Drones

May 15 (Asia Today) — South Korea and the United States signed a letter of intent Friday to cooperate on drone and counter-drone systems, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.

The agreement was signed at the ministry’s headquarters in Seoul by Jun Joon-beom, director general of the Defense Artificial Intelligence Planning Bureau, and Patrick Mason, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Army for defense exports and cooperation.

Under the agreement, the two sides will work to build a joint supply chain for drone and counter-drone systems and strengthen cooperation on standardization.

The U.S. Defense Department plans to consider registering Korean-made products on an online platform for drone and counter-drone transactions that it aims to establish this year.

South Korean officials said the platform could allow both countries to purchase and operate Korean-made systems, improving interoperability and reducing logistics costs.

The two countries also plan to cooperate on common standards for drone and counter-drone systems to improve the efficiency and compatibility of combined South Korea-U.S. operations.

In the near term, they will seek to adopt a common battery standard for small drones. They will also exchange information and conduct joint research toward a shared standards system.

“We hope the signing of this letter of intent will accelerate the establishment of common standards and certification systems for drone and counter-drone systems,” Jun said.

Mason said allies such as South Korea could overcome existing acquisition barriers and quickly field efficient and interoperable drone systems.

“We will ensure that the best available technologies are provided to South Korean and U.S. combined warfighters,” Mason said.

Before the signing ceremony, Won Jong-dae, South Korea’s deputy defense minister, met U.S. officials and said the agreement marks the beginning of the South Korea-U.S. alliance evolving into a “drone alliance.”

Won said the ministry would work with related agencies, including the Industry Ministry and the Transport Ministry, to build a stable joint supply chain between the two countries.

Jang Ji-hyung, head of the technical research division at the Defense Agency for Technology and Quality, said the agency would play a central role in producing practical results from drone and counter-drone cooperation.

The two defense authorities plan to form a working-level consultative body to continue cooperation.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260515010004281

May 14 (UPI) — Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted President Trump at a glittering state banquet in the Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday as the two leaders wrapped up the first day of a planned two-day summit.

The elegant dinner came after a day of discussions in which Xi warned Trump that mishandling the matter of Taiwan’s independence could push the two superpowers into “conflict,” but which also included moments of agreement and praise offered by both leaders.

The dinner menu included roast duck, pork buns and and beef ribs served by waiters in traditional red clothing, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported, while the entertainment program was highlighted by a performance of the American hit song “YMCA” by the People’s Liberation Army band.

During his speech at the elaborate dinner, Trump described U.S.-China relations as “one of the most important in history” and focused on the long-standing ties between Washington and Beijing.

Xi, meanwhile, drew parallels between the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence and the start of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for economic and social development.

“The over 300 million American people are reinvigorating the spirit of patriotism, innovation and enterprise, and ushering in a new journey for the development of the United States,” he said, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The peoples of both China and the United States are “great,” Xi added, saying, “Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand. We can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world.”

Among the banquet attendees were administration officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, as well as U.S. business leaders including Tim Cook of Apple and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, the New York Times reported.

The dinner came during a day of talks held against the backdrop of the Iran conflict and mounting tensions over trade, technology and regional security.

Xi, however, placed Taiwan — a self-governing island of 23 million people that China claims as its territory and has vowed to bring under its control — at the top of the agenda.

“The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” Xi told Trump, according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.

“If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability,” Xi said. “Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”

Trump did not answer questions from reporters about Taiwan after the meeting.

“Great. Great place. Incredible. China’s beautiful,” Trump said when asked about the talks with Xi, according to a pool report.

Washington does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taipei but is Taiwan’s main international backer and arms supplier under the Taiwan Relations Act, a 1979 law that states threats to the island are “of grave concern” to the United States.

The Trump administration announced an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan in December, including rocket systems, drones and anti-tank missiles, though delivery has yet to move forward. Trump said in February that he discussed the sale with Xi and would make a determination “pretty soon.”

Trade also loomed large over the summit after years of tensions over tariffs, export controls and advanced technology restrictions. Trump traveled with a delegation of prominent U.S. executives as his administration seeks expanded Chinese purchases of American aircraft, agricultural goods and energy products.

Xi and Trump also discussed the Middle East, Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula during their meeting, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday evening for his first visit to China since 2017. Xi did not meet Trump at the airport, but welcomed him Thursday with a red carpet ceremony, troop review and 21-gun salute at the Great Hall of the People. Children waved flowers and American flags as the leaders entered the hall for talks.

In comments at the start of their meeting, Xi said the world was at a “new crossroads” amid mounting geopolitical instability and called on the two countries to work together.

“Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe and the international situation is fluid and turbulent,” Xi said. “Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world?”

“We should be partners, not rivals,” he added.

Trump called the gathering “maybe the biggest summit ever” and praised Xi’s leadership.

“We’ve had a fantastic relationship,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a fantastic future together. Such respect for China, the job you’ve done. You’re a great leader.”

After talks lasting more than two hours, Trump and Xi traveled to the Temple of Heaven, a ceremonial complex dating to the Ming Dynasty where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests. A state banquet was scheduled for Thursday evening.

Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina resigned following criticism of her government’s handling of stray drones, believed to be Ukrainian, crossing into Latvian territory. The controversy deepened divisions within the ruling coalition, causing it to lose its parliamentary majority.

May 14 (UPI) — The U.K.’s Maritime Trade Operations said Thursday that a Honduran-flagged vessel was seized by Iran northeast of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

The Hui Chuan, described by UKMTO as a “floating armoury,” was in the Gulf of Oman when it was seized by Iranian forces. The vessel is moving toward Iranian waters.

UKMTO said in a statement that the seizure was reported about 38 nautical miles northeast of Fujairah.

“The CSO has reported that the vessel has been taken by unauthorized personnel [whilst] at anchor and is now bound for Iranian Territorial Waters,” UKMTO said in its report. “UKMTO continue to investigate.”

The vessel had been anchored in the Gulf of Oman for about a month. Its operators said it was storing weapons used to protect ships from pirate attacks.

The Hui Chuan is at least the second vessel to be attacked on the Gulf of Oman in as many days. On Wednesday, the Indian-flagged vessel Haji Ali sank off the coast of Oman after an explosion.

Security firm Vanguard said the explosion was believed to have been caused by a “drone or missile.”

Tensions in the Persian Gulf remain high during an uneasy ceasefire between the United States and Iran. The United States has imposed a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, pursuing any vessels using Iranian ports. Iran has meanwhile threatened vessels traversing the strait since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

President Zelenskyy says rescue operations continue after Russia used ‘more than 1,560 drones’ during its overnight attacks.

Russia launched a barrage of missiles and drones targeting Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, killing at least three people and wounding 40 others, Ukrainian authorities have said.

The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that the overnight strikes hit six districts of Kyiv and another six in the surrounding areas. Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said attacks had targeted ports in the southern Odesa region and railways.

In a post on X, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said rescue operations were continuing following an attack on a nine-storey building in Kyiv after Russia launched “more than 670 attack drones and 56 missiles against Ukraine”.

“In total, since midnight yesterday, Russia has used more than 1,560 drones against our cities and communities. These are definitely not the actions of those who believe the war is coming to an end,” he wrote on Thursday.

“It is important that partners do not remain silent about this strike. And it is equally important to continue supporting the protection of our skies,” Zelenskyy added.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said 40 people were wounded in the attacks, including two children, while Ukrainian emergency services said three people had been killed.

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Audrey Macalpine said people are still feared trapped under the rubble of the building.

Macalpine said it was one of Russia’s largest attacks of the war, “in a single 36-hour period just by sheer number of drones”.

The attack comes as a setback for efforts to end the war after United States President Donald Trump raised faint hopes for peace by brokering a three-day ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow last week, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin suggested the war could be winding down.

The truce – put in place as Putin presided over a scaled-down military parade in Red Square to mark the anniversary of World War II victory – was marred by allegations of violations by both sides.

Ukraine and Russia launched long-range drone attacks immediately after it ended on Tuesday.

The Kremlin has poured cold water on the idea that Putin’s vague comments, issued Saturday, about the war “heading to an end” could mean a softening in Moscow’s position.

On Wednesday, it repeated its demand that Ukraine fully withdraw from the eastern Donbas region before a ceasefire and full-scale peace talks can take place.

Kyiv has rejected such a move as tantamount to capitulation.

In another sign of how much first person view (FPV) drones have changed warfare, Israel says it is building a new factory to produce thousands of these weapons. The move comes as its forces are coming under increasing attack from Hezbollah’s FPV drones in southern Lebanon, something we were among the first to report.

“The IDF is currently establishing a factory that will produce suicide drones (FPV drones) for use in all theaters of war,” Israel Army Radio reported. “The goal of establishing the factory is to industrialize and significantly expand the arsenal of suicide drones that the IDF has, in order to increase capabilities on the battlefield.”

Israel is racing to catch up to Hezbollah in the use of this class of fast, highly maneuverable munitions that became a main strike weapon for both Ukrainian and Russian forces, as well as elsewhere in the world. In our earlier reporting about the issue, we noted that the Iranian proxy has ramped up FPV attacks the deeper Israel has pushed into southern Lebanon. 

You can see some videos of those attacks below.

A big issue for Israel has been that while a domestic manufacturer is producing FPV drones, they include Chinese components, which represent both a security and a supply chain concern, the IDF-funded Israel Army Radio explained. By bringing production in-house to its Technology and Logistics Division, the IDF is looking to boost output, reduce cost and use only indigenous components.

The IDF estimates that the factory will begin supplying the army with drones in large quantities starting in July. Initially, the goal is to produce 1,000 per month, according to Israel Army Radio, with production then being boosted to tens of thousands.

Reaching that goal is not a huge leap for the IDF, one of the world’s most technologically advanced militaries in a country not devastated by the kind of war faced by Ukraine. In comparison, as we have reported in the past, Ukraine and Russia both make and use multiple millions of these drones every year. 

Удари російських дронів по українському Leopard 1A5 [Січень 2025]

Seeing the lessons learned from Ukraine, the U.S. too is scaling up, with plans to significantly increase the number of FPV drones it makes.

For Israel, however, boosting the number of FPV drones for its troops is only part of the equation in this realm of warfare. The IDF has been highly criticized in Israel for not reacting more quickly to defend against these weapons, especially after encountering them on a much smaller scale in 2024 and watching what has taken place in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Exacerbating the problem for Israel is that Hezbollah has been relying heavily on fiber-optic guided FPV drones. Fiber optic cables mitigate the effect of electronic warfare efforts to jam radio signals as well as some of the limitations imposed by geographical features that can impede the line-of-sight radio connection between drone and operator.

Faced with a threat that is causing casualties and damaging equipment, Israel is beginning to roll out new countermeasures. As we have previously noted, these solutions range from putting netting on vehicles to improving armor defensive systems.

In our past reporting, we explained that the idea behind netting is that drones will get caught up in these nylon or mesh metal barriers and become disabled, or, in some cases, the nets will help keep the drones far enough from the occupants before exploding to keep them from being killed. 

As for protecting armor, active protection systems (APS) on its tanks and armored personnel carriers are being adapted to provide hard-kill counter-drone protection. These systems use sensors to detect incoming rocket-propelled grenades, missiles, and other similar threats, and fire projectiles to hit them before they strike the vehicle. Israel is a major pioneer in the APS space, with systems being deployed for decades, but just how soon it can upgrade existing systems, such as Iron Fist, for this application isn’t clear. Also, this doesn’t help many lighter vehicles that do not have APS capabilities.

Iron Fist APS | Active Protection System for Armored Vehicles

The IDF is also working on other systems. The include equipment to better detect the drones as well as the creation of interceptor drones specifically designed to counter FPV drones, according to Israel’s YNet media outlet.

Israel is far from alone in trying to both make more FPV drones and defend against them. The U.S., for instance, recently came under attack by FPV drones in Iraq and its services are training on ways to defend against them. Given Israel’s advanced military tech base that produces weapons used around the world, we will keep an eye on the solutions to the FPV scourge it develops.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

One killed and four others wounded in attacks on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, local administration chief says.

Russia and Ukraine have resumed air attacks after a United States-brokered three-day truce expired, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying more than 200 drones were used to attack Ukraine overnight.

Russian aerial attacks across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday morning killed at least one person and injured four others, according to regional administration chief Oleksandr Ganzha.

Russian drones also hit energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, causing outages, and struck residential buildings and a kindergarten in the Kyiv region, according to local authorities. Russia also carried out attacks on the regions of Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy and Chernihiv, according to authorities.

More than 200 long-range drones were used in the wave of attacks, Zelenskyy said. “Russia itself chose to end the partial silence that had lasted for several days,” he said in a post on X.

Russia’s military, meanwhile, said its defences downed 27 Ukrainian drones over the regions of Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov.

The exchange of aerial attacks came after the expiry of a 72-hour truce announced by US President Donald Trump on Friday, which he said he hoped would mark “the beginning of the end” of Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine.

The May 9-11 truce overlapped with Russia’s Victory Day, which celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war.

But even before it expired, both sides accused each other of violating the truce by attacking civilians.

Zelenskyy said Russia was neither observing the truce nor “even particularly trying to”, adding there had been no calm in front-line areas despite a lull in large-scale attacks.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence accused Ukraine of committing more than 1,000 ceasefire violations. It said Ukrainian forces attacked civilian targets in several Russian regions and carried out strikes against Russian military positions on the front line.

Russia’s military had “responded in kind” to the ceasefire violations, according to the Defence Ministry.

US-backed negotiations on ending the Russia-Ukraine war have made little headway and have been largely sidelined by the crisis in the Middle East amid the US-Israel war on Iran. Trump’s ceasefire announcement had raised some hope that US-led talks to end Russia’s invasion could be resumed.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested for the first time that the Ukraine war may be “coming to an end” and expressed a willingness to meet Zelenskyy in Moscow or a neutral country once an agreement to end the war is finalised. He also accused the “arrogant” West of risking a global conflict, warning that Russia’s “strategic forces” are combat-ready.

May 7 (UPI) — U.S. Central Command said Thursday that American forces struck Iranian military sites responsible for “unprovoked” missile, drone and boat attacks on U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

“U.S. forces intercepted unprovoked Iranian attacks and responded with self-defense strikes as U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers transited the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

CENTCOM said Iran had targeted the USS Truxtun, the USS Rafael Peralta and the USS Mason.

“No assets were struck,” it said.

The U.S. strikes targeted the Bandar Abbas and Qeshm ports near the strait, CBS News and CNN reported, each citing unnamed U.S. officials.

The attacked Iranian facilities included “missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance nodes,” according to CENTCOM.

After the U.S. vessels had transited the strait, President Donald Trump promptly took to social media to post a warning to Iran.

“Missiles were shot at our Destroyers, and were easily knocked down,” he wrote. “Likewise, drones came, and were incinerated while in the air. They dropped ever so beautifully down to the Ocean, very much like a butterfly dropping to its grave! A normal Country would have allowed these Destroyers to pass, but Iran is not a Normal country. They are led by LUNATICS.”

Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said in a statement carried by Iranian state-owned outlet Press TV that it attacked the U.S. warships in response to an alleged U.S. cease-fire violation as well as a U.S. attack on an Iranian tanker near the Iranian city of Jask.

Iranian forces caused “significant damage” to the U.S. warships, it said.

A spokesperson for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters also said the Iranian strikes were in response to the “aggressive, terrorist and outlaw” U.S. military, Press TV reported.

The attacks come after Trump earlier this week called off Project Freedom, a U.S. military operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, as Washington and Tehran try to reach an agreement to end the war.

Despite the attacks, Trump told reporters that the fragile cease-fire that halted the war that began in late February was still intact.

“They trifled with us today. We blew them away,” Trump told reporters Thursday evening.

“If there’s no cease-fire, you’re not going to have to know. You’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran.”

Pakistan announced on Friday that it had shot down 77 Israeli-made attack drones launched by India, in the latest escalation between the two sides following exchanged attacks.

This was announced by Military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry during a press conference addressing developments in the military situation in the region, according to the local newspaper Dawn.

Chaudhry confirmed that the death toll from Indian attacks had risen to 33, while the number of injured had reached 62. He accused India of “deliberate attacks and targeting civilian areas.”

Responding to Indian allegations that Pakistani aircraft had been shot down or that Pakistan had carried out attacks inside India, Chaudhry said, “India should present the wreckage of at least one aircraft if its claims are credible.”

He revealed that the Pakistani army had not lost any of its people in the clashes between the two countries, despite the casualties among its ranks.

READ: US President Trump claims India, Pakistan have fought over Kashmir for 1,500 years

Chaudhry sent a message to India, saying, “If you enjoy our response, we will meet your requests at a time, place, and means of our choosing.”

He continued, “We are prepared for all eventualities. If they decide to continue escalation, let them know that we are the ones who will finish what they started.”

On Thursday, Indian media reported that Pakistan had carried out strikes targeting ammunition depots on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry later denied this, asserting that allegations of attacks in the Pathankot and Srinagar areas were “baseless.”

It is worth noting that on 6 May, India launched missile strikes targeting what it described as ‘terrorist hideouts” inside Pakistani territory, in retaliation for a deadly attack on 22 April in the Pahalgam district that killed 26 people.

According to New Delhi, its strikes targeted nine militant sites, while Islamabad said the strikes hit six civilian sites, killing 33 people and wounding 62 others.

Pakistan also announced that it shot down 5 Indian warplanes during the attack, a claim that has yet to be confirmed by Indian authorities.

OPINION: The Indo-Pak war: recklessness and diversion in the service of pharaohs 

May 5 (UPI) — Senate Republicans have released an immigration enforcement package that includes $1 billion in taxpayer money earmarked for President Donald Trump‘s massive ballroom project at the White House — a project the president has widely touted as being fully funded by private donors.

That $1 billion is to be used for security improvements to the 90,000-square-foot space, including “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing ModernizationProject, including above-ground and below-ground security features,” the bill says.

Since a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in late April, Republicans have said the ballroom is needed for presidential security. Trump administration court filings on the plan from early April say the project will be able to withstand drone attacks and include a bomb shelter and underground medical facilities, NBC News reported.

“Congress has rightly recognized the need for these funds,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “Due in part to the recent assassination attempt on President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the proposal would provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS.”

This $1 billion is part of a reconciliation bill that Congress plans to pass with only Republican votes, CNN reported. The full package contains about $70 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol. Democrats have earlier blocked such funding without reforms, including requiring judicial warrants and banning officers from wearing masks.

Trump has long said the ballroom project, which is expected to cost $300 million to $400 million, is a gift to the nation from private donors with “not one penny” of government funds to be used, NBC News reported. The president demolished the White House’s East Wing without congressional approval for the project, a move that’s drawn ongoing legal challenges.

Last week, after the Correspondents’ Dinner incident, the Department of Justice asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit by the National Trust for Historic Preservation that challenged the ballroom plans. DOJ officials said “there is no better example of why this ballroom is necessary.”

Senate Democrats say they’ll try to force a vote to strip the $1 billion in ballroom money from the bill, which is expected to be voted on later in May.

May 5 (UPI) — Iran warned Tuesday that it was “just getting started” after its military clashed with U.S. forces attempting to guide commercial vessels marooned in the Persian Gulf out through the Strait of Hormuz.

Mohammad Ghalibaf, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, signaling Iran’s intention to exploit the United States’ need for a timely resolution to the conflict, said Iran was digging in for an extended fight that it was prepared to keep going for as long as necessary.

“The new equation in the Strait of Hormuz is being solidified. Shipping security and energy transit have been jeopardized by the U.S. and its allies with the cease-fire violations and blockade. However, their evil acts will fail. We know well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America, while we are just getting started,” said Ghalibaf.

Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to try to de-escalate the situation, stressing that the mission to free trapped merchant ships was a short-term, defensive operation purely aimed at providing protection for the hundreds of vessels he said “are lining up to transit.”

“Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration, with one mission, protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression. American forces won’t need to enter Iranian waters or airspace. It’s not necessary. We’re not looking for a fight,” he said.

However, echoing threats made by U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday night, Hegseth said that Iran “will face overwhelming firepower” if it attacks commercial shipping and that he expected other countries to “step up” to protect the strategically important sea lane “at the appropriate time.”

Day one of Trump’s Project Freedom on Monday saw Iran claim it fired on U.S. naval vessels approaching the strait, forcing one to turn around, while Trump said U.S. forces sank seven Iranian navy “fast boats,” prompting Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to dub the effort “Project Deadlock,” warning that the conflict could only be resolved through compromise.

The UAE also said it was targeted with Iranian missiles and drones for the first time since a cease-fire came into force April 9, blaming the attacks for a fire in its Fujairah Oil Industry Zone in which three people were injured.

“Events in Hormuz make clear that there’s no military solution to a political crisis. As talks are making progress with Pakistan’s gracious effort, the U.S. should be wary of being dragged back into a quagmire by ill-wishers. So should the UAE,” said Araghchi.

The comments came hours after Trump threatened to blow Iran “off the face of the Earth’ if it attacked U.S. vessels involved in Project Freedom.

U.S. Central Command said no U.S. Navy ships had taken fire while Iran rejected as “outright lies,” claims by CENTCOM that two U.S.-flagged merchant vessels “successfully transited through the Strait of Hormuz and are safely headed on their journey.”

May 3 (UPI) — Two members of the U.S. Army were reported missing during a training event in Morocco on Sunday morning by the United States Africa Command.

The soldiers were participating in the U.S. military’s largest Africa-based exercise, African Lion, when the soldiers went missing on Saturday night during near the Cap Draa Training Area, which is near the city of Tan Tan, Morocco, AFRICOM said in a press release.

Military officials said their disappearance is unrelated to the exercise, but rather than they had gone on a hike near the training range and may have slipped off a cliff into the ocean, The New York Times reported.

“U.S., Moroccan and other assets from African Lion immediately initiated coordinated search and rescue operations, including ground, air and maritime assets,” AFRICOM said in the release.

“The incident remains under investigation and the search is on-going,” the command said.

The soldiers were discovered missing during a base-wide head-count around 9 p.m. local time, with helicopters searching throughout the night and various aircraft — including larger planes and drones — picking up the search on Sunday morning near the coast, CBS News reported.

African Lion is an annual joint military exercise that includes the U.S. military, NATO allies and African partner nations, and is hosted by Morocco, Ghana, Senegal and Tunisia, according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

This year’s event, scheduled to run from April 27 to May 8, includes 5,000 people from 40 countries.

April 30 (UPI) — Israeli forces intercepted and boarded the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters off Greece on Thursday, preventing it from delivering aid to Gaza and drawing international condemnation.

The Israeli military, using drones and armed personnel, blocked the fleet of ships in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Greek island of Crete. Twenty-two of 58 vessels were seized, with passengers held at gunpoint.

“Our boats were approached by military speedboats, self-identified as ‘Israel’, pointing lasers and semi-automatic assault weapons, ordering participants to the front of the boats and to get on their hands and knees,” the Global Sumud Flotilla aid mission said in a statement.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a social media statement on Thursday that it detained about 175 activists from the more than 20 boats of the flotilla.

“Well done to our Navy!” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement following the operation, stating he had directed the military to intercept the boats before they reached Gaza.

“No ship and no Hamas supporter reached our territory, and not even our territorial waters. They were turned back and will return to their countries of origin.”

The flotilla was sailing from Barcelona, Spain, to Gaza when its ships were intercepted. Crete is more than 700 miles from the Palestinian enclave.

The Global Sumud Flotilla social media page posted that Israeli forces smashed engines and destroyed navigation arrays on its ships before retreating.

“Intentionally leaving hundreds of civilians stranded on powerless, broken vessels directly in the path of a massive approaching storm,” the social media post reads. “Furthermore, communications with multiple vessels have been jammed, severing their ability to coordinate or signal for help.”

Israel has maintained a maritime blockade of Gaza since 2009. It has said the blockade is meant to block weapons smuggling to Gaza.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the aid flotilla a “PR stunt.”

“As international media have exposed, these are professional provocateurs on pleasure cruises, addicted to self-promotion,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry wrote on social media.

Numerous countries, politicians and human rights organizations voiced condemnation of the Israeli operation, with a dozen-country bloc, including Brazil, Pakistan, Spain, Malaysia and South Africa, describing the interception as an “Israeli assault” on a peaceful civilian humanitarian initiative.

“The Israeli attacks against the vessels and the unlawful detention of humanitarian activists in international waters constitute flagrant violations of international humanitarian law,” the bloc said in a statement.

Italian President Giorgia Meloni separately condemned the seizure, while Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called upon the international community “to adopt a unified stance against this unlawful act by Israel.”

The U.S. State Department, meanwhile, issued a statement condemning the flotilla.

The U.S. Marine Corps wants to field its first conventional takeoff and landing Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones in 2029, and is also looking at the possibility of fielding similar drones with short takeoff and landing capabilities. The news comes soon after the service outlined its plans for Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie, and potentially other CCAs, to be paired with its F-35s as a “bridge” to an entire family of next-generation air combat capabilities, which could include a sixth-generation crewed fighter. You can read more about the implications of that in our previous coverage.

Updates on the latest developments within the Marine Corps’ CCA program were provided by Col. Scott Shadforth, a program manager for the Expeditionary and Maritime Aviation Advanced Development Team (XMA-ADT), at the annual Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C., at which TWZ is in attendance.

The Corps’ CCA efforts currently fall under a program called Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Uncrewed Expeditionary Tactical Aircraft (MUX TACAIR). The MAGTF is the primary organizing concept around which the service deploys air and ground forces.

Shadforth defines the CCA program as “how the Marine Corps is going after increasing the lethality of existing and future tactical aircraft in a high-threat environment.”

The MUX TACAIR effort emerged out of a previous effort that the Marine Corps War Fighting Lab sponsored as part of a Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). This earlier program was known as the Penetrating Affordable Autonomous Collaborative Killer — Portfolio (PAACK-P).

The Marine Corps is kicking off its CCA efforts with a landing gear-equipped version of the XQ-58. In contrast, the previous PAACK-P program involved the rocket-assisted takeoff (RATO) variant of the XQ-58. Meanwhile, the MQ-58 designation refers to Marine-specific variants of Kratos’ Valkyrie now in development, although it remains unclear how official this is. 

As Shadforth explained, under MUX TACAIR, the Marine Corps is attempting to answer the question: “How do we take that essential [XQ-58] airframe itself and turn it into a conventional takeoff and landing [CTOL] platform so that it’s reusable at a higher rate?”

The OSD effort involved four flights of the XQ-58, culminating in the fall of 2024. At the beginning of this month, the Marine Corps completed a risk-reduction flight involving XQ-58 payloads and integration at China Lake.

Up to this point, the tests have all involved RATO variants of the XQ-58, but the Marines are targeting a first flight using conventional takeoff and landing sometime in the mid- to late summer of this year.

Shadforth confirmed that the “ultimate goal” for the MQ-58 effort is to get its hands on “deliverable prototypes” in the summer of 2029. In an ideal case, he added, these would be delivered to VMX-1 in Yuma, “so the Marine Corps can actually get their hands on the aircraft and fly the aircraft in a tactical environment and develop the CONOPS for how they’re actually going to employ those.”

VMX-1, or Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One, has multiple aircraft types in its inventory and is responsible for tests and evaluations of all types of Marine aircraft and associated systems, while assisting in the creation of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). You can read more about its work here.

MUX TACAIR doesn’t start and end with the MQ-58, however.

Shadforth said that the Marine Corps is currently exploring further MUX TACAIR options with “several vendors,” including General Atomics and Anduril. Meanwhile, the branch is also working with Northrop Grumman as part of the MQ-58 effort.

As to how the CTOL MQ-58 will be best integrated with the fleet of Marine Corps F-35Bs, which feature short takeoff and landing (STOVL) at the heart of their capabilities, this is something the service is still weighing up.

According to Shadforth, the Marine Corps “is always going to be interested” in finding ways for fixed-wing aircraft to operate from shorter runways, suggesting that a STOVL-type CCA could well be part of its future plans. Of course, a return to the RATO-capable MQ-58 could be one way of achieving this.

For now, the Marine CCA effort is squarely focused on the CTOL variant of the Valkyrie, but Shadforth said that it’s also looking toward the future, including “other vendor offerings, whether they exist in reality or not, that remove the need for landing gear.” CCAs that offer either runway independence or that are able to operate from shorter or improvised airstrips represent a capability “the Marine Corps will be interested in exploring,” Shadforth added. One obvious candidate here would be the X-BAT, the jet-powered autonomous stealth ‘fighter’ drone designed to take off vertically and land the same way, tail first, after completing its mission. 

At this point, it should be recalled that Kratos said earlier this year that the CTOL version of the Valkyrie being developed for the Marines will still be able to make rocket-assisted takeoffs from static launchers. This means the drone will retain a valuable degree of runway independence, though it will have to touch down on a runway at the end of its sortie.

Before that, Kratos also unveiled a special launch trolley that allows variants of the XQ-58 without landing gear to take off from traditional runways, though not land back on them, as seen in the video below.

Kratos Valkyrie Trolley Launch System

An aircraft with some kind of STOVL capabilities “just kind of opens up the world to us, where we don’t need 7,000-, 8,000-, 9,000-, or 10,000-foot paved runways. Those are always capabilities that we’re interested in,” Shadforth said.

Overall, this is a somewhat surprising route, considering that the XQ-58 in its basic form is already runway independent. This would suggest the Marines, in the future, are looking specifically for something that combines STOVL performance with faster sortie rates. After all, the XQ-58 also requires some infrastructure for that and requires a reset time. A STOVL or VTOL type of CCA would also be able to deploy and operate alongside the F-35B more seamlessly.

“As far as how CCA is envisioned integrating with existing STOVL-type platforms, the Marine Corps is kind of on the front end right now of getting CCA out to the operational forces. A lot of that’s going to come through experimentation and evaluation. As we target the 2029 timeframe to get prototypes out to VMX-1, part of their mission set is going to be: now we’ve physically got these things, how are we actually going to employ them with the various tactical aircraft we have available?” he continued.

As well as the STOVL F-35Bs, these tactical aircraft include CTOL/carrier-capable F-35Cs and potentially legacy F/A-18 Hornets, as well as other Joint Force capabilities.

Shadforth continued: “Those are issues that are going to have to be explored and experimented with for how we’re going to see how those CCAs are going to operate. The point being there’s no set solution at the moment.”

In terms of missions, the Marine Corps is initially focusing MUX TACAIR on an “electronic warfare type platform,” Shadforth said. “Those are the payloads we’re interested in looking at at the moment.”

XQ-58A Valkyrie Demonstrator Inaugural Flight

But Shadforth confirmed that other efforts with different vendors are exploring how to use the space within the Valkyrie air vehicle to see what other payloads and capabilities are available to the Marine Corps. Not only usefulness but timeliness are important factors here, Shadforth added.

Kratos is known to be working on a miniature cruise missile called Ragnarok, which the XQ-58 can carry in its internal bay and externally under its wings, and you can read more about it here. Renderings have also shown Valkyries with AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) under their wings. The drone can carry Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) internally, and has demonstrated drone launch — launched effects are therefore almost certain to be included for the electronic warfare mission.

Within all this, it is important to remember that, at this point, the Marine CCA effort is still very much in the prototyping phase, led by the MQ-58. As Shadforth noted, the service has “not entered into a specific acquisition-type construct yet,” beyond developing these prototypes. Nevertheless, with a timeline now in place to get the first MQ-58s to Yuma, and with conventional takeoff and landing trials expected in the next few months, MUX TACAIR reflects the overall acceleration of the Corps’ CCA program.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Over the course of a nearly two-month old war with Israel, Hezbollah has been increasing its use of fiber-optic controlled first-person view (FPV) drones against Israeli troops and vehicles, something we were among the first to note. Now, it appears that Israel is resorting to the use of anti-drone netting on its vehicles to help protect them from the one-way attack drones. These attacks are occurring even amid an ongoing, though extremely fragile, ceasefire.

A video emerged Wednesday on social media showing an Israeli vehicle festooned with the netting, draped like a soccer goal from metal arms extending out and above. The idea, as we have reported in the past, is that drones will get caught up in the nylon or mesh metal nets and become disabled, or the nets will help keep the drones far enough from the occupants before exploding to keep them from being killed. The latter is a far more limited scenario and depends on the vehicle type and the warhead on the drone. Based on the video we are seeing, the level of protection netting can provide passengers in the open-top Israeli vehicle if a trapped drone’s warhead were to detonate is likely very little.

The video began to circulate amid growing controversy in Israel over what is perceived as the IDF’s inability to counter the Hezbollah FPV drone threat. The frustration reached a new level over the weekend, after an Israeli soldier was killed and six were wounded by a Hezbollah drone. A followup attack was launched while the IDF was medevacing the wounded, narrowly missing the helicopter.

You can see the drone narrowly miss the helicopter in the following video. 

“The attack laid bare a growing vulnerability: the Israel Defense Forces’ lack of preparedness for first-person view (FPV) drones in Lebanon, which have been an increasingly prominent weapon in Hezbollah’s arsenal during the current fighting,” the Times of Israel reported on Monday. “The Israel Defense Forces has reported dozens of drone-related injuries in recent weeks, though most were minor. Sunday’s attack marked the first fatal FPV drone strike on Israeli forces.”

“Yet the emergence of fiber optic-guided drones should not have come as a surprise,” the paper highlighted. The reason is what we noted in our previous story about this issue. The militant Lebanese group has used FPV drones against Israel since 2024 and they have been widely used by both sides in the Ukraine war for several years, as well as in other conflicts zones around the globe.

These strikes have become more prevalent the deeper Israel went into southern Lebanon. Videos of these recent attacks have been showing up on social media.

Hezbollah conducted more fiber-optic FPV strikes on Israeli vehicles in Lebanon, including two ‘Merkava’ Mk.4 tanks, a D9 Caterpillar armored bulldozer, and what appears to be a rare ‘Namer’ heavy IFV equipped with a turret mounting a 30 mm Bushmaster Mk 2 cannon.
1/ https://t.co/ms2nagNHrD pic.twitter.com/WDs6M3SpwW

— Roy🇨🇦 (@GrandpaRoy2) April 5, 2026

Moreover, Israeli Merkava tanks began sporting metal additions on top of vehicles meant to deflect top-down attacks from drones during the conflict in Gaza two years ago, which you can read more about here. Some of those tanks that have come under attack recently have been observed with them as well. So Israel has been working to deal with the evolving FPV drone threat, on some level, for some time and it is not alone in struggling with it. Most militaries in the world face the possibility of this same vexing threat with no clear blanket countermeasure to deal with it.

Israeli military officials acknowledge that the IDF still lacks an effective counter to fiber-optic-guided drones, the Times of Israel noted, for reasons we have frequently reported. Fiber optic cables mitigate the effect of electronic warfare efforts to jam radio signals as well as some of the limitations imposed by geographical features that can impede the line-of-sight radio connection between drone and operator.

“The IDF initially assessed that Hezbollah’s fiber optic drones could only operate over a few kilometers,” the outlet stated. “Later, the military discovered launches occurring from distances of up to 15 kilometers (nine miles).”

“The gap was underscored on April 11, when the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development issued a public call for solutions to the threat — nearly two years after such systems first surfaced in Ukraine, and weeks into the current conflict with Hezbollah,” according to the Times of Israel. “The Defense Ministry is seeking additional capabilities to address this threat. The purpose of this request is to identify innovative and mature technologies.”

⚡️🇮🇱🇱🇧Times of Israel: Sunday’s Hezbollah drone attack in Taybeh, which killed Sgt. Idan Fooks and wounded six others, has exposed the IDF’s lack of preparedness for first‑person view (FPV) drones, particularly those guided by fibre‑optic cables which are immune to electronic…

— War Monitor (@monitor11616) April 28, 2026

It’s unclear how widespread the use of netting is currently by the IDF in southern Lebanon.

“The issue of drones carrying fiber-optic cables is currently a threat without a clear solution,” a high-ranking IDF official, who just returned from Lebanon, told us. “What’s been shown in the video seems more like an experimental concept rather than something that is already operational in the field.”

“In practice, forces are using various improvised solutions—fishing nets, camouflage nets, even soccer nets, along with drills involving small-arms fire at drones,” he added. “However, I personally haven’t seen the specific net system mentioned being used on the ground yet.”

The official said someone from the IDF’s ground forces research and development team told him that the conclusion in the military is that “this solution is highly problematic. It allows the lower parts of the vehicle to remain exposed, areas that the net doesn’t cover. The likely next step for the adversary would be to detonate the drone at a distance from the net, causing shrapnel to disperse toward the forces.”

In a post on X Tuesday, Israeli military journalist Doron Kadosh said the issue of how to deal with Hezbollah FPV drones “took up significant volume in [Monday]’s discussion at the IDF’s senior command forum at Ramat David. The commander of the 282nd Artillery Brigade, which is currently fighting in Lebanon, Col. G., told the commanders: ‘The drone threat is a significant operational challenge that we’re dealing with. We need to think about how to organize better against this threat.’”

IDF combat unit commanders fighting in Lebanon “now express great frustration with the drone threat and the few tools the IDF has to counter them,” Kadosh added. “‘There’s not much you can do about it,’ says a commander currently fighting in Lebanon. The briefing the forces receive boils down to— ‘Stay alert, and if you spot a drone—shoot at it.’”

Some IDF units “have already begun developing independent responses to the threat—for example, nets deployed over positions, houses, and windows—so that the drone gets caught in the net and doesn’t hit its target,” Kadosh continued. “This is an improvised response; we’ve started deploying it with some of the forces, but it’s far from sufficient,” an officer currently fighting in Lebanon told the reporter. This would follow exactly what we saw in Ukraine, as both sides looked to improvised forms of protection from incoming drones, leading to rapid experimentation and many dead ends.

הבוקר אצל @efitriger:

איום רחפני הנפץ שמאתגר את כוחות צה״ל בדרום לבנון בשורת התקפות יומיומיות של חזבאללה:

הסוגיה תפסה נפח משמעותי גם בדיון פורום הפיקוד הבכיר של צה״ל אתמול ברמת דוד. מפקד חטיבת התותחנים 282 שנלחמת כעת בלבנון, אל״ם ע׳, אמר למפקדים: ״איום הרחפנים הוא אתגר מבצעי… pic.twitter.com/jiSGrSEBGH

— דורון קדוש | Doron Kadosh (@Doron_Kadosh) April 28, 2026

Despite the limitations, this netting has become fairly common in Ukraine, with both sides using netting over vehicles, buildings and miles and miles of roadway to provide safer corridors of travel.

About anti-FPV road net tunnels:

“Thousands of kilometers of equipped anti-drone corridors block the main logistical routes all the way to the forward positions
The goal is to ensure security up to a depth of 100 km from the contact line.”
6/ https://t.co/Avipifv6Fr pic.twitter.com/ES7gq20lln

— Roy🇨🇦 (@GrandpaRoy2) April 29, 2026

As we noted in our last piece on the growing FPV threat to Israeli forces, active protection systems (APS) on armored vehicles are being adapted to provide hard-kill counter-drone protection. These systems use sensors to detect incoming rocket-propelled grenades, missiles, and other projectiles, and fire projectiles to hit them before they strike the vehicle. Israel is a major pioneer in the APS space, with systems being deployed for decades, but just how soon it can upgrade existing systems, such as Iron Fist, for this application isn’t clear. Also, this doesn’t help many lighter vehicles that do not have APS capabilities. Still, it is one bright spot of hope of creating a defense against fiber optic FPVs, at least for lower volume attacks, although these are also very costly systems.

Iron Fist APS | Active Protection System for Armored Vehicles

Regardless, we are likely to see more Israeli vehicles equipped with nets and other forms of passive protection in the coming days, and likely more advanced countermeasures if the war grinds on for a prolonged period.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Ukraine has targeted a major Russian oil refinery in the Black Sea port city of Tuapse for the third time in less than two weeks, setting off a fresh blaze and prompting authorities to evacuate local residents.

April 27 (UPI) — A 5-year-old girl who went missing from a central Australian Indigenous community over the weekend was abducted, authorities said Monday, as they search for a 47-year-old man who they believe may be connected.

Sharon Granites was reported missing from her residence in Old Timers, an Aboriginal town camp in Alice Springs, located in Australia’s Northern Territory, at about 1:35 a.m. local time Sunday, according to a statement from the Northern Territory Police Force.

She was last seen at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday wearing a dark blue short-sleeve T-shirt with white stripes around the neck and sleeve hemlines and a pair of black boxer-style underwear.

Northern Territory Police Acting Commander Mark Grieve told reporters at a press conference that they believe Sharon was abducted and that officers are seeking to speak with Jefferson Lewis, “who may be able to provide us with some information in regards to that.”

Grieve said Lewis had been in and around Sharon’s residence on Saturday, is one of the few people who were in Old Timers who have not made themselves known to police and is believed to have gone missing at around the same time as the little girl.

Grieve stopped short of accusing Lewis of being involved in Sharon’s disappearance, saying police wanted to speak with him because he and Sharon appeared to have disappeared around the same time.

“Considering himself and Sharon went missing at around about the same time, it certainly brings about those suspicious circumstances and we’d like to speak to him about that,” he said.

Lewis was recently released from prison and has a criminal history that includes physical assault and domestic violence, Grieve said, adding that no offenses were related to child endangerment.

Drones, dogs, horses, ATVs, motorcycles and ground patrols were among the assets police deployed in the search for Sharon, he said, stating they are calling on members of the public with information on either Sharon or Lewis’ location to contact authorities immediately.

“Obviously, it’s a terrible situation to have such a young child go missing,” he said. “We’re just over 24 hours now, so it would certainly be my worst nightmare as a parent.”

Leonardo DRS has for the first time shown its Maritime-Mission Equipment Package (M-MEP) integrated on an autonomous unmanned surface vessel (AUSV). The M-MEP is a platform-agnostic suite of systems that are collectively designed to protect vessels from attacks involving single or multiple small to medium-sized unmanned aerial systems (UAS). M-MEP was demonstrated on a Sea Machines Stormrunner USV at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2026 trade event just outside Washington D.C.

Leonardo DRS has adapted its range of ground-based Counter-UAS (C-UAS) systems for sea-based operations under the M-MEP project. The modular design, coupled with an open system architecture, allows for the integration of multiple kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, software-definable sensors, and communication packages. Leonardo DRS says this flexibility ensures that the M-MEPs remain platform-agnostic, capable of being configured across a range of small-to-large USVs of varying sizes from 14 feet in length. The C-UAS sensors and effectors are designed to complement existing naval capabilities.

The M-MEP system utilizes active and passive radars and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) systems, with situational awareness facilitated through real-time data processing and threat assessment, enabling faster decision-making and response. Leonardo DRS says that M-MEP employs a range of non-kinetic electronic warfare systems for the active disruption and neutralization of UAS guidance systems, while integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is intended to help predict and mitigate emerging threats.

TWZ‘s Jamie Hunter spoke with Bo Mancuso from Leonardo DRS about the M-MEP program.

SAS Leonardo DRS v1 for review

Ukraine’s Shahed-killing Antonov An-28 Cash twin-turboprop utility aircraft are now air-launching interceptor drones to provide another means of defeating their targets. This is among the latest developments in Ukraine’s battle against Russian long-range one-way attack drones, one that has seen each side introduce new technologies and countermeasures in what has become one of the fastest-moving aspects of the conflict.

⚡️The legendary civilian Ukrainian An-28, modified into a “Shahed hunter” with over 150 confirmed kills, has now been adapted to launch interceptor drones in flight. pic.twitter.com/aAv3by9gLA

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 23, 2026

The video of the An-28 armed with interceptor drones was apparently first published by Ukrainian pilot and volunteer Tymur Fatkullin, who has previously documented other extemporized aviation initiatives, including using the six-barrel Gatling-type M134 Minigun to blast Russian drones out of the air.

In this new iteration, the An-28 has underwing hardpoints mounting two types of Ukrainian-made interceptor drones, the SkyFall P1-Sun and the Merops AS-3 Surveyor. Earlier this month, we wrote about how the Merops drones have been effectively used by the U.S. military to counter Iranian Shahed attacks in the Middle East.

Alongside the video, Fatkullin provided the following account:

“Aircraft-launched P1-Sun interceptor against hostile Shaheds. This method has already proven effective in real combat conditions. We have also tested several other interceptor drones during training flights. You could call it a cheap air-to-air missile.”

Fatkullin also added that, at this point, the An-28 has additionally brought down 222 Russian drones using gun armament.

A passenger An-28 aircraft armed with miniguns is shooting down Russian drones over Ukraine, French TF1 got an inside. The crew consists of civilian volunteers who have already destroyed nearly 150 drones during air defense missions. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/x1E921TPT2

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) February 5, 2026

As we have previously reported, Ukraine has been successfully using several locally produced drones to counter Russian Shaheds for some time now.

Both the P1-Sun and the AS-3 Surveyor are small, relatively inexpensive drones built specifically to zip through the skies and intercept long-range one-way attack drones.

In the case of the P1-Sun, this uses a modular, 3D-printed airframe, can operate at altitudes up to 16,400 feet (5,000 meters), and reach speeds of up to 280 miles per hour (450 km/h). This is sufficient to intercept jet-powered drones such as the Russian Geran-3, under some circumstances.

Meanwhile, the AS-3 Surveyor is a somewhat more expensive and more capable option, intended for use against higher-end threats. These interceptors can operate autonomously or be remotely piloted and are equipped with onboard sensors for target tracking. The interceptor carries an explosive warhead and destroys targets either through a direct collision or a proximity detonation.

A video shows the AS-3 Surveyor during a live-fire demonstration in Poland in November 2025:

A new system to identify and take down Russian drones is deployed to NATO’s eastern flank

According to the U.S. Army, a single example of the Merops-made drone costs around $15,000, with the potential to reduce this to between $3,000 and $5,000 if production is scaled up. This compares with the estimated cost of between $30,000 and $50,000 for a Shahed. Provided the interceptor drones are effective, the economic case is a very compelling one.

Having interceptor drones launched from aircraft provides a number of advantages. The An-28 is able to bring the interceptor drone closer to the target and to use its own sensors to help locate these. As we have reported in the past, the An-28 crew initially relies on air traffic controllers to guide them to the area where drones are known to be flying. One of the crew is a ‘camera operator,’ monitoring a feed from an infrared camera. Members of the crew are also provided with night-vision goggles (NVGs) for spotting the mainly nocturnal drones.

The turboprop also offers significant loiter time for standing anti-drone patrols, which can be set up as a screen where they are most advantageous. At the same time, having the drone launched from the air reduces the response time. Launching from height gives the interceptor drone additional altitude and range.

There is also the benefit of having a choice of weapons (different types of drones, guns, and potentially also rockets) to respond to various drone threats.

Furthermore, the An-28’s short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability makes it ideal for operating in and out of shorter and more austere airstrips, of the kind that Ukraine makes extensive use of in the conflict with Russia.

This threat is only set to grow. Russia, as we have previously noted, now manufactures Shahed/Geran drones at the rate of 2,000 per month and has announced plans to nearly triple that.

Already, interceptor drones have established themselves as a much more cost-effective option compared to surface-to-air missile interceptors like the Patriot system, and even cheaper, less advanced missiles when it comes to countering Shahed-type drones. Although these drones lack the payload and range of high-end munitions, they can be deployed in large numbers, allowing them to cover broad areas. This, in turn, helps preserve the limited supply of more sophisticated interceptors and reverses the unfavorable cost dynamic between targets and defensive systems. Even so, such solutions are most effective when integrated into a layered defense, particularly for protecting high-value sites and critical infrastructure.

The small size of interceptor drones also makes them suitable for arming lighter aircraft, crewed and uncrewed. Ukraine already makes use of ‘mothership’ drones, while helicopters and even gun-armed Yakovlev Yak-52 prop trainers, also used to hunt drones, could potentially carry them under their wings. Already, light aircraft and helicopters are said to be responsible for downing between 10 and 12 percent of all drones claimed by Ukrainian air defenses of all kinds.

Inside the Cockpit of Ukraine’s Secretive Unit Hunting Russian Drones | WSJ News

It isn’t hard to see how this concept could be rapidly evolved and executed even more effectively and efficiently with better technology. For instance, having MQ-9 Reapers loaded with these drones and equipped with air-to-air radar would allow for a long-range, long-endurance picket aircraft of sorts. In the context of the war in the Middle East, parking these between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, over the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, could go a long way to stopping incoming Shahed-136 and other one-way attack drones at a tiny fraction of the cost of surface-to-air missiles.

Arming crewed aircraft with interceptor drones is the latest expression of Ukraine’s fast-developing counter-drone arsenal. If it proves successful, we will likely see its wider adoption. After all, anything that helps change the calculus for Ukraine in the drone war is likely to be enthusiastically adopted.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

April 23 (UPI) — As tensions simmer across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan is quietly accelerating a shift toward drone-centric defense.

The nation is betting that swarms of low-cost, domestically produced systems can help offset the numerical and industrial advantages of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy and its expanding network of maritime auxiliaries.

This approach reflects a broader recalibration in Taipei — a move away from expensive, vulnerable platforms toward distributed, resilient and scalable capabilities designed to complicate any attempt at invasion or blockade.

At its core lies a simple calculation. In a high-intensity Indo-Pacific conflict, quantity, adaptability and survivability may matter more than traditional firepower.

From platforms to swarms

Taiwan’s embrace of drones is rooted in the concept of asymmetric warfare. Rather than matching China ship-for-ship or missile-for-missile, Taipei is investing in systems that can be mass-produced, dispersed and rapidly replaced.

“It’s not really about ‘swarms’ yet — it’s about mass. Large volumes of drones used in salvos to overwhelm defenses and increase the probability of a successful strike,” said Molly Campbell, analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.

Government plans call for the procurement of up to 200,000 drones over the coming decade, spanning aerial, maritime and hybrid platforms in what officials describe as a whole-of-society approach to resilience.

These include a broad mix of air (UAV), surface (USV) and underwater (UUV) drones, designed to operate in contested littoral environments.

The objective is clear: saturate defenses, disrupt amphibious operations and raise the cost of any Chinese military action.

“What Taiwan is trying to do is shift from heavy, high-end defense platforms to a more dispersed and resilient model,” Simona Alba Grano, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told UPI.

In Taiwan’s case, where the goal is not to defeat China outright, but to make any invasion “extremely costly and uncertain,” such systems fit squarely within a broader denial strategy.

Lessons from Ukraine — with limits

Taiwan’s drone push has been influenced by Ukraine’s battlefield innovations, where low-cost unmanned systems have reshaped modern warfare.

Ukraine’s use of maritime drones in the Black Sea, striking high-value naval targets with relatively inexpensive systems, provides a compelling reference point. It has also highlighted the importance of rapid iteration, short development cycles and close integration between operators and industry.

Taiwanese companies have begun engaging with this ecosystem, supplying components and spare parts to Ukrainian operators and seeking to gain exposure to combat-driven innovation.

Yet, the analogy has limits.

The Taiwan Strait presents a far more demanding operational environment as it is wider, more exposed and subject to extreme weather conditions. Systems must operate over longer distances, carry heavier payloads and withstand harsher maritime conditions.

At the same time, Ukraine’s drone ecosystem is shaped by continuous battlefield validation, giving its manufacturers a level of operational credibility that remains difficult to replicate elsewhere.

Advances in unmanned systems, including long-range platforms and “mothership” concepts, also are eroding the Taiwan Strait’s traditional role as a natural buffer, increasing the tempo of gray-zone interactions.

Ukraine has demonstrated what is possible. Taiwan must now determine what is adaptable to its own operational environment.

Industrial ambition meets resistance

Taiwan’s challenge is no longer strategic clarity, but execution on the ground. The gap between planning and implementation, particularly in scaling capabilities and coordinating across agencies, now defines the island’s defense posture.

“Ukraine’s drone production is on a completely different scale. It’s nowhere near comparable to what Taiwan is currently able to produce, ” Campbell said.

Authorities have signaled openness to integrating foreign expertise, pursuing joint production and accelerating domestic manufacturing. Yet, progress has been uneven.

Industry insiders point to reluctance among local manufacturers to share market opportunities within a rapidly expanding defense budget. This has constrained collaboration both domestically and internationally, slowing efforts to build a more integrated ecosystem.

This dynamic is particularly visible in Taiwan’s interactions with Ukraine. Despite Kyiv’s operational experience and willingness to cooperate, Taiwanese firms have at times resisted incorporating Ukrainian know-how into their platforms, limiting co-development opportunities.

At the same time, Taiwanese companies have sought to market their own systems abroad, often with limited success in operationally mature environments. The result is a mismatch between industrial ambition and battlefield credibility in a highly competitive, experience-driven sector.

The fragmentation of Taiwan’s drone ecosystem comes at a critical moment, when speed, scale and integration are essential.

Cutting the China supply chain

Another pillar of Taiwan’s strategy is reducing reliance on Chinese components, long a structural vulnerability in the global drone industry.

“Taiwan is making a concerted effort to eliminate Chinese components from its drone supply chain to reduce dependence and mitigate security risks, said Ava Shen, an analyst at the Eurasia Group.

Taipei is working with international partners, particularly the United States, to develop a secure, China-free supply chain for unmanned systems. This effort is now backed by policy initiatives in Washington, where bipartisan legislation seeks to expand joint drone production and strengthen industrial resilience between the two partners.

The objective is not only to secure supply chains, but also to align production ecosystems in ways that enhance interoperability and long-term sustainability.

However, decoupling comes with trade-offs. Eliminating Chinese components increases production costs, extends timelines and complicates scaling. These constraints risk slowing deployment at a moment when speed is critical.

Meanwhile, China continues to expand its own unmanned capabilities, including drone swarms, electronic warfare systems and the conversion of legacy platforms into remotely operated assets. The scale of its industrial base and the integration of civilian and military sectors present a formidable challenge.

If Taiwan’s approach emphasizes agility and innovation, China’s rests on mass, coordination and systemic depth.

Southeast Asia as regional test bed

Beyond Taiwan, Southeast Asia, particularly along the South China Sea littoral, is emerging as a practical testing ground for unmanned systems.

The United States has expanded drone support to regional partners, providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms such as the ScanEagle, RQ-20 Puma and Skydio X10 UAVs to countries including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. These systems are primarily used to enhance maritime awareness in contested areas.

The Philippines, under sustained pressure from Beijing, has become a focal point. The United States has deployed MQ-9A Reaper for extended surveillance missions and introduced maritime drones, such as the Devil Ray T-38.

Together, these deployments are turning parts of Southeast Asia into a real-world environment for testing unmanned concepts short of conflict, particularly in maritime surveillance and denial.

China has also deployed uncrewed surface vehicles such as the Sea Wing and Wave Glider types, many of which have been lost or recovered by fishermen and coast guards, in the South China Sea as well as in the Java Sea, highlighting both the spread and the fragility of these systems in contested waters.

Deterrence, escalation and uncertainty

Drones offer Taiwan a pathway to strengthen deterrence by denial, increasing the cost, complexity and uncertainty of any military action. But they also introduce new risks.

The proliferation of low-cost systems may lower the threshold for escalation, especially in ambiguous encounters involving coast guard or maritime militia vessels. What begins as signaling or harassment could escalate more rapidly in an environment saturated with autonomous or semi-autonomous platforms.

Moreover, drone networks depend heavily on communications, data links and supply chains – all of which are vulnerable to disruption through cyber operations or electronic warfare.

Race against time

For Taiwan, the shift toward drone-centric defense is both an opportunity and a race against time.

Drones offer a scalable and cost-effective means of offsetting China’s advantages. But success depends on overcoming internal fragmentation, accelerating production and adapting technologies to local operational realities.

The central question is no longer whether drones will shape the balance in the Taiwan Strait, but whether Taiwan can scale and integrate them fast enough to make deterrence credible.

As China continues to refine its own capabilities, the balance in the Strait may increasingly hinge on a simple but decisive factor: which side can deploy, adapt and sustain unmanned systems at scale.

April 21 (UPI) — Iran on Tuesday demanded the United States release the Iranian-flagged container ship the U.S. military seized over the weekend, threatening to use “all its capacities” to defend itself as the cease-fire neared its end.

The U.S. military seized Touska on Sunday as it enforced a military blockade of Iranian ports and ships, raising already high tensions during a two-week cease-fire rapidly nearing its end that negotiators from both countries are to use to secure an end to the war.

U.S. warships intercepted Touska transiting the north Arabian Sea en route to Iran’s Bandar Abbas port city for allegedly violating the blockade.

Iran responded with accusations of violating the cease-fire and drone strikes targeting U.S. military vessels, according to state-run media, though U.S. Central Command has yet to comment.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday condemned the seizure of Touska as an “unlawful and savage act of the terrorist U.S. army,” saying the “act of maritime banditry and terrorism” terrified the ship’s passengers and crew, some of whose family members were onboard.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, while warning of the very dangerous consequences of this unlawful and criminal act by the United States, emphasizes the immediate release of the Iranian vessel, its passengers, its crew and its families,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said the seizure is a violation of international and the fundamental principles and rules of the U.N. Charter, and that it had informed the U.N. secretary general, the Security Council and maritime organizations.

“There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran will use all its capacities to defend Iran’s national interests and security and to safeguard the rights and dignity of its citizens,” the ministry statement said.

“It is obvious that full responsibility for the further complication of the situation in the region lies with the United States.”

The cease-fire is to end at midnight Tuesday.

Iran has accused Trump of ducking real negotiations on ending the war in favor of trying to exert the United States’ economic and military might to force it to capitulate.

“Trump, by imposing a blockade and violating the cease-fire, wants — in his view — to turn the negotiating table into a table of surrender, or else justify starting the war again,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said late Monday in a statement.

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and over thee past two weeks we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield.”

Trump has continued to boast online that he was “winning” the war while defending himself from criticism and vowing the deal his administration is working on with Iran will be “FAR BETTER” than the landmark multinational Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action the United States, Iran and several other countries signed during the Obama administration.

“If a deal happens under ‘TRUMP,’ it will guarantee Peace, Security and Safety, not only for Israel and the Middle East, but for Europe, America and Everywhere else,” he said on his Truth Social media platform.

“It will be something that the entire World will be proud of, instead of the years of Embarrassment and Humiliation that we have been forced to suffer due to incompetent and cowardly leadership!”

Turkey, Iran’s neighbor and U.S. ally, has been among nations working to de-escalate tensions in the Gulf and seek an extension to the cease-fire as negotiations appear to be at a stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program.

Though public rhetoric is fiery, negotiations behind closed doors are progressing, Ankara’s foreign affairs minister, Hakan Fidan, said Sunday during a forum in southeastern Turkey’s Antalya.

“The good thing is this: both sides continue to negotiate with a very serious intention, sincerely, they have the will to continue,” Fidan said.

“Now, no one wants a new war to start again with the end of the cease-fire next week.”

Turkey hopes that under international pressure, the United States, Israel and Iran will extend the cease-fire to solve outstanding issues, he said.

“A two-week period is good for a cease-fire, but the file in front of them is so comprehensive that it will not be possible to solve all these issues in two weeks,” he said.

“Therefore, a new extension will be needed. I hope this extension will come. I am optimistic about that.”

April 20 (UPI) — The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Blue Origin‘s New Glenn rocket after it botched the release of a satellite following its successful launch two hours earlier.

The third launch of New Glenn and second landing of its reusable booster stage “Never Tell Me The Odds” on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean was a success in those terms, but the spacecraft delivered AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to an orbit too low for it to operate properly.

Blue Origin said Monday that it is leading an investigation into one of New Glenn’s engines producing insufficient thrust to reach the mission’s target orbit.

“While we were pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post on X.

The FAA, NASA, the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Space Force also have been monitoring the situation and will require Blue Origin to complete its investigation and report on the engine anomaly, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

“A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the FAA said in explaining why it grounded the rocket.

The New Glenn-3 rocket launched around 7:30 a.m. EDT on Sunday morning, nailing the flight and landing portion of its mission, and successfully released the BlueBird 7 satellite once it reached orbit.

Because one of the two BE-3U engines that power New Glenn’s upper stage didn’t produce sufficient thrust on its second engine burn, which is meant to boost the spacecraft to its target orbit above Earth, it never got there.

Although the satellite was released and powered on properly, the off-nominal orbit — which was too low for it to be useful — AST said it would be jettisoned.

BlueBird 7 is one of 45 satellites that AST SpaceMobile hopes to get in orbit by the end of 2026 as part of a satellite-based cellular network designed to operate with standard smartphones.

The satellite would have been the companies eighth to reach orbit, and it’s share price Feller by more than 6% on Monday, The BBC reported.

Limp said Blue Origin is analyzing data as it conducts the investigation and is “in steady communication with the team at AST SpaceMobile.”

“We appreciate their partnership, and we’re looking forward to many flights together,” Limp said.