headed

Call them the Geek Squad, the Surfer Dudes or the Genius Squad from Redondo Union High.

In an unprecedented achievement, three starters for the Sea Hawks’ 13-2 volleyball team — Tommy Spalding, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal — are headed to MIT this fall.

Their final assignment in Advanced Placement Physics 2 should be figuring out the astronomical odds of how three best friends from the same volleyball team could be admitted to one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

“There’s no way,” was the reaction of Mirabal’s father when he heard the news.

“It’s crazy,” coach Kevin Norman said.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple hanging out in a garage. Who knows what inventions, ideas or technological feats will be imagined in gyms or on surfboards as these three Southern California teenagers unleash their brain power and love for having fun on the East Coast.

“Probably twice a week, I’ll call him, ‘Yo, I have this idea,’” Spalding said of his conversations with Mirabal. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, we usually don’t do anything about it. But it’s throwing ideas out there and hopefully one is going to stick.”

One Spalding idea: “When I was driving home from Joshua Tree, I was stuck in traffic. I was like, ‘Dude, what if we made a Google Maps type of app that utilized AI and had a camera in your car that analyzed the road, tells you what lane to be in to go the fastest and also be able to look at the traffic lights and tell you if this left arrow is red, then go straight, turn left at the next street.”

Elon Musk, beware.

MIT-bound Redondo Union volleyball players Tommy Spalding, left, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

They’ve formed a band, “Ratiohead,” a parody of the English rock band Radiohead, with lyrics from math. They’re preparing for the battle of the bands. Spalding is the vocalist, Maribal is on keyboard and Flaherty, the 6-foot-5 redhead, plays guitar.

“We’re looking for a drummer,” Spalding said.

Spalding has a 4.65 GPA and 1490 SAT score. Flaherty is at 4.4 and 1560. Mirabal is at 4.4 and 1510. Spalding said his hardest class was AP European history. Mirabal chose honors chemistry. Each received one B in four years of high school. Flaherty has received multiple Bs and said, “I think it goes to show you that you don’t have to be perfect to get into these schools if you have the potential and you’re willing to work hard and be a good fit.”

Flaherty is so witty he might be able to do a comedy routine, with Spalding serving as his wing man.

“Someone might have messed up, but I’m not going to tell them,” Flaherty said of the threesome earning a spot in the MIT class of 2030.

“Maybe it was chemistry,” Spalding quipped.

If they can make a movie, “The Social Network,” about the invention of Facebook. and a TV series, “Big Bang Theory,” about smart geeks, just wait until someone figures out the entertainment value following around this threesome.

Spalding has all the attributes of a future entrepreneur and loves tinkering with cars. He sent a two-minute video to MIT as part of his application process that showed himself and his father, Michael, turning a 2002 yellow school bus into an RV.

Mirabal has his own YouTube channel, “Carter’s Stuff Review.” He wants to be a mechanical engineer and explore the business side. Flaherty would be happy sending rockets and satellites into space while living near the beach.

All three hang out at the beach, either playing volleyball or surfing. Spalding brought his grandfather’s ping-pong table to the volleyball room at school for more fun. Cornhole is another game they play.

None set out at the beginning of high school seeking a path that leads to MIT, which accepts only about five students for every 100 applicants. “We weren’t taking the classes because we want to go to MIT,” Spalding said. “We just enjoy the subjects.”

There are smart genes in their families. Spalding’s parents are both educators, one an AP physics teacher at Peninsula High, the other a middle school vice principal. Mirabal’s father is an accountant. Flaherty’s father owns two Handel’s ice cream stores (everyone wants to hang out with Flaherty on a hot day).

Each has a story to tell about how they learned of being accepted to MIT.

Mirabal was playing volleyball in his backyard on Dec. 15 with teammates. He was going to wait until his friends left to check the email for fear of rejection. Instead, with them huddled around, he opened the email and everyone started screaming, “Yo!”

Spalding was with Mirabal and headed home to share the moment with his parents when he received a text from the MIT volleyball coach walking out the door congratulating him. “Welcome to the MIT family,” it read.

Flaherty had to wait until March 14 — Pi Day — to see if he was going to make it three for three.

He was driving home from Joshua Tree national park with his girlfriend and Tommy’s girlfriend in the car. The traffic was so bad it came to a standstill so he checked his cellphone.

“I opened it up. I saw the confetti but didn’t realize what it meant until I got a couple lines down,” he said. “The first reaction was disbelief because I thought there was no chance after these two got in.”

In fact, Flaherty said the person doing the MIT interview admitted later, “I’m not going to lie. I thought that was the killer for your application.”

They’ll be playing NCAA Division III volleyball. Mirabal and Spalding will be roommates. “Vaughan will room with someone else because he said he’d be too comfortable with us and be a bad roommate,” Spalding said.

So are they really OK leaving Southern California?

“I wouldn’t say OK with it,” Spalding said.

“It is a sacrifice,” Mirabal said.

Just know the beach will always draw them back to sunny Southern California as the three sat in the Redondo Union volleyball locker room wearing shorts, sandals and their MIT shirts.

“As much as we study, I feel at the end of the day we want to have fun,” Spalding said.

They’re not expecting to re-create “Animal House” at MIT, but let’s see what happens when three surfer dudes from the same high school in California show up with open minds and lots of ideas to explore.

For Nareg Kopooshian, the basketball coach at AGBU High in Canoga Park, there’s a big summer ahead. He’s going to be the head coach for the U16 Armenian national team in the FIBA U16 EuroBasket competition July 4-12 in Yerevan.

It’s the first time Armenia is hosting the event.

Los Angeles has the largest Armenian community in the United States with as many as 700,000 people.

Players selected for the training camp in Armenia include Anthony Sarkesian (Chaminade), Anthony Karayan (Village Christian), Ethan Kazanjian (AGBU), Edward Gemjian (La Canada) and Jivan Dorian (AGBU).

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

An Australian E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control plane is headed for the Persian Gulf. This comes as Gulf Arab states continue to be subjected to Iran’s attacks in retaliation for ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes. The E-7A is arguably the best airborne look-down sensor platform in the world at present, and will provide a particularly important boost in capability for spotting low-flying Iranian kamikaze drones and cruise missiles.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the impending deployment of the E-7A to the Middle East at a press conference yesterday. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) currently operates a fleet of six Wedgetails.

“Twelve countries across the region, from Cyprus through to the Gulf are continuing to be targeted. The United Arab Emirates alone has been forced to shoot down over 1,500 rockets and drones,” Albanese said. “This growing wave of dangerous and destabilising attacks from Iran puts civilian lives at risk, of course including Australian lives, of which there are more than 20,000 people based in the UAE.”

“In responding to requests, following a conversation that I had with the President [of the UAE,] Mohammed bin Zayed [Al Nahyan; also Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi], and other requests, Australia will deploy an E-7A Wedgetail, to the Gulf to help protect and defend Australians and other civilians,” Albanese continued. “The Wedgetail will provide long-range reconnaissance capability, which will help to protect and secure the airspace above the Gulf. The Wedgetail and supporting Australian Defence Force personnel will be deployed for an initial four weeks in support of the collective self-defense of Gulf nations.”

The E-7A is based on the Boeing 737-700 Next Generation airliner airframe. Its most prominent feature is the Northrop Grumman Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) sensor installed on top of the fuselage, which offers 360-degree coverage and can scan for aerial and maritime threats. It also has an extensive suite of communications and data-sharing capabilities, backed by modern processing power, allowing for the rapid exchange of information with other friendly assets in the air and in other domains. You can read more about the aircraft here.

Northrop Grumman MESA Radar – Boeing E-7 AEWC

“As the Prime Minister has said at the request of the UAE, we will be deploying an E-7 Wedgetail to the Gulf. This is one of the leading capabilities in the world in terms of airborne long-range reconnaissance and command. And we are one of the leading nations in the use of the E-7,” Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and the country’s Minister for Defense, also said at the press conference yesterday. “There will be in the order of 85 personnel who will go with this airframe and that’s the normal crew. The airframe will be leaving Australia today and the expectation is that it will be in the region in the middle of the week and operational by the end of the week.”

Albanese and Marles also said the Australian government planned to send a tranche of AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) to the UAE. In addition to ground-based air defense, Emirati fighters have been working to intercept incoming Iranian threats.

As noted, the biggest boost in capability the RAAF’s E-7A will bring to the Gulf is its look-down sensor capability. From the aircraft’s high perch, the MESA sensor has an excellent field of view to spot low and slow-flying targets, even if they are relatively small. Wedgetail would also be able to see threats as far out into the Persian Gulf, or even possibly beyond.

So much garbage being passed around here in long jargon filled threads that sound like AI about E-7 Wedgetail and the potential RAAF deployment to the Middle East. Here is all you need to know:

it’s arguably the best low flying drone and CM detection sensor on earth.

That’s… pic.twitter.com/TRuBrmQzSC

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) March 10, 2026

Having another eye in the sky to provide additional alerts about incoming threats and more overall situational awareness will be a boon for defenders in the air and on the ground, in general. The E-7A can also be refueled in flight, meaning it can stay on station longer.

The UAE, which is the clear focus of the Australian deployment, does have a fleet of 5 Saab GlobalEye airborne early warning and control aircraft, but the extent to which they are operating now is unknown. While a modern and capable design, GlobalEye does not provide the same level of coverage and capability as the E-7A, and is also based on the smaller Bombardier Global 6000 business jet, which cannot refuel in flight.

GlobalEye on operational mission

There is more airborne warning and control coverage elsewhere in the Gulf, including six U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft forward-deployed to Saudi Arabia just ahead of the current conflict with Iran. Saudi Arabia has its own E-3s and GlobalEye jets. How effective the aging Cold War-era E-3, in particular, is at this point at spotting and tracking low-flying kamikaze drones is unclear. In general, the E-7’s active electronically-scanned array MESA sensor offers clear advantages over the Sentry’s older radar, especially when it comes to smaller, slower, and lower-flying targets.

For years now, the U.S. E-3 fleet, overall, has struggled with readiness issues, which you can read more about here. As an aside, the strain on the E-3 fleet, now magnified by the current conflict, together with Australia’s deployment of an E-7 to the region, makes the Pentagon’s attempt last year to cancel the U.S. Air Force’s Wedgetail program seem even more bizarrely short-sighted.

In speaking yesterday, Australia’s Marles drew a comparison between sending the E-7A to the Middle East now and the past deployment of a Wedgetail to Poland to provide coverage along that country’s border with Ukraine. However, that mission was ostensibly focused on watching for threats to cross-border transfers of aid to the government in Kyiv.

The need for E-7A in the Gulf now is substantially more pressing.

Since the current conflict began, the UAE has been providing particularly granular data about incoming Iranian missile and drone attacks, as well as interception rates, offering a good sense of the current threat ecosystem in the Gulf. As of the last official tally from the UAE’s Ministry of Defense, the country’s forces have intercepted 1,385 kamikaze drones, 241 ballistic missiles, and eight cruise missiles since February 28.

Still, UAE authorities say that 90 kamikaze drones and 19 ballistic missiles have been able to reach the ground, causing casualties, as well as damage to military facilities and civilian infrastructure. All of this is broadly reflective of the experience of other Gulf Arab states that have been subjected to attacks from Iran over the past 11 days.

Overall, Iranian retaliatory attacks have notably slowed in recent days across the region, but they have not stopped. Based on its own data, the UAE saw a notably high number of Iranian drones get past its defenses yesterday. This comes amid persistent media reports of concerns among several Gulf Arab states, as well as the U.S. military, about the dwindling stockpile of anti-air interceptors and what has turned into a war of attrition with Iran. Publicly, American and regional authorities have pushed back on this reporting. At the same time, Australia’s plan to rush AIM-120s to the UAE is certainly evidence of demand for additional munitions.

Reasonable to ask what the raw numbers for ballistic missile and drone attempts vs. hits are, which are plotted in these figures. Again, all figures are from UAE MOD. pic.twitter.com/dhj86h6DbD

— Christopher Clary (@clary_co) March 10, 2026

There is also a question of where the Australian E-7A will be based and what threats there might be as a result to the aircraft, aircrew, and the rest of the 85-person contingent. Albanese and Marles do not appear to have explicitly said where the jet will be flying from to provide coverage over the UAE and other parts of the Gulf region.

With Iran showing no intention of halting its drone and missile attacks across the Gulf, Australia’s E-7A Wedgetail, wherever it might be stationed, looks set to bring immensely valuable added look-down surveillance coverage to the region.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

March 13 (UPI) — The USS Tripoli, and the 2,500 Marines on the amphibious assault ship, are headed to the Middle East to bolster U.S. military power there as the war in Iran enters its third week.

The Tripoli, along with Marines of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Group, had been operating in the Philippine Sea but is now headed west south of Taiwan through the Luzon Strait, USNI News reported.

Although the Tripoli had been with the USS San Diego and USS New Orleans in the Philippine Sea, it is not clear if the San Diego and the New Orleans are also being moved closer to Iran.

As Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to most traffic, and is targeting vessels that transit it, the move comes as U.S. Central Command asked the Pentagon for additional military options in the conflict, Axios reported.

The 31st MEU can conduct ground operations, which have not been announced but have not been ruled out, according to the Trump administration.

The deployment comes as President Donald Trump said he is considering sending U.S. Navy vessels to escort shipping vessels through the strait, the military is planning to take out anti-ship missiles that have been sent by Iran to the area.

CENTCOM is particularly focused on ensuring freedom of navigation in the straight, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine told reporters on Friday, which “means going after Iran’s mine-laying capability and destroying their ability to attack commercial vessels.

Oil prices have surged over the last week after Iran shut down the strait, though Caine noted that some traffic is moving through it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said Friday that the military is “dealing with” Iranian attacks on the strait, saying that “we have been dealing with it and don’t need to worry about it.”

Hegseth added that as the military campaign continues and Iran’s military capabilities weaken, the United States has also been taking out Iranian defense companies to prevent the ability to build more weapons.