystery drones in the skies.

“After New Jersey, there were calls for ‘just shoot them down,’” the general recalled. “Well, you know, in your homeland, that’s pretty hard to do, especially when you don’t have domain awareness. But shooting missiles that accelerate to four times the speed of sound or more, that have exploding warheads with fragmentation devices that explode titanium rods at thousands of feet per second over Langley or New Jersey is probably not where we needed to be, and for me that was really the only option I had as the NORAD/NORTHCOM commander.” 

Besides, as we frequently noted, the vast majority of these so-called drones were reported by civilians and turned out to be misidentified manned aircraft and even stars and planets. In fact, we saw no visual evidence of any mass drone incursions or strange objects over New Jersey during this prolonged series of events.

You can see video of one of the Jersey Drone situations below:

VanHerck was bringing up issues we pointed out in our own coverage about the murky authorities and prohibitions on the use of directed energy weapons, like lasers and high-power microwave systems, let alone kinetic capabilities, to bring down drones over military bases. 

Frustrations over that lack of authority and ability to act are issues that VanHerck’s successor, Gen. Gregory Guillot, has also raised and in many ways successfully pushed to change. You can read more about his efforts to give commanders greater authority to act against drones in our coverage here.

As we previously reported, in the wake of drone incursions like those over Langley, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Picatinny Arsenal, and others, NORTHCOM was given the role of synchronizing the U.S. military response during Guillot’s tenure. U.S. INDOPACOM was given a similar role for the Pacific. 

In addition, as VanHerck noted on Wednesday, there have been additional much-needed changes under current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “who has cleared up a lot of the responsibility [and] authority [issues] with some of his actions.”

Among them, the military has been using directed energy lasers against cartel drones flying across the border and is working to expand that capability.

Moreover, the federal Safer Skies Act, which gives the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ) as well as certain state, local and tribal agencies, limited authority to mitigate drone threats domestically, “really helps clarify things,” VanHerck stated.

Still, there is a long way to go, however, before the U.S. can fully protect its skies, the retired general suggested.

“We still have gaps and seams, and we need an integrated, layered approach driven by specific policy on what you must defend,” VanHerck posited. “These are the key lessons that I took away and put in memos years ago that we still have to fix today, and we’re seeing some of this play out not only in our homeland. We’re seeing some of it play out forward as well. So that’s a long answer, but there are a lot of lessons here.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

But Ferrari’s shares dropped the day after the Luce’s launch, following backlash over the car.

Amongst those criticising the car were Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini and former Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who said the car was “risking the destruction of a legend”.

Ferrari’s chief design officer Flavio Manzoni said in an interview in May that critics are part of the innovation process and that he believed people would come to appreciate the Luce.

The company has not disclosed its target for Luce sales but, according to a Financial Times report, it has hit this year’s goal thanks to strong demand from China.

Ferrari did not respond to a BBC request for comment on the FT’s report,

Sotheby’s said in a statement, external that the auctioned vehicle marked an “unbeatable opportunity” to own the first production car of the Luce.

The car has special wheels, customised brakes and a white finish.

The charity sale marks a “tangible expression of innovation, responsibility, and long-term vision for future generations,” Sotheby’s said.

Ferraris often attract some of the highest prices at car auctions.

A bespoke Ferrari Daytona SP3 supercar raised $26m for the carmaker’s education initiatives at an auction in 2025. At the time it set an auction record for the highest-price paid for a new car.

The current record for the highest price paid at auction was an ultra-rare 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, which was sold for $142m in 2022.

Israeli settlers have erected tents for a new illegal settlement outpost near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, as separate groups of settlers have besieged the village of Qusra for a week.

Settlers pitched tents in the Wadi Zeytun area near the village of Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, on Sunday in an attempt to establish a new settlement outpost, said Al Jazeera’s Tharwat Shakra.

Reporting from Ramallah, she said settlers also began establishing a separate outpost in the village of Burqa on the same day.

If a new outpost is established, the number of outposts surrounding the two neighbouring villages will rise to six, said the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported the encroachment in Wadi Zeytun.

Settlers have seized roughly 4,700 of Umm Safa’s 4,800 dunams (about 470 of 480 hectares, or 1,160 of 1,186 acres), and 10,000 of Burqa’s 12,000 dunams (1,000 of 1,200 hectares, or 2,471 of 2,965 acres), according to Shakra.

Meanwhile, in the Ras al-Ain area of the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, an Israeli settler siege on three families has entered a second week, with 15 Palestinians, including two children, besieged in their homes.

Israeli soldiers rotated their positions and erected a tent in front of residents’ homes after spending the previous two days dismantling one that settlers had tried to put up there, Shakra reported. Municipal crews later restored electricity and water lines to the besieged families.

In separate incidents on Sunday, Al Jazeera reporters in the West Bank said settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the town of Beit Imrin, north of Nablus, and detained those inside. Israeli forces then arrived and arrested nine people from the house before withdrawing. Soldiers also blocked Palestinian Red Crescent teams from reaching the area and confiscated the keys to ambulances and medical-relief vehicles, Shakra reported.

There were also attacks in the Nab’a al-Kaabneh community near Taybeh, Shakra said, and an attempted raid on a home in Turmus Aya, both in the Ramallah district. Attacks in Hebron’s al-Jaabari neighbourhood left Palestinians injured, including some by gunfire, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces have escalated arrests in towns where illegal settler outposts have been established, targeting residents who confront the attacks.

Israel using settlers ‘to advance ethnic cleansing’

Israeli settler violence and the ongoing siege of three Palestinian homes in Qusra should be understood as part of Israel’s decades-long rule of “impunity”, which has now reached a “climax”, said Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Sunday, she said Israel has no right to carry out military incursions on Palestinian territory and is instead obligated to protect civilians from military action. Israeli officials, however, appear to be collaborating with settlers rather than restraining them, she said.

“Israel has outsourced coercion to the settlers and is using them to advance ethnic cleansing,” Albanese said. “This is a crime… This is utter terrorism; these settlers should be investigated and prosecuted.”

She said that while Israel’s endgame may be “ethnic cleansing”, it is using “war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide as the means to continue the Nakba” – the catastrophic ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948, during the creation of Israel.

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera the situation in the West Bank was “extremely dangerous”, saying settler groups were carrying out “an average of 30 attacks every day” as they “spearhead” a campaign to seize land and displace Palestinians.

Barghouti said the goal of the campaign was “annexation and displacement”, and called for Arab and international pressure on Washington to halt Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank as well as Gaza.

Israeli attacks in the West Bank have intensified since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, according to Wafa. About 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 illegal outposts across the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

The UN recognises Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as illegal under international law.

US president says he’s ‘not happy’ about the drills, citing his ‘very good relationship’ with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

US President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with close ally South Korea, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump said in a social media post on Sunday that the exercises, due to start on Monday, are costly and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” while Trump has been in the White House.

“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He also mentioned Seoul’s stance on the US-Israel war on Iran.

“I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” he said.

Trump added that it was too late to cancel the drills, so he had ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” them.

When asked about Trump’s post, South Korea’s Ministry of Defence said the military exercises would “proceed as previously notified and scheduled”.

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield drills, scheduled to run for 11 days from August 17 to 27, will involve 18,000 South Korean soldiers. They are a regular summer fixture for South Korea’s armed forces and their US allies, designed to prepare them for defence against the nuclear-armed North Korea, which is battle-hardened from its involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Pyongyang has always been angered by the exercises, saying they are rehearsals for an invasion.

Last week, North Korea denounced the latest drills as a provocation that heightens tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

A spokesperson for North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that the US-Japan-South Korea military cooperation is turning into a nuclear alliance, and Pyongyang will respond to a new level of threat with a new level of deterrent.

The following day, Trump posted a photo of himself standing next to Kim and wrote that the two leaders got along great, “despite the unfriendly look on this particular picture”.

During his first term, Trump met Kim three times.

This is not the first time that the US president has sought to end the exercises with South Korea. After a historic 2018 summit in Singapore with Kim, he called the military drills “expensive” and “provocative“.

President Donald Trump has said the US will “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.

He also noted on Truth Social that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile,” Trump posted.

Seoul said the drills with the US would proceed “as scheduled”. Pyongyang has not yet commented. It comes after North Korea this month conducted ballistic missile tests banned by the United Nations.

Trump said in his social media post on Sunday that it was “too late to cancel”, as the US and South Korea were due to start their annual military exercises on Monday.

He added: “While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!'”

Last week, US and South Korean military leaders held a joint press conference announcing Ulchi Freedom Shield.

They said the 11-day event would be similar in scale to previous years, with about 18,000 South Korean soldiers participating.

During the news conference, military leaders also mentioned North Korea’s deployment of troops to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

US military spokesperson Ryan Donald said “our training accounts for that threat”, referring to North Korean soldiers returning from the battlefield. About 28,500 American military personnel are stationed in South Korea.

On Friday, North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned the joint military drills as “a rehearsal for an aggressive war”.

The joint exercises come days after South Korea, the US and Japan detected the second North Korean missile test in days.

Pyongyang has accelerated efforts to expand its nuclear and missile programmes since the collapse in 2019 of Kim’s high-profile diplomacy with Trump during his first term in the White House.

He became the first ever sitting US president to set foot in North Korea when he visited seven years ago.

Trump’s pointed remark about South Korea in his social media post seemed to hint at possible frustration with Seoul for declining to make direct military or logistical contributions to the US hostilities with Iran.

He has also expressed displeasure with other allies for their hesitance to get involved in the conflict, including Japan, France and the UK.

Trump’s move to downsize joint military exercises with South Korea is not without precedent.

He suspended the exercises entirely in 2018, during denuclearisation negotiations with Kim.

The exercises were again scaled back in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last week, South Korea’s president proposed talks with its northern neighbour on officially ending the war between the two that is technically still active since an armistice was signed in 1953.

The head of U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM) says having a “credible, acknowledged” means of damaging or even destroying enemy assets in space is vital to deterring opponents and surviving if a major fight in orbit does break out. American officials have already been steadily more open about their desire for new offensive “orbital warfare” capabilities. China’s breakneck expansion of its intelligence-gathering and other capabilities in orbit, as well as its arsenal of anti-satellite weapons, has been a central factor behind this push.

U.S. Space Force Gen. Stephen Whiting made an explicit call for new “integrated space fires” capabilities, including both non-kinetic and kinetic options in orbit and/or within the atmosphere, during a talk yesterday at the annual Space & Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, at which TWZ is in attendance. SPACECOM is the main joint service command in charge of all U.S. military activities in space.

“From the broadest perspective, maybe the most critical characteristic of the responsive and adaptive national security space architecture called for in the President’s Ensuring American Space Superiority executive order is that survivability matters at least as much as performance,” Whiting said. “In space, there is no safe harbor. You can’t dig a trench or build a shield. Our satellites are consistently or predictably in an opponent’s weapons engagement zone. And we can build the most high-performing, exquisite satellites in human history, but if they depend on fragile, targetable supporting infrastructure, their performance will drop to zero on the first day of the next war.”

“Space survivability isn’t just good to have or nice to have. It is need to have. Now let’s get specific. I’ve explained how durable we need our kit to be, but now I want to tell you about our FY29-to-33 [Fiscal Years 2029 to 2033] integrated priorities list,” the SPACECOM boss continued. “We’ve looked at risks and potential gaps and determined these are the top five capabilities we need to meet our Title 10 and Unified Command Plan responsibilities. This isn’t just a wish list. It’s a clear demand signal to several audiences, describing the warfighting capabilities we need to meet our mission.”

“Number one and two are integrated space fires and counter-pLEO that enable us to establish space superiority,” he said. pLEO, also sometimes written P-LEO, stands for proliferated low Earth orbit, and refers to distributed constellations of hundreds or potentially thousands of satellites in that orbital region. The U.S. military itself is investing heavily in this arena to develop and field new space-based capabilities that are more resilient to attack.

The other three lines of effort Gen. Whiting outlined during his talk had to do with improved command and control, better situational awareness in space, and increased ability to maneuver assets in orbit.

“We’re a combatant command, and we fight to win wars,” Whiting declared. “To win, we need credible, acknowledged, kinetic, and non-kinetic fires. They are a key component of how we establish space superiority and restore credible deterrence.”

“Our space assets need to shoot, move, and communicate just like the rest of the joint force, so that our space assets can enable the joint force to shoot, move, and communicate,” the head of SPACECOM also said. “In short, space needs to fight like the joint force to empower the joint forces’ ability to fight and undermine our adversaries’ ability to do so.”

Whiting did not elaborate on what these future integrated fires and counter-pLEO capabilities might look like. An accompanying briefing slide did include a graphic depicting a kinetic attack on a satellite originating from within the Earth’s atmosphere utilizing what might be a laser-directed energy weapon.

The threats that directed energy weapons, as well as cyber attacks, pose to friendly satellites, even ones in distributed constellations, had come up at a separate panel discussion at the SMD Symposium on Tuesday.

“If you have 10,000 satellites that are providing you with service, surely you’re not going to try and attack with a direct ascent ASAT [anti-satellite interceptors fired from within the Earth’s atmosphere] 10,000 satellites,” U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Rick Zellmann, Deputy Commander of SPACECOM, said during the panel. “I encourage our adversaries to try and shoot down 10,000 satellites that way. I don’t think they will. And, so, just like we do, our targeting folks will try to find the various nodes where you can get a one-to-many solution.”

“Those, I think, one-to-many solutions for proliferated constellations are twofold. One is cyber,” he continued. “I think the other is directed energy, because that doesn’t cost too much for a shot, right? So those two technologies are the ones I’d be concerned about.”

“Non-kinetic effects of directed energy, mounted on all types of platforms, from the surface all the way to space and everywhere in between,” could also be “opportunities,” Brig. Gen. Drew Morgan, the deputy head of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), another one of the panelists, also said later on. In a space context, non-kinetic directed energy ‘effect’ could include what is known as ‘dazzling’ using lasers to blind optics on satellites without causing permanent damage. In the past, U.S. officials have said that friendly assets in orbit are routinely subjected to various kinds of non-destructive attacks.

At present, a family of ground-based electronic warfare systems called the Counter Communications System (CCS) is the U.S. military’s only publicly acknowledged offensive counter-space capability. In June, the U.S. Space Force announced it had “operationally accepted” the latest version of the system, called Block 10.3, and also known by the codename Meadowlands.

There have been hints for years that the U.S. military might have other operational anti-satellite capabilities in the classified realm, or at least have been actively experimenting with them. In 2019, then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson notably suggested a public live-fire demonstration of some kind could be necessary to deter potential opponents, such as Russia and China, from attacking American space-based assets.

It’s also worth noting that President Joe Biden’s administration announced a self-imposed moratorium on destructive direct ascent ASAT weapons testing in 2022, but it is unclear whether that is still in force. As TWZ pointed out at the time, this did not rule out the possibility that the U.S. military could use other testing means to help develop those capabilities. Space-based anti-missile interceptors are now a key component of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

“Protective measures on satellites is just like thinking about protective measures on aircraft, okay? And we’re working through that,” Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, head of the Space Force’s Combat Forces Command (CFC), told TWZ and others more recently at a roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) Warfare Symposium in February. “I won’t provide specifics, because I want those protective measures to work, right? I don’t want to tell Beijing and Moscow what I’ve done.”

“But protecting and defending satellites can’t simply be done by protect and defend. You can’t run away from a bully forever. Sometimes you got to turn around and punch,” Gagnon continued. “So protect and defend, although necessary, is insufficient to deliver space control. We also need, as part of our joint force, the ability to attack.”

At that time, Gagnon also stressed that challenging China’s still-growing array of space-based capabilities was another key driver behind this desire for new offensive counter-space capabilities.

What “[China’s] President Xi [Jinping] has decided to do is build the second-best remote sensing architecture in the world from outer space, and that’s now what they have,” Gagnon also said at that time. “So when 2013 started, and he came to power, he had less than 100 satellites that were the total of what China had in outer space. They have about 1,900 today. Over 500 of those satellites are remote sensing satellites, which are purposely designed and networked to track mobile forces such as U.S. carriers, destroyers, and cruisers in the Pacific, as well as aircraft that deploy around the Pacific. Those have been built with a purpose. The purpose is to cue their long-range fire weapons.”

Gen. Whiting also said during his talk at the SMD Symposium yesterday that China, and its anti-satellite capabilities in particular, remained the greatest challenge facing the U.S. military in the space domain.

“Number one is the development of counter-space weapons that I highlighted in my remarks. These are not future possibilities,” the head of SPACECOM said. “Some of you have played the war games over the years where we have to give the ‘red force’ [the side playing the mock adversary] additional capability, maybe project five years forward and give them what we think they’ll have. And, no, the capabilities we talked about are real, they exist today, and we have to face them.”

“These include direct ascent ASAT missiles, ground-based lasers, jammers, and maneuverable co-orbital ASATs, and dual-use satellites like the SJ-21, which can target the satellites we rely upon for missile warning and defense missions,” the SPACECOM boss had said in his opening remarks. “They are, in no uncertain terms, expanding military options for sustained offensive operations against the satellites we rely on to defend the homeland and project power. These developments intend to degrade our current space superiority, and would potentially give China a maneuver and logistics advantage in space, something we would never accept on the land, at sea, or in the air.”

The SJ-21 satellite mentioned here has been a particularly hot topic of discussion since it was launched in 2021. It has a grappling arm with a demonstrated ability to tow other satellites in space. This is ostensibly intended to be used for non-military applications, such as on-orbit servicing and moving debris, but has obvious potential to be weaponized.

Long March-3B launches Shijian-21

In general, so-called inspector-type satellites capable of rendezvousing and maneuvering closer to other objects in space have an inherent ability to be used to launch attacks, destructive and otherwise, using a variety of different means, as well as gather intelligence. This includes kinetic attacks where the inspector could be used as an interceptor and simply smashed into the target. U.S. military officials have been warning about the dual-use potential of inspector satellites for years now, especially in the context of examples that Russia has put into orbit.

This all speaks further to counter-space capabilities U.S. forces could themselves bring to bear in the future. Last month, Northrop Grumman in the United States notably launched the first of what it hopes will be a constellation of new Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) satellites capable of performing on-orbit refueling and other servicing missions for commercial and military customers. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) played key roles in the development of a payload equipped with a pair of robotic arms for the MRV. Questions about whether the MRVs with their arms could also have an offensive counter-space role have already been raised, as you can read more about here.

American officials also regularly point to Chinese and Russian anti-satellite developments, as well as those by other countries, in pushing back on concerns about the steady weaponization of space. As an aside here, two years ago, the U.S. government very publicly accused its counterparts in Russia of pursuing a new nuclear-armed space-based anti-satellite weapon.

“Depends on where you sit, right, you know? But to say that it’s the responsibility for the U.S. government to protect its citizens from emerging threats makes perfect sense to me,” outgoing Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said last year. “And we clearly see a country like the PRC [People’s Republic of China] investing heavily in these kinds of threats, whether it’s hypersonic [weapons], whether it’s threats from space. And so now it’s time for the U.S. government to step up to the responsibilities to protect American citizens from those threats.”

Saltzman was speaking at the time in the context of a discussion about Golden Dome’s space-based interceptors during an interview broadcast online as part of Defense One‘s State of Defense 2025: Air Force and Space Force virtual conference.

How much will ultimately be acknowledged about the U.S. military’s future planned “integrated space fires” capabilities, as well as exactly what might be in its anti-satellite arsenal already, remains to be seen. Regardless, Gen. Whiting’s comments this week have now at least made the active pursuit of new counter-space weapons a matter of public record.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The Polish Navy launched its largest surface combatant since the interwar period, when the frigate Wicher went into the water today. The warship, built locally according to a British design, is the first of three and part of a wide-ranging modernization program for the Polish Navy as it adapts to meet a growing Russian threat in the strategic Baltic Sea region and elsewhere.

Wicher (Polish for gale) was floated off a semi-submersible heavy-lift barge in the Gulf of Gdansk today.

Yesterday, the frigate was still on dry land, in the dock at the PGZ Stocznia Wojenna (PGZ SW) yard in Gdynia, on the Baltic Sea, where it had been built. It was rolled out and placed on the barge there before its christening and naming ceremony attended by Polish President Karol Nawrocki.

“Within the PGZ Group, we are implementing projects of strategic importance to national security,” said Adam Leszkiewicz, CEO of PGZ. “The christening and launch of the first frigate under the Miecznik program is one of the most important milestones in rebuilding the operational capabilities of the Polish Navy.”

Yesterday’s ceremony was marked by the blasts from the ship horns of two of the warships that Wicher will replace. These are the Kościuszko, which accompanied Wicher during its launch today, and Pułaski, currently in dry dock at the shipyard.

These are Poland’s two Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, dating from the late Cold War period and transferred from the U.S. Navy.

The three new multirole frigates being built in the Project 106 Miecznik (Swordfish) class — described as the largest program of its kind in Polish Navy history — are far more capable vessels, based on Babcock International’s Arrowhead 140 design.

The Arrowhead 140 design is derived from the innovative Iver Huitfeldt class frigate used by the Royal Danish Navy and also forms the basis of the U.K. Royal Navy Type 31 general-purpose frigate. Overall, the Arrowhead 140 has a modular structure and generous internal space, meaning it can be adapted for a variety of different systems and sub-systems, as required.

The new Swordfish frigates have a length of 138 meters (453 feet), a beam of approximately 20 meters (66 feet), and a maximum displacement (including additional equipment and armor) of approximately 7,700 tons. They will have a maximum range of approximately 8,000 nautical miles, and a maximum speed of 28 knots, powered by four combined diesel and diesel (CODAD) piston engines driving two propellers. Each will have a core crew of approximately 120, with space to embark an additional 60 personnel.

Babcock’s Arrowhead 140 design was selected by Poland in 2022, after which a keel-laying ceremony for Wicher was held in Gdynia in January 2024.

Construction of the second vessel, Burza (Storm), had begun by early 2026, which is planned to be followed by its launch in 2027 and commissioning in 2030. The keel for the third ship, Huragan (Hurricane), will be laid down in late 2026, followed by a planned launch in 2028 and commissioning in 2031.

While they are multirole vessels, the Miecznik design stresses anti-air warfare (AAW) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW).

Compared to the British Type 31, the Miecznik is more extensively equipped.

For its AAW mission, the primary weapon of the Polish warship is the MBDA CAMM, or Common Anti-air Modular Missile.

Firing trials of the CAMM (also known as Sea Ceptor) from the U.K. Royal Navy frigate HMS Argyll:

Sea Ceptor firing trials from HMS Argyll

For medium-range threats, out to beyond 62 miles, the warship will be armed with the CAMM-MR, being jointly developed by Poland and the United Kingdom under the Future Common Missile (FCM) program.

The standard CAMM, with a maximum range of around 28 miles, will also be carried to engage targets at shorter distances.

Versions of the CAMM can be quad-packed, in this case in the U.S.-made Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS), with 32 cells. That would provide for a maximum of 128 missiles, especially significant bearing in mind current concerns about magazine depth in the face of sustained drone and missile barrages.

Depending on the exact configuration of the VLS, other kinds of missiles and ASW weapons could potentially be integrated at a later date, too.

For ASW specifically, the Miecznik class is provided with two dual-tube launchers for MU90 Impact lightweight torpedoes. The same torpedoes arm the Polish Navy’s AW101 helicopters, seen in the tweet below, which can also be embarked.

For surface strike, the frigate will be armed with eight Kongsberg Naval Strike Missiles (NSM), stealthy weapons that can be used against other ships as well as against targets on land. There is an option to install an additional eight NSM launchers if required.

Gun armament will comprise a Leonardo 76mm Strales, which is compatible with guided ammunition. While these are dual-purpose weapons also capable of striking surface and land targets, the guns are optimized for the anti-missile and anti-drone defense role, for which they fire DART projectiles that employ radio-command guidance for accuracy. The video below shows the Strales/DART combination in action during peacetime:

Strales system with DART ammunition

Two 35mm guns will also be able to fire programmable ammunition. These guns will likely be the locally produced OSU-35K remote weapon stations, as seen below on a Polish Navy minehunter:

Najbliższe dni upłyną nam pod znakiem Miecznika i wodowania Wichra. Równolegle pracujemy jednak przy jednostkach już będących w służbie – dziś na niszczycielu min ORP Albatros (602) zamontowaliśmy docelowy system artyleryjski OSU-35K.
Albatros to typ Kormoran II. Okręty te… pic.twitter.com/pEvF79AofY

— PGZ Stocznia Wojenna ⚓ (@StoczniaWojenna) July 28, 2026

For self-defense, the vessels will be fitted with the Terma C-Guard system, with eight fixed 130mm launchers that can dispense infrared, radar-frequency, and acoustic countermeasures.

The majority of the sensor suite on the Miecznik class is provided by Thales, integrated under its TACTICOS combat management system (CMS), already used by the Polish Navy. Thales-provided equipment also includes primary and secondary multifunction radars, a panoramic electro-optical system, and an underwater detection suite comprising a hull-mounted sonar and a towed array sonar.

TACTICOS, Thales’s Combat Management System for Warfighting and Maritime Security Operations

The electronic warfare system is from Rohde & Schwarz, based on that company’s KORA system.

Other additional systems include a laser warning system, navigation radars, and a diver detection sonar.

From the outset, the Polish Navy has schemed the Miecznik class around uncrewed systems, both in terms of operating these itself and countering hostile drones.

While it’s unclear what types of drones may be embarked, the Arrowhead 140 design includes four boat bays, which can accommodate uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) as well as traditional small, crewed boats. The large helicopter deck can also embark rotary-wing drones.

Bearing in mind the emphasis on ASW missions, USVs and rotary-wing drones equipped for this mission could become a regular fixture on the frigate, helping to extend its surveillance range and also for prosecuting targets, especially in high-risk and/or littoral environments.

Under current planning, Wicher is expected to be commissioned in 2029, following sea trials and qualification tests. Before then, the warship needs to be fully outfitted and its systems integrated, which will also be conducted at Gdynia.

The Miecznik program is scheduled for completion by the end of 2031, making it a remarkably compressed effort, reflecting the urgency behind Poland’s military modernization.

PGZ – Miecznik – Nowoczesna fregata dla Marynarki Wojennej RP

In the maritime realm, the new frigates are key to Poland’s efforts to transform its navy from a relatively small Baltic force centered on aging, second-hand warships into a more capable fleet able to make meaningful contributions to high-end NATO maritime operations.

The Miecznik class represents a substantial increase in both size and combat capability over the Polish Navy’s existing surface combatants. The transformation is being driven in large part by the changing security environment in the Baltic following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

With Finland and Sweden joining NATO, Germany strengthening its maritime capabilities, and the Baltic states expanding their armed forces, Poland is positioning itself to play a much larger role in the alliance’s regional maritime architecture.

Russia retains substantial air defense, electronic warfare, and strike capabilities in the Baltic region, while its Baltic Fleet is relatively modern and well preserved compared with the Black Sea Fleet. Russian forces in and around the Baltic region — particularly Kaliningrad, western Russia, and Belarus — can combine these capabilities with long-range missiles, submarines, mines and other systems to threaten NATO forces before they even have the chance to concentrate.

Already, Russia is employing cyber operations, sabotage, GPS/electronic interference, drone activity and other “gray zone” measures around NATO’s eastern flank.

A modern frigate force, backed by advanced submarines, coastal anti-ship missiles, and other naval capabilities, will give Warsaw considerably more reach and flexibility both inside the Baltic and beyond it.

However, there remains a question over whether Poland can generate enough people, infrastructure, and sustained resources to turn its ambitious procurement plans into a genuinely effective fleet. The Polish Navy has historically operated with a relatively small personnel base, currently numbering just over 6,000, while the country’s armed forces are simultaneously pursuing one of Europe’s most expansive modernization programs. Manning, training, maintaining, and sustaining an expanded fleet could ultimately prove a challenge.

Poland has an option with Babcock to build a further five ships to the same design. Perhaps more significantly, construction infrastructure built for the program, and the accompanying skills base, will be available for projects in the future, helping the Polish Navy continue its modernization.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The government of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz approved a landmark bill to expand the powers of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Domestic Intelligence Service (BfV) by 2027. This expansion grants them offensive and operational tools, including cyber counter-sabotage and espionage, with funding of €1.51 billion. This move has sparked significant concern among Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies regarding the radical shift in German security doctrine, stemming from the geopolitical context and the fears of Germany’s adversaries, China and Russia, regarding the ongoing hybrid warfare. The German initiative was driven by the escalating pace of gray and hybrid warfare, the most recent example being the discovery of a booby-trapped drone at Leipzig’s strategic airport. Consequently, intelligence, strategic, and security circles in Beijing and Moscow are closely monitoring this historic intelligence revolution approved by Chancellor Merz’s government on August 12, 2026.  This draft law (exceeding 700 pages) represents the most significant shift in Germany’s security doctrine since the end of World War II in 1945. From the perspective of Chinese and Russian intelligence, this shift constitutes a security revolution that ends the strict constraints imposed on Germany since World War II, transforming German intelligence agencies from mere information-gathering tools into entities capable of launching offensive and counter-sabotage operations. For these reasons, this internal German intelligence transformation is being closely monitored and analyzed in depth within intelligence and military circles in Beijing and Moscow, given its strategic dimensions and its connection to Berlin’s attempt to break free from American dependence. This move, analyzed by Chinese and Russian intelligence and military circles, is seen as a targeting of Russia and China. Although Berlin attempts to frame counterintelligence as a general effort, German officials, such as Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, have explicitly stated that the goal is to deter Russian and Chinese sabotage operations and enable German intelligence to inflict pain on adversaries and operate on equal footing with allies like the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), rather than relying on them entirely. The German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) is expected to formally pass the bill after the summer recess, allowing these offensive powers to become fully operational in Germany by early 2027.

Military think tanks and research centers affiliated with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Russian circles alike are analyzing all the operational and political dimensions of this strategic decision in Germany, focusing on understanding the German desire to shift from a defensive doctrine to an offensive operational approach and to adopt a cyber sabotage strategy and a counter-terrorism measure called “Hack-Back.” For the first time, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BfV) are granted legal authority to penetrate the information systems of adversaries and attackers and modify or delete data to prevent large-scale cyberattacks and dismantle the infrastructure of hackers. This includes German approval for field sabotage operations in situations of German defense tension, whereby the BND is permitted to carry out active sabotage operations abroad, such as disabling servers and replacing military or vital technology components with damaged ones to prevent attacks, such as in drone factories and chemical laboratories of hostile states. This has been interpreted by Chinese and Russian circles as a German crushing of the principle of separation between German domestic and foreign intelligence agencies.   According to Chinese and Russian analyses, the new German law is also generating considerable legal controversy within Germany itself, as it narrows the historical distance between intelligence agencies (those concerned only with collecting information) and the police agencies (those concerned with implementation).

Here, the Chinese intelligence reading of the German reform can be understood as the end of historical restrictions imposed on Berlin, as Beijing views the move as a reversal of the strict restrictions imposed since the end of World War II and Berlin’s shift from purely information gathering to carrying out covert operations and penetrating adversaries’ networks.  In addition to what this represents for Beijing and Moscow in terms of reducing dependence on Washington, Chinese intelligence is monitoring Germany’s attempt to build independent self-reliance capabilities to reduce intelligence dependence on the United States and its allies amid mutual strategic suspicions. Intelligence, military, political, and strategic circles in Beijing also view with caution the (militarization of German digital space). Here, the Chinese analysis considers that allowing the disruption of infrastructure and the modification and deletion of data places German agencies in the ranks of major countries with active offensive doctrines, given the reliance of German domestic and foreign intelligence agencies on the pattern of practical and technical dimensions of reform and hybrid capabilities in reforming their security and intelligence agencies, through directly confronting drones, disrupting spy servers, or tampering with components of a weapon under production without resorting to human physical violence, with the expansion of the use of artificial intelligence technologies, through expanding the use of facial recognition technologies and reducing data protection restrictions to store and analyze information for longer periods. However, at the same time, German circles are facing parliamentary challenges, given that the draft law is undergoing legislative proceedings in both houses of the German parliament (the Bundestag and the Bundesrat) amidst local human rights objections warning of the erosion of personal freedoms and the principle of separating intelligence from the police.

Here, the Russian intelligence perspective (Moscow) on the German intelligence draft law comes to the fore. Russian intelligence agencies (SVR, GRU, and FSB) view this move as a direct response to their operations and interpret it within the context of an acknowledgment of hybrid warfare. Moscow believes that Germany is now officially treating Russia as an enemy in a state of undeclared war.  The increase in the budget of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency (BND) by 26%, reaching €1.51 billion, is seen as an indication of a long-term security buildup against Russia. Moscow also viewed this as a move to neutralize cognitive denial, especially given accusations from German domestic and foreign intelligence agencies that Russia is exploiting German bureaucratic sluggishness and strict data privacy measures to carry out cyberattacks and sabotage operations. Therefore, the Russian interpretation of this German decision can be seen as a direct response from Berlin to Moscow, aimed at closing this digital and security gap between the two sides. It can be interpreted as a German intelligence strategy of reciprocity, or, according to the Russian analysis, as an attempt by Germany to encircle disinformation networks by granting German intelligence the ability to take down Russian propaganda and disinformation servers, which pose a direct threat to Russia’s soft power tools aimed at destabilizing Germany.

On the other hand, Chinese intelligence circles, primarily the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which acts as the Chinese intelligence service, analyze German law from the perspective of technological and geopolitical conflict, targeting industrial and academic espionage by China. Here, the Chinese analysis focuses on the expansion of the powers of the German domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and the use of artificial intelligence. This analysis primarily aims to track Chinese soft networks that focus on stealing advanced German technology and conducting economic espionage in order to protect German infrastructure and communications. Beijing believes that the new German laws, which compel German telecommunications companies and digital platforms to hand over data to German intelligence, are primarily intended to isolate Chinese technology and impose complete German sovereign control over cyber data in the face of China. The most sensitive aspect of Russian and Chinese analyses lies in their dual interpretation of Germany’s desire to break free from the Five Eyes framework. They see it as either an intelligence network for exchanging signals intelligence, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, whose decisions are guided by Washington, or as a new dilemma facing Germany in building self-reliant capabilities and ending its dependence on the United States. This latter scenario serves the interests of China and Russia, promoting multipolarity and a multipolar international world and ending the one-way street of Washington.   The German Chancellery has publicly stated that reliance on allies (specifically the US) has been a one-way street, where Germany receives information without the ability to exchange it or protect itself independently. From a Chinese and Russian intelligence perspective, this represents a new German policy of hedging against Trump’s unpredictability. Moscow and Beijing believe that the primary motivation behind the conservative Merz government’s actions is strategic skepticism regarding the reliability of the United States, particularly with Donald Trump in the White House, and Berlin’s fear of the politicization or severing of US intelligence flows. This reinforces the Chinese-Russian view that this is a technologically impossible German attempt to break free from US control and dictates.

Accordingly, assessments in Beijing and Moscow agree that Germany—despite its ambition—will not be able to completely break free from intelligence dependence on America anytime soon. The United States controls the global cloud infrastructure, internet cables, and critical cyber technologies, making German intelligence independence a costly ambition that will take years to materialize technologically. However, it does give Berlin at least greater parity in dealing with partners, which China and Russia are trying to maximize.

The devastating hurricane grazes the Big Island in Hawaii in the US, but avoids making landfall.

Hurricane Lala has weakened from a Category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm after passing south of Hawaii, but meteorologists warned that hurricane-force gusts could still batter the islands with flash flooding and punishing winds.

On Saturday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued a hurricane warning for the Big Island, which has not suffered a direct hurricane landfall in 155 years.

But as tropical storm winds soared west from Maui to Oahu and Kauai on Sunday, Hurricane Lala drifted past, edging the Hawaiian coast and just escaping primary impact zones.

Still, pounding waves crashed against the shore of the Big Island. Wild squalls bent tall palm trees, and fierce sideways rain swelled rivers.

Up to one metre (three feet) of rain was expected on higher windward slopes. Such a torrent could turn rivers into turbulent floods and cause life-threatening mudslides. The NHC said in an advisory published early Sunday morning that rainfall totals could even reach up to 90cm (35 inches) in some areas of the Big Island.

More than 60,000 households were without power, and three hospitals switched to generator power, Hawaii’s Governor Josh Green said Saturday evening.

At least one person died in a car accident in the South Point area of the Big Island, while 19 roofs were lost in the “enormous storm”. 

Christine Matsuda, who lives in Waimea, on the northern side of the island, told the Associated Press that “big gusts every few minutes rattle the whole house”.

Tropical storm warnings remain active for Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau. Dire conditions continue to lash the Hawaiian coast as monster waves drive coastal erosion and severe flooding plagues communities across the US state. The westward-moving storm raises fears among residents regarding heavy floods and strong winds that could spark catastrophic wildfires in the Aloha State.

The deputy commander of United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) was asked on Thursday if he could defend against an attack by a swarm of drones in the homeland. His reply was blunt and chilling: “No.”

“We don’t have the sensors, and depending on where that swarm is going to attack, it depends on whether we have any sensors at all, and also on whether we’ve got any effectors to go after that problem,” stated Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, who also serves as the Vice Commander, United States Element, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). He was addressing an audience at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium (SMD) in Huntsville, Alabama, attended by TWZ.

“So we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that, and obviously we’ve seen it used,” the general added. “We’re seeing it used on a daily basis around the world, and we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate that threat, but we’re not there yet.”

2026 SMD Symposium Day 3

Jarrard’s statements were a sharp admission by a U.S. military leader of a number of interconnected gaps, including the lack of domain awareness over the homeland. It is a topic TWZ has frequently raised over the years, but one that U.S. officials would not admit to or address until after the Chinese spy balloon floated over much of the country in 2023 before being shot down off the Carolinas. He was also raising other concerns we have often highlighted, like having the right systems in place to take drones down once they are detected and the proper authority to use them when needed.

Though Jarrard didn’t offer any specific examples of potential threat scenarios, the most glaring is Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb attack on Russian air bases. Drones stored in pre-positioned trucks were launched nearby remotely and destroyed a large number of Russian bombers and other critical aviation assets.

You can see a video of one of those attacks below.

Another example of a similar near-field attack was the first-person view (FPV) drone strike on a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq earlier this year, which you can read more about here.

The following video captures that incident.

An Iranian-backed militia carried out a successful FPV drone strike on Camp Victory in Iraq yesterday, successfully hitting multiple targets.

Seen here, one of the FPV attack munitions hits a parked UH-60 Black Hawk. pic.twitter.com/ngY8td9ONZ

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 25, 2026

These incidents underscore the very real risk faced by military infrastructure, other critical assets and VIPs in the United States, a point that TWZ has repeatedly raised for a decade. In particular, near-field attacks like Operation Spiderweb pose a huge threat and one that would be hard to stop once it began. Compared to a combat theater, there are fewer defenses and far less surveillance, let alone similar alert levels, at sensitive installations all over the U.S. With advances in drone technology and accessibility, attacks coming from within the U.S. could be executed by longer-range drones, as well, which presents additional challenges for preparing defenses.

Speaking at SMD, Jarrard acknowledged many of these concerns and offered some insights into the challenges the command faces and how it is working to address them.

While the authority to use counter-drone systems is still catching up with the technology, Jarrard noted that his commands are working to apply lessons from Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) on the counter-drone effort. ONE, which came into being following the September 11th attacks, changed America’s air defense posture. It included putting fighters on higher readiness and upping the surveillance over the United States with regular air patrols and flights by AWACS surveillance aircraft. In addition, new rules of engagement were put in place and trained for.

“We are integrating some of the TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] that we use in that mission to also incorporate with the counter-UAS mission, so some of that is just a natural flow from the ONE mission,” the general proffered at SMD without offering further details. “But the other problem is detection. That is obviously the biggest issue, and so how we are able to detect is one of our biggest concerns right now.”

“We’re using the assets that we have, radars, et cetera, but it’s going to be also involving local law enforcement because it’s not just installations, Army or military installations, but it’s also things like we did [by] interacting with the federal authorities and local law enforcement with respect to the FIFA World Cup,” Jarrard suggested. “We’ve got to be interoperable with the systems that they’re procuring, using, utilizing, and they’ve all got to talk together, and so that’s where we’ve got to get to with respect to the interoperability between not just military systems, but also those that are protecting our cities, critical infrastructure, et cetera, that are off our installations.”

Inside Look at US Drone Security During FIFA World Cup 2026

As we have previously noted, NORTHCOM has taken measures to help base commanders protect against drones once they arrive. One example came earlier this year, after incursions over two installations, including Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home of B-52 Stratofortress bombers and nuclear weapons storage facilities, and a key part of the airborne leg of America’s nuclear triad. NORTHCOM deployed its new counter-drone fly-away kit, designed to give installation commanders the ability to detect, quantify, and defeat small drones that they cannot defend against on their own.

However, given that these systems have to be requested and then delivered, there is a limit to just how much protection they can provide, especially against an attack like Spiderweb that popped up with no warning. The fly-away kits would not arrive until after such an attack occurred, unless there was intelligence that gave some kind of warning. Meanwhile, there is a huge lack of capacity when it comes to installing these systems on a more permanent basis at installations that really need them, let alone critical civilian infrastructure and other high-value targets.

Moreover, for years now, U.S. military officials have often pushed back on the utility and cost-effectiveness of investing more in the physical hardening of bases and other critical facilities, especially shelters to shield aircraft from drones and other threats. However, that is starting to change. In a notable shift in department policy, the Pentagon in February issued new guidance for defending critical infrastructure against drone attacks through the increased use of netting, cables, and other kinds of passive physical defenses.

Jarrard’s comments at SMD, while troubling, were also a refreshing acknowledgment by someone in charge of protecting the U.S. that we remain woefully vulnerable to the kind of attack Ukraine launched against Russia last year, and admitting the problem will hopefully help with putting real solutions in place in the not-so-distant future.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Neighbouring countries send personnel to help keep the blaze from crossing into Germany.

Firefighters are battling Belgium’s largest wildfire on record as it burns through the High Fens nature reserve near the German border on Sunday.

The fire broke out on Friday in Belgium’s Liege province and has been spreading east towards Germany. It has burned more than 27sq km (10.4sq miles).

Belgium’s previous record fire occurred in 2011, burning 14sq km (5.4sq miles) of the same reserve, the European Forest Fire Information System said.

More than 250 emergency services personnel have been deployed, among them firefighters from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Firefighters focused on containing the advancing front of the fire, spokesperson for the government of Belgium’s Wallonia province, Stephanie Ernoux, told the Reuters news agency.

About 600 people in the Belgian border municipalities of Waimes and Butgenbach were told to leave their homes on Saturday as winds shifted and smoke spread.

Authorities said no homes had been affected as of Sunday morning, but urged people to stay away from the fire zone.

In Germany, the town of Monschau said the fire had come within about 3km (1.9 miles) of the border. Officials did not expect the flames to cross the border, the town said, but it advised residents of three of its districts to leave temporarily due to the smoke.

The fire came as Belgium had just come through another burst of severe heat, the thermometer touching roughly 37C (98.6F) in places on Friday, on top of weeks with barely any rain.

Like other parts of Europe, Belgium is in the middle of a summer of repeated heatwaves. Weather agencies logged temperatures above 35C (95F) in several European countries on Thursday, and the United Kingdom had its hottest day of the year when west London reached 38.1C (100.5F).

Fires have frequently followed the heat. Thousands of people have been driven from their homes in Germany, France, the UK, Croatia and Greece in recent days, and about 500,000 hectares (about 1.24 million acres) have burned across the European Union this year.

Palestinian politicians and analysts have warned against what they describe as an Israeli plan to illegally annex the occupied West Bank by implementing a series of decisions and actions under different pretexts.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, on Friday, ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision follows criticism over the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.

Katz justified the shift, saying, “The army’s role is to combat Palestinian terrorism … and not chase hilltop youth.”

The Defence Ministry indicated the police would establish a dedicated force to handle these civilian matters.

However, Palestinian officials and a wide array of political experts warn this structural shift represents a dangerous acceleration of illegal annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaisation”.

He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”

Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.

He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”

De facto annexation

Analysts argue that replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory. Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.

“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said. He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.

He noted this move absolves the military of its obligations under international law, placing enforcement under Ben-Gvir.

Mustafa warned that Ben-Gvir, who previously oversaw the demolition of thousands of Arab homes in Israel, will now command the police to “support the settlers more and more and push them more and more towards deepening their repression and terrorism against the Palestinians”.

Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the mandate. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, described the move as a blatant violation of international agreements and an attempt to “impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to entrench the illegal annexation of Palestinian land”.

The Palestinian group Hamas echoed this sentiment, releasing a statement calling the order a “dangerous step on the path to imposing de facto annexation” that provides “cover and more protection for the escalating attacks and crimes of the settlers”.

Fascist militias

The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli government and its military of sponsoring settlers’ violence. Even Israeli members of parliament have accused the army of being complicit.

Analysts stress that relieving the military of its duties essentially deputises settler violence, turning them into an armed extension of the state.

Nihad Abu Ghosh, an expert in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that there is no contradiction between the army and the settlers. He noted that the settlers have evolved into “fascist militia formations” that perform the state’s dirty work.

“These are fascist militia formations, and there are similar precedents in many countries that were ruled by fascism, whether in Spain, Italy, Germany, or even Chile,” Abu Ghosh said.

He added that these militias carry out roles that “require evading any discipline, rules, or laws” to achieve a “creeping, gradual annexation to make it a reality”.

Apartheid and displacement

The dual legal framework resulting from this shift has drawn sharp international and local criticism. Shadi al-Shurafa, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the situation is a textbook definition of segregation.

“We are facing an application of an overt racist apartheid system in the West Bank,” al-Shurafa said, noting it involves one regime operating with two entirely different laws based on ethnicity.

He added that the ultimate goal of the current government is carrying out complete ethnic cleansing and trapping Palestinians in “isolated cantons and isolated Bantustans”.

Other experts argue that the move completely alters the international legal status of the territory, pushing the crisis into a new, more dangerous phase.

“The subject has bypassed the issue of annexation to a post-annexation phase and creating a reality where the Palestinian finds himself forced to think about migration,” said Adel Shadid, expert in Israeli affairs.

International complicity

Analysts also pointed to the role of the international community, particularly the United States, in enabling this systemic shift.

Shadid dismissed recent US condemnations of settler violence as mere theatre to “mislead global public opinion”.

He argued that the underlying project has full US backing, noting that “all that is happening now is an American-Israeli plan and there is harmony between the two right-wing administrations in Washington and here in Israel”.

Andrew Whitley, a former United Nations official and director of the Balfour Project, stressed that the planned transfer is “completely illegal” and urged immediate global intervention.

He told Al Jazeera that the “Palestinian state is disappearing before our eyes”, demanding that the international community move beyond rhetoric.

“We have to do much more than just wring our hands and complain that governments are not doing anything about this,” Whitley said, calling for concrete sanctions to halt the rapid erasure of the Palestinian presence.

German defense giant Rheinmetall has demonstrated its new FV-014 loitering munition being launched from a containerized launcher mounted on a truck, including while the vehicle was moving. The test marks the first time the FV-014 has been fired from its Containerized Missile Launcher, a modular system intended to carry significant numbers of missiles or loitering munitions.

The demonstration took place in July at the National Test Center for Unmanned Aerial Systems at the German Aerospace Center in Cochstedt, Saxony-Anhalt. The customer demonstration included both stationary and mobile launches from an HX-series truck, followed by simulated operational profiles and attack flights.

Rheinmetall demonstrates FV-014 launch from Containerized Missile Launcher

The FV-014 is a relatively long-range, truck-launched loitering munition that can perform its own reconnaissance and then conduct a precision attack. Rheinmetall says the weapon has a range of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) and can remain airborne for as long as 70 minutes.

Like many loitering munitions, this endurance gives the operator considerably more time to search for targets and decide whether to conduct an attack than would be available with a conventional fire-and-forget missile. Rheinmetall describes the system as combining “reconnaissance, target identification and precision strike capabilities within a single system.”

The FV-014 is designed to remain under permanent human control. An operator using the associated ground station can identify and track targets and authorize an attack, while also having the ability to abort an engagement if circumstances change.

As we have discussed in the past, human-in-the-loop architecture is useful when operating against targets that may be moving or difficult to identify in advance.

However, the concept also has significant drawbacks compared to increasingly autonomous loitering-munition concepts in which the system itself can perform much more of the target-detection and engagement process. Human-in-the-loop comes with latency and communications dependencies, as well as operator workload, but it may also be the result of a particular customer demand, whether operational or legal. At the same time, for all its promise, autonomous technology is still in its infancy.

The FV-014 has a launch weight of around 50 pounds, including a payload of approximately 13 pounds. Its HEDP, or high-explosive dual-purpose, warhead is claimed to be capable of penetrating around 24 inches of solid armor steel.

That would give the weapon a substantial anti-armor capability for its size, although Rheinmetall also says the warhead can be used against unarmored targets and infrastructure.

After being ejected from its launch tube using a booster, the FV-014 unfolds its wings and transitions into aerodynamic flight. An electrically driven propeller provides propulsion during the cruise phase. Rheinmetall also says the weapon has been designed with reduced radar and infrared signatures in mind.

The company is pitching the FV-014 for both individual attacks and coordinated swarm operations. In the latter case, multiple weapons could be used simultaneously against a number of targets or to overwhelm an adversary’s defenses and create outsized, rapid effects on the battlefield.

‘Swarm’ has become something of a catch-all term in the loitering-munition market, however, and Rheinmetall has not provided detailed information about the level of autonomy or coordination available between FV-014s. The company does say that the weapon has network connectivity and a “high degree of autonomy” intended to help it operate in environments where satellite navigation is being disrupted.

This capability is particularly important on the modern battlefield, where electronic warfare systems are routinely used to interfere with satellite-navigation signals. Rheinmetall says the FV-014 is resilient to global navigation satellite system (GNSS) interference, although specific details about its navigation architecture have not been disclosed.

The weapon’s launch system, Rheinmetall’s Containerized Missile Launcher, is built around a standardized ISO container that can be installed on a fixed site, carried by a truck, or potentially integrated onto a ship. In its 20-foot configuration, the company says the launcher can accommodate up to 18 FV-014s.

That is considerably fewer weapons than some other containerized drone-launcher concepts Rheinmetall has previously promoted. In 2024, for example, the company showed a containerized system intended to carry as many as 126 Hero-series loitering munitions from Israeli manufacturer UVision.

Rather than simply acting as a large rack of launch tubes, the new launch system has its own integrated power supply and can connect to command, control, communications, computers and intelligence networks. It can also be operated locally, through a radio link, or via satellite communications.

The launcher is intended to make extensive use of commercial off-the-shelf components, which should reduce lifecycle costs. It also incorporates what the company calls a “sleeper” capability, allowing the launcher to remain inactive and be remotely activated when required.

The ability to move the entire system on a standard military truck is potentially significant. Rheinmetall has demonstrated the launch of FV-014s from a moving truck, as well as a stationary one. Shooting on the move could be beneficial when defending convoys, engaging targets of opportunity, or offering rapid fire support to units within range. Beyond that, interceptor drones would allow for engagements against drone threats while on the move.

Using a standardized container makes it possible to rapidly relocate a large number of long-range loitering munitions without relying on a dedicated launcher vehicle, and also opens up potential maritime applications. Rheinmetall says future versions are planned for other mobile land platforms and seagoing ones, while the container itself is compatible with existing transportation and logistics infrastructure.

This general concept is already seeing considerable uptake. Containerized launchers provide a relatively discreet way of deploying large numbers of missiles or drones and can potentially turn trucks, ships, or other platforms capable of carrying ISO containers into weapons carriers. TWZ has previously examined the broader appeal of this approach, including Rheinmetall’s earlier Hero-family launcher concept.

In the past, we have also highlighted the immense potential battlefield impact of this type of capability, which other countries, especially China, are also actively pursuing.

The video below shows a test of a Chinese truck-mounted launcher design capable of being loaded with up to 48 kamikaze drones. 

中国电科陆空协同固定翼无人机“蜂群”系统

In general, containerized launchers offer an unusual degree of concealability: a weapons system housed in a standard shipping container can potentially be moved through conventional logistics networks and deployed without the distinctive appearance of a dedicated missile battery. Rheinmetall has explicitly pitched the standardized container format as supporting “covert operations,” and this immediately calls to mind Ukraine’s audacious Operation Spiderweb that saw several Russian bombers and other aircraft destroyed or damaged by (much shorter-range) drones launched from trucks.

Rheinmetall has not disclosed details about the customer involved in the July demonstration, nor of the targets used, the engagement distances, the number of FV-014s launched, or the extent of autonomy involved in reported swarm operations.

However, with the FV-014 now proven, Rheinmetall can offer a complete system in which a truck can arrive with a sizeable magazine of relatively long-range weapons, launch them individually or in groups, and provide operators with the ability to search for targets before deciding whether to attack. The German company’s mobile containerized launcher and a 100-kilometer-class loitering munition are eye-catching, but the system also enters an increasingly competitive market.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com