Fury

Dana White has credited Eddie Hearn for making sure the long-awaited fight between Tyson Fury and Antony Joshua will be held in the UK but insisted he was “bored” of their ongoing feud.

The heavyweight bout will take place at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff – despite efforts to host it New York’s Madison Square Garden – on a bill that starts on 11 December, though they are not expected to fight until the early hours of 12 December.

White and Saudi Arabian organisers wanted the bout in the United States, but Joshua and his promoter Hearn refused to budge on their contractual right to have it in the UK.

“You’ve got to give credit to Eddie for really grinding that and making sure that it happened in the UK,” UFC president and Zuffa Boxing chief White told Steve Bunce on the 5 Live Boxing with Bunce podcast.

However, there had been doubts over the contest because of a dispute over the role of White in the promotion of the event.

The fight, which will be shown on Netflix, has been presented as a collaboration between Saudi boxing powerbroker Turki Alalshikh’s The Ring and White.

Hearn has been publicly feuding with White since the launch of Zuffa Boxing earlier this year and said his involvement in the fight “ain’t happening”.

But, Fury and Joshua held a news conference on 30 September, to ease concerns over their fight.

Tickets for Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua’s fight at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium have sold out in just one hour.

Fury and Joshua will meet on a bill that begins on 11 December but they are not expected to fight until the early hours of 12 December.

The highest-priced tickets were available at £13,128, including booking fees, with the lowest at £88.50.

The all-British heavyweight contest, which will be broadcast globally on Netflix, was announced in September and around 80,000 tickets went on sale at 12:00 BST on Friday.

Just minutes after the tickets went on sale more than 500,000 people were waiting in the online queue.

Tickets quickly began emerging on resale websites, with ringside VIP seats being advertised for £73,645, while upper tier seats were available for £425.

Ringwalks are expected to start around 01:00 GMT on Saturday 12 December, following a short live music performance, and the stadium will remain open until 03:30.

The event is being promoted as a collaboration between Saudi boxing powerbroker Turki Alalshikh’s The Ring and UFC chief Dana White.

Organisers are yet to confirm any of the undercard fights.

The volume of munitions expended in the course of U.S. operations against Iran this year has been and continues to be a hot topic of discussion, and there has been relatively little official data provided on this front. However, now we know that the F/A-18F Super Hornets of the U.S. Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41), the “Black Aces,” launched 421 missiles and bombs during their time supporting Operation Epic Fury.

This new insight into VFA-41’s role in the conflict with Iran comes from a photo of a large board listing the squadron’s weapons expenditures during Epic Fury, via Jeff Rojas, who goes by the handle @jro_photography on Instagram. Rojas also shared pictures recently taken of VFA-41’s Super Hornets. The Black Aces were one of the squadrons assigned to the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been on a marathon deployment since last year. The carrier only left the Middle East region last month and is now set to formally return home to San Diego, California, within days. Per the Pentagon’s official timeline, Operation Epic Fury began on February 28 and concluded on May 5, though U.S. forces have continued to conduct strikes on Iran, on and off, since then.

The complete tally of munitions employed as shown on the board, broken down by type, from greatest to fewest, is as follows:

The total cost of all of these munitions, using available data from U.S. military budget documents, is very roughly $43,646,000, at least. Unit costs fluctuate regularly due to a variety of factors. Furthermore, the exact price tag for different JDAMs can be somewhat difficult to calculate given how the individual components are budgeted.

The JDAM is really a family of kits that turn standard unguided ‘iron bombs,’ which can vary significantly in the kinds of effects they are designed to produce, into warheads for precision-guided munitions. This is exemplified by the (V)2 and (V)4 subvariants of the GBU-31/B mentioned here, which are built using standard high-explosive and bunker-buster bombs, respectively. No specific subvariants of the GBU-32, GBU-38, or GBU-54 were mentioned in the information provided. Standard JDAMs can also only be employed against static target coordinates. The LJDAM kits add a laser guidance component (akin to what is found on Paveway-series bombs) that enables strikes against moving targets.

No specific version of AGM-154 is mentioned, either, but the C and C-1 types, which have multi-stage bunker-busting warheads, are the only ones understood to be in service today. Remaining A variants, which were loaded with 145 small bomblets, were removed from U.S. service in 2008 as a result of new guidelines on cluster munitions issued under President George W. Bush. A planned AGM-154B, which would have contained six “smart” Sensor Fuzed Munition bomblets, was never produced. You can read more about the full JSOW family here.

We do not know exactly what targets any of these munitions were employed against. However, a picture that Jeff Rojas grabbed of one of VFA-41’s Super Hornets, seen toward the top of this story and in part below, shows a very interesting broken submarine kill marking, with the added text “Sub Buster.” The jet also has a number of more typical bomb-shaped kill marks.

Iranian naval vessels, including the country’s Russian-made Kilo class and other submarines, were top priority targets during Epic Fury. The U.S. military has previously confirmed that air-launched AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles (likely fired from MQ-9 Reaper drones) and ground-launched Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles were employed against submarines, specifically.

The video montage in the social media post below includes a clip, starting at 0:13 in the runtime, of a Hellfire missile hitting what looks to be a Ghadir class diesel-electric midget submarine in port.

U.S. forces are degrading the Iranian regime’s ability to project power at sea and harass international shipping. For years, Iranian forces have threatened freedom of navigation in waters essential to American, regional and global security and prosperity. pic.twitter.com/gIBN02mowh

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 10, 2026

Bunker-busting JDAMs are also known to have been key munitions employed during strikes on targets in Iran during Epic Fury. TWZ previously called explicit attention to the employment of JSOW in the opening phases of the operation, as well. Navy strike fighter squadrons made significant use of SLAM-ERs in strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen last year, too.

It is extremely likely that the AIM-9Xs and AIM-120s were fired at Iranian drones, though they could have been launched at incoming cruise missiles, as well. At the time of writing, there are no known or reported instances of U.S. military jets engaging crewed Iranian aircraft in the course of the conflict to date. In 2024, the Navy carried out a crash program that increased the total number of AIM-9Xs that F/A-18E/Fs could carry per sortie, specifically in response to Houthi drone threats. Super Hornets loaded with nine air-to-air missiles are now referred to as “Murder Hornets.”

Notably absent in VFA-41’s tally is any mention of 70mm laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets. Air-to-air optimized versions of the APKWS II are now part of the arsenal available to U.S. Air Force F-16C Vipers, F-15E Strike Eagles, and A-10 Warthogs, and have become the service’s go-to aerial weapon for engaging drones. In February, the U.S. Marine Corps disclosed that it was working to integrate this capability onto its legacy F/A-18C/D Hornets. Whether the Navy has any such plans for the Super Hornet is unclear.

It is also important to remember that this is a discussion of the munitions expended by just one Navy strike fighter squadron. Lincoln‘s air wing includes four strike squadrons, three with Super Hornets and one with F-35Cs, as well as units flying other types of aircraft and helicopters. The carrier was just one part of a much larger array of air, naval, and ground forces that participated in Operation Epic Fury and subsequent operations against Iran. For additional context, consider that the entire Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, including its entire air wing and escorting ships, fired off 770 munitions in total, by the official count, during very active combat operations in and around the Red Sea between November 2023 and June 2024.

All of this speaks to the larger matter of how many munitions the U.S. military has expended in the course of operations against Iran this year, which is now fueling concerns about the sufficiency of remaining stockpiles and what it will take to replenish them.

As such, the tally of munitions launched from VFA-41 Super Hornets offers a very interesting view into that squadron’s contributions to Operation Epic Fury, as well as the full scale and scope of the conflict with Iran.

Special thanks again to Jeff Rojas for sharing the details about VFA-41’s participation in Operation Epic Fury and his pictures with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

When Tyson Fury was asked whether his fight against Anthony Joshua had come too late for both boxers, the Gypsy King responded: “Is it too late?… It’s the icing on the cake of two great careers.”

Former heavyweight world champions Fury and ⁠⁠Joshua came face to face ⁠⁠in London on Wednesday to allay months-long fears and rumours surrounding their long-awaited fight, which has been confirmed for December 11 in Cardiff.

The British boxing stars are 38 and 36 years old, respectively, and have kept the boxing world waiting for years.

For many fans, why it took so long to agree on a fight is almost as big a question as who will win.

Neither boxer wanted to take the hit for delaying the biggest fight in British boxing history when they appeared in front of the media in London. Fury blamed Joshua, despite reports stating Joshua insisted the fight take place in the United Kingdom for the sake of home fans.

“You’ve been crying behind the scenes to get out of this fight,” Fury said. “I’ve checkmated you. You have to fight. I’ve said I’ll fight anywhere.”

But is the Gypsy King right? Can Fury vs Joshua live up to more than 10 years of hype?

Al Jazeera Sport breaks it down:

Ten years of near misses

Joshua and Fury are prizefighters who decide their destiny in the ring, but outside of it, their promoters negotiate contracts, choose venues and make calls on top billing.

The history goes back 10 years and is full of near misses, contractual problems and other fighters entering the fray.

It all started in 2020, when the two camps agreed to a two-fight deal. A year later, contracts were signed for an undisputed heavyweight showdown. However, Deontay Wilder, an American former world heavyweight champion, won an arbitration case that forced Fury into a trilogy fight in 2021.

In 2022, Joshua reportedly accepted a 60-40 purse split in Fury’s favour, but that deal collapsed too. During this period, unbeaten Ukrainian heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk defeated Joshua twice and proceeded to beat Fury twice as well.

All this while, Fury vs Joshua failed to materialise.

Eddie Hearn vs Dana White

Online streaming platform Netflix, which holds global rights to the fight, has billed it as a collaboration between Saudi sports powerbroker Turki Alshikh’s The Ring magazine and Dana White, the owner of mixed martial arts promotion UFC.

Neither Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, nor Fury’s, Frank Warren, was named when talks of the fight resurfaced earlier this year.

Alshikh and White cofounded a boxing promotion, Zuffa Boxing, which was launched earlier this year and became a point of contention in the Joshua-Fury fight. Hearn was of the view that Joshua’s contract barred White and Zuffa’s parent company from any promotional role.

“Dana White cannot be involved with this fight promotion,” Hearn said recently.

However, Fury saw it differently and blamed Hearn for costing “the biggest fight in boxing history” in an Instagram post.

White was not seen at the London news conference, where fans booed his name.

A battle of egos

In boxing, the name that comes first on the poster usually signals the A-side, or the bigger fighter.

Joshua claimed he got a call asking whether he minded Fury’s name going first, because Fury was “unwilling to sign unless he does”.

Fury boasted: “I’m number one.”

There was also the issue of the fight venue and, specifically, the host country.

Joshua insisted he ensured it would happen in the UK, whereas White had pushed for it to be held at Madison Square Garden in New York.

“I know we are going to inspire this generation, and I know for a fact we are going to inspire the next generation,” Joshua said.

The niceties didn’t last long between the opponents as Fury claimed he would knock Joshua out.

“I’m going to catch him and, when I do, it’s going to be curtains,” Fury said.

Joshua welcomed the outburst and said: “This is the energy that we want.”

In the end, money got the deal over the line.

Reports in UK media say the fighters will share a $200m purse and will bag more than “any British fighter has earned in a fight ever”.

VENEZUELA FURY may have crashed out of the running in I’m A Celebrity . . . The Wild Frontier, but boxing champ TYSON’s teen daughter is still sitting pretty.

I can reveal the young entrepreneur aims to launch her own make-up and skincare line.

Plans are afoot for a firm called No Tomorrow, and ­Venezuela hopes to unveil the range next year as she makes the most of her growing ­profile.

She also has brilliant ­inspiration in her corner – her aunt Molly-Mae Hague.

Molly, who is engaged to Venezuela’s uncle Tommy, is now worth an estimated £20million thanks to years of hard graft in the fashion and beauty industries.

A source said: “Venezuela has just turned 17 so it’s a huge achievement to be launching her own business and she’s so excited.

“She has a top team behind her but the ideas are all hers.

“She wants to make her family proud.

“Having Molly-Mae and obviously her mum Paris as inspiration is a huge boost too.”

While details are still being worked out, it is likely that the No ­Tomorrow x Venezuela Fury range will include everything from make-up and skincare to fake tan and false eyelashes.

Venezuela celebrated her ­birthday yesterday while on ­holiday with husband Noah Price.

She earned the break after ­having a rough time ­filming Ant & Dec’s I’m A Celeb spin-off in the Canadian wilderness.

Venezuela and Noah, who ­married in May, quit just 72 hours into filming after she became unwell and started vomiting.

Viewers will be able to tune in to the new reality show when it airs next spring.

But we’ll be hearing a whole lot more from ­Venezuela before then, I’m sure.

Netflix and Saudi powerbroker Turki Alalshikh’s fight announcement was striking for who it included – and who it did not. The event was presented as a collaboration involving Alalshikh’s The Ring and White.

There was no mention of Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn, who has promoted Joshua throughout his professional career, or Queensberry’s Frank Warren, Fury’s long-time promoter.

White’s involvement was not entirely unexpected.

The Zuffa Boxing promoter has been saying for weeks he would be involved in Fury-Joshua.

Hearn has been equally adamant he would not. After Thursday’s announcement, Hearn said Joshua’s contract specifically prevented White and American sports entertainment company TKO from having a promotional role, claiming Netflix had not been made aware of that provision.

Hearn said there had been breaches of the agreement which needed to be resolved and cast doubt on whether Wednesday’s news conference would go ahead.

Fury says a similar restriction originally appeared in his own contract but was removed because he wanted White involved.

Warren has taken a more pragmatic position. Speaking to BBC Sport before the latest dispute escalated, he said his understanding was White had helped secure the Netflix deal and compromises had been necessary to get the fight made.

On Saturday, White was generally non-committal on the future of the contest but much clearer in his criticism of Hearn. “The guy who is supposed to be helping the fight has been hurting the fight,” White said. “He hasn’t done the fight any favours.”

Speaking to BBC Sport after the fight was announced, Fury’s promoter Frank Warren repeatedly returned to one word: compromise.

“Everybody’s got to make a compromise,” the Queensberry boss said. “Tyson really compromised. He didn’t dig his heels in.

“He said, ‘Fine, wherever they want it, I’ll do it. If they want me to go to New York, I’ll go. They want it in the UK, I just want to get the fight on.”

The fighters had already agreed to the contest but the venue was a sticking point.

Warren says Netflix wanted New York, while Joshua, 36, was determined to fight in Britain. Predictably, their camps disagree over who finally got it done.

Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn described the push to keep the fight in Britain as a “two-man crusade”.

“AJ has turned down money to keep it in the UK,” Hearn told the Matchroom YouTube channel. “I wouldn’t be able to look people in the eye if I was part of the movement to take this to the US.”

Hearn says Joshua had specifically requested protection for a UK fight in his contract and refused to relent.

“We were under so much pressure to fold,” he added. “It was only really the support of the British public that made Joshua stand 10 toes down and say no.”

Warren sees it differently.

He says Fury, 38, could have insisted on his own contractual position but instead accepted Britain to ensure the fight did not collapse.

Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury will contest their long-awaited all-British heavyweight fight at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on 11 December.

The bout, more than a decade in the making, will be broadcast globally on Netflix.

BBC Sport understands the main event could take place in the early hours of Saturday morning in the UK, with organisers considering a late start to cater for audiences in the United States.

Joshua and Fury will come face-to-face at a news conference in London on Wednesday, 30 September, as the build-up begins to one of the most anticipated fights in British boxing history.

“I am inspiring a generation,” Joshua, 36, posted on Instagram. Fury is yet to comment on the announcement.

The event is being promoted as a collaboration between Saudi boxing powerbroker Turki Alalshikh’s The Ring and UFC chief Dana White.

“Two of the best heavyweights of this generation, finally in the ring together,” Alalshikh said.

“This will be one of the biggest fights in boxing history. I am very happy to make this fight happen for the fans.”

The former two-time world champions had already signed contracts for the bout earlier this year, but the date and venue had yet to be confirmed.

London’s Wembley Stadium and New York’s Madison Square Garden were the frontrunners to stage the fight, but both presented issues before Cardiff recently emerged as an alternative.

The Principality Stadium has hosted late-night boxing before, including Joe Calzaghe’s fight with Mikkel Kessler in November 2007, which began at 01:00 GMT.

Welsh Rugby Union and Cardiff Council officials welcomed the fight, saying it would reinforce the city’s reputation for staging major events and could bring a significant economic boost, although some operational details still need to be finalised.

Joshua had been pushing for the fight to take place in the UK and has got his wish.

“Forever indebted to the UK public for their support of Anthony Joshua. We couldn’t have got this over the line without you,” his promoter Eddie Hearn said.

It is notable that White, who fronts Zuffa Boxing, is involved in the promotion.

“For more than a decade, boxing fans have been clamouring for the heavyweight showdown between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. Together, they bring 66 wins, 52 knockouts and multiple heavyweight world titles into the ring,” White said.

“On December 11, two of the biggest heavyweights of this generation finally collide – and the winner will take a significant place in heavyweight history.”

There was no official statement from Hearn or Fury’s promoter Frank Warren in the official news release sent by Netflix. Hearn had previously said he did not want White to be involved in promoting the fight.

Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) has already flown in formation alongside F-35 fighters during U.S. Air Force testing, company executives have revealed, offering the clearest indication yet that live manned-unmanned teaming work with the fifth-generation fighter is underway.

The disclosure came during a briefing by Anduril executives Jason Levin, senior vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, and Erin Simpson, vice president for Strategy for Air Dominance and Strike, at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending. The executives said the Fury flew alongside F-35s during a July exercise conducted with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. You can read more about that event in our past reporting here.

“We’ve already started flying in formation alongside crewed. I can even say fifth-gen fighters. F-35,” Levin said.

The testing is an important step toward the Air Force’s broader vision for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, in which relatively inexpensive autonomous aircraft are intended to operate alongside and support crewed fighters in contested airspace.

The executives stressed, however, that the F-35 was not yet controlling the Fury during those flights.

“But they’re not controlling it from the crewed fighter yet,” Levin said. “Not yet.”

Instead, the July testing involved Fury operating under its Mission Autonomy system while sharing airspace with crewed fighters, other CCAs, and other aircraft. Anduril says Air Force personnel were able to operate the autonomy system without Anduril personnel directly running the aircraft, although company personnel remained on site in a supporting role.

Lattice for Mission Autonomy: An Unfair Advantage for Unrivaled Deterrence

The company described the progression toward direct manned-unmanned teaming as a “crawl, run, build-up” process.

Anduril says it has already begun work on what it calls “quarterback integration,” referring to the ability for a crewed aircraft to direct or task autonomous aircraft. That work has been conducted in hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop environments as well as on the Fury itself.

“Most of those events will be coming up here in a matter of weeks or months,” Levin said when asked about the timeline for the first quarterback integration with Fury.

Asked whether those events would involve live flying, the answer was unequivocal: “Yes.”

Exactly how an F-35 would control Fury remains part of that ongoing development effort. The executives pointed to work involving integration of the appropriate human-machine interfaces, primarily including tablet-based control from the crewed fighter, at least at first.

The distinction between flying alongside an F-35 and being controlled by an F-35 is important. The former demonstrates that Fury’s aircraft and autonomy systems can operate safely in the same battlespace as a fifth-generation fighter. The latter would represent a much more significant demonstration of the operational concept behind CCAs: allowing a single crewed fighter to employ and manage additional autonomous aircraft as part of a larger force.

Anduril’s July testing went beyond simple formation flying. The company said Fury was conducting Mission Autonomy flights using live sensor data and was operating in airspace shared with crewed fighters and other CCAs. Air Force operators reportedly conducted both relatively basic route and pattern work and more representative tactical scenarios.

The Fury’s work with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit has progressed through two increasingly ambitious phases. During the first exercise in April at Edwards Air Force Base, Air Force personnel were trained to operate the aircraft and were able to launch and recover it using Anduril’s compact Menace-T setup, essentially a pair of ruggedized cases and a laptop rather than a conventional ground-control station.

By the second exercise, conducted at Creech in July, the Air Force had reduced the manpower and infrastructure required further. A single EOU operator could launch and recover the aircraft after only hours of training, while Air Force personnel independently operated Fury’s Mission Autonomy. The aircraft also flew in airspace shared with other CCAs, while the exercise demonstrated disaggregated operations and a rapid “hot reload” in which two operators replaced an AIM-120 AMRAAM with the engine running, reducing the turnaround between sorties to single-digit minutes.

The July exercise also included a live weapons demonstration that Anduril characterized as a complete end-to-end kill chain rather than simply a captive-carry or basic weapons-release test. The Fury launched from Edwards with a single operator and received a track generated by an external source over a beyond-line-of-sight connection. That track was ingested by Anduril’s Lattice AI-infused autonomy software system, after which the operator tasked the aircraft to engage. Fury then launched an AIM-120 AMRAAM and guided the weapon to the target. Anduril described the test as demonstrating the complete kill chain from offboard targeting information, through the aircraft’s mission systems and operator tasking, to an actual air-to-air weapons engagement.

On the weapons side, the production FQ-44 is being designed around four external hardpoints, allowing it to carry four AIM-120 AMRAAMs for the Air Force’s primary air-to-air mission set. Currently, the demonstration aircraft can carry two. Regardless, the company is also pursuing a much broader weapons portfolio for Fury. Executives said they have already begun integration and fit checks for 500-pound guided bombs, Small Diameter Bombs, low-cost cruise missiles — including Anduril’s Barracuda 500 offering — other air-to-air weapons, rocket pods and targeting pods. Those integrations are intended to give Fury options beyond air-to-air combat, including counter-drone, counter-cruise-missile and air-to-ground/air-surface strike missions. Anduril stressed that these are currently integration and engineering efforts rather than claims that all of those weapons have been flight-tested from Fury. The company also said additional sensors, such as a targeting pod, could be added for some of those missions.

The executives acknowledged that some of the more advanced tactical capabilities remain under development and are being explored extensively in simulation. Those efforts include areas such as sensor fusion, track discrimination and tactical engagements.

The ultimate objective is an aircraft that does not require a large ground-control infrastructure or a dedicated operator for every individual sortie. As previously noted, during the July exercise, Anduril says a single Air Force operator was able to launch and recover a Fury after only hours of training, while other Air Force personnel operated the aircraft’s Mission Autonomy functions.

That same exercise also demonstrated what Anduril described as “disaggregated operations,” with personnel at multiple locations able to operate the same aircraft. The concept is intended to support an Agile Combat Employment-style approach in which CCAs can be dispersed across multiple operating locations rather than relying on a single large ground footprint.

The company has since delivered a Fury aircraft to the Air Force’s EOU at Creech, making it the first CCA to be permanently delivered to the unit, according to Anduril. The service is now flying the aircraft multiple times a day with what the company said is a very limited Anduril presence.

Meanwhile, Anduril says assembly of Fury airframes has already begun at its Arsenal facility, with production aircraft expected to begin coming off the line early next year. The company says it has built the facility and supply chain around a potential production rate of 150 aircraft per year, although that figure is a planned capacity rather than an existing Air Force order. Anduril executives said the company has already advanced procurement of long-lead items and worked with its Tier 1, 2 and 3 suppliers to support that rate, while also examining additional production lines. They emphasized that the current Air Force pricing is based on a substantially lower annual buy than 150 aircraft, but said the Fury’s unit cost is well below $20 million at the quantities currently contemplated. The company also says the production line is designed for relatively rapid reconfiguration, allowing capacity to be shifted between products in weeks rather than the months or years associated with more traditional aircraft production facilities.

Earlier this year, the Air Force awarded contracts for the production of FQ-44A Fury and General Atomics FQ-42A Dark Merlin drones — the latter has now been formally named Vengeance. This sets the service up to operate a split initial fleet of CCAs. As you can read about here, the Air Force is now aiming to have at least 500 CCA in service by 2032, a substantial step up from earlier plans, with the USAF having previously talked about acquiring “over” 150 of these drones by the end of the decade. The 500 target will likely include upcoming increment two CCAs, as well, the requirements of which the Air Force is still working on.

For Anduril, the next major milestone should go far beyond simply putting a Fury and an F-35 in the same formation, demonstrating that a crewed fifth-generation fighter can actually command and employ the autonomous aircraft as part of a live mission.

If Anduril’s timeline holds, that testing could begin relatively soon.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The fight had initially been discussed for November but, with negotiations over the venue dragging on, it now looks set for December.

Staging an open-air stadium fight in the UK at that time carries immense risk.

While Wembley offers unmatched prestige, exposing tens of thousands of fans and a massive international broadcast operation to potentially freezing temperatures, wind and rain was deemed unacceptable.

Moving the event indoors to an arena like London’s O2 would eliminate weather risks, but at the cost of sacrificing tens of thousands of ticket sales.

The Principality Stadium’s retractable roof allows organisers to capture the immense scale, atmosphere and gate revenue of a stadium show while offering full protection from the elements.

The venue’s official seated capacity is just under 74,000, but boxing configurations allow for even larger crowds.

Joshua has already proven he can sell out the venue, having defended his WBA and IBF titles there against Carlos Takam in front of nearly 80,000 fans in 2017 before adding the WBO belt against Joseph Parker five months later.

New imagery shared with TWZ by Anduril shows its YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) configured with air-to-ground weapons, underscoring the fact that the CCA could take on an air-to-ground role in the future in addition to its current air-to-air focus. Yesterday, Anduril executives revealed that the company had begun integration and fit checks for a range of air-to-ground weapons, although they confirmed to us that those weapons had not yet been flight-tested aboard Fury.

The YFQ-44A is one of two aircraft selected by the Air Force for its CCA Increment 1 program, alongside General Atomics’ YFQ-42A Vengeance. The service’s stated priority for the initial aircraft is air dominance, and Anduril says the production FQ-44 will have four external hardpoints capable of carrying four AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. The YFQ-44A, which currently has two underwing pylons for two AMRAAMs, has already conducted a live AIM-120 firing as part of testing with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit.

The new imagery, however, points toward a substantially broader weapons envelope, with the aircraft shown carrying different air-to-ground stores on its two external stations. The weapons are shown fitted to the aircraft during a ground-based fit check, an important step in the integration process before captive-carry and, ultimately, live-release testing, if Anduril and the USAF choose to go down that route.

During a recent roundtable with reporters yesterday at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending, Anduril’s Jason Levin, senior vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, and Erin Simpson, vice president for Strategy for Air Dominance and Strike, said the company had already begun integration and fit checks of 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), and low-cost cruise missiles. Pods for 2.75-inch guided or unguided rockets are also seen fitted to the aircraft. In each case, the stores are mounted on a twin adaptor rack.

Furthermore, Anduril’s plans extend to testing the Fury with other air-to-air weapons and targeting pods.

Importantly, the diversity of weapons will give Fury a range of potential missions beyond high-end air-to-air combat, including counter-UAS, counter-cruise-missile, and air-to-ground or air-to-surface strike missions.

“We’ve begun integration and fit checks of a lot of other munitions,” an Anduril executive said. “We’ve done 500-pound guided bombs. We’ve done Small Diameter Bombs.”

The company said it had also begun engineering work to integrate its Barracuda 500 offering for the Air Force’s emerging low-cost cruise-missile effort.

Introducing: Barracuda-M Family of Cruise Missiles

It should be noted that giving the YFQ-44— or YFQ-42A — the ability to deliver a JDAM or SDB against a predetermined fixed target is not particularly complex. This type of austere air-to-ground capability should be relatively straightforward to add, providing a useful secondary strike function without requiring the aircraft to take on the far more demanding requirements associated with dynamic targeting or more sophisticated air-to-ground missions. This could also allow for these increment one CCAs to be used independently as air-to-ground ‘weapons trucks’ if their air-to-air assistance isn’t needed.

When the production FQ-44 arrives, it will have four hardpoints, compared with the two currently fitted to the YFQ-44A. Anduril says loading all four stations with AIM-120s for the Air Force’s air-dominance mission would reduce the range of the aircraft but would not require a larger engine or otherwise push the aircraft outside its basic takeoff, landing, climb, and flight-envelope requirements.

While the Air Force’s initial CCA requirement is heavily focused on air dominance, the same aircraft could potentially be configured for different missions by changing its external stores and sensors. Anduril is already positioning Fury as something more than a single-purpose “missile truck.”

That flexibility could become increasingly important as the Air Force considers how CCAs will be employed alongside crewed fighters. During a July Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) exercise at Creech Air Force Base, Fury flew in the same airspace as crewed fighters and other CCAs while Air Force personnel operated its Mission Autonomy system. Anduril says the aircraft has also flown in formation alongside F-35s, although the fighters were not yet controlling Fury.

The company is now working toward what it calls “quarterback integration,” in which a crewed aircraft will direct autonomous aircraft as part of a larger combat formation. Anduril says that work has already progressed through hardware- and software-in-the-loop environments and onto the aircraft itself, with live testing expected in the near term.

A Fury operating under the direction of an F-35 could potentially carry air-to-air missiles for counter-air missions, while other aircraft in the formation could be configured for strike or other effects. Alternatively, the same autonomous aircraft could be reconfigured for a different mission before being dispersed to another operating location. Having four pylons would also give the production Fury greater scope to undertake “swing-role” missions, flexing between prosecuting air and surface targets as required.

The July EOU exercise also demonstrated a rapid “hot reload” capability, with two Air Force personnel replacing an AIM-120 on a running Fury and reducing the turnaround between sorties to single-digit minutes. The demonstration was intended to show how CCAs could be rearmed and returned to the fight without the large maintenance and ground-support footprint associated with traditional combat aircraft. This will be vital as the Air Force integrates CCAs into its Agile Combat Employment concept, in which the drones can be dispersed across multiple operating locations rather than relying on a single large ground footprint.

Also speaking yesterday at the Air & Space Forces’ Air, Space and Cyber Symposium was Air Force Chief of Staff Kenneth Wilsbach, who confirmed that the service hasn’t necessarily made any decisions on Increment 2 of the CCA program yet, but it could include air-to-ground capabilities.

“We’re going through some thought processes about what Increment 2 should be able to do. Increment 1 is air-to-air, so do we want air-to-ground? Maybe, maybe not. Do we want it to have more sensors? Do we want it to be a lot cheaper? Do we want it to be more attritable or expendable, or do we want it to be more exquisite? Do we want shorter range or longer range? Do we want something that can be dropped from another platform, or does it take off and land by itself?”

“These are all considerations,” Wilsbach continued. “It’s still a bit early to make any definitive decisions on that, especially before we really get our hands on the current Increment 1 aircraft and learn from them.”

It’s also important to note that export customers for Fury may demand an air-to-ground capability set, especially if they will only be buying a limited number of CCA types. Having this option ready to go is relevant to prospects beyond the U.S., which are certainly growing.

Fury’s air-to-ground weapons work is part of a broader effort to make the aircraft a flexible combat system rather than simply an uncrewed air-defense adjunct for crewed fighters. The Air Force’s immediate priority may be air dominance, but the weapons integration underway suggests that the same four hardpoints could eventually support a much wider range of missions. This weapons flexibility could ultimately be central to the broader CCA concept, especially as the Air Force works out what it wants Increment 2 to deliver.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Israel’s bitter political divisions are particularly sharp before the country’s October elections. But the furious response to a new documentary about the military’s actions in the genocidal war on Gaza has revealed an issue that much of Israel’s political and media establishment appears united on.

Few of the central allegations in NAZA, made by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, are new. Reports that the Israeli military was relying on artificial intelligence systems to generate targets in Gaza, often killing the inhabitants of entire buildings to kill just one individual identified by the system, were reported in April 2024.

Other accusations against Israel, such as committing genocide, deliberately causing a famine, and unlawfully killing children, have also not received much attention in Israel.

In contrast, NAZA has unleashed a litany of abuse from across Israel, and brought the allegations to the centre of Israel’s political debate.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar reacted to the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival – where it received a 25-minute standing ovation – by calling for the directors to be stripped of their citizenship and to be investigated by the internal intelligence service for treason.

Army chief Eyal Zamir has dismissed the film as being built on blood libel and ordered a legal probe to hunt down its military and intelligence sources.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also cited the film when advancing legislation to revoke citizenship from anyone deemed to be smearing the country’s soldiers, while in the coastal city of Ashdod, graffiti branding the directors “traitors” has appeared on the walls.

“You can’t really understand the extent of the madness from outside of the country,” Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call, which first carried many of the accusations contained in the film, said. “They’re attacking the friends and families of [the filmmakers] Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. They’re talking about revoking their citizenship. They’re asking the Shin Bet to investigate them – for making a film, and it isn’t just the politicians. Journalists, who you might expect to show some kind of solidarity with them, are competing to attack them. It’s scary.”

Denial

In late 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported escalating censorship and harassment in Israel, with Israeli journalists telling the organisation that the media’s approach had become “part of the war effort” and, by extension, significantly shaped Israeli view of their war on Gaza.

In October 2025, a study by the Israeli think tank Molad found that only 3 percent of Channel 12’s coverage of the first six months of the war mentioned Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Of 206 war-related images and video clips broadcast by the network, Israel’s most-watched channel, only two showed Palestinian civilian casualties.

Nevertheless, before the film’s release, polls found that most Israelis believed the coverage they were receiving of the military’s conduct in Gaza was balanced.

“I guess it was because the mainstream media outlets in Israel did not investigate the conduct of the army during the war in Gaza, and hardly covered the war from the Palestinian point of view,” Anat Saragusti, the Israeli jurist and journalist responsible for press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel, said of the shock that had accompanied the release of the film. “[The Israeli media] hardly reported on the human toll and the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Compounding the gap, Saragusti said, was a deep-seated national narrative: that the war had been imposed on Israel, that Hamas had carried out a massacre on October 7, 2023, and that Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields made mass casualties in Gaza all but unavoidable.

Palestinian deaths, in this telling, were framed less as the product of Israeli conduct than as collateral damage forced on Israel by its enemy’s tactics, she said.

Lynch mobs

“Even journalists that usually support the anti-Netanyahu bloc have criticised the filmmakers,” Israeli political sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal said.

“Israeli Jews deny the genocide,” he continued, “Even all the opposition parties joined the vicious criticism of the filmmakers.”

The language used against the filmmakers has been echoed by some of Netanyahu’s most prominent political rivals.

On Monday, former military chief and one of Netanyahu’s principal rivals Gadi Eisenkot denounced the film for “moral blindness, a detachment from reality, and harm to the State of Israel in a difficult hour”.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is also running in October’s election, called the film a “horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters”.

“Everything gets heightened the closer to the election we get,” Noy said. “But I think only now, for those of us who live here, is the extent of the fascism becoming clear. Journalists, politicians and the media are forming some kind of incitement machine.”

“I’ve had anxieties over where Israel had been going for a long time,” she said, “but right now I’m genuinely worried for my friends and colleagues.”

The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit’s (31st MEU) recent deployment to the Middle East marked the first time the United States Marine Corps (USMC) used its Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept in a combat setting, the service confirmed to TWZ on Thursday. At its core, EABO involves relatively small groups of Marines quickly establishing bases of operation in forward areas, often within the enemy’s weapons range. During operations in the fight against Iran, Marines refueled and rearmed their own aircraft, as well as those from the joint force, at these austere locales. They also set up remote sensing locations, among other actions from the EABO playbook.

This employment of EABO for Epic Fury is a highly significant development. After years of progressively evolving the EABO playbook, it was no longer an experimental exercise. This meant that Marines were forward deployed in a contested area in a region where established bases were taking heavy fire from Iranian missile and drone barrages. Troops were killed in some of these attacks and U.S. aircraft, buildings and equipment were damaged and destroyed across the Middle East. Pushing aircraft from the MEU, as well as the joint force, to FARPs (forward arming and refueling point) would have been a relevant asset preservation tactic as well as one that would help accelerate combat operations, and it’s exactly what EABO is meant to do.

The 31st MEU’s six-month deployment began in January in the Pacific, before the unit was ordered to the Middle East in March, returning to Okinawa, Japan, in July. That’s where it is stationed as the USMC’s only continuously forward-based MEU.

“This was the first time we were able to implement EABO in combat operations since the concept was created for the force,” Capt. Steven J. Keenan, a USMC spokesperson, told us. “We have practiced it many times, but this was a first for supporting a Joint Force named operation with forward FARPs and forward bases that supported joint ops and combat power sustainment.”

EABO was first introduced in 2020 by then-Commandant Gen. David Berger in his Force Design 2030 plan for the future of the Corps. It was created with a fight against China in mind, especially utilizing small Pacific islands. The idea is to have highly mobile, low-signature forces deployed forward in austere, contested or potentially contested maritime locations. The mission is to “support sea control operation, conduct sea denial operations within the littorals, contribute to maritime domain awareness, provide forward command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, and counter-targeting capability and forward sustainment,” according to the Marines.

The news of the first activation of the EABO concept in combat came Wednesday during a media roundtable with Col. Chris P. Niedziocha, who commanded the 31st MEU during its deployment to the Middle East in support of Operation Epic Fury. Now director of the USMC Expeditionary Warfare School, Niedziocha discussed EABO and a range of other operations during that deployment, including boarding vessels during the blockade of Iranian ports.

The 31st MEU was embarked aboard the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), which consisted of the America class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans, and Whidbey Island class dock landing ship USS Rushmore. You can read more about the ARG/MEU and its assets in our initial story about the deployment to the Middle East here.

“You’re starting to see this has been validated,” the colonel said of the EABO concept during the roundtable TWZ attended virtually. “It’s still nascent, but we actually, for the first time, demonstrated what we thought we were able to do, which I think is pretty exciting. And then things like forward arming and refueling to extend the operational reach of aircraft and expeditionary reloading, and then the ever-present logistic challenge of doing something like that. So that’s pretty significant.”

“We successfully implemented critical Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), establishing sensor expeditionary advanced bases and forward arming and refueling points (FARPs) where none existed,” the colonel added. “Through our forward logistic elements, we proved that an agile Marine Air-Ground Task Force can sustain itself and generate ready, lethal power in contested maritime environments, directly setting the theater for follow-on joint forces.”

One of the objectives of the FARPs was to reduce reliance on the Marines’ fleet of KC-130 aerial refuelers and serve as jumping-off points for its F-35B Lightning II fighters.

“There was all manner of tankers all the time, but the FARP is to extend the operational reach, and if you can do it, you reduce the load on that,” Niedziocha noted. “Because there’s some aircraft that are basically for expeditionary austere operations, especially the F-35B,” the Marine Corps’ variant of the aircraft designed for short take off and vertical landing. 

“There are some trade-offs associated with the Bravo,” Niedziocha pointed out, using a slang for the jets. “There’s less internal fuel, but you have the lift [system], which gives you the option to do these kinds of things. So, the goal there was to walk that fine line between providing the full sortie over wherever you needed it, and keeping the ships far enough away to make them as survivable as possible.”

In addition to the F-35Bs and other aircraft organic to the 31st MEU, the FARPs were also used by Army helicopters, Keenan told us. Imagery posted on the Pentagon’s image distribution site also showed U.S. Army Gray Eagle drones and Marine MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft were included.

Niedziocha did not provide details about where the FARPs were set up, but a U.S. defense official told us they were “disaggregated throughout the Middle East.” The official declined to provide further information, citing operational security concerns since they are still being used.

“Throughout the deployment, the Tripoli ARG and 31st MEU successfully conducted over 1,600 mishap-free flight hours of combat aviation missions, including precision strikes, transporting 800,000 pounds of cargo, and moving 5,000 personnel,” a 31st MEU overview of the deployment explained. “The units also provided sustained combat support to joint force operations by delivering critical intelligence and refueling over 300 aircraft ashore and underway.”

The colonel also didn’t provide details about the sensor expeditionary advanced bases. According to the Marines, “a sensing expeditionary advanced base (SEAB) brings together coastal surveillance radars, electronic sensors, and Marines ashore to extend maritime domain awareness, complementing the radars and sensors already at work aboard naval ships off the coast.”

“When SEAB systems identify surface vessels in nearby sea lanes, small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) operators launch their platforms to visually identify and track the contacts,” the Marines added. “Sensor data and imagery are transmitted in real time across the blue-green command network to decision-makers.”

This capability could have been used to track Iran’s remaining fleet of small boats that it has used to harass shipping and mine the Strait of Hormuz, as well as larger vessels trying to transport oil. Other sensors, like radars and counter-drone systems, could also help identify incoming threats and provide general situational awareness. The EABO concept was employed as part of the 31st MEU’s larger role in supporting the blockade and mine clearance efforts.

The 31st MEU interdicted four vessels during the deployment, three of which led to boardings. On April 19, Marines boarded the MV Touska; on April 28, the MV Blue Star III; and on May 19, the MT Celestial Sea.

The Touska was boarded after USS Spruance fired multiple 5-inch rounds, targeting the engine room and disabling the vessel’s propulsion. The crew of the vessel was retained for about two weeks before being repatriated.

Niedziocha told us that none of the crews offered any resistance.

“At two in the morning, when 30 Force Reconnaissance Marines fast rope onto your vessel, [you are] just compliant with a capital C. They did exactly what they were directed to do. The overmatch that you put onto that vessel is pretty surprising. And then there’s overwatch provided by UAS and manned aircraft, so you create this bubble around the vessel. So yeah, they complied.”

You can see the Touska being boarded in the following video.

Two years ago, as the EABO concept was maturing, TWZ was invited to get an exclusive look at how an advanced EABO concept would be put into action, including how squadrons operated the F-35B out of an austere combat environment while generating combat sorties. It was an unprecedented and exclusive peek into the EABO playbook and what a real fight in the Pacific with the USMC’s most advanced fighter aircraft could actually look like. You can read about that in our story here. It appears the operations in the Middle East mirrored this exercise closely.

Now back in Japan, the ARG/MEU is getting ready for a new deployment, said the colonel.

“We got back to Okinawa, I think July 22nd, and they had already begun their workup cycle in earnest to be on the water in early January to go out and do another Iron Fist [training exercise] with the Japanese, and then long periods of a crisis response,” said Niedziocha, who relinquished command in August before moving on to his new role. “Just being there, present in the First Island Chain to partner with your allies, demonstrates the resolve and commitment to deter whatever needs deterring.” 

As noted earlier in this story, the EABO concept was designed with a Pacific fight in mind. Its first combat employment in the Middle East clearly offers lessons that can now be adapted to enhance EABO operations globally.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com