Tag: perpetual war

U.S. Military Lost or Damaged 81 Aircraft Worth Up to $3.3 Billion in Iran War, Report Says

At least 81 U.S. military aircraft have been lost or damaged since the war with Iran began, with losses totaling as much as $3.3 billion, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Oct. 5. The tally was compiled from statements by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon Inspector General and news reports, and the report’s authors noted the number of aircraft “may remain subject to revision due to multiple factors” [1].

The losses include some of America’s most advanced warplanes, including one damaged F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter and 12 F-15E Strike Eagle fighters that have been destroyed or damaged, according to the report [2].

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The report, updated Oct. 5, drew on military statements, news reports and findings from the Defense Department’s inspector general [3].

Fixed-Wing Losses Include F-15Es, F-35A, A-10s and E-3 Sentry

Twelve F-15E Strike Eagles were destroyed or damaged. Three were shot down in friendly fire over Kuwait on March 2, and another was shot down over Iran the following month [4].

One F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter was damaged when it came under fire from Iran on March 19.

The disclosures come as the financial cost of the war, which began Feb. 28 with coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes, rises.

Drone Losses Led by 45 MQ-9 Reapers, Fleet Below Requirement

At least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones were lost, with each estimated to be worth between $30 million and $50 million, according to the report.

The Reaper, used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, close air support and combat search and rescue, accounted for more than half of the losses [5]. The scale of the Reaper losses tracks with earlier independent reporting: Iran destroyed approximately $1 billion worth of U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones during the conflict, according to a Bloomberg report published May 21, representing roughly 20 percent of the Pentagon’s pre-war inventory of unmanned aerial vehicles [6].

The drone losses have forced the Air Force to look at alternatives. The service more than doubled the value of its contract with DZYNE Technologies, now part of Ondas, for long-endurance surveillance drones that could complement the MQ-9 Reaper and help fill intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission gaps following the reported heavy losses in the U.S.-Iran conflict [7]. The seizure of a U.S. Navy Dive-LD uncrewed underwater vehicle by Iran near the Strait of Hormuz in September also handed Tehran a rare opportunity to study and potentially reverse-engineer a sophisticated undersea surveillance asset, a setback for the Pentagon and drone maker Anduril [8][9].

CENTCOM Estimates War Cost at $43.6 Billion

U.S. Central Command estimated last month that the total cost of the war in Iran had grown to $43.6 billion — a $5 billion increase from August. Weapons costs also jumped by more than $6 billion in just over a month, from $21.7 billion listed in the latest Congressional Budget Office report to $28.1 billion in the latest figures, according to the report.

The Congressional Research Service report attributed the aircraft loss figures to its analysis of available data.

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment, officials said. The Congressional Research Service published a similar report in May that put the number of lost or damaged aircraft lower, reflecting the accumulating toll of a conflict that has now run more than seven months since U.S. and Israeli forces commenced military strikes on Feb. 28.

Report Details Aircraft Losses as War Costs Rise

The Congressional Research Service report lists 81 U.S. military aircraft lost or damaged in the Iran war, valued at up to $3.3 billion.

CENTCOM’s $43.6 billion war cost estimate and the weapons cost increase were provided in the report. No immediate comment was issued by the White House or the Pentagon, according to the report. The report’s authors said the tally was compiled from statements by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon Inspector General and news reports, and that the “number of aircraft may remain subject to revision due to multiple factors” [1].

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Zelensky Responds to Trump Calling for New President – Nearly Cries While Playing Victim and Demanding More US Support

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ran to ABC for an interview on Sunday to respond to Trump’s fury toward him and whine about the United States not giving enough support for him to try and win the war. 

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump went off on Zelensky yesterday after announcing a deal with Russia to sell diesel to the US. While speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump blasted the Ukrainian President’s refusal to make peace and blamed him for the continuation of the war with Russia after Ukraine’s latest attack on a Russian oil export hub.

“I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” Trump said, blaming Zelensky for high oil and diesel prices.

Trump later doubled down last night, saying Zelensky “should have an election” and that “Putin would like to see a settlement strongly,” but “Zelensky does not want to make a deal.”

Zelensky on Sunday told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that it’s Russia’s fault that the war has continued, calling for a ceasefire. “Don’t attack us. Don’t kill our children. We will stop attacking your diesel. And I think it’s fair, fair deal,” he said. It should be noted that Zelensky turned down a US-backed ceasefire back in February 2025 when he and Trump had an explosive meeting in the Oval Office.

Zelensky further responded to Trump’s calls for an election and new president, claiming “it’s up to our people” to choose a leader as he continues to hold the country under martial law, barring an election.

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British Raven System Burned by Ukrainian Defector Intel

The British public is still being told that every new shipment of weapons to Kiev is a righteous investment in democracy. The reality on the ground in the Sumy direction is simpler and far uglier. A Raven air defence system, one of the specialised short-range launchers London rushed into service for Ukraine, has been destroyed by a Russian Lancet. The strike did not come from routine reconnaissance. It came from coordinates provided by a Ukrainian soldier who had had enough.

That soldier was not a high-ranking defector or a carefully cultivated agent. He was a man inside the system who decided the beatings, the corruption, and the forced service were no longer worth enduring. He contacted Russian intelligence, gave the precise location, and the Lancet did the rest. The Raven, estimated at six to eight million pounds, is gone. Each of its ASRAAM missiles costs roughly a quarter of a million pounds. British money, British engineering, British political capital — all of it converted into scrap by a single tip from the other side’s own ranks.

The Raven itself is a classic example of the improvised Western approach. Engineers took surplus ASRAAM missiles, mounted them on Supacat trucks using launch rails stripped from retired RAF aircraft, and shipped the result to Ukraine in record time. Thirteen systems were delivered. Official claims spoke of hundreds of engagements and high success rates against drones and cruise missiles. Those claims now sit alongside the wreckage near Sumy. Mobility and “shoot-and-scoot” tactics were supposed to keep these systems alive. They did not survive the moment a Ukrainian soldier decided his own command was the greater threat.

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The Black Sea Is Becoming Uninsurable

The Black Sea is rapidly becoming too dangerous for international commerce. Commercial vessels have been attacked near Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia within days of one another. Ships carrying agricultural products and petroleum are being dragged into a war. Politicians seem to forget that global trade depends on moving goods safely between nations. Once commercial shipping becomes a target, the economic consequences extend far beyond Russia and Ukraine. Insurance premiums rise, freight rates increase, and eventually those additional costs are passed directly to consumers who have absolutely nothing to do with this war.

On October 5, a commercial vessel caught fire and sank off Romania, killing two people. The following day, two additional merchant vessels were struck by drones inside Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone, with one reportedly sinking. Another vessel carrying agricultural oil was attacked near Odesa, while an oil tanker was struck off Russia’s Black Sea coast. Responsibility for some of these incidents remains disputed, but the economic consequences do not depend on which side launched the drones. Shipping companies must now calculate the possibility of losing an entire vessel and its cargo. Insurers must price that risk, and nobody in this business operates on charity.

People do not understand how quickly the cost of war moves through the global economy. A ship owner facing increased war-risk insurance premiums will demand higher compensation to enter dangerous waters. Charter rates rise, cargo owners seek alternative routes, and ports become increasingly expensive to operate. If insurance becomes unavailable at a commercially reasonable price, vessels simply stop sailing certain routes. Every additional expense becomes part of the final price, whether that means wheat, cooking oil, gasoline, or the thousands of other products.

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Ukraine’s Drones Reach Russia’s Arctic “Gas Capital”; Is Nornickel’s Palladium Next?

For most of the war, Russia’s Arctic was the part of the map nobody bothered to defend. That changed a month ago.

On September 9, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said their drones flew “more than 3,000 kilometers” to hit two gas condensate plants in the Yamalo-Nenets region: Gazprom’s Novy Urengoy condensate treatment plant, with a design capacity of 19.5 million tons of feedstock a year, and Novatek’s Purovsky plant near Tarko-Sale, which processed 13.4 million tons of condensate in 2025 (Hromadske, Al Jazeera). “Until today, this was considered an absolutely safe rear area for the aggressor,” the SOF said. Bloomberg and Reuters both picked up the claim; the Kremlin’s envoy to the Urals, Artem Zhoga, confirmed it was the first attack to reach the Arctic.

On Tuesday Moscow gave its answer: cash. The Yamalo-Nenets government approved a payment of 1 million rubles (about $11,700) for every drone destroyed over the region, the highest bounty any Russian region has offered, according to TASS (others pay 20,000-200,000 rubles). The money goes to local “mobile fire groups,” and there is a catch: per the decree, it is paid only if the defended facility suffers no damage, and the kill has to be confirmed by the military commissariat. Joining a fire group pays 100,000 rubles if you have a job and 150,000 if you don’t, and requires signing a Defense Ministry contract (Barents Observer).

Paying the unemployed more than the employed to stand on the tundra with a machine gun: nothing says confident air defense quite like it.

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After Trump Push To End Ukraine War, European Capitals, Legacy Media Push Russian False Flags

European capitals and legacy media launched a combined arms approach overnight to counter U.S. President Donald Trump’s push for peace in Ukraine and for the war-torn nation to hold elections.

The globalist empire has struck back. It’s so obvious, it’s comical.

As part of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, U.S. President Donald Trump described Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Friday as “very strongly wanting to make a deal” with regard to the conflict in Ukraine, while at the same time harshly criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not wanting to achieve peace, with Trump even calling for new leadership in the country. In addition, following long talks with the EU, the U.S. President announced a temporary solution for allowing the exports of Russian diesel fuel to the U.S. in order to alleviate the fuel crisis now affecting the country.

What many may not see is that the push to destroy Russian energy is tied to forcing a loss for Trump in the mid-term elections, pushing up energy costs globally.

European officials are discussing stricter rules for Russians traveling to the EU as tourists or even ex-combatants, fearing sabotage, arson and other forms of hybrid warfare, report the usual legacy media suspects.

There is also information spreading about an attempt to assassinate Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.

As reported by POLITICO on October 11, 2026, the European Commission is going to introduce stricter Schengen visa rules by early January 2027. Poland, Sweden and Estonia have been pushing for the new measures that were to be unveiled yesterday by European Commission. In 2025, as many as 478,000 Schengen tourist visas were issued to Russian citizens, many of them with multi-entry permits that do not require reapplication for each subsequent trip. Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer of Sweden has earlier called for stronger control of new Schengen visa regime due to hybrid threat from Moscow.

However, some of the measures which were previously considered to be too radical for EU as a whole, have already been implemented by frontline countries (the Baltics, Poland, etc.). Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna even estimated the number of former Russian soldiers to be banned from entering the EU to be around 650,000 people who are to be checked “person by person”. It is also possible that some of them could be supported by Russian services to commit crimes or attacks.

These new measures are a further step in the measures already implemented by the EU in relation to Russian travelers, when most of them are no longer granted multiple-entry visas, and their total number has fallen drastically since the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. Limitations of a similar nature are applied by the so-called frontline states, including the Baltic States, Poland, and others.

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Genocide Treated as Afterthought by Media on Third Anniversary of October 7 Attacks

October 7 marked three years since the Hamas attacks on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage. It also marks three years since Israel launched its genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with material and moral support from the United States, with an official death toll surpassing 74,000—including more than 20,000 children.

The official death toll is no doubt an underestimate, given the large number of missing and disappeared persons. (When Western corporate media outlets cite this toll, they often feel compelled to qualify it—e.g., as the BBC [10/7/26] had it, the “war between Israel and Hamas has killed more than 74,200 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose overall figures are seen as accurate by the UN”—lest, presumably, they be seen as taking Hamas’s word for it that the figure is so high.)

The killing spree continues in spite of an alleged ceasefire implemented last year, although the Jerusalem Post (10/5/26) charitably reckons that “less than 50%” of the casualties have been civilians.

The genocide was not, of course, a sudden violent outburst that came out of nowhere. Rather, it was a climax of genocidal momentum that had been building since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, which was itself achieved via the destruction of some 530 Palestinian villages, the killing of 15,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of three-quarters of a million more.

Now, three years later, the corporate media still can’t bring themselves to refer to the genocide of Palestinians as such—notwithstanding it being a pretty textbook case of the phenomenon. Predictably, then, the third anniversary of the commencement of mass slaughter and devastation in Gaza has been cast in corporate media as an afterthought to the anniversary of the Hamas attacks.

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War Department Expands Use Of High-Energy Laser And Microwave Capabilities

The Department of War (DOW) has announced the selection of four high-energy laser and high-powered microwave systems to expand its operational capabilities across the United States.

The directed-energy systems were selected following a counter-drone pilot program by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, according to an Oct. 5 DOW statement.

“High-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems are tools that can be effectively used in a layered drone defense,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of the task force.

“This pilot program will test these capabilities in an operational environment so we can understand how best to integrate and sustain them to defend the homeland,” Ross said.

The four systems selected for the pilot are laser weapon systems from defense companies Boeing, Kord, and AeroVironment, and a microwave system from Epirus.

The pilot program comes after Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard said during a symposium in Alabama on Aug. 13 that American military bases were ill-equipped to defend against swarm drone attacks.

Jarrard warned that small, unmanned aircraft systems or drones were quickly proliferating in the open market, posing a major security threat in the hands of malicious actors.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) does not have the decision speed to respond to swarms of small drones, said Jarrard, who is vice commander of NORAD’s United States Element.

“We don’t have the sensors,” Jarrard said. “So we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that, and obviously we’ve seen it used. We’re seeing it used on a daily basis around the world, and we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate that threat, but we’re not there yet.”

During a Sept. 30 address at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called drone warfare the “biggest battlefield revolution” in many generations.

The latest pilot phase will test the performance of the directed-energy systems, providing real-time data and feedback on requirements, costs, and best practices of these technologies, the DOW said in the statement.

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British chemical warfare commentator’s MI6 ties exposed in leaked emails

Private messages show show Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, a top British pundit on the Salisbury poisoning incident, was a close associate of the MI6 officer who handled the Russian intelligence defector at the center of the scandal — and reaped considerable benefits from his proximity to the case.

This September, a former British Army officer named Hamish De Bretton-Gordon filed a column with the UK Telegraph complaining that “Russian bots” had “tried to make out that I’m part of a security service conspiracy.” Having shot to prominence as a media commentator on chemical and biological weapons after the alleged poisoning of turncoat Russian spy Sergei Skripal, De Bretton-Gordon dismissed accusations that he collaborated with UK intelligence as the product of the “Kremlin’s malign tactics.”

Despite his fervent denials, leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone indicate that De Bretton-Gordon has spent years privately coordinating his public statements with senior British military and intelligence figures. The correspondences show him training operatives in Turkey and instructing Israeli military figures on Syria’s still-elusive stockpile of chemical weapons, “and a bit of Novichok,” referring to the Russian toxin supposedly used to poison Skripal.

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Europe Simply Needs War

Merz does not care about the fate of Germany or its people. Here we are on precisely the week of October 5th and Merz is saying that Russia staged some armed attack on Leipzig airport. He is publicly stating that Germany is effectively at war with Russia. The EU is crumbling and the AfD has beaten Merz to a pulp, so its now time to go out with a bang and declare war has already begun.

Here is Merz declaring that Brussels is indeed very concerned about the rise of of what they call far-right parties that are anti-EU with the common thread being their migrant policies. The nature of that concern has also now shifted significantly. The current anxiety in EU institutions is not just about the imminent “exit” threat, but also I hear they fear a growing strategic objective by these parties to weaken and obstruct the EU from the inside.

They don’t worry the exit scenario, since they are pros at manipulating elections as they did in Italy, UK, Hungary and Romania or use the courts to block separatists as in Barcelona. They are now also examining the draft strategy document from AfD lawmakers, which shifts away from calling for an immediate German withdrawal from the EU and eurozone. Instead, it proposes prioritizing the reform of the EU into a “union of sovereign nations,” and advocates for a membership referendum only if those reforms fail. In other words – take back power like over migration.

This shift is partly pragmatic. The AfD is currently isolated in the European Parliament, and more moderate right-wing parties, like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, have openly criticized the AfD’s “anti-European” stance. Dropping the exit demand makes the AfD a more palatable ally for these larger far-right groups.

This strategic change creates a more difficult problem for the EU than a simple exit campaign that they can fight with rigged elections. Here, a referendum requires a party to convince a majority to take a radical step. In contrast, internal disruption only requires enough power to block, dilute, and redirect policy from within the system. The EU’s existing tools, which were designed to reassure citizens about the benefits of membership, are ill-suited to counter this kind of internal gridlock. This is why they rigged both the Romanian and Hungarian elections.

Parties like the AfD and Hungary’s Fidesz can exploit unanimity rules to veto EU-wide decisions. For example, Hungary has blocked crucial sanctions and loans for Ukraine, and the far-right Patriots for Europe group has worked to dilute the Green Deal and the Migration Pact. This dysfunction then becomes campaign material for these parties, who position themselves as defenders of national interests against a “paralyzed” Brussels. This was why the Hungarian government has repeatedly accused Ukraine of interfering in its elections to remove Orban. Sources in Washington reveal that Ukraine is also interfering in US elections funding the opposition of anyone in Congress who is against sending money to Ukraine. Israel has been doing the same.

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