Tag: drones

Ukraine Fires over 1,000 Drones at Russia, Including Hundreds at Moscow

Ukrainian forces fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, including hundreds that were launched toward Moscow, officials said Sunday as the Kremlin was wrapping up the third and last day of its parliamentary elections.

Moscow´s mayor described the wave of drones as the “largest ever” attack on the Russian capital and said there had been damage to a Moscow oil refinery and a residential building.

Across the wider Moscow region, the attack killed two people and wounded 20, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said. The dead were a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, he said.

Writing on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv had used a range of missiles and drones in the attack – including Ukraine’s domestically made Flamingo and Pelican missiles – to hit oil and logistics facilities.

“These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the financial pressure that Kyiv hopes to put on Russia’s economy.

Ukraine also continued to fend off Russian attacks, Zelenskyy said. A Russian drone strike hit a monastery in Ukraine’s Kherson region Saturday, killing a member of the clergy and wounding four people, he said.

A Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital also killed two children and their mother on Saturday evening, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional state administration. He later said that another child wounded in the same attack had died in hospital on Sunday.

The attack took place on the final day of Russia’s first wartime parliamentary election – balloting that has been virtually devoid of opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s policies and is all but certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance.

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Ukrainian Drone Hits Russian Nuclear Plant Days After Trump Energy Truce Plea

President Trump raised eyebrows when on Monday he declared that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other’s oil and energy infrastructure, amid global crude and diesel supply problems related mostly to the Hormuz Strait crisis.

But then within days later it became clear that the default reality on the ground has persisted, as energy sites continue to get pummeled. And it’s not only refineries and ports which have continued getting hit, but as of Thursday morning a Russian nuclear plant was apparently targeted in a Ukrainian drone attack.

A drone hit the cooling tower of a reactor unit at Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency has announced Friday.

The unit was operating at the time, but its operating mode was unchanged and no fire broke out. 

The UN agency’s director Rafael Grossi declared in a statement that “all attacks on nuclear facilities are unacceptable as they could endanger nuclear safety and security, irrespective of where they occur.”

He urged “maximum military restraint to prevent the risk of a nuclear accident” – which remains a top dangerous reality of the battlefield in the context of the Ukraine war.

In early July the same site had suffered a prior drone attack from Ukraine. One industry source reviews:

The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (Kursk NPP) has been the target of several military actions and drone strikes. The most notable incident occurred in August 2025 when a drone detonated and damaged an auxiliary transformer, sparking a structural fire that had to be contained by emergency teams. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitored the event and confirmed that radiation levels remained normal.

The Kremlin going back to 2024 has accused Ukrainian forces of seeking a ‘provocation’ at the Kursk nuclear plant.

The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) lies about 25 miles west of the city of Kursk, which is the administrative center of the oblast by the same name.

The plant continues to be a major electricity producer for Russia. Kremlin officials have long voiced alarm that Ukraine may seek to use some major provocation to draw its backers in NATO deeper into the conflict.

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Beware Contrived Scares And False Flags In Europe

On the evening of August 4, an airport employee at Leipzig/Halle noticed a small drone resting on the apron near a parked Ukrainian Antonov freighter. It carried an explosive charge and a detonator. The charge did not go off. A bomb-disposal robot rolled out across the tarmac, and by the account German officials would later give, the device had gone unnoticed for roughly four hours before anyone found it. Then the airport reopened and the country moved on.

Twenty-eight days later, on September 1, the German government told its citizens who had done it. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stood together in Berlin and named Russia. The consulate in Bonn would close on September 18; the lease on Berlin’s Russian House cultural centre would be torn up; more Russians would be proposed for European Union sanctions lists. The attribution was delivered as settled fact. The evidence behind it was not.

Five days after that, on September 6, the voters of Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls with the Alternative für Deutschland polling around 41-43%, within reach of an absolute majority in a state the entire German establishment had spent months trying to deny it. The sequence is worth holding in the mind as a single object. A device found in early August, a public silence lasting four weeks, and then an official enemy announced in the final days of a campaign. Nothing about that ordering is illegal, but nothing about it is accidental either.

Dobrindt’s case, as he laid it out, does not rest on a single piece of proof. It rests on three strands said to point the same way: police forensics, the resemblance of the device to earlier operations, and intelligence reporting. “Taken together,” he said, the investigations, the pattern and the intelligence findings established Russian responsibility. He named no GRU officer. He named no unit. He said the people who carried out the plan appeared to be “low-level” agents acting on behalf of unspecified “Russian state entities.”

What the public was given, then, was a conclusion and a description of the kinds of evidence that produced it—not the evidence. An independent observer cannot test the chain. Even sympathetic accounts noted the gap: the ministers named the state but kept most of the underlying material out of view. NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte pronounced the evidence “clear” without any of it being made public, and welcomed the German measures. The European Union’s foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas went further still, telling reporters in Ireland that the incident bore “all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism.”

This is the ordinary grammar of attribution in the sabotage era. A government states that its services and their partners have reached a judgement, allied governments affirm the judgement, the proof stays classified; and the citizen is invited to supply the trust that the missing evidence would otherwise earn. It may be that the classified material is overwhelming. It may be that it is thin. The structure is identical either way, which is precisely the problem. A public asked to accept an attribution on faith has no way to tell a strong case from a convenient one.

The load-bearing sentence in the German case is not about forensics at all. It is about familiarity. Wadephul said the drone’s configuration, its components, its explosives, and its ignition technology were “familiar to us from other Russian hybrid operations and from Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Dobrindt used almost the same words: elements “known to us,” a device of “high technical expertise” assembled with care. Recognition, in other words, is doing the work that a signature would normally do.

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Iran: Several Ballistic Missiles Fired At US Aircraft Carrier, Navy Destroyer

Iran Unleashes Large Drone Swarm Attacks on Several Ships

Iran state media is releasing footage of its own Saturday action against US assets in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, as part of the fresh weekend tit-for-tat fighting with the United States. Per state PressTV and IRIB, it seems Tehran is saying it has targeted six vessels:

  • The IRGC targets three US-related vessels and three oil tankers in the Hormuz Strait, warning all vessels against choosing unauthorized routes to transit Hormuz.
  • In response to US attacks on three Iranian tankers, Iran has targeted three vessels in the unauthorized route of the Strait of Hormuz, along with three American ships.

Al Jazeera Breaking:

BREAKING: Iran says several ballistic missiles fired at US aircraft carrier, Navy destroyer

The IRGC Navy is claiming a “response” to US aggression: “This morning, the terrorist and aggressor US military, in a brutal act born of desperation from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, attacked three oil tankers belonging to the Islamic Republic, causing damage,” the force said in a statement on Saturday. In response, it continues: “the fighters of the IRGC Navy targeted three oil tankers traveling along an unauthorized route through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as three vessels affiliated with the child-killing United States, in other areas.”

IRAN SHOWS NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN STRIKES on ‘VIOLATING’ vessels in Hormuz — Tasnim

The overnight into early Sunday hours are going to be interesting, awaiting more possible Pentagon action, even as the Department of War says this is not a “war”.

CENTCOM Confirms Strikes 

US Central Command confirmed on X that US forces struck three Iranian oil tankers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles toward two US Navy warships. 

CENTCOM provided details:

Following Iran’s failed attacks, CENTCOM permanently disabled the IRGC crude oil carriers M/T Downy off the coast of Kharg Island and M/T Stark 1 near Jask. American forces also completely destroyed the unladen crude oil carrier M/T Kylo (also known as the “Noxen”) in the Gulf of Oman, striking the vessel in multiple critical locations to render it inoperable after the crew was directed to abandon ship.

The three Iranian crude oil tankers are part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies. Iran has no means by which to defend them.

CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper stated:

Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost —taking out three of yours. 

We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet. 

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Iran Targets Marine Barracks In Jordan, Sends Drones On Bahrain & Kuwait, After Trump’s New Strikes

Iran Targets Marine Barracks in Jordan, Drones Sent on Bahrain, Kuwait

Iranian state media is saying that the military retaliation is ongoing, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force announcing that it launched a heavy ballistic missile attack targeting the US Marine barracks at Camp Titin, located near the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan – which is at a significant distance, in the country’s far southwest corner. State media sources further detail:

According to the IRGC, the strike destroyed multiple military installations and attack helicopters, inflicting heavy casualties on U.S. forces. The operation was executed as the second wave of retaliatory actions under the code name “Ya Rasul Allah.”

And more via state WANA News Agency: “The IRGC stated that the action was carried out in retaliation for a U.S. strike on a residential home during a wedding ceremony in Sirik, which resulted in nearly 50 civilians killed or injured, including children.” Iranian claims of US casualties will as usual be hard to verify, but CENTCOM has said no casualties have resulted, per news wires:

US officials says no US casualties from Iranian attack on facilities in Jordan so far

In the wake of the US CENTCOM campaign, which may still be ongoing, Iran’s Hormozgan grid is under blackout. Further damage is likely to be assessed and publicized in the coming hours. Bahrain, Kuwait also targeted:

  • Iran’s army launched drone attacks on the US base in Bahrain, according to Fars News Agency
  • Kuwait Army says air defenses are confronting attacks by hostile drones
  • Jordan intercepts 10 ballistic missiles from Iran, three fell in remote areas: army

Initial unconfirmed footage now widely circulating of alleged IRGC attack on Jordan base…

Iranian Retaliation on regional Bases Begins

Iran is already hitting back, according to some early reports of what looks to be their latest retaliation, despite President Trump having earlier warned the Islamic Republic will be hit harder if it responds.

“If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!” he stated earlier.

The White House indicated it is focused on taking out IRGC targets. But this has triggered the expected reaction:

  • Fars: Some Arab sources report that an explosion was heard in Jordan; several explosions were heard from American bases in Jordan
  • IRGC says US attacks will tighten the lock on the Strait of Hormuz
  • Explosion heard in Erbil, Iraq, reports Fars

The last tit-for-tat instances also saw US bases in Jordan targeted.

One Atlantic Council analyst points out the obvious – today’s action is yet another indication that the administration still does not understand how the Iranian government and leadership thinks (unless the intent is actual runaway escalation). Danny Citrinowicz writes:

Threatening Tehran with even more devastating strikes if it retaliates is unlikely to prevent an Iranian response. In fact, it may do the opposite. From Tehran’s perspective, failing to respond to a direct U.S. attack would undermine the very deterrence equation Iran has spent months trying to establish. The Iranian leadership believes it must demonstrate that American military action carries a price. That means Iran is likely to retaliate and it may even conclude that a broader or more painful response is necessary precisely to rebuild deterrence against future U.S. attacks.

This is the fundamental problem with Washington’s approach: it assumes that sufficiently strong threats will convince Iran to back down. But Tehran may draw exactly the opposite conclusion, meaning that backing down under threat would invite additional American strikes. Threats will not solve this problem. If Washington wants to prevent another cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, it needs a political strategy for ending the confrontation. Otherwise, each side will continue using force to restore deterrence after the previous round — creating an escalation cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to control.

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US Military Shoots Down 3 Mexican Cartel Drones With Laser

A laser system was used to shoot down three drug cartel drones in southern Texas, close to the Mexican border, the U.S. military said on Aug. 27.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, in a joint statement, said an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) was used overnight on Aug. 25-26 in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) deemed the three drones to be hostile and posing a physical threat to U.S. military personnel and their partners in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of JTF-SB, said the successful operation against the drones was a testament to the readiness, vigilance, and technological edge of his force.

US Will ‘Not Tolerate Hostile Surveillance’

“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Taylor said. “By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance.”

Ammon Blair, a former U.S.Border Patrol agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure & Sovereign Texas Initiative, told The Epoch Times in March 2025 that he recalled hearing cartel-operated drones overhead while working along the Texas border.

“You’d be running, and you’d have a drone right above your head and tracking every move you made,” Blair said at the time.

In February, the airspace around El Paso International Airport was closed for 7 hours for “special security reasons.”

The White House told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement at the time that Mexican cartel-operated drones had breached U.S. airspace and that the Department of War took action to disable them.

In other parts of Mexico, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks, but there is no suggestion the drones in the Texas incident were armed.

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The UN and Red Cross Are Calling for Restrictions on AI Drones and Killer Robots

The United Nations and the Red Cross are warning that rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic weapons are bringing the world dangerously close to crossing a moral red line that has inspired dystopian science fiction for decades: the autonomous targeting of humans by deadly machines.

In an appeal to world leaders on August 25, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN Secretary-General António Guterres renewed their call for a global treaty establishing restrictions on autonomous weapons systems. They warned that the technology behind AI targeting software and unpiloted drones has developed at record speed since the UN and Red Cross first called for such negotiations three years ago.

“At the same time, scientists and engineers developing these systems have themselves raised the alarm,” Guterres and the Red Cross said in a joint statement on August 25. “When the architects of this technology are calling for limits, States cannot afford to remain passive. This year must mark a turning point.”

In other words, the world must act now to rein in what are commonly known as “killer robots” or “slaughterbots” — unpiloted drones, robotic dogs, robot sentries armed with guns, AI targeting systems, and other digitally driven death machines that can identify, strike, and eliminate human beings on their own.

“You don’t even need drone operators; you can just type in a coordinate and not see the implications of what you are doing,” said Rory Fanning, an author, activist, and veteran of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, in an interview.

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Drone Warfare in Ukraine and the Changing Nature of Combat

Ukraine has exposed serious weaknesses in Russia’s conventional military by relying on drones, electronic warfare, and rapid technological adaptation to offset Moscow’s advantages in manpower and equipment. The world’s second most powerful military could be able to carpet-bomb Ukrainian positions, then follow through with a massive surge of troops and tanks all the way to Kyiv. However, the development of new technologies has changed that calculus, making it increasingly costly to deploy expensive aircraft or risk large numbers of troops and tanks.

Ukraine demonstrated that rapid innovation, such as FPV strike drones, decentralized command, and real-time intelligence sharing, could inflict disproportionate damage on a larger conventional force. At sea, Ukraine effectively neutralized much of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet using domestically produced Neptune anti-ship missiles, one of which sank the flagship Moskva, and explosive sea drones, forcing the Russian Navy to retreat from Crimean ports.

However, the war is far from over. There are no noticeable signs that Russia is on the brink of surrender, and those saying that the paradigm of war has changed permanently, or that this war proves traditional staples such as infantry, tanks, and aircraft have become obsolete, are premature at best, if not misguided.

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Amazon ‘Prime Air’ To Expand Drone Delivery To Nearly 500 US Cities This Year

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service, first teased by Jeff Bezos in a 2013 60 Minutes interview as a way to get packages under 5lbs to customers in 30 minutes or less, represents the broader push toward autonomous aerial last-mile logistics that could bypass traffic and cut delivery times dramatically. 

After years of regulatory hurdles with the FAA, technical iterations, and limited trials, the service has matured into a commercial offering using the MK30 drone, which hovers to drop packages.

A major breakthrough came in 2024, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted Amazon a waiver allowing its drones to fly beyond the visual line of sight of their operators, and has already completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries in 2026 across 11 sites in seven states. 

Today Amazon announced plans to expand it to nearly 500 US cities and towns by year-end – a roughly sixfold increase – bringing ultrafast options (as quick as 30 minutes) to tens of millions more customers in places like the Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, Syracuse, and Boise metro areas.

The drones will primarily operate in suburban areas, away from skyscrapers and major airports that could complicate operations.

Amazon describes the aircraft as “highly autonomous,” with onboard cameras and sensors for navigation, obstacle detection, and safe delivery.

The cameras do not transmit a live video feed, according to the company.

The company also sought to address the potential concern about noise.

“During drop-off, the sound level is below that of an idling delivery truck parked curbside and lasts about 30 seconds,” Amazon said.

Someone standing outside may hear a sound “comparable to a window fan on low” as the drone arrives, while people indoors may not hear it at all, the company added.

Prime Air delivery is free for Prime members on orders of at least $50, but orders below that threshold carry a $2.99 delivery fee, while customers without a Prime membership are charged $4.99.

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U.S.-Registered Drone Detected at Site of Suspected CIA Boat Strike

In the hours after a mysterious attack on an Ecuadorian fishing boat near the Galápagos Islands on March 17, a drone registered to U.S. defense contractor Shield AI was hovering just 500 meters from the burning vessel, La Negra Francisca, according to a review of flight tracking data by Drop Site News. This represents the first known vehicle to arrive at the site of the strike.

The unattributed bombing of three Ecuadorian fishing boats in January and March, and the subsequent abduction and torture of 36 fishermen, was first reported by Drop Site in April. Last week, The Washington Post, building on Drop Site’s ongoing investigation, reported that the attacks were part of a covert CIA operation.

According to flight and vessel tracking data from Radar 24 and Global Fishing Watch, the drone was a V-BAT model, primarily used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, but capable of carrying a weapons payload and switching its signal on and off to avoid detection.

The Shield AI drone matches the fishermen’s descriptions of the drones that circled their boats before the bombing, and bears the same red and green lights eyewitnesses reported seeing as they photographed the explosion.

Shield AI did not respond to a request for comment.

The CEO of Shield AI, Brandon Tseng, has publicly stated that the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy are using V-BAT drones “to interdict and destroy billions of dollars’ worth of drugs that were headed for the United States of America.” In 2024, the U.S. Coast Guard signed a $198 million contract with Shield AI for V-BAT drones; in April 2026, Shield AI announced it had received an $800 million contract for V-BAT drones from the U.S. Navy.

No drugs were found on any of the three fishing boats investigated by Drop Site—the Negra Francisca, Don Maca, and Fiorella—all of which were searched and cleared by Ecuadorian coast guard personnel prior to the strikes.

Last month, Drop Site published NASA thermal imagery consistent with an explosion at coordinates 1.5822°N, 87.6958W°, recorded at 1:02 p.m., the time fishermen say they were hit, and in the location where their transponder stopped broadcasting.

Tracking data suggests that the drone launched from a nearby boat on March 17, seven hours after the strike on La Negra Francisca and then circled near the site, its signal disappearing and reappearing. Ascending and descending patterns of movement indicate that the drone may have been landing on a boat and then resuming its flights.

Drop Site previously reported that vessel tracking data showed a U.S. Coast Guard cutter leaving a Galápagos military base a day before the Negra Francisca bombing—despite claiming it only deployed the cutter as a post-incident rescue effort. The Coast Guard vessel’s signal went dark and later appeared in Central American waters 24 hours before the fishermen were placed in El Salvador’s custody.

Video recordings, taken by eyewitnesses to the bombing, show the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling in the aftermath of the airstrike. Drop Site asked the U.S. Coast Guard in June to account for the cutter’s movements after its signal went dark. The Coast Guard responded that it “does not disclose cutter movements during law enforcement missions for operational security.”

In June, the U.S. Coast Guard told The Guardian it deployed its Bertholf cutter for a search-and-rescue operation after receiving a Mayday alert, contradicting prior statements by the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees maritime operations in the Pacific, that it had no knowledge of any U.S. involvement in the incidents. To date, the U.S. Coast Guard has not acknowledged using drones in its purported rescue efforts.

The U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Southern Command, and the Central Intelligence Agency did not respond to questions for this article.

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