base

Satellite imagery has emerged showing China’s two massive stealthy flying-wing high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft at its secretive test base near Malan. TWZ first identified both of the previously unseen aircraft last year in Planet Labs archived imagery of the airfield, which is known to be on the leading edge of the PLA’s unmanned combat aircraft development efforts. However, this is the first time both have been captured outside their hangars simultaneously, or on the main apron at all. Overall, the image, dated March 26th, 2026, underscores the major uptick of very advanced drone testing activity at the installation.

The flying wing with the longest wingspan (red arrow in the image at the top of the article), which some have dubbed “WZ-X,” and what we refer to as “The Monster of Malan,” is parked on the main apron next to the runway. The very large flying wing has a span of approximately 173 feet — roughly the width of a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. You can read more about this impressive aircraft in our previous coverage here and here. Other details about its true designation or its manufacturer remain unknown.

The second large flying wing (green arrow) is seen in the image sitting outside a hangar that is part of the sprawling new high-security facility on the opposite side of the complex. It features a ‘cranked kite’ planform with a wingspan of approximately 137 feet, although it would appear to have a significantly higher gross weight and likely lower operating ceiling than its wider stablemate. Based on our previous analysis, this variant is suited for the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) role, but could also work as a supersized unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) capable of performing very long-range heavy strike missions.

Both of these aircraft appear to have been flying now for a number of months. You can read about this here and here.

There is also what appears to be a stealth fighter-like drone (orange arrow) and a Xi’an Y-20 transport plane on the main apron in the image.

China has shown off a very large number of fighter-drone concepts, very loosely similar to the U.S. Collaborative Combat Aircraft initiative, in recent years. A Chinese military parade in 2025 was really Beijing’s major public thrust into this area of advanced fighter-like drone development. Since then, testing of at least one configuration has been ramped up considerably.

Just reviewing Planet Labs archived images of Malan in recent months shows the aircraft configuration seen above to be very active at the base. This relatively large unmanned ‘fighter’, analogous to a manned light-to-medium weight fighter in size, is a tailless design that features a very similar planform as the J-XDS 6th generation manned fighter. It also appears similar in shape to another CCA-like aircraft that has been photographed flying.

One drone shown off during China’s big military parade looks very similar to it, in particular. But regardless, this general design appears to be a focus of testing at the base.

Other mysterious aircraft have appeared at the installation as well, which is clearly set up specifically to run many programs within its high-security confines at any given time.

Beijing is actively pursuing a range of flying-wing drones of various sizes, including large HALE drones, designed to perform a diverse set of missions, including ISR and strike. For many years, TWZ has assessed that this was an area of the Chinese aviation industry most likely to see an explosion of investment. The WZ-X is still the largest Chinese design in terms of wingspan that we have seen in this category to date. The cranked-kite design is certainly the heaviest.

This new look at China’s two large flying wing combat drones comes as we got our first good look at America’s own RQ-180 HALE stealth drone, which has been flying for some time and is now being used operationally. It also comes as China is rushing ahead on all fronts with its next generation air combat ecosystem, and making impressively quick progress to show for its efforts. Still, a formidable looking aircraft doesn’t mean it can fight as impressively as part of a joint force as it looks, or survive against enemy air defenses. Regardless, China is clearly betting substantially on advanced and large unmanned flying wing designs.

Contact the author: ian.ellis-jones@teamrecurrent.io

Wiffen said that he was “already planning” on moving to Dublin even before the Irish Open.

He had targeted a time of seven minutes 42 seconds in the 800m, but came in at 7:58.08 on his way to winning gold in Bangor and also said his performance in the 1500m was “confirmation in my head that I wasn’t in the shape I wanted to be in” and that he should switch to Dublin.

“In 1500m I got to the 1000m mark in a second off PB [personal best] pace and I could feel it fading and it was all down to the training,” he added.

“I wasn’t doing the right type of work I used to do, so when it came to the decision, I sat down with Andy Reid [National Performance Director at Swim Ireland] and talked to him. We had talked of the back-up plan if California didn’t work when he was first appointed, so this was already in the thinking.”

Reflecting on his time in California, Wiffen was critical of the training in the US and says he “feels a lot fitter” since he started training in Dublin.

“In California it felt like you kind of didn’t know what you were doing. You were having to push yourself, there wasn’t much guidance or criticising technique.

“They didn’t want to mess up the Olympic champion is what I felt. They were trying to do what they wanted to do, not what’s good for me.”

Wiffen is now gearing up for a big summer with the Commonwealth Games and European Championships on the horizon and hopes a solid block of training in his new surroundings can get him up to speed to break more records.

“I don’t know how fast I’m going to be in the summer, but I have two benchmark meets before that I can compare to other years.

“I need to see how those go and how the training works. I have eyes on the world record in the summer, but if not I need to readjust some things.”

The decisive blow in the Dodgers’ 12-4 win against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday at Dodger Stadium was the kind of unrelenting rally they hadn’t mustered since leaving Colorado on Monday.

The Dodgers were trailing by a run going into the bottom of the fourth inning. Then they put together a six-run rally.

They stacked up six hits, only one of which was for extra bases, and two walks in the inning, to knock Cubs starter Colin Rea out of the game before piling on against long reliever Javier Assad.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged Friday that the offense hadn’t been clicking as a whole for much of the week. That changed Saturday, with contributions from across the lineup.

Shohei Ohtani ended a three-game hitless streak (0 for 12) with a single in the first inning. He went on to draw two walks to reach base three times.

Max Muncy — batting third because he was feeling under the weather and Roberts wanted to take advantage of the matchup with Rea before replacing Muncy with Santiago Espinal — drove in the Dodgers’ first runs. Muncy’s two-run blast in the third inning was his ninth home run of the season.

Dodgers No. 8 hitter Hyeseong Kim started the fourth-inning rally with a line-drive single up the middle. Then Alex Freeland, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, Dalton Rushing and Andy Pages combined for six RBIs.

Dodgers starting pitcher Roki Sasaki delivers against the Cubs in the first inning Saturday at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

They kept applying pressure against the Cubs’ injury-depleted bullpen, putting together a four-run sixth inning that added two more RBIs to Pages’ tally.

The Dodgers (18-9) forced the Cubs (17-10) to use two multi-inning relievers, which could affect the rubber match Sunday.

Dodgers starter Roki Sasaki gave up three home runs, but they were all solo shots since he limited traffic on the bases. Sasaki surrendered four runs, each in different innings, and left the game in the sixth after putting two runners on base with a walk and single.

Left-hander Jack Dreyer entered and immediately walked designated hitter Moisés Ballesteros to load the bases. But he struck out the next two batters, and right-hander Will Klein finished the escape job.

The bullpen, with Kyle Hurt and Jake Eder also contributing, held back the Cubs the rest of the way. The Dodgers’ victory stopped the red-hot Cubs’ 10-game win streak.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is in discussions to potentially send more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort and relatives of U.S. service members stuck in Qatar to a third country, the U.S. government and some advocates said. Congo is an option, the advocates said.

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said Wednesday that U.S. officials informed him and other groups of discussions between the United States and Congo about taking the Afghan refugees who have been in limbo at a U.S. base in Doha for the last year.

The 1,100 refugees at Camp As-Sayliyah include Afghans who served as interpreters and with Special Operations Forces as well as the immediate families of more than 150 active-duty U.S. military members.

The State Department said Wednesday that it is working to identify options to “voluntarily” resettle the refugees in a third country, but it did not confirm which nations were being discussed.

An alternative provided to the refugees, VanDiver said, is to return to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal or even death at the hands of the Taliban for working alongside the U.S. during the two-decade war.

“You cannot call a choice voluntary when the two options are Congo and the Taliban, civil war or an oppressor who wants to kill you,” VanDiver said at a virtual news conference. “That is not a choice. That is a confession extracted under duress.”

The discussions — which were reported earlier by the New York Times — come more than a year after President Trump paused his predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration.

That policy left thousands of refugees who fled war and persecution, and had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America, stranded at places worldwide, including the base in Qatar.

From one war-torn country to another

Negotiations between the U.S. and several other countries, including Botswana and Malaysia, started months ago, according to an executive at a refugee resettlement agency who was briefed by U.S. officials. The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share private negotiations, said that Botswana was seen by many refugee advocates as the most promising option but that talks between senior U.S. officials and the country’s leadership fell through. In early April, the executive was briefed that Congo was now the main option being discussed.

A person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said they had heard from State Department personnel that the U.S. was looking at sending the Afghans at the base in Qatar to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The person said the Afghans were told Wednesday that there was no final deal on where to send them.

The base in Doha “was always intended as a transit platform. It was never designed to hold families for months or years, which is the situation that people are currently in,” said Jon Finer, who was deputy national security advisor to then-President Biden. “What I want to emphasize is that this was intended to honor a wartime commitment.”

Finer and other former U.S. officials and refugee advocates warned of the risk of resettling Afghans in Congo, a country that U.N. officials say is facing “one of the most acute humanitarian emergencies in the world.”

The African country has been battered by decades-long fighting between government forces and Rwanda-backed rebels in its eastern region.

Congolese authorities did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment on the discussions, which did not come as a surprise to some there. Congo is one of at least eight African nations that were paid millions in controversial deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S. to countries other than their own.

Like most other African nations involved in the deportation program, Congo is also among the worst-hit by the Trump administration’s policies on aid and trade. At least 70% of the country’s humanitarian aid came from the U.S. before Trump’s second term, and aid workers say American aid cuts have led to avoidable deaths in the conflict-hit region.

Sean Jamshidi — an Afghan American who served in the U.S. military, including a stint in Congo — said he was deeply concerned about his brother possibly being sent from the Doha base to the war-torn country.

“I saw the security situation and what it looked like there. I saw the displacement camps. … I stood in places where the United Nations has counted the dead,” Jamshidi said. “I’m telling you, as someone who has been in uniform, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not a place you send vetted Afghan allies and their children to live.”

Refugees are in the dark as they await their fate

Negina Khalili, a former prosecutor in Afghanistan who fled during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal, has been waiting to hear about the resettlement status of her father, brother and stepmother since they arrived at the Doha base in January 2025. That was just days before Trump suspended the refugee program soon after he returned to the White House.

Khalili told the Associated Press on Wednesday that she spoke to her family about reports that they could be sent to Congo.

“They are not giving them any information or updates regarding which countries they will go to,” she said. “They were so stressed and worried about it and said that Congo is not a safe place either. They don’t know if it’s a temporary location for them there or a permanent location. They are worried.”

She said U.S. officials at the camp have been suggesting to refugees that they go back to Afghanistan and offering them money to do so.

Amiri, Santana and Asadu write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from New York and Asadu from Abuja, Nigeria. AP writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers tout Yoshinobu Yamamoto as a Cy Young award contender, and every one of his starts has been a quality start, including the one he made here Tuesday.

The Dodgers talk up Shohei Ohtani as a Cy Young award contender, and Ohtani has given up one run all season. He pitched six shutout innings here Wednesday.

But the pitcher who delivered the best start of this series against the San Francisco Giants, and the one that stood tall between the Giants and what would have been a humiliating sweep, was Tyler Glasnow.

That was one storyline from an eventful afternoon at the ballpark and, for the Dodgers, a sorely needed 3-0 victory on a day they found themselves a new cleanup hitter, a new closer — and on a day a Giants player blasted a Dodgers player for making a “dirty” play.

Nothing like a little bad blood to breathe a little life into a languishing rivalry.

The cleanup hitter: Kyle Tucker, dropped from second to fourth in the lineup after his average had fallen to .233, ignited a two-run rally in the fourth inning with a double and delivered his first two-hit game in 17 days.

The closer: Tanner Scott, just as the Dodgers planned last year. After Glasnow pitched eight shutout innings and gave up one hit, Scott got the first save situation since the Dodgers lost closer Edwin Díaz to elbow surgery. Scott has a 0.84 ERA this season, including the perfect ninth inning he worked Thursday for the first of what might be quite a few saves this season.

The Dodgers (17-8), remember, signed him for $72 million as their closer last season, but he lost his job and did not pitch in the playoffs.

“It was terrible,” he said. “But I washed it away.”

The “dirty” play was the second of two acts in a sixth-inning drama.

On Tuesday, cameras caught Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing muttering something after looking back at the Giants’ Jung Hoo Lee, who was in discomfort after an awkward slide at home plate. Rushing had tagged out Lee and was headed back to the dugout when he turned back to see Lee on the ground, then kept going.

Rushing did not play Wednesday. On Thursday, in his third plate appearance, Rushing was hit by a pitch from San Francisco starter Logan Webb.

Webb dodged a question about whether the pitch was a response to the thing that happened with Rushing and Lee.

“What thing with Jung Hoo?” Webb said. He simply described the pitch as “fastball, inside.”

Said Rushing: “I like getting on base. Whatever works. If it was intentional, I’ll take it. I’ll take what I deserve. I’ve cleared the air with all of that. I’ve made sure Jung Hoo is good and healthy.”

When the following batter, Hyeseong Kim, grounded to second baseman Luis Arraez, Rushing threw up his hands and slid away from the base to try and prevent shortstop Willy Adames from completing the double play.

The second-base umpire pointed at Rushing and awarded the Giants with the double play. The first-base umpire ruled the Giants had completed the double play anyway, since Adames’ throw beat Kim to first base.

“For me, that’s not good baseball,” Arraez said. “It’s dirty.”

Rushing said the slide was not his response to getting hit.

“I was taught that in college,” he said. “That’s kind of the way you go in, especially when you have a speedster like that with Hyeseong behind me. You’re not going four or five feet outside the bag. You stay within the body length and try to break up a double play. Nothing against any of those guys right there.”

Did Dodgers manager Dave Roberts believe Webb’s pitch was intentional?

“It probably was,” Roberts said. “For me, he [Rushing] said what he said. I don’t think he meant it too personally. But they see it, social media catches it, Webb is an old-school guy. He’s protecting his teammates. I’ve got no problem with it.”

Roberts said he saw nothing wrong with Rushing’s slide.

“I like that too,” Roberts said. “That’s baseball. They’re going to hit you. You know, Webb has got really good command. I get it. They’ll deny it. I like the way he went in hard. No problem. That’s nothing against Adames, but he went in hard and they turned a double play. That’s good baseball — good, hard-nosed baseball.”

And winning baseball, for a happy flight after a mediocre trip. The Dodgers concluded a 3-4 trip to Colorado and San Francisco, the teams projected to finish in the bottom two spots in the National League West. Up next: the Chicago Cubs, winners of nine consecutive games.

Glasnow faced one batter over the minimum over his eight innings. The one hit he allowed was a single. He struck out nine. His ERA is 2.45, with Yamamoto at 2.48.

Roberts said the combination of Glasnow’s evolving maturity — his ability to respond to setbacks and challenges — makes him a legitimate Cy Young candidate.

“Now, for me, he’s going to be in that conversation,” Roberts said. “And I think for me, that was the missing piece. You know you’re not going to feel great every outing. There’s going to be stress, there’s going to be things that you can’t control, and you got to be able to manage it. And I think now he’s equipped mentally to do that.”

There is one thing Glasnow has yet to accomplish. The Dodgers decided a season-high 105 pitches from an oft-injured pitcher was enough this early in the year.

However, this could have been his big chance: In 133 major league starts and 130 minor league starts, he never has pitched a complete game.

“That,” Glasnow said, “would be sick.”

DENVER — Nobody’s perfect, not even the Dodgers.

Their steamroll hit a speed bump as they squandered opportunities in Saturday’s 4-3 loss to the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.

Even the hottest of Dodgers’ hitters cooled off as the night did. Collectively, they went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and left eight runners on base, including two in the ninth inning.

Now 15-5, it was their first loss in five games and their first all season to a National League opponent.

Kyle Tucker, the Dodgers’ pricey new right fielder, had three hits, including his third home run this season. And backup catcher Dalton Rushing hit his fifth home run.

But that was all the damage the Dodgers did in support of starter Emmet Sheehan, who left with a one-run lead that reliever Will Klein relinquished in a matter of three batters in the sixth inning.

Shohei Ohtani also saw his career-best on-base streak reach 50 when he singled in the ninth inning to tie Willie Keeler’s 50-game mark established in 1901.

The two-time reining World Series champs threw the proverbial first punch when Tucker launched a 435-foot two-run home run into the second deck, making it 2-0 two batters into the game.

Tucker’s third home run as a Dodger drove home Ohtani, who chopped the first pitch he saw to Troy Johnston and would have been out at first if not for the errant throw by the first baseman.

In the bottom of the first, the Rockies responded when Mickey Moniak doubled and TJ Rumfield drove him in with a single to cut the lead in half, 2-1.

Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing follows the flight of his solo home run off Colorado pitcher Ryan Feltner Saturday in Denver.

(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)

The Dodgers came right back in the second inning, when Rushing — in his one expected start behind the plate this series — kept crushing, launching a 1-1 pitch 371 feet over the right field wall to make it 3-1. It was his fifth home run in 18 at-bats until that point.

The Dodgers’ two home runs in the first two innings gave them multiple homers in 10 of their first 20 games this season — and ran their MLB-leading season total to 37 as a team.

But the Rockies returned serve in the bottom of the second, when Johnston scored on a Kyle Karros sacrifice fly to stay within a run, 3-2.

That’s how it stayed for the next three innings, as Sheehan got out of the third and fourth unscathed, despite the Rockies putting runners in scoring position in both the third and fourth. His only 1-2-3 inning was the nine-pitch fifth.

His control wasn’t as sharp as in his prior outing, but he left after five innings with the lead, having thrown 77 pitches, allowed four hits, two runs, struck out four and walked two.

The Dodgers got something going again in the sixth inning when Freddie Freeman hit a one-out triple into the gap in the expansive Colorado outfield, just beyond the grasp of diving center fielder Brenton Doyle.

A batter later, the Rockies’ diving third baseman Karros made a nifty play to throw out Teoscar Hernández after he drilled a ball up the line — holding Freeman at third in the process.

Then left-hander Brennan Bernardino came on in relief and tied up a clearly frustrated Max Muncy with a curveball, striking him out and ending a scoreless inning with Freeman stranded on third.

Klein took the loss after taking over for the Dodgers in the sixth and immediately gave up a double to Hunter Goodman before Ezequiel Tovar’s grounder ricocheted off Klein’s left foot and right knee. Tovar reached before Freeman could corral the ball and get it to Klein at first.

Both runners scored on a no-out double by Johnston and Colorado had a 4-3 lead that would stand.

In the eighth, “Let’s go Dodgers” chants picked up with Andy Pages at bat and Ohtani and Tucker on first and second base. But Pages struck out on a strike that was determined to find the bottom of the zone by baseball’s new ABS system.

Hernández then walked to load the bases but Muncy grounded out to second base, leaving more runners stranded.

Strolling through a deep tangle of beech trees to get some fresh air after a long drive, I think of the scene in Kenneth Grahame’s wistful story The Wind in the Willows, where Mole gets lost in the Wild Wood. “There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.”

I’ve come to South Oxfordshire to explore what was once Grahame’s old stomping ground. Although I don’t share his character’s fear of the woods, I do share his own wonder for this part of the country, close to suburbia yet wrinkled with pockets of wildness. It’s one of those spring days when the light feels elastic and daffodils brighten the verges of muddy lanes. The moon is rising, however, and smoke drifts from the chimney of a cottage just beyond the woods. Nocturnal creatures may be rousing but I’m feeling the pull of a cosy burrow. I leave the trees and head back to my accommodation, Bonni B&B, in Hill Bottom.

Run by Koo and Denny Akers, the B&B is a spin-off from Bonni Outbuildings, the cabin business the couple set up during the pandemic. These distinctive corrugated cabins in shades of mint, moss and terracotta have been commissioned as everything from artist studios to yoga shalas and even golf-simulator games rooms. The option to order a Bonni fully fitted and decorated has helped define the brand and, although the B&B is located above a smart timber garage at the couple’s home, it has just the same fittings, furnishings and paint colours as the cabins.

Created for potential buyers (a kind of try-before-you-buy experience), the B&B also makes a stylish base for a weekend away. Technically a one-bed apartment, there’s an open-plan kitchen and living room, a shower room with underfloor heating and a king-size bed below a round window. Lined with panelling and painted in shades of clotted cream, terracotta and powder blue, details such as jugs of white tulips and salvage store swag – vintage mirrors and stripped pine drawers – add cosiness, but the star feature is the shower, with its bottle green corrugated panelling. Guests can pre-order a DIY breakfast – and I enjoy avocado on toast with velvety smoked salmon, poached egg and chilli flakes while looking out into a veil of morning mist.

By the time I’ve finished eating, the mist is lifting and I pull on my boots to explore. In the summer, visitors come to follow Grahame and Jerome K Jerome’s leads, messing about on, or by, the river (there are paddleboards or a boat with skipper to hire), or venturing out on expeditions to Oxford, Windsor and London (all reachable in under an hour by train from Goring or Pangbourne).

Koo and Denny both grew up locally and are generous with insider tips on the area. Borrowing one of their bikes, I start with a gentle 10-minute pedal downhill to Whitchurch-on-Thames. First stop is the Modern Artists Gallery, where I watch light glinting off Alice Cescatti’s gilded paintings as owner Peggy Brodie tells me of the farmhouse up the road where the seeds of Womad music festival were sown. Detouring east, I pass alpaca-nibbled fields and watch red kites circle overhead on my way to Lin’s Veg Shed; its wholesome-looking vegetables and salads can be bought steps from where they have been grown.

In Whitchurch I pedal past the Greyhound pub and over the river into Pangbourne. Grahame’s former home is here, still a private house. Although he wasn’t living here when he wrote The Wind in the Willows, Pangbourne has echoes of picnic-loving Ratty, with its cheese shop, bakery and Italian deli.

Cycling back to Hill Bottom to drop off the bike, I finish my day on foot, walking a few miles to Goring-on-Thames and Streatley along a riverside route through the Goring Gap, a topographical half-pipe where the Thames slices through chalk hills. My route joins the Ridgeway, Britain’s oldest road, as I cross the river, and the landscape feels timeless as I pass pretty brick and flint cottages, ancient churches, a mossy-roofed mill and pubs with elbow-polished bars.

Hunger starts to hit as I pass the waterside tables of The Swan at Streatley, the steamed-up windows of Pierreponts cafe and the decadently stocked shelves of the Goring Grocer. But waiting for me back at Bonni B&B is a pre-ordered Riverford recipe-box meal – a dinner-in-a-bowl dish of romesco chickpeas. With its smoky paprika, lemon and crumbly medita cheese beckoning, and the promise of another night of restorative calm through the round window, I turn from the river and pick up the path back to Hill Bottom.

Soon the Gatehampton Viaduct is stretching behind me and I reach the tunnel-like holloway that leads to Bonni B&B. In The Wind in the Willows, Ratty tells Mole that beyond the Wild Wood lies the Wide World – somewhere he’d never been and would never be going. Entering the sunken path as dusk falls, I realise I feel similarly content in this bosky corner of the Chilterns. I may not want to venture back out into the wider world the following morning either.

The trip was provided by Bonni Outbuildings. Doubles from £150 B&B; breakfast kits £15pp. Riverford dinner recipe boxes from £15 for two. Bikes or paddleboards can be hired for £30 a day

No. 1-ranked UCLA, known for its powerful batting order from one to nine, turned to its pitching staff on Friday in New Jersey to pull out a 4-1 victory over Rutgers in 14 innings. It was UCLA’s 25th consecutive win. The Bruins are 31-2 and 16-0 in the Big Ten.

Starting pitcher Logan Reddemann tied a UCLA record with 18 strikeouts in eight innings. Four UCLA pitchers combined to strike out 30 batters, one shy of an NCAA record. Zach Strickland came through with three innings of scoreless relief, striking out seven. Easton Hawk got the save by striking out the side in the bottom of the 14th.

UCLA had left 16 runners on base until finally breaking through in the top of the 14th. The Bruins loaded the bases with one out, then broke the 1-1 tie on a fielder’s choice. Aidan Espinoza followed with a two-run pinch-hit single.

NEW ORLEANS — A U.S. Army staff sergeant is trying to halt his wife’s deportation after she was detained inside a Louisiana military base where the couple was planning to live together just days after their wedding.

The effort to remove the soldier’s wife, who was born in Honduras and remained in a federal immigration detention center Monday, has drawn criticism from military family advocates who called the detention demoralizing in a time of war and warned that deporting spouses could undermine recruitment.

Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank said he brought his wife, Annie Ramos, 22, to his base in Fort Polk, La., last Thursday so that she could begin the process to receive military benefits and take steps toward a green card. The couple married in March.

Federal immigration agents detained Ramos as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, which legal experts say has dispensed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s practice of leniency toward families of military members.

“I never imagined that trying to do the right thing would lead to her being taken away from me,” said Blank, 23, in a statement to the Associated Press. “What was supposed to be the happiest week of our lives has turned into one of the hardest.”

Ramos’ detention was first reported by The New York Times.

Ramos entered the U.S. in 2005, when she was younger than 2 years old. That same year, her family failed to appear for an immigration hearing, leading a judge to issue a final order of removal, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“She has no legal status to be in this country,” Homeland SEcurity said in an emailed statement. “This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law.”

In 2020, Ramos applied to receive Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, but her husband says her application has remained “in limbo” amid legal fights to end the Obama-era program.

Last April, Homeland Security eliminated a 2022 policy that considered military service of an immediate family member to be a “significant mitigating factor” in deciding whether or not to pursue immigration enforcement. The administration’s new policy states that “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”

Prior to the Trump administration’s mass deportation push, Homeland Security generally allowed the spouses of active-duty military members to gain legal status through policies like parole in place and deferred action that military recruiters promote, according to Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.

Ramos’ case would have been easy to resolve in the past, Stock said, but instead Homeland Security now appears to be focusing on detaining members of military families whenever the opportunity arises — including when, like Ramos, they are attempting to apply for legal status.

“It doesn’t make any sense — they’re going to get arrested for following the law? That’s stupid,” Stock said. “It’s bad for morale, it disrupts the soldiers’ readiness.”

In September, more than 60 members of Congress wrote to the Homeland Security and Defense Departments warning that arrests of military personnel and veterans’ family members was “betraying its promises to service members who play a key role in protecting U.S. national security.”

The Pentagon declined to comment.

Lydiah Owiti-Otienoh, who runs an advocacy group called the Foreign-Born Military Spouse Network, said she’s anecdotally seen an increase in cases where the lives of military families have been upended by tightening immigration restrictions. She believes the federal government is undermining its own interests by attempting to deport military spouses.

“It just sends a really bad message — we don’t care about you, about your spouses, anything you are doing,” Owiti-Otienoh said. “If military families are not stable, national security is not stable.”

Blank’s mother, Jen Rickling, told the AP in a statement that her daughter-in-law, a Sunday school teacher and biochemistry major, had been everything she hoped for — someone who “loves my son with her whole heart.”

“We absolutely adore her,” Rickling said. “I believe in this country. And I believe we can do better than this — for Annie, for other military families, and for the values we hold dear.”

Blank says he had been eager to start building a life and with Ramos on the base while he served his country.

“I want my wife home,” Blank said. “And I will not stop fighting until she is back where she belongs, by my side.”

Brook writes for the Associated Press.

The rescue of the F-15E weapon systems officer (WSO) missing in Iran after his fighter was shot down was one of the most complex and dangerous missions the U.S. military can undertake. These kinds of operations can come in many forms. In this case, before the WSO was finally recovered from the mountain crevice where he was hiding, a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) deep inside enemy territory had to be rapidly set up and secured so that it could act as a staging area for the aircraft, equipment and troops taking part in the mission. This is an exact mission set U.S. special operations forces train for extensively.

To get more insights about how such a FARP would be set up and operated, we reached out to Kyle Rempfer, a former Special Tactics Squadron (STS) airman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. STS units are an elite cadre of operators who work to control aircraft in the air, including from airfields they establish deep inside contested territory, and direct airpower onto the enemy, among other duties, including rescuing personnel trapped behind enemy lines. They are often paired with special operations units, such as SEALs, Delta Force and Rangers, to bring their unique skills to their missions.

Air Force Special Tactics – the Air Force’s ONLY Special Operations Ground Force

Rempfer, a journalist and former colleague of the author at Military Times, offered unique insights into the process as someone who trained for these missions.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: What happens in the Special Tactics Squadron level when the word comes out that there’s an aircraft down deep into enemy territory? 

A: By this point in the campaign, Air Force Special Tactics teams – which are made up of combat controllers (CCTs) and pararescue jumpers (PJs) – would have surveyed or identified scores of Iranian runways and austere airfields that can be used for landing zones or drop zones down the line. Even if CCTs hadn’t set foot on these sites, they’d have pulled imagery of the locations and started using tools like AutoCAD, a surveying and mapping software, to sketch out the dimensions of an airfield and identify what type of aircraft could land there. Is this a site that could only work for a light short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft, or could we land something bigger like a C-17? Those types of questions are on their minds. And since this event appears to have happened near the Isfahan nuclear facility, it can be assumed that Special Tactics has been scoping out landing zones in that area since at least this war started, maybe far earlier. 

For this mission, the Special Tactics team just needed someplace to land a couple of MC-130J Commando IIs. Those are designed to infiltrate and exfiltrate special operations troops into and out of the hinterlands, so an agricultural runway intended for crop-spraying planes would fit the bill in terms of dimensions. But on the ground, the soil strength might not hold up for repeat landings, or perhaps the recent weather has eroded the area or left it muddy. That can have an impact, and there are tools like dynamic cone penetrometers that Special Tactics teams use to assess soil strength. They’ve used those and a host of other tools to scout airfields all around potential conflict zones in Africa, northern Iraq, Syria, etc., but given the tight security in Iran, that probably was not feasible to do in advance here. So the soil strength might have been a known-unknown going in. 

Q: What would happen once the FARP is set up?

A: They can do these fast. Everything is prestaged, even inside the MC-130. AH-6 Little Bird helicopters were probably offloaded and taking off within minutes, not hours, and beaming toward the WSO’s beacon. At that point, the team at the FARP site is pulling security and talking to all the aircraft overhead. Those pilots and aircrews are using sensors to monitor all the roadways that plausibly lead to the site, and potentially even putting warheads on those roadways to make them unusable. We know there were some diversionary bomb drops as part of the rescue, so they could also take that time to put big potholes in the roads.

Q: Can you talk about what systems, personnel and equipment would have secured the site?

A: The people who are surveying and setting up the landing zone and FARP are probably CCTs [Combat Control Teams] from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. They would have had imagery to look at ahead of the mission, but you might not know what level of stress the ground can take until you physically get there. CCTs are trained to inspect that, blow up obstacles on the runway if needed, scan enemy activity around the landing site, etc., and then set up the austere airfield to start accepting planes and helos. They might not have had time to do a full-on reconnaissance mission, of course. 

CCTs have dirt bikes, something like a Kawasaki KLR 250, that they can drive up and down the airstrip for quickly setting up lights and visually inspecting the terrain. The lights they’d use to create the airstrip would be set up to infrared mode so only people with night vision devices can see them. This isn’t the early days of Afghanistan, though, and night vision devices have proliferated to such a degree that infrared lights are no longer the game changer they once were. However, it still prevents civilians from seeing the operation at night, and that is important given reports that Iranian state media was mobilizing the population to look for the downed airman. 

Q: Who would be brought in for force protection?

A: The CCTs of course are not alone at the landing zone. They had DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) for security and dozens of aircraft backing them up with an absolutely jarring amount of aerial firepower. CCTs are usually also certified JTACs so they can manage the aircraft stacks not just for landing the MC-130s and AH-6s returning from the WSO rescue, but also the dozens of aircraft overhead that can fire at targets as necessary.

Q: Reports indicate that the WSO climbed up a 7,000 foot crevice and hid out there with intermittent communications while the Iranians were looking for him. How does that complicate things? And what would the team on the ground be doing?

A: I imagine that all the communications would have been encrypted – not anything that the Iranians could listen in on. For the guys on the ground, the biggest situation is monitoring to make sure that other forces aren’t approaching the area and protecting that forward arming and refueling site, because while it’s not a base, for all intensive purposes it is the center of mass of the most U.S. forces, the safest zone you have. So basically probably just protected that site. 

Q: What would be happening in the air?

A: You would have ISR assets that would be scanning the area, and not just the immediate area, but probably any roads and highways leading up to where that FARP site was set up. They would be watching anyone who could possibly be approaching. 

That whole area would just be soaked with ISR assets, and I know the Iranians knocked out two Reaper drones during the operation. So presumably, there was plenty of ISR. 

There would be a mix of attack and surveillance aircraft. There would be dozens of aircraft available for this mission. That is great for the team on the ground, but just like an air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Airport in DC can be overburdened, so will the JTAC who’s on the ground controlling all these different pilots and aircrews calling in to report threats they’ve spotted, relay their fuel or munitions status, report radio chatter they’re picking up from the ground, etc. This could require multiple JTACs on the ground, and probably also pilots in A-10s or F-35s who can act as an extra layer of forward air control in the sky, handling aircraft check-ins and keeping track of specific assets so the JTACs on the ground aren’t losing their minds mind handling a massive air stack behind enemy lines. 

Most CCTs also have a JTAC certification, so they can help call in airstrikes as needed to protect the FARP site. And attack aircraft, like A-10s, or multi-role fighters, like F-35s, also have pilots who are certified as Forward Air Controller (Airborne) — or FAC(A). The E-3 can also provide a command and control function to help manage this complex battlespace. 

Q: How difficult is a mission like this? What are the dangers?

A: This would have been a hot refueling site, with engines running refueling, and you’re doing all that blacked out, and you have to probably keep the amount of radio chatter on the ground to a minimum because you don’t know if maybe Iran does have something where they can break through the encryption. 

So I would imagine that the danger is even more than just the IRGC coming in and shooting at you. The danger is  the technicalities that you’re dealing with, with the forward  arming and refueling sites and all these aircraft moving around under night vision in blacked out conditions in a tight area. It’s a small airfield, you have to keep your signature low.

Thankfully, they were able to get more aircraft in to usher everyone out. But that just shows how even what they were dealing with, the runway probably wasn’t built to handle these kinds of aircraft, or not maintained. 

Clearly this kind of operation – where you’re coming in, setting up an airfield, whether it’s for a follow-on parachute jump or even just air landing more troops and supplies – would be repeated in most of the other scenarios people are talking about. For instance, going in and digging out Iran’s enriched uranium. I think it would have to be pretty similar. You would send in a special tactics team with some Ranger recce guys, and the Ranger reconnaissance company would maybe parachute in, and check out the airfield, and they would start bringing in the MC-130s. It’s going to be a remote, austere airfield. It’s not going to be easy to land aircraft there, it’s not going to be well maintained, and you’re going to run into a lot of problems on the ground with aircraft. 

In addition to the fixed-wing planes, the U.S. also destroyed a reported four Little Birds on the way out. Imagine if you’re trying to do sustained operations bringing aircraft in, that all those aircraft are wearing down that obscure runway as you’re coming in, and you’re having more and more troops flow in. Your signature is going to be bigger and it’s going to be there for a longer time. 

So this is how you create a window into a country to conduct follow-on operations. In this case, it was just to look for one guy and pick him up. But, they’re obviously looking at runways and airfields all across the country, whether they’re actual runways that are in use by the Iranian government or municipal governments, or if they’re just like roads that they can use or dirt fields that they think they can land on. So this rescue mission was probably a snapshot into larger operational planning.

Q: After the rescue of the pilot, the search for the WSO seemed to turn fairly quickly from a traditional PJ mission to a Tier One rescue operation. Can you talk about that transition and how those two fit together?

A: That’s right. From my understanding, there were two missions. The first was a traditional CSAR mission that was launched in daylight immediately after the F-15E went down. This likely involved the PJs from a rescue squadron that was on standby. They were aboard HH-60W Jolly Greens and had refueling support from an HC-130J. That mission is obviously very risky and time sensitive. They’re flying low and slow, in daylight, and vulnerable to ground fire. We saw people shooting at them with small arms, which probably won’t do much barring really lucky shots, but the crews are still exposed to man portable air defense systems (MANPADS).

You can see Iranians firing small arms at the CSAR aircraft in the following video.

This initial CSAR package successfully recovered the F-15E pilot, who would have had a beacon and survival radio. But obviously the WSO was still at large. Perhaps they knew his location but couldn’t get to him before the region came alive like a bees’ nest – with everyone from locals to actual security forces scouring the scene. At that point, it appears the mission shifted from a more traditional CSAR operation conducted by a rescue squadron to something we’re actually more familiar with from Afghanistan and Iraq – Tier One raids into denied territory. This makes sense to me because this was the single most important mission going on, and it makes sense to flood this with assets to successfully pull off a second pick up. In a bigger war, I doubt downed aircrew can expect JSOC rescue parties every time one of them goes down. 

A lot of people were surprised that MC-130s and AH-6s were used for this, but it actually reminds me a lot of the early Afghanistan missions Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted in fall 2001, before the Taliban fell. At least one of these involved Air Force Special Tactics CCTs parachuting into a remote part of Afghanistan, setting up a dirt airstrip, landing two MC-130s, off-loading a couple of Little Birds and then flying those around all night striking Taliban targets.

This rescue raid isn’t too different. It sounds like Air Force Special Tactics CCTs surveyed the airfield in advance – maybe in person, maybe just using satellite imagery – and then brought in the MC-130s that held the AH-6s to actually conduct the rescue that grabbed the WSO. This sort of scheme makes sense given the distance inside Iran. The MC-130s can bring extra fuel and ammunition to set up a mini-special ops refueling and re-arming site.

One thing to note here is why the commandos reportedly blew up the MC-130s on the way out. If the government’s version of events is accurate, this might have been because the runway was not suitable for the MC-130s and those planes got stuck or damaged landing there. The CCTs may have known this was a possibility but determined it was the least bad option. There’s also the possibility the aircraft were more damaged by enemy fire than we’ve been told. We may never know. 

Q: What would be the biggest danger from the Iranians? Indirect fire like artillery? Drones?

A: Hard for me to say. If the team had the element of surprise, which it seemed to, then the Iranians would have been caught off guard enough that they didn’t have time to stage artillery or have drones already scanning the area. In that case, I could see the biggest threat being local police or civilians stumbling upon the site early in the mission. As the operation gets underway, the noise signature would probably attract more and more attention. And then you have IRGC teams speeding to the scene. If they’re moving fast, they might only have small arms, maybe some belt-fed machine guns, small caliber mortars, and potentially MANPADs. The longer the U.S. team was on the ground, the more time Iran had to rush forces to the scene and that’s when things appeared to get dicey, the Army’s Delta Force reportedly had to blow in place the MC-130s and call in a quick reaction force (QRF) for pickup. 

Because people keep asking, the WSO was extracted on little birds flying STS and DEVGRU. Smoke checked 9 EKIA on tgt. The QRF that got called in for the FARP was from Delta. https://t.co/mmCbzrRjys

— Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) April 5, 2026

This is also why having so many aircraft overhead would be useful. Not only are those planes there to strike targets, they can listen to enemy communications and local civilian radio chatter, they can use their sensors to scan all the routes leading up to the airfield, and they can use jamming and spoofing to befuddle the Iranian response. All that helps buy time. 

Q: What kinds of geospatial tools would have been used to find and prep the site and carry out the mission?

A: I imagine in advance of this mission the airfields and runways in this area were pre-scouted using satellite imagery. I’m probably too out of date to go into specifics even if I wanted to, but we have very high resolution satellite imagery that’s available in the commercial space and is very impressive. Additionally, aircraft can fly over sites and scan the terrain using LIDAR to build 3D maps of the environment. Suffice to say, the CCTs would have a great picture of the environment before going in, but being physically on the ground shows new problems — can the soil hold up to landing an MC-130? How fine is the sand? When the AH-6s take off, are they creating a brown-out environment? 

In an ideal scenario, the CCTs could parachute in before the main mission, conducting a high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump and then confirming on the ground that the site will work to land an MC-130. We don’t know if that’s what happened, but if the reporting is accurate that an MC-130 got stuck and had to be blown up in place, then perhaps they made a mistake or – my bet – they knew the runway was rough and accepted the risk.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

The activists were protesting the alleged use of the RAF base as a departure point for US aircraft involved in the US-Israel war on Iran.

British police have arrested seven people on suspicion of supporting the banned group Palestine Action at a protest near a Royal Air Force (RAF) air base in eastern England used by United States forces.

The five men and two women arrested at a peace encampment just outside the Lakenheath airbase had gathered with other activists on Sunday to protest the alleged use of the base as a departure point for US aircraft involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The Lakenheath Alliance for Peace, which organised the protest, said the seven had been arrested wearing clothing with the message: “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action.”

Police said the protesters had been arrested “on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation”.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government banned Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation last year, making it a criminal offence to belong to or support the group.

In February, a court ruled the ban was “disproportionate” and interfered with the right to free speech. But the government has appealed, and the ban remains in effect in the meantime.

More than 2,700 people have been arrested and hundreds charged over rallies in support of the group, according to protest organisers Defend Our Juries.

Police said in a statement on the latest arrests that they had a duty to enforce the law “as it currently stands, not as it might be in the future”.

Two protesters were also arrested on Saturday at Lakenheath and charged with obstructing public thoroughfares, police said.

US President Donald Trump has railed against Starmer for what he calls insufficient support in the US-Israel war on Iran, straining the countries’ longtime alliance.

The United Kingdom has authorised the US to use British military bases to carry out “defensive” operations against Iran and protect the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes in peacetime.

Wiffen said he is expecting “to swim the best ever so I don’t have to make a decision” across the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m events he will be competing in, despite his recent lack of competitive action.

He outlined his goals as swimming the 400m around 4.33 seconds, the 800m below 7.42 seconds and the 1500m under 14.40 to assess whether his time spent in California has been successful.

The County Armagh man also cited Dublin as a potential future base if he does decide to move, but emphasised that doing so would be heavily dependant on his performances in Bangor.

“If I’m around those times, under or around PB, then that’s great. That obviously means the training is working, and if it doesn’t work then I [have to figure out] what I’m going do after,” he added.

“I’m thinking of coming back to Dublin if it doesn’t go well, but, we have to see. If I swim lights out in Bangor, then my decisions obviously can’t have been made.”

Wiffen also explained the main differences he has encounter between training in England and in the US, where they use yardage instead of metres.

“The training is just quite different and, even though I don’t swim a lot of yards, I just think being in America is fun. There’s quite a lot of distractions, and it’s a good lifestyle but, it’s not the same as what Loughborough was like,” he said.

“[It was] all about grind, very similar weather to Ireland and I love swimming in the rain and when the weather is dull. When you’re in the sun everything becomes a lot harder and the motivation becomes a lot harder.

“When I’m swimming in California, my motivation is I’m with a really good training group and everybody’s pushing each other, where as in Loughborough, I feel like it was more self-motivation, I was getting there because I wanted to win.

“I wanted to do all these things where I feel like another group is kind of pushing me to swim fast, which I like, but I think I want a bit of the self-motivation back, so we’ll have to see how the next week goes.”

March 27 (UPI) — An Iranian attack on an air base in Saudi Arabia on Friday injured 10 U.S. service members — two seriously — unnamed officials familiar with the incident told media outlets.

The attack took place at the Saudi military’s Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, striking a building where the U.S. service members were, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal. NBC News and CBS News also confirmed the attack, citing unnamed sources.

Iran used missiles and drones to carry out the attack, which also damaged multiple refueling vehicles.

Since the start of the war in Iran a month ago, more than 300 Americans have been injured and 13 killed.

The United States and Israel began attacks on Iran beginning Feb. 28 amid stalling talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program. On Thursday, President Donald Trump said the United States would forgo attacks on Iran’s energy sites for 10 days to give time for further negotiations to end the war.

Iran on Friday blamed Israeli for contradicting Trump’s 10-day delay by launching attacks on infrastructure sites, including an energy plant.

The U.S. Air Force’s 378th Air Expeditionary Wing has been based at Prince Sultan base since 2019.

With its facilities in the Middle East frequently targeted by Iranian missiles and drones, U.S. Central Command is looking for better ways to protect its troops and capabilities. This week, the command and its subordinate units put out two calls for information from companies that can design and provide hardened infrastructure, including underground facilities, as well as shelters. The need for hardened shelters is something that The War Zone has been raising for years, especially when it pertains to aircraft.

The moves come as 13 U.S. troops have been killed, more than 300 wounded and facilities and equipment like radar systems and aircraft have been destroyed and damaged since the launch of Epic Fury on Feb. 28.

The attacks have been so intense that they’ve forced “many American troops to relocate to hotels and office spaces throughout the region,” The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing military personnel and American officials. “So now much of the land-based military is, in essence, fighting the war while working remotely, with the exception of fighter pilots and crews operating and maintaining warplanes and conducting strikes.”

You can see video from one of those Iranian attacks, on the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain, below.

The troop relocations spurred Iran’s powerful Speaker of the Parliament Mohamed Bagher Ghalibaf to mock the U.S. war effort in a post on X.

How can the US, which can’t even protect its own soldiers at its bases in the region and instead leaves them stashed away in hotels and parks, protect them on our soil?

— محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) March 27, 2026

One of the shelter sources sought requests from CENTCOM this week is a long-term seven-year project while the other is for more immediate protection. Neither addresses the issue of protecting aircraft.

On Wednesday, U.S. Air Forces Central (AFCENT) put out a call for vendors who are able to help bolster force protection at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the Middle East. Like many other bases in the region, it has come under frequent attack from Iran. AFCENT is seeking information from companies able to plan and design “a hardened, underground, secure, Combat Center Building…and squadron operations buildings supporting a variety of airframe and missions to include, but not limited to, bombers, fighters, and unmanned aircraft systems for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).”

The sources sought solicitation, which could lead to a sole-source contract award, states that the plan may also seek construction of additional facilities, including administrative offices, command and control facilities, operational readiness and life support facilities for specialized personnel, elevators, and a parking garage. However, there is a long lead time for this project, even if it gets approved. A contract solicitation won’t be issued until April 2027, with the award anticipated in January 2028. 

The underground shelter plan for Al Udeid is part of Strategic Master Plan 2040 (SMP2040), “a portfolio of over 170 Qatar-funded projects worth $10 billion that will be carried out from the first quarter of 2026 until 2040,” according to AFCENT. “Most of the projects are designed and will be constructed by Qatar with a few being U.S.-designed and constructed.”

It is unclear whether the new shelter project was spurred by current events, but a Feb. 3 AFCENT release on SMP2040 makes no mention of such structures. That fact that the plan will take years to come to fruition also raises questions about why it had not been unveiled sooner, given that Al Udeid has long been known to be a target of potential Iranian attacks. It is also not publicly known whether the proposed Combat Center Building at Al Udeid will replace or augment the current Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) that serves as a command and control headquarters for U.S. and allied aircraft operating across the Middle East. We’ve reached out to AFCENT for clarification, but they deferred us to CENTCOM, which declined comment.

Al Udeid, just 175 miles from Iran across the Persian Gulf, has already been hit by Iran, suffering damage to a radar and buildings during Epic Fury and forcing the relocation of troops. Last year, Iran launched 10 ballistic missiles at the base in retaliation for the Operation Midnight Hammer strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That incident spurred what was at the time the largest volley of Patriot interceptors ever expended by the U.S. for one single event.

Attacks on and damage to Al Udeid from Iranian missiles can be seen below.

This satellite imagery is noteworthy. It appears to show at least two precise impact points on a large bunker used by U.S. forces at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar 🇶🇦, located at 25°06’45.71″N 51°20’43.17″E.

Curious which munitions were used in that strike. https://t.co/unbsGZmZUc pic.twitter.com/CItRQjA9gr

— Egypt’s Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) March 13, 2026

In a more immediate request, CENTCOM is looking for vendors capable of providing “prefabricated, transportable, hardened shelter systems designed to protect personnel from blast and fragmentation threats,” according to a sources sought posting on Monday. “All proposed solutions must be deliverable to the Aqaba Air Cargo Terminal at King Hussein International Airport in Aqaba, Jordan.”

Unlike the Al Udeid plan, CENTCOM is looking for a quick turnaround on these shelters, asking that vendors submit “three potential delivery options reflecting estimated timelines of 3 days, 15 days, and 30 days.”

“Responses shall include a comprehensive description of the materials used in fabrication, including composition, structural design, and any reinforcement features,” according to the solicitation. “Vendors must also clearly identify the protection level of each proposed bunker, including the highest level of threat (e.g., blast force, fragmentation, or ballistic impact) the system is designed to withstand.”

The total quantity of these shelters is currently unknown and vendors are being asked to provide pricing structures “that reflect any available economies of scale.” The timeline for this project is unclear. Responses are due today, but there is no contract award deadline listed in the solicitation. CENTCOM declined our request for details, citing operational security concerns.

“Vendors are requested to submit three potential delivery options reflecting estimated timelines of 3 days, 15 days, and 30 days.”

“The USG’s review of documentation priorities are delivery timeline first, followed by protection level of the bunker systems.”

— 1st ETSG/TKO

— Carter Johnston (@__CJohnston__) March 23, 2026

As noted earlier in this story, we have long wondered why the U.S. military has not done more to protect its assets by building hardened shelters, particularly for aircraft.  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.

The most recent incident took place earlier this month when Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana experienced waves of drone incursions. The base is home of B-52 Stratofortress bombers and nuclear weapons storage facilities, and is a key part of the airborne leg of America’s nuclear triad.

I have spent a good part of my career just getting people to believe this was actually happening. Now we are here. With 15 drones, you can lose roughly 1/4 of the B-52 force as it sits idle on the ground. This was always the most concerning scenario. Time to move to hardening.… https://t.co/bBgE5taas9

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) March 20, 2026

One of the biggest concerns we have raised over the years is the lack of shelters at the massive and highly strategic Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. The base, a key location for U.S. power projection in the Pacific, will be a prime target for Chinese long-range missiles in the event of a war.

Friday morning, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, now dean of the Mitchell Institute, concurred with our concerns about the lack of shelters and other hardened infrastructure.

“It absolutely has been needed and I made that case back when [Al Udeid] was being built,” Deptula told us. “But it’s all about money. That, along with not hardening aircraft shelters in Guam.

Deputla added that he tried to get hardened shelters built in Guam back when he was Director of Air and Space Operations for Pacific Air Forces more than 20 years ago.

“We were passed over due to other priorities at the time,” he explained.

As for the concept for hardened infrastructure at Al Udeid, Deptula said he was not aware of the plan, “but it is too little too late for this war.”

The reluctance about hardened shelters may be starting to change. Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announced anti-drone updates to the Modular Protective System-Overhead Cover (MPS-OHC). MPS-OHC was originally developed during the Global War on Terror era in response to indirect fire threats like artillery shells, rockets, and mortar rounds that U.S. forces were facing in Afghanistan and Iraq. The modular shelters, while still hardened, could provide a more temporary and cost-effective way to protect aircraft, other equipment and personnel from drones.

Meanwhile, weeks before Epic Fury was launched, the Pentagon released new guidelines for hardening civilian and military facilities in the homeland from the growing threat from small drones that The War Zone has long warned about. These concerns have been spurred by years of incursions over U.S. bases and critical facilities and were hammered home by Ukraine’s 2025 near-field attack, dubbed Operation Spider Web, that wiped out a large number of Russia’s bombers with concealed arrays of drones stashed near airbases.

Epic Fury, of course, presents a different threat as U.S. bases get hit by ballistic missiles and large drones like Shahed-136s, in addition to first-person view (FPV) drones. Regardless, this conflict has once again highlighted the need to find better ways of protecting American troops and assets.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Operation Epic Fury will hit a month old by the weekend. It and the massive military build-up to it were made possible by a global logistics chain that only the Pentagon can supply. At the heart of it is the aerial refueling fleet. These aircraft have flown thousands of sorties to get materiel where it needs to be and fast. These have included stuffing the fuel tanks of C-17s with cargo holds full of Patriot missiles to dragging stealth fighters across the globe. Epic Fury has been one of many operations to heavily tax the tanker fleet in recent years. To get a much better insight into the tanker portion of the war and its impacts, we talked to one man with an extreme level of experience behind the controls of USAF tankers.

For more than 20 years, Troy Pananon, a retired Air Force colonel, served in the aerial refueling community. He flew KC-10 Extender and KC-135 Stratotanker refueling jets and served as deputy commander of the 6th Air Mobility Wing at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida (now 6th Air Refueling Wing), and later as commander of the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall in England. Both of these installations and their KC-135s are instrumental in the ongoing war in Iran.

In a two-hour, wide-ranging exclusive interview, Pananon offered insights into the strain of the war on the jets and personnel and the challenges of keeping the aging KC-135s flying as they perform hundreds of sorties gassing up fighters, airlifters and other aircraft. One of those missions resulted in the deaths of six airmen after a suspected midair collision over Iraq. Pananon also addressed a whole host of other issues, including how Epic Fury is affecting readiness for a fight against China, the scourge of drone incursions and much more, which will be addressed in future installments.

Pananon, who began his career as an enlisted Marine, retired from the Air Force in 2023 and is now a 737 first officer with United Airlines. The first installment of our conversation focuses on Epic Fury and the toll on the tankers, crews and maintainers. Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: The Air Force tanker fleet has come under extremely heavy use in recent years, being widely utilized in the evacuation of Afghanistan, the massive deliveries to Ukraine, the constant crisis in the Middle East and the campaign against the Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Now, the war in Iran. Talk about the strain this is putting on it, on the aircrews, the maintainers and the airframes, some of which rolled out during the Eisenhower era.

A: I would categorically say that there’s a huge strain on the entire ecosystem. The KC-135s were rolling off the assembly line in the 50s and 60s. Some of the technology, and we called it technology back then, was graduated from the Wright brothers technology. Parts on that aircraft are still reminiscent of some of the things that were invented by the Wright brothers. So it’s amazing to me that the KC-135 is able to operate, and it’s due in large part to the maintainers and the relentless effort that they follow through to keep those aircraft air worthy. 

If you think about the [airmen], how they’re operating in places you mentioned all over the world, they’re there. We’ve broken their normal routine. They’re away from home, away from their family and friends. So that’s a mental and physical stressor, because they’re in environments that they’re not accustomed to. 

We don’t know how long this conflict could last. We’re approaching a high heat of summer in that region, and so depending on where some of these personnel are based or stationed, they’re certainly out of their normal circadian rhythm, their normal environmental routines. It is a huge strain on those maintainers and the airframes that we’re placing in different parts of the world, exposed to different elements than they may have been exposed to at their normal pace. Maintaining these aging aircraft is a strain on the entire ecosystem, and we are operating them at a high operations tempo, and surely that puts a lot of a significant strain on the KC-135.

We do have the KC-46 that is helping to fill some of that void, but we just retired the KC-10, which was a tremendous workhorse. And so I would say that there’s a significant strain on the ecosystem.

Q: What are the biggest challenges in keeping these Cold War-era jets like the KC-135 flying? How difficult is it to find parts, and what do you do when you can’t?

A: That’s 100% accurate. There have been some breakthroughs in technology. I know that they’ve used 3D printing to help source some parts. They’ve even gone back to the boneyard and pulled parts off of older KC-135s. So resources will always be a great puzzle for our entire team to source. 

There’s no new assembly line. They shut that assembly line down back in the ’50s and ’60s. Some of the parts for those aircraft in general were from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. And then, you have to take those back and refurbish those certain parts. There’s not a lot of new technology that’s going on to these core platforms. The avionics, for sure, is newer. But everything that you add to this aircraft, I call it the Frankenstein effort – taking bolt-on technology to try and help modernize the fleet. And by modernizing that means that you’re also helping with the parts availability. But going back to the age of these aircraft, some of these parts were developed back in the ’40s and machined back in the ’50s and ’60s. Our teams have to get creative with the acquisition. And that’s a huge, huge challenge. But they currently have done a great job of putting new engines on the aircraft. And so that means that the parts availability is better in some cases, but it’s not a solution. 

Davis Monthan AMARG Boneyard tour with KC-135s and Boeing 707s

Q: What are some of the old parts you’re talking about that go back to the ’40s, or to the Wright brothers era?

A: Just think about the flight controls. If you, for whatever reason, need to replace certain pulleys or elements within the flight control system, those parts were thought-up and developed way back in the ’40s. Machined maybe back in the ’50s and ’60s. It’s still not a fly-by-wire aircraft like some of the modern aircraft that we have nowadays. And so you have to go back and machine some of these parts if they get wear and tear.

Q: What are the complexities of supporting such a high tempo operation like the war against Iran with aerial refueling? We’ve heard that the airspace over Iraq is chaotic and that the lack of onboard situational awareness is a major issue with tanker crews and receivers. What have you heard about this?

A: Obviously I haven’t operated over there in a number of years, but I do go back to the times when I was operating aircraft in that theater. That puts me back into the Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom timeframe. We have deconfliction procedures. We have airspace procedures that we study and that we follow. We have aircraft in there that help us deconflict the airspace and ensure that we have safe separation. And it goes to training, it goes to situational awareness.

Back then, we didn’t have some of the avionics and software suites that we have available to us today, so our situational awareness wasn’t as high, but yet we had good, solid procedures and processes that ensured clear deconfliction and separation in the airspace that they’re operating in. Now, I would assume that it’s congested and it’s contested, and so having the ability to have higher situational awareness with onboard avionics suites that are connected is probably more and more essential as we go forward.

Q: But have you heard anything about the chaotic nature of the current airspace and lack of onboard situational awareness? Is it a major issue right now with the tanker crews and receivers?

A:  I really can’t comment on it, because I don’t have firsthand knowledge. What I can say is that it’s in a contested environment, and our crews are definitely trained to operate in these kinds of environments. And you know, it’s just like anything there. There are elements that we have little control over, and I call it the fog and friction of warfare. But I have 100% absolute trust in the personnel. They’ve been trained. They are equipped. Could they be equipped better? Could they be resourced better? Sure. But again, it still goes back to the fact that even if we resource them with the newest technology, they then have to go back and be trained to understand how to integrate it and how to use it effectively. 

There is still an opportunity here. You can’t solve it overnight, but it does need to happen so it would help. I’m certain that if we ever get into conflict with a near peer, it’s going to be even more challenging.

Q: When was the last time tanker crews flew in contested airspace against adversaries with more robust air defenses than we have seen in past conflicts?

A: I would like to say that any time that you’re operating within a conflict zone, that’s considered contested airspace, right? The tankers are considered a high-value, low-density. We don’t have an infinite number of tankers, so they’re going to tend to operate outside the reach of the adversary’s missiles, or fighter aircraft that would try to reach and take down one of these tankers. So they’re really going to try and operate within a safe, safe zone. I would frankly say that in a conflict, tankers operate in contested airspace all the time, and it’s really contingent on the ability of our joint force to clear that airspace and to allow our tankers to move closer to the tip of the spear, but generally speaking, it is really sacrosanct to keep tankers an arm’s reach away from an adversary’s ability to take them down.

Q: Do you have any sense of what happened in the fatal March 12 KC-135 crash in Iraq that led to the deaths of Maj. John “Alex” Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama; Capt. Ariana G. Savino, 31, of Covington, Washington; Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky; Capt. Seth R. Koval, 38, of Mooresville, Indiana; Capt. Curtis J. Angst, 30, of Wilmington, Ohio; and Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio?

A: There’s an investigation taking place and it’d be wrong of me to comment on what I think took place. These crews are highly trained. They have a process. They have procedures. I don’t know what was taking place on the flight decks of both of those aircraft. There was probably some confusion as to who and where each aircraft was supposed to be, but I don’t know what led to that. There’s a lot of speculation out there. It’d be hard for me to really say what I think actually did happen.

Q: The cause of the tanker crash is suspected to be a collision with another KC-135. How many close calls have you experienced in your career?

A: Well, I have a deep background in the KC-10, and that also gives gas and takes gas. So I’ve been within 10 feet of another aircraft, operating at close to 350 miles an hour. It’s an inherently dangerous occupation when you’re trying to receive fuel from another aircraft. I don’t think that was the case in this particular incident over Iraq. But at all times, everything we do is inherently dangerous because we operate within safe operating margins, but they’re tight. So, a simple split-second decision or maybe error puts you in a precarious position. But we have procedures that, if we make a mistake and we come close to another aircraft – there is a term that we use, which is ‘breakaway.’ And that tells both aircraft, ‘hey, we’re in a situation where we need to create some space between our aircraft,’ and we follow our procedures. It’s a safe maneuver, but probably makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little bit. I’ve been in this, I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to rapidly escape from another aircraft. 

But again, we get trained for this. We are highly trained. And I think because of the training, when a situation like that occurs, your instinct kicks in and you know what to do. And so, I don’t recall instances where two KC-135s had a midair collision, but certainly, we have had air-to-air collisions, just none in my recent memory.

Q: The air refueling tanker community is tight. You served at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, with Tech. Sgt. Pruitt, one of the airmen who was killed in the crash. Tell me about how the crash affected the community. Tell me a little bit about Pruitt.

A: From my time at MacDill, I do remember her family. In general, losing anyone is just a shock to the system. And especially somebody that you may have worked with in the past, and you know. I just feel for their families. And we have a community. The tanker community – it’s just a system, a brotherhood and sisterhood. We are just one big family. Anytime we have a tragedy that strikes our community, especially like this, it’s tough. 

I know that there are teams of people out there that are remorseful for the loss and that are doing anything in their power to support the families of these airmen. And I know there’s a lot of effort right now within our tanker community and outside of our tanker community with Go-Fund-Me pages. This is critical, because the families that have been affected by this lost a parent, right? A brother or sister or a spouse. I really do feel for these families, and I applaud the efforts of the supporters out there that are contributing to help with some of the things that are going to end up financially costing these families; but emotionally, you know that they will need support, probably for the rest of their lives. And so it’s a huge, huge loss.

Q: What can you tell me about Tech. Sgt. Pruitt?

A: Ashley was full of energy and was extremely bright, tenacious, and had an unmatched work ethic. She was a real, genuine people person. When you walked into a room, you knew she was there. But she was incredibly talented and someone that you could rely upon to help others, and she was absolutely an incredible boom operator and highly skilled and her death is this huge, huge loss. For her legacy, she impacted so many people and so many of these airmen and their families were certainly enriched by her being in their lives. At the time, I was the vice commander of the [then-6th Air Mobility Wing] at MacDill. And on occasion, I would go out and go fly with the KC-135 crews. I didn’t have a daily interaction with her, but everybody knew her, and everybody knew of her. And that’s the important part. There are many other airmen that are in our ranks right now that have benefited from being introduced to her and being taught by her and being mentored by her. So she’s surely missed.

Q: Give me a sense of how RAF Mildenhall and other bases in Europe and elsewhere keep these aircraft flying to generate sorties and deploy to combat zones like the Middle East.

A: The best part about having a forward operating base like Mildenhall is that you have all the resources in place, and in this particular case, they’re closer to where the conflict is. You don’t have as much of a long logistical chain, but you still have a logistics chain that you have to support. And so operating at a place like Mildenhall, a round the clock operation every day of the year, you do have weather to contend with on occasion, and you do have airspace constraints that you do have to contend with. But again, all of these crews are highly trained and so I would say that the operations tempo at a place like Mildenhall is extremely high. 

Just being able to have the support of the government there and the host nation that there is, and the local community is a big deal. I enjoyed my time there. Of course, we were there during COVID, during the global pandemic, and the lengths and support that we received from the host nation to ensure the safety of our community and our airmen was incredible.

Q: The 100th Air Refueling Wing has 15 tankers and more transit through. What are the concerns and checklists of objectives for a Mildenhall commander during a major contingency operation like Epic Fury?

A: It’s just our ability to support, right? You mentioned there are 15 tankers, but the airfield itself was able to surge to support twice as many. I currently don’t know how many aircraft that we’re currently supporting out of Mildenhall, but the ability to support that means that you have to be able to flex to the surge of the operation that you’re encountering. You have personnel that are helping to fuel the aircraft. You need personnel to maintain and sustain the aircraft. And so I would assume that we are getting support from bases in the United States. And they’re deployed there from all parts of our country and major units. The tanker fleet is a total force effort. Nearly half of the force resides in the [Air Reserve Component] ARC, and so personnel from Reserve, Guard, active duty, I’m sure, have been sent to help support operations like that. 

In our next installment, Pananon talks about the KC-46’s lack of a boom pod, how Epic Fury is affecting the ability to potentially fight China and the dangers of flying long distances over the Pacific against an adversary with robust and plentiful modern air defenses.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

March 24 (UPI) — NASA on Tuesday announced plans to spend $30 billion on a permanent lunar base and send astronauts to the moon every six months after the Artemis V mission.

Speaking at a so-called “Ignition” event at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Administrator Jared Isaacman discussed plans to accelerate construction of a moon base.

“There will be an evolutionary path to building humanity’s first permanent surface outpost beyond Earth,” he said.

“NASA is committed to achieving the near-impossible once again: to return to the moon before the end of President [Donald] Trump’s term, build a moon base, establish an enduring presence, and do the other things needed to ensure American leadership in space.”

NASA’s plan was initially to focus on what it called the Gateway program — a space station that was going to orbit the moon. Then the agency would build a base on the moon.

Carlos Garcia-Galan, the program executive for NASA’s Moon Base program, said the systems and hardware already established for the Gateway program would be repurposed to build the moon base.

Isaacman said the moon base plan will comprise three phases.

The first phase would include a series of missions to send small robotic landers and vehicles astronauts can drive on the surface to the moon. It would also encompass communications and scientific instruments.

The second phase would involve the construction of a “semi-habitable infrastructure” for astronauts on the lunar surface.

The third phase would start construction of a more permanent structure.

The first two phases would involve an investment of $20 billion over the next seven years and dozens of missions to the moon. The third phase would cost another $10 billion.

“The moon base will not appear overnight,” Isaacman said.

Isaacman said NASA also plans to launch a nuclear-propelled spacecraft to Mars by 2028.

NASA’s launch window for Artemis II is set to open April. The crewed mission is expected to send the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft to orbit the moon over 10 days and return to Earth. The crew will test whether the spacecraft operates in deep space.

The long-term goal of the Artemis program is to re-establish a human presence on the moon in preparation for the ultimate aim of putting a human on Mars.

The agency will increase robotic missions to the moon and launch a spacecraft called Space Reactor 1 Freedom.

NASA has unveiled a major overhaul of its moon and Mars strategy, scrapping plans for a lunar-orbit space station and instead committing $20bn over the next seven years to build a base on the moon’s surface, while also advancing plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman outlined the changes on Tuesday during a meeting in Washington, DC, with partners, contractors and government officials involved in the Artemis programme, saying the agency will increase robotic missions to the moon and lay the groundwork for nuclear power on the lunar surface.

Isaacman, appointed by US President Donald Trump and who took charge in December, said the changes form part of a broader overhaul of NASA’s long-term Moon-to-Mars strategy.

The planned moon base is intended to support long-term human presence on the lunar surface, with robotic missions expected to help prepare the site, test technologies and begin building infrastructure before astronauts return later this decade.

The agency also disclosed plans to launch a spacecraft called Space Reactor 1 Freedom before the end of 2028, a mission designed to demonstrate nuclear electric propulsion in deep space on the way to Mars.

The spacecraft will deliver helicopters on the Red Planet, similar to the Ingenuity robotic test helicopter that flew with NASA’s Perseverance rover, a step the agency said would help move nuclear propulsion technology from laboratory testing to operational space missions.

The Ingenuity helicopter was the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet. It travelled to Mars attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover and landed in February 2021.

Pausing the Lunar Gateway station

The Lunar Gateway station, a planned space station in lunar orbit being developed with contractors including Northrop Grumman and international partners, was meant to serve as a base where astronauts could live and work before heading to the Moon’s surface.

But NASA now plans to repurpose some Gateway components for use on the surface instead.

Repurposing Lunar Gateway to create a base on the moon’s surface leaves uncertain the future roles of Japan, Canada and the ‌European Space ⁠Agency in the Artemis programme, three key NASA partners that had agreed to provide components for the orbital station.

“It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman said.

The changes to NASA’s flagship Artemis programme are reshaping billions of dollars’ worth of contracts and come as the United States faces growing competition from China, which is aiming to land astronauts on the moon by 2030.

The Artemis programme, begun in 2017 during Trump’s first term as president, envisions regular lunar missions as NASA’s long-awaited follow-up to its first moon missions in the Apollo programme that ended in 1972.

Spotters in Greece have caught an especially good look at what very much appears to be a stealthy, long-range, high-altitude (HALE) intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drone commonly referred to as the RQ-180, or an evolution of that design.

Pictures of the dark-colored, flying-wing type aircraft landing at Larissa National Airport, also known as Larissa Air Base, situated in the Greek city of the same name, were published earlier today by local news outlet onlarissa.gr.

“Those who were in the area near the 110th Fighter Wing [technically the 110th Combat Wing] in Larissa at the end of last week were left speechless when they saw an impressive plane in the sky, completely different in shape and appearance from everything we see daily in politics and the military air force,” according to a machine translation of onlarissa.gr’s piece, which misidentifies the aircraft as a B-2 bomber. “According to more recent information from military sources, this [aircraft] … reportedly parked at the Larissa military airport due to a breakdown and will remain there until it is repaired.”

TWZ cannot immediately confirm any of these latter details, but we have reached out to U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and the Pentagon for more information.

What is clear is that this is not a B-2, which has a very distinctive saw-tooth trailing edge that is not visible here, among other features. In fact, the overall planform is highly reminiscent of the new B-21 Raider stealth bomber from Northrop Grumman, as well as past sightings of aircraft believed to be RQ-180s or progenitors of that design. The RQ-180 is widely understood to be a Northrop Grumman product, as well, and very likely played a significant role in risk reduction efforts as part of the development of the B-21, as we have posited for years.

There are also some very rough similarities to sightings of what is believed to be an Israeli drone called the RA-01, but with some distinct differences. The RA-01 shares a similar planform, but is a more svelte design that would be significantly smaller than what we are seeing here. Furthermore, it makes very little sense that an Israeli drone would be flying that far west for any reason. The American aircraft in question is likely quite large, sitting below the size of a B-21, but maybe by 25 percent, as a guess. It would be designed for extremely long-endurance, high altitude strategic reconnaissance missions.

B-21 Takeoff and Landing

The pictures from Larissa also offer a good look at the aircraft’s landing gear, which is very widely positioned. A gear configuration of that kind allows for the maximization of volume in between and underscores the sheer wingspan of the aircraft.

Whether the aircraft in question has been operating from Larissa, or simply diverted there due to an issue, is unknown. It is possible that it has been forward-deployed to the base, but still had to return to base unexpectedly, leading to it being spotted during the day rather than coming in discreetly at night.

Larissa is a Hellenic Air Force base, home to the 110th Combat Wing, which operates Block 52+ F-16C/D Viper fighters, as well as various types of drones. Since the late 2010s, the U.S. Air Force has also publicly used the base for MQ-9 Reaper drone operations over areas of Europe and Africa. That, in turn, has led to upgrades to Larissa’s infrastructure, especially along the south side of the base, where there are now hangars that could accommodate larger flying wing aircraft and that do not appear to be used to house MQ-9s.

By what we can surmise about the RQ-180 program, aircraft that are part of its lineage have likely been flying for roughly over a decade and a half. Yet in recent years, just as this platform was thought to be coming online in a grander operational sense, we have not seen the infrastructure that would be indicative of that. It’s even possible its scale has been reduced as the Pentagon looks to push its surveillance capabilities to space, and especially some of the kinds an ‘RQ-180’ could do.

Still, given that this aircraft is now likely a component of the Long Range Strike (LRS) family of systems, and will work in concert with and even possibly have some commonality with the B-21, it could share that same infrastructure and come online fully alongside the Raider in the next couple of years. That is if the program is still intended to be scaled-up as opposed to diverting funds to on-orbit surveillance capabilities.

Regardless, the aircraft has been spotted flying over secretive locales in America’s Southwest for many years now, with sightings over Area 51, and reports of it flying out of Palmdale and Edwards Air Force Base. A conflict with Iran would be a relevant fit for what it was designed to do, so it should be of no surprise that it is flying missions over the country, even if it still remains in something of a late developmental state.

In all of the years of the RQ-180’s rumored existence, multiple stealthy HALE drone designs have emerged in China, at least undergoing testing, and these are just the ones we know about.

We will have more analysis on all this in the near future.

Already, if nothing else, there are very strong signs that we’ve now gotten our best look ever at the drone referred to as the RQ-180 or a directly related design.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Islamabad hits Kandahar facility after Taliban drones strike civilian areas and military sites as conflict intensifies.

Pakistan has carried out strikes on an Afghan military facility in Kandahar after Taliban drones targeted civilian areas and military installations across the country.

The strikes on Saturday came after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the overnight drone attacks, warning Kabul it had “crossed a red line by attempting to target our civilians”.

Pakistan’s military said the drones, described as locally produced and rudimentary, were intercepted before reaching their targets, though falling debris wounded two children in Quetta and civilians in Kohat and Rawalpindi.

A security source told the AFP news agency that airspace around the capital, Islamabad, had been temporarily closed when the drones were detected.

Islamabad said the Kandahar facility had been used both to launch the drone attacks and as a base for cross-border rebel activity.

The exchange marks the sharpest single escalation yet in a conflict that has been building since late February, when Pakistan launched military operations against what it said were Pakistan Taliban fighters sheltering on Afghan soil.

Islamabad also accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters from the ISIL (ISIS) group’s Khorasan province affiliate.

The Taliban government has denied both charges.

The drone attacks followed Pakistani strikes on Kabul and eastern border provinces in Afghanistan overnight on Thursday into Friday. The Pakistani attacks killed four people in the capital, women and children among them, and two more in the east.

In the Pul-e-Charkhi neighbourhood of Kabul, one resident described being buried under rubble after his home was hit, saying he lay there believing it was his “last breath” before neighbours pulled him free.

A local representative told AFP that those killed were “ordinary people, poor people” with no involvement in the conflict.

Pakistani aircraft also struck a fuel depot belonging to the private airline Kam Air near Kandahar airport, which an airport official said supplied aid organisations, including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The official added that there were “no military installations” at the site.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces had captured a Pakistani border post and killed 14 soldiers.

Islamabad dismissed the assertion as baseless, with the prime minister’s spokesman accusing the Taliban of “weaving fantasies” rather than dismantling rebel networks on Afghan territory.

The UN mission in Afghanistan says at least 75 civilians have been killed and 193 injured since hostilities intensified on February 26, a toll that includes 24 children.

According to the UN refugee agency, about 115,000 people have been forced from their homes.

The crisis is unfolding as the wider region remains engulfed by the US-Israeli war with Iran, which began just two days after the Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes escalated.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi has urged both sides to pursue dialogue, warning that further force would only deepen the crisis, though his appeal came as Pakistani jets were already in the air over Kandahar.