In his first news conference since succeeding Pep Guardiola last month, Marseca found himself fielding questions about the Catalan, who won 20 trophies in his 10 years at the club.
The 46-year-old knows only too well the tough act he has to follow having worked as Guardiola’s assistant during the 2022-23 Treble winning season.
“I want to say it is a privilege because it’s the reason why the club decided to go for me, that is a privilege,” he said.
“I have said many times, I consider Pep the best coach in the world in the last 20-25 years. It is a challenge [to replace him].”
Maresca, who called time on his time at Chelsea in January after 18 months, acknowledged the challenge of arriving at a club who have had just three managers in 16 years.
“That is not normal and has not happened often,” he said. “I am confident that we can continue to do a great job and continue to do the job that has been done in the last 14, 15 years since Roberto Mancini was here.
“I know the organisation quite well and the people inside the club from years ago. The structure understands to give time for everything.
“Since Manchester City contacted me, I had no doubt about joining this fantastic club.”
Maresca hinted that there were “a few things to do” in the transfer window but would not be drawn on the futures of players including goalkeeper James Trafford, who has been linked with a move away from the club, and returning midfielder Jack Grealish, who spent last season on loan at Everton but is back in training with City.
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) is to require all players to undergo genetic sex testing in order to compete on the WTA Tour.
In the latest edition of its women’s eligibility policy, which will come into effect on Tuesday, players will be required to provide a cheek swab, blood or saliva sample to test for the presence of the SRY gene which is part of the Y chromosome and causes male characteristics to develop.
Players will be tested just once in their lifetime and only a negative result, showing no presence of the gene, will permit them to compete on the Tour.
If they test positive, players will face further medical assessment before being allowed to play.
The new policy also requires players to sign a document that states they could face disciplinary action if they refuse testing.
The WTA’s previous policy, last updated in 2024, allowed transgender women to compete on the Tour if they had lowered their testosterone levels to below 2.5 nmol/L continuously for the previous two years.
There are no known transgender women currently playing on the WTA Tour.
“The WTA’s women’s eligibility policy is designed to promote equal athletic opportunities in women’s professional tennis and maintain fair competition for all players participating in WTA tournaments,” the governing body said.
“Since first being introduced in 1975, the eligibility policy has undergone periodic review in light of developments across international sport.
“Following the most recent review, which included consultation with WTA members and evolving standards across women’s sport, the WTA board approved an updated WTA women’s eligibility policy beginning in 2026 based on biological sex.”
It added: “The WTA recognises that this is a sensitive and complex issue and is committed to treating all players with dignity and implementing the policy in a respectful and thoughtful way.”
The policy change comes a year after World Athletics announced new regulations – brought into effect in September 2025 – requiring athletes wanting to compete in the female category for world ranking competitions to take a one-time gene test.
World Boxing also approved the use of the SRY test in May 2025 when it introduced mandatory sex testing for all athletes wanting to compete in the women’s category.
Col. Justin Bronder, head of SOCOM’s Program Executive Office for Fixed Wing (PEO-FW), discussed the integration of the radar together with the AGM-190A on the AC-130J earlier today. Bronder spoke to TWZ and other outlets alongside other SOCOM acquisition officials at a roundtable on the sidelines of the annual SOF Week conference.
A US Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider gunship. USAF
AGM-190A is the formal U.S. military designation for the SCM, developed by Leidos, originally under the name Black Arrow. It has now also emerged that SOCOM refers to the missile by the nickname Havoc Spear. With a demonstrated range of at least 400 miles, the missile has far greater reach than any of the other missiles and precision bombs that the AC-130J is known to be able to employ now by a huge margin. The Ghostrider’s current armament package, which also includes a 30mm automatic cannon and a 105mm howitzer, is focused on close air support and interdiction missions against targets at much closer ranges.
“A lot going on in that space,” Col. Bronder said today. “Our unique teaming with Leidos, that started with a CRADA [Cooperative Research and Development Agreement], that accelerated through an express development program on the now called AGM-190 Havoc Spear affordable cruise missile.”
A CRADA is a non-traditional research and development mechanism through which elements of the U.S. military can pool resources with private companies and other organizations. These agreements allow the parties involved to pursue mutually beneficial work, but without a typical contract or even money necessarily changing hands.
“That program [the AGM-190] has really been moving along quite, quite quickly,” Bronder continued. “We’re looking at ways to kind of accelerate fielding of that weapon in the not too distant future with close teaming with AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] partners to really collapse that development and operational test timeline. So, real big acquisition success there.”
Leidos completes successful test launch of a Small Cruise Missile
“We have tech demonstrations with the AESA radar and the small cruise missile that we’re now looking to see how we can augment and accelerate fielding those types of capabilities for the SOF [special operations forces] fleet,” Bronder added.
“CRADAs produced the AGM-190A Havoc Spear small cruise missile that offers an affordable mass solution with significant range to our service partners,” U.S. Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, head of SOCOM, also said separately during his keynote address at the SOF Week conference earlier today. “Integrated with the AESA radar on the AC-130 gunship, [it is] a formidable capability.”
SOCOM’s proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year, released last month, had hinted at plans to demonstrate the new combination of capabilities for the AC-130J in the next year or so. The command is asking for nearly $5.9 million to support work on the so-called Precision Strike Package (PSP) for the AC-130J. PSP is the overarching system through which all weapons and associated sensors are integrated onto the Ghostrider.
The new funding “is required to integrate AESA radar capabilities into the PSP,” according to SOCOM’s budget documents. The planned work “includes software and hardware development to incorporate the AESA functionality into the Battle Management System and other associated AC-130J systems.”
“AFSOC is exploring the development and use of the AESA Radar on the AC-130J as the command continues to operate as both the SOF component to the Air Force and air component to USSOCOM,” AFSOC told TWZ when asked for an update in August 2025. “We cannot discuss the type of radar due to operational security.”
The APG-83 does remain a very plausible choice. The Air Force has already been in the process of integrating this radar onto a significant portion of its fleets of F-16C/D Viper fighters for years now. Beyond its target detection and tracking capabilities, the AN/APG-83 has a synthetic aperture mapping mode and is capable of producing ground moving target indicator data. Also referred to as SAR mapping, this mode allows SABR to produce high-resolution radar imagery. GMTI tracks can be overlaid on those images. All of this, in turn, can be used for target acquisition and identification purposes, as well as general reconnaissance.
A generic example of GMTI tracks overlaid on top of a SAR image. Public Domain
There are other AESA radars on the market, as well, including a growing number of compact designs. Radars of this type, in general, can spot objects of interest, even ones with smaller radar cross-sections, faster and do so with greater precision and fidelity compared to older mechanically-scanned models. They can also just scan faster and perform multiple functions near-simultaneously, and do so with improved resistance to radiofrequency jamming and far greater reliability.
As mentioned, TWZ has long pointed out that the addition of an AESA radar would be a huge upgrade for the AC-130J’s ability to spot, track, and engage targets at extended ranges, even in bad weather. The radar would be able to provide real-time midcourse updates to a stand-off weapon if it had a data link capability. This would make engaging moving targets possible if the missile also had a terminal seeker capable of doing so.
Overall, the capability boosts the AESA radar offers are especially important when paired with new, longer-range strike munitions like the AGM-190A. The radar could also help improve the Ghostrider’s effectiveness when employing other shorter-range munitions, including GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) now and GBU-53/B StormBreakers (also known as SDB IIs) in the future.
An AGM-190A seen being test-launched from the rear ramp of an AC-130J. Leidos
AESA radars will also expand the AC-130J’s general surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, as well as provide improved general situational awareness.
This is all reflected in SOCOM’s budget documents, which state: “AESA radar enhances the AC-130J’s situational awareness, precision targeting, and survivability while replacing phased-out legacy radars, enabling the Gunship to close Joint Force kill webs and expand its role in support of USINDOPACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] and Western Hemisphere operations.”
The mention here of the Indo-Pacific region underscores broader questions about future operational relevance that have been facing the AC-130 fleet in recent years. The Ghostrider and its immediate predecessors were workhorses during the Global War on Terror era, flying heavily over countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Even so, they flew almost exclusively under the cover of darkness to help reduce vulnerability to ground fire.
The integration of a new stand-off strike capability paired with an AESA radar is one way for the AC-130J to respond to this evolving threat ecosystem. It could also open the door to other new capabilities for the Ghostrider, as well as other AFSOC aircraft like the OA-1K Skyraider II light attack plane. Similar questions about future relevance have been raised about the OA-1K, a design that is also primarily geared toward counter-terrorism missions and other low-intensity conflicts.
The AC-130J fleet is also in the process of receiving a number of other upgrades, including improvements to its defense countermeasures suite.
It is very possible that the AGM-190A could find its way out of the special operations community and into more widespread U.S. military use. The Air Force is currently planning to buy nearly 28,000 low-cost strike munitions over the next five years through its Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM) program.
“We’re also continuing to talk to the Air Force about what they’re doing with their Family of Affordable Mass Munitions [sic]” to see “if there’s some continued interplay there for us to do a service-to-SOF or SOF-to-service transition,” Col. Bronder said today.
Last week, the Pentagon also rolled out a plan to acquire at least 10,000 lower-cost cruise missiles, primarily for surface-launched applications from containerized launchers, in the next three years. Leidos is among the companies now involved in this Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM) program, and is developing a derivative of the AGM-190A to meet those requirements.
A rendering of the AGM-190A-derived missile Leidos is now developing under the Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM) program. Leidos
For the AC-130J, a full-up demonstration of the pair of an AESA radar and the AGM-190A cruise missile will mark another step toward giving the gunships a valuable, if not increasingly essential, boost in capability.
President Donald Trump gestures during a law enforcement leaders dinner in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Monday, the same day the White House announced his annual medical evaluations have been scheduled for May 26. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
May 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s annual dental and medical evaluations are scheduled for May 26, the White House announced on Monday evening.
At 79, Trump is the second-oldest person to serve as president and was the oldest to be sworn into a new term. Questions about his health and mental fitness that surfaced during his first administration have intensified since he returned to the White House last year amid reports and images that appear to show him falling asleep during public events, as well as makeup covering apparent bruises on his hands.
The evaluations are to be conducted at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, the White House said, stating it is part of Trump’s “regular preventive healthcare.”
Trump frequently boasts about his physical health and mental acuity amid questions about whether his age could affect his ability to carry out the duties of his office.
In October, Trump underwent what administration officials initially described as “a routine yearly check-up,” which would have been his second in six months.
After the examination, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, physician to the president, said Trump “remains in exceptional health” following what he called “a scheduled follow-up evaluation.”
The White House said that while in Maryland for the annual evaluations, Trump will “spend time with service members and staff at Walter Reed in recognition of their service, professionalism and dedication to the nation.”
President Donald Trump delivers remarks at an event he is hosting for a group that includes Gold Star Mothers and Angel Mothers in honor of Mother’s Day in the Rose Garden of the White House on Friday. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
