cage

A century and a half ago, Richard Wagner was running out of cash as he was preparing to stage his four momentous nights of opera known as the “Ring Cycle” when he got a message from the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee in Philadelphia. It offered him a princely $5,000 (around $150,000 today) to write a triumphant 12-minute orchestral score to open the Centennial Exposition in Fairmont Park celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

On May 10, 1876, Theodore Thomas, perhaps America’s most famous conductor at the time (he would go on to head the New York Philharmonic and help found the Chicago Symphony), led the premiere of Wagner’s “Grosse Festmarsch” with a 150-member orchestra, its brass and percussion so impressive that the addition of cannon fire Wagner suggested was not needed. The crowd was said to number well over 100,000. President Ulysses S. Grant attended and invited Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil to join him along with members of Congress and Supreme Court justices for what remains a unique Declaration of Independence spectacle and debacle.

The “Centennial March,” as it came to be known, turned out to be dreck. Even Wagner, who carelessly tossed it off in a couple of weeks, said the best thing about the score was the fee, which he had demanded to be paid in gold. But what sounds like something AI might come up with if asked to write a pompous march in the style of Wagner began the American obsession with celebrating the Declaration of Independence, the words and deeds of our presidents, our very democracy with the assist of the symphony orchestra and opera.

One hundred years later, the country was awash with federal, state, city and philanthropic funding for a music-happy bicentennial of exceptional ambition. “With millions available in hand and more money to come,” Time Magazine wrote in 1975, “the Bicentennial is the biggest bonanza for the American composer since Hollywood discovered the musical.”

And so it was. The centerpiece was the National Endowment for the Arts Bicentennial Orchestra Commissioning Project. That funded America’s six top orchestras to each commission a major work that all six would play. In addition, the NEA offered further support to 34 American orchestras for dozens more new scores.

Everyone got into the act. The New York State Council of the Arts alone sponsored 68 commissions. Orchestras everywhere came up with striking projects. The Pittsburgh Symphony, for instance, premiered L.A. composer John LaMontaine’s opera/oratorio “Be Glad Then America” that featured the folk singer Odetta as the Muse of Liberty and enlisted ROTC students to reenact the Battle of Lexington overhead the orchestra.

The National Symphony commissioned symphonies from Roy Harris and William Schuman as well as Alan Hovhaness’ “Ode to Freedom,” a lovely short violin concerto written for Yehudi Menuhin. The list goes on.

We are obviously not seeing or hearing much like that in a semiquincentennial year when our government’s green gets the most attention for promoting algae. Even so, the NEA does indeed have an “America250” project (though it does little to publicize it, let alone fund it on the scale of 50 years ago) that is promoting more than 50 artworks. In music, they range from the Montgomery Symphony’s premiere in February of Nkeiru Okoye’s oratorio “A Time for Jubilee,” commemorating the 60^th anniversary of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches, to a New West Symphony premiere last weekend of Michael Christie’s “A Ronald Reagan Portrait” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

The major East Coast orchestras are paying some attention. The New York Philharmonic premiered David Lang’s luminous “the wealth of nations.” The National Symphony got the most attention in its attempt to commission Philip Glass’ “Lincoln” Symphony, which the composer pulled in opposition to an un-Lincoln-like presidential takeover of the Kennedy Center. Glass then gave the rights to the Boston Symphony for a July 5 first performance.

The National Symphony did pull off the premiere of Peter Boyer’s “American Mosaic,” and it was to the Altadena composer that Philadelphia, this time around, entrusted its Declaration of Independence commemoration. Boyer’s multimedia oratorio, “A Hundred Years On,” was given its premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra last month at the orchestra’s outdoor summer home, the Mann Center.

Upcoming will be a few repeat performances. Next month, “the wealth of nations” lands at the Aspen Festival, as does the “Lincoln” Symphony at the Cabrillo festival (with an L.A. Phil performance next season). “American Mosaic,” of which the Pacific Symphony was a co-commissioner, had its West Coast premiere in Costa Mesa last month and was scheduled to be performed at the Hollywood Bowl by the National Symphony in August, but that has now been replaced by Dvorak’s commonplace “New World Symphony.”

None of this comes close to comparing with the attempted civic zest of 1976. The NEA made it a matter of admirable policy that commissioned new works get multiple performances. Yet despite several of these being substantial works by some of our most noted and venturesome composers, few bicentennial commissions have survived. Even odder is that many of the composers did not necessarily feel compelled to explore nationalist themes. For them, American liberty implied freedom to simply write the kind of music they cared about.

The six works for the six orchestras were David del Tredici’s irresistibly over-the-top “Final Alice” (Chicago Symphony), Elliott Carter’s arrestingly impenetrable-on-first-hearing “Symphony for Three Orchestras” (New York Philharmonic), John Cage’s irrepressibly come-what-may “Renga” (Boston Symphony), Morton Subotnick’s brilliant electronic-landscaped “Before the Butterfly” (Los Angeles Philharmonic), Leslie Bassett’s introspective “Echoes From an Invisible World” and Jacob Druckman’s abstract-modernist “Chiaroscuro” (Cleveland Orchestra).

No orchestra has brought back its commission over the last half century, and only Chicago and New York recorded their commissions. No recording at all exists of L.A.’s, although Subotnick’s inventive uses of electronic music with a standard symphony orchestra went on to have considerable influence. None of these works, it appears, are likely to be heard anywhere in America this year, with one sort-of exception.

An explanation for that may be that, while 1976 was a fraught time for America — the country was recovering from the Vietnam War, we had a president and vice president who were not elected, there was runaway inflation, etc. — the music of the time represented optimism. Many works around the country explored new electronic music technology. It was the year Glass wrote “Einstein on the Beach” and Steve Reich created “Music for 18 Musicians” — the composers’ first masterpieces — demonstrating that Minimalism mattered.

That sense of liberation is clearly behind Del Tredici’s “Final Alice,” an hourlong romp around the ending of “Alice in Wonderland” for superhuman soprano and orchestra. It is so obsessively and addictively wild that its tamest moments sound like Richard Strauss on LSD. It does have a cult following although performances are few and far between.

Cage’s score is an abstract work based on the Japanese form of collective poetry known as renga, in which each poet attempts to write a line that is as distant as possible in meaning from the preceding line. Cage translates that to an independence of instrumental parts. While “Renga” can be performed alone Cage further suggests it be played along with an actual bicentennial work he wrote separately, “Apartment House 1776.” That is what Boston and the other orchestras did.

Indeed, “Apartment House” got the lion’s share of bicentennial attention and ridicule. When Zubin Mehta conducted it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the L.A. Philharmonic did not take it seriously and many walked out on it.

The work features four vocal soloists who represent Native American, Sephardic, African American and Protestant religious traditions, along with instrumental music based on early American hymn tunes. Everything is cut up and put together through chance operations into what Cage called a Musicircus. Under the circumstances “Renga” was hardly noticed, although two decades later, “Renga” came into its own when Michael Tilson Thomas famously conducted it with the San Francisco Symphony and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead.

Still the idea that “Apartment House” need not stand alone, that our traditions and those of long-ago Japan belong together, represented for Cage a future for America. We need not act like a superpower, he noted, but merely be one nation, no more and no less, among many.

We are obviously not that nation. A half-century later, “Apartment House” tends to exist mainly in its own right. An excellent London new music ensemble calls itself Apartment House. Detroit Opera recently staged it with a 2026 need to give the singers the opportunity to select their own music rather than reflect on our heritage. If American music in 1976 represented a collective, inquisitive, inventive American spirit of discovery, the semiquincentennial in the age of social media has become more about the individual identity.

As a sign of how we think about ourselves, the Los Angeles Philharmonic begins its Hollywood Bowl season five days after the 4^th with a program of American music conducted by Thomas Wilkins that opens with Valery Coleman’s “Fanfare for Uncommon Times,” which was written five years ago.

But for now, the work that stands out is Lang’s “the wealth of nations.” It balances harsh thoughts of how the promise of capitalism has failed society and how racism remains with music of stunning beauty and glory, to gently but forcefully show us, in our age of American dissatisfaction, the direction in which we might go to make us proud again. It needs many performances.

Brussels, Belgium – Bilal knows life behind bars.

Over the past 10 years, the 34-year-old has served a sentence in five prisons across Belgium. He most vividly recalls conditions in Mons, a 19th-century prison near the French border, where he said 9-square-metre (97-square-foot) cells housed three to four detainees. He remembers bouts of scabies, bed bugs and monkeypox spreading widely and guards who faced severe exhaustion.

“During my 10 years in prison, things only got worse,” Bilal told Al Jazeera on condition that we use only his first name. “They took away some of our time outside of our cells, various activities.”

Belgium, one of Europe’s richest countries, is grappling with a deepening prison overcrowding crisis.

In mid-May, its 39 prisons counted 13,733 inmates – significantly exceeding a capacity of 11,064, according to data provided by the directorate-general of prisons.

“The combination of ever-increasing overcrowding and staff shortages makes the situation very, very, very difficult,” warned Pieter Houbey, vice-chairman of the Central Prison Monitoring Council (CCSP), an independent watchdog.

“It’s become almost impossible to maintain a detention system … aimed at reintegrating people,” he said.

In mid-May, 754 detainees were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, up from 672 in December.

Across Europe, prison populations have increased dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic, with overcrowding affecting one-third of prison administrations.

Occupancy rates are highest in Cyprus, followed by Slovenia, France, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Austria and Belgium.

As a result, governments find themselves under pressure, with experts and workers criticising common responses – from building more detention facilities to transferring prisoners abroad – as ineffective.

‘Mice in a cage’

“To ensure decent conditions, we must first respect their rights – that is, stop treating them like mice in a cage,” said Yasin Sarikaya, vice-president of Brussels’ prisons.

Prisoners, especially those on remand, are often left in their cells for 22 to 23 hours a day, exacerbating the lack of privacy, as well as potentially pre-existing health and substance abuse issues. Receiving medical support can take months.

Loic*, who is serving his third of seven years at Saint-Gilles Prison in Brussels – meant to shut down by 2028 – said that work or other activities are hardly offered at the facility. Most detainees do not have a residency permit, he said.

“It’ll be tough to get back into the workforce,” the 23-year-old told Al Jazeera, looking at the floor while he spoke.

Bilal, convicted of two bank robberies and attempted murder, said he experienced suicidal ideation during imprisonment.

In recent years, videos circulating online have shown drones smuggling goods into prisons. In 2024, a video went viral showing a prisoner being tortured by five fellow inmates in his cell while the guards, on a 48-hour strike, failed to notice for days.

Guard burnout

Those conditions reinforce existing staff shortages.

At Haren, the country’s largest jail complex, “some guards are injured and can’t come to work”, said Sarikaya, who works at the complex.

According to the directorate-general of prisons, critical incidents in prisons doubled within a year.

With general crime rates having fluctuated in past years, experts connect the situation to Belgium’s carceral policy and its attempts to crack down on drug-related crime. While the country has struggled with overpopulation for decades, its most recent increase is mainly linked to a decision in 2023 to enforce all sentences of up to three years, previously served primarily under electronic monitoring.

Belgium also detains people for ever longer periods. Currently, the average detention lasts 9.9 months – a 39.4 percent increase over five years. Belgium’s pretrial detention rate of 32 percent is well above the European average (24.7 percent in 2024).

Emergency measures

Last July, Belgium’s parliament passed an emergency bill. The law, drafted by Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden, encourages the use of alternative punishments for sentences under three years and allows directors to release inmates, sentenced to a maximum of 10 years, six months before the end of their sentences.

In the longer term, the government seeks to install modular units and to renovate existing prisons pending the construction of new facilities.

That, however, is unlikely to reduce overcrowding, warned An-Sofie Vanhouche, a professor in the criminology department of Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

“Research shows that the more [prison] space we have, the more people we usually send to prison,” she said.

Cells to rent

As part of a stricter migration policy, Belgium is also seeking ways to deport detainees without legal residency, who comprise about a third of the prison population.

Earlier this year, Verlinden visited Estonia to discuss renting cells there. The government has already eyed similar deals with Kosovo and Albania.

Belgium is not the only European country considering such agreements.

Sweden has struck a deal with Estonia to rent 400 prison cells. According to the Estonian Ministry of Justice, prisoners could start arriving by the end of the summer. In 2019, Denmark reached an agreement to rent 300 prison cells from Kosovo.

Vanhouche described the moves as “very populist and symbolic”.

While only having a “small impact”, they raise numerous ethical questions around the protection of prisoners’ rights and their wellbeing, she argued.

The Belgian Ministry of Justice, as well as the Swedish and Danish ministries, did not respond to requests for comment. The Estonian ministry said that “prisoners remain protected under European human rights standards and applicable international law”.

Ways forward

Critics are calling on Belgium to move towards a greater emphasis on societal reintegration rather than just security – also through alternative punishment.

“Prison leads to recidivism,” warned Tahar Elhamdaoui, the founder of NGO Collectif Desistance, which helps young former prisoners reintegrate into society.

According to Houbey, Belgium’s reoffending rate is 60-70 percent.

Thanks to Elhamdaoui’s NGO, Bilal is interning as a football coach. Meanwhile, Loic* is trying out different jobs on day release.

But that’s not the norm, Elhamdaoui warned.

“As long as there are no prisons that prepare people to succeed outside,” he said, “we will not only be producing more crime upon release, but also a sense of despair so deep that people will not be able to reintegrate into society.”

President Trump plans to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary — and his own 80th birthday — next month by watching bare-chested and bloody UFC fighters kick, punch and choke each other on the storied South Lawn of the White House.

Later, during the administration’s summer-long festival to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, IndyCars will race in a fossil fuel-burning extravaganza around and around the National Mall — home to the U.S. Capitol and the Washington and Lincoln monuments.

Both venues are National Park Service land and are administered by the agency.

The planned spectacles — UFC Freedom 250 and the Freedom 250 Grand Prix — stray so far from the park service’s traditional mission and ethos that advocates and career employees are crying foul.

“These events are inappropriate and disrespectful to the history and importance of the White House and the National Mall,” said Jonathan Jarvis, who began his career as a park ranger on the Mall in 1976 and was named director of the National Park Service by President Obama in 2009.

White House officials insist that IndyCar and the UFC are extremely popular with everyday Americans: the race and the fights will be exuberant celebrations of patriotism and pride, they say.

The UFC event, in particular, “will be one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history, and President Trump hosting it at the White House is a testament to his vision to celebrate America’s monumental 250th anniversary,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle.

President Trump is hosting a UFC match on the White House grounds in honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

To organize this summer’s events, the Trump administration asked the National Park Foundation — a congressionally chartered nonprofit that works closely with the park service and collects private donations to help maintain hiking trails and fund programs to get kids outdoors — to lend a hand.

Because of the scale of the planned celebrations, the foundation created a limited liability company, “Freedom 250,” to “execute events, activities, and celebrations in or around national parks,” according to the Freedom 250 website.

Freedom 250 has its own employees, but the foundation provides funds and the park service approves the events and reviews their budgets, according to the website.

Which is why advocates are appalled.

“Essentially, this is a hijacking of one of America’s oldest and most well-respected conservation organizations,” said Aaron Weiss, director of the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental nonprofit based in Denver. “There are so many very good people at the foundation, with so many years doing real work on behalf of America’s national parks, it’s heartbreaking to watch.”

When Jarvis was director of the park service — and therefore an ex-officio board member of the foundation — the two organizations worked hand in hand to ensure that the foundation’s work complemented that of the park service. They organized the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House South Lawn and lit the Christmas tree on the Ellipse, Jarvis said.

Workers continue to paint the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

Occasionally, the president made special requests, which were reviewed carefully to ensure they were consistent with park service principles. Michelle Obama’s famous “Kitchen Garden” passed the test, Jarvis said with a chuckle, providing fruits and vegetables for family meals — and the occasional state dinner — for years.

It’s hard to imagine any career parks employee, or the foundation board members he served with, coming up with the current agenda, Jarvis said.

In addition to the IndyCar race and cage fights, the National Park Foundation is sponsoring “Freedom Trucks” — six red, white and blue tractor trailers traveling the country as rolling museums — and Rededicate 250, a large Christian revival meeting held on the Mall earlier this month that raised objections about the mixing of church and state.

“I think the foundation is being told what to do,” Jarvis said. “And I think it’s hard to say no to the White House these days.”

Josh deBerge, a spokesperson for the National Park Foundation, insisted that no money from Freedom 250 is being spent on the IndyCar race or the UFC fights.

But the IndyCar race is listed as a “signature” event on the Freedom 250 website, and both IndyCar and the UFC are listed as Freedom 250 sponsors.

Danielle Alvarez, a former Trump campaign senior advisor, is a spokesperson for Freedom 250. She acknowledged that the race and the cage fights are happening on national park land and under the banner of Freedom 250, but said neither is receiving funds or logistical support from her organization.

“Many groups have adopted ‘Freedom 250’ branding as part of their festivities, even though it does not mean it is backed by Freedom 250 funding,” Alvarez said in a text message. “The shared terminology is a natural expression of collective pride in 250 years of American independence.”

Neither IndyCar nor the UFC responded to requests for comment.

All of this comes as the Trump administration has taken an ax to the National Park Service, cutting its staff by 25% through buyouts and layoffs since 2025, and proposing another 25% staff reduction this year.

A worker applies hot wax during the restoration process of the Gen. Nathanael Greene statue in Stanton Park on Capitol Hill.

(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call / Getty Images)

Trump has also proposed slashing nearly $800 million from the park system’s roughly $3-billion operating budget — potentially diminishing the ability to keep facilities clean and control crowds. Already this year, Yosemite National Park has ditched a reservation system, leading to enormous crowds in the valley and on nearby trails.

Parks advocates fear it’s part of a broader and deliberate strategy to marginalize an agency that has long been a sanctuary for environmentalists and progressives — most of whom presumably did not vote for Trump.

In addition to the staff and budget cuts, Trump last year instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at parks and historic sites.

Instead, he ordered the agency to ensure that its signs remind Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

Those marching orders left opponents and free speech advocates in disbelief, wondering how park employees were supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery, Jim Crow laws and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Trump opponents also question the political wisdom of picking on an agency that’s routinely ranked among the most admired branches of the large and sprawling federal government. Even Americans who pay little attention to politics will probably never forget standing in Yosemite Valley and admiring a towering waterfall.

There were more than 323 million visits to America’s national parks in 2025, dwarfing attendance — 135 million — at professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey games combined.

That has not stopped the assault by the current administration.

Black granite was installed last month as the new walkway for the West Wing Colonnade at the White House.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

“The ideologues in power now take a very dim view of the federal government in general, and the last thing they want is a highly popular and successful federal agency,” Jarvis said. “So if they can kill it, or diminish it through neglect, they win. They don’t really care about the public’s opinion.”

Chuck Sams, the last director of the National Park Service, stepped down the day Trump was inaugurated. Since then, the agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director.

Sams agreed that the Trump administration seems to have it in for the Park Service and worried that the guardrails that used to prevent the executive branch from doing whatever it wants with park land are disappearing.

Destroying the East Wing of the White House for Trump’s proposed ballroom and paving over portions of the White House Rose Garden lawn are prime examples, Sams said.

During his tenure, any proposed change to the White House or its grounds was approached in a “very concerted and deliberate manner with a lot of educated professionals weighing in,” Sams said. “Was it slow? Absolutely, but that was because everyone understood these places belong to the people.”

Asked what he thought of the IndyCar race and the cage fights, Sams said, “We are in uncharted territory, on uncharted ground.”

WASHINGTON — Yet another White House construction project is underway, though this one is meant to be only temporary.

Crews are erecting an octagon-shaped cage on the South Lawn that will host next month’s UFC bout, helping mark the nation’s 250th anniversary — and President Trump ‘s 80th birthday.

Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like ahead of the June 14 event. It will be ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars and stripes patterns and two large screens carrying the action live.

The cage and stage will themselves be surrounded by thousands of temporary seats, including ringside space for a full marching band that can set the entire scene to blaring music.

The project is part of a series of events celebrating the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence’s signing on July 4, 1776. Other planned functions include an IndyCar race that will pass by the White House and the Great American State Fair taking place on the National Mall.

Trump has said that the finished UFC project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House.” Additional large screens broadcasting the fights will be set up in a park at the nearby Ellipse, and the UFC has said it plans to issue as many as 85,000 free tickets to accommodate spectators at both locations.

“I have never seen anybody want anything so much as people want those tickets,” Trump said recently of demand to attend the UFC fight, adding, “That’s gonna be something.”

The card has been panned by fans online as underwhelming, featuring just two championship fights. Brazil’s Alex Pereira will meet France’s Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight title. Then Spanish-Georgian lightweight champion Ilia Topuria takes on interim champ Justin Gaethje, one of just two Americans who currently hold even a share of the UFC’s 11 championship belts.

The octagon and surrounding structures are the latest project in the White House building boom Trump is leading.

The president’s other efforts to leave his mark include tearing up part of the Rose Garden to make room for a patio space reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, affixing partisan plaques to the wall of the colonnade for a Presidential Walk of Fame, redoing the bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom and renovating the Palm Room, placing new flag poles on the north and south lawns and demolishing the entire East Wing for a sprawling ballroom.

The president also wants to repaint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the White House and build a 250-foot arch at the nearby Lincoln Memorial — the same monument where weigh-ins for the upcoming UFC fight are scheduled to take place, bout organizers say.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Renfield, a movie based on characters from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, is airing tonight and fans have praised hailed the film “funny and deliciously entertaining’

A movie perfect for fans of Dracula is heading to the small screen.

American action comedy horror film Renfield was originally released in 2023 and Film4 is showing the film at 9pm on Wednesday (May 20) evening.

Inspired by characters from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula and its 1931 feature film adaptation, the film features Nicholas Hoult as the titular character and co-stars Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brandon Scott Jones, Adrian Martinez and Nicolas Cage.

The story follows Renfield who, after decades as a grueling servant for Dracula, seeks a new purpose in life. Viewers who have already watch the movie have offered their review online.

One fan penned: “I came for Nicolas Cage and was not disappointed. He played an amazing Dracula in the modern world.” Nicolas Cage was born to play and he appropriately chews up the scenery whenever he is on screen. This movie is a lot of fun thematically and visually.”

A third person said: “Renfield hits all the right notes. The humour is dark, witty and at times profound. The film delivers plenty of gore and bloodshed to satisfy fans of the horror genre.”

A fourth agreed: “Funny, well-crafted, and deliciously entertaining, Renfield isn’t short of bite.”

According to reports, Cage prepared for his role as Dracula by observing the distinctive ways the character was portrayed on screen by Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman.

“What can I bring that will be different?”, he said, “I want it to pop in a unique way. We’ve seen it played well, we’ve seen it play not so well, so what can we do?

“So I’m thinking to really focus on the movement of the character … and that perfect tone of comedy and horror.”

Cage mentioned An American Werewolf in London, Ring and Malignant as inspirations for the role.

The film is Cage’s first live-action film by a major studio since Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

The film’s black-and-white opening scenes recreate the events of Dracula with Cage and Hoult respectively inserted in place of Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye as Count Dracula and Renfield, with Helen Chandler and Edward Van Sloan appearing as Mina Seward and Abraham Van Helsing via archive footage.

A recent development in the Black Sea drone war has seen a Russian Navy patrol boat appear with a screen, commonly known as a “cope cage,” on top of its superstructure to help protect against drones. Whether the modification is a one-off or part of a broader plan, it emphasizes the growing ubiquity of drone threats, a reality that the U.S. Navy is also increasingly having to contend with.

Two photos showing Russian Navy Project 21980 Grachonok class patrol boats underway in the Black Sea were published by Ukrainian defense adviser Serhii Sternenko. The photos were reportedly taken this month, but it’s not clear if they show the same vessel (in one photo, the Russian Navy flag is flying from a mast, and in the other, it is not).

This may well be the first instance of this kind of add-on protection, which is now routinely used by both sides of the conflict in Ukraine on tanks and other fighting vehicles, being installed on a surface vessel. However, as we reported in the past, a cope cage has also appeared on at least one Russian Navy ballistic missile submarine, the Tula.

The Project 21980 vessel is described by Russia as a multi-purpose anti-saboteur boat. Primarily designed to protect ports and other naval installations, they are used by the Russian Navy as well as the Border Service. Around 30 of the vessels have been completed since 2008.

According to Ukrainian sources, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet operates nine Project 21980 boats, while another four are assigned to the Border Service.

Displacing around 150 tons, the Project 21980 is a little over 100 feet long and can be armed with a 14.5 mm machine gun, anti-sabotage grenade launchers, and an Igla-series man-portable air defense system (MANPADS). Ironically, the Russian media has, in the past, heralded the success of the Grachonok class during exercises in which the vessel was used to detect and destroy uncrewed aerial vehicles (as well as uncrewed surface vessels and other small-sized surface targets).

The cope cage covers most of the surface area of the vessel, with three distinct levels: a first section protecting the area above the stern; a second section mounted above the bridge and projecting aft of it, but below the antenna array; and a third section aft of the main superstructure. The sides of the vessel appear entirely unprotected; this may well be to allow normal operations such as docking. Furthermore, access here is required to operate the weapons, as well as the rigid-hull inflatable boat (RHIB) that is typically stowed at the stern, and which is deployed and recovered by crane.

Considering the normal mounting of the machine gun on the bow and the grenade launchers firing aft from the rear of the superstructure, it’s not clear how these weapons function after the cope cage is fitted. At the very least, the additional protection screens would appear to significantly reduce their fields of fire, limiting them to a very depressed trajectory.

Moreover, while the cope cage provides a degree of overhead protection against drone-delivered munitions, it can be easily seen how a skilled drone operator would be able to find a gap in the protection. FPV drones, in particular, are highly maneuverable and have already demonstrated their ability to penetrate inside armored vehicles through open hatches and into buildings through whatever openings might be available. In this case, flying a drone around the static cope cages would not appear to be too difficult.

At the same time, the protection doesn’t address the threat posed by uncrewed surface vessels (USVs, ‘drone boats’) and uncrewed underwater vessels (UUVs) that have repeatedly been used to attack Russian targets in and around the Black Sea.

The threat of Ukrainian naval drones was most recently underscored in an incident on the night of April 30, when, according to reports, a Border Service PSKA-300 class patrol boat was struck, close to the Kerch Bridge. A photograph subsequently published on a Telegram channel showed a memorial plaque indicating that nine members of the Russian crew were killed in the strike. Ukrainian reports suggest that, as well as the PSKA-300, a Project 21980 Grachonok class patrol boat was also hit in the same raid.

🚨⚓ BREAKING: Ukrainian Navy struck Russian patrol boats guarding the Kerch Bridge overnight on April 30.

A Sobol patrol boat of the FSB Border Service and a Grachonok anti-sabotage boat were hit in the Kerch Strait area. https://t.co/dEFbWvQM8M pic.twitter.com/0Ib1M3rbyG

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 30, 2026

The PSKA-300 and Project 21980 are both regularly used to patrol the waters around the Kerch Bridge, linking mainland Russia with occupied Crimea, which is a regular target of Ukrainian strikes.

At the same time, equipping surface vessels with these kinds of add-on protection is a logical extension of the drone war. Russian forces began installing top protection on their tanks in the build-up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Armor of this type has since become a common feature on Russian and Ukrainian tanks and other armored vehicles, primarily as a defense against FPV and other types of weaponized commercial drones.

As the war has progressed, the threat of Ukrainian aerial drones has been extended into the Black Sea.

Last summer, we reported on how Ukraine had begun using so-called bomber drones launched from USVs to attack targets in Crimea. The occupied peninsula is especially target-rich, hosting high-value Russian radar and air defense systems, as well as military aircraft. In that context, Ukraine using similar weapons to target Russian surface vessels in the Black Sea should come as no surprise.

Bomber drones launched from drone boats offer various advantages. They give Ukrainian operators the ability to strike more than one target per drone with heavier warheads than typical FPV drones usually carry. They can also travel farther while maintaining their connection, as they don’t have to dive to the ground to hit their targets. As we have reported in the past, Ukraine also has bomber drones that can launch guided munitions with a heavier punch. All of these would offer a significant threat to Russian vessels in the Black Sea.

Already, Ukrainian actions have effectively forced the Black Sea Fleet to vacate Crimea and instead operate from Novorossiysk, although this hasn’t removed the Ukrainian threat entirely.

As well as heavier and more capable bomber drones, Ukrainian drone boats are also increasingly being used as platforms for launching FPV drones. Back in 2024, the first evidence emerged that Ukraine was using a capability like this, with aerial drones being launched from USVs as part of its campaign of attacks on Russian offshore platforms. 

Meanwhile, it was reported recently that the HX-2 strike drone, from German manufacturer Helsing, has been adapted for launch from small boats. The company states that the HX-2s feature standoff range and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled capabilities that make them resistant to electronic warfare systems, and can be employed in networked swarms.

🇩🇪 German HX-2 strike drone, which is used by 🇺🇦Ukraine, has been adapted for deployment from boats, – Militarnyi

Helsing reported that it successfully conducted the first launch of the drone from a coastal vessel. pic.twitter.com/PAujJE2Wd5

— MAKS 25 🇺🇦👀 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) May 11, 2026

Further proliferation of FPV drones and new missions for these types include a growing emphasis on using them in a coastal defense capacity. Here, again, patrol boats like the Project 21980 would be exposed to additional threats.

Overall, questions remain about how effective the drone protection on the Project 21980 patrol boat might be in practice. However, the emergence of the fixture again underscores Russia’s concerns about the dangers posed by Ukrainian weaponized drones. This is a threat that is now very real across all domains and one that is steadily growing worldwide.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com