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Ukraine attacks Russian oil rigs and shadow fleet as drones cripple chemical plant in huge explosion
MS Daily brief-12 DECEMBER 2025
Contents
News from Ukraine | Russians make serious mistake in Pokrovsk | Elite forces lose. 1
US wants Ukraine to withdraw from Donbas and create a “free economic zone,” says Zelenskyy 1
Ukraine war update: “Terrorist” attack kills one soldier in Kiev and injures four 3
Trump extends sanctions against Venezuela, while Maduro denounces a new “era of piracy” 5
What we know about the oil tanker seized by the US off the coast of Venezuela. 8
US seized oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, Trump says. 13
US seizes sanctioned tanker off the coast of Venezuela, says Trump. 15
Navy wants new frigate in 2028, says procurement chief. 21
Underwater drones against Russian spy ships: London’s new strategy to protect its coasts. 22
The New York Times: Europe is also worth fighting for 23
Ukraine strikes Russian oil platform in the Caspian Sea for the first time, official says. 26
NATO’s Rutte warns allies that they are Russia’s next target 27
Mission command with Chinese characteristics?. 27
Passive-aggressive. Reconsidering the relevance of passive defense in a major war. 28
Babcock unveils ARMOR Force to fulfill Royal Navy’s autonomous ambitions. 36
South Korean Navy launches first high-speed Marlin combat boat 37
The US Navy and HII begin construction of the Virginia-class Block V submarine Barb (SSN-804). 45
Russian Navy may finally receive Project 677M Velikiye Luki submarine before the end of the year 47
The terrible arithmetic of our wars. 49
Intense surveillance activity over the Black Sea today. 51
How does China manage to produce so many submarines?. 52
The naval coalition already includes more than 20 countries – commander 55
Zelenskyy signs state budget law for 2026. 56
BREAKING NEWS: Tensions rise rapidly as terrorist cells in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq prepare for attack | TBN Israel
News from Ukraine | Russians made a serious mistake in Pokrovsk | Elite forces lost
US wants Ukraine to withdraw from Donbas and create a “free economic zone,” says Zelenskyy
The Ukrainian president argues that the plan would not be fair without guarantees that Russia would not simply take control of the area
Shaun Walker in Kiev
Thursday, December 11, 2025, 9:20 p.m. CET
The US wants Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donbas region, and Washington would then create a “free economic zone” in the parts currently controlled by Kiev, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Previously, the US had suggested that Kiev cede the parts of Donbas it still controls to Russia, but the Ukrainian president said on Thursday that Washington had now suggested a compromise version in which Ukrainian troops would withdraw but Russian troops would not advance into the territory.
“Who will govern this territory, which they call a ‘free economic zone’ or ‘demilitarized zone’ — I don’t know,” the Ukrainian president said, speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Thursday.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine does not consider the plan fair without guarantees that Russian troops will not simply take control of the area after the Ukrainian withdrawal.
Zelenskyy said: “If one side’s troops have to withdraw and the other side remains in place, then what will stop these other troops, the Russian troops? Or what will prevent them from disguising themselves as civilians and taking control of this free economic zone? All of this is very serious. It is not certain that Ukraine will agree to this, but if we are talking about a compromise, then it must be a fair one.”
He said that if Ukraine agreed to such a plan, elections or a referendum would be needed to ratify it, stating that only “the Ukrainian people” can make decisions on territorial concessions.
Zelenskyy says ceasefire needed before elections can be held in Ukraine – video
Under the US plans, Zelenskyy said, Ukraine would withdraw from Donbas, where Russia is advancing, while the front lines would be frozen in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Russia would give up a few small pieces of land it controls in other regions.
Zelenskyy has been under immense pressure from Donald Trump to sign the US peace plan. In recent days, Trump has attacked Zelenskyy, saying he “hasn’t even read” the draft peace plan and suggesting that it lacks legitimacy and that Ukraine should hold elections.
Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said Thursday: “The president is extremely frustrated with both sides involved in this war and is tired of meetings just for the sake of meetings.”
Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian negotiating team sent the revised plan to Washington on Wednesday and that questions about territory and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are two of the remaining points under discussion. “It’s not the final plan; it’s a reaction to what we’ve received… the plan is constantly being developed and modified, and this is an ongoing process that is still unfolding,” he said.
If Washington and Kyiv reach an agreement, the much more important question remains whether Vladimir Putin is really prepared to sign an agreement or is just buying time with fake negotiations, hoping to continue his military advance during the winter.
In Berlin, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Thursday that if Putin is allowed to impose his will in Ukraine, the prospect of war in Europe will become more real, warning that the continent has been “silent and complacent” about the threat from Russia.
A new war waged by Russia could break out within the next five years and could be “on the scale of the war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured,” Rutte suggested. He made an already familiar appeal to all European countries to increase their defense spending. “Too many believe that time is on our side. It is not. Now is the time to act,” he added.
Rutte is among European politicians who have made sustained efforts to keep the Trump administration on their side regarding policy toward Ukraine, as the US president appears to be growing increasingly impatient with the lack of a peace agreement.
On Thursday afternoon, Zelenskyy held a video conference with about 30 leaders from the “coalition of the willing” countries that support Ukraine, but without Trump.
In some European capitals, there is a growing sense that Ukraine will have to make painful compromises as the country enters its fourth winter of full-scale war, with a difficult situation on the front lines and enormous energy problems caused by Russia’s repeated attacks on energy infrastructure.
However, the leaders of France, Britain, and Germany, who met with Zelenskyy on Monday at Downing Street, are keen to stress that only Ukraine can decide on territorial issues. “It would be a mistake to force the Ukrainian president to accept a peace that his people will not accept after four years of suffering and death,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday.
Zelenskyy said that, in addition to the general framework agreement, there are two separate documents that Ukraine hopes to sign in the coming days, one on potential security guarantees that would come into effect if Russia attacked Ukraine again and one on Ukraine’s economic revival.
Also on Thursday, senior EU officials met in Lviv, western Ukraine, to discuss Ukraine’s accession prospects, even though Hungary’s Russia-friendly leader Viktor Orbán continues to block formal negotiations.
All other EU members are in favor of Ukraine’s accession, and officials have said they want to accept Ukraine anyway, provided the country can move forward in aligning its laws and practices with EU regulations. “Ukraine will become a member of the EU, and no one can block that,” Marta Kos, the EU commissioner for enlargement, said during the talks.
Zelenskyy said he hoped Trump would put pressure on Hungary and any other EU countries that might block Ukraine’s accession. “We all understand that the US president has various levers of influence, and these will work on those who are currently blocking Ukraine’s accession,” he said.
Update on the war in Ukraine: a “terrorist” attack kills a soldier in Kiev and injures four people
The explosion of an improvised bomb was followed by a second one when police and medics arrived at the scene, prosecutors say; drones struck a major Russian military chemical manufacturer. What we know on day 1,388
Warren Murray with Guardian journalists and news agencies
Friday, December 12, 2025, 3:11 a.m. CET
- Two improvised bombs exploded in Kiev on Thursday, killing one soldier and injuring four others, including two police officers, in a “terrorist” attack, prosecutors said. “The first explosion occurred while two National Guard soldiers were patrolling the area, and one of them died,” the Kiev prosecutor’s office said, adding that the second bomb was detonated while police and medics were responding to the first.
- Ukrainian drones struck two chemical plants in Russia’s Novgorod and Smolensk regions, the commander of the drone forces said Thursday. Major Robert “Magyar” Brovdi said the plants were producing components for explosives used by Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. Other sources, including the dissident Russian social media channel Astra, reported the attacks and published images. The Kyiv Independent described the PJSC Acron factory in the city of Veliky Novgorod as one of the largest facilities of its kind in Russia.
- The Ukrainian army’s eastern command on Thursday denied Russian claims that it had taken control of the town of Siversk. It is located about 30 km (18 miles) east of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major towns in the Donbas region that are still under Ukrainian control. The area “remains under the control of the Ukrainian armed forces,” the army said. “The enemy is trying to infiltrate Siversk in small groups, taking advantage of unfavorable weather conditions, but most of these units are destroyed on approach.” The Institute for the Study of War said Thursday that Ukrainian forces had recently advanced near Pokrovsk, while Russian forces had recently advanced in northern Kharkiv region and in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area and near Oleksandrivka.
- NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned allies that “we are Russia’s next target” in a speech in Berlin, saying that “too many do not feel the urgency, too many believe that time is on our side” and presenting a vision of a European war with Russia in the next five years.
- An estimated €210 billion of Russian central bank assets in the EU will remain frozen for the foreseeable future, according to a plan to be presented to EU finance ministers on Friday for formal approval. Most EU member state ambassadors approved on Thursday the plan to use the exceptional powers provided for in Article 122 of the EU treaty to speed up the measure. The Kremlin-friendly Hungarian government criticized the decision. The freeze will no longer require a biannual vote that Hungary could veto. This helps pave the way for a loan to Ukraine, financed from frozen Russian assets, which Europeans are rushing to finalize.
- Kim Jong-un praised North Korean troops fighting in the war in Ukraine, state media reported on Friday. The statement was made at the end of a three-day meeting of the dictatorship’s central committee. The soldiers, Kim said, “have demonstrated to the world the prestige of our army and state as an ever-victorious army and true protector of international justice.” At least 600 of them have been killed and thousands more wounded, according to South Korean estimates.
- The US wants Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donbas region, which it still controls, and Washington would then turn it into a “free economic zone” run by “who knows who,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday. The idea was for Ukrainian troops to withdraw, but for Russian troops not to advance into the territory, the Ukrainian president said.
- As Shaun Walker writes from Kiev, Zelenskyy continued: “If one side’s troops have to withdraw and the other side stays where it is, then what will stop those other troops, the Russians? Or what will stop them from disguising themselves as civilians and taking control of this free economic zone? All of this is very serious. It is not certain that Ukraine would agree to this, but if we are talking about a compromise, then it must be a fair one.” If Ukraine were to agree to such a plan, only “the Ukrainian people” could ratify it through elections or a referendum.
- Zelensky opposed the idea of a unilateral withdrawal of Ukraine from the Donetsk region without the Russians doing the same. “Why doesn’t the other side involved in the war withdraw the same distance in the opposite direction?” he said, adding that there are “many questions” still unresolved. “We have two key points of disagreement: the territories in Donetsk and everything related to them, as well as the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. These are the two issues we continue to discuss.” Donald Trump said Thursday that the US will send a representative to participate in talks in Europe on Ukraine this weekend if there is a good chance of progress on a ceasefire.
Trump expands sanctions against Venezuela, while Maduro denounces a new “era of piracy”
Six more supertankers have been added to the sanctions list, along with members of Maduro’s extended family, amid rising tensions following the seizure of the tanker
Andrew Roth in Washington and Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Friday, December 12, 2025, 02:43 CET
Donald Trump has increased pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by expanding sanctions and issuing new threats to strike land targets in Venezuela, while the South American dictator has accused the US president of ushering in a new “era of criminal naval piracy” in the Caribbean.
On Thursday evening, the US imposed restrictions on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six supertankers and shipping companies linked to them. The Treasury Department said the ships “have engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt and narco-terrorist regime.”
The targeted ships recently loaded crude oil in Venezuela, according to internal shipping documents from state oil company PDVSA. Four of the tankers are registered in Panama, and the other two are registered in the Cook Islands and Hong Kong.
In his comments Thursday night, Trump repeated his threat to soon begin attacks on suspected narcotics shipments traveling overland from Venezuela to the US.
The comments come after the US seized a tanker from the “black fleet” called Skipper off the coast of Venezuela, sparking concerns among some US lawmakers that Trump is “sleepwalking us into a war with Venezuela.”
On Thursday, Maduro responded to the seizure, saying at a presidential event: “They kidnapped the crew, stole the ship and inaugurated a new era, the era of criminal naval piracy in the Caribbean.” He added that “Venezuela will insure all ships to guarantee free trade of its oil around the world.”
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the US would take the Skipper to a US port. “The ship will go to a US port, and the United States intends to seize the oil,” Leavitt said at a press conference. “However, there is a legal procedure for confiscating the oil, and that legal procedure will be followed.”
Trump previously told reporters that the US intends to “keep” the oil on board the tanker.
Asked if she considered the seizure an escalation of US pressure on Maduro, Leavitt replied: “I think the president views the seizure of the tanker as an enforcement of the administration’s sanctions policies.”
“A prolonged war is certainly not something that interests this president,” she added.
Reuters reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources, that the US is preparing to seize more oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela. Asked if the US would do so, Leavitt replied: “We will not stand idly by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narco-terrorism by rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Maduro on Thursday after this rare capture to “reaffirm” Russia’s support for the current Venezuelan government, despite calls from the , other countries in the region, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who have asked him to resign.
According to a Kremlin statement, Putin called Maduro to express his “solidarity” with the Venezuelan people and to continue economic and energy cooperation, which includes offshore oil projects in the Caribbean Sea.
Senior Democratic lawmakers and at least one Republican condemned the seizure of the tanker, with one of them stating that Trump “is sleepwalking us into a war with Venezuela.”
Maduro reacted defiantly to US pressure, and his government described the seizure of the tanker as “blatant theft” and “an act of international piracy,” adding that it “will defend its sovereignty, natural resources, and national dignity with absolute determination.”
But neighboring countries have said that Maduro’s departure could help find a solution to the crisis. In a radio interview on Thursday, Colombian Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio indicated that her government would be willing to offer Maduro a place to live or “protection” if necessary.
“Colombia would have no reason to refuse,” Villavicencio said, although she believes Maduro would be more willing to go somewhere further away. It was the first time a senior Colombian official had said Maduro could be granted asylum in the country, although Villavicencio had previously discussed the possibility of forming a transitional government.
Why is Trump attacking Venezuelan boats? | Latest news
This followed a public statement by Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, on Wednesday: “It is time for a general amnesty and a transitional government that includes everyone,” Petro said, adding that he opposes a “foreign invasion” of Venezuela and rejecting direct action by the US.
Celso Amorim, senior adviser to Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, told The Guardian earlier this week that “asylum is a Latin American institution [for] people on the right and left,” but added that he did not want to speculate, “so as not to appear to be encouraging” the idea.
Speaking in Oslo on Thursday after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado repeated her call for Maduro to step down and predicted that he would soon have no choice but to leave Venezuela. “He will leave,” she insisted, although so far the autocrat has shown no sign of being willing to relinquish power after nearly 13 years as president.
At a rally on Wednesday, Maduro urged his supporters to be prepared “to crush the teeth of the North American empire, if necessary.” In an apparent attempt to project nonchalance, he danced to Bobby McFerrin’s song, Don’t Worry Be Happy.
Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan minister and opposition supporter, said that in his view, the only way to force Maduro out is to dramatically increase US military pressure on him.
“If you know you’re going to face kinetic threats from a credible military force, then exile suddenly becomes much more attractive,”
Hausmann said. “That’s why I prefer to clearly use military threats to convince Maduro to leave.”
“If staying in power means you might be the target of missiles, like [Iranian General Qasem] Soleimani, then you should seriously consider whether you want to stay in power,” Hausmann added.
Maduro was democratically elected in 2013, inheriting the Bolivarian revolution from his mentor, Hugo Chávez, but has led the country in an increasingly authoritarian direction.
The former union leader is widely seen as having rigged last year’s presidential election, with an independent analysis of opposition-collected election data suggesting Maduro suffered a crushing defeat to Machado’s ally, retired diplomat Edmundo González. Even long-time allies of the Chavista movement, such as the leftist presidents of Brazil and Colombia, refused to recognize Maduro’s claim that he defeated González, who ran in Machado’s place after she was barred from participating.
Although the US seizure of the Guyana-flagged vessel Skipper was quickly seen as an escalation of pressure on Venezuela, it also coincided with a series of attacks on other ships in the “black fleet” around the world that transport oil between sanctioned countries in violation of global maritime regulations.
Maritime data collected by Windward, an artificial intelligence-based maritime data company, and shared with the Guardian indicated that the ship regularly “falsified” its location and made multiple trips to Venezuela and Iran, which are also under US sanctions, and transported oil to China.
“The seizure of the Skipper by the US off the coast of Venezuela sends a strong message that black fleet tankers are now a legitimate military target,” the company wrote in an analysis.
There are 30 sanctioned tankers operating in Venezuelan waters, the company said, including seven that are falsely registered and operate off the coast.
“Despite violating global maritime regulations that underpin world trade, hundreds of these tankers have operated around the world unchallenged — until now,” the company said.
The Trump administration presented Wednesday’s seizure as a law enforcement action, noting that the US Coast Guard led the operation and asked US Attorney General Pam Bondi to announce the seizure.
“For several years, the tanker has been sanctioned by the United States for its involvement in an illicit oil transportation network that supports foreign terrorist organizations,” she said. “This seizure, conducted off the coast of Venezuela, was carried out safely and securely — and our investigation, conducted in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil, continues.”
What we know about the tanker seized by the US off the coast of Venezuela
Skipper, an oil tanker sanctioned by the US in 2022, is believed to have been carrying 1.1 million barrels of Venezuelan oil
Jonathan Yerushalmy and Edward Helmore
Thursday, December 11, 2025, 8:39 p.m. CET
The US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a ship that had previously been sanctioned by the US in 2022 while sailing under a different name, in a dramatic operation that further intensifies tensions between the Trump administration and the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In recent months, the US has built up its largest military presence in the region in decades, including the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s newest and largest aircraft carrier. It has more than 4,000 sailors, plus fighter jets and accompanying warships.
At the same time, the Trump administration launched a series of deadly attacks on ships suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, which have come under scrutiny in Congress. Some organizations have described the operations as extrajudicial killings .
Donald Trump’s objective remains unclear, but experts largely agree that the overthrow of Maduro’s authoritarian government is the ultimate goal.
Karoline Leavitt, White House spokeswoman, said Thursday at a press conference that the tanker was seized under a judicial warrant because it was a “sanctioned vessel known for transporting sanctioned oil on the black market” to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and was to be taken to a US port.
Leavitt added that the US intends to seize the tanker’s oil, but noted that this is subject to legal proceedings.
“The ship is currently undergoing a seizure process,” she said, noting that the ship was being searched and the crew questioned. “The US intends to seize the oil, but there is a legal process for seizing it, and that legal process will be followed.”
Asked to clarify the Trump administration’s strategic goal in Operation Southern Spear, Leavitt pointed to stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the US and “enforcing this administration’s sanctions policy.”
What do we know about the seized ship?
The tanker, identified as Skipper by maritime analysts Vanguard, was a very large crude carrier (VLCC) and is believed to have been carrying approximately 1.1 million barrels of oil, loaded last week in Venezuela’s main oil port.
The tanker was falsely flying the flag of Guyana, the country’s maritime authority said. A ship’s flag indicates where it is registered, and under international law, ships must comply with the maritime laws of that country when at sea. However, in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of ships sailing under false flags, which allows them to circumvent safety regulations and international sanctions.
Tracking data shows that Skipper was previously sanctioned by the US in 2022 while sailing under another name, Adisa. It was accused of belonging to the so-called ghost fleet, which illegally transports oil on behalf of Iran to avoid US sanctions.
The ship has also made multiple trips to Venezuela and Iran in recent years, according to Marine Traffic, which provides real-time ship tracking services.
Public records show that the ship is owned by Triton Navigation Corp, which was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for its involvement in transporting oil for Iran.
“The Skipper has transported nearly 13 million barrels of Iranian and Venezuelan oil since joining the global tanker fleet in 2021,” Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, .
Triton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What was the ship doing when it was seized?
According to Marine Traffic, the ship was transmitting a “false” position, a tactic well known among “shady” oil tankers transporting sanctioned oil from Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Despite location data indicating that the ship was closer to the coast of Guyana, satellite images show that it had actually been in the Venezuelan port of Jose for several weeks. Images provided to the Guardian by TankerTrackers.com show that Skipper was anchored at the Jose oil terminal as early as November 18.
The ship left Venezuela last week with about half of its oil cargo belonging to a Cuban state oil importer, according to documents from Venezuela’s state oil company seen by the Associated Press.
The Venezuelan government said the seizure “constitutes blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
Why did the US seize this tanker?
The US government has sanctioned more than 170 ships it accuses of illegally transporting oil, while the number sanctioned by other governments and organizations likely exceeds 1,000.
Experts disagree on why the Skipper was singled out and seized on Wednesday and how this fits into the broader operation in Latin America.
In its statement, the Maduro government claimed that the seizure revealed the Trump administration’s true motives: “It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”
However, analysts have suggested that, as the US is the world’s largest oil producer, there are likely other motives behind the campaign of aggression against Venezuela.
Although the US has seized sanctioned oil tankers before, Wednesday’s action stands out for the dramatic nature of the operation. Images of the US Coast Guard descending from helicopters onto the deck of the Skipper were amplified on social media by the Trump administration. In a video distributed by the Department of Homeland Security, the soundtrack features LL Cool J’s song Mama Said Knock You Out.
The release of such videos will likely be seen as a propaganda victory for the Trump administration, which will continue to put pressure on Maduro.
Other experts have suggested that the seizure of the Skipper will further slow Venezuela’s oil industry by increasing export costs. Venezuela has already been forced to significantly reduce the price of crude oil exports to its main buyer, China, due to increasing competition from sanctioned oil from Russia and Iran.
The real and present threat of US operations against sanctioned tankers — as demonstrated on Wednesday — will force shadow tanker owners to demand higher costs for transporting Venezuelan oil as insurance against seizures.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/11/venezuela-oil-tanker-seized-us
Trump news in brief: President “tired of meetings” as negotiations for peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia drag on
Trump’s spokesman suggested he was growing increasingly weary of the process, while Ukraine’s president was under immense pressure to sign the agreement with the US – major US political news from December 11, 2025
Guardian staff
Friday, December 12, 2025, 03:08 CET
Regarding the peace negotiations in Ukraine, Donald Trump is “tired of meetings just for the sake of meetings,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday.
Leavitt added that the White House could send a representative to meet with European and Ukrainian officials this weekend if it believes the meeting is “worth” the US’s time, adding that Trump is “extremely frustrated with both sides of this war.”
“He wants this war to end, and the administration has devoted more than 30 hours [to this issue] in the last two weeks alone, meeting with the Russians, Ukrainians, and Europeans,” Leavitt said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been under immense pressure from Trump to sign the US peace plan. In recent days, Trump has attacked Zelenskyy, saying he “hasn’t even read” the draft peace plan, suggesting he lacks legitimacy and that Ukraine should hold elections.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s negotiating team sent the revised plan to Washington on Wednesday and that questions over territory and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are two of the remaining sticking points.
Leavitt said Trump was “aware” of Ukraine’s updated peace proposal but offered no further comment.
Zelenskyy skeptical of US plan for “free economic zone” in Donbas region
The US wants Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donbas region, and Washington would then create a “free economic zone” in the parts currently controlled by Kiev, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Previously, the US had suggested that Kiev cede to Russia the parts of Donbas it still controlled, but the Ukrainian president said on Thursday that Washington had now suggested a compromise version in which Ukrainian troops would withdraw, but Russian troops would not advance into the territory.
US lawmakers condemn seizure of Venezuelan tanker
Senior Democratic lawmakers and at least one Republican have condemned the US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker off the country’s coast, with one saying Donald Trump was “sleepwalking us into a war with Venezuela.”
There is growing concern in Washington, at least somewhat bipartisan, about the administration’s escalating military posture in the region. Trump has accused Venezuela’s of facilitating drug trafficking and has increased the US military presence in the Caribbean to a level not seen in decades.
Indiana Republicans rebuke Trump by rejecting electoral map redrawing
Indiana Republicans have rejected efforts to redraw the state’s congressional map, a stunning rebuke of Donald Trump and Republican efforts to reconfigure the state’s congressional districts to add two more Republican-friendly seats.
The measure failed 19-31, with 21 Republicans joining 10 Democrats in rejecting the new maps. Republicans currently hold seven of Indiana’s nine congressional districts. The new map would have favored Republicans in all nine districts.
Senate rejects two health care bills as Obamacare tax credits expire
The US Senate on Thursday rejected competing proposals to address the imminent expiration of subsidies for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act, significantly increasing the chances that healthcare costs will soon rise to levels unaffordable for millions of Americans.
Protesters interrupt Noem’s hearing with a quote from The Exorcist
Protesters briefly interrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a hearing on Capitol Hill, evoking a quote from the movie The Exorcist.
As Noem delivered her opening remarks before the House Homeland Security Committee, two protesters interrupted the hearing, one shouting, “Stop ICE raids! The power of Christ compels you! Stop deportations, the power of Christ compels you!”
Grand jury again refuses to indict Trump critic
The department tried twice to bring new charges against James after a judge dismissed the case against her, ruling that the prosecutor handling the case had not been properly appointed.
It is an embarrassing blow to Trump’s Justice Department, as the president sought revenge against one of his political rivals.
Critics slam Trump’s plan to check visitors’ social media
Supporters of free speech have accused Donald Trump of “destroying civil liberties” and “outright censorship” after the White House announced that it intends to require visa applicants from dozens of countries to provide their social media, phone, and email histories for review before being allowed to enter the US.
What else happened today:
- Kilmar Ábrego García was released from an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania after a federal judge in Maryland ordered his release on Thursday. Ábrego was released shortly before 5 p.m. ET, his lawyer told The Associated Press. He plans to return to Maryland’s , where he has lived for many years with his wife and child, both US citizens, after entering the country illegally as a teenager.
- Health authorities in South Carolina have reported an “acceleration” of the measles epidemic in the state following Thanksgiving travel and a lack of vaccinations, with hundreds of people being placed in quarantine.
- The increasingly polarized ideology in the US is affecting a larger and much younger part of the country’s armed forces and testing the military’s ability to remain above political conflicts, said a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- The US southern border is set to become more militarized following an announcement by the Trump administration that the military will now oversee 760 acres of public land for a period of three years.
- While top US vaccine officials are under pressure from lawmakers and former leaders, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it will “soon” release information on regulatory changes following unconfirmed claims of deaths after Covid vaccination .
- Mike Lindell, pillow salesman and election conspiracy theorist, has announced his candidacy for governor of Minnesota.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/11/trump-administration-news-update-today
The US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, Trump says
President Donald Trump confirmed Wednesday that the US had taken control of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a move that risks escalating tensions with that country.
“As you probably know, we just seized a tanker off the coast of Venezuela,” Trump said. “A big tanker, very big, in fact, the biggest ever seized.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi later posted a video on X showing armed personnel rappelling down from a helicopter onto the ship, then moving across the deck with their weapons drawn. She said the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, and the U.S. Coast Guard, “with the support of the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for an oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.”
“For several years, the tanker has been sanctioned by the United States for its involvement in an illicit oil transportation network that supports foreign terrorist organizations. This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was carried out safely — and our investigation, alongside the Department of Homeland Security, to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues,” Bondi wrote.
This screenshot from a video posted by Attorney General Pam Bondi on December 10 shows US forces seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
The president offered no detailed explanation for the move, saying only that it was seized “for very good reasons.” Asked what would happen to the oil carried by the tanker, Trump replied, “We’re keeping it, I think.”
The seizure took place in international waters, a senior US official said, and was carried out without incident or casualties, either among US personnel or the tanker’s crew.
The ship, named Skipper, was carrying Venezuelan crude oil, the official said. The tanker had previously been associated with Iranian oil, and a federal judge had issued a seizure warrant in its name because of those ties.
The move risks further escalating tensions with Venezuela, where Trump has stepped up a pressure campaign aimed at forcing the nation’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, from power. The ship, which was headed for Cuba, was ultimately bound for Asia after being brokered through Cuban sellers, the senior official said, adding that more seizures are possible in the coming weeks as the US puts pressure on Maduro.
In response to questions from CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Trump said he had not spoken to Maduro recently and declined to say who owned the seized tanker.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the Venezuelan government said it “strongly denounces” the seizure and described it as an “act of international piracy.”
“Under these circumstances, the real motives behind the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed,” the statement said. “It is not about migration. It is not about drug trafficking. It is not about democracy. It is not about human rights. It has always been about our natural wealth, our oil, our energy, resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”
Venezuela has said it will challenge the seizure in “all existing international bodies.”
This screenshot from a video posted by Attorney General Pam Bondi in December shows US forces seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Cuba is already facing some of its worst power outages in decades, with blackouts lasting for hours, sometimes even days. The aging energy infrastructure of the communist-run island is dependent on oil imports, often in the form of donations from allies such as Venezuela, Russia, and Mexico. The Cuban government had no immediate response to the news of the seizure of the tanker heading for the island.
The US has already been campaigning for months to put pressure on Venezuela, including deploying thousands of troops and a group of aircraft carriers to the Caribbean, attacking ships suspected of drug trafficking, and repeatedly threatening Maduro. So far, the US military has killed 87 people in attacks that destroyed 23 alleged drug-trafficking vessels, and Trump has repeatedly suggested that actions on land could take place soon.
CNN reported that the Trump administration is working on plans for the day after Maduro is removed from power, according to two senior administration officials and another source familiar with the discussions.
Maduro did not address the seized tanker in a speech on Wednesday that took place as news of the US decision was circulating.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlnUmqnKqyM
Source: here
US seizes sanctioned tanker off Venezuela’s coast, Trump says
- This move is the first known seizure of an oil tanker since the US began its build-up
- It signals a new effort to attack Venezuela’s main source of revenue
- Impact on global oil supply unclear
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (Reuters) – The United States seized an authorized oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, a move that sent oil prices higher and heightened tensions between Washington and Caracas.
“We just captured a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a big tanker, a very big tanker, the biggest ever, in fact, and other things are happening,” said Trump, who has been pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
Asked what would happen to the oil, Trump said, “We’re keeping it, I think.”
In response, the Venezuelan government, in a statement, accused the US of “blatant theft” and described the seizure as “an act of international piracy.” It said it would denounce the incident before international bodies.
Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of US military intervention in Venezuela. The seizure is the first of a Venezuelan oil shipment under US sanctions that have been in place since 2019. It is also the first known action by the Trump administration against a Venezuelan-linked tanker since it ordered a massive military mobilization in the region.
The US has already carried out several strikes against ships suspected of drug trafficking, raising concerns among lawmakers and legal experts.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that the FBI, Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard, with the support of the US military, executed a seizure warrant for an oil tanker used to transport authorized oil from Venezuela and Iran.
A 45-second video posted by Bondi showed two helicopters approaching a ship and armed individuals in camouflage rappelling onto it.
The Iranian Embassy in Caracas condemned the action as a “serious violation of international laws and norms” in a post on X on Thursday.
Trump administration officials did not name the ship or disclose its location at the time of the seizure.
British maritime risk management group Vanguard said the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Skipper was seized off Venezuela on Wednesday morning. The US imposed sanctions on the tanker for what it considers involvement in Iranian oil trade when the ship was called Adisa.
The Skipper left Venezuela’s main oil port, Jose, between December 4 and 5, after loading approximately 1.8 million barrels of Merey heavy crude oil from Venezuela. It transferred about 200,000 barrels near Curaçao to the Panama-flagged Neptune 6, which was heading to Cuba before being captured, according to satellite information analyzed by TankerTrackers.com and internal data from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA.
The Guyana Maritime Authority said the Skipper was falsely flying the country’s flag. The ship transported Venezuelan oil to Asia between 2021 and 2022, PDVSA data shows.
Oil futures rose after news of the seizure. After trading in negative territory, Brent crude futures rose 27 cents, or 0.4%, to settle at $62.21 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 21 cents, also 0.4%, to settle at $58.46 per barrel.
Point 1 of 5 US President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable discussion with business leaders at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, December 10, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Maduro spoke at a march on Wednesday without addressing reports of the seizure.
IMPACT ON OIL?
Venezuela exported more than 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil last month, the third-highest monthly average so far this year, as PDVSA imported more naphtha to dilute its extra-heavy oil production. Even though Washington has increased pressure on Maduro, the Trump administration has not previously intervened in oil flows.
Venezuela has been forced to drastically undercut crude oil prices to its main buyer, China, due to increasing competition from sanctioned oil from Russia and Iran.
“This is just another geopolitical/windfall option against sanctions hitting spot supply availability,” said Rory Johnston, an analyst at Commodity Context.
“The seizure of this tanker further fuels these concerns about tight supply, but it doesn’t immediately change the fundamental situation, as these barrels were already going to be circulating for a while,” Johnston said.
Chevron, which works with PDVSA, said its operations in the country are normal and continuing without interruption.
The US oil company, which is responsible for all Venezuelan crude exports to the United States, increased these deliveries last month to 150,000 bpd from 128,000 bpd in October.
INCREASING PRESSURE ON MADURO
Maduro has claimed that the US military build-up is aimed at overthrowing him and taking control of the OPEC country’s oil resources, which represent the world’s largest crude reserves.
Since early September, the Trump administration has carried out more than 20 strikes against suspected drug ships in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing more than 80 people.
Experts say the strikes may be illegal. There has been little or no public evidence that the boats were carrying drugs or that it was necessary to blow them up, rather than stopping them, confiscating their cargo, and interrogating those on board.
Concerns about the attacks on the boats grew this month after reports that the commander overseeing one of the operations ordered a second attack that killed two survivors.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that a large majority of Americans oppose the US military’s campaign of lethal strikes on boats, including about a fifth of Trump’s Republicans.
In a broad strategy document released last week, Trump said his administration’s foreign policy would focus on reasserting its dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Source: here
Terrifying scenario: A war with Russia will start just like this; you won’t believe how long it will last.
The British public television station published an analysis of a possible war between the United Kingdom and Russia, according to which the conflict would last only a few weeks. It is argued that Britain simply does not have the power for such a war.
As reported by Index, UK military officials have repeatedly warned that the country must prepare for war if it wants to avoid it.
However, if the unimaginable happens and a conflict with Russia does break out, the question is whether the UK could fight for more than a few weeks, notes the British public television station.
What would modern warfare look like?
According to reports, the first sign that the war had begun was the loss of mobile phone signal, accompanied by the inability to use payment cards, interruptions in food distribution, and power outages.
War is no longer fought only with drones, bombs, and missiles, as the Ukrainian people are well aware, because modern society depends on networks of submarine cables and pipelines that transmit data, financial transactions, and energy, the BBC points out.
Russian spy ships, such as the Yantar, are believed to have already mapped these cables for possible sabotage, which is why the Royal Navy has recently invested heavily in a fleet of underwater drones.
In a war, such invisible actions, combined with attempts to “blind” Western satellites, would seriously undermine the UK’s ability to fight and create chaos in society.
A week or two of fighting and that’s it?
At the recent “Fighting a Long War” conference in London, organized by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), military and political officials pointed out that there is little evidence that the UK has a plan for a war lasting more than a few weeks.
Some even noted that Britain’s plan for mass casualties seems to be based on the assumption that there will be no casualties at all.
Experts also point out that a long war requires adequate support. It requires a second and even a third echelon—personnel, platforms, and logistics chains capable of absorbing losses and continuing the fight.
And the Russian army — an enormous force
Justin Cramp, CEO of the private intelligence company Sibylline, says that the UK has shortcomings in terms of ammunition, artillery, vehicles, air defense systems, and personnel, with limited or no capacity to resupply units or replace casualties.
The war in Ukraine has highlighted two key lessons: drones have become an integral part of modern warfare, and “mass,” meaning large numbers of personnel and equipment, remains crucial.
It is clear that the Russian army, although inferior in quality, is enormous, which is its main advantage.
The British Ministry of Defense’s intelligence service estimates that since the start of the invasion in 2022, Russia has suffered over 1.1 million casualties, including deaths, injuries, captures, and disappearances.
However, Russia is constantly rotating its troops on the front line, Index reports, adding that the Russian economy has been operating under sanctions for three years.
A particular problem for the UK – the lack of soldiers
While France and Germany have recently launched initiatives to revitalize voluntary military service, the idea of training a “citizen army” in the UK, proposed in 2024 by former army chief General Sir Patrick Sanders, was quickly rejected.
Former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace was very blunt: “The reality is that our armed forces cannot survive on a diet of government propaganda, long-term spending commitments, and empty rhetoric.”
Thus, Britain’s defense has been underfunded for so long that the country is now dangerously vulnerable, especially in terms of air defense.
Where could conflict break out?
NATO military officials fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin, if he achieves his goals in Ukraine, may seek new targets.
One potential flashpoint is the Suwałki Corridor, a 100-kilometer stretch between Poland and Lithuania that separates Belarus from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Conquering this corridor would give Moscow direct access to the Baltic Sea.
Other potential targets could be the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All have Russian minorities, which Putin could use as a pretext for an invasion under the guise of “protection.”
A third possible point of conflict is the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, administered by Norway, where Moscow already has a foothold in the mining town of Barentsburg.
Source: here
Hegseth declares the end of American “utopian idealism” with a new military strategy
The Secretary of Defense, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum, outlined defense priorities that focus on the Western Hemisphere and reassess the US relationship with Europe.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks with senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025, in Quantico, Virginia. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
By Paul McLeary 12/06/2025 18:11 EST
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SIMI VALLEY, California — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a vehement attack on post-Cold War American foreign policy on Saturday, criticizing former presidents and generals by name while declaring the end of the era of American “utopian idealism.”
Hegseth, speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum, emphasized a new military focus on the Western Hemisphere, called on allies to fend for themselves, and adopted a more conciliatory approach toward China’s military.
His remarks underscored the new National Security Strategy released Thursday evening and previewed the Pentagon’s own upcoming strategy, which will set the military’s global priorities.
“No more idealistic utopianism,” he said. “Back to uncompromising realism.”
The defense secretary’s speech revealed an administration moving toward a policy that recognizes spheres of influence led by major powers — China in the Pacific, the US in the Western Hemisphere, and Europe in general, though he made only a passing reference to Russia.
The US should not be “distracted by democracy building, interventionism, indefinite wars, regime change, climate change, moralizing ‘woke’ and irrelevant nation building,” Hegseth said. “Instead, we will put the practical and concrete interests of our nation first.”
The Pentagon chief also used the defense industry-focused forum to more firmly underscore the Trump administration’s strategic reorientation closer to home. This comes amid a military campaign in the Caribbean that has sunk more than 20 small boats believed to be carrying drugs and killed about 80 people . The administration has said it is fighting “narco-terrorists,” although some lawmakers and experts have denounced the action as illegal.
Hegseth also suggested that the military would become more involved in patrolling the southern border with Mexico. “We will secure the border in part by organizing units specifically trained and equipped for border defense missions, including land, sea, and air operations,” he said.
Although defense strategies in recent years have focused on deterring China, Hegseth suggested that the future strategy would take a softer approach.
“President Trump and this administration seek stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China,” he said. The US will pursue a policy of “respecting the historic military development that [China] is undertaking,” he added, while the Pentagon “maintains a clear appreciation of how rapid, formidable, and holistic their military development has been.”
Hegseth praised countries such as South Korea, Poland, and Germany for increasing their defense spending in recent years, citing President Donald Trump’s efforts to ensure that countries pay more for their own defense.
“Allies are not children,” he said. “We can and should expect them to do their part.”
The defense secretary also reiterated a point he made in a November speech about “overfeeding the US defense industrial base.” This includes new investments in ships, drones, and air defense systems, such as the Golden Dome project, which is in its early stages. These are part of the $1 trillion defense budget, which includes a $150 billion increase from the mega-bill passed by Congress this year.
The Trump administration, in some respects, wants to have it both ways when it comes to foreign relations. The National Security Strategy criticizes European allies for not accepting far-right parties that embrace ethnic nationalism and states that Washington will support efforts to “restore Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.” But Hegseth also rejected US intervention in other countries’ affairs on Saturday.
The Trump administration “will rightly prioritize our homeland and our hemisphere,” he said. “Threats persist in other regions, and our allies must step up, and really step up.”
During questions after the speech, Hegseth defended a second Sept. 2 attack on a boat that killed survivors wounded in the first attack. The disclosure, reported by The Washington Post, led to bipartisan outrage in Congress over whether the action constituted a war crime.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, speaking after Hegseth, said that his and the head of Special Operations Command, General Frank Bradley, plan was to brief senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week on the details of the attacks.
Hegseth refused to back down. On Saturday, he said he supported the second attack launched by the commander of Special Operations Command. “If you bring drugs into this country by boat, we will find you and sink you,” he said.
Caine, the senior military officer, echoed Hegseth’s comments. “In recent years, we haven’t had much American firepower in our own backyard,” he said. “I suspect that’s probably going to change.”
Source: here
Navy wants new frigate in 2028, says service’s procurement chief
Navy Secretary John Phelan recently told attendees at a private dinner that the new frigate will be a modified national security ship, sources told Breaking Defense.
Artist’s rendering of the future USS Lafayette (FFG 65), named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette and his service during the American War of Independence. The Constellation-class guided-missile frigate is the Navy’s small-generation surface combatant. (Photo by Chief Petty Officer Shannon Renfroe)
WASHINGTON — The Navy hopes to have new frigates based on an American design “in the water” by 2028, a senior military official said today, an aggressive new schedule following the service’s cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate.
“We believe the next frigate can be in the water in 2028,” Jason Potter, the Navy’s acting chief of acquisitions, told attendees at the Defense Forum in Washington today. He said the service is focusing on using a design approach that separates the completion of the ship’s design from the construction of the main ship, a path the Navy is following with its new Medium Landing Ship.
The Navy announced at the end of last month that it would terminate its contract with Fincantieri Marinette Marine for four of the six frigates the company was to build. Instead, the Navy said it would seek a new class of ships and provide Fincantieri with partial work from other programs to keep the shipyard afloat, but details on what that would look like were not immediately clear.
Then, at the National Defense Forum last weekend, Navy Secretary John Phelan said the new frigate would be based on an American design and stressed that any change orders would have to go through him. (The Navy has been heavily criticized by lawmakers and outside observers for making an excessive number of design changes to the Constellation-class frigate, which experts say led to schedule problems and cost overruns.)
Phelan recently told attendees at a private dinner that the new frigate would be a modified national security ship, two sources who heard the comments told Breaking Defense. Asked about Phelan’s private comments, a Navy spokesperson referred to the secretary’s social media posts about the new frigate and declined to comment further.
HII is building a National Security Cutter (NSC) for the US Coast Guard. During the initial competition for frigates, the company proposed a modified version of that ship for what would become the Constellation class. An HII spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the company is “aware of developments related to the frigate and cannot comment specifically on the NSC.”
“However, as our CEO, Chris Kastner, has stated, we will build what the Navy wants us to build. Regarding the initial frigate competition, we bid on an NSC variant that is lethal, low-risk, and affordable. We look forward to working with the Navy on the ship projects they need,” the spokesperson added.
Potter declined to elaborate on the procurement strategy for selecting a new frigate design and shipbuilders, but said the Navy and Coast Guard are “very close” on ship construction.
“We are in constant communication with the Coast Guard about one or the other, and I would say that it is probably too early to make any clear statements,” he said.
Source: here
Underwater drones against Russian spy ships: London’s new strategy to protect its coasts
The Royal Navy is experimenting with the use of German-built, remotely piloted Fathom equipment. “Intrusions from Moscow have increased by 30%”
A fleet of underwater drones hunting Russian spy ships off the British coast. This is the new strategy that the Royal Navy is experimenting with in Scottish waters to stop Moscow’s interference and episodes of “hybrid warfare,” which, according to London, are becoming increasingly frequent. The new units are similar to remotely piloted torpedoes, capable of patrolling for days on end, moving silently beneath the sea surface.
A BBC report revealed the experiment using German-made SG Fathom gliders, also known as “underwater gliders.” “The glider patrols the depths of the ocean, monitoring and listening for any intruders that may be in the area. It processes and identifies threats faster than we could before,” Katie Raine, director of the Fathom program, told British television.
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If it proves effective, Fathom will likely become part of Atlantic Bastion, a network of drones, warships, and surveillance aircraft designed to protect vital underwater infrastructure. But why did London feel the need to beef up its coastal defenses? The Ministry of Defense reported a resurgence of Russian submarine activity in the area: in the last two years, the number of Russian vessels threatening British waters has reportedly increased by 30%.
London aims to protect not only the Royal Navy’s activities, but also the safety of infrastructure, starting with submarine cables, which could become targets for attack. Last month, Yantar, a Russian oceanographic research vessel suspected of mapping British submarine cables and pipelines, directed lasers at RAF pilots following its movements.
Source: here
The New York Times: Europe is also worth fighting for
Donald Trump could be one of “those figures in history who appear from time to time to mark the end of an era and force it to abandon its old chimeras.”
The lack of appetite among European citizens to defend their country with arms is the context in which the latest version of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) has landed in Europe, writes The New York Times (US).
If Germany were invaded today, only 38% of its citizens would be willing to fight for their country, according to a recent poll. 59% of Germans would not fight. Another poll, in Italy, found that only 16% of citizens fit for combat would be willing to defend their country with arms. The chief of staff of the French army, General Fabien Mandon, said last month at a conference of mayors that his country would be “in danger” if it “hesitated, because we are not prepared to accept losing our children.” A statement of the obvious that sparked a political scandal.
This is the context in which the latest version of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), published last week, landed in Europe with a deafening silence.
And it is not difficult to understand why. America’s main foreign policy priorities, the document states, are now focused on the Western Hemisphere and Asia. The EU is accused in the text of repressing political freedom, undermining national sovereignty, obstructing economic dynamism, promoting immigration policies likely to lead to its own “elimination as a civilization,” and preventing a negotiated settlement of the war in Ukraine.
“It is far from clear whether certain European countries will still have economies and armies strong enough to remain reliable allies,” the document warns.
These are the basic ideas of the European far right. Russia is nowhere treated in the document as an enemy of the US, just as Ukraine is never seen as an ally. The real enemies, from the NSS perspective, are instead immigrants and bureaucrats, bent on destroying what remains of authentic Europe.
It is tempting to dismiss this NSS as a disturbing but frivolous construct: it has no legal binding force, and the text itself sounds as if it were written by the character Otto from the film A Fish Called Wanda—the grumpy and inept American bully impeccably played by Kevin Kline. But as with many other populist arguments from the right or left, the problem with the NSS is not so much its untruths as the half-truths it asserts. The NSS identifies a host of fundamental problems, but proposes the worst remedies.
Among the fundamental problems: Europe represents an ever-smaller fraction of the global economy, especially in terms of the industries of the future—where are the European equivalents of Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, SpaceX, Amazon, or Apple? Immigration, in itself, is not necessarily a problem; rather, it may be a solution to the disease of the rich world: the collapse of birth rates. But immigration without assimilation is a scourge, especially when immigrants have values that are indifferent or hostile to those of the host country. Small armies can be made big by changing budget priorities. But the crucial element of military success is not money; it is the will to fight. With the exception of frontline states such as Finland and Estonia, Europe does not seem to possess this.
Earl Butz, secretary of agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, once said of a papal position on contraception (albeit in his usual vulgar style): if you don’t play the game, you don’t make the rules. This is the position Europe risks finding itself in, in a world of unsentimental power politics.
All this should serve as a resounding wake-up call, especially for those segments of the European political classes who still believe that their job is to turn fantasy into reality. No, that is not their job. Their job is to keep the nightmares at bay.
European politics this century has been guided mainly by clichés that kill economic growth (“sustainable development”); by absurd foreign policy gestures (the recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state); self-destructive environmental policies (Germany’s decision to shut down its nuclear power plants); and a hypocritical attitude toward mass immigration (Angela Merkel: “We can handle it”), which is the main reason why fascist parties such as Alternative for Germany are on the rise.
What should replace them? It is a thankless task to determine what Europe must do to protect itself in a world where it no longer has protectors. Re-armament on a massive scale. The cessation of green energy projects, which create dependency and exacerbate prices. Adopting an immigration policy based on the Danish model: more stringent admission and deportation criteria and stricter conditions that immigrants must meet in order to integrate. Returning to the original and noble goal of the EU: opening markets and stimulating competition, rather than turning the bloc into a rule factory.
Above all, a civic revolution is needed to convince younger Europeans that it is worth defending their heritage, culture, and way of life—a fundamentally Christian civilization developed and improved, not erased by the Enlightenment. It is not my civilization, and the mere fact of writing the previous sentence has given me the feeling that I am crossing a line.
And yet, these things should be self-evident. If this is not what Europe means, then what does it mean? If not this, then why would anyone take up arms for its sake? If not this, then what could prevent it from simply becoming an appendage of someone else’s civilization, whether we are talking about America, Russia, or Islam?
Henry Kissinger once said of Donald Trump that “he may be one of those figures in history who appear from time to time to mark the end of an era and force it to abandon its old chimeras.” There are good reasons to regret this moment, not least in Europe. However, there is no serious reason to pretend that it is not happening—or to refuse to adapt.
Source: here
A secret Pentagon document warns that China will destroy and defeat the US in a possible war over Taiwan
“The top-secret government document, titled ‘Overmatch Brief’ by the Pentagon, details China’s ability to destroy American fighter jets, large ships, and satellites.
A top-secret US government assessment claims that China would destroy US fighter jets and defeat the military in a possible conflict over Taiwan, The New York Times reported. The document, titled “Overmatch Brief,” was reportedly prepared by the Pentagon’s Net Assessment Office and compares Washington’s reliance on expensive and vulnerable weapons with its rival’s “cheap but technologically advanced” ones.
The report comes days after China warned that it would “crush” any foreign attempts to interfere in the Taiwan issue. (AFP)
The report comes days after China warned that it would “crush” any foreign attempts to interfere in the Taiwan issue, while Japan warned that it would place missiles on an island near Taiwan. At the time, Peng Qingen, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said during a press conference: “We have a firm will, strong determination, and strong ability to defend our national sovereignty and territorial integrity… We will crush any foreign interference.”
Will China defeat the US military in a potential conflict over Taiwan?
The Pentagon’s top-secret document, titled “Overmatch Brief,” discusses China’s ability to destroy American fighter jets, large ships, and satellites. It also details weaknesses in the US military’s supply chain, the NYT reported.
An official told the publication that when a national security official received the classified document in 2021, during the Joe Biden administration, he was stunned because he understood that “every trick we had up our sleeve, the Chinese had layoffs after layoffs.”
The top-secret document reveals that the Pentagon relies heavily on expensive and vulnerable weapons, while its rivals are developing cheaper and more advanced ones. At the same time, the document appears to show a decline in Washington’s ability to fight and win a war with a superpower.
In war games such as those described in the Overmatch report, ships like the Ford are often destroyed, according to the report. Even so, the US Navy plans to build at least nine more Ford-class aircraft carriers in the coming years.
According to the report, Volt Typhoon, a group of hackers “supported” by China, has introduced malware into the computer systems that manage electrical networks, communications lines, and water services for US military bases.
This threatens the US military’s ability to equip and staff in the event of a crisis in the Pacific and could also affect civilians.
Tensions between China and Taiwan
Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and has never ruled out the possibility of using force to gain control.
The Taiwanese government rejects this claim and says that the island’s future can only be decided by its people. Taiwanese Prime Minister Cho Jung-tai has said that “returning” to China is not an option for the island’s 23 million inhabitants.
Source: here
Ukraine strikes Russian oil platform in Caspian Sea for first time, official says
- At least four drones hit the Filanovsky platform, says Kiev official
- Kiev steps up campaign to reduce Russian oil and gas production
KIEV, December 11 (Reuters) – Ukrainian aerial drones struck a Russian oil platform in the Caspian Sea for the first time on Thursday, halting production at the facility owned by Lukoil (LKOH. MM)
, opens a new tab , according to an official with Ukraine’s Security Service.
The attack on the Filanovsky platform — part of Russia’s largest oil field in the Caspian Sea — is the latest sign that Ukraine is trying to step up its campaign to disrupt Russian oil and gas production.
At least four drone strikes hit the platform, forcing the shutdown of more than 20 oil and gas wells, the official said. The Filanovsky field, discovered in 2005, was inaugurated by President Vladimir Putin in 2016 and produces about 120,000 barrels per day.
Lukoil did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attack.
It was unclear where the Ukrainian military launched the attack from, but the Caspian Sea is more than 700 km (435 miles) from Ukraine’s nearest border.
Kiev has carried out numerous drone strikes on Russian oil facilities this year in an effort to undermine Moscow’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine.
The strikes have mainly targeted oil refineries, many of them located in the European part of Russia.
Ukraine expanded its campaign last month to target unregulated tankers carrying Russian oil through the Black Sea. Three such ships have been hit by Ukrainian marine drones in the past two weeks.
At least seven explosions have hit other tankers calling at Russian ports since December 2024, including in the Mediterranean Sea. Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied any role in these attacks.
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has accused Ukraine of piracy and threatened to retaliate by cutting off Ukraine’s maritime access in response to the attacks on the tankers.
Source: here
NATO’s Rutte warns allies they are Russia’s next target
BERLIN, December 11 (Reuters) – NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday urged allies to step up defense efforts to prevent a war waged by Russia that could be “on the scale of the war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”
In a speech in Berlin, Rutte said too many allies in the military alliance did not feel the urgency of the Russian threat in Europe and needed to rapidly increase defense spending and production to prevent a large-scale war like the one seen by past generations.
“We are Russia’s next target. I fear that too many are calm and complacent. Too many do not feel this urgency. And too many believe that time is on our side. It is not. The time for action is now,” Rutte said.
“Conflict is at our doorstep. Russia has brought war back to Europe. And we must be prepared,” he added.
Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO in five years, Rutte said.
Source: here
Mission command with Chinese characteristics?
Exploring Chinese military thinking on command and control in future warfare
As the US Department of Defense (DoD) focuses on preparing for a potential conflict with China as a tempo threat, it is important to understand how the Chinese military might command and control its forces in a future conflict. The authors of this report explore Chinese military thinking about the command and control of the future, with a specific focus on the prospect of China adopting mission command—that is, delegating certain decision-making authority to subordinates, with the expectation that they will act based on broad, pre-established guidelines from their superiors—in contrast to China’s traditional centralized command.
The authors trace the rise of mission command within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and analyze the benefits of mission command as promoted by PLA advocates. They also explore how mission command might be implemented in the PLA, including some consideration by service and operational type. In addition, they develop and analyze three alternative futures for what the adoption of mission command by the PLA might mean for the United States. Finally, the authors provide an analysis of how the Chinese military might evaluate the advantages of US-China command.
Key conclusions
- There is a strong consensus within the PLA that future warfare will place an increasing burden on human decision-makers.
- Some PLA researchers favor mission command to empower lower levels of command to make faster and more resilient decisions.
- If the PLA implements mission command, it will likely be varied and uneven across units and mission types, as the PLA has always struggled to move away from centralized command due to the Chinese government’s strong preference for political control over the military.
- The PLA’s adoption of mission command could exacerbate the PLA’s crisis behavior due to weaker coordination and control of frontline forces by the PLA’s senior leadership.
- The PLA’s adoption of mission command could reduce the effectiveness of traditional American concepts of operation due to the PLA’s more resistant command and control and greater command autonomy.
- Mission command is unlikely to remedy all PLA command deficiencies, providing the joint force with opportunities to influence Chinese leadership decisions during command.
Recommendations
- The DoD should monitor the PLA’s adoption of mission command.
- The DoD should carefully weigh opportunities to shape the PLA’s approach to future command.
- The DoD should ensure that future operational concepts are robust to improve Chinese command capability.
- The DoD should continue to collaborate with the Chinese military on crisis management to prevent the risks of unauthorized PLA actions caused by the adoption of mission command.
Source: here
Passive-aggressive. Reconsidering the relevance of passive defense in a major war.
Research published on December 11, 2025
The Joint Chiefs of Staff asked RAND to develop a new framework around passive defense and suggest ways the Joint Chiefs could evaluate these capabilities to determine whether they can contribute to achieving national objectives of deterring major conflicts in the Pacific and Europe or prevailing in major conflicts if deterrence fails.
The authors reviewed US guidance documents and military doctrine to identify key national objectives and the military approach to achieving those objectives, as well as definitions and concepts related to passive defense. They considered recent conflicts involving the US military as examples of situations where defense was particularly important. Using these assessments, they developed a framework to better understand the value of passive defense for the modern US military.
Key conclusions
- Force protection is always relevant: Even armies with highly aggressive maneuver warfare doctrines are exposed to attrition and will seek ways to mitigate such vulnerabilities.
- Passive defenses are being used extensively in the conflict in Ukraine. Whether this is relevant to future US operations depends on assumptions about how various US military tactics and capabilities likely to be used in future conflicts might address some of the problems that require passive defense investments.
- For passive defenses to be relevant in future conflicts, they should be closely linked to protecting forces from the modern kill chain and the effects of precision weapons that the kill chain provides.
- To deter future conflicts between major powers, passive defenses must convince the adversary that its preferred mode of attack is too risky and unlikely to succeed.
- Adversaries’ investments in anti-access/area denial are specifically designed to draw out elements of the US force considered essential to victory, so understanding the force’s resilience to these threats is essential to being fully prepared for such challenges.
- In Ukraine, small unmanned aerial systems demonstrate that new technological developments threaten different types of forces in different ways, triggering urgent efforts to mitigate these new vulnerabilities.
- The Joint Staff has an important vantage point to help coordinate efforts within the US Department of Defense, including collaboration with partners.
Recommendations
- The US Department of Defense should revise the definition of passive defense to better link it to the task of countering the adversary’s kill chain and minimizing weapon effects.
- Using national-level guidance for deterring future conflicts, the Joint Chiefs of Staff should identify ways that passive defenses could contribute to making a potential adversary doubt the success of its preferred course of attack.
- The U.S. military should identify the critical conditions for success in priority scenarios and the vulnerabilities of enemy and friendly forces to determine how passive defense investments could improve outcomes and contribute to warfighting capabilities.
- The Joint Staff should collaborate with partners and allies in the Pacific and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to leverage available expertise on passive defense options to help develop integrated action plans.
- The Joint Staff should develop an analytical assessment plan, including fundamental research relevant to adversaries’ weapons and kill chains, and develop and evaluate concepts and capabilities to provide passive defenses that mitigate key vulnerabilities.
Source: here
Innovation and Adaptation During War: Supporting Ukraine’s Digital Transformation
A series of reports on how to optimize Kyiv’s technological and political advantages in defending its sovereignty.
What is the problem?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred rapid technological advances on the battlefield, particularly in unmanned systems, electronic warfare, command and control, and surveillance. Staying ahead of the technological curve has kept Ukraine in the fight, despite the greater size of its adversaries, but technological advances do not happen in a vacuum—and innovation is not just a Ukrainian phenomenon. These advances must be structured within a political framework tailored to Ukraine’s specific needs in order to be most effective in keeping the country sovereign and free.
How did we help?
This project was created to support the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s efforts to maximize Ukraine’s technological advantage on the battlefield, complementing their deep operational knowledge with RAND Europe’s strategic and cross-cutting perspective. Throughout this project, RAND Europe used a mixed-methods research approach, combining desk-based literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, expert workshops, and field visits. The research teams reviewed academic, government, and gray literature, focusing on unclassified or open-source materials to ensure broad use and dissemination. Interviews were conducted with a diverse range of experts—both Ukrainian and international—representing the perspectives of government, military, industry, and civil society. Field visits to Ukraine ensured direct stakeholder engagement and participation in relevant discussions, such as the Brave1 Forum for Defense Technology Innovation. Internal expert workshops were then used to synthesize findings, test assumptions, and identify applicable recommendations tailored to the Ukrainian context.
Findings
Report 1 Learning and Remembering Under Fire: Proposals for a New Doctrinal System for Ukraine
What did we discover?
- Ukraine’s unique operational context requires a doctrinal system distinct from NATO’s, while maintaining the strengths of horizontal innovation and rapid lesson sharing.
What can be done?
- Traditional, slow peacetime doctrinal cycles are not suitable; a “Doctrinal Wiki” is recommended, combining open access for rapid updates with centralized management and oversight through a Joint Doctrine Cell (JDC).
- The system should combine classified and open sections, integrate lessons learned in real time, and actively involve both military and civilian stakeholders.
- Ukraine’s doctrine should allow for interoperability with NATO, but reflect its distinctive whole-of-society approach and innovative use of unmanned systems (UxS).
Learning and Remembering Under Fire: Proposals for a New Doctrinal System for Ukraine
Report 2 Planning for the future: Improving Ukraine’s awareness of future technologies
What did we find?
- A set of futures methodologies—such as horizon scanning, STREAM comparative analysis, robust decision-making, and forecasting—can support strategic planning and technology investments under conditions of uncertainty.
- Systematic forecasting and scenario planning tools are needed to anticipate trends, prioritize capability development, and test policy resilience in volatile environments.
What can be done?
- It is recommended to integrate foresight methods into standard decision-making cycles, invest in technology monitoring infrastructure, and leverage both probabilistic and deliberative approaches for robust planning.
- Adopting future techniques will help Ukraine remain agile, avoid strategic surprises, and ensure effective prioritization of defense investments.
Read the report
Planning for the Future: Improving Ukraine’s Awareness of Future Technologies
Report 3 Lessons learned: Understanding the role of military organization and culture in adapting to Ukraine’s defense future
What did we discover?
- Ukraine’s experience in the current conflict highlights rapid technological development and the need to strengthen how it captures and applies lessons learned.
- Its unique military culture blends hierarchy with informal innovation, shaping its approach to learning.
- NATO’s Lessons Learned model provides useful guidance, but should be adapted to the Ukrainian context.
What can be done?
- Formalize off-rotation training to share frontline experience, through full unit rotations or briefings by returning personnel, to reinforce existing informal learning networks.
- Implement Lessons Learned Officers, Analysis Functions, and Cross-Functional Team Structures to embed a sustainable lessons learned culture, drawing on British and Swedish military examples.
- Prioritize sharing lessons with experienced units first to model best practices and enable gradual, low-cost adoption across the wider force.
Read the report
Report 4 From Policy to Victory: Recommendations to Ukraine for Leveraging Defense Technology
What did we find?
- Ukraine’s defense technology ecosystem is characterized by rapid, bottom-up innovation, civil-military collaboration, and high tolerance for implementing immature technologies.
- Key weaknesses include excessive dependence on short-term donor funding, insufficient regulatory frameworks, fragmented demand signals, and underutilized production capacity.
What can be done?
- There are opportunities for improved oversight, greater use of commercial technology integration, leveraging Ukraine’s battlefield experience internationally, and developing new co-financing models (e.g., expanding the “Danish model”).
- The report recommends defining interministerial roles, prioritizing long-term research and development, strengthening contracting and procurement mechanisms, and enhancing the sustainability of the defense innovation ecosystem.
Read the report
From Policy to Victory: Recommendations to Ukraine for Leveraging Defense Technology
Report 5 Preparing Together: How Europe and Ukraine Can Improve Defense Industrial Collaboration
What did we find?
- Although international support and willingness to collaborate are high, practical barriers—such as wartime risks, perceptions of corruption, bureaucracy, and unclear procurement processes—discourage increased European investment in Ukraine’s defense sector.
What can be done?
- To improve cooperation, Ukraine should further simplify procurement reforms, communicate its requirements and opportunities more clearly, and continue to improve the business environment.
- The Danish model (European-funded procurement from verified Ukrainian companies) is identified as an effective template and should be expanded; partnerships and licensing offer additional avenues.
- Ukraine should leverage its status as a testing ground for defense innovation, offer learning and development to partners, and propose joint research and development campaigns to address battlefield challenges collaboratively.
Read the report
Equipping Together: How Europe and Ukraine Can Improve Defense Industrial Collaboration
Report 6 Looking to the future: Enablers of innovation and expansion for the future of Ukraine’s defense industrial base
What did we find?
- Shaped by conflict, Ukraine’s defense industry sets global standards for innovation despite constrained budgets and regulations. Clarifying its competitive advantage will guide long-term industrial planning.
- Ukraine’s strength lies in its skilled, combat-experienced workforce and strong state-industry alignment, although concerns about corruption and unclear demand discourage foreign direct investment (FDI).
- Ukraine’s world-leading UAS industry thrives on high domestic demand, fueled by unsustainable defense spending. Long-term success will depend on a shift toward exports driven by innovation and skills rather than products.
What can be done?
To address these challenges, the Ministry of Digital Transformation can focus on:
- Expanding the “Danish Model” of investment-based aid to increase global engagement, prioritize domestic development over equipment support, and attract more long-term prospects for FDI.
- Developing a strategy for retaining and relocating skills, focusing on accelerating the return of skilled Ukrainians to support Ukraine’s long-term industrial base. This will support efforts to strengthen the non-defense economy as Ukraine moves away from its high levels of defense spending as a percentage of GDP.
- Marketing Ukraine’s innovation through global competition as a defense services integrator, not just a product exporter. Despite a crowded and heavily regulated UAS market, Ukraine’s rapid development and adaptation remain valuable to allies.
Looking ahead: Enablers of innovation and scale for Ukraine’s future defense industrial base
Report 7 Invisible Defender? Opportunities and Challenges for Integrating DEWs into Ukraine’s C-UAS
What did we find?
- Directed energy weapons (DEWs) are an option for defeating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are attracting attention due to their accuracy, reported range, and low cost at the point of use.
- Although several countries are actively exploring DEWs, levels of technological readiness vary significantly, and all come with fundamental constraints in terms of use cases and development costs.
- DEWs should not be a short-term investment for Ukraine. Their low costs at the point of use mask significant investments in research and development, and infrastructure requirements and atmospheric sensitivities are significant.
What can be done?
- Actively monitor the development and implementation of ongoing projects in other nations to assess whether this area of development should be prioritized in the future.
- Develop alternative systems to minimize the opportunity cost and distraction of resources in DEW development.
- Actively monitor the further evolution of low-consumption, soft-kill systems that produce energy from the DEW array, as these are likely still costly and complicated to implement in the short term.
Read the report
Invisible Defender? Opportunities and Challenges for Integrating DEWs into Ukraine’s C-UAS
Source: here
Babcock unveils ARMOR Force to fulfill Royal Navy’s autonomous ambitions
On December 8, 2025, Babcock International of the United Kingdom unveiled its Autonomous and Remote, Maritime Operational Response – Force – ARMOR Force architecture of disaggregated systems and platforms to support the Royal Navy’s (RN) next-generation autonomous ambitions.
Working with Huntington Ingalls Industries (HHI), the largest military shipbuilder in the United States, and British artificial intelligence (AI) defense technology startup Arondite, Babcock intends to “drive the delivery of a Hybrid Navy” by creating a Type 31 Common Command Vessel (CCV) capability, enabling the Royal Navy’s newest frigates to control a networked force of large, autonomous, unmanned ships and systems.
In addition to Babcock’s T31 CCV, the overall solution includes large unmanned surface vessels (USVs) that can be autonomous or remotely controlled, and modular containerized Persistent Operational Deployment Systems (PODS) for rapid deployment of capabilities and mission autonomy. The solution will also involve an autonomous mission system, with the goal of being deployable by the end of 2026.
HII is currently developing and building the ROMULUS family of USVs, which are designed for rapid, repeatable production and long endurance at sea. These USVs offer sustained endurance on the open oceans, with a focus on lethality, cost efficiency, and scalability. In addition, Babcock will design and manufacture the handling system for loading and unloading PODs onto large ROMULUS USVs, providing customers with more diverse capabilities.
Meanwhile, Arondite’s Cobalt Operating System will serve as the autonomy and mission orchestration layer within the ARMOR Force, integrating manned and unmanned platforms into unified fleets that can be commanded from sea or shore. Together, Babcock and Arondite are collaborating on the design, development, and implementation of a range of AI-integrated, interoperable, and natively autonomous maritime systems for the Royal Navy and navies globally.
“ARMOR Force is our response to the First Sea Lord’s call for a reimagined hybrid navy,” said Sir Nick Hine, executive director of Babcock’s marine sector, in a company press release. “ARMOR Force and the partnerships we are creating with HII and Arondite represent a bold step forward. We are combining advanced autonomy, modular systems, and digital innovation to create a more agile, resilient, and ready fleet for tomorrow’s challenges. What we are proposing will keep the Royal Navy at the forefront of global maritime security for decades to come, redefining what is possible at sea.”
Chris Kastner, President and CEO of HII, was quoted as saying: “HII is proud to be part of this revolutionary industry initiative to deliver a Hybrid Navy concept for the Royal Navy and international markets. The partnership with Babcock strengthens HII’s ability to deliver ROMULUS for the ARMOR Force and support the Royal Navy’s vision for the future fleet. The ROMULUS family of USVs brings scale, autonomy, and a real operational advantage, and HII brings world-leading expertise on land, at sea, and in the air—as well as the ability to innovate at scale with a platform already in production.”
Will Blyth, co-founder and CEO of Arondite, added: “The future of maritime energy will be defined by an adaptable mix of manned and unmanned systems, using distributed sensors and effectors. We built Cobalt to meet precisely this challenge. We are proud to combine our autonomy and mission orchestration capabilities with Babcock and HII’s leading integration, design, and construction expertise to rapidly deliver the Royal Navy’s vision of a Hybrid Navy.”
Built on open commercial and NATO standards, ARMOR Force technology is also designed to collaborate with allied forces.
Source: here
South Korean Navy launches first high-speed Marlin combat boat
The South Korean Navy officially launched the HCB 001 Marlin, its first purpose-built high-speed combat boat, at a ceremony at the Gangnam shipyard in Busan on December 11, 2025. The locally designed vessel is intended to transport marines faster and with greater protection around the disputed islands in the northwest, reducing response times amid ongoing tensions with North Korea.
South Korea has taken a visible step toward strengthening the defense of its exposed islands by commissioning the ROK Marine Corps’ first high-speed combat boat, the HCB 001 Marlin, at a ceremony on December 11 in Busan, which defense officials consider a key milestone in amphibious modernization. Developed as part of an effort by the Defense Acquisition Program Administration and built by local shipyard Gangnam Co., this approximately 18-meter boat combines a domestically produced water jet propulsion system with an enclosed, partially armored cabin and a remotely controlled weapon station, providing marines with a platform optimized for sprints in shallow waters, rapid landings, and emergency extraction from beaches and small piers north of the Yellow Sea.
The Marlin High-Speed Combat Boat (HCB) has a compact format designed for speed and discretion close to the coast
At approximately 18 meters long, it is about half the size of the Navy’s Cheonjungbong-class fast patrol boats, making it easier to maneuver near shores and access shallow anchorages. The platform uses an internally developed water jet propulsion system, which allows for a maximum declared speed of 80 km/h, or over 43 knots, while maintaining good maneuverability in shallow waters. The water jet reduces draft, protects propulsion components from debris, and improves acceleration, which is important for rapid approaches and emergency retreats in the face of surface threats or artillery fire.
At the industrial level, Marlin illustrates the growing role of the South Korean shipbuilding industry in the field of specialized small craft. The construction contract was signed with Gangnam Co. in July last year. The construction phase began in May, followed by a keel-laying ceremony in August, and the official launch took place in December 2025. The program includes a period of testing and evaluation, followed by delivery to the Marine Corps in December of the following year, with progressive integration into the fleet once all propulsion and combat systems have been accepted. This compressed schedule reflects the authorities’ intention to quickly obtain a fully operational prototype, drawing on national expertise in naval architecture and onboard systems.
The Marlin’s armament and protection represent a clear break from the equipment previously used by the Marine Corps. The submarine is equipped with a Remote Controlled Weapons Station (RCWS) on deck, typically armed with a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun, combined with a stabilized fire control system, electro-optical sensors, and a thermal camera for day and night target engagement. Firing can be carried out from inside the cabin, without exposing gunners to small arms fire. Ballistic panels are installed on critical parts of the superstructure to protect the crew and troops on board from small-caliber projectiles and fragments. The enclosed cabin also improves protection against wind, rain, and sea conditions, an often overlooked but important aspect for maintaining personnel efficiency after a long transit.
Comparison with older semi-rigid fast boats, Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs), highlights the desired qualitative change. These inflatable units with outboard motors, mostly open, offered virtually no protection against enemy fire or bad weather, which limited their prolonged use in bad weather and greatly exposed occupants near a beach or breakwater. Marlin introduces a different logic, more focused on survival and maintaining combat capability upon arrival in the area of operations. The cabin also facilitates the integration of modernized navigation and communications systems, including tactical data links or additional consoles, should the Marine Corps decide to install them at a later date.
The HCB-001 is designed as a mobility multiplier in the confined environment of the northwestern islands and Korean estuaries. Its maximum speed, combined with good performance in shallow waters, is intended to enable the rapid deployment of reinforcements, reconnaissance teams, or specialized detachments to key island strongpoints or vulnerable coastal infrastructure. The Marlin can approach discreetly, land a detachment on a beach or secondary landing stage, then withdraw before the enemy can concentrate its fire. Used in a flotilla, it offers the possibility of multiplying the axes of approach, overloading the adversary’s observation capabilities, and complicating the planning of artillery attacks or long-range missile strikes. In a broader crisis scenario, these fast boats can also act as connectors between major amphibious ships and forward echelons, transporting key personnel, ammunition, or command resources to areas where larger ships would be too exposed.
The introduction of the Marlin reflects a broader evolution of South Korea’s posture in an increasingly contested regional environment. On the west coast, the Northern Limit Line remains contested by Pyongyang, which conducts repeated naval demonstrations of force and landing exercises. On the east coast and further afield in the Indo-Pacific, South Korea seeks to present itself as an actor capable of contributing to maritime stability, in line with the presence of the United States and the interests of regional partners. By equipping the Marine Corps with its first dedicated ship, designed and built locally, Seoul is sending a message of determination to both adversaries and allies: the defense of outlying islands, maritime lines of communication, and coastal areas no longer depends solely on major naval units, but also on a new generation of fast and protected assets, adapted to a theater of operations where a local incident can quickly take on regional dimensions.
Source: here
Leaked US war games show China could sink the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in a potential conflict over Taiwan
A leaked assessment of US war games, known as the Overmatch Brief, reports that Chinese missile, cyber, and space attacks repeatedly disabled or sank the USS Gerald R. Ford during conflict simulations in Taiwan.
On December 8, 2025, the New York Times revealed a leaked US war game assessment, known as the Overmatch Brief, which claims that China could sink the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in a conflict over Taiwan. The leak describes multiple simulations in which Chinese forces destroyed or disabled the Ford before US air power could influence the battle. The scenarios show concentrated missile salvos, cyber operations, and counter-space attacks working together to degrade US defenses around the aircraft carrier in the opening phase of the battle.
The Overmatch Brief simulations indicate that once the protective bubble is weakened, the Ford itself becomes increasingly vulnerable to precision strikes that can damage the flight deck, critical sensors, or propulsion systems, even if the ship is not completely sunk. (Image source: US Navy)
Overmatch Brief indicates that Chinese strikes routinely neutralized the Ford at the start of simulations by combining long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles, and electronic jamming. It notes that Chinese forces used a coordinated sequence, beginning with cyber intrusions similar in profile to Volt Typhoon activity, targeting electrical grids, communications nodes, and water systems that support US bases. This was followed by attacks on surveillance and navigation satellites that support targeting, routing, and combat management for US ships and aircraft. Once these systems were degraded, simulations show Chinese forces massing successive waves of anti-ship missiles that overwhelmed the defensive capabilities of Aegis destroyers and the layered defenses of the strike group, resulting in the sinking of the Ford or the inability to operate aircraft.
The assessment attributes this outcome to China’s deliberate development of capabilities tailored for a Taiwan contingency. It describes an expanding inventory of anti-ship ballistic missiles, including DF-21D and DF-26 variants, combined with land-based aircraft such as the H-6K, equipped for long-range maritime attacks and supported by reconnaissance platforms that provide beyond-the-horizon targeting. It also highlights the expected use of cyber campaigns designed to delay mobilization and impose friction on US military logistics, as well as counter-space systems capable of disabling or damaging satellites used for early warning, communication, and precision navigation. In these scenarios, these capabilities were concentrated in a theater of operations where Chinese forces can deploy large numbers of missiles, aircraft, and naval platforms at relatively close range to Taiwan, accelerating the pace at which US forces are targeted.
The USS Gerald R. Ford is described in the Overmatch Brief as a critical platform whose loss would significantly reduce the US’s available air power in the Western Pacific during a crisis. The ship displaces approximately 100,000 tons, is powered by two A1B nuclear reactors, and operates from a flight deck approximately 333 meters long. Its air wing is planned to include over 75 aircraft, and its systems include the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, Advanced Arresting Gear, and an advanced radar system. The assessment notes that the Ford class is central to the US Navy’s long-term planning, with the Navy intending to acquire more hulls based on the same architecture. It also mentions the ship’s estimated construction cost of approximately $12.8 billion, along with additional research and development expenses for the class.
In this wargame, the Ford operated with escort cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carrier-based assets, but these combined defenses proved insufficient against large-scale missile saturation. The memo explains that anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses were gradually overwhelmed by the number, speed, and flight profile of the approaching weapons. It points out that even partial damage to the flight deck, sensors, or propulsion systems could prevent the carrier from launching missions, regardless of whether the ship remained afloat. According to simulations, Chinese strikes hitting critical systems regularly achieved this effect, taking the carrier out of action and forcing commanders to decide whether sending in another carrier group would result in similar losses.
The memo attributes a significant part of this outcome to China’s rapid expansion of its stockpile of hypersonic and anti-ship missiles. It states that China has accumulated up to 600 hypersonic weapons that can travel at about five times the speed of sound or even faster, performing in-flight maneuvers that complicate interception. These systems are used alongside anti-ship ballistic missiles and land-based cruise missiles launched from mobile platforms, as well as surface ships, submarines, and long-range aircraft equipped with missiles. The assessment notes that in simulations, China has used these weapons in coordinated salvos, using targeting data from satellites, radars, and unmanned systems to generate overlapping engagement zones. It concludes that in these areas, an attack group of aircraft carriers such as the Ford faces a high probability of being neutralized before completing its planned operations.
The Overmatch Brief links these tactical findings to broader structural problems in US force design and industrial capacity. It states that high-value platforms such as aircraft carriers, fifth-generation aircraft, and major satellites are vulnerable to relatively inexpensive weapons that can be produced in large quantities. It notes that US defense spending, measured at about 3.4% of GDP, is close to its lowest level in about eighty years and that current production capacity is insufficient for a protracted conflict with a major power. The assessment argues that concentrated force structures increase risk and that the United States would need more distributed platforms , faster ammunition production, hardened bases, resilient communications networks, and a greater role for unmanned and smaller ships in absorbing attrition. It concludes that protecting a platform such as the Gerald R. Ford in a Taiwan scenario requires significant adaptation in US industrial planning and production.
Source: here
US Navy SEALs conduct live-fire operations from MH-60 Seahawk aircraft in an aircraft carrier defense scenario
US Naval Special Warfare operators conducted a live-fire demonstration with the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush during the Titans of the Sea presidential review in the Atlantic. The event highlighted how SEAL teams, destroyers, and carrier-based aviation are now training as a single combat system for contested maritime environments.
US Navy officials used this year’s Titans of the Sea presidential review to showcase an integrated, live-fire rehearsal that brought together SEAL teams from the East Coast, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and air assets operating around the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush. According to information published through DVIDS, the tightly choreographed scenario provided senior leaders with a direct look at how Naval Special Warfare units connect directly into fleet operations when an aircraft carrier strike group must control congested waters and approach suspicious vessels under real-world conditions.
U.S. Navy SEALs firing from an MH-60S Seahawk during the Titans of the Sea presidential review, conducting live-fire exercises over an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer as part of a Navy 250 demonstration that highlighted the integrated capabilities of special operations and carrier strike groups (Image source: US Navy).
In the segment shown, SEALs fired from a MH-60S Seahawk of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 11, the Dragonslayers, as the aircraft maneuvered over an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, executing a visit, board, search, and seizure scenario. Images from the event show operators working from the helicopter and aboard the destroyer USS Ross, highlighting how Naval Special Warfare integrates directly into the fleet’s surface warfare missions and maritime interdiction under the air umbrella of the aircraft carrier.
The scenario took place in a crowded combat space with live fire, controlled by personnel from the Carrier Strike Group and the US 2nd Fleet. Destroyers, embarked air assets, and SEAL elements rehearsed the tightly sequenced movements necessary to protect an aircraft carrier, neutralize fast coastal attack craft, and support boarding teams approaching suspect vessels. For commanders, the review was also a rehearsal for complex command and control, with real aircraft, warships, and munitions operating nearby under strict safety limits.
From a Special Warfare perspective, Titans of the Sea was a live laboratory for Group DOI, which generates and deploys SEAL teams from the East Coast for maritime combat forces. Operators honed communication procedures with fleet helicopters, practiced safe aircraft arcs and weapons discipline from an unstable firing platform, and practiced the rapid transition from surveillance to boarding actions on the destroyer deck. These are the same skills SEALs apply in counter-piracy, counter-proliferation, and maritime control missions.
The centerpiece of the aviation element was the MH-60S Seahawk, a multi-mission maritime helicopter with a maximum speed of approximately 180 knots and a typical range of nearly 245 nautical miles, depending on payload. In support of Special Warfare, the MH-60S is typically equipped with GAU-21/A .50 caliber heavy machine guns on the cabin doors, which fire approximately 950 rounds per minute at up to nearly 1,850 meters, as well as M240D 7.62 mm machine guns where more controlled and precise fire is required. This combination allows crews to suppress small boats, penetrate light cover, or provide discriminating surveillance for boarding teams approaching a contact of interest.
SEAL gunners typically supplement the helicopter’s guns with their own small arms. In similar maritime profiles, teams use 7.62 mm MK48 Mod 1 light machine guns developed for US special operations forces, 5.56 mm MK46 light machine guns for reduced recoil and tighter control in confined spaces, as well as M4A1 carbines equipped with SOPMOD Block II optics, infrared lasers, and suppressors. Configured in this way, a SEAL element moving from cabin to deck can seamlessly transition from area suppression to precision fire against exposed threats on a target ship.
On the surface, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers provided the hard edge of the actual fire perimeter. Their Mk 41 vertical launch system can accommodate Standard missiles for fleet air defense, advanced Sea Sparrow missiles for point defense, Tomahawk land attack missiles, and vertically launched ASROC for anti-submarine warfare, while the five-inch/62-caliber Mk 45 Mod 4 gun delivers rapid naval fire up to over 20 kilometers with modern ammunition. Close at hand, Phalanx 20 mm CIWS guns, Mk 38 25 mm automatic guns, and crew-served .50 and 7.62 mm mounts provide the destroyers with layered short-range firepower, now proven effective against drones and small boats.
The USS George H. W. Bush served as the command and control center. The aircraft carrier is armed with Mk 29 launchers for RIM 162 Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles, RIM 116 Rolling Airframe missile launchers, and multiple Phalanx CIWS mounts, forming a protective bubble around the flight deck and strike group. Although the DVIDS segment highlights the MH-60S and SEALs, the ship’s air wing typically includes F/A-18E/F strike aircraft, E-2D airborne command and control aircraft, and MH-60R anti-submarine helicopters, providing commanders with options across the entire chain of destruction, from early warning to precision strike.
For defense planners, the Titans of the Sea Presidential Review was much more than a ceremonial anniversary parade. It placed high-value units, escorts, and special operations forces in a single, heavily instrumented scenario that tested distributed maritime operations, resilient C2, and layered defense at sea under stress, against a backdrop of growing anti-access and area denial capabilities.
By tying Navy 250 celebrations to the demand for live-fire evolution, the US Navy and Naval Special Warfare community signaled that public demonstrations continue to serve a difficult operational purpose. US SEALs, carrier-based aviation, and guided-missile destroyers train together as an integrated maritime strike and interdiction system, optimized for the next contested ocean, not the last.
Source: here
South Korea and the US team up to build swarms of Navy underwater drones to counter China in the Indo-Pacific
South Korea’s Hanwha Group and US-based Vatn Systems have reached an agreement to jointly develop low-cost autonomous underwater drones for the US Navy. The effort supports Washington’s push for mass-scalable underwater systems that can counter China’s rapid expansion in the Indo-Pacific.
According to Reuters, on December 10, 2025, South Korea’s Hanwha Group and US startup Vatn Systems agreed to jointly develop autonomous underwater drones for the US Navy as part of a broader effort to counter China’s growing maritime presence in the Indo-Pacific. The agreement builds on Hanwha’s recent investment in a $60 million funding round for Vatn and aims to rapidly deploy low-cost torpedo-shaped vehicles capable of conducting both surveillance and attack missions.
Hanwha and US startup Vatn are advancing a new generation of low-cost autonomous underwater drones, combining the strength of Korean shipbuilding with American swarm technology to deliver rapidly deployable underwater effects for future US and ROK Navy operations (image source: Vatn Systems).
At the heart of the partnership is Vatn’s Skelmir S6, described by the company as a Compact Modular Underwater Effector. The man-portable drone weighs approximately 50 to 60 pounds, is only 6 inches in diameter, and can carry a payload of 10 to 20 pounds. It accelerates to up to 20 knots, with a range of approximately 20 nautical miles and an operating depth of approximately 100 meters, trading exceptional endurance for speed and number.
The S6 is explicitly designed as a sacrificial mass. Vatn mission software allows a single operator, using an Android Tactical Assault Kit plug-in, to plan and monitor hundreds of vehicles simultaneously, providing commanders with a swarm of autonomous effectors that they can launch from shore, small boats, submarines, surface combatants, or even aircraft. The platform can accept kinetic warheads, electronic warfare or cyber payloads, and a variety of sensor packages without requiring deep integration with host vessels.
Cost is central to its operational logic. The unit price of the S6 is estimated at around $75,000, a fraction of the millions of dollars associated with larger autonomous underwater systems. In practice, this means that an aircraft carrier strike group or a coastal marine regiment could saturate choke points with dozens of swarms of Skelmirs, creating mine-like ambush zones, protecting high-value units, or hunting enemy submarines with attractive sensors and torpedoes.
Hanwha brings something very different to the table: the conglomerate is already a major supplier of submarines, mine countermeasure systems, and unmanned maritime vehicles to the Republic of Korea Navy, including autonomous surveillance AUVs and large anti-submarine UUV concepts built around open architecture and swarm control. Its experience in integrating unmanned platforms into naval combat systems, plus the capacity of shipyards in both Korea and the United States following the acquisition of the Philly shipyard, positions Hanwha as the industrial backbone that can scale Vatn’s innovation in small batches at the fleet level.
For Washington, the appeal is obvious. The Pentagon’s Replicator initiative envisions affordable autonomous systems at a scale of many thousands in areas to diminish China’s numerical advantage. Skelmir-type swarms fit this concept almost perfectly: cheap, fast, hard to track, and survivable in blocked, GPS-free littorals where traditional submarines and manned patrol boats are increasingly vulnerable. The addition of Hanwha as a co-producer also diversifies the US underwater industrial base and anchors a key ally in emerging supply chains for autonomy.
Seoul gains just as much. Joint production of Skelmir-based systems connects Hanwha directly to US underwater weapons programs and accelerates technology transfer in autonomous software, networks, and US Navy certification standards. The same family of effectors can be adapted for Korean requirements, from mine hunting and port defense in the Yellow Sea to layered anti-infiltration barriers around major naval bases, complementing Hanwha’s larger ASW UAVs and anti-mine warfare USVs.
China has already sanctioned Hanwha after its expansion into the US shipbuilding sector, and the decision to deepen cooperation with Washington on underwater drones indicates that Seoul is prepared to take this pressure in exchange for a closer defense industrial alliance. For the United States, placing its brand and allied capital on an emerging family of weapons reinforces deterrence messages and makes it easier to deploy the same systems with partners across the Indo-Pacific.
The Hanwha Vatn agreement is worth watching as a prototype for the underwater weaponry of the future: small, fast, software-defined effects, produced in the thousands, not the tens. If the partnership proves successful, swarms of Skelmirs could become a standard tool for US and South Korean naval commanders seeking to create an underwater hell of attractive drones that complicate any Chinese movement from the Taiwan Strait to the Sea of Japan.
Source: here
The US Navy and HII begin construction of the Virginia-class Block V submarine Barb (SSN-804).
HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding laid the keel for the future USS Barb (SSN-804) on December 9, 2025, officially beginning construction of the US Navy’s next Virginia-class Block V submarine.
On December 9, 2025, HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division hosted the keel laying ceremony for the Virginia-class attack submarine Barb (SSN-804) in Newport News, Virginia, marking the official start of construction of what will become the US Navy’s 31st Virginia-class fast attack submarine and the 15th built at this shipyard. The future Barb is the first Block V Virginia-class submarine to carry a World War II-era hull number into modern service, while remaining part of the joint production effort shared between Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boat.
To date, the US Navy has authorized a total of 66 Virginia-class submarines, with 24 submarines delivered to the fleet by early 2025, including USS North Carolina (SSN-777), and 16 more under contract for future construction. (Image source: US Navy)
SSN-804 will be the third US submarine to bear the name Barb and the first Virginia-class vessel to do so, linking a contemporary nuclear attack submarine to a historical record associated with both World War II and the Cold War. SSN-804 was ordered on December 2, 2019, and, like other Virginia-class submarines, Barb is intended to operate on a wide range of missions that include anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, cruise missile strike missions, intelligence and surveillance tasks, support for special operations forces, and mine warfare activities. The submarine will enter the active fleet after completion of outfitting, trials, and testing, with global operational patterns expected to be consistent with the broader class. Its construction is part of a sustained program aimed at maintaining the Navy’s attack submarine inventory as older Los Angeles-class units are retired from service.
The first USS Barb (SS-220), a Gato-class diesel-electric submarine commissioned in 1942, established the name that subsequent vessels inherited. It conducted eight war patrols in the Pacific and is credited with sinking 17 confirmed enemy ships, totaling over 96,000 tons, including the escort carrier Unyo and several transports and cargo ships. The submarine disrupted Japanese maritime logistics in several operational areas and landed a detachment that placed charges on a railroad line on Japan’s Sakhalin- , destroying a train during its last patrol. After World War II, the submarine received several unit awards (four Presidential Unit Citations, one Navy Unit Commendation, and eight battle stars) before being transferred to Italy in 1954, where it served under the name Enrico Tazzoli (S-511) until it was decommissioned and sold for scrap in the early 1970s. The cumulative patrol history of this submarine established the Barb as one of the most renowned American ships of its era.
The second submarine to bear this name, USS Barb (SSN-596), served between 1963 and 1989 as a Permit-class (formerly known as Thresher-class) nuclear-powered attack submarine and participated in Cold War patrols that included intelligence gathering, tracking missions, and operational support in regions related to the Vietnam conflict. SSN-596 performed extensive underwater operations, facilitated by nuclear propulsion, and contributed to early tests associated with the development and evaluation of the Tomahawk cruise missile, providing data for the integration of long-range strike capabilities into the submarine force. During its service life, the submarine conducted multiple missions in the Atlantic and Pacific and participated in activities that advanced tactical procedures for deep and shallow water operations. It remained active for more than two decades before being decommissioned in 1989. The operational production of SSN 596 added a nuclear dimension to the Barb line before the transition to the current program, the Virginia class.
The future and third USS Barb (SSN-804) will be a Block V Virginia-class submarine, which means it includes the Virginia Payload Module, which distinguishes this variant from previous blocks by inserting a hull section containing four large-diameter payload tubes. Each tube can accommodate seven Tomahawk missiles, increasing the total vertical payload capacity to 40 and providing space for future payload types as they become available. The additional volume increases the length of the submarine and supports expanded strike and multi-mission capabilities compared to previous blocks. Although propulsion and basic acoustic characteristics remain consistent with previous units, the Block V configuration is designed to improve long-range strike capability and provide space for emerging underwater capabilities. As the newest submarine to receive the Barb name, SSN 804 will combine this expanded payload configuration with the operational expectations associated with the Virginia class, thereby extending the lineage into the current generation of American attack submarines.
SSN-804 will incorporate the basic characteristics of the Virginia class, with a submerged displacement of approximately 10,200 tons, a length of approximately 140 meters, a width of approximately 10.4 meters, and a draft of close to 9.8 meters. Propulsion is provided by an S9G pressurized water reactor with an auxiliary diesel generator and a pump jet propeller, which supports submerged speeds of nearly 25 knots and allows the submarine to remain underwater for extended periods, limited mainly by consumables. The class typically carries approximately 15 officers and 120 enlisted personnel who operate hull systems, nuclear propulsion, combat systems, sensors, and support infrastructure. Armament includes four 533-millimeter torpedo tubes for Mk 48 heavyweight torpedoes and vertical launch capability for BGM-109 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. The class also uses phonic masts instead of traditional periscopes and integrates bow, flank, and towed sonar systems for detection and tracking in deep ocean and littoral environments.
The US Navy’s long-term plan has so far authorized a total of 66 Virginia-class submarines, with 24 submarines delivered to the fleet by early 2025 and another 16 under contract for future construction. The USS Iowa (SSN-797) became the 24th submarine delivered in April 2025, representing the latest in the Block IV series, followed by the ongoing construction of Block V incorporating the Virginia Payload Module. Later that year, the Navy accepted delivery of the future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on November 21, 2025, marking the 25th Virginia-class submarine to enter the fleet and the 12th delivered by Newport News Shipbuilding. At least nine more submarines are still under construction, and additional hulls (including Block VI) have been authorized, with actual delivery rates averaging approximately 1.1 to 1.2 submarines per year, compared to a planning target of two per year to meet broader force structure goals and potential future commitments.
Source: here
Russian Navy may finally receive Project 677M Velikiye Luki submarine before year-end
The Admiralty Shipyards appear to be preparing the B-587 Velikiye Luki for delivery to the Russian Navy before the end of the year, based on indications shared by Russian sources.
On November 25, 2025, Russian news outlet Curious indicated that Admiralty Shipyards wants to deliver the B-587 Velikiye Luki diesel-electric submarine, a Project 677M Lada-class unit currently undergoing testing, to the Russian Navy before the New Year. The submarine has undergone its final sequence of tests in the Baltic Sea, completing several diving phases and returning periodically to the shipyard for adjustments. This could finally end a program marked by several changes in the planned delivery dates, initially set for 2019 and subsequently adjusted to 2021, 2022, 2024, and now the end of 2025.
B-587 Velikiye Luki was launched on December 23, 2022, participated in the Main Naval Parade in July 2023, and began sea trials on December 21, 2023, which continued repeatedly throughout 2024 and 2025. (Image source: Curios)
B-587 Velikiye Luki has been at sea repeatedly since December 2023 for factory and state trials, including dives to approximately 100 meters in December 2024 and deeper dives of nearly 180 meters in July 2024, with the support of the Baltic Fleet. Crews and industry personnel checked propulsion, navigation, sonar, combat systems, and emergency procedures at depth, while practicing surfacing and coordination with escort and rescue vessels in designated ranges. Each test cycle was followed by a return to the fitting-out wall and dry dock for technical adjustments, indicating either ongoing refinement of onboard systems prior to acceptance or new repairs to be made after each test, which could also explain a six-year delay. These actions will typically constitute the final steps before entering service with the Baltic Fleet, which intends to use the submarine in roles such as anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, base protection, and maritime route patrols.
Velikiye Luki was originally laid down as Sevastopol on November 10, 2006, following the basic design of Project 677. However, work on the second and third ships, B-586 Kronstadt , and Sevastopol (formerly Velikiye Luki), was halted in 2009 because the Russian Navy assessed performance issues identified on the lead submarine B-585 Sankt Peterburg. In December 2014, Admiralty Shipyards received a new contract to complete the third hull using a revised technical design. On March 19, 2015, Sevastopol was refitted and renamed Velikiye Luki, with officials announcing at the time that delivery was expected in 2018. In 2019, construction was estimated at 55 percent complete, and the delivery date was postponed to November 25, 2021. The submarine was launched on December 23, 2022, participated in the Main Naval Parade in July 2023, and began sea trials on December 21, 2023, which continued throughout 2024 and 2025.
Technically, Velikiye Luki now corresponds to the modified standard of Project 677M, with a surface displacement of approximately 1,765 tons and a submerged displacement of nearly 2,650 tons, a length of approximately 66.8 to 67 meters, a width of 7.1 meters, and an average draft of 6.6 meters. Propulsion consists of two diesel generators rated at approximately 1,250 kW each, which supply power to a main electric motor (estimated between 4,050 and 5,500 horsepower), supported by two 102-horsepower backup motors driving a single shaft. Two battery packs, each with 120 cells, are integrated to ensure underwater autonomy. Reported performance characteristics include a submerged speed of up to 21 knots, a surface speed of approximately 10 knots, an autonomy of approximately 45 days, and a crew of 35 to 36 personnel. The design uses a compact single-hull or semi-single-hull structure, with smaller dimensions and lower displacement than previous submarines in Projects 877 or 636, combined with anti-sonar coatings and vibration isolation designed to reduce acoustic signatures.
The armament includes six 533-millimeter torpedo tubes mounted at the bow and a payload of up to 18 heavy torpedoes or a mixed arrangement of torpedoes and mines. The submarine can launch Kalibr cruise missiles through its torpedo tubes for land attack, anti-ship, or anti-submarine missions. For surface self-defense, the B-587 Velikiye Luki project allows for the use of portable air defense systems such as the Igla-1M or Verba, with eight missiles stored in transport launch containers, although the submarine has been observed carrying a heavy machine gun on its sail roof. The combat systems are managed by the Lity automated combat control system, integrating sensors, navigation, and weapon engagement functions. Molniya-type anti-sonar hull coating and vibration isolation measures are reportedly used to limit detectability. Air-independent propulsion using hydrogen fuel cells has been studied for later units of the family, although Velikiye Luki and the first boats of the class retain conventional diesel-electric propulsion without this addition.
The broader effort of Project 677 Lada began in the early 1980s at Rubin to provide the Russian Navy with non-nuclear submarines suitable for inland seas such as the Baltic and Black Seas. The lead unit, Saint Petersburg, was laid down in 1997, launched in 2004, and entered trials in 2007, before being formally accepted in 2010. The Navy subsequently moved it to the Baltic Sea in 2020. Over time, various technical problems were identified, and by 2023, information indicated plans to retire the submarine rather than modernize it, due to the cost and complexity of upgrading the prototype to newer standards. Despite these issues, the modified configuration of Project 677M was adopted for continued construction, allowing for the completion of Kronstadt and ongoing work on Velikiye Luki. Export-oriented derivatives, such as Project 677E, Amur 950, and Amur 1650, were also promoted as part of the program.
The broader series evolved under varying funding and industry conditions. Kronstadt, built in 2005, was halted in 2009, resumed in 2013, and launched in 2018. It completed phased trials beginning in 2021 and was commissioned into the Northern Fleet on January 31, 2024. In June 2019, the Ministry of Defense ordered two additional submarines, Vologda and Yaroslavl, both built on June 12, 2022, while another hull was contracted at the Army 2020 forum. Internal orders in December 2023 indicated that work on Vologda and Yaroslavl had been suspended due to insufficient funding. Over time, Russian authorities have referred to targets ranging from at least eight to at least twelve Lada-class units for domestic use, although broader industrial requirements and competing procurement priorities influence these projections. In this context, the completion of Velikiye Luki by the end of 2025 would represent, for Admiralty Shipyards, a measurable step toward strengthening non-nuclear forces in the Baltic Sea with newer submarines built under the Project 677M standard.
Source: here
The terrible arithmetic of our wars
Unless we find a way to fight much more cheaply, we will not be able to afford to win any battles.
At the lowest point of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln characterized the central factor between victory and defeat as finding a general who understood the “terrible arithmetic” of war. War is a contest of blood and treasure; each can and must, in the end, be counted and measured. It has been so for every conflict before and since.
However, this arithmetic is constantly changing, and never more rapidly than now. If the United States cannot update its calculations to accurately reflect our new era, our failure will not only cost us blood and resources, but will lead us to defeat.
Imposing costs has long been a principle of US strategy. During the Cold War, the US launched costly programs such as stealth and Star Wars not only for their tactical value, but to send a strategic signal to the Kremlin: neither your economy nor your war machine can keep up. Gorbachev, convinced, gave up decades of competition with the US.
The same concept of imposing costs was also fundamental to last year’s most famous operations. In Operation Spider Web, Ukraine used inexpensive drones, which reportedly cost less than $500 each, to damage strategic bombers worth millions of dollars, degrading Russia’s long-range strike capabilities for years to come. Similarly, in Operation Rising Lion, inexpensive Israeli drones destroyed 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 case, the tactical became strategic through new operational concepts that leveraged the new mathematics of new technologies.
Now, compare this to our own approaches, which rely overwhelmingly on sophisticated but costly overmatch.
The most acclaimed American operation of 2025 was Operation Midnight Hammer, our follow-up to Rising Lion. One estimate put the cost at $196 million, combining the nearly $160,000 per flight hour cost of the B-2 bomber and the approximately $1.87 million price tag of the Tomahawk missiles. (This does not take into account the initial purchase of the seven B-2 bombers, which cost $2.1 billion each, nor the $4.3 billion submarine that launched the missile.)
It may have been worth spending a fifth of a billion dollars to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the figures from Operation Rough Rider — the strikes against the Houthis last spring — illustrate the problem more clearly. The Pentagon spent about $5 billion on ammunition and operational costs to stop attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, which just resumed this month.
The same grim arithmetic haunts current operations in the Caribbean against the Venezuela-based Cartel de los Soles, which is linked to the government. 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 center of a cocaine trafficking network, transporting a reported street value of between $6.25 billion and $8.75 billion in drugs (the cartel receives an unknown but clearly smaller percentage of this total value as actual profit).
To fight this enemy, the United States has assembled a fleet that has cost at least $40 billion in total. The Ford carrier alone cost $4.7 billion to develop and $12.9 billion to build. The fleet is supported by at least 83 aircraft of various types, including 10 F-35Bs ($109 million each), seven Predator drones ($33 million each), three P-8 Poseidons ($145 million each), and at least one AC-130J attack aircraft ($165 million). Of course, all of these assets will continue to be used long after Operation Southern Spear ends, but that’s how we use the investment.
But the current cost of operations and expendables doesn’t tell a better story. The Ford alone costs about $8 million per day to operate. The F-35s and AC-130Js cost about $40,000 per flight hour; the P-8s, about $30,000; the Reapers, about $3,500.
Analysis of videos of the attack on the 21 submarines shows that US forces fired AGM-176 Griffin bombs ($127,333 each in 2019), Hellfires (approximately $150,000 to $220,000), and potentially GBU-39B Small Diameter bombs ($40,000). In some cases, they appear to be firing four munitions per strike: “twice to kill the crew and twice to sink the crew.”
All of these are set up 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 sell for about $400,000 on Boats.com, but the old open motorboats in the videos are obviously well below that price. Their crews were reported to be earning $500 per trip.
By comparison, the cost of the deployed US naval fleet is at least five times what the cartel earns from smuggling. The deployed air fleet costs at least twice as much. It costs about 5,000 times more than the suspected drug boats that have been destroyed. In fact, the cost of operating the offshore patrol off Venezuela for a single day has not yet equaled the maximum cost paid by the cartel for lost boats.
In the air, the US military spent about 66,000 times more to buy each unmanned drone in the operation than the cartel paid for each man killed by the unmanned drones. The US spent between 80 and 300 times more for each bomb or missile used than the cartel paid for each man killed by those bombs or missiles.
The math is probably even worse when we are on the defensive.
In September, a wave of 19 Russian drones entered Polish airspace… Gerbera drones cost only $10,000 — so cheap that they are often used as decoys to mislead and overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses. NATO countered with a half-billion-dollar response force consisting of F-35s, F-16s, AWACS radar planes, and helicopters, which shot down four of the drones with $1.6 million worth of AMRAAM missiles.
It’s a bargain compared to how difficult it was for US forces to defend themselves against Houthi forces using the same inexpensive technology. Our naval forces reportedly launched 120 SM-2 missiles, 80 SM-6 missiles, and 20 SM-3 missiles, costing approximately $2.1 million, $3.9 million, and over $9.6 million each. And that was to defend against a group operating out of the world’s 187th largest economy, capable of launching only hundreds of drones and missiles. Our supposed pace-setting challenger, China, has an economy that will soon become the world’s largest and a combined national industrial and military procurement plan to be able to launch ammunition 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 today’s battlefields remains literally orders of magnitude beyond what our budget plans to spend, our industry intends to build, our procurement system can contract, and, implicitly, what our military will deploy.
As a point of comparison, Ukraine is on track to build, purchase, and deploy over four million drones this year. Meanwhile, the US military aims to procure 50,000 drones next year — about 1.25% of Ukraine’s total. In its most optimistic plans, it hopes to be able to purchase 1 million drones “in the next two to three years.”
When you spend an order of magnitude more than your adversary, you are in a “loss equation.” And if we don’t change that math, we will need an update to Norm Augustine’s famous “law” of defense procurement. In 1979, Augustine calculated that if the Pentagon could not limit the cost curve of procurement, by 2054 we would not be able to afford any aircraft.
The 2025 version says that if we don’t master the new mathematics of the battlefield, we won’t be able to afford to win any battles.
Source: here
Intense surveillance activity over the Black Sea today
This morning, the Black Sea region was once again the focus of significant intelligence gathering activity, with multiple ISR assets operating simultaneously in support of NATO situational awareness along the Alliance’s eastern flank.
A US Navy P-8A Poseidon departed from Sigonella and established its usual surveillance route over the western Black Sea, maintaining a pattern close to international waters but clearly oriented towards monitoring Russian naval and coastal activity.
At the same time, a NATO E-3A Sentry (call sign NATO01) operated over central Romania, flying repeated orbits near the borders of Moldova and Ukraine. This AWACS presence provides command and control support while extending radar coverage across the entire region.
Further south, a US Army ARTEMIS II bomber (call sign BRIO66) conducted a long-range signals intelligence mission over the Black Sea, flying a route that stretched from the Bulgarian coast to the eastern basin. The ARTEMIS platform has become increasingly common in the area, reflecting the ongoing need for real-time electronic intelligence.
Today’s photo highlights once again the sustained and coordinated effort by European and allied resources to keep the Black Sea under constant surveillance in an extremely dynamic security environment.
Source: here
How does China manage to produce so many submarines?
China’s industrial capacity is an order of magnitude greater than the facilities available to Western countries.
“Belief,” “appetite,” and “ambition.”
These are words that key members of the UK’s underwater defense ecosystem have used to explain how China has managed to gain an edge over Western countries in submarine production.
For several years now, China’s industrial base has far exceeded the productive capacity of the West, delivering four submarines in the last year. Such a rate is a dream for Europe and the United States, with the US struggling to produce two nuclear submarines over a 12-month period, and the UK and France lagging even further behind.
According to a 2023 report by the former US Department of Defense, later renamed the Department of War, China planned to increase its submarine force to 80 units by 2035, while working to retire older, less capable models.
British MP Fred Thomas, Labour MP for Plymouth Moor View, during a defense committee session on October 21, 2025, spoke about assessments that China would attempt to deliver 80 submarines over the next decade, although most would still be conventionally powered.
Addressing a panel of senior executives from BAE Systems, Babcock, and Rolls-Royce, Thomas said that the UK’s enemies were building submarines “much faster” than was possible in the West.
“There are some assessments that [China] will build 80 boats over the next decade, which will be considerably more than we will be able to do. What is different about them that they are able to build so quickly?” Thomas asked the committee.
Steve Timms, managing director of BAE Systems Submarines, said China was not “constrained by history” as Britain had been in recent years, possibly in relation to the near loss of nuclear submarine capabilities before the Astute-class submarines entered service.
“A lot of it is about belief and appetite,” Timms said.
Alongside Timms was Harry Holt, chief executive of nuclear at Babcock International, who said China had “scale” and “ambition” as key factors in its industrial success.
Offering his opinion, Steve Carlier, president of Rolls-Royce Submarines, said that having a dedicated long-term plan is “the best way” to build nuclear submarines.
“That lends itself to the way China runs its economy, they set a long-term plan and stick to it,” Carlier said.
The bigger, the better: China’s quantitative advantage
According to an analysis by GlobalData in 2024, China’s defense spending is reshaping global security, with Beijing determined to create a multipolar world order, balancing the previous dominance of the United States. In terms of numbers, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is the largest navy in the world.
The US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) predicts that by 2030, China will have over 400 combat ships, giving it a clear quantitative advantage over the United States, with the qualitative gap closing rapidly. The latest PLAN warships are considered comparable in capability to their US Navy counterparts.
Beijing’s spending on nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) was estimated to exceed $36 billion by 2034, with an annual forecast for 2034 of over $4.3 billion, up from $2.6 billion in 2024.
China’s PLAN has historically been a prolific operator of diesel-electric submarines, but since the beginning of the millennium it has sought to further develop its nuclear propulsion capabilities by introducing two Type-093 SSNs between 2006-2007 and four Type-093A variants between 2012-2017.
The PLAN also operates SSBNs, bringing four Type-094s into service between 2007 and 2021 and two Type-094As in 2020. In addition, the PLAN has a single Type-092 SSBN from the 1980s in its inventory.
China is also working on the new Type-096 class of SSBNs, with two submarines under construction and many more likely planned as part of a general shift to nuclear propulsion for its underwater fleet. In addition, an unknown number of Type 095 SSNs are under development, with Bohai Shipyard (China Shipbuilding Industry) being a candidate for the production phase.
The ONI believes that by 2030, the PLAN will operate 13 SSNs and up to eight SSBNs, except that the current expansion of submarine shipyards could allow for much higher production.
China also has a huge advantage in the sophistication and number of commercial shipyards that can be tasked with supporting the country’s defense ecosystem.
How does the UK compare?
The UK, part of the AUKUS triumvirate alongside the US and Australia, recently revealed its ambition to develop up to 12 planned AUKUS SSNs, a design it will share with Canberra, with technical assistance from Washington.
Included in this plan is a plan to produce one completed AUKUS SSN every 18 months, an unrealistic ambition that will see the UK build its entire 12-submarine force in less time than it takes to manufacture and commission two Astute-class SNs of the current Astute generation.
The odds are not in the UK’s favor, with an Astute-class SSN taking an average of over 128 months from the first steel cutting to delivery to the Royal Navy.
It goes without saying that the idea that the UK will be able to build a nuclear-powered submarine in less than two years is, at best, overly ambitious, or at worst, fanciful.
The capacity of the BAE Systems submarine yard in Barrow is stretched, with four submarines currently under construction, three of which are Dreadnought-class SSBNs and the last two are Astute-class submarines. The fourth Dreadnought-class submarine, the future HMS King George VI, will likely take the place of the last Astute (HMS Achilles, formerly Agincourt) currently under construction.
Three Astute SSNs are being built inside the DDH. Credit: BAE Systems
BAE Systems’ Devonshire Dock Hall (DDH), located at its Barrow-in-Furness site, is the production facility for the entire UK submarine fleet. Approximately 260 meters long, 58 meters wide, and 51 meters high, the DDH is a huge structure.
The combined length of an Astute SSN (97 m) and the future Dreadnought-class SSBN (153 m) is 250 m, well within the limits of the DDH. There are few images available of the interior of the DDH, although BAE Systems has published an image of three Astute SSNs under construction, more or less side by side.
Assuming the existing construction rate of the Astute SSN and the average time between each submarine, it can be extrapolated that a 12-vessel AUKUS SSN fleet would be ready by March 2068, if started in 2029 to replace HMS Astute in the 2040s.
At the current rate of construction of the Astute class at the BAE Systems Barrow-in-Furness site, it will take more than 39 years to build the Royal Navy’s future AUKUS SSN fleet.
Without the expansion of the DDH or BAE Systems facilities at Barrow, much will depend on the delivery of the Dreadnought SSBNs, which appear to be taking approximately 15 years to complete. Construction of HMS Dreadnought began in 2016, and the ship is expected to enter service in the early 2030s.
The interval from the start of construction of HMS Dreadnought to the second in the class, HMS Valiant, was two years and 11 months, while the interval to the third in the class, HMS Warspite, was three years and five months. Given this, it is likely that the fourth class, HMS King George VI, will begin construction in late 2025 or early 2026.
This will mean that the Dreadnought program is still ongoing as the first ships of the new AUKUS SSN class are being built.
But what about AUKUS?
Back at the defense committee session, the industry wanted to emphasize that for AUKUS to be successful, it had to start on time, thus avoiding corresponding delays that would filter further down the program schedule.
Given that this unique class is set to replace the UK’s Astute SSN submarines and Australia’s planned Virginia-class interim submarines, which it will obtain from the US, this is far from guaranteed.
“It’s not just about new submarine platforms, it’s about an ecosystem,” Holt said, referring to the need to help Australia sustain its future nuclear submarines, not just the delivery platforms.
“There is a challenge in terms of scale, pace, and decision-making,” Holt added.
The Australian timetable will require it to be ready to support US and British SSNs that will rotate through the HMAS Stirling naval base in Western Australia starting in 2027, with the first US-built Virginia-class ships arriving by 2033.
An artist’s impression of the AUKUS SSN concept. Credit: Royal Navy
Rolls-Royce, which has six sets of nuclear reactors in its supply chain, including four at the company’s Raynesway site, said the concern is that each stage of the UK’s nuclear recapitalization process will start on time.
“This is the kind of industry that does not respond well to frequent changes of pace,” Carlier warned.
Timms said it was “clearly a challenge” in “ensuring alignment” and the need to make decisions on time.
However, despite a deadline for the next series of UK funding decisions, which are due to be approved by the end of the year, the government’s Autumn Budget — which is expected to include significant cuts in public spending amid a huge financial black hole — poses a clear danger to AUKUS’ aspirations and its short-term deadlines.
Source: here
The naval coalition already includes more than 20 countries – Commander
The Maritime Capabilities Coalition in Support of Ukraine already includes over 20 countries.
The commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Naval Forces, Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, announced this on Facebook on the second anniversary of the coalition’s creation, Ukrinform reports.
“In December 2023, together with our partners, we announced the creation of the Maritime Capabilities Coalition for Ukraine at the initiative of the United Kingdom and Norway. Even then, we clearly understood where we were headed and why it was necessary to strengthen the Ukrainian Navy,” Neizhpapa said.
According to him, “today more than twenty countries are with us, helping Ukraine develop as a modern maritime power. Thanks to the member states of the Coalition, we have received ships and boats of various types, strengthened attack and mine measures, are developing the amphibious component of the Marine Corps, and are training personnel in various fields.”
“I greatly appreciate this support. A clear position from our partners, concerted actions, and practical steps strengthen our ability to act with confidence and consistency. It is a partnership you can rely on. Much has been done in these two years, but there is still work to be done. Russia continues its aggression not only in the Black Sea. Therefore, our task is to remain resilient, prepared for any challenge, and to act proactively. The sea is the way. A way that should be open and safe for everyone,” Neizhpapa stressed.
As reported by Ukrinform, Finland is joining the maritime coalition led by the United Kingdom and Norway, whose task is to support the development of the Ukrainian Navy.
Earlier it was reported that in November 2024, the Maritime Capabilities Coalition included 19 countries, 12 of which had already signed a document of accession.
Source: here
Zelenskyy signed the law on the state budget for 2026
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed the law on Ukraine’s state budget for 2026.
This is evidenced by the document sheet on the parliament’s website.
On December 3, the Verkhovna Rada approved, in the second reading, the draft state budget of the House for 2026. On December 8, the document was sent to the president for signature.
According to Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko, state budget revenues amount to UAH 2 trillion 918 billion, including the general fund – UAH 2 trillion 625 billion, revenues were increased in the draft budget for the second reading, in particular by taking into account additional revenues from increased taxation of bank profits.
Marchenko noted that state budget expenditures for 2026 amount to UAH 4 trillion 837 billion, expenditures for the security and defense sector – UAH 2.8 trillion, of which approximately UAH 1.3 trillion will go to the salaries of defenders.
In early November, Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko announced that the government had prepared a draft state budget for 2026 for a second reading in the Verkhovna Rada. The parliament adopted the state budget at first reading on October 22.
Source: here