building

In an era of escalating climate disasters, the ability to translate data into life-saving action has never been more critical. For the Asia-Pacific region—the world’s most disaster-prone, this is not an abstract challenge but a daily reality. At the forefront of this battle is the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), which is leveraging artificial intelligence to close the gap between risk knowledge and on-the-ground resilience. In this exclusive Q&A, Kareff May Rafisura, Economic Affairs Officer at the ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of ESCAP, provides a clear-eyed look at their innovative tool, SatGPT, and how it’s changing the game for communities from the remote village to the ministerial office.

1. It’s one thing to see a flood risk map, and another to break ground on a new levee. Could you walk us through how a local official might use SatGPT to confidently decide where to actually build?

Kareff May Rafisura, Economic Affairs Officer at the ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of ESCAP: First, it’s worth noting that there’s growing rethinking within the science and policy communities on the long-term benefits and trade-offs of constructing artificial levees.

Going back to your question, understanding an area’s flood history is key to making smart infrastructure decisions. You wouldn’t build a levee on natural floodplains, for example. Without risk knowledge, levees might not protect communities effectively and could even cause problems downstream or in ecologically sensitive areas. SatGPT offers a rapid mapping service that helps local officials make risk-informed decisions. It significantly reduces the time and cost traditionally required to assess flood characteristics, such as frequency, spatial extent, and impacts, and converts that data into actionable information. This information is critical for decisionmakers who must weigh it alongside economic, social, and environmental considerations when determining whether, and where, to build a levee.

2. We often hear about getting tech “to the last mile.” Picture a rural community leader with a simple smartphone. How does SatGPT’s insight practically reach and help them make a life-saving decision?

Kareff: SatGPT’s strength lies in enhancing historical risk knowledge. It’s not designed to predict the next disaster, but rather to help communities prepare more effectively for it. For instance, when a rural leader needs to decide whether to evacuate ahead of a flood, she will still rely on early warnings from national meteorological services. What SatGPT can do is support smarter ex-ante planning—so that when early warning information arrives, the community is ready to respond quickly. This includes decisions on where to build shelters, how to lay out evacuation routes, and where to preposition relief supplies. These are all critical elements that must be in place to help avert disasters, as consistently demonstrated in the cyclone response histories of India and Bangladesh.

3. Floods are an urgent threat, but what about slower crises like droughts? Is the vision for SatGPT to eventually help with these less visible, but equally devastating, disasters?

Kareff: ESCAP coordinates the long-standing Regional Drought Mechanism, which has been supporting drought-prone countries in gaining access to satellite data, products, tools, and technical expertise—everything they need to conduct drought monitoring and impact assessments more effectively. Our support goes beyond making data available—we work with countries and partners to strengthen institutions and capacities, converting these data into actionable analytics and insights. We are currently working with three Central Asian countries in establishing their own Earth observation-based agricultural drought monitoring systems.

4. AI is powerful, but it can sometimes reflect our own blind spots. How are you ensuring SatGPT doesn’t accidentally worsen inequality by overlooking the most vulnerable communities in its models?

Kareff: You raised a valid concern. That’s why in our capacity development work, our participants combine SatGPT’s flood mapping with socio-economic data to pinpoint who’s most at risk and where. They work on use cases that unpack the exposure of essential services like hospitals and water treatment facilities. When these critical infrastructures fail, it’s the poorest who pay the highest price. That’s why it’s vital to understand the hazards that threaten them.

5. Governments have tight budgets. If you were making the pitch to a Finance Minister, what’s the most compelling argument for investing in SatGPT now versus spending on recovery later?

Kareff: Investing in reducing disaster risk – which involves measures taken before disasters occur to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience (e.g., early warning systems, resilient infrastructure, land-use planning) – is far more cost-effective than recovery. Every dollar invested in disaster risk reduction can save multiple dollars in future losses. While the benefits are context-specific, a recent multi-country study found that for every $1 invested, the return can be as high as $10.50.

6. The region is innovating fast, with countries like Indonesia and Thailand building their own systems. How does SatGPT aim to be a good teammate and connect with these national efforts, rather than just adding another tool to the pile?

Kareff: That’s a good point. And beyond technological innovation, we’re also seeing progress in policy and institutional innovations being put in place. Our intention is not to replace national systems, but to show what’s possible when you make risk knowledge accessible and actionable. We work closely with our national counterparts with a focus on integrating SatGPT insights into existing workflows and systems-not reinventing them.

7. Training young professionals is key. Beyond the technical skills, what’s the most important lesson you hope they take away about using this technology responsibly?

Kareff: I’m glad you recognize that today’s most pressing need goes beyond technical expertise. That’s precisely why our technical capacity-building activities are held alongside youth forums to provide a platform for young people to engage in meaningful conversations around values and motivations. As stakeholders, we all share the responsibility of upholding safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems to support sustainable development.

8. Looking ahead a year, what would a “win” for SatGPT look like on the ground? Is it a specific number of communities better protected, or a faster warning time?

Kareff: Forecasting and enhancing the forecast lead times remains the responsibility of mandated early warning agencies. SatGPT is well-positioned to support efforts to protect more communities. By enhancing the historical understanding of floods, it can help improve the accuracy of early warning information, help communities proactively plan their response, and reduce disaster risk ex-ante. In that sense, I would say that effective SatGPT roll-out would amount to both gains in space and time – more communities being warned with improved lead times for mitigative response with more reliable historical data for granular risk characterization.

9. The document mentions turning the Jakarta Declaration into action. From your vantage point, what’s the biggest spark of progress you’ve seen so far?

Kareff: One of the most promising sparks of progress has been the strengthened regional cooperation aimed at enhancing the capacity of countries—especially the countries in special situations—to overcome barriers to accessing the benefits of innovative geospatial applications. With the support of ESCAP members, we are implementing field projects, providing capacity-building and technical assistance, facilitating expert exchange, and knowledge sharing across more than a dozen countries. These efforts are helping to develop space-based solutions from the ground up to tackle sustainable development challenges such as urban poverty, air pollution, droughts, floods, and crop biodiversity loss.

10. Finally, behind all the data and code, you mention this is about protecting lives. Has working on SatGPT given you a new perspective on what “resilience” truly means for a family facing a flood?

Kareff: Having lived and worked for the United Nations in some of the world’s most flood-prone countries, I’ve witnessed first-hand how the lack of historical data can lead to underinvestment in risk reduction. Tools like SatGPT and other digital innovations are not silver bullets, but they help close this gap by converting geospatial data into actionable insights – quickly and more accessibly – to guide communities to prepare and protect lives and livelihoods.

The conversation with Kareff May Rafisura underscores a pivotal shift in disaster risk management: from reactive recovery to intelligent, data-driven preparedness. SatGPT represents more than a technological achievement; it is a practical instrument of empowerment, ensuring that from the finance minister to the rural community leader, the best available knowledge informs the decisions that save lives and safeguard futures. In the fragile balance between human vulnerability and environmental force, such tools are not just helpful, they are essential. The future of resilience in the Asia-Pacific is being written today, not in the aftermath of disaster, but in the proactive, thoughtful application of innovation like SatGPT.

WASHINGTON — Stewart McLaurin knew it was coming.

An entire wing of the White House, a building he calls “the most special, important building on the planet,” was going to be replaced to make way for a ballroom that President Trump wants to add to the building.

But when McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Assn., saw the first images of backhoes tearing into the East Wing, it still came as a bit of a shock.

“When the reality of things happen, they strike us a little bit differently than the theory of things happening, so it was a bit of a jarring moment,” McLaurin told the Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

McLaurin, who has led the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for more than a decade, did not take a position on the changes. It’s not his job. “Ours is not to make happen, or to keep from happening — but to document what does happen, what happens in this great home that we call the White House,” he said.

But he said he sees a silver lining from the “jarring” images: They have piqued public interest in White House history.

“What has happened since then is so amazing in that in the past two weeks, more people have been talking about White House history, focused on White House history, learning what is an East Wing, what is the West Wing … what are these spaces in this building that we simply call the White House,” McLaurin said.

Trump demolishes the East Wing

The general public became aware of the demolition work on Oct. 20 after photos of construction equipment ripping into the building began to circulate online, prompting an outcry from Democrats, preservationists and others.

In a matter of days, the entire two-story East Wing — the traditional base of operations for first ladies and their staffs — was gone. The demolition included a covered walkway between the White House, the family movie theater and a garden dedicated to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Trump had talked about building a ballroom for years and pushed ahead with his vision when he returned to office in January. His proposal calls for a 90,000-square-foot structure, almost twice the size of the 55,000-square-foot White House itself and able to accommodate 1,000 people. The plan also includes building a more modern East Wing, officials said.

The president ordered the demolition despite not yet having sign-off for the ballroom construction from the National Capital Planning Commission, one of several entities with a role in approving additions to federal buildings and property. The White House has yet to submit the ballroom plans for the commission’s review because it is closed during the government shutdown.

Trump appointed loyalists to the planning commission in July. On Tuesday he also fired the six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a group of architectural experts that advises the federal government on historic preservation and public buildings. A new slate of members who are more aligned with Trump’s policies will be named, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions. The Washington Post was first to report the firings.

East Wing art and furnishings preserved

It was the job of the White House curator and their staff to carefully remove, catalog and store the art, the official portraits of former first ladies, and furnishings from the East Wing, McLaurin said.

The White House Historical Assn. does not have a decision-making role in the construction. But it has been working with the White House to prepare for the changes.

“We had known since late summer that the staff of the East Wing had moved out. I actually made my last visit on the last day of tours on August the 28th,” McLaurin said.

Working with the curator and chief usher, the association used 3D scanning technology “so that every room, space, nook and cranny of the East Wing, whether it was molding or hinges or door knobs or whatever it was, was captured to the nth degree” to be digitally recreated as an exhibit or to teach the history of that space, McLaurin said.

A photographer also documented the building as it was being taken apart. It will be a while before any images are available, but McLaurin said items were found when flooring was pulled up and when wall coverings were pulled back that “no living person remembered were there. So those will be lessons in history.”

White House has grown over the years

Trump’s aides have responded to criticism of the demolition by arguing that other presidents have made changes to the White House too. Trump said the White House needs a bigger entertaining space.

McLaurin said the building continues to evolve from what it looked like when it was built in 1792.

“There is a need to modernize and to grow,” he said, noting that White House social secretaries for generations chafed at the space limitations for entertaining. “But how it’s done and how it’s accomplished and what results is really the vision of the president who undertakes that project.”

What the White House Historical Assn. does

Jacqueline Kennedy created the historical association in 1961 to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It receives no government funding and raises money mostly through private donations and sales of retail merchandise.

It is not the mission of the association to take a position on construction, McLaurin said. Its primary mandate is preserving the State Floor and some of the historic bedrooms upstairs in the private living quarters, and teaching the history of the White House, which is an accredited museum. The State Floor is made up of the Green, Blue and Red Rooms, the East Room and State Dining Room, the Cross Hall and Grand Foyer.

“Ours is not to support — or to not support,” McLaurin said. “Ours is to understand, to get the details.”

Since the demolition, McLaurin said he has seen attendance spike at a free educational center the association opened in September 2024 a block from the White House. “The People’s House: A White House Experience” is open seven days a week — including during the shutdown.

The educational center had its busiest days the weekend of Oct. 17-19, with about 1,500 daily visitors, up from a previous average of 900, he said.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

A residential building floor collapsed as rescue workers were searching through the rubble, following overnight Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia. Officials said six children were among 13 injured in the strikes.

Satellite imagery shows China has been building at least two facilities featuring hardened shelters with retractable roofs along its heavily disputed border with India. These look to be examples of a new pattern of air defense site, with the shelters allowing for surface-to-air missiles to be fired from transporter-erector-launchers situated within. The shelters, which offer added protection against various threats and create complexities for enemy forces, reflect larger trends when it comes to hardening of military infrastructure in China and elsewhere globally.

Geospatial intelligence firm AllSource Analysis was the first to call attention to the two sites in western China, which it assessed using satellite images from Planet Labs taken between August and September. Additional satellite imagery captured in September from Vantor (formerly Maxar Technologies), first obtained by India Today, offers further insights.

One of the sites is situated within Gar County, while the other is near the eastern end of Pangong Lake (also known as Pangong Tso). Both are located inside China’s Tibet Autonomous Region in relatively close proximity to the so-called Line of Actual Control (LAC), which forms the current de facto border with India. Pangong Lake and other areas along the LAC have seen repeated confrontations between Chinese and Indian forces over the years that have sometimes escalated into violent skirmishes. In 2022, TWZ noted an already significant expansion of Chinese military infrastructure on that country’s side of the LAC following the conclusion of a particular serious flare-up in the border dispute that had first erupted two years earlier.

Static surface-to-air missile sites are present at bases across China, especially in border areas and along its coasts, all of which share common circular design patterns. The typical mode of operation at those facilities involves TELs moving out from garages to open positions when ordered.

The facilities in Gar County and near Pangong Lake, which are enclosed inside heavy perimeter walls, have distinctly different configurations from what is typically seen at Chinese air defense sites. Each one has four hardened shelters with retractable roofs, all with the same trapezoidal design. From what can be seen in additional satellite imagery from Vantor, the shelters look to have a reinforced concrete garage-like central section with angled additions, which may just be earthen berms, on three sides.

The Gar County facility also has what appears to be two radars in elevated positions, as well as channels linking them to the shelters and what looks to be the main command center. Communications cables could be laid in those channels.

Similar channels are visible at the facility near Pangong Lake, but there are no apparent radar positions currently. There are signs that construction is still ongoing at both locations to differing degrees.

The facilities in Gar County and along the shore of Pangong Lake also have an array of other structures that look to provide for munitions storage, vehicle maintenance, living spaces for personnel, command and control, and more. Each one also has a pair of basketball courts, a common feature at People’s Liberation Army (PLA) bases, large and small, across China.

Beyond the shelters, many of the other buildings at both locations, including the main command centers, look to have been built to extremely similar, if not identical patterns. This, in turn, points to the sites, which have different overall layouts, having the same core purpose.

As mentioned, the combination of the shelters, radar positions, and other features seen at the Gar Country site, in particular, points to an air defense mission for both facilities. AllSource Analysis assessed that the sites would be sufficient to support an HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missile system. The HQ-9 is in widespread Chinese service today and is broadly analogous to later models of the Soviet-designed S-300P series. A typical complete HQ-9 system includes a number of 8×8 wheeled transporter-erector-launchers (TEL), each of which can be loaded with up to four interceptors at a time, and offboard search and fire control radars.

The HQ-9 TELs fire their missiles vertically, which aligns with shelters with retractable roofs. One of the Vantor satellite images of the Gar County site shows the roofs of two of the shelters retracted, revealing objects inside that are consistent with HQ-9 TELs in their deployed positions.

Other surface-to-air missile systems that launch their interceptors vertically could also potentially make use of the shelters. It is also possible that they could be used in combination with surface-to-surface missile systems, though this seems far less likely to be the intent with everything else that is visible at both sites.

First and foremost, the ability to fire anti-air interceptors from within hardened shelters offers additional protection for those assets, which could be particularly valuable for Chinese forces arrayed along the LAC with India. The facilities help extend the PLA’s anti-access and area denial bubbles deeper into Indian territory – India Today‘s report noted that there is an Indian air base on the opposite side of the LAC from where the site in Gar County is situated – but are also within range of Indian standoff strikes as a result. Their location also opens them up to the possibility of more direct and shorter-range attacks in the event of a major conflict, including ones involving armed drones or even ground raids. As mentioned, the facilities in Gar County and near Pangong Lake also have fortified perimeters.

The shelters also make it harder for enemy forces to readily determine what is inside, which could lead to opponents expanding valuable resources to destroy empty structures. They also simply provide a way to help shield assets and personnel from extremely low temperatures, harsh weather conditions, and other potentially problematic environmental factors commonly found in this part of the world.

It’s interesting to note here that this is not the first time that structures with retractable roofs that look intended, at least in part, to be used in combination with surface-to-air missile systems, and the HQ-9 specifically, have appeared at Chinese military bases.

In 2017, Reuters reported on the appearance of far less hardened structures with retractable roofs on China’s man-made island outposts in Subi, Mischief, and Fiery Cross reefs, all part of the hotly disputed Spratly Islands chain in the South China Sea. The suggestion, even then, was that those buildings were reflective of a broader trend in Chinese air defense sites.

The popular murder mystery series will undergo a huge format change for its highly anticipated sixth season

Only Murders in the Building is headed to London to film the sixth season of Hulu and Disney+’s hugely popular crime comedy.

The hit series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez has just wrapped up its fifth season with another jaw-dropping finale.

This time, the podcasting trio have been investigating the mysterious murder of the Arconia’s beloved doorman Lester (played by Teddy Coluca) they suspect is connected to the New York mob.

Meanwhile, a rival trio of powerful billionaires, portrayed by season guest stars Christoph Waltz, Logan Lerman and Renée Zellweger, quickly become their prime suspects when they arrive to sabotage their detective work.

With the fifth season coming to an end with another show-stopping finale this Tuesday (28th October), countless fans are already itching for the next instalment, which has now been officially confirmed.

Disney+ and Hulu have also confirmed that Only Murders is eyeing a change of scenery next time as the series is heading to London.

This is the first time the trio will venture out of the United States as part of their investigations, which rarely leave New York.

Season four saw them vacate the confines of the Arconia to head to Hollywood, California, though season six will be at least partially set on a whole new continent.

Spoilers won’t be revealed here, but fans may discover a hint towards Charles, Oliver and Mabel’s next case in the recently released finale.

This is the biggest shake-up to the series yet, as all five seasons of Only Murders so far have revolved around murders in their iconic apartment block.

Whatever awaits in season six, the series is expected to continue to prove a monster hit for Hulu as an army of fans have already devoured the latest episode.

Viewers have already been singing the episode’s praises on X, where one user posted: “What a finale!!! I can’t say everything cuz of spoilers but this is what Television is all about.”

“What a season finale, what a cliffhanger,” another shared. “I didn’t see that coming, can’t wait to see season 6.”

Someone else teased: “That last scene of the Only Murders in the Building finale?! I literally gasped when they revealed who’s the victim next season.”

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And a final fan exclaimed: “A perfect season finale! I love this show so damn much!

“Definitely the best show on @hulu without a doubt! I really appreciate the team’s commitment to releasing each season every year.”

Stay tuned to find out if more details about the show’s sixth season are revealed soon.

Only Murders in the Building is available to stream on Disney+.

CHICAGO — The music begins low and ominous, with the video showing searchlights skimming along a Chicago apartment building and heavily armed immigration agents storming inside. Guns are drawn. Unmarked cars fill the streets. Agents rappel from a Black Hawk helicopter.

But quickly the soundtrack grows more stirring and the video — edited into a series of dramatic shots and released by the Department of Homeland Security days after the Sept. 30 raid — shows agents leading away shirtless men, their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

Authorities said they were targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, though they also said only two of the 27 immigrants arrested were gang members. They gave few details on the arrests.

But the apartments of dozens of U.S. citizens were targeted, residents said, and at least a half-dozen Americans were held for hours.

The immense show of force signaled a sharp escalation in the White House’s immigration crackdown and amplified tensions in a city already on edge.

“To every criminal illegal alien: Darkness is no longer your ally,” Homeland Security said in a social media post accompanying the video, which racked up more than 6.4 million views. “We will find you.”

But Tony Wilson, a third-floor resident born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, sees only horror in what happened.

“It was like we were under attack,” Wilson said days after the raid, speaking through the hole where his door knob used to be. Agents had used a grinder to cut out the deadbolt, and he still couldn’t close the door properly, let alone lock it. So he had barricaded himself inside, blocking the door with furniture.

“I didn’t even hear them knock or nothing,” said Wilson, a 58-year-old U.S. citizen on disability.

Dreams and decay

The raid was executed in the heart of South Shore, an overwhelmingly Black neighborhood on Lake Michigan that has long been a tangle of middle-class dreams, urban decay and gentrification.

It’s a place where teams of drug dealers troll for customers outside ornate lakeside apartment buildings. It has some of the city’s best vegan restaurants but also takeout places where the catfish fillets are ordered through bullet-proof glass.

It has well-paid professors from the University of Chicago but is also where one-third of households scrape by on less than $25,000 a year.

The apartment building where the raid occurred has long been troubled. Five stories tall and built in the 1950s, residents said it was often strewn with garbage, the elevators rarely worked and crime was a constant worry. Things had grown more chaotic after dozens of Venezuelan migrants arrived in the past few years, residents said. While no residents said they felt threatened by the migrants, many described a rise in noise and hallway trash.

Owned by out-of-state investors, the building hasn’t passed an inspection in three years, with problems ranging from missing smoke detectors to the stench of urine to filthy stairways. Repeated calls to a lead investor in the limited liability company that owns the building, a Wisconsin resident named Trinity Flood, were not returned. Attempts to reach representatives through realtors and lawyers were also unsuccessful.

Crime fears spiked in June when a Venezuelan man was shot in the head “execution-style,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. Another Venezuelan was charged in the death.

Days after the raid, the doors to dozens of the building’s 130 apartments hung open. Nearly all those apartments had been ransacked. Windows were broken, doors smashed, and clothes and diapers littered the floors. In one apartment, a white tuxedo jacket hung in the closet next to a room knee-deep in broken furniture, piles of clothing and plastic bags. In another, water dripping from the ceiling puddled next to a refrigerator lying on its side. Some kitchens swarmed with insects.

Wilson said a trio of men in body armor had zip-tied his hands and forced him outside with dozens of other people, most Latino. After being held for two hours he was told he could leave.

“It was terrible, man,” he said. He’d barely left the apartment in days.

A city under siege?

Chicago, the White House says, is under siege.

Gang members and immigrants in the U.S. illegally swarm the city and crime is rampant, President Trump insists. National Guard soldiers are needed to protect government facilities from raging left-wing protesters.

“Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World,” he posted on Truth Social.

The reality is far less dramatic. Violence is rare at protests, though angry confrontations are increasingly common, particularly outside a federal immigration center in suburban Broadview. And while crime is a serious problem, the city’s murder rate has dropped by roughly half since the 1990s.

Those realities have not stopped the Trump administration.

What started in early September with some arrests in Latino neighborhoods, part of a crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” has surged across Chicago. There are increasing patrols by masked, armed agents; detentions of U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status; a fatal shooting; a protesting pastor shot in the head with a pepper ball outside the Broadview facility, his arms raised in supplication.

By early October, authorities said more than 1,000 immigrants had been arrested across the area.

The raids have shaken Chicago.

“We have a rogue, reckless group of heavily armed, masked individuals roaming throughout our city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said after the Sept. 30 raid. “The Trump administration is seeking to destabilize our city and promote chaos.”

To Trump’s critics, the crackdown is a calculated effort to stir anger in a city and state run by some of his most outspoken Democratic opponents. Out-of-control protests would reinforce Trump’s tough-on-crime image, they say, while embarrassing Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, seen as a possible Democratic presidential contender.

So the South Shore raid, ready-made for social media with its displays of military hardware and agents armed for combat, was seen as wildly out of proportion.

“This was a crazy-looking military response they put together for their reality show,” said LaVonte Stewart, who runs a South Shore sports program to steer young people away from violence. “It’s not like there are roving bands of Venezuelan teenagers out there.”

Officials insist it was no reality show.

The operation, led by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was based on months of intelligence gathering, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The building’s landlord told authorities that Venezuelans in about 30 units were squatters and had threatened other tenants, the official said, adding that the building’s size necessitated the show of force. Immigration agencies declined further comment.

Even before the “Midway Blitz,” Trump’s election had whipsawed through Chicago’s Latino communities.

Stewart said Venezuelan children began disappearing from his programs months ago, though it’s often unclear if they moved, returned to Venezuela or are just staying home.

“I had 35 kids in my program from Venezuela,” he said. “Now there’s none.”

A wave of migrant newcomers

The raid echoed through South Shore, pinballing through memories of the surge in violence during the 1990s drug wars as well as economic divides and the sometimes uncomfortable relations between Black residents and the wave of more than 50,000 immigrants, most Latino, who began arriving in 2022, often bused from southern border states.

Chicago spent more than $300 million on housing and other services for the immigrants, fueling widespread resentment in South Shore and other Black neighborhoods where the newcomers were settled.

“They felt like these new arrivals received better treatment than people who were already part of the community,” said Kenneth Phelps, pastor at the Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Woodlawn, a largely Black neighborhood.

It didn’t matter that many migrants were crowded into small apartments, and most simply wanted to work. The message to residents, he said, was that the newcomers mattered more than they did.

Phelps tried to fight that perception, creating programs to help new arrivals and inviting them to his church. But that stirred more anger, including in his own congregation.

“I even had people leave the church,” he said.

In South Shore it’s easy to hear the bitterness, even though the neighborhood’s remaining migrants are a nearly invisible presence.

“They took everyone’s jobs!” said Rita Lopez, who manages neighborhood apartment buildings and recently stopped by the scene of the raid.

“The government gave all the money to them — and not to the Chicagoans,” she said.

Changing demographics and generations of suspicion

Over more than a century, South Shore has drawn waves of Irish, Jewish and then Black arrivals for its lakeside location, affordable bungalows and early 20th-century apartment buildings.

Each wave viewed the next with suspicion, in many ways mirroring how Black South Shore residents saw the migrant influx.

Former first lady Michelle Obama’s parents moved to South Shore when it was still mostly white, and she watched it change. A neighborhood that was 96% white in 1950 was 96% Black by 1980.

“We were doing everything we were supposed to do — and better,” she said in 2019. “But when we moved in, white families moved out.”

But suspicion also came from South Shore’s Black middle-class, which watched nervously as many housing projects began closing in the 1990s, creating an influx of poorer residents.

“This has always been a complex community,” Stewart said of those years.

“You can live on a block here that’s super-clean, with really nice houses, then go one block away and there’s broken glass, trash everywhere and shootings,” he said. “It’s the weirdest thing and it’s been this way for 30 years.”

Sullivan writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Aisha I. Jefferson in Chicago, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

They had come to hear plans for the privately funded rebuilding of the Palisades Recreation Center that was badly damaged in the January fire that tore through Pacific Palisades.

Most of the hundreds crammed into the rec center’s old gym cheered about plans for new park space, pickleball courts and basketball hoops to be paid for by some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest and most prominent philanthropists.

But that Tuesday night — nine months to the day since the Palisades fire began — they were angry, too. With City Hall.

During public comments, Jeremy Padawer, whose home in the Palisades burned, said of the city-owned rec center: “We need this. We need churches, we need synagogues, we need grocery stores. We need hope.”

But he said he didn’t trust the municipal government to run the beloved rec center and reminded the crowd that the city, which is navigating the complex recovery from one of the costliest and most destructive fire in its history, is “a billion dollars in debt.”

Firefighters extinguish hot spots at the Community United Methodist Church of Pacific Palisades on Jan. 12.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“What are they going to do with this brand new facility when [philanthropists] turn the keys over to them?” he asked. “Do we trust them?”

“No!” the crowd shouted.

He added: “Where is Mayor Bass?” The audience cheered. Someone hollered back: “Lost cause!”

Bass and other city leaders dispute they have neglected the fire-ravaged Palisades, but the scene encapsulated the anger and disappointment with City Hall that has been building in one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest neighborhoods. There, scores of yard signs depict the mayor wearing clown makeup à la the Joker. On one cleared lot, an enormous sign, roughly 7 feet tall, stands where a home once did, declaring: “KAREN BASS RESIGN NOW.”

Residents have blamed city leaders for a confusing rebuilding process that they say is being carried out by so many government agencies and consultants that it’s difficult to discern who is in charge. They also say that the city is moving too slowly — a charge that Bass and her team vehemently reject.

Kenny Cooper, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, speaks during a news conference announcing the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht in connection with the Palisades fire on Wednesday.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

On Wednesday, a day after the meeting at the rec center, federal prosecutors announced that the deadly Palisades fire was a flare-up of a small arson fire that had smoldered for six days, even after city firefighters thought they had it contained. Authorities said they had arrested Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver who is suspected of setting the initial fire on New Year’s Day.

Hours after the arrest was announced, the Los Angeles Fire Department — which failed to pre-deploy engines despite extreme wind warnings — released its long-awaited after-action report that said firefighters were hampered by an ineffective process for recalling them back to work, as well as poor communication, inexperienced leadership, and a lack of resources.

Many Palisadians had already suspected the fire was a rekindling of the smaller blaze, said Maryam Zar, who runs the citizen-led Palisades Recovery Coalition. But the onslaught of news landed “like a ton of bricks” in the frustrated community.

Zar got home late after attending the meeting at the rec center Tuesday night. Then, on Wednesday morning, her phone buzzed with text message chains from Palisadians telling one another to brace for a traumatic day — not necessarily because they would learn how the fire started, “but because we all knew that it was so unnecessary,” she said.

While people were happy there was “finally some accountability” with the arrest, she said, conversations in the Palisades quickly turned to: “Had the city been prepared, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Zar, who has spent more than a decade serving on and founding volunteer organizations and task forces in Pacific Palisades, said she was well accustomed to byzantine government processes.

“But for the first time, I’m worried because the wheels just aren’t turning,” she said.

A large sign on a fire-scorched lot at Alma Real Drive and El Cerco Place in Pacific Palisades calls on Mayor Karen Bass to resign.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

One project that has, for some, become surprisingly emblematic of working with the city is the promised-but-delayed installation of a small temporary space for the Palisades Branch Library, which stood next to the rec center campus before it was destroyed.

Cameron Pfizenmaier, president of the volunteer group Friends of the Palisades Library, said Los Angeles Public Library officials told her in July that the city would be placing a 60-by-60-foot prefabricated building — essentially a large trailer — on a grassy space at the entrance to the rec center.

It would include lockers for patrons to pick up books ordered online, computers, printers and scanners, and public meeting space. The building, she said she was told, would be up and running by August.

Then, she said, the building’s installation was delayed to October. And the location was changed, with the temporary space — which probably will stand for several years while the library is being rebuilt — now set to be placed atop two tennis courts at the rec center.

In an email to The Times this week, Bass’ office said that the building’s installation is expected to begin in November and that it should open by the end of January.

“The community is losing faith that the city is actually able to do anything,” said Pfizenmaier, who lost her home. “It’s such a missed opportunity for good news and hope.

“It’s not that hard to drop a bungalow and hook it into power. … The only thing that’s making it hard is the bureaucracy that’s preventing it.”

People play tennis at the Palisades Recreation Center on Oct. 5.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

Yet Palisadeans themselves seem divided on the library, with some decrying the proposed use of the rec center’s grassy expanse, a rare green oasis in the charred neighborhood. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home, posted a photo of the space on Instagram, complaining that “Karen Bass and her city goons want to put a temporary library on top of it” and that he figured “the library will be designed in the shape of an empty water reservoir.”

Others have blasted the decision to place the structure atop the popular tennis courts.

In a statement to The Times, Bass’ office said the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks and the Los Angeles Public Library are gathering community feedback about the modular building, which the two agencies will share. They also are still determining how to hook up plumbing, sewage and electricity on site and are ordering books, computers, supplies and furniture, the mayor’s office said.

“This effort needed to be coordinated with and adjusted to the plans to redesign and rebuild the Palisades Rec Center to ensure the temporary site would not impede future construction,” Bass’ office said.

From the days just after the fire through July, the library lot on Alma Real Drive served as a staging area for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s emergency response, including distributing water and providing electric vehicle charging stations for Palisades residents, Bass’ office said.

Bass has issued a swath of executive orders to aid recovery, including providing tax relief for fire-affected businesses and streamlining permitting. And she has touted the speed with which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency, cleared debris from the library lot, citing her own “call to prioritize public spaces in the debris removal operation.”

The lot was cleared in April in six days — 24 days ahead of schedule.

Bass’ office said the L.A. Public Library is working to select an architect from a list of preapproved contractors through the Bureau of Engineering “to expedite the rebuilding of the permanent library.”

Joyce Cooper, director of branch library services for the library, said in an interview that the Palisades Branch Library held more than 34,000 items, including books, audiobooks, DVDs and CDs.

“Pretty much our entire collection — everything was lost,” Cooper said. “It was a community hub. When the fire destroyed the branch, it took that away from everybody.”

The city established limited library services in the nascent Pacific Palisades in the 1920s, and the community got its first branch library in 1952.

The most recent facility opened in 2003 and was damaged by a 2020 electrical fire that destroyed much of the children’s collection, said Laura Schneider, a board member and former longtime president for Friends of the Library.

After a long closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, volunteers worked hard to draw people back to the library, Schneider said. Children and teenagers competed in writing contests, volunteers hosted big weekend book sales, and older people sought help with computers.

Schneider — whose still-uninhabitable home was damaged by the January fire — was first drawn to the library as a young mom. She moved to the Palisades when her son, now 23, was 2 years old and was enchanted by the big, circular window with a window seat in the fairy-tale-themed children’s section.

“I really believe it’s the heart of the Palisades,” Schneider said. “It’s a place that welcomes everyone. … There’s no community center. There’s no senior center in the Palisades. The library is as close to that as it comes.”

At the start of Tuesday night’s meeting at the Palisades Recreation Center, Jimmy Kim, general manager of the city’s cash-strapped parks department, made clear that questions about the location of the temporary library were “outside the scope” of the gathering and would not be answered. Many in the audience groaned.

The recreation center will be rebuilt through a public-private partnership that Bass and her onetime political adversary, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, promoted in a joint appearance in the spring. There, Bass told reporters that the city’s job was to ensure the project was able to move quickly through the permitting process and that “the role of government is to get out of the way.”

Private donations from Caruso’s philanthropic group Steadfast LA will help pay for the roughly $30-million rebuilding of the rec center. Another major donor is LA Strong Sports, a group started by Lakers coach JJ Redick, a Palisades resident who coached a youth basketball team at the center and appeared at the Tuesday meeting.

Speaker after speaker praised the private donors for making speed a priority.

“I’m so grateful that this is going through private [development] and not city because otherwise it would not be up for another 10 years,” said one woman, who said she had lived in the Palisades for two decades and had an 8-year-old boy who used the park often.

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She added: “I just want to thank Rick Caruso for being the savior of our community.”

Caruso — who defeated Bass in the Palisades by wide a margin in the 2022 mayoral election — smiled and waved at her from the front of the room as the audience clapped.

A 15-year-old girl came to the microphone and said the rec center was where she learned to ride a bike and where her brothers played Saturday basketball games. Please, she pleaded with the donors in the room, hurry.

“Please don’t let us age out,” she said. “Please don’t let this take so long that kids never get to experience what I have. We’re ready to come back stronger. We just need help getting there.”

Caruso told the audience he expected construction to begin in January and for the center to reopen in January 2027. He said his group will not operate the space — the city will — but that he thought it would be in better hands if a community foundation took it over from the government.

At the end of the meeting, a City Hall staff member told the crowd that Bass had sent several staffers that night. The mayor, she promised, was listening.

Footage shows rescue dogs and workers combing through debris after a building collapse in central Madrid killed four people, including three construction workers and an architect. The six-story building was being converted into a hotel. Several people were also injured.

It’s getting close.

Chaminade Prep in West Hills expects to begin demolition soon of the 4.8 acres of buildings it acquired in 2018 that will become its.sports fields. Next year construction will begin on a baseball field, pool and training fields that could be completed by 2027, according to athletic director Todd Borowski. Both projects need final approval from the city before work can begin.

Buildings from the old shopping center have been abandoned and the property is fenced.

Chaminade has phases planned for construction that will include a pedestrian bridge to link its main campus across the street with the new fields. A new softball field will replace the current baseball field. There will be new campus classrooms and a new school entrance.

Here’s a video from the school explaining all the building that will soon begin.

Chaminade is the second Mission League school adding new sports fields. Harvard-Westlake is scheduled to open its River Park complex next year that includes a gym, fields, pool and parking.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

Indonesian authorities have deployed heavy machinery to shift massive sections of a collapsed school, with approximately 59 teenage students still unaccounted for, three days after the devastating structural failure.

After consulting with families of the missing students and detecting no further signs of life beneath the rubble, officials made the decision to proceed.

“In any case, we will be very, very careful when using the heavy machines,” stated Coordinating Minister Pratikno, emphasising that despite the bleak outlook, operations would continue with extreme caution.

The catastrophe occurred on Monday when the prayer hall at the century-old al-Khoziny Islamic Boarding School in Sidoarjo, eastern Java, collapsed, burying hundreds of people. According to officials, two unauthorised additional floors were under construction above the two-storey building, and the foundation evidently failed during concrete pouring.

Currently, five people are confirmed dead, more than 100 are injured, and more than two dozen hospitalised with serious injuries, including head trauma and fractures. The victims were primarily male students aged between 12 and 19 from grades seven to 12. Female students, who were praying in a different section of the building, escaped.

As the critical 72-hour window – when survival chances significantly diminish – passed, nearly 220 workers continued their efforts at the site with ambulances on standby. The arrival of numerous body bags, however, indicated the increasingly grim situation.

Suharyanto, head of Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency, acknowledged, “We are no longer considering the possibility of survivors remaining, but we will still proceed with caution,” while noting uncertainty about the exact number of missing individuals. “We really hope that these 59 people are not there under the rubble.”

Hundreds of family members have maintained a constant vigil at the school since Monday, sleeping on government-provided mattresses in corridors while waiting for updates.

Among them is Hafiah, whose 15-year-old ninth-grade son Muhammad Abdurrohman Nafis is missing. “I can’t give up, I have to believe that my son is still alive, he is a hyperactive boy … he is very strong,” she said, remembering how eagerly he had eaten his favourite satay rice during her visit just one day before the collapse. With his junior high graduation approaching, Nafis had planned to study mechanical engineering in high school.

“I can’t give up as the rescue team is currently trying to help our children out,” Hafiah added, expressing her profound helplessness.

Maybe this was a pressure-creating-diamonds situation.

Somehow in the 1930s, amid the immense stresses of economic collapse, natural disaster, Olympic anxiety and the looming shadow of World War II, Los Angeles built some of its best-loved architectural gems. The jaw-dropping lobby of the Pantages Theatre (1930), the hilltop domes of Griffith Observatory (1935), the grand halls of Union Station (1939) — all were produced in that harrowing decade.

How rough were the ’30s in L.A.? The Depression, beginning with the stock market crash in October 1929, put the brakes on new construction and farm production, pushing California unemployment to an estimated 28% in 1932. The City Council, meanwhile, was led by one of the most corrupt politicians in L.A. history, Mayor Frank Shaw.

The city did pull off the 1932 Summer Olympics, drawing a record 101,000 people to the Memorial Coliseum opening ceremony. But those Games drew only 1,332 athletes from 37 countries — half as many athletes as gathered for the 1928 Games in Amsterdam.

In 1933, the Long Beach quake killed more than 100 people and destroyed at least 70 schools. The 19-story Los Angeles General Medical Center was completed (and after decades mostly idle, is now being repurposed).

In 1934 and 1938, major floods along the Los Angeles, Santa Ana and San Gabriel rivers took scores of lives and prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to build Hansen Dam in the San Fernando Valley and encase 51 miles of the L.A. River in a concrete channel.

Begun in 1936 and completed in 1959, that channel might be among the city’s largest and least attractive man-made landmarks — in the words of historian Kevin Starr, “A tombstone of concrete.” But it does its job.

As the city weathered these changes, its signature industry shrunk, then bloomed, as movies (priced at about 25 cents) distracted the masses. The arrival of color deepened the spell, as did blockbusters like 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

The landmarks that went up during those years aren’t all great architectural innovations; many flow directly from the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne trends of the 1920s. But all carry hints about how Angelenos changed with the times.

As critic and author David Kipen has written: “If you don’t like the weather in San Francisco, they say, just wait five minutes. If you don’t like the architecture in Los Angeles, maybe give it ten.”

Here we take a year-by-year architectural stroll through the 1930s. You can enter most of these buildings, in some cases for free, in some cases by booking a tour, buying beer or seeing a show.

A MAN has been arrested after a town centre building collapsed when a car rammed into it while fleeing the cops.

Heywood Star takeaway in Rochdale came crashing down after a serious collision in the early hours yesterday.

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The terrifying collapse came after a police pursuit which was sparked when cops attended a house in Bury earlier that morning.

A man in his 30s fled the home with officers following in a high speed chase.

Greater Manchester Police said a man has since been arrested on suspicion of failing to stop, dangerous driving and threats to kill.

He was raced to hospital to receive urgent medical treatment after the pursuit came to an abrupt end.

The chase was finally ended when a vehicle ploughed into the takeaway, bringing part of the building down in a shower of rubble.

Pictures from the scene on Bridge Street show the front of the building completely caved in as a result of the impact of the car.

The interior of the building is entirely exposed with the front wall brought down by the force of the collision.

The road remained cordoned off yesterday afternoon as workers tried to clear the scene.

A silver car was spotted by witnesses who said it was crushed under a pile of bricks and rubble.

The public has been kept away from the building amid fears that it has been made unstable by the crash.

Heavy machinery, including diggers, was brought in to clear the area of the rubble.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said: “At around 3.50am this morning, we responded to reports of an ongoing disturbance at an address on Walmersley Road in Bury.

“Upon police arrival a vehicle made off resulting in a pursuit utilising specialist tactics.

“The suspect vehicle travelled towards Heywood where it collided with a building on Bridge Street in Heywood, Rochdale.

“The driver of the vehicle – a man in his 30s – was arrested on suspicion of failing to stop, dangerous driving and threats to kill, before being taken to hospital for an injury to his arm.

“Investigations are ongoing. Officers are now appealing for anyone who witnessed the incident to come forward and assist their investigation.”

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Shane Tamura, the gunman who killed four people and himself in a New York City office building in July, had CTE, a degenerative brain disease linked to head injuries sustained in football and other contact sports.

The New York medical examiner “found unambiguous diagnostic evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE, in the brain tissue of the decedent,” according to a statement. “The findings correspond with the classification of low-stage CTE, according to current consensus criteria.”

The 27-year-old, who took his own life, was a high school football player at Granada Hills Charter School in the San Fernando Valley and Golden Valley High in Santa Clarita.

Tamura drove this summer from Nevada — where he worked as a security guard at the Horseshoe Las Vegas hotel and casino — to New York, leaving behind a three-page suicide note stating that he believed he had CTE and that his motive was anger at the NFL for making profit a priority over players’ brain safety.

“Football gave me CTE,” Tamura reportedly wrote. “Study my brain please.”

Tamura entered the skyscraper on Park Avenue that houses NFL headquarters but ended up on the wrong floor. He killed police officer Didarul Islam, security guard Aland Etienne, Blackstone senior executive Wesley LePatner and real estate employee Julie Hyman. He also shot and wounded NFL employee Craig Clementi before killing himself with a shot to the chest.

CTE, caused by concussions and non-concussive impacts, tends to be diagnosed mostly in those who have played football for a decade or longer. However, four years of high school football could expose a player to CTE, said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports athletes and others affected by CTE and concussions.

“The odds of having CTE are best correlated to the number of seasons played,” Nowinski said. “The best window we have is we have studied 45 former high school players who died before 30, and 31% had CTE.”

Daniel Daneshvar, chief of brain injury rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, said high school football players warrant greater study and treatment.

“Can a high school player get it? Yes,” Daneshvar recently told The Times. “Of the 3.97 million football players in this country, those that are playing at the college and the professional level are less than 4%, so we’re talking about over 96% of people are playing at some youth or high school level.”

Nowinski stressed that being diagnosed with CTE didn’t necessarily cause Tamura to commit a crime.

“It’s very clear that most people who have developed CTE have not become murderers, and most people have not had extraordinary psychiatric symptoms that involve them to have involuntary psychiatric holds,” Nowinski said.

Tamura was remembered as quiet and respectful in high school. Granada Hills teammate Anthony Michael Leon told NBC News, “This is so shocking. I’m telling you, this was one of those kids who never exerted bad energy or a negative attitude.

“He was quiet, but when he did actually talk, people listened.”

Domino’s Pizza (DPZ -0.60%) may be best known for late-night delivery, but for investors it represents something bigger. One of the most durable growth stories in the restaurant industry. Over the past two decades, Domino’s has outpaced the S&P 500, delivering close to 3,000% in stock return to investors.

Now, with more than 21,000 stores worldwide, the question is what keeps Domino’s compounding from here. The answer lies in three powerful forces: International expansion, digital leadership, and menu innovation.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. International expansion, and particularly China

One of the biggest issues with Domino’s is the sheer size of its U.S. store count (7,031 as of March 23), which limits its future growth potential. While the bears are not wrong in saying that, they are missing the bigger picture, wherein the real growth engine is from overseas. For perspective, Domino’s now operates more international stores than domestic ones, and global markets (with more than 14,000 stores) are providing both scale and profitability.

The most significant growth opportunity here is China. Domino’s master franchisee there, DPC Dash, ended June 2025 with about 1,198 stores across 48 Chinese cities. Same-store sales have grown for more than 30 straight quarters, and management expects to add about 300 stores in 2025 and 350 more in 2026. It also has 30 million customers on its loyalty program there, up from 19 million a year ago.

Importantly, DPC’s growing scale is translating into profitability. In the first half of 2025,  Domino’s China generated $362.7 million in revenue and a fivefold increase in net profit year over year, with adjusted EBITDA margins climbing to 12.4%. Those numbers highlight a rare combination: Rapid revenue growth alongside improving margins.

While impressive, the growth in China is likely to be in the early days. With a population of 1.4 billion, the country can certainly accommodate many more thousands of stores. For investors, that’s a blueprint that could extend to other emerging markets as Domino’s replicates the model in emerging markets like India or Southeast Asia.

2. Ongoing investment in digital and technology

Domino’s has long differentiated itself through technology. It was one of the first pizza chains to roll out mobile ordering, and today, digital accounts for a large share of its sales base. In the U.S., more than 85% of sales now come through digital channels.

That’s more than just a convenience metric. Digital orders typically carry higher average tickets and lower error rates, and foster customer loyalty through push notifications and rewards. By steering customers to its own app, Domino’s also collects valuable data, enabling upselling and targeted marketing.

The company is also partnering with other tech companies. Its DoorDash deal, announced in May 2025, allows Domino’s stores to appear on DoorDash’s marketplace while still using Domino’s drivers for fulfillment. This hybrid model expands customer reach without compromising the delivery experience for customers.

Looking ahead, Domino’s ongoing investment in the latest technology and innovations could further enhance the customer experience while making its operation leaner and better. Both will add to the bottom line over the long run.

3. Menu and value innovation

People crave variety, even in a category as simple as pizza. Domino’s continually updates its menu with new toppings, sides, and limited-time offers that encourage repeat visits from loyal customers while attracting new demographics.

Internationally, Domino’s adapts to local tastes — paneer pizzas in India, durian pizzas in China — to ensure cultural relevance while still leveraging its global brand. That balance of localization and consistency is a significant strength as it expands into new markets.

Value remains just as crucial as novelty. Domino’s has consistently positioned itself as an affordable option in quick-service dining, offering carryout deals, bundles, and promotional pricing that appeal to price-sensitive consumers. This approach has helped Domino’s not only sustain demand through economic cycles, but also gain market share during more challenging times.

The combination of menu variety and value pricing has cemented Domino’s position as the largest pizza chain in the world, and it gives the company multiple levers to drive growth even when broader consumer spending slows.

What does it mean for investors?

Domino’s isn’t just a restaurant chain anymore — it’s a global platform powered by scale, technology, and relentless customer focus.

International expansion, particularly in China, offers a long runway for store growth. Its digital leadership strengthens customer loyalty and operational efficiency. And menu and value innovation keep the brand relevant and affordable across markets.

That’s why, even after two decades of outperformance, Domino’s story may just be getting started. Investors should keep the company on their radar.

South Korea reports Pyongyang building up enriched uranium supplies, insists ‘stopping’ its nuclear development ‘urgent’.

North Korea is believed to have accumulated large quantities of weapons-grade uranium, according to South Korea.

Seoul’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young on Thursday cited an assessment that Pyongyang possesses 2,000kg (about 4,400 pounds) of highly enriched uranium “at a purity of 90 percent or higher”.

If confirmed, the amount would also signal a sharp increase in North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear material.

Intelligence provided by civilian experts reveals that North Korea is operating four enrichment plants, he added.

“Even at this very hour, North Korea’s uranium centrifuges are operating at four sites,” Chung told reporters, only mentioning the known site of Yongbyon, which Pyongyang purportedly decommissioned after talks but later reactivated in 2021.

Foreign experts believe North Korea has built additional uranium-enrichment sites as leader Kim Jong Un has been pushing hard to expand his nuclear arsenal.

The North has long been known to hold a “significant” amount of highly enriched uranium, the key material used to produce nuclear warheads, according to South Korea’s defence ministry.

Enrichment must be pushed to more than 90 percent, the concentration termed weapons-grade, to ensure that the critical mass sets off the chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 42kg (92.6 pounds) of highly enriched uranium is needed for one nuclear weapon; 2,000kg would be enough for roughly 47 nuclear bombs.

Chung said “stopping North Korea’s nuclear development is an urgent matter”, but argued that sanctions will not be effective and that the only solution lies in a summit between Pyongyang and Washington.

International diplomacy on ending North Korea’s nuclear programme has stalled since 2019, when high-stakes summitry between Kim and United States President Donald Trump fell apart without any agreement.

Kim said recently that he was open to talks with the US as long as the demand that the North surrender its nuclear arms remains a condition.

North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and is under a raft of United Nations sanctions for its banned weapons programmes, has never publicly disclosed details of its uranium enrichment facilities.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June, has promised a more dovish approach towards Pyongyang compared with his hawkish predecessor, Yoon Suk-yeol, saying he will not seek regime change.

Chung said, by designating Pyongyang as the “main enemy” and insisting on denuclearisation first, the previous administration had effectively allowed North Korea’s nuclear capabilities “to expand without limit”.

USAIN BOLT has stunningly revealed he huffs and puffs when he climbs a flight of stairs.

The Jamaican sprinting legend, the fastest human in living history, won a litany of titles during his career – including eight Olympic gold medals and 11 world titles.

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Bolt called time on his illustrious career in 2017 and has been dealing with the devastating effects of a torn Achilles tendon for the last year.

And the injury has taken its toll on his once amazing cardiovascular endurance.

He told The Guardian: “I mostly do gym workouts 1757974939.

“I’m not a fan, but I think now that I’ve been out for a while, I have to actually start running.

“Because when I walk upstairs, I get out of breath.

“I think when I start working on it fully again, I will probably have to do some laps just to get my breathing right.”

Bolt, 39, still holds three world records, including his world-famous 9.58-second running of the 100m.

He also holds the records for the fastest-ever 200m and 4x100m, having run them in 19.19 and 36.84 seconds respectively.

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Despite the advancements in training, nutrition and running technology, nobody has come close to breaking them.

When asked why this generation of sprinters aren’t as quick as his, he replied: “We’re just more talented. That’s all I’m saying.

“Of course, it shows when it comes to the men. You can see the women are different.

“They’re running faster times and faster times. So it shows – it has to be the talent.”

Bolt stopped watching athletics after his retirement but travelled to Tokyo this month to watch Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Oblique Seville win gold.

The pace of Bolt’s once hectic life has changed in large part due to his three children, Olympia Lightening, five, and twin boys Leo and Saint, two.

But he wouldn’t trade dad life for anything, partly because it’s helped him find a passion for Lego.

When I walk upstairs, I get out of breath.”

Usain Bolt

He said of his post-athlete daily routine: “Well, normally, I wake up just in time to see the kids off to school.

“And then it depends on what I have to do. If I have nothing to do, I just chill out.

“I might work out sometimes if I’m in a good mood. I just watch some series and chill until the kids come home.

“I spend some time with them, hang out, until they start annoying me then I leave.

“And then afterwards, I just stay at home and watch movies or I’m into Lego now, so I do Lego.”

Israeli forces bombed a residential building causing fires to spread in an intense night of Israeli strikes on Gaza City. The army says its forces are “increasing the pace of attacks” and told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move south.

For many years, I have highlighted in detail the threat posed by lower-end drones, ranging from off-the-shelf and standard remote-controlled types to short-range First Person View (FPV) types to much longer-range, but comparatively inexpensive one-way attack munitions that blur the lines between cruise missiles and unmanned aerial systems. Combined, these weapons represent a vast and truly game-changing asymmetric threat that the Pentagon has long overlooked. Now the Department of Defense (DoD) is desperately trying to play catch-up at a time when the evolution of these systems is fast outpacing countermeasures to them. This massive failure in vision could be heavily paid for in blood if a major conflict were to erupt between the U.S. and a capable adversary.

At the same time, the Pentagon has also been bizarrely slow at widely adopting lower-end drones for its own offensive operations. This is glaring for short-range types, especially after all the lessons learned in Ukraine. Thankfully, we are finally seeing some much-needed change in this regard. But what’s arguably even more frustrating is the DoD’s lack of urgency when it comes to producing massive numbers of long-range one-way attack drones, even now, when the need for these weapons, which have transformed modern warfare, isn’t just clear, it’s absolutely critical for deterring and, if all else fails, winning a conflict.

For our regular readers, what you are going to read isn’t exactly new. It is something we have been harping on for many years. In recent times, the lack of movement on doing everything reasonably possible to produce as many relatively inexpensive long-range attack and decoy drones borders on downright negligence when it comes to ensuring America’s national security. That being said, I have hopes the Trump administration will reverse this wrong, and there are indications from the very top that it will, but the Pentagon cannot approach it like it has done with any other weapon system in the recent past. This urgent challenge requires a more aggressive and streamlined approach that looks at the procurement of these weapons differently. There simply isn’t the time left to obtain this critical combat mass using the DoD’s ‘business as usual’ procurement playbook.

We are talking about putting in place the means to sustain rapid production of tens of thousands of these weapons a year, not hundreds or a few thousand. If the U.S. fails to do this, it hands a massive advantage to our near-peer adversaries, China and Russia, which are in far more advantageous positions to supply these capabilities in very large numbers today.

To put it bluntly, this post is not just a prediction of things to come, it is a plea for urgent action.

Attack of the clones

The drones that are so desperately needed are not complex. They are not expensive. They are anything but exquisite. They are also not innovative in any way. In fact, they take a play right out of our adversary’s playbook. They are clones of a long line of clones — that’s a huge feature, not a bug. And as a result of these attributes, they are intrinsically repulsive to the Pentagon’s legacy vision for America’s dominance in future wars.

Those making the decisions for the DoD have been dreaming up how to fight wars of the past — ones dominated by qualitative advantage. The last decade and a half or so has seen a stunted force transformation that was designed in denial of what’s on the horizon, specifically when it comes to unmanned technologies.

The same exact flavor of apathy and lack of vision within the DoD that has been occurring toward long-range one-way attack munitions was present in the last decade with the much higher-end, opposite end of the future unmanned air war. You can read about this bizarre reality in our 2016 exposé on a capability — unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) — that remains an obvious hole in America’s aerial force mix as our adversaries and some allies alike pursue it with urgency.

Not surprisingly, these polar opposites in terms of deferred unmanned aircraft capabilities have one thing in common — a massive premium put on range. The decision not to aggressively procure high-end unmanned combat aircraft in the last decade was a luxury that no longer exists, but doing so with the lower end of the drone spectrum is arguably even a bigger mistake today.

A loose vision of what we so desperately need is already being mass-produced in Russia today. It is also Moscow’s primary standoff weapon with which it bombards Ukraine on a daily basis. This is the Shahed-136 — renamed Geran in Russia — long-range one-way attack munition.

This weapon was ‘designed’ by Iran, who loosely cloned it from Israel, which largely originated the development and operational use of this type of capability decades ago, a reality which you can read all about here. Today, Russia is producing thousands of ever-improving variants and derivatives of the Shahed-136 per month. That production is set to expand drastically in the near term. It is very possible that 2026 could see Russia build over 50,000 of these drones annually. The basic Shahed concept has also been copied by other countries in recent years, from China to North Korea, as well as some U.S. allies.

The Shahed-136 is an efficient delta planform, modified flying-wing-like design. It can carry plenty of fuel to get to its destination, roughly around 1,000 miles away, give or take a couple of hundred miles, as the range varies quite dramatically depending on the sub-variant. It measures around eight feet wide by 11 feet long. It delivers a roughly 50-to-100-pound warhead. It does this at plodding light aircraft speeds with the use of a small and simple internal combustion engine. The basic engine/airframe combination is intrinsically adaptable. While primarily a ‘kamikaze drone,’ it can be viewed simply as a platform. Development of improved configurations and ones capable of tackling emerging mission sets is done in a low-cost and high-risk, rapid iterative manner, not over years of development and prolonged procurement processes. The Russians have been steadily evolving their Shahed variants in exactly this way.

As noted earlier, the Shahed-136, and many other types with a similar mission, blur the line between cruise missiles and drones. This often frustrates those who obsess over definitions and designations. The fact is, you can look at these weapons as slow, low-cost cruise missiles or long-range drones that are designed, at least primarily, to fly a single, one-way suicidal mission. It is worth noting that some variants can be reused under various circumstances when used for non-strike missions.

While there are many drone configurations that could do this job, from traditional fuselage-and-wing combinations to more exotic ones, the delta planform design has proven itself as something of a sweet spot for similar drone performance capabilities dating back many decades. That being said, any airframe design that can be built as cheaply as possible and can achieve very basic range and payload objectives will work.

When it comes to this class of drone, speed and advanced guidance concepts do not define its utility. Range and cost do. Survivability comes in numbers, and due to their smaller size, use of composite materials, and small internal combustion engine, as well as their slow speed. These attributes, along with their low-altitude flight profile, mean they possess a reduced signature and general level of detectability that can be a challenge for traditionally configured ground-based radars. Despite their smaller signature, the fact that they are still somewhat vulnerable to interception is actually a positive, but we will get to that in a moment.

Above all else, the Shahed-136 and other long-range one-way attack drones exist to put a relevantly-sized warhead on a target far from their launch position at the lowest possible cost. It was previously estimated that the Russian Shahed-136 variant costs around $50,000 per copy, with some estimates being far lower. This cost has also likely declined significantly since Russia has mastered the design and drastically ramped up serial production. By comparison, traditional cruise missiles with similar range have costs in the millions of dollars per round, so the price differential is very dramatic. The Shaheds are also just far easier to build and can be produced in much less time than a typical cruise missile.

Go big or choose to lose

Before we continue, it’s absolutely crucial that if you take away anything from this piece, it’s that the U.S. military needs to acquire many long-range one-way attack munitions very fast. The basic framework for doing so that I lay out below is not the only way to realize that goal, although I believe it is, by far, the best way to do so. Regardless, the DoD must act now, and at dramatic scale, to stockpile as many of these weapons as possible in the near term.

The Shahed-136 was developed by Iran with, ironically considering its roots, Israel in mind as a primary target. Russia has tweaked their versions for range and payload optimization dictated by the conflict it is in with Ukraine — and for a potential future broader European fight by default. The U.S. military needs a drone to meet similar requirements, but it also needs another, less numerous type that is better suited for the extreme challenges of the Pacific. Critical to the latter design would be the objective of having the range to reach from the Second Island Chain to the Chinese mainland — this is roughly 2,000 miles one-way.

Having two variants, one that can reach around 1,000 miles and one that can reach over 2,000 miles, provides maximum tactical unpredictability and theater optimization. This addresses the extreme challenges of a Pacific contingency while also providing a more prevalent and efficient type for potential wars anywhere, including the Pacific.

Considering the shorter-range variant can be launched from any ship that can hold a shipping container, or that those containers can be placed on any landmass and even be activated remotely, the enemy has no way of targeting them at scale. These drones can also be launched by a small catapult or even from a moving truck bed. Air launch is also an interesting concept to ponder. Because they can be launched from pretty much anywhere, the drones can approach the enemy from every vector accessible to the launching force.

The smaller, cheaper, far more prevalent of the two ‘U.S. Shahed’ configurations can be just as useful for posing a threat to China virtually everywhere within the First Island Chain and out to 1,000 miles from Chinese shores as it would be in Europe. The larger, more expensive 2,000-plus-mile configuration is less flexible, but it’s so important because it provides an even greater targeting problem to the adversary, and extra ‘left of launch’ survivability via the sheer distance it can attack from. Its utility would be highly important in a scenario where accessing anywhere within 1,000 miles of the Chinese mainland becomes highly dangerous after the opening shots of a conflict, making resupply and distribution of additional shorter-ranged one-way attack munitions to areas within that bubble very problematic.

It’s also worth noting that the range of these drones can be consumed by flying circuitous routes to maximize survivability or to assist in coordinated attack operations with other standoff munitions and crewed platforms. Regardless, the existence of many thousands of these drones packed in non-assuming containers ready to fire, or in ships’ holds, or storehouses with a catapult nearby, and forward positioned across a vast battlespace, will demand that the enemy’s available defenses be distributed beyond their capacity to defend.

So, to sum this up, the U.S. military needs two classes of long-range one-way attack munitions and, for at least by far the most prevalent one, cloning the Shahed-136 will do. While an infinite number of configurations from different suppliers could fill those two requirements, going that route only lessens the ability to produce, stockpile, maintain, and employ the extreme quantities required. This is why two standardized configurations are absolutely key. Making such weapons is easy and by no means requires the expertise of huge defense contractors. Quite the opposite. Producing them and stockpiling them in bulk is where the biggest opportunities and challenges lie for the United States.

A new way

When I say stockpile, I don’t think it’s intuitive to visualize the scale of such an operation that is required. While the Pentagon is now slowly trying to pivot to a high-low mix of some classes of standoff munitions, with the lower end of that spectrum also being focused on the ability to rapidly produce them on demand, it is very debatable that this concept will meet expectations. This is especially true during a wartime scenario when the possibility of massive disruptions in global supply chains and even within the homeland will be part of a near-peer enemy’s battle strategy.

Yes, in a major all-out fight in the Pacific, the war will come home to the United States, too.

This could manifest in the form of some very concerning cyber weaponry China has amassed, as well as potential sabotage and kinetic operations targeted at degrading America’s ability to respond militarily and its citizens’ will to support such a response. Defense production will be among the top targets, as well as military assets. Transportation, energy, and financial infrastructure are also likely to be in the crosshairs.

Just look at what happened in Russia and Iran when it comes to near-field attacks inside their countries with adversaries using relatively basic drones and other short-ranged guided weaponry. These were precisely the kind of potential attacks we have been predicting for many years, right down to the very details. As it sits now, there are no robust domestic defenses in the United States against these kinds of enemy actions. This is another byproduct of the U.S. government’s massive lapse in not taking the drone threat seriously. This appears to be changing now, hopefully. Regardless, these are just one set of tactics, but China has clearly dreamed up many. While we can hope the words I am writing here prove to be hyperbolic and that things don’t actually occur this way should a U.S.-China fight come to pass, that is a massive ‘divorced from the facts’ gamble that nobody should be willing to take at this point.

China is also the industrial production powerhouse of the globe. It can produce things at truly massive scales to a degree the United States can’t really replicate. This is especially true when it comes to relatively long-range one-way attack drones. Famously, the first time Ukraine used such systems on Russia, they were drone airframes available on Alibaba converted into weapons. The possibility of how many of these systems China could pump out on short order presents a very dark picture when compared with America’s industrial capacity, as well as its available air defense capabilities to counter throngs of Chinese drones.

So yeah, we are far behind in the rapid production capacity realm, and especially when it comes to cheap composite airframes, basic flight control systems, and small and relatively crude internal combustion engines. So instead of living in denial, let’s work around the problem while growing production capacity in the United States. We can do this by building many of these airframes and their basic subsystem components now, in peacetime, so we have a deep, widely distributed, and resilient magazine to rapidly draw from in wartime. This, paired with the ability to scale up production during a time of crisis to counter the massive use rate of these weapons in the early days and weeks of the conflict, will be key. Initially obtaining a shallow stockpile with the hopes that production can be scaled to deal with a crisis is a very risky and foolish strategy for such a critical capability.

What the U.S. needs to do right now is an industrial push to use many contractors to mass produce the same two basic airframe designs, and the flight control systems and powerplants needed to make them fly. It is critical that the U.S. government owns the rights to the basic designs so that it isn’t ‘vendor locked’ to a single contractor. This way, the Pentagon can openly compete every component of the common designs in perpetuity, as well as assembly, payload integration, and sustainment of the stockpile, all without being held hostage by a single contractor and lopsided licensing agreements.

Once again, these drones are just simple platforms, crude ‘open architecture’ ones by default due to their inherent simplicity. As noted earlier, Russia is taking advantage of this reality with its rapid evolution of its Shahed derivatives. What we need as fast as possible is a large stockpile of the basic components that make up a completed airframe, then we can insert payload advancements as they make sense and as tactics, countermeasures, and general technology evolve. This will allow us to achieve a proper capabilities mix that can fluctuate elastically over time.

Two standardized designs also mean launch systems and backend mission planning components can also be standardized, mass produced, trained on, distributed, and sustained at the cheapest cost.

It’s critical to note that there are a small but growing number of firms that are now actively pitching U.S.-built Shahed-like clones to the U.S. military. Spektreworks and Griffon Aerospace, for example. So far, beyond some financial assistance in prototype development, the DoD has mainly only shown interest in procuring them as threat representative targets for testing and training purposes. It’s possible that there have been orders for offensive configured types, but not at anywhere the scale needed as outlined in this post. While Shahed-like target drones are certainly badly needed, it’s a bit ironic that they want them for this use alone, because they represent a new threat that is vexing and asymmetric, but they aren’t rushing to actually obtain the same class of weapon in huge quantities for offensive use. Regardless, these firms are exactly the ones that can play a major part in bringing these two designs into service, along with other manufacturers, big and small.

Another Group 3 threat system (target) broadly similar to the FLM 136 G3 ‘reverse-engineered Shahed’ threat system.

“The MQM-172 Arrowhead is designed as a high-speed, maneuverable one-way-attack and target drone platform—perfect for realistic threat emulation, training, and… https://t.co/qaEanNEC8T pic.twitter.com/DwxlGypV4E

— AirPower 2.0 (MIL_STD) (@AirPowerNEW1) August 12, 2025

The American version of the “Shahed-136” — the “Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Aerial System” (LUCAS) — its production facility, although currently still at the CGI animation stage. via the second 2025 Technology Readiness Experimentation event (T-REX 25-2). https://t.co/y64Xd1B9QA pic.twitter.com/x4qwVvfTBx

— 笑脸男人 (@lfx160219) July 22, 2025

With all this in mind, the plan of action needs to include finding a slew of firms with the capability and the will to produce the basic standardized airframe, propulsion, and flight controls, and build these U.S.-Shaheds as fast and as cheaply as possible. Again, this cannot be the domain of one primary manufacturer. It requires many companies. This is how the United States can achieve a highly resilient supply chain, immediate scale, and rampant competition to drive the price of each drone down over time and increase capability while piling on our combat mass. With every dollar saved via this strategy, we can buy more drones. Once we have stockpiled tens of thousands of these weapons, we can taper production strategically to keep production lines warm and work to export them to our allies.

Other companies can produce insertion payloads — anti-radiation and optical seekers, electronic warfare payloads, swarm networking communications, warheads, hardened GPS and PNT capabilities, and especially revolutionary AI infusion that will allow the use of these common airframes in innovative and outright new ways. This includes taking on missions well beyond striking static targets or acting as decoys. Cooperative swarming capabilities and mesh network deployments could all be ported into these airframes as needed.

In summary, the DoD needs to consolidate around two long-range kamikaze drone designs that it owns the intellectual property to and stockpile them very rapidly.

Striking on the cheap

The most obvious drivers for an Americanized Shahed-136, and a bigger brother to it, are the ability to hit a target at great distance cheaply and having enough weapons that can do so to sustain a fight against a major foe.

The DoD’s rush to build cheaper cruise missiles, alongside far more expensive and capable models, is one intended measure to address this reality. The fact is that in even a limited conflict with China, the target sets will be measured in the tens of thousands. A much wider conflict will see that number balloon. So the U.S. military needs weapons that can put many thousands of targets at risk without rapidly consuming all of its multi-million-dollar cruise and ballistic missiles or putting its aircraft at much higher risk by requiring them to make closer proximity or even direct attacks because stockpiles of long-range standoff weapons are depleted. The fact that these weapons require a small logistical footprint with small groups of minimally-trained personnel able to deploy them, and that they don’t depend on a host delivery system, such as an aircraft or ship, to get them to their launch points are massive added bonuses.

As we noted earlier, as it sits now, the DoD’s hope for less expensive and faster-to-produce cruise missile options is palpable, but still unproven. These weapons will still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — far cheaper than current options, but still not exactly dirt cheap, even when built at scale. We need a much lower-end option for the standoff munitions arsenal to complement these new lower-cost missiles, and that’s where the two classes of standardized one-way attack munitions come in. Additionally, they will possess far greater range than these lower-cost cruise missiles. They can also be stockpiled with far less sustainment demands and can be produced much faster and easier during an actual crisis. Just their forward presence by the thousands in a theater would act as a major deterrent against aggression.

It seems that the U.S. military has bet on any future war being quick and very violent, but that line of strategic thinking is extremely optimistic at this point, and it borders on outright hubris. Some would argue that it is unlikely in the China scenario. So we must prepare for much longer, sustained operations. Procuring the cheapest and easiest to build long-range strike weapons and stockpiling them en masse is a critical hedge against less convenient conflict timelines.

Effector depletion — a modern battle of attrition

The massive need for this critical capability goes beyond just putting tens of thousands of targets at risk over great distances on the cheap. That is the baseline threat the drones provide to the adversary. The byproduct of it is that, to the enemy, these weapons, whether they are decoys or armed with high-explosive warheads, need to be shot down before they reach a potential target. As a result, the attritable combat mass they provide gives them a secondary role — or it can even be considered a primary one, depending on the circumstances — to consume massive amounts of expensive and hard to quickly replace counter-air weapons. These include surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles primarily, as well as counter-drone loitering munitions.

Each combatant’s stockpile of kinetic counter-air effectors is relatively finite in the short term. These weapons are generally very costly, filled with complex proprietary components, and take a long time to procure. The faster you degrade the enemy’s stockpile of these effectors, the better off you are. This impacts everything, from the enemy’s resource allocation in peacetime to the downstream effects of enhancing the survivability of friendly platforms participating in an air war to making potential targets more vulnerable to attack. Being on the right side of the cost ‘exchange rate’ is critical here. The enemy using multi-million-dollar hard-to-replace interceptors to down $50,000 easy-to-replace drones is a win in many circumstances.

The cold, hard truth of America’s and its allies’ stockpiles of advanced interceptors has been all too clearly highlighted by the war in Ukraine. The U.S. and its NATO allies are scrambling to produce more interceptors, not just to replace those Ukraine has consumed, and for the U.S., those used up in actions in the Middle East, but also because it’s clear they do not have enough stockpiled for future fights. These contingencies will include facing thousands of enemy drones just like the Shahed-136, which will chew through effector reserves at an alarming rate.

China is not immune to this issue either, although they have a far larger industrial capacity and more government control over it to stockpile weapons and replenish them quickly, if needed. Still, during major conflict, especially a fast-developing and extremely violent one, the consumption rate will vastly outpace any production rate.

So, for examples of American Shaheds that never make it to their targets, if they are even intended to hit targets at all, their deaths at the hand of anything but a specific set of very short-range enemy point defense systems, could be considered a win — one that, collectively, could very well be critical to succeeding in a conflict over the long term.

Let’s talk about that short-range air defense caveat for a moment. The mainstream media has painted a picture that directed energy weapons — lasers and high-power microwave systems specifically — are the antidote to low-cost, but effective aerial attack drones. Today, these directed energy systems are still in their infancy, and delays in development and fielding have put many predictions of them dominating the battlefield in the near term in check. Regardless, these are very short-range systems with major operational limitations, even when they work as advertised. They are meant to protect a small area or a large facility at short distances measured in single miles, at best. The same can be said for gun and guided rocket counter-drone systems.

For high-value targets, these short-range protection measures can play a major defensive role, but they are far too costly to deploy over large areas. Even when used to defend high-value targets, they are a last line of defense, not a panacea for long-range one-way attack drones and other standoff munitions. In order to rely on them solely, the party being attacked has to be willing to let very dangerous weapons get within extremely close proximity of their most valued assets — ones that could be attacked en masse in an attempt to overwhelm these kinds of point defenses. So yes, they are a critical layer of defense under certain circumstances, and their role will grow as their capabilities do, but they are in no way an antidote for the long-range one-way attack drone threat.

Electronic warfare has its own limitations, including its reach, depending on the tactic being deployed. In order to act as an effector-consuming target, a one-way attack drone could rely on nothing that could be impacted by traditional electronic warfare. This includes just flying on a heading once entering into GPS-disrupted areas or working off of onboard inertial navigation system (INS) guidance alone, if it’s so equipped. Remember, the drone doesn’t even have to end up at a specific target for it to consume an effector. The enemy doesn’t know if it has a warhead or an advanced navigation system or not, nor what its target is. For basic missions, they do not need to be equipped to communicate, so jamming communications is not a viable vector of electronic attack, either.

Modern positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies will only improve upon this resilience to electronic warfare, even for those drones configured to strike with precision. Basic infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) is fast approaching over the horizon for lower-end drones, which will enable adaptive autonomous navigation without GPS and strikes even on mobile targets of opportunity. Again, you can read all about this in our previous feature linked here. Electronic warfare will not be able to impact these systems.

The key takeaway is that having tens of thousands of real threats that cost a fraction of the price of a standard cruise or ballistic missile, ready to gobble up precious air defense effectors, will be an absolutely critical factor in any major future conflict.

The enemy is also fully aware of this vulnerability and tactical opportunity, too, but that’s another post entirely.

Starting tomorrow is too late

Rapidly amassing a fleet of two types of relatively crude long-range, expendable drones seems remarkably simple for a country that builds stealth bombers and reusable rockets. The good news is that this isn’t technically wrong. What’s missing is the strategic vision and the urgency to actually do it. The fact that I am even having to write this about a weapon that has already changed modern warfare and is being used by the thousands every month in an active war in Europe certainly is as troubling as it is outright strange.

There is absolutely nothing sexy or innovative about any of this. This is borrowing and scaling, not innovating and slowly iterating. In simple terms, it is everything the Pentagon isn’t known for, regardless of its leadership’s constant messaging on needing to change the way they do procurement and ‘move fast.’ You can look at the scope of the Biden administration’s Replicator initiative to get an idea of just how out of touch the powers that be were when it comes to needing a huge infusion of combat mass ‘yesterday.’

Then again, we are at an inflection point. The picture isn’t pretty when it comes to the United States facing off with China, especially at the same time Russia’s war machine is being spun into high gear and poses an increasing threat to Europe, and other hot spots around the globe burn ever brighter. The good news is that we are seeing some promising signs within the DoD that this reality is sinking in that the need for change isn’t some nebulous goal for generals to pine about in future tenses.

Two types of relatively simple and adaptable long-range, expendable drones, built at scale by multiple companies, big and small. No, it’s not that much of an ask, is it?

So let’s do it.

Waiting for tomorrow is now too late.

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