Bulgaria calls off search for 10 missing sailors after drone attack sinks cargo ship

By Simon Ormiston & Anna Kirchheim

Published on 07/10/2026 - EURONEWS

A second vessel hit in the same strike is still on fire and expected to go down, as Bulgaria's president convenes her national security council.

Bulgaria has called off the search for the 10 crew of a cargo ship sunk in a drone attack in the Black Sea, after finding no trace of the sailors.

The operation ended at 5pm local time (4pm CET) on Tuesday and will not resume, Rumen Nikolov, head of rescue operations at Bulgaria's Maritime Administration, told reporters in Varna on Wednesday.

Searchers found three life rafts and an overturned lifeboat from the 83-metre long Alfa Watan but no one from its crew, he said, adding that no trace of the sailors was likely to be found.

The second ship hit in the attack, the Able, will probably sink as well, Nikolov said, according to shipping news site Maritime.bg. Its engine room flooded after a sea drone struck the stern, it is sitting heavily down at the stern and it was still burning on Wednesday morning.

Pollution in the area is minimal, he said.

Bulgaria President Iliana Iotova has convened the country's national security council to discuss maritime security.

All 18 of the Able's crew, 11 Turkish and seven Indian, were rescued by the Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria and are now in Varna. Two were hospitalised, one with burns and one with a head injury.

Sea and aerial drones hit the ships at about 3am local time (2am CET) on Tuesday, around 70 nautical miles east of the town of Byala in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said.

The crew of the Dioscuria, which was in the area, saw an explosion on the first ship and rushed to the scene, Radev confirmed. They found an overturned lifeboat and life jackets but no one from the crew.

Radev said two helicopters were sent to Varna to pick up rescue teams and a Su-25 aircraft was deployed to carry out aerial reconnaissance over the area.

Both vessels had sent distress signals during the night and one disappeared from Border Police radar at about 9am local time (8am CET) on Tuesday, public broadcaster BNR reported.

Both vessels are Turkish-owned, according to the Equasis merchant shipping database and it is believed to be the first attack on shipping in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone.

Ship tracking website vesselfinder.com shows the Alfa Watan was sailing under the flag of Togo and was headed for the Romanian port of Sulina.

The second ship was carrying wheat and sailing south, Radev said. The cargo of the sunken Alfa Watan is not yet known.

Radev, who called the attack "absolutely unacceptable", did not say who launched the drones, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the developments "concerning".

Three attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea within two days

Tuesday's attack occurred the day after a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying grain from Ukraine to Italy was attacked off Romania's coast in the Black Sea by at least one drone and sank after catching fire, killing two crew members.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said the ship's captain, Azerbaijani national Rustam Ismayil oglu Hasanov, died and his body was being repatriated. A second Azerbaijani crew member, Mahammad Hamza oglu Suleymanzade, is still missing and the search and rescue operation is ongoing. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said their families were informed and they were receiving logistical and financial support.

11 other crew members were rescued by the Romanian authorities. Three Azerbaijani sailors and one Indian crew member among them are receiving emergency medical care in Romania.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry explicitly reiterated its urgent warning to Azerbaijani citizens to refrain from travelling to active conflict zones, working in high-risk areas, or taking employment on transport vessels operating along contested maritime corridors.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russia for yesterday's sinking of the cargo ship and called it "a horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel" in neutral waters.

India condemned Tuesday's attack as part of the crew members were Indian nationals. The Indian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that "India views these attacks on commercial shipping and seafarers with grave concern," adding that "the targeting of traffic in international waterways is severely undermining global commerce and welfare of people across the world."

Ship sinks after drone attack in Bulgaria's Black Sea zone, crew missing

PM Rumen Radev said the attack was "absolutely unacceptable". / government.bgFacebook

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By bne IntelliNews October 7, 2026

A cargo ship sank and its crew went missing after drones attacked two merchant vessels in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea on October 6, Bulgarian officials said, raising concerns about the widening risks to civilian shipping from the war in Ukraine.

The vessels were attacked by air and sea drones at about 3 a.m. local time, around 70 nautical miles (130 km) east of the Bulgarian coastal town of Byala, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said.

One of the ships, the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan, sank. The vessel was Turkish-owned and was reportedly heading towards the Romanian port of Sulina. Its cargo and the number of people aboard were not immediately clear.

A Bulgarian vessel that went to the scene found an overturned lifeboat, life jackets and rafts but no crew members, Radev said. A search-and-rescue operation was under way.

The second vessel, the grain carrier Able, was hit and caught fire. Its 18 crew members - 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals - were rescued by the Bulgarian roll-on/roll-off vessel Dioscuria, Radev said. Two crew members, including the captain, were seriously injured and taken to a military hospital in Varna.

"This is an absolutely unacceptable attack, a gross violation of international law and maritime affairs," Radev said at an emergency government meeting, BTA reported.

He said it was not immediately known whether the drones had originated from Russia or Ukraine.

Rising Black Sea risks

The incident comes as attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea have increased, with vessels carrying Ukrainian grain among those hit, and as European governments warn of a growing threat from Russian hybrid warfare.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the attacks, saying the situation in the Black Sea was becoming increasingly concerning.

"Commercial ships – and innocent crews – are being targeted, with lives already lost at sea," von der Leyen said on X. "Attacks on civilian shipping are unacceptable."

She noted that the incident came a day after a Turkish ship carrying Ukrainian grain was hit and sunk off Romania.

Radev did not directly blame Russia for Tuesday's attack, but linked the incident to the war in Ukraine.

"As I have long maintained, if this war is not halted in time, it will continue to expand its geographical reach and increase risks, including the risk of a global conflict," he said, according to BNR.

Bulgaria, a NATO member, does not border Russia or Ukraine but occupies a strategically important position on the western Black Sea. Its exclusive economic zone covers more than 29,000 square kilometres.

President Iliana Iotova will convene Bulgaria's Consultative Council on National Security on October 7 to discuss risks to maritime security and critical infrastructure stemming from the war in Ukraine, her office said.

The Bulgarian authorities were also monitoring the sunken vessel and the surrounding area for possible environmental risks, Radev said.

The incident followed a separate attack near Ukraine's port of Odesa in which a Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was reportedly hit, killing one crew member and injuring seven others.

  

Drones hit two ships off Bulgaria's coast, search and rescue ongoing as one sank

By Simon Ormiston & Anna Kirchheim

Published on 06/10/2026 - EURONEWS

Drones hit two ships off Bulgaria's coast and one of them sank, with the crew missing, the day after another drone attack sank a ship near Romania's shore in the Black Sea, in two consecutive drone attacks on NATO's Eastern flank countries.

A massive search is under way in the Black Sea for the crew of a cargo ship that sank after drones struck two commercial vessels off Bulgaria's coast early Tuesday, the day after another drone attack sank a Turkish grain ship off the coast of Romania, killing 2 crew members.

Sea and aerial drones hit the ships at about 3am local time (2am CET), around 70 nautical miles east of the town of Byala in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said.

The crew of the Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria, which was in the area, saw an explosion on the first ship and rushed to the scene, Radev confirmed. They found an overturned lifeboat and life jackets but no one from the crew.

Officials have not said how many people were on board, nor the origin of the drones.

A second ship was attacked and caught fire, with all 18 of its crew rescued by the Dioscuria. Eleven are Turkish and seven Indian, according to the televised address from Radev.

Two of them were hospitalised, one with burns and one with a head injury. The other 16 were being brought ashore on a Border Police patrol boat.

Radev said two helicopters were sent to Varna to pick up rescue teams and a Su-25 aircraft was deployed to carry out aerial reconnaissance over the area. The operation is being run by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre.

Both vessels sent distress signals during the night and one disappeared from Border Police radar at about 9am local time (8am CET), public broadcaster BNR reported.

Bulgarian shipping news site Maritime.bg named the sunken ship as the Alfa Watan and the second as the Palau-flagged Able. It said the strikes were the first attack on shipping in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone.

Both vessels are Turkish-owned, according to the Equasis merchant shipping database.

Ship tracking website vesselfinder.com shows the Alfa Watan was sailing under the flag of Togo and was headed for the Romanian port of Sulina.

The second ship was carrying wheat and sailing south, Radev said. The cargo of the sunken Alfa Watan is not yet known.

Radev, who called the attack "absolutely unacceptable", did not say who launched the drones, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the developments "concerning".

Three attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea within two days

Tuesday's attack occurred the day after a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying grain from Ukraine to Italy was attacked off Romania's coast in the Black Sea by at least one drone and sank after catching fire, killing two crew members.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said the ship's captain, Azerbaijani national Rustam Ismayil oglu Hasanov, died and his body was being repatriated. A second Azerbaijani crew member, Mahammad Hamza oglu Suleymanzade, is still missing and the search and rescue operation is ongoing. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said their families were informed and they were receiving logistical and financial support.

11 other crew members were rescued by the Romanian authorities. Three Azerbaijani sailors and one Indian crew member among them are receiving emergency medical care in Romania.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry explicitly reiterated its urgent warning to Azerbaijani citizens to refrain from travelling to active conflict zones, working in high-risk areas, or taking employment on transport vessels operating along contested maritime corridors.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russia for yesterday's sinking of the cargo ship and called it "a horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel" in neutral waters.

India condemned Tuesday's attack as part of the crew members were Indian nationals. The Indian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that "India views these attacks on commercial shipping and seafarers with grave concern," adding that "the targeting of traffic in international waterways is severely undermining global commerce and welfare of people across the world."

Bulgarian PM says drone attack on two ships is 'flagrant' breach of maritime law

Copyright AP Photo

By Simon Ormiston

Published on 06/10/2026 - EURONEWS

The EU pledged "full solidarity" with its eastern members as the search went on for the sunken vessel's crew, and no one has yet been blamed for the strikes.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev has condemned a drone attack on two commercial ships in the Black Sea that sank one of them, calling it "a flagrant violation of maritime law"

"Such an attack within the Bulgarian exclusive economic zone is absolutely unacceptable," he told reporters on Tuesday at the start of an emergency government meeting on the strikes.

Sea and aerial drones hit the vessels at about 3am local time (2am CET), around 70 nautical miles east of the town of Byala according to Radev, the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA) reported. He did not say who was behind the attack.

Radev warned that unless the war in Ukraine is brought to an end, it will keep widening its reach and raising the risks, including that of a global conflict.

"The situation significantly complicates navigation in the Black Sea, drives up insurance premiums, and makes maritime traffic extremely difficult," Radev said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said attacks on civilian shipping were "unacceptable" and that the EU stood "in full solidarity with our member states on the eastern flank".

"The situation in the Black Sea is increasingly concerning. Commercial ships – and innocent crews – are being targeted, with lives already lost at sea," she wrote on X.

The crew of the sunken ship are still missing and the search for survivors is continuing. Radev said the state's priority was to protect lives regardless of who was sailing in Bulgaria's economic zone.

The Bulgarian prime minister also addressed the Emil, a cargo ship attacked by Russian drones in August and now drifting towards Bulgaria's waters. Moscow confirmed the strike, claiming that the ship was carrying military equipment for Ukraine.

"We will not in any way allow the Bulgarian coast to be threatened," Radev said.

The emergency meeting brought together the defence, interior, transport and environment ministries, the presidency and the security services.

The attack came a day after a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying grain in the Black Sea was hit by at least one drone and sank after catching fire.

KILLER BOTS

Ukraine says using AI robot guns to shoot down new Russian drones

AFP
Mon, October 5, 2026 


Twelve of the AI-powered turrets have been installed in Kyiv, officials said (Handout)

Ukraine has begun using artificial intelligence-enabled robot guns to take down Russia's new and fast-moving jet-powered drones, the Ukrainian air force said Monday.

For months, Kyiv has been seeking new ways to intercept the new Russian drones pounding the Ukrainian capital as it faces a dire lack of suitable ammunition to take them out.

Russia's newer jet-powered drones move faster and are harder to intercept than the traditional models, which are based on Iranian Shahed drones.

As part of Ukraine's efforts to respond, "robotic turrets are now being installed on bridges", air force spokesman colonel Yuri Ignat told national television.

"There have already been shoot-downs" of the drones, including the bigger, faster and more powerful Geran-5 version, he told national television.

Speaking to AFP, Ignat explained that the new turrets, which have been seen by AFP journalists in the Ukrainian capital, use "optical vision and artificial intelligence to eliminate the human factor and deliver strikes".

Sergiy Beskrestnov, a technology adviser to the Ukrainian president, explained on Telegram over the weekend that the new automated turrets were "an innovative Ukrainian solution that shoots down (drones) using machine guns controlled by artificial intelligence".

He said that 12 of the turrets had been installed in Kyiv, adding that "more turrets will be installed in the future".

- Not a panacea -

Ignat acknowledged that the new system had a small operating radius.

Ukraine's robotic gun turrets have scored their first kills of Russia's fastest attack drones

Business Insider

"It can operate at about one kilometre plus. And it works when conditions are favourable, when the attack approach angle is suitable," he told AFP.

"This is not some kind of panacea," he said, stressing that the turrets were part of "an integrated air defence system that provides engagement of these targets at different tiers".

"Of course we rely on all available assets."

Ignat said that currently, most of the work against jet-powered drones "is actually done by aviation".

"Because they fly high, they fly fast, it's the fighters that can catch them, especially the F-16s," he explained, adding that some pilots could "sometimes shoot down more than 10 Shaheds in a single sortie".

But the pilots were often forced to use aircraft cannons against drones, "because there are no missiles, (or) there are very, very few", he lamented.

Ukraine, which has repeatedly sought more support to fend off Russia since its full-scale invasion began in 2022, has been accelerating the integration of artificial intelligence into its defence capabilities.

It is already using the technology on the frontlines to guide drones, detect targets for strikes and coordinate large-scale operations.

bur-nl/jc/gv

Frontline Robotics unveils Frodo, its new 6×6 UGV with 93-mile range and 25 mph top speed

Munis Raza
Sat, October 3, 2026 

INTERESTIN ENGINEERING


Frontline Robotics unveils Frodo, its new 6×6 UGV with 93-mile range and 25 mph top speed

Key takeaways

Frontline Robotics has unveiled Frodo, a universal 6x6 unmanned ground vehicle designed for logistics, evacuation, and strike missions, with a top speed of 25 mph and a range of up to 93 miles on a single charge.

Ukrainian defense company Frontline Robotics has unveiled Frodo, a universal 6x6 unmanned ground vehicle built for logistics, evacuation and strike missions. The company told Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi that the platform can reach a top speed of 25 mph (40 km/h) and travel up to 93 miles (150 kilometers) on a single charge.

Frodo carries an effective payload of up to 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and a maximum payload of up to 880 pounds (400 kilograms). Independent adaptive suspension and ground clearance adjustable between 6.7 and 13 inches (170 to 330 millimeters) are designed to let the vehicle handle potholes, rocky roads and paths blocked by fallen trees.
Built to keep moving

A low center of gravity helps keep Frodo stable across uneven terrain, while its running gear is designed to keep the vehicle moving even if it loses a wheel entirely. A single service member can replace the vehicle's battery packs without additional support, according to the manufacturer.

The platform also supports several communication channels, including Starlink, LTE, Silvus, ELRS and TBS, giving operators multiple ways to maintain contact with the vehicle across different battlefield conditions. Frodo has already been codified and is now available for procurement by Ukraine's Defense Forces.

More than a cargo hauler

Beyond transporting cargo and evacuating wounded personnel, Frodo can carry remotely operated combat modules. The platform is compatible with Frontline Robotics' own Burya turret, a robotic weapons mount the company first introduced in 2024 for the Mk 19 40mm automatic grenade launcher before moving the system into serial production in early 2025.

An upgraded version, Burya 2.0, followed in late 2025 with a universal mount capable of operating the Mk 19, RDS40 and AGS-53 grenade launchers, as well as the Browning M2 heavy machine gun and similar weapons.

Part of a bigger push

Frontline Robotics CEO Yevhen Tretiak said ground robotics is now going through the same stage of development that aerial drones already went through, as militaries work to control not just the sky but the ground beneath it. He added that entering the unmanned ground vehicle market fits into the company's broader strategy of building a multidomain robotic ecosystem.

The Burya turret has already been fitted onto other platforms beyond Frodo, including Ukraine's ARDAL UGV in February and the Estonian-made THeMIS tracked UGV, built by Milrem Robotics, in August 2025. Frontline Robotics has also agreed to integrate the turret with Danish-Ukrainian company Dropla's Logist ground platform, with both companies jointly developing AI-based threat-detection systems.

Frontline Robotics additionally produces the Linza 3.0 bomber drone, built with visual-inertial navigation for use in electronic warfare conditions, along with the Z00m 3.0 reconnaissance drone, designed to operate under similar jamming conditions.

The Illusion Of Hard Power: Reflection On How Democratized Technology And Strategic Geography Broke The Superpower Monopoly On War

October 5, 2026

By Dawit W. Giorgis

Key Takeaways:

A former infantry officer argues that Vietnam, Iraq, and African interventions show firepower does not buy compliance when a population treats the fight as existential, and that external backing or neglect left long instability from Congo and Somalia to Libya and the Sahel.

The 2026 Iran war and Ukraine are presented as a cost inversion: cheap mass drones and missiles force million-dollar interceptors, and Hormuz pressure moved the contest into shipping, insurance, and energy; Ukraine’s sea drones against the Black Sea Fleet are cited as the same pattern.

The conclusion is that total destruction is politically and strategically unavailable, so China’s caution on Taiwan and future stability depend on defensive sustainability and compromise rather than regime change—an argument, not a demonstrated law.

Written from the unique perspective of a former infantry officer of the late sixties, this paper examines the paradigm shift in 21st-century geopolitics, in which conventional military dominance no longer guarantees political control. Tracing an evolutionary line from the ideological endurance of Vietnam to the urban insurgencies of Iraq, the paper argues that contemporary conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine mark a watershed in modern warfare. By pairing fierce nationalist resolve with cheap, mass-produced asymmetric technology, weaker states have triggered a severe industrial-economic inversion, bankrupting expensive Western defensive systems through supply-chain attrition. Crucially, the paper highlights how Iran successfully weaponized its strategic geography—specifically the Strait of Hormuz—shifting the center of military gravity into global shipping, insurance, and energy networks and holding global markets hostage. Confronted with the reality that victory against an existential defense would require total destruction, superpowers such as the United States, Russia, and an island-facing China are hitting a structural wall. The paper concludes that absolute military coercion is obsolete; future global stability depends on balancing defensive sustainability with soft power, diplomatic tolerance, and mutual compromise.

The Illusion of Hard Power

In 1967, I was a young officer training at the Advanced Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, alongside American officers. The ghost of the Vietnam War hung heavy over every field exercise, tactical briefing, and grueling march we endured. We were trained by men who had just returned from those jungles, and the lesson they drilled into us had nothing to do with a lack of American firepower. Instead, they forced us to confront the limits of willpower. We learned the hard way that you cannot militarily break an indigenous population when they are fighting for their own dirt. Fifty years have passed since my time in uniform, and as I get older, I watch the news and realize that our strategic leaders are still trapped in the same fallacy. We continue to assume that an overwhelming accumulation of military might can force a weaker nation to surrender its independence and existence. History has shattered that illusion across my lifetime, from Southeast Asia to the deserts of Iraq, and now to the tech-driven battlefields of Ukraine, the proxy conflicts of Africa, and the waters of the Persian Gulf. The basic reality of modern conflict is that military dominance no longer equals political control. When a nation views a conflict as existential, hard power can only achieve two things: death and destruction. It cannot buy compliance. Today, because the means of resistance have been cheapened and widely democratized, the pursuit of absolute control is a path toward mutual ruin. True strength for the future lies not in our capacity to destroy, but in our willingness to tolerate, compromise, and engage the world through mutual respect.

To understand why US military dominance is broken, we must look closely at how resistance has changed since my time. In the 1960s and 70s, US conventional doctrine was pushed to its limits. The United States dropped millions of tons of ordnance on Vietnam yet failed to achieve its political objectives. The failure was not a lack of tactical skill on the ground; it was a fundamental strategic failure to recognize that a population defending its homeland measures victory purely by its willingness to keep dying. Against deeply rooted nationalism, conventional bombing campaigns could not break the enemy’s resolve. As my generation learned through immense trauma, a democracy simply cannot sustain a war of indefinite casualties for non-existential goals. Decades later, I watched the next generation of American soldiers march into Iraq. While the initial conventional phase of that war was won in a matter of weeks through “Shock and Awe,” the secondary phase of controlling and governing the country was completely lost. Our political leaders were blindsided by the raw willpower of a population that flatly rejected a foreign occupation. The battlefield quickly evolved into a decentralized, borderless insurgency fueled by improvised explosive devices and urban terror. Iraq demonstrated what any seasoned infantryman fears in his bones: demolishing a state’s conventional armor and infantry is the easy part. Holding and controlling a hostile nation is politically, morally, and economically unsustainable. The sheer friction of trying to enforce compliance against an unwilling population eventually drains a superpower’s resources and erodes its domestic political capital.


Yet this failure to understand the limits of hard power is not confined to the Middle East or Southeast Asia. When evaluated against my twenty-eight years as a UN peacemaking consultant across Africa’s most volatile war zones, the limits of conventional military coercion become even more starkly apparent. In all the wars I have witnessed on the African continent, there was always a degree of heavy-handed, unbalanced, or indifferent Western and global involvement that excluded local populations and created a legacy of perpetual instability. Cold War logic led to American support for the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For Washington, this was a low-cost transactional alignment; for the DRC, it left behind a legacy of systemic fracture and a perpetual war that refuses to heal. Similarly, American indifference during the Rwandan genocide left a scar on America’s declared role as an advocate for genocide and crimes against humanity, and its unwise, heavy-handed intervention followed by a disgraceful exit in Somalia fundamentally altered the regional landscape, leaving Somalia trapped in a cycle of warlordism from which it cannot recover. In Libya, a relatively low-cost NATO aerial intervention to overthrow Gaddafi resulted in a fractured state that became a breeding ground for human trafficking, weapon proliferation, and militia warfare that spilled across the Sahel. Historical alignments like the American-supported Charles Taylor created havoc and civil war across both Liberia and Sierra Leone, proving that short-sighted external backing yields catastrophic regional consequences on the back end.


Today, this cycle continues as global superpowers and regional actors treat the continent as a theater for cheap geopolitical disruption. In Central and West Africa, Russia uses its mercenary arm, formerly Wagner and now Africa Corps, as a low-cost tool to loot mineral resources and displace Western influence. Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, the absence of a clear, balanced US policy has allowed its allies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to wage destructive proxy wars to secure their strategic and mineral interests. This echoes the historic “Françafrique” policies of control in West and Central Africa, where foreign dictation systematically excludes local people from the economic value chain. When war is supported, sponsored, or neglected by global powers, it becomes a negative-sum game where everyone loses. Because of these heavy-handed or neglectful policies, Africa’s true potential is suppressed, making it impossible to establish equitable, win-win trade or security architectures. Instead of being a robust global partner, these destabilized regions are forced into a state where they become involuntary exporters of instability through migration crises, piracy, and transnational terrorism. The West is then forced to spend trillions on reactive border security and counter-terrorism operations—a massive, unsustainable defense expenditure triggered by the long-tail consequences of original policy failures. Africa is left unable to heal itself, the West remains trapped in a cycle of reactive containment, and the global rules-based order faces an asymmetric threat to peace that cannot be solved by expensive weapons alone.


This structural failure of global foreign policy mirrors the tactical crisis we see on the modern battlefield, driven by the brutal mathematics of the Cost-Imbalance Doctrine. Modern warfare is no longer dictated by platform sophistication but by logistics, replacement speed, and lopsided economic exchange ratios. The collapse in the cost of commercial electronics, additive manufacturing, and open-source autonomous systems has shattered the traditional cost curve, tilting the strategic advantage sharply toward mass-produced, low-cost offense. The 2026 war involving Iran represents the ultimate, terrifying evolution of this trajectory, presenting a style of warfare that my peers in the seventies could scarcely have imagined. If Vietnam required dense jungles and Iraq required complex urban networks, modern asymmetric warfare requires only three things: basic, a determined population, universally manufacturable technology, and the strategic weaponization of geography. Iran effectively rewrote the global rules of engagement by manufacturing mass-produced, low-cost weapons—primarily twenty-thousand-dollar kamikaze drones and standard ballistic missiles. This has created a catastrophic economic and industrial imbalance for Western forces. Today, advanced militaries are forced to defend multi-billion-dollar assets like aircraft carriers by firing two-million-dollar air-defense interceptors at targets that cost less than a used car. When a five-hundred-dollar FPV drone or a thirty-thousand-dollar Shahed loitering munition forces a defender to fire a multi-million-dollar Patriot, THAAD, or SM-3 interceptor, the exchange ratio becomes unsustainable. This is no longer a war of tactical maneuver; it is a war of supply chain attrition, and the mathematics favor the cheap.


Furthermore, Iran’s true stroke of strategic genius was recognizing that its geographic position is a more powerful weapon than any nuclear arsenal. By sitting directly astride the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow maritime bottleneck through which twenty percent of the world’s petroleum flows—Iran shifted the center of military gravity entirely out of the mud and into global financial markets. By deploying its low-cost sea-denial arsenal to menace commercial shipping, it effectively nationalized a global commons. This strategy weaponized marine insurance networks, sent global energy prices soaring, and proved that controlling a geographic bottleneck allows a weaker state to hold the entire global economic system hostage. This is why Iran marks a watershed moment: it demonstrated that geography, activated by cheap tech, can completely bypass a superpower’s military superiority to strike directly at its domestic and economic vulnerabilities. We see proof that this shift is a universal law, not an American exception, in the stagnation of the Russian war machine in Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, conventional military wisdom predicted a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian state within days. Instead, the world witnessed the brutal stagnation of a traditional military giant. Ukraine countered massive armored columns and superior air power by leveraging the same formula: boundless national will paired with asymmetric technology. Armed with relatively inexpensive, mass-produced anti-tank missiles, first-person-view kamikaze drones, and decentralized digital command networks, Ukraine transformed the battlefield into a meat grinder for conventional assets. Ukraine’s ability to completely neutralize Russia’s Black Sea Fleet—not with a rival navy, but with low-cost, domestically manufactured explosive sea drones—perfectly mirrors how the vulnerability of multi-billion-dollar warships has been exposed globally.


This new reality explains the profound caution we see in East Asia regarding the Taiwan Strait. Objectively, China possesses the overwhelming conventional means—the world’s largest navy, advanced missile arsenals, and proximity—to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Yet Beijing hesitates. This caution stems from a clear-eyed analysis of these new rules of engagement. The Chinese leadership understands that invading Taiwan would mean wading directly into an asymmetric trap. Taiwan has spent decades preparing a “porcupine strategy” centered on cost-imbalance warfare. Crossing a hundred miles of open sea leaves Chinese transport ships highly vulnerable to swarms of low-cost, domestically produced anti-ship missiles and autonomous sea drones. Even if Chinese forces landed successfully, controlling a highly urbanized island of twenty-three million people against a deeply nationalist insurgency would mirror our catastrophic occupation failures in Iraq, multiplied tenfold, while inflicting an estimated two-and-a-half-trillion-dollar hit on the global economy. China’s hesitation proves the thesis: they recognize that while they have the hard power to cause immense death and destruction, they cannot guarantee surrender or control.

When a superpower faces a determined populace armed with universally manufacturable denial weapons and backed by strategic geography, it hits a wall. Because economic sanctions and localized strikes fail to break a deeply nationalist population, a superpower is left with only one military option to force an unconditional win: total destruction. Forcing a sovereign nation to abandon its existential interest today would require sustained, uninhibited bombardment or the use of nuclear weapons. However, as any strategist knows, this is a dead end. If the resisting nation or its allies possess even primitive nuclear or chemical deterrents, any escalation toward total destruction guarantees mutually assured destruction(MAD). Furthermore, neither the domestic population of a democracy nor the international community will tolerate the absolute annihilation of a country. Because total destruction is morally, politically, and strategically impossible, unconditional surrender is a relic of the past. Hard power has reached its absolute limit. If the accumulation of military might can no longer buy security or compliance, the global architecture must undergo a pragmatic revolution. This is not an appeal to utopian idealism; it is hardheaded realism from someone who has spent a lifetime reflecting on the cost of war. When conflict becomes too expensive for the strong and resistance too cheap for the weak, coexistence is the only affordable strategy left on the table.

Conclusion

True national security must be built on a balanced matrix of defensive sustainability and soft power. Superpowers must pivot away from a doctrine of regime change, containment, and forced compliance and toward policies of tolerance, compromise, and mutual respect. If a powerful nation needs resources, stable trade routes, or geopolitical cooperation, it can no longer acquire them bythe barrel of a gun or the threat of a carrier strike group. It must acquire them through diplomatic reciprocity. By recognizing the sovereignty and existential interests of smaller nations, superpowers can foster partnerships built on mutual benefit rather than perpetual, exhausting hostility. The lessons of my lifetime are clear. The world will never know peace, and superpowers will never achieve stability, until they accept that hard power is a blunt instrument capable only of wreckage. True strength lies in the capacity to compromise, to tolerate difference, and to engage the world through the sustainable lens of mutual respect.

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CSIS Analysis

Cordesman, Anthony H. The Lessons of Ukraine and the Changing Nature of Asymmetric Attrition.Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2024.

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Malahila, Letsema. “The Contradictory Logics of International Intervention in Africa: Structural Fragility from Mobutu to Françafrique.” GIGA Focus Africa, no. 4 (2022): 1–9. GIGA Hamburg.

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About Dawit W. Giorgis
Dawit W. Giorgis is originally from Ethiopia, US citizen, permanent resident of Namibia; served as P.S of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Governor of Eritrea (prior to independence) and Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner during one of the most publicised famine relief operations. He later served as UN consultant in 11 African conflict and post conflict countries; was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, University of Cape Town and Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Wash, D.C. at different times.
View all posts by Dawit W. Giorgis →

Russia And Ukraine’s New Theories Of Victory? – Analysis

October 3, 2026

By Patial RC


Key Takeaways:

The essay says the war’s “victory” test is endurance, not the next village: Russia hits Ukrainian energy, transport, and industry to break daily life; Ukraine hits Russian refineries, logistics, and defence plants to raise the cost of fighting.

It notes Russia held parliamentary elections in September 2026 while Ukraine’s October 2023 parliamentary and May 2024 presidential votes remain postponed, a gap Moscow uses on legitimacy, and that each side hopes the other’s public will tire first.

Neither is said to have a classical win; the cycle is strike, repair, adapt, and regenerate, so the outcome depends on which economy, industry, and political system wears out sooner.

The Russia-Ukraine war may be entering a new and more consequential phase—not because either side has found a way to win the war on the battlefield, but because the definition of victory itself is changing. The central question is no longer simply who can capture more territory, destroy more tanks or hold the next line of defence. Increasingly, it is becoming a contest over something more fundamental:Which side can destroy the other’s capacity to sustain a prolonged war before its own capacity is exhausted? This is pushing the conflict far beyond the trenches of close combat at the front lines.

Russia is increasingly targeting the foundations that allow Ukraine to function as a state to fight this war: energy, infrastructure, transport, industry, communications, economic activity and, ultimately, public resilience. Ukraine, unable to match Russia’s manpower and missile resources symmetrically, is increasingly targeting the foundations that allow Russia to wage war: refineries, energy infrastructure, logistics, military facilities and defence-industrial capacity. The emerging strategic equation is therefore stark:

Russia wants to make Ukraine unable to continue; Ukraine wants to make Russia unable to continue. Neither strategy requires the complete destruction of the opponent.Each requires only sufficient degradation to make continued war increasingly costly, politically difficult and strategically unsustainable. That is why the next decisive battles may take place hundreds of kilometres behind the front—at refineries, power stations, logistics hubs, defence factories, data centres and economic centres rather than in the trenches. The war is evolving from a contest of territorial attrition into a contest of national endurance.

Ukraine’s Theory: Make War Unaffordable to Russia

Unable to match Russia’s enormous missile and manpower resources symmetrically, Ukraine was the first to increasingly exploit its comparative advantages in drones, with precision strikes in depth, intelligence, electronic warfare and technological innovation. Its objective is to attack the war waging machinery in Russia’s depth areas.

Ukrainian strikes have increasingly targeted oil refineries, energy infrastructure, logistics, military facilities and defence-industrial assets deep inside Russia. Recent reporting indicates that attacks on Russian refineries have reduced fuel-processing capacity and contributed to shortages in some regions. Kyiv’s broader objective is to raise the economic cost of sustaining the war.


The logic is straight forward. If Ukraine cannot match the Russian army on the battlefield which is near impossible, it can attempt to make the Russian war effort more expensive. It requires Ukraine to degrade enough of the Russian system that maintaining the war becomes increasingly difficult and costly.This amounts to a form of strategic neutralization by the gradual erosion of the economic and industrial foundations supporting its military objectives. The underlying message is simple:

“Make the war unaffordable to Russia.”
Russia’s Counter-Theory

For much of the war, Russia’s strategy appeared centred on territorial conquest and attrition. Moscow expected sustained pressure along the front eventually to exhaust Ukrainian manpower and weaken Western support. But the campaign has acquired another dimension.

Russian missile and drone attacks reach deep into Ukraine, including Kyiv and other major urban and economic centres. Their consequences increasingly extend beyond immediate military targets to energy, transport, industry and economic activity.

The objective, therefore, is not simply to destroy Ukraine’s armed forces but to disrupt the wider system that enables Ukrainian society to function and the state to sustain a prolonged war. Moscow may not need to capture every important Ukrainian city if it can make those cities increasingly difficult to live and work in. A city repeatedly deprived of electricity, transport and communications becomes less productive. Businesses hesitate to invest. Workers leave. Infrastructure requires constant repair. Government expenditure rises while revenues decline.

Economic exhaustion. Population displacement. Infrastructure degradation. Declining morale. Political pressure. Russia may therefore be seeking to erode not merely Ukraine’s military strength but its capacity to function as a modern state under wartime conditions.


“Break Ukraine’s ability to function and fight.”


Russia is attacking Ukraine’s ability to live and function normally. Ukraine is attacking Russia’s ability to wage war economically.

Both are betting that the people will eventually ask: How long can this continue and how much longer can we afford to continue?

The war is increasingly becoming a contest of National Resilience.
The Psychological Battlefield

There is another dimension: Morale. Repeated Russian attacks appear intended not only to destroy infrastructure but also to demonstrate to Ukrainians that nowhere is completely safe.

That psychological effect becomes particularly significant when electricity, heating, transport and communications are repeatedly threatened. If Ukrainians begin to expect another cycle of blackouts, attacks and economic disruption every winter, Moscow may hope that the cumulative burden eventually produces pressure for a settlement.


The same dynamic is increasingly visible inside Russia. Ukrainian long-range drone attacks have brought the war closer to Russian cities and disrupted parts of everyday economic life. The psychological barrier separating the Russian population from the war has consequently become thinner.

The more each side attempts to make the other population feel the cost of war, the greater the possibility that the target population adapts rather than capitulates. The psychological battlefield is therefore becoming reciprocal. Each side is attempting to convince the other that the costs of continuing the war are becoming greater than the benefits.
The Political Battlefield: Elections and Legitimacy

Russia has demonstrated that it can conduct elections while the war continues. Its parliamentary elections were held in September 2026 despite the continuing conflict and Ukrainian drone attacks.For Moscow, holding elections provides an opportunity to demonstrate institutional continuity and project the image of a state capable of maintaining its political machinery despite the war.

Ukraine’s parliamentary election, due in October 2023, and presidential election, due in May 2024, have not been held. This creates an important political asymmetry: Russia is conducting elections while the war is going on and Ukraine is postponing elections. For Ukraine, the continued postponement creates an issue that Moscow can exploit politically and diplomatically.


Russia has incorporated Ukraine’s deferred elections into its narrative concerning the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership.
The Race Against Time

For both sides, time has become a weapon. Russia needs its military, economic and psychological pressure to accumulate faster than Ukraine and its Western partners can adapt.

Ukraine needs its long-range strike capabilities and domestic defence production to grow faster than Russia can regenerate its military capabilities. The financial dimension is critical.

Russia is devoting enormous resources to sustaining its war effort, while Ukraine remains heavily dependent on external financial and military assistance. Both sides therefore face the same fundamental calculation: how long can their economic systems continue absorbing wartime expenditure?

The answer will depend not only on the size of their economies but also on their ability to regenerate military equipment, maintain industrial production, repair damaged infrastructure and preserve political support.
From Victory to Coercion

This explains why the meaning of “Victory” has become increasingly complicated. Neither side has an easy path to a classical military victory. Russia has not achieved all of its maximal objectives. Ukraine has not restored all its territory through military force.

The central question is therefore ;Which side can create enough pressure on the other to make a negotiated settlement preferable to continued war?

Russian strikes provoke Ukrainian retaliation. Ukrainian deep strikes provoke Russian escalation. Each side presents the other’s attacks as justification for its own both imposing pain without becoming capable of imposing a decisive settlement.
The Emergence of a Prolonged War

This may be the most important evolution in the character of the conflict. The war is increasingly becoming a prolonged war of targeting infrastructure. The objective is no longer necessarily to destroy the enemy’s armed forces in one decisive campaign. It is to progressively weaken the economic, industrial, infrastructural and psychological foundations that allow those armed forces to continue fighting.


The central question now is: Not how much territory has been captured? But, how much national capacity remains available to sustain the conflict? This changes the meaning of strategic success.

A country can suffer extensive infrastructure damage yet continue fighting if it possesses sufficient external support, domestic resilience and the ability to regenerate its military capacity. The war is therefore increasingly becoming a contest between destruction and regeneration.
The Risk of Strategic Exhaustion

This creates a dangerous possibility: Strategic Exhaustionwithout political resolution. Neither side may need to defeat the other’s armed forces completely. It may be enough to make the cumulative cost of war increasingly difficult to sustain.

The cycle becomes: strike → retaliation → escalation → adaptation → regeneration → another strike.

New air defences appear. New drones are developed. Production is dispersed. Infrastructure is repaired. Alternative supply routes are established.
The Real Endgame

The coming phase may therefore be less about who captures the next village and more about whether either theory can alter the opponent’s strategic calculation.

If Russia succeeds in turning Ukrainian winters into prolonged crises of energy, mobility, employment and displacement, Moscow may conclude that time is working in its favour.

If Ukraine can expand its ability to strike Russia’s energy and defence-industrial infrastructure while maintaining external financial and military support, Kyiv may conclude that time is becoming a burden for Moscow.

The war has consequently entered a race of Strategic Exhaustion:

Russia seeks to exhaust Ukraine’s capacity to function. Ukraine seeks to exhaust Russia’s capacity to sustain the war. Both sides are becoming increasingly capable of imposing costs while remaining unable to impose a decisive settlement.

The decisive battle is therefore no longer taking place on the battlefield alone but is dangerously becoming a prolonged war of infrastructure targeting. It is being fought across energy networks, refineries, defence factories, logistics systems, financial resources, cities, political institutions and public resilience.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is thus evolving into something broader than a conventional war of territorial attrition. It is becoming a struggle to degrade the opponent’s capacity to function, fight and endure.


The new theories of victory are not simply theories of capturing territory but are theories of making the opponent’s war unsustainable.

And the battle that determines the eventual outcome may be fought not at the front, but in the economic, industrial, infrastructural and political depth of both nations.


About Patial RC
is a retired Infantry officer of the Indian Army and possesses unique experience of serving in active CI Ops across the country and in Sri Lanka. Patial RC is a regular writer on military and travel matters in military professional journals. The veteran is a keen mountaineer and a trekker.
View all posts by Patial RC →

WSJ editors bury Hegseth for bizarrely offensive 'weirdo' speech: 'Has he met anyone?'

Matthew Chapman
October 1, 2026 

RAW STORY


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense's FY27 budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz


The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board had scorn for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's bizarre speech boasting about how his military only had "warriors," rather than "beardos," "weirdos," or slurs for transgender people.

Hegseth, wrote the board, "rolled out several good U.S. military initiatives on Wednesday, and usually the purpose of big speeches is to persuade the public of worthy ideas. Yet Mr. Hegseth seems determined to shrink his support with gratuitous potshots, and that bears on whether the Administration can boost recruitment or confront new technology in warfare."

Many of the things Hegseth talked about are decent, the board wrote, like a program for recruiting officers out of schools — even if the focus is intensely on right-wing schools like Liberty University and Hillsdale College — as well as plans to establish a four-star command for autonomous weaponry.

However, the board said, Hegseth "couldn’t resist his usual polarizing attack routine against all and sundry, and he even accused the press of 'treason' for publishing what’s leaking out of the secretary’s shop. The most remembered line of the speech will be Mr. Hegseth’s declaration that the U.S. military no longer abides 'beardos' or 'weirdos.' As a practical matter, has he met anyone in defense technology lately?"

The fact is, said the board, "voters wanted the Trump Administration to restore and protect the military’s meritocracy, after race and identity excesses in the Biden Administration," something Hegseth promises to do, but now "his shoot-first firings of general officers have exasperated even some Republican Members of Congress, and the public is losing confidence in the project as it descends into debates about testosterone levels."

Ultimately, the board concluded, "Mr. Hegseth relishes attacking opponents, and even sometimes allies, as if he’s running a political campaign. But he’s a cabinet officer who needs allies to achieve his military goals."

Hegseth mocked for 'not achieving full extension' after speech about troop fitness

Erik De La Garza
September 30, 2026 

RAW STORY

Kasie Hunt and retired Army Lt. Gen. Karen Gibson on "The Arena." (Screengrab via CNN)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s fixation on military fitness became a punchline when a retired lieutenant general was asked to evaluate his own workout form.

CNN’s Kasie Hunt noted Wednesday that Hegseth has repeatedly stressed physical fitness standards and cited an assessment in The Atlantic that described his push-ups as more like “half-ups.”

Hunt then played several clips of Hegseth working out on camera and asked retired Army Lt. Gen. Karen Gibson whether he was performing the exercises correctly.

“The kettlebell, not so much,” Hunt joked as laughter broke out on the CNN set of her show, “The Arena.”

“The pull-up is like this, not like this. Yes? No?” Hunt asked while mimicking the movement.


Gibson agreed that Hegseth’s form appeared incomplete.


“Well, he’s not achieving full extension of his arms or the joint there,” she said.

But Gibson quickly shifted to a broader point about Hegseth’s emphasis on physical fitness.

“I think every soldier should be fit. That’s really important,” she said. “But his fixation on some specific exercises is not the quality that makes the U.S. military so incredibly lethal and powerful.”


“There are lots of other things that make a good soldier,” Gibson added.

Alarm as Hegseth gives mega MAGA donors a say in future of warfare: 'Feels different now'

Robert Davis
October 1, 2026 
RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shakes hands with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff US Air Force General Dan Caine as he returns to his seat after his remarks at a ceremony in remembrance of US military prisoners of war and those missing in action (POW/MIA) at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., US, September 18, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth alarmed some analysts Thursday after he announced he was inviting a few private citizens to collaborate with the Defense Department on the future of warfare.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Palmer Luckey, founder of drone company Anduril, have been given advisory roles in a Pentagon project about the future of war, The Guardian reported. The project, known as “Project Meridian," seeks to develop new weapons of war for different terrain ranging from outer space to subterranean.

The inclusion of private citizens in defense contracting is nothing new, but Brendan Glavin at Open Secrets noted in the report that the motley crew Hegseth has gathered raises some important questions.

“Bringing major industry players into these types of positions at the Pentagon is not something new, but what feels different now is the substantial financial support these two have, and continue to, deliver for the Republican Party,” Glavin told The Guardian.

Musk was one of the largest donors to President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, spending an estimated $250 million to help elect the president. Musk's companies have also been deeply wedded to some of the Trump administration's pet projects, such as the Department of Government Efficiency and the so-called "golden dome" missile defense project.

Luckey's company is also supported by the venture capital firm run by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to the report.

Luckey has also been dubbed the "godfather of Republican fundraising on the West Coast," according to the report.

"Invitations to political fundraisers obtained by the Guardian show Luckey hosted and co-hosted events for candidates from Trump himself to Ken Calvert, Rick Scott, Mehmet Oz, Ted Cruz and others. The most recent event was on 22 August, where he and his wife co-hosted a $50,000-a-head effort to 'Keep the Senate,' and listing guests John Thune of South Dakota, Mike Rogers of Michigan, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Jon Husted of Ohio," the report reads in part.

‘Best Minds’? Hegseth Taps Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich to Lead ‘Future of Warfare’ Project

“A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military,” said one observer. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Palmer Luckey (left), Newt Gingrich (center), and Elon Musk (right) look on during US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” speech—in which the trio was announced as leaders of the “future of warfare” initiative—at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on September 30, 2026.
(Photo by Sean Parnell/X)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that three men—none of whom have served in the military and two who make billions of dollars from it—will help lead a new Pentagon project on the “future of warfare,” even as he moves to eliminate hundreds of senior armed service leadership position, including many generals and admirals.

Hegseth unveiled Project Meridian during his “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The 120-day initiative will examine emerging technologies that the Department of Defense believes will be critical in future warfare.

“America’s best minds” will be brought together to “reimagine what warfare will look like in the future,” Hegseth said.

To that end, the defense secretary said that “Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation’s best minds, Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich.”




Musk, the world’s wealthiest human, is already deeply involved in US national security infrastructure through SpaceX—the recipient of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts—and other businesses. He was previously part of the administration as the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Luckey, who like Musk is a major Trump donor, is the co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries. Last year, he said that Anduril planned to produce “large numbers” of cruise missiles, fighter jets, and other artificial intelligence-powered weapons systems.

“If we have to fight Iran, and China, and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed,” Luckey said in pushing for more arms production.

Gingrich is a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who had been pushing for war with Iran since at least 2005. Like President Donald Trump, he has been accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War by receiving numerous deferments; in Trump’s case for bone spurs, and for Gingrich because he was a student and a father.

“Those three great Americans are going to be joined by a team of senior leaders, hand-picked private sector leaders, and subject matter experts from across our nation’s unmatched innovation, academic, and policy ecosystems,” said Hegseth—whose Senate confirmation last year was so contentious due to concerns about him being unfit for office that it required a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance.

The defense secretary also announced the creation of an Autonomous Warfare Command—or Autowarcom—“a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force.”

The appointments come as Hegseth simultaneously pursues a major reduction in the military’s senior leadership. He announced Wednesday that the Pentagon would eliminate 20% of its roughly 800 general and admiral positions by January—doubling a previously announced 10% reduction. Hegseth described the cuts as necessary to eliminate “redundant force structure” and “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”

The reductions follow the removal or early departure of more than two dozen senior military and civilian defense officials since Hegseth became defense secretary.

The contrast has drawn criticism from lawmakers and military observers, who expressed alarm at the prospect of removing experienced officers while handing an influential role in planning future war to warfare technology executives and a hawkish former lawmaker who is no longer accountable to the public.

“Interesting. A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military,” NewBlue USA executive Marty Taylor said on social media. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Patriotic Cowboys ‘R Us


Warfighter-obsessed Pete Kegsbreath
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Abby Zimet
Oct 02, 2026
FURTHER 

COMMON DREAMS

Sidestepping his debacle of a war, “smug pathetic little man,” warfighter fetishist and Gen.-Patton-cosplaying clown Pete Hegseth just gave a blustering speech before troops In a “hyper-macho freak show” to announce he’s cutting forces, starting several senseless new programs, and proclaiming, “We are no longer the woke (or) weak department...No fatties, trannies, beardos, weirdos, wimps, radicals. Just warriors.” Appalled consensus on the yahoo “turning the military into a frat house”: “What a dick.”

Perhaps due to his low-rent credentials as a weekend TV host at Fox - and a history of drunkenness, adultery, sexual assault and on-the-job incompetence so sordid he needed JD’s tie-breaking vote to get his job - Hegseth has built a sloppy, fragile “Department of Defensiveness” focused on shaping a narrative and persona to his liking - one based on paranoia, distrust, dysfunction, lies and frequent purges of those deemed disloyal. From his make-up studio to his press strictures to his blunders - Signalgate, the war, its first day’s war crimes - Pete’s spent an inordinate amount of time covering his ass and overcompensating for his failures. “He’s just a true believer in way over his head, the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect,” said one DOD employee. “Generally, we consider him a joke, a deeply unqualified clown.”

Still, with men reportedly fleeing MAGA, their need to “pump up that masculine animus” is well-served by Pete’s juvenile, chest-pounding, lethality-obsessed focus on testosterone in the name of a “High-T Department of War” that has “nothing to do with science and everything to do with regressive ideas of what masculinity is.” The same idiocy fuels all the culture war malevolence: Banning books, gutting DEI initiatives - “Diversity is not our strength” - blocking promotions for women and Blacks, a “no more dudes and dresses” transphobia, and ending tenure for civilian professors at military academies ‘cause who needs to protect independent thinkers, scholars, leaders, experts from “the tyranny of a government that actively hates its critics,” the “mindset of someone who has learned nothing (from) American military failures.”

And so to another cringey, Strangelovian “State of the Force Address,” which was not a thing until a TV bobblehead took over the military and turned it into bumbling amateur-hour theater. Last year, he summoned nearly 800 generals, admirals, advisors from around the world, all smarter and higher-ranking than him, to rant about beards and “fat troops,” tell them they “kill people and break things for a living,” and prattle about a 10% cut in their numbers by “removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership.” When he paused for applause, there was only deep silence. Maybe because a Joint Chiefs chairman, two service chiefs, two intelligence directors, several generals and the better part of the Army’s senior leadership “were told to run faster by a weekend television host.”

On Wednesday, he gathered about 600 officers and enlisted members, again at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, for another speech. In the weeks leading up to his latest dash of show business, The Wall Street Journal reported, he emailed commanders asking them to nominate troops to attend. They had to “fit certain physical standards,” he wrote, to have the proper height/weight ratio, with “impeccable grooming: ”I want central casting.“ If they were hot enough, he added, as a bonus some would have ”the opportunity“ to join him in a hot and sweaty dawn work-out at the Pentagon. Totally normal! And luckily, a camera crew was there to follow them on a chanting, banner-bearing run through D.C. To make them look even cooler, he gave them all t-shirts that read, ”This Is War.“ Or at least off-off Broadway.



Later, before a giant American flag, he dropped the hammer in a campy speech many compared to SNL’s Colin Jost doing Pete Hegseth, or Tom Cruise’s braying misogynist in Magnolia, or George C. Scott’s Gen. Patton “minus the inspiration.” Under his “less generals, more GIs” mandate - though it’s “fewer” not less - he said he was doubling the previous cut of 10% of high-ranking personnel to 20% with, wrote Tom Wellborn, “the confidence of a man who has looked at the most powerful armed force in the world and concluded its central weakness was the number of people in it who outrank a major,” what he was. Months into a disastrous war, “That is the force Pete Hegseth has built by subtraction. What it has lost is (what) a general is for, which is to be the person in the room who says no, and (he) has made sure, one firing at a time, there is nobody left in the room to say it.”

“The media calls that a purge,” blustered Hegseth, evidently expecting criticism. “I call it accountability. As usual, what the media levels as an accusation, I wear as an accomplishment.” He haughtily went on to “lay it out simply for the anti-American losers in our media...We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” On coverage of the war and eight attempted suicides on the USS Lincoln, he slammed “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda as if it’s written by our adversaries.” “The information space is a battle space,” he said. “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in.” Smirking, he added,.“With testosterone testing on top.” Jesus, dude.

He also announced several new programs with fancy warlike names like Fortress America and Autonomous War Command or AutoWarCom, a “four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities,” and “The Next Great American Base,” the first new military base in 40 years, with all 50 states “invited to bid for it like an Amazon headquarters,” and “America’s Corps of Cadets, creating new college partnerships with right-wing Liberty University and Hillsdale College, plus Louisiana State, Mississippi, Tuskegee Universities, to increase the number of ”patriotic leaders of character“ and counter ”anti-American, DEI-worshiping woke factories,“ aka the Ivy League schools Hegseth attended.

There’s the bonkers Project Meridian to study “the future of warfare,” headed by “three of our nation’s best minds” - two tech fat cats and one 83-year-old MAGA hawk - none of whom have served in the military, two of whom have made fortunes from it. Cue Elon Musk, a gonzo rocket salesman with billions in Pentagon contracts, GOP pol Newt Gingrich, who got almost as many deferments as Trump during the Vietnam War, and Palmer Luckey, MAGA donor, self-proclaimed “radical Zionist” and founder of tech company Anduril - “three great Americans to help plan the next war with three people who have never been in one,” what could possibly go wrong?“ From a military Reddit: ”Is this real?“, ”Yes master code-monkey, infosec ninja, and tech infrastructure guru Newt Gingrich age 83. Our enemies are so fuct bro!“ and ”Oh fuck this fucking Nazi-loving fuck outta here.“

There’s a new Office of Religious Affairs for a DOD “putting on the full armor of God” to “strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters,” aka “do the Lord’s work to improve smiting capacity,” because, “while we wage physical war, the real battle is spiritual.” (Maybe why the Pentagon’s covering up not-real casualties?) It’s “voluntary,” which skeptics say is akin to being “voluntold” to do things. Finally, as a party favor, troops were given a new 144-page “field manual” of transcripts of Hegseth speeches. Its forward is by Trump, in classic Trumpese. “As your Commander-in-Chief, I will not ask you to fight dumb Wars,” it reads. “I will unleash you to be violent, lethal and unstoppable - and I will always have your back. Godspeed, Great Warriors. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

 YouTubewww.youtube.com

Along with other regime Nazis, crackpots and fools, theories abound as to what the fuck is wrong with Pete Hegseth. Many argue he’s afflicted with the common sickness of countless, soulless, mediocre white men who know, deep inside, they have risen further than they deserve to. Hence, the bottomless need to be subservient to a monster like Trump (who is too mad to know that) to maintain their place and value in a white guy patriarchy, to always understand “who they get to abuse, and who they are supposed to take abuse from,” and to remain within that vaunted structure, the only one where they have power and respect, by continuing to rule over those they’ve been taught are beneath them. It’s also why, conversely, they freak out when their vital slot is threatened: See Hegseth’s frantic lie detectors at any sign of leaking, mocking, saying no.

Hegseth seems particularly despised by Americans, many of whom eagerly await his war crimes trial, his impeachment,, his rapturing - hopefully first in line, though maybe behind Goebbels/Miller. The concrete damage done by his legacy - the calamitous war, hollowing of the military’s promotion chain, lethality-tinged dumbing down of its intellectual infrastructure and exploitation of those serving - will presumably take years to repair. But people hate him just as much for his personal failings: his gross unfitness and incompetence, his swaggering “Jr High Machismo,” the Nazi-adjacent arrogance of “this nose-powdering drunk,” the lying, preening chutzpah of the military’s worst-ever leader consistently “acting like a 19-year-old edgelord loser,” like “a dipshit,” “an asshole,” “an absolute tinydick in every goddamn way.”

Several truly obnoxious moments of his state-of-the-empire speech ignited that animus. His attack on media who do their job and tell the truth about him began with a lame nod to the First Amendment - “A free press is of course important” - that veered to a diatribe: “But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking (is) anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason, actually...It has to be said.” Umm, not, said America: “Secretary of Dewar’s doesn’t get he’s the only one getting smeared, not the troops,” “I love the free press until they say words I don’t like in which case I call them traitors and want them killed,” “Bro, they’re not shitting on the troops, just you,” “It’s called free speech, fucknut. The thing your troops are supposed to defend,” “The mission of our military has become historic only in the degree of its absurdity.”

Then there was a pitiful, fitness-instructor-like defense of his bullying of troops: “Telling someone to get in shape or shave or fix their uniform or start busting their ass - that’s not discrimination. That’s leadership.” Fact: Actually, it’s neither. It’s stupid, shallow, beside-the-point bullying. Many argued it’s just “being a dick” and “an asshole.” That he should “tell his boss to get in shape and start busting his ass.” That it’s weird how he “doesn’t get to the part where he actually discriminates.” That leadership is “inspiring, being an example, not getting your nation into an illegal war, losing it in days and committing war crimes.” That he’s “a drunk, vain, adulterous rapist with ridiculous sideburns.” That it’s “stunning in an awful way a man his age is so immature.” That “this motherfucker is waaay out over his skis.” And damn, more fucking patriotic cowboys is the last thing we need thanks.

How Pete's (deservedly) doingScreengrab from CNN