Tervell

New problems have emerged in developing Britain's new Challenger 3 tanks, complicating work again. So, the old hulls that will be used to produce them are too worn and also have various defects, which suggests the idea of producing them from scratch altogether. Britain's Ministry of Defence claims it is actively cooperating with industry to accelerate vehicle delivery. Work is also underway to ensure necessary materials and reduce possible risks. Recall that Challenger 3 received a completely new turret with a smoothbore 120mm gun, but old Challenger 2s will be used for hulls. The latter have been actively used by the military in recent decades, which led to certain wear and possible poor condition.

This is indeed an obstacle, but it can be overcome through major overhaul, although it will probably require more funds and time. There are plenty of examples of installing a new turret on even older vehicles, one can recall at minimum Leopard 1 with Cockerill 3105 or even the Skyranger 35 air defense systembeing supplied to Ukraine. So here its worth looking at the next stated problem - significant difference in sizes between hulls due to different production standards during Challenger 2 production times. This will create a need for additional adjustment of new equipment to each vehicle. Specifically, concerns relate to new TDSS (Turret Drive Servo System) turret drives, which are needed for the new turret. There are some suggestions that it will now be more rational to manufacture new hulls from scratch.

However, this would essentially mean producing tanks from scratch, which would require deploying new industrial capacities. That is, more work, even more costs, and additional delivery delays, which could extend for decades altogether. So such a way out is not very rational here, and if already moving in this direction, then take from available analogues on the world market. The Challenger 3 project itself is constantly questioned due to possible critical mass increase with the same running gear and very long readiness times. And this is in addition to other failed problems, such as with the Ajax IFV suspended from use.

western militaries will just straight up dissolve into dust in the next few decades

Britain is “no longer capable” of running a nuclear submarine programme after “catastrophic” failures pushed it to the brink, a former Navy chief has said. Rear Admiral Philip Mathias said the UK’s “silent service” was facing an “unprecedented” situation from which it was highly unlikely to recover without radical intervention. The former director of nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence said delays in building new attack boats had reached record levels, while the duration of patrols for crews in nuclear-armed submarines had been driven up from 70 days during the Cold War to more than 200 days now. This had led to a “shockingly low availability” of submarines to “counter the Russian threat in the North Atlantic”, the retired submarine commander warned.

The admiral, who led the Trident value for money review in 2010, called for Britain to pull out of the multi-billion Aukus defence deal with America and Australia to build 12 new nuclear submarines. “The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine programme,” he said. “Dreadnought is late, Astute class submarine delivery is getting later, there is a massive backlog in Astute class maintenance and refitting, which continues to get worse, and SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale.” “Performance across all aspects of the programme continues to get worse in every dimension. This is an unprecedented situation in the nuclear submarine age. It is a catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning.” He added: “The public should be aware of the gross mismanagement of this hugely expensive and important programme. Our adversaries certainly will be, not least by counting our submarines alongside using satellite imagery and reading audit reports already in the public domain.”

The Navy’s fleet of Astute submarines is already facing significant problems, with many having been stuck in port for years. Out of the seven planned, six are in service. HMS Ambush is currently inactive, having spent 1,222 days – more than three years and four months – in port, according to defence analysts. Sister vessels Artful and Audacious are undergoing sluggish maintenance programmes, having both spent more than 950 days out of action. Astute and Anson are also in port. HMS Agamemnon, the sixth and penultimate vessel, entered service in September during a commissioning ceremony led by the King, with ministers hailing it a “truly remarkable manufacturing feat”. But Rear-Adml Mathias said: “The uncomfortable truth is that she took over 13 years to build – the longest-ever construction time for a submarine to be built for the Navy.”

Russia, meanwhile, continues to pressure the Navy, having ramped up its activity in UK waters by more than 30 per cent, John Healey, the Defence Secretary, has warned. Last week, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said he was ready to go to war with Europe. The UK’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet is critical to defending the country and deterring Russia and other dangerous states from using weapons of mass destruction. The fleet of four Vanguard stealth boats carries Britain’s nuclear missiles, with one vessel always patrolling the seas at any time. Each of the submarines can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 60 ton ballistic missiles armed with up to eight individual warheads, the combined destructive power of which dwarfs the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the Second World War and would wipe out millions of people. However, the boats have faced problems during launch tests issues in the past. In 2016, one of the 44ft Tridents fired from HMS Vengeance veered off course and reportedly self-destructed. Then at Port Canaveral, Florida, on Jan 30 last year, a missile launched from HMS Vanguard misfired and landed back in the sea.

In his critique, Rear-Adml Mathias said Britain’s next generation of nuclear weapon boats, the Dreadnought class, should be the “last class of nuclear-powered submarines that the UK builds”. He said the Aukus programme should be “cancelled now”, with the money instead spent on better “cost-effective” ways of delivering the same capability but with cheaper tech, like aerial drones or smaller unmanned submarines. The naval commander pointed towards historic cuts in defence spending, repeated changes to how nuclear submarine programmes are delivered and a “huge failure” to manage key personnel as contributing factors to the decline. But he also criticised the role of industry giants for delays to programmes and added that not a single one of the UK’s 23 decommissioned nuclear boats had been dismantled since the first, HMS Dreadnought, left service in 1980.

“This is an utter disgrace and brings into question whether Britain is responsible enough to own nuclear submarines,” he said, adding the details he raised were all publicly available and probably known by Russia. A defence source insisted the “right people were in the right place” to continue to oversee Britain’s nuclear programme. The Ministry of Defence said it was committed to delivering the next generation of nuclear submarines, and that the Dreadnought programme remained on track. It added that it was committed to the safe disposal of old boats and was a responsible nuclear operator, meeting the highest standards of safety, security and environmental protection for the current projects in Devonport and Rosyth and through planning for a future disposal capability in the UK. A spokesman added: “We are unwavering in our commitment to renewing and maintaining the nuclear deterrent underlined by the biggest sustained investment into defence spending since the end of the Cold War. “The Strategic Defence Review made clear the need for sustained investment across the Defence Nuclear Enterprise. This will see delivery of the most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy and the investment of £15bn this Parliament into our sovereign warhead programme.”

The killing in October underscores the complex political and security landscape as the United States begins working with interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in the fight against remnants of IS. According to relatives, Khaled al-Masoud had been spying on IS for years on behalf of the insurgents led by al-Sharaa and then for al-Sharaa’s interim government, established after the fall of former President Bashar Assad a year ago. Al-Sharaa’s insurgents were mainly Islamists, some connected to al-Qaida, but enemies of IS who often clashed with it over the past decade. Neither U.S. nor Syrian government officials have commented on al-Masoud’s death, an indication that neither side wants the incident to derail improving ties. Weeks after the Oct. 19 raid, al-Sharaa visited Washington and announced Syria would join the global coalition against IS. Still, al-Masoud’s death could be “quite a setback” for efforts to combat IS, said Wassim Nasr, a senior research fellow with the Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank focused on security issues. Al-Masoud had been infiltrating IS in the southern deserts of Syria known as the Badiya, one of the places where remnants of the extremist group have remained active, Nasr said. The raid targeting him was a result of “the lack of coordination between the coalition and Damascus,” Nasr said. In the latest sign of the increasing cooperation, the U.S. Central Command said Sunday that American troops and forces from Syria’s Interior Ministry had located and destroyed 15 IS weapons caches in the south.

Confusion around the raid

The raid occurred in Dumayr, a town east of Damascus on the edge of the desert. At around 3 a.m., residents woke to the sound of heavy vehicles and planes. Residents said U.S. troops conducted the raid alongside the Syrian Free Army, a U.S.-trained opposition faction that had fought against Assad. The SFA now officially reports to the Syrian Defense Ministry. Al-Masoud’s cousin, Abdel Kareem Masoud, said he opened his door and saw Humvees with U.S. flags on them. “There was someone on top of one of them who spoke broken Arabic, who pointed a machine gun at us and a green laser light and told us to go back inside,” he said. Khaled al-Masoud’s mother, Sabah al-Sheikh al-Kilani, said the forces then surrounded her son’s house next door, where he was with his wife and five daughters, and banged on the door. Al-Masoud told them that he was with General Security, a force under Syria’s Interior Ministry, but they broke down the door and shot him, al-Kilani said. They took him away, wounded, al-Kilani said. Later, government security officials told the family he had been released but was in the hospital. The family was then called to pick up his body. It was unclear when he had died. “How did he die? We don’t know,” his mother said. “I want the people who took him from his children to be held accountable.”

Faulty intelligence

Al-Masoud’s family believes he was targeted based on faulty intelligence provided by members of the Syrian Free Army. Representatives of the SFA did not respond to requests for comment. Al-Masoud had worked with al-Sharaa’s insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in its northwestern enclave of Idlib before Assad’s fall, his cousin said. Then he returned to Dumayr and worked with the security services of al-Sharaa’s government. Two Syrian security officials and one political official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, confirmed that al-Masoud had been working with Syria’s interim government in a security role. Two of the officials said he had worked on combating IS. Initial media reports on the raid said it had captured an IS official. But U.S. Central Command, which typically issues statements when a U.S. operation kills or captures a member of the extremist group in Syria, made no announcement. A U.S. defense official, when asked for more information about the raid and its target and whether it had been coordinated with Syria’s government, said, “We are aware of these reports but do not have any information to provide.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive military operation. Representatives of Syria’s defense and interior ministries, and of U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack, declined to comment.

Increased coordination could prevent mistakes

At its peak in 2015, IS controlled a swath of territory across Iraq and Syria half the size of the United Kingdom. It was notorious for its brutality against religious minorities as well as Muslims not adhering to the group’s extreme interpretation of Islam. After years of fighting, the U.S.-led coalition broke the group’s last hold on territory in late 2019. Since then, U.S. troops in Syria have been working to ensure IS does not regain a foothold. The U.S. estimates IS still has about 2,500 members in Syria and Iraq. U.S. Central Command last month said the number of IS attacks there had fallen to 375 for the year so far, compared to 1,038 last year. Fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops are believed to be operating in Syria, carrying out airstrikes and conducting raids against IS cells. They work mainly alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast and the Syrian Free Army in the south.

Now the U.S. has another partner: the security forces of the new Syrian government. Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor, has reported 52 incidents in which civilians were harmed or killed in coalition operations in Syria since 2020. The group classified al-Masoud as a civilian. Airwars director Emily Tripp said the group has seen “multiple instances of what the U.S. call ‘mistakes,’” including a 2023 case in which the U.S. military announced it had killed an al-Qaida leader in a drone strike. The target later turned out to be a civilian farmer. It was unclear if the Oct. 19 raid went wrong due to faulty intelligence or if someone deliberately fed the coalition false information. Nasr said that in the past, feuding groups have sometimes used the coalition to settle scores. “That’s the whole point of having a hotline with Damascus, in order to see who’s who on the ground,” he said.

At the lowest point of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln characterized the core factor between victory and defeat as finding a general who understood the “awful arithmetic” of war. War is a contest of blood and treasure; each can, and must, ultimately be counted and measured. It has been the same for every conflict before and after. Yet this arithmetic is constantly changing, and never faster than right now. If the United States cannot update its calculations to properly reflect our new era, our failure will not just cost us blood and treasure, but will drive us toward defeat. Cost imposition has long been a tenet of U.S. strategy. During the Cold War, the U.S. launched expensive programs such as stealth and Star Wars not just for their tactical value, but to send a strategic signal to the Kremlin: neither your economy nor your war machine can keep up. Gorbachev, persuaded, gave up the decades-long competition with the U.S. The very same concept of cost imposition was also elemental to the most celebrated operations of the past year. In Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine used inexpensive drones, reportedly costing less than $500 each, to damage strategic bombers worth many millions of dollars, degrading Russia’s long-range strike capabilities for years to come. Similarly, in Operation Rising Lion, cheap Israeli drones took out Iranian surface-to-air missiles and radars, paving the way for the destruction of command and nuclear facilities worth tens of billions of dollars. In each, the tactical became the strategic through new operational concepts that leveraged the new math of new technologies.

Now contrast this with our own approaches, which overwhelmingly rely on sophisticated but costly overmatch. The most lauded U.S. operation of 2025 was Operation Midnight Hammer, our followup to Rising Lion. One estimate put its cost at $196 million, from combining B-2 bomber’s nearly $160,000 per flight hour and Tomahawk missiles' rough price of $1.87 million apiece. (It does not count the initial purchase of the seven B-2 Bombers that cost $2.1 billion each, nor the $4.3 billion submarine that launched the missiles.) Perhaps it was worth spending one-fifth of a billion dollars to damage Iranian nuclear facilities, but the numbers in Operation Rough Rider—the strikes against the Houthis last spring—illustrate the problem more starkly. The Pentagon spent roughly $5 billion on munitions and operating costs to stop attacks on Red Sea shipping, which simply started back up this month.

The same awful arithmetic haunts the current operations in the Caribbean against the Venezuela-based, government-connected Cartel de los Soles. The entity was recently designated by the Trump administration as a foreign terrorist organization, as part of its argument that US forces are engaged in an “armed conflict.” The cartel was declared by the Department of Justice to be the hub of a cocaine transport network, shipping a reported street value of between $6.25 billion and $8.75 billion in drugs (the cartel gets an unknown, but clearly lesser, percentage of that overall value in actual profit). To battle this foe, the United States has assembled a fleet that cost at least $40 billion to buy in total. The carrier Ford alone cost $4.7 billion to develop and $12.9 billion to build. The fleet is backed by at least 83 aircraft of assorted types, including 10 F-35Bs ($109 million apiece), seven Predator drones ($33 million each), three P-8 Poseidons ($145 million per), and at least one AC-130J gunship ($165 million). To be sure, all of these assets will continue to serve long after Operation Southern Spear is wound down, but this is how we are using the investment. But the current cost of operations and expendables hardly tells a better story. The Ford alone costs about $8 million a day to run. The F-35s and AC-130J cost about $40,000 per flight hour; the P-8s, about $30,000; the Reapers, about $3,500. Analysis of the strike videos on the 21 boats show that U.S. forces have fired AGM-176 Griffins ($127,333 apiece in 2019), Hellfires (running about $150,000 to $220,000) and potentially GBU-39B Small Diameter Bombs ($40,000). In some cases, they are reportedly firing four munitions per strike: “twice to kill the crew and twice more to sink it.”

All this is arrayed to sink motorboats, 21 at last report. One of the boats was described by Pentagon officials as a 39-foot Flipper-type vessel with four 200-horsepower engines. New ones go for about $400,000 on Boats.com, but the old, open top motorbots in the videos are obviously well below that in cost. Their crews have been reported as making $500 per trip. Put in comparison, the cost of the US naval fleet deployed is at least five times what the cartel makes in smuggling. The air fleet deployed costs at least another two times more. It is roughly 5,000 times the cost of the suspected drug boats that have been destroyed. Indeed, just the cost of operating the Ford off Venezuela for a single day has still not yet equaled the maximum cost the cartel paid for the boats it has lost.

dang, almost as if drugs have absolutely nothing to do with any of this, and these forces are actually arrayed there to threaten Venezuela!

In the air, the U.S. military spent roughly 66,000 times more to buy each unmanned drone in the operation than the cartel paid each man that the unmanned drones killed. The US spent between 80 to 300 times more for each bomb or missile it has used than the cartel paid each man killed by those bombs or missiles.

The math is arguably even worse when we're on the defense. In September, a wave of 19 Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace.. The Gerbera-type drones cost as little as $10,000—so cheap that they are often used as decoys to misdirect and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. NATO countered with a half-billion-dollar response force of F-35s, F-16s, AWACS radar planes, and helicopters, which shot down four of the drones with $1.6-million AMRAAM missiles. This is a bargain compared to how challenging U.S. forces have found it to defend against Houthi forces using this same cheap tech. Our naval forces have fired a reported 120 SM-2, 80 SM-6, and 20 SM-3 missiles, costing about $2.1 million, $3.9 million, and over $9.6 million each. And this is to defend against a group operating out of the 187th-largest economy in the world, able to fire mere hundreds of drones and missiles. Our supposed pacing challenge, China, has an economy that will soon be the largest in the world and a combined national industrial and military acquisition plan to be able to fire munitions by the millions.

Even in America’s best-laid plans for future battlefields, there is a harsh reality that is too often ignored. The math of current battlefields remains literally orders of magnitude beyond what our budget plans to spend, our industry plans to build, our acquisitions system is able to contract, and thus what our military will deploy. As a point of comparison, Ukraine is on pace to build, buy, and use over four million drones this year. The U.S. Army, meanwhile, aims to acquire 50,000 drones next year—about 1.25 percent of the Ukrainian total. In its most optimistic plans, it hopes to be able to acquire 1 million drones “within the next two to three years.” ​​When you spend orders of magnitude more than your foe, you are in what is known as a “losing equation.” And if we don’t change this math, we will need an update to Norm Augustine’s infamous “law” of defense acquisitions. Back in 1979, Augustine calculated that if the Pentagon couldn’t curtail the cost curve of its purchasing, by 2054 we wouldn’t be able to afford a single plane. The 2025 version is that if we don't master the new math of the battlefield, we won’t be able to afford to win a single battle.

I'm pretty sure most people don't know that the Battle of Mogadishu was planned by Mohamed Aidid from the beginning to inflict such a sudden and severe tactical defeat on the US that it would sour US public opinion and force a withdrawal. Aidid trained at an infantry school in Rome and was hand selected by the Soviets to attend the elite Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. He calculated that a single prolonged engagement with the American forces in Mogadishu would get the US to withdraw from the county if it involved enough American casualties. He observed that the joint Delta/Ranger teams searching for him would use the exact same helicopter insertion, humvee exfiltration plan every time they raided a house looking for him. So all he had to do was let himself be seen somewhere and mass forces in the surrounding area to encircle the US forces, then set up roadblocks so the humvees wouldn't be able to reach the trapped Americans. Aidid's plan worked perfectly, and his prediction was 100% correct, because Clinton pulled our troops out less than two weeks after the "black hawk down" incident.

The bulk of the casualties on the Somali side were caused by random civilians picking up guns and charging out to fight the Americans. These people wanted revenge on the US force in Somalia because it had caused so much collateral damage and killed so many people during the hunt for Aidid. Aidid's forces tried desperately to get them to put down their weapons and go home because they were just getting in the way, but there were too many of them, and they refused to listen. Aidid lost perhaps 100-200 fighters in the battle, which is an incredibly small price to pay to knock the world's foremost military power out of your country.

This part of the story is more murky, but there's evidence to suggest Aidid grew concerned about causing too many American casualties, inviting a military response, and made the decision to open a corridor for the trapped US troops to exit the encirclement. The quoted post makes another common mistake in missing that the SNA shot down not one but two Blackhawks. Aidid created RPG squads and dispersed them across the area, recognizing the vulnerability of the helicopters, which were always a key part of US raids. Characterizing this as "lucky" doesn't make much sense. Aidid's plan wasn't complicated. His masterstroke was correctly predicting the reaction of the White House and American public (which had no interest in Somalia). Getting this wrong could have triggered escalation instead of a withdrawal.

Of over 500 Ukrainian orphans brought to Turkey under the "Childhood Without War Project"

• 253 were involved in forms of seхual assaults, physical torture
• two girls Nastya(15) & Ilona(16) were impregnated by Turkish staff
• no arrests/ case covered up

In 2022, when the conflict began, there were about 67,000 orphans, 3,500 in the frontline regions. 3,500 of these orphans would later be signed up for evacuation and relocation to foreign nations under Zelensky's wife, Olena Zelenska. The task to carry out this project would be given to 'Ruslan Shostak', a Ukrainian businessman leading the 'Childhood Without War Foundation'. 510 of these children from Dnepropetrovsk would be transferred to Turkey, many others to Germany, Poland and France. In march of 2024, two years after the transfer, an investigation was launched into the project.

It was found out that 85 adults were involved in sexual assaults or forms of physical torture on over 250 children, with two below 17yo impregnated by Turkish cooks. In 2022, after the transfer to Turkey, funds would quickly run out and children would be transported from hotels to hotels – each in worser conditions. From the report of 7 children, "Money ran out and we were forced into labor & fundraising campaigns for money" According to the kids' statements, teachers would give permission of outsiders to interact with students and turn a blind eye to adult-children relationships. A name was constant in my research, senior teacher Oleksandr Titov who was involved in physical abuse.

In the case of 15yo Nastya who was impregnated by a 23yo would later explain that Titov threatened her to abort the child. "He called me and said, tell me if you are pregnant, we can solve this with a pill"* Nastya would return to Ukraine and have the child (2yo today). The second girl Ilona who was 16yo at the time would also be sent back to Ukraine under a vocational study cover up. She would have the child (1,5yo today). Ilona would sIіt her wrist 2months after giving birth, but was saved just in time. Investigation would secretly be ended in July 2025, with no one arrested, later exposed by independent journalists. The Director of the Boarding school, Svetlana would blame the girls for their problems. Titov would be demoted from Senior teacher to P.E. instructor.

There are many other cases we might never find out about. This same problem was reported in Germany, and Ukraine talks about Russia removing kids from the grey zone. Why should Russia ever consider returning ethnic Russian kids back to Ukraine? This is the case we are met with.

Source: Ukrainian journalists of Slidstvo.Info

(seems like the original article might be these: https://www.slidstvo.info/news/ofis-ombudsmena-vstanovyv-porushennia-prav-ukrainskykh-ditey-u-turechchyni-ale-opryliudniuvaty-tse-ne-planuvav-lubinets/, https://www.slidstvo.info/news/pislia-evakuatsii-ukrainskykh-ditey-syrit-do-turechchyny-dvoie-nepovnolitnikh-divchat-povernulysia-vahitnymy-vid-turkiv/)

Like thousands of other military families, Erica’s family learned the hard way that the biggest threat to their health and well-being wasn’t across an ocean or a threat from a foreign enemy. It was inside their own home. The nonprofit Change the Air Foundation recently released an independently administered national survey and a 10-minute documentary, The Hidden Enemy, that puts data and real stories behind what too many in Washington continue to overlook: Military housing is still failing our families, harming their health, and threatening national security. The survey findings echo the experiences of Erica’s family and so many others stationed across the country. The survey, Unsafe and Unheard: Military Service Members and Their Families Sound Off on Dangerous Living Conditions, collected responses from more than 3,400 service members and families at 57 military installations. The results are shocking. Ninety-seven percent of families reported at least one serious housing problem. Mold, mildew, water damage, pest infestations, water contamination, and broken HVAC systems are some of the various housing issues that many military families reported experiencing. Alarmingly, half of all their requests for help go unresolved.

In Erica’s case, she watched her five children develop serious health issues like rashes, headaches, asthma, and GI issues that no doctor could explain. That was until one finally traced the problems back to mold and water damage inside their walls, ceilings, window casing, and HVAC system. They would try to clean it, but then it would return. The housing company insisted the problem was fixed, but her family’s various health symptoms told another story. The Thompson family’s experience is alarmingly common. Seventy-six percent of families surveyed said their health had been harmed by housing conditions, and nearly half said their medical providers confirmed the connection. Brain fog, migraines, fatigue, respiratory problems, even seizures and long-term diagnoses, are being reported by military families across the country. Military children are suffering most of all: rashes, eczema, asthma, chronic infections to name a few. How is this acceptable for the sons and daughters of the people sworn to protect this nation? These housing issues aren’t cosmetic problems. They completely disrupt lives, kid’s schooling, finances, and a warfighter’s ability to adequately perform their duties - in fact, forty seven percent of active duty members reported this in the recent survey. They drive families to emergency rooms and, in many cases, push service members out of the military altogether. When you’re up all night with a sick child because your home is making them ill, you cannot perform your best at work. When families feel like they’re having to choose between their health and their service, it degrades mission readiness.

Yet when military families report these problems, the system designed to help them seems to fall apart. According to the survey, 94 percent of families did everything they were supposed to do by notifying the proper authorities, submitting photos, and begging for inspections or remediation. But only seven percent made it all the way through the military’s so-called “3-Step Process.” Most of the time, families must report the same problem repeatedly before anyone responds. Even then, the housing companies often mark work orders as “resolved” without having made satisfactory repairs. Astonishingly, fifty-three percent of reported issues never got resolved at all. Some families are offered to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) just to secure basic habitability repairs or temporary relocation, a stunning practice that would be unthinkable in civilian residential housing. Yet military families, because of federal enclave law, lack many of the protections civilian renters are afforded. And far too many of these families live with a fear of retaliation for speaking up. In fact, the survey found that more than a quarter of families feared retaliation; 10 percent experienced it. But it’s not the fault of the commanders on the ground. The dispute resolution process for housing issues at local installations rarely works well, if at all. The Hidden Enemy captures the human cost better than statistics ever could. Families from across the country share stories of medical bills, destroyed belongings, sick children, and battles with housing companies fighting for a safe and habitable living space. For years, these stories were dismissed as isolated incidents. Now, the data shows the opposite: This is a systemic crisis. And it’s been worsening since the military got out of the real estate and housing business in 1996 and let private corporations take over with little effective Congressional oversight and accountability.

A third generation of military families is now paying a terrible price for the lack of oversight, transparency and accountability of military housing that came with the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI). To date, the Congressional Research Service estimates that more than $28 billion in Defense Department funds have gone to MHPI contractors. Yet, for at least a decade, those in Washington have documented widespread failures across the MHPI program. Our military families have had enough. Earlier this year, Change the Air Foundation and volunteers met with more than 60 congressional offices. Lawmakers asked for evidence with independent data that went beyond anecdote. Military families delivered it. Now it’s time for Congress, the Pentagon, and private housing companies to finally solve these urgent problems. Some of the solutions to begin tackling this are not complicated: for starters, adopt and enforce real mold remediation standards such as the ANSI/IICRC S520; ban NDAs that silence families; create legal protections so military tenants have the same rights as civilian renters; adopt a uniform definition for Life, Health and Safety (LHS) hazards as defined in the FY 2020 NDAA; require independent inspections and documented oversight so the housing system is being assessed by data, facts and successful outcomes. Most importantly, treat military families as partners and allies, not problem makers. Our warfighters and their families are the backbone of our nation’s mission readiness and national security. Their health, their stability, and the health of their homes matter. It’s time to finally fix our nation’s ongoing military housing crisis.

The evidence is in. Families like Erica’s and too many others are speaking out. And, this time, they will not go unheard.

The U.S. military has stood up its first operational unit armed with Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) kamikaze drones, a design reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in the Middle East. The establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS) is a major development, and offers a way “to flip the script on Iran,” according to a U.S. official. Earlier this year, TWZ laid out a detailed case for why America’s armed forces should be investing heavily in rapidly-produced Shahed-136 clones as an adaptable capability that could be critical in future operations globally, as you can read here. U.S. Central Command announced the creation of TFSS today, which it said is a direct response to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” initiative that kicked off earlier this year. TFSS falls more specifically under the auspices of U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), which oversees U.S. special operations activities across the Middle East. CENTCOM’s Rapid Employment Joint Task Force (REJTF), established in September to help fast-track the fielding of new capabilities in the region, was also involved.

TFSS consists of about two dozen troops that will oversee the establishment and operations of drones, the U.S. official told us, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. The delta wing LUCAS drone, which is roughly 10 feet long and has a wingspan of eight feet, was developed by Arizona-based SpektreWorks in cooperation with the U.S. military. “I do not want to get into numbers [of drones fielded], but they are definitely based and delivered at an amount that provides us with a significant level of capability,” the official added. The LUCAS design includes features that allow for “autonomous coordination, making them suitable for swarm tactics and network-centric strikes.” “Costing approximately $35,000 per platform, LUCAS is a low-cost, scalable system that provides cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional long-range U.S. systems that can deliver similar effects,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, also told TWZ. “The drone system has an extensive range and the ability to operate beyond line of sight, providing significant capability across CENTCOM’s vast operating area.”

“LUCAS drones deployed by CENTCOM have an extensive range and are designed to operate autonomously,” CENTCOM added in a press release. “They can be launched with different mechanisms to include catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff, and mobile ground and vehicle systems.” “We can push them from various points,” the U.S. official told TWZ when asked about whether the LUCAS drones could be launched from ships. “They can be launched through various mechanisms, and land is not the only place from which to launch these.” As an aside here, TWZ has previously explored in great depth the arguments for adding a variety of drone types to the arsenals of U.S. Navy ships to provide additional layers of defense, as well as enhanced strike, electronic warfare, intelligence-gathering, and networking capabilities, which you can find here. Overall, the LUCAS drone’s core design was based directly on the Shahed-136. “The U.S. military got hold of an Iranian Shahed,” according to the U.S. official. “We took a look and reverse-engineered it. We are working with a number of U.S. companies in the innovation space.” “The LUCAS drone is the product of that [reverse-engineering] effort,” they added. “It pretty much follows the Shahed design.”

...

U.S. military experience aiding in the defense of Israel, as well as observations from the war in Ukraine, have been key drivers in recent pushes to develop and field new drone and counter-drone capabilities, now including the LUCAS design. Beyond the particulars of the LUCAS drones themselves, the confirmation that an operational American unit in the Middle East is now armed with them is a major development. Before now, at least publicly, the U.S. military had only shown concrete interest in LUCAS and similar designs for use as threat representative targets for testing and training purposes rather than as operational weapons. “We are now at a point where not only are we building them in mass, but we have already based them in [the] Middle East for the first time,” the U.S. official stressed to TWZ. “In essence, we are able to flip the script on Iran.” “I’ll let you read between the lines, but the fact that we are basing it where we are basing it, and the fact that we have seen what the Russians have done to Ukraine, what Iran has done to fomenting instability with the use of drone technology, the 12-Day War threats they posed to Israel and how partners and allies have to expend vast amounts of resources to defend against these attacks, we are now taking a page from their playbook and throwing it back at them,” the U.S. official continued. “In essence, Iran enjoyed overmatch and an advantage through the high volume of drone attacks they were able to effectively deploy, and they are hard to defend against at such a high volume.”

...

In addition to Iran, “we don’t have a problem hitting the [Iranian-backed] Houthis [in Yemen], we could throw it in their face as well,” the U.S. official continued. However, “with the Houthis, you have more of a target-find problem, [rather] than sending a bunch of things into Iran with lots of stuff to hit.”

...

SpektreWorks is not the only company in this marketspace. In the United States, at least one other firm, Griffon Aerospace, has been pitching a Shahed-esque drone called the MQM-172 Arrowhead to America’s armed forces. While the general concept has existed for decades, similar delta-winged one-way attack munitions are steadily emerging globally among allies and potential foes alike, including in China. Russia is also said to be assisting North Korea in establishing its own domestic capacity to produce Shahed-136s, or derivatives thereof, as part of an exchange for Pyongyang’s help in fighting Ukraine. At the same time, while today’s announcement about TFSS and its LUCAS drones is significant, it is still being presented heavily as a regionally limited capability to be employed by special operations forces. Whether or not there are efforts to stand up similar units elsewhere within the U.S. military in other locales is unclear. Top U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force officers have openly expressed an extremely high desire to field a Shahed-like kamikaze drone capability as soon as possible. Still, the U.S. military’s standing up of its first operational unit armed with Shahed-like long-range kamikaze drones is a major development — one that has a high chance of serving as a springboard to much broader fielding of similar capabilities.