• A Russian attack submarine that was stationed in Syria has officially left the Mediterranean Sea.
• The departure of the Kilo-class Novorossiysk leaves Russia without any known submarines in the region.
• The uncertain fate of Russia's naval presence in Syria amid other setbacks could spell trouble for its submarine force.

Strategic Russian naval bases have been upended by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, creating headaches for the Kremlin's navy, including its submarine force.

Moscow no longer appears to have any attack submarines in the Mediterranean Sea after NATO forces spotted its last known submarine leaving the region last week.

Portugal's military said that it observed a Russian Kilo-class submarine moving through the country's continental exclusive economic zone near northern Spain on Friday. NATO Maritime Command later identified the vessel as the Novorossiysk.

The Novorossiysk was spotted several weeks earlier at Tartus, a naval base in Syria that Russia had used for years. The future of Moscow's military footprint at the facility — and in the country in general — was, however, thrown into uncertainty after the shocking collapse of the Assad regime last month.

There are indications that Russia is drawing down forces at its bases in Syria. Losing Tartus for good would be a significant blow to Moscow's navy — including its capable submarine force — which relies on the warm-water port to project power across the region and beyond.

Early December satellite imagery showed the Novorossiysk docked in Tartus, but by the middle of the month, it was gone, along with the rest of the Russian warships that had been there. Some of the Russian naval vessels have been spotted in recent weeks loitering off the Syrian coast, but the whereabouts of this submarine were less certain.

Should Syria's new leadership decide Russia can no longer station its forces at Tartus, it would mark another setback for Moscow's navy, which has suffered a string of stunning losses in the nearby Black Sea since the start of the full-scale Ukraine war nearly three years ago.

Ukrainian forces have used missiles and naval drones to damage or destroy dozens of Russian naval vessels, including one of six improved Kilo-class submarines Moscow's Black Sea Fleet operates, during the conflict.

These attacks have forced Moscow to withdraw the Black Sea Fleet from its long-held headquarters in Sevastopol, a major city in the southwestern corner of the occupied Crimean peninsula, across the region to the port of Novorossiysk along western Russia's coast. If Russia is unable to move back into Sevastopol, that creates complications.

For Russia, losing the ability to keep submarines at Sevastopol and Tartus is less than ideal.

Bryan Clark, a former US Navy officer and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said that the remainder of the Kilo-class vessels are based in St. Petersburg, where there is a large naval facility and dry docks for maintenance.

"The Russians are now having to redeploy their submarine force back up to the north" instead of relying on warm-water ports that "you could get in and out of them year-round," Clark told Business Insider. "St. Petersburg, you can't get in and out of year-round."

Recent developments also seriously undermine Russia's military influence in the Mediterranean and southern Europe, Clark said.

The Novorossiysk is a newer improved Kilo sub. Submarines of this class are diesel-electric vessels and formidable long-range strike platforms that can attack ships and land targets, deploy for weeks on end, and stay relatively undetected. They are effectively Russia's most capable non-nuclear subs and can carry Kalibr missiles.

Russia has kept a Kilo-class vessel in the region for years. The boat's departure from the region, though Russia could ultimately opt to move another sub into the area later, may signal a broader decline in Russian naval might in the Mediterranean.

In four years, Russia appears to have gone "from being a pretty big player in the Med — in terms of naval forces — to now being a nonexistent player," Clark said.

Russia's basing challenges could ultimately hinder its ability to project power. The uncertainty with Tartus and nearby Hmeimim Air Base — underscores a broader issue for the Russian military.

Satellite imagery captured on Monday by Maxar Technologies, a commercial imaging company, shows no obvious signs of any major Russian naval vessels at Tartus, as has been the case for weeks. Ukraine's military intelligence agency has said Russia is withdrawing from the base.

Whether Moscow is able to negotiate an arrangement with the new Syrian leadership to stay in the country or is forced to relocate to a new hub in North Africa to sustain its operations remains to be seen.

• Ukrainian long-range drones attacked a key Russian port over the weekend, a security source said.
• Video footage shows a drone striking the facility and causing a massive fireball.
• Russia's Ust-Luga port is used to support a murky and deceptive "shadow fleet."

Ukrainian forces carried out an attack on a major commercial port in Russia over the weekend, using long-range drones to target and disrupt the operations of Moscow's sanctions-evading "shadow fleet."

The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, carried out the attack Saturday on Ust-Luga, a port in northwest Russia near the city of St. Petersburg, a source in the agency confirmed to Business Insider on Monday.

The SBU source said the drones flew over 550 miles and "successfully hit" their targets, with one drone striking containers filled with gas condensate, causing an explosion that severely damaged one container and sent shrapnel into three others nearby.

Video footage obtained by BI appears to show the moment the drone hits the containers. Sporadic gunfire can be heard ringing out in the background, suggesting Russia attempted to shoot down the drone as it drew closer to its target.

However, these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and the drone slammed into the Russian infrastructure, causing a massive fireball and a loud blast. The SBU source, citing unspecified experts, said repairing this facility will take a while and will cause a disruption to the port's operations.

BI could not independently verify the SBU-provided details of the attack.

Ust-Luga is Russia's largest commercial port in the Leningrad region and a key logistics hub along the Baltic Sea. The SBU source said Moscow uses the facility to sell oil and gas using its so-called "shadow fleet."

The "shadow fleet" refers to the collection of vessels that Moscow uses to evade the international sanctions on its energy exports placed in response to its invasion of Ukraine and sustain significant cash flow to support its war efforts.

According to the European Parliament, this murky, deceptive network consists of aging and poorly maintained vessels with unclear ownership and origins. The ships employ various tactics to conceal movements and operations, like transmitting false data, ship-to-ship transfers, automatic identification system blackouts, and other deceptive practices.

"As Russia depends increasingly on its 'shadow fleet' to maintain oil exports," the European Parliament wrote in a briefing published last year, "the EU and allied nations have implemented measures to counter these evasive tactics."

It said the approaches include sanctions on specific vessels and greater international collaboration to disrupt the malign activity that helps to boost Russia's war chest. However, Ukraine appears to favor direct military action.

"Drone sanctions from the SBU reduce the currency that Russia needs to wage war," the security source said, according to a translation of their remarks shared with BI.

The attack on Ust-Luga over the weekend marks the latest long-range Ukrainian strike on Russian soil. Kyiv has heavily relied on its arsenal of domestically produced drones for cross-border operations, using these explosive-packed uncrewed systems to target Moscow's energy and military facilities.

In recent months, Ukrainian drones have struck Russian ammunition depots, airfields, and weapons storage facilities.

• A Ukrainian company is producing steel armor for the country's Patriot air-defense batteries.
• The armor consists of small plates that wrap around the exterior of the Patriot's control unit.
• It is intended to protect the highly valuable systems from Russian missile shrapnel and debris.

A Ukrainian defense initiative is making steel armor for the country's inventory of American-made Patriot batteries, providing the air-defense systems with extra protection against shrapnel.

The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile system that has been a critical part of Ukraine's air-defense umbrella. Several Western nations, including the US, have sent Patriot control systems, launchers, and interceptor missiles to Kyiv to help it fend off massive Russian bombardments, but it only has a few Patriots, making protection key to maintaining Ukraine's defenses.

Rinat Akhmetov's Steel Front, a Ukrainian initiative that has built protective screens for tanks and armored fighting vehicles, announced on Friday that engineers from Metinvest, the country's largest steel producer, have developed new armor for the Patriot.

The heavy armor consists of around 200 steel plates, each around 8 millimeters thick, that wrap around the exterior of the Patriot's control unit, where the crew sits to operate the system. The protective plates are designed to shield the control unit from missile shrapnel and blast fragments.

Oleksandr Myronenko, the Metinvest Group's chief operating officer, said the company developed the project from scratch in under two months. "Air defenders also need reliable protection," he stressed in a statement. The total weight of the armor is 2.6 metric tons, but, the company said, it doesn't impact mobility or functionality.

Mass production of the armor is underway, but the first of the plates has already been installed on an undisclosed number of Patriot control units. Business Insider has reviewed video footage of the steel plates on one such unit.

The Patriot is a workhorse for the Ukrainian military and has been since the first air-defense battery arrived in April 2023. Kyiv has relied heavily on the system to defend its skies from Russian missiles and warplanes. It operates them alongside other Western-provided and Soviet-era air defenses.

The Patriot has specifically received praise for its success against the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, a Russian air-launched ballistic missile that Moscow has said is impossible to intercept.

Beyond protecting the Patriots, Steel Front has also produced screens for various armored vehicles in service with the Ukrainian military, including Soviet-era tanks like the T-64 and T-72 and American-made systems like the M1 Abrams tank and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

These welded screens are designed to protect these highly vulnerable vehicles from threats like the small, exploding first-person view (FPV) drones that have wreaked havoc on the battlefield, destroying armored vehicles sometimes worth millions for a tiny fraction of that cost. Cage armor has become increasingly common as the drone threat has become more prolific, but the designs vary significantly in both quality and sophistication.

• Ukraine's naval drones fired missiles at — and hit — three Russian helicopters earlier this week.
• The first-of-its-kind combat engagement occurred off the coast of Crimea.
• It's the latest achievement for Kyiv's naval drones, which have been modified to carry missiles.

Ukrainian naval drones armed with heat-seeking missiles shot down two Russian helicopters and damaged a third above the Black Sea earlier this week, Kyiv said on Thursday.

The unusual combat engagement marked the first known instance of a naval drone firing on and striking an aircraft. The Ukrainian military previously reconfigured its uncrewed boats for sea-based air defense.

The milestone combat operation unfolded on Tuesday off the western coast of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula. Ukrainian naval drones equipped with missile launchers fired at three helicopters, destroying two of them and damaging a third.

The crews of the destroyed helicopters, identified as Mi-8s, were killed, Ukraine's military intelligence agency, also known as the HUR, said on Thursday. The damaged helicopter managed to land.

The HUR credited the operation to a special forces unit called "Group 13," which fields the Magura V5, one of several naval drones in service with the Ukrainian military.

Earlier this week, the HUR said that a Magura V5 drone took down a single Mi-8 with R-73 air-to-air missiles. The R-73 is a decades-old, short-range missile that uses infrared homing technology. Two days later, Ukraine revealed that a second helicopter was destroyed and a third damaged.

The HUR published a radio intercept purportedly containing audio from one of the Mi-8 pilots after the Russian helicopter was hit. "There was a water launch," the pilot says in the recording, describing how a missile exploded near the aircraft. Business Insider could not independently verify any of the details of the operation.

This week's incident is not the first time that Ukrainian naval drones have engaged Russian helicopters in a firefight; last month, Kyiv shared footage showing a similar engagement on the other side of Crimea involving a drone outfitted with a machine gun. However, the downing of an aircraft marks a new chapter in naval drone warfare.

Kyiv's domestically produced naval drones have played a key role in its Black Sea operations. In addition to the Magura V5, Ukraine also fields other sea drones, like the Sea Baby platform in service with the Security Service of Ukraine.

Ukraine lacks a traditional navy, so it has relied on these naval drones to wage a successful campaign against Russian interests across the Black Sea, using them in attacks against Moscow's warships, aircraft, and infrastructure, like bridges and oil platforms.

Through this asymmetrical campaign, Ukraine's drones have effectively driven Moscow's Black Sea Fleet away from its long-held headquarters in Crimea and forced it to relocate across the region to the port of Novorossiysk in southwestern Russia.

Ukraine has innovated with its naval drones through various modifications that make them more threatening, like adding missile launchers to give them air-defense capabilities. Some of the drones have also been outfitted with rocket launchers, guns, and even other drones.

• It's been a rough year for Iran and its friends in the Middle East.
• Israel has degraded Tehran's proxy forces and delivered punishing airstrikes against Iran itself.
• And Iran just lost one of its most important allies in the region: the Assad regime.

From Gaza to Beirut, Damascus to Tehran, it's been a rough year for Iran and its allies and proxy forces across the Middle East.

Israel's wars against Hamas and Hezbollah have severely degraded these two Iranian proxies, while its military confrontations with Iran itself have left the country short on critical defenses. Tehran's key ally — Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar Assad — was just ousted by rebel forces.

A senior Biden administration official said earlier this month that Assad's fall can be traced to US support for Israel in its conflicts with Iran and its proxies and Ukraine in its defense against Russia.

"Hamas is on its back; its leaders are dead," the US official told reporters. "Iran is on its back. Hezbollah is on its back. Russia is on its back. It's just abandoned its only ally in the Middle East."

"Now, the Assad regime — Russia and Iran's main ally in the Middle East — has just collapsed," they said.

The Iranian proxies

Hamas' October 7, 2023, massacre, which killed around 1,200 people in Israel, sent shockwaves through the Middle East and triggered an immediate — and devastating — military response.

What began as an aerial bombardment later turned into an Israeli invasion of Gaza. After more than a year, Israel has eliminated Hamas' military leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, in a scorched-earth campaign that local authorities in Gaza say has killed over 45,000 Palestinians and drawn international condemnation.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said after Sinwar's killing that Israel has "decimated" the military structure of Hamas, although he acknowledged the group is still a threat in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Lebanese Hezbollah started attacking Israel shortly after October 7, and the two longtime enemies regularly exchanged cross-border fire for nearly a year, displacing tens of thousands of people as fighting steadily escalated.

In September, Israel sharply increased the pressure with its audacious pager attacks, followed by a new campaign of strikes that wiped out Hezbollah's senior leadership and weaponry. Israeli forces then invaded Lebanon before a late-November cease-fire ended the fighting, which left thousands of people dead across the country.

Brian Carter, the Middle East portfolio manager at the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, said earlier this month that the "Israeli operations in Lebanon have defeated Hezbollah and compelled the group to end its involvement in the October 7 War."

Iran itself

In early April, an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus killed multiple senior Iranian military officials, escalating what had long been a shadow war between Israel and Tehran.

Iran responded later that month by launching over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, but nearly all the projectiles were shot down in what was the first-ever direct attack on Israel from Iranian soil. Israel then struck Iran in retaliation.

In July, Iran accused Israel of executing the daring assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas' political wing. Haniyeh was killed at a guesthouse in Tehran — a tremendous security breach and a blow to Iran.

Iran waited months to retaliate over the killing of Haniyeh and other proxy leaders, but on October 1, it launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel — the second direct confrontation between the two bitter foes. Officials said a majority of the Iranian missiles were intercepted.

Israel then responded later that month, carrying out widespread airstrikes that nearly wiped out all of Iran's air-defense systems and degraded its ability to produce missiles. An Israeli security official told BI in the aftermath that the strikes were "powerful" and put Tehran at a "disadvantage," as they left the country vulnerable to follow-on military action.

The Assad regime

Iran long supported the Assad regime because it viewed Damascus as a crucial pillar for keeping weapons flowing to Hezbollah and projecting its influence across the region to Lebanon along the Mediterranean Sea.

But earlier this month, Syria's yearslong civil war ended in shocking fashion when rebel forces suddenly swept across the country in a lightning offensive that lasted just days and ended with their capture of Damascus. Assad and his family fled to Moscow.

US officials attributed the sudden collapse of the Assad regime to the fact that its main allies — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia — were much weaker than in years past and simply couldn't intervene militarily as they had done earlier in the civil war.

President Joe Biden said after the rebels captured Damascus that the military setbacks Iran and Hezbollah have suffered fighting against Israel this year essentially made it "impossible" for them to continue to support the Assad regime.

The Houthis

One Iranian ally that has stood out among the others is the Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen that has spent over a year attacking civilian and military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Armed with a large, diverse stockpile of missiles and attack drones, the Houthis have launched more than 130 attacks on vessels transiting shipping lanes off the coast of Yemen. They have struck a number of merchant ships, sinking two of them and hijacking one. Four sailors have been killed during the campaign.

The Houthis have said their campaign is in support of Palestinians in Gaza, although US officials often dismiss this claim since the rebels have targeted vessels sailing under many different flags. These attacks have caused a significant decline in activity along a key global trade route, forcing shipping companies to make longer and more costly trips around Africa.

A Western naval coalition, led by the US Navy, has so far been unable to defeat or deter the Houthis. American forces routinely intercept inbound missiles and drones and carry out strikes against the rebels in Yemen.

Though degraded, the Houthis still retain the ability to attack ships. Just this month alone, the rebels have targeted US warships and commercial ships with missiles and drones on multiple occasions. The vessels all emerged unscathed after the attacks, but the incidents underscore the enduring threat that shows no signs of stopping.

• A US air defense system in Israel was just used in combat for the first time since it was deployed.
• It's unclear if the THAAD battery successfully intercepted the incoming threat.
• The battery was reportedly used against a Houthi ballistic missile late last week.

A top US air defense battery deployed to Israel was recently used in combat in what appears to be the first known instance that the system fired an interceptor since it arrived in the country two months ago.

The THAAD (or Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) battery was used in theater over the past couple of days, a US defense official confirmed to Business Insider on Monday. They did not elaborate on the circumstances of the incident, the kind of missile attack THAAD was designed to counter.

Footage shared on social media Friday purported to show the launch of a THAAD interceptor in Israel against an incoming ballistic missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen. A US soldier can reportedly be heard in the background of the video saying, "Eighteen years [I've] been waiting for this."

It's unclear whether the THAAD shot was successful. The Israeli military said early Friday local time that a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory. It did not specify which air defense system was actually used to take down the threat.

The US deployed a THAAD battery and around 100 soldiers to Israel in October following a massive Iranian missile attack on the country at the start of the month. The Pentagon said then that the system would supplement Israel's advanced and multi-tiered air defenses.

THAAD, which is made by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin, is designed to defeat short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles during the final phase of their flight. The system can engage targets at ranges of 93 to 124 miles inside and outside the atmosphere and eliminates an incoming threat by hitting it rather than exploding nearby.

The US Army began developing THAAD in 1992, and it now has seven batteries, several of which are outside the continental US. A typical battery consists of nearly 100 soldiers, six truck-mounted launchers, an advanced radar, and a fire control and communications element.

THAAD's first operational intercept in combat came in January 2022 when a battery used by the United Arab Emirates took down a Houthi ballistic missile. Though it has rarely seen combat, THAAD is still considered to be one of the top air defenses in the world; Israel's equivalent to the THAAD, the Arrow 3, has also proved its worth in combat.

Last year, the US sent a THAAD battery to the Middle East to protect American troops after Hamas carried out its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. The October deployment strengthens Israel's vaunted air-defense shield against missiles, consisting of David's Sling and the Arrow systems. The widely touted Iron Dome, by contrast, is designed to counter rockets and artillery shells.

Israel is retiring the US-made Patriot battery. The Israelis soured on the Patriot after their early version failed to defeat Scud missiles fired by Iraq in 1991. Later upgrades would transform Patriot into a critical defensive asset for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

The recent employment of the THAAD battery comes amid a notable uptick in Houthi missile and drone attacks on Israel over the past few weeks. Israeli forces have bombed the rebels in Yemen in retaliation.

• Russia has changed the way it attacks Ukraine with missiles and drones in recent months.
• Since August, Russia has likely been conserving its munitions for larger but less frequent attacks.
• Britain's defense ministry said this strategy differs from Russia's approach earlier this year.

Russia is likely conserving its missiles and building up stockpiles to launch larger — but less frequent — attacks on Ukraine, according to a new Western intelligence assessment.

The Russian military has launched several big aerial bombardments against Ukraine this month, including one large-scale attack that saw Moscow fire more than 90 missiles and 190 drones at its neighbor. The simultaneous attacks increase the chances of some munitions breaking through Ukraine's air defense network and likely also aim to terrorize Ukrainians wearied by nearly three years of barrage.

Ukraine said Russian forces launched ballistic and cruise missiles from fighter jets, bombers, and warships in the December 12-13 attack, which was directed at its energy grid. Most of the missiles and drones were either shot down or failed to reach their targets.

A few weeks later, on Christmas Day, Russia launched another large-scale attack against Ukraine's energy sector with nearly 200 missiles and drones. The two strikes appear to reflect a recent change in Moscow's bombardment tactics. Ukrainians celebrated Christmas on Dec. 25 again this year, but Russia's Eastern Orthodox won't observe it until Jan. 7, 2025.

Britain's defense ministry wrote in an intelligence update over the weekend that, since August, "it is highly likely Russia has chosen to take time to build stocks between strikes and then launch in larger, less frequent strike waves, rather than the more frequent smaller attacks conducted earlier in the year."

The characteristics of the December 12-13 attack were similar to those of previous assaults, as they targeted Ukraine's critical infrastructure while also trying to overpower the country's air defenses with exploding drone swarms.

Britain's defense ministry cautioned on Saturday that "Russia retains the ability and the stocks to allow such assets to be employed in smaller numbers, as a punitive measure, with little or no warning."

Russia maintains a formidable arsenal of more than 1,500 cruise and ballistic missiles, which can be launched from air, ground, and sea-based platforms, according to some local media estimates. However, Moscow has also been forced to rely on foreign shipments from other internationally isolated states like North Korea and Iran.

Conflict analysts and US officials have said Russia's strike campaign against Ukraine's energy facilities is intended to force Kyiv and the West into making policy decisions that favor Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly pressed his Western military backers for more air defenses and munitions to help the country defend against Russian assaults. After the Christmas Day attack, President Joe Biden said the US has sent Kyiv hundreds of air-defense missiles in recent months, with more on the way.

"I have directed the Department of Defense to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and the United States will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen Ukraine's position in its defense against Russian forces," Biden said last week.

Meanwhile, the US on Monday announced nearly $2.5 billion in new security assistance to Ukraine, including air-defense munitions like the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and other high-profile military aid.

• Ukraine is facing critical manpower challenges on the battlefield.
• An analyst recently back from Ukraine said Russia is trying to exploit this challenge by using small assault waves.
• "It's death by a thousand cuts. It's very stressful to units who are undermanned," she said.

Ukraine is facing increasingly serious manpower challenges all along the front lines, and Russia is relying on a brutal, albeit costly, tactic to stress Kyiv's defenses.

Dara Massicot, a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Russia and Eurasia Program, recently returned from a research trip to Ukraine, where she met with different units that are all facing manpower shortages and other struggles.

"What the units are experiencing from the Russians is a significant amount of strain from Russian tactics," Massicot recounted from her trip on a podcast this month with the Center for Strategic and International Studies earlier.

She said that the Russians "are attacking [the Ukrainians] in very small groups all the time, day and night. It's death by a thousand cuts. It's very stressful to units who are undermanned."

Russia's small assault wave attacks, sometimes called human wave attacks or meat assaults, have been a problem for Ukraine throughout the conflict, but they have especially been a challenge for Kyiv as it faces critical manpower shortages.

To address this problem, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has lowered the mobilization age from 27 to 25, but the Biden administration has pushed Kyiv to lower it even more to expand the number of civilians who can fight. So far, Kyiv has been unwilling to do that.

Ukraine is not isolated in grappling with manpower challenges. Russia faces its own mobilization issues. They are much less urgent than Kyiv's, but Moscow is taking serious casualties on the battlefield, raising questions about troop sustainment and replacement down the road.

These human wave tactics come at a tremendously high cost. Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said earlier this month that Russia's commitment to maintaining its theater-wide initiative in Ukraine is putting strains on its domestic labor pool.

The "constrained labor pool is likely unable to sustain this increased casualty rate in the medium-term," they wrote in a war update.

Russia experienced its highest number of casualties in any month of the war in November, averaging more than 1,500 soldiers killed and wounded every day, Britain's defense ministry said in an intelligence update earlier this month, citing Ukrainian military figures.

This made November the most costly month of the conflict for the Russian military, with nearly 46,000 total casualties, Britain's defense ministry said. It also marked the fifth straight month that Moscow saw an increase in its monthly losses. ISW said that the West needs to be boosting support to increase Russian losses, which are not sustainable.

"The high rate of casualties is likely reflective of the higher tempo of Russian operations and offensives," the British defense ministry said of the losses, adding that Moscow will likely continue to see over 1,000 soldiers killed and wounded every day as its forces push along the front lines.

Russia employs Soviet-style tactics in which any gained ground justifies the losses, no matter how heavy. It sends wave after wave of soldiers, offering undermanned and undersupplied Ukrainian units little rest or respite. Such tactics have been seen in Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Pokrovsk, among other places.

The Russian leadership has signaled it is willing to suffer these losses in a grinding, attritional campaign that is just not to Ukraine's advantage, given that it is the smaller combatant with fewer resources to throw into this fight.

Massicot said that even though Russia is suffering its highest casualty rates of the Ukraine war right now, Moscow is still applying overwhelming pressure on the Ukrainian forces trying to hold the line against continuous Russian attacks, and these attacks are taking ground.

"The casualties are not causing a cessation of this tactic or these waves of attacks," she said.

Russia is trying to advance against Ukrainian defensive positions in several different directions of the front. One important area of focus is the city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics and rail hub that Moscow is closing in on.

Russia is also trying to push Ukrainian forces out of its own Kursk region, which Kyiv invaded in a stunning move in early August. Thousands of North Korean soldiers have been deployed to this area in recent weeks to help Moscow with its efforts, putting more stress on Ukrainian troops struggling to hold territory.

US and Ukrainian officials have confirmed that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat alongside Russian forces in Kursk. They have also suffered losses in battle, in part because they don't have any recent experience with this kind of war.

• A US Navy warship accidentally shot down an American fighter jet over the Red Sea on Sunday.
• The crew members survived, but it marks the second friendly-fire incident of the Houthi conflict.
• These incidents highlight the complex operating environment in which NATO forces have engaged.

Though there are still a lot of unanswered questions, the accidental downing of a US Navy fighter jet by an American warship in the Red Sea over the weekend underscores the risks and complexity of intense combat in a high-tempo operating environment.

The shootdown marks the second known friendly-fire incident for American and allied forces this year as they continue to battle the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In February, a German warship mistakenly targeted an American military drone, but a malfunction spared the uncrewed aircraft from getting hit.

Early Sunday morning local time, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg mistakenly fired on an F/A-18 Super Hornet flying above the Red Sea, downing the carrier-based fighter in what the US military said was "an apparent case of friendly fire."

US Central Command said that two naval aviators ejected safely from the aircraft and were recovered by the Navy. It added that an initial assessment suggests one of the crew members sustained minor injuries. A two-seater F/A-18 typically has a pilot and weapons officer.

Centcom, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, said the incident "was not the result of hostile fire, and a full investigation is underway." It did not respond to Business Insider's requests for more information.

Friendly-fire engagements aren't uncommon occurrences in combat, especially high-intensity fights.

During the Gulf War, for instance, an A-10 Warthog killed nine British soldiers when the ground-attack aircraft opened fire on their armored personnel carriers, mistaking them for Iraqi vehicles. A few years later, F-15s shot down two Black Hawks on a humanitarian mission, killing 26 people. The pilots mistook the helicopters for Iraqi targets they thought were violating a "no fly" zone.

There are numerous examples across military conflicts, a more recent incident being a US airstrike in Afghanistan that killed five American servicemembers in 2014.

Bradley Martin, a retired Navy surface warfare captain, said friendly-fire incidents are "likely to eventually occur in the complicated and rapidly changing environment of air defense." There are a wide range of things that can go wrong.

"Friendly and enemy aircraft can be in the engagement areas. Identification systems can malfunction," Martin, now a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told BI. "Friendly aircraft profiles can look like threat profiles. And certainly, human error can enter into the equation. Operators may have minutes or even seconds to make a determination and, mistakes occur."

"I think it's important to remember that the Navy has been reacting to intense air attacks now for over a year, with more engagements in a month than we'd seen in decades," Martin said, referring to the Navy's tireless efforts to fend off Houthi missiles and drones.

"These have been largely successful, but with a large number of engagements comes the increased risk of mistakes and malfunctions," he said.

And mistakes have been made, though nothing fatal. In February, a German frigate accidentally targeted an American MQ-9 Reaper drone while it was on a mission in the vicinity of the Red Sea. The missiles never reached the drone, though, thanks to a technical error in the warship's radar system.

The German military said at the time, it engaged a drone that lacked a "friend or foe" identification and coordinated with allies in the area before opening fire. It's unclear where the disconnect occurred, but it almost ended in the destruction of an expensive combat and reconnaissance drone.

The F/A-18 Super Hornet that was shot down was part of the air wing attached to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. The Truman and its strike group, which consists of the Gettysburg and two destroyers, entered the Middle East region earlier this month, becoming the latest assortment of Navy warships to join the conflict against the Houthis.

The F/A-18 is a multi-role fighter jet made by US defense contractor Boeing that has been in service with the Navy for decades. A single aircraft is estimated to cost around $60 million.

The military's acknowledgment of the Red Sea friendly-fire incident came shortly after a combat bout between the US and the Houthis. Centcom said it carried out strikes against Houthi facilities in Yemen, and during the operation, its forces shot down multiple drones and a cruise missile.

It is unclear if the friendly-fire incident occurred during the operation, which took place at some point on Saturday local time. Centcom said that F/A-18s were involved in the mission.

The Houthis said that they launched eight cruise missiles and 17 drones during the battle with the US military. The rebels said this led to the downing of the F/A-18 and ultimately forced the Truman to withdraw to another part of the Red Sea.

The Houthis have spent the past year launching missiles and drones at military and civilian vessels operating in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The rebels claim they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and have stepped up their long-range attacks on Israel in recent days. US, British, and Israeli forces have carried out extensive strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.

• The US Navy has long held a missile-tube advantage over China.
• But China's ships now have half as many vertical-launch-system cells as the US, research found.
• VLS capacity is important for naval combat, but it's not everything.

China is closing the missile-tube gap with the US Navy as the latter's long-standing edge in vertical-launching-system cell capacity, one indicator of naval strength, shrinks.

The People's Liberation Army Navy now has over half as many missile tubes, or VLS cells, as US Navy surface combatants have. That represents a significant uptick from a few years ago, a new research report said.

The US Navy still outmatches the Chinese navy in tonnage and firepower, but Beijing is catching up with new warships with combat-capability improvements sailing out of busy shipyards.

Earlier this week, the Department of Defense said in its latest report on China's military capabilities that Beijing would be able to carry out long-range precision strikes from its surface ships in the near term.

The US has 8,400 vertical-launch-system missile cells across its dozens of surface combatants, while the Chinese navy has almost 4,300 on a similar number of warships, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a UK think tank, found in an analysis published Friday.

A warship's VLS cells can carry various missiles, from air-defense interceptors to anti-ship missiles to land-attack weaponry. Ships are often outfitted with a mix of weapons for increased mission versatility. IISS reported that near the end of 2024, the US Navy had 85 surface warships with VLS to China's 84.

Five years ago, China had roughly one-fifth of the US capacity. Johannes Fischbach, the maritime-research analyst at IISS who wrote the report, said that the diminishing capacity gap was due to a dip in US Navy numbers as its warships continued to age and Beijing's outpacing of America in terms of warship construction.

"The gap between the capacity of the US Navy and that of the PLAN is set to continue to close for the foreseeable future," he said.

China boasts the world's largest navy, with more than 370 ships and submarines, including over 140 major surface combatants, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Beijing's military. This battle force is expected to grow to nearly 400 next year and 435 vessels by the end of the decade.

"Much of this growth will be in major surface combatants," the Pentagon said in its report. Much of the US fleet is aging, the cruisers with the largest VLS capacities among the surface vessels are being retired, and the newest warships are delayed, some for years.

Newer Chinese ships, like the capable Renhai-class destroyers with 112 VLS cells, are coming off the line at speed.

A high VLS capacity gives a ship the ability to fire a lot of missiles before having to reload, which can be difficult to carry out at sea and generally requires a port. The US is experiencing a taste of high munitions-expenditure rates during its conflict against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The demands in a fight with China would be significantly higher.

While the number of missile tubes provides insight into a navy's warfighting capabilities, maritime combat is not entirely determined by a navy's VLS capacity. Launch tubes vary in size and function, and munitions vary. Air defenses and other countermeasures would matter as well in a US-China conflict.

Naval combat also extends beyond surface warships and their respective VLS capacities. Militaries can fire anti-ship missiles and other munitions from land or drop them from aircraft. Additionally, submarines can be equipped with missile-launching tubes. The US still maintains a significant advantage underwater over China.

• The US military has confirmed recent drone activity around bases in New Jersey.
• The Pentagon said this week that it sent counter-drone technology to two installations.
• One of these systems has been identified as the Dronebuster, a hand-held electronic warfare tool.

The Pentagon is arming two military installations in New Jersey with counter-drone technology, giving them extra tools to better defend their airspace from any unauthorized drone incursions. One of the systems the Pentagon mentioned by name is the Dronebuster.

The US military confirmed drone sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle this month, as well as multiple sightings at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, with drones at one point forcing the base to close its airspace. A spokesperson for the Joint Staff said last weekend that drone activities over bases are not a new issue but criticized some of the recent incidents as "irresponsible."

Amid recent drone drama, there have been repeated calls to shoot down unidentified aircraft, particularly those near military bases.

The Pentagon said this week that "if a determination is made that unauthorized drones are conducting any malign or malicious activity, commanders are authorized to take appropriate action to mitigate and counter these unmanned systems," but the military is not going to be engaging anything kinetically, a spokesperson added, unless it is a "clear and present danger."

Military bases have some existing capabilities to deal with drone incursions, but the Pentagon acknowledged that sending more technology will help them mitigate potential threats.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the military is providing "active and passive detection capabilities" and "counter-drone capabilities" to Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Ryder identified one of these tools as the Dronebuster, a newer piece of counter-drone tech that "employs non-kinetic means to interrupt drone signals" and affects the aircraft's ability to operate. Picatinny did not confirm any of the specific systems it is obtaining but said that it is "strengthening its counter-UAS capabilities to detect and mitigate drone incursions." BI was unable to reach Naval Weapons Station Earle.

The Dronebuster device is a hand-held electronic warfare system developed by the American company Flex Force. When a user points the lightweight device that first came online in 2016 at a drone, the weapon emits a signal that cuts the connection between the drone and its operator. It's in use with various military services.

The US Army trains service members to counter drones using the Dronebuster in tandem with a Smart Shooter system — a rifle with a special optic that tracks the drone, calculates its trajectory, and tells the user when they have a good chance of hitting it with a bullet. BI observed this training firsthand at the Joint C-sUAS (Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft System) University, or JCU, which is a new US Army initiative based at Fort Sill.

Beyond the US military, security personnel and first responders can also use the Dronebuster as a portable jammer system when facing a threat. The radio frequency jammer has evolved over the years, becoming several times more powerful than the earlier models and more rugged for a range of counter-drone operations.

Ryder said that the device is "a methodology that we have that is able to essentially bring drones down non-kinetically should we need to do that."

For the military, maintaining a robust counter-drone capability is becoming essential as drone technology becomes more prolific. The low cost of these systems makes them readily available for hobbyists and malign actors alike. Terrorists and insurgencies have weaponized small drones in Middle East combat, and in the Ukraine war, cheap, off-the-shelf hobby-style drones easily bought for a few hundred dollars are engaging in everything from surveillance to precision strike.

Drone activity over and around US bases has long been an issue for the military and is not limited to the New Jersey and Ohio incidents.

In recent weeks, suspected drones have also been spotted at US bases overseas. Such activity presents a growing problem for the military, as drones can spy on its assets, like aircraft, or hazard its operations. As drone usage continues to proliferate, the Pentagon is seeking out ways to better its approach to countering unmanned systems.

"I think we've all recognized the fact that unmanned systems are here to stay," Ryder said this week. "They're a part of modern warfare, and whether it's here in the homeland or overseas, we want to make sure that we're doing due diligence to protect our forces and protect our equities from a national security standpoint."

It can be a challenge to respond stateside, though.

"When we're here in the homeland, the authorities that the US military has to detect and track these kinds of things is much different than it would be if we were in a combat zone. In other words, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that we can employ outside the United States are much different, for very good reasons," Ryder said.

The drone activity at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle comes amid a flurry of reported drone sightings across the East Coast over the past few weeks. A range of federal agencies have determined that the sightings are not nefarious, despite speculation to the contrary, and include commercial drones, hobbyist drones, law enforcement drones, manned aircraft, helicopters, and even stars.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Monday that "we have not identified anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast." The FBI, Homeland Security, and Department of Defense have argued the same.

• New satellite images show activity at Russia's Hmeimim Air Base in Syria.
• The images appear to show the movement of military equipment over the past few days.
• Russia's long-held military footprint in Syria has been in question since the Assad regime collapsed.

Newly captured satellite imagery seems to show the Russians moving military equipment out of a strategic airbase in Syria as its long-standing presence in the country remains in limbo.

The images, captured by BlackSky and obtained by Business Insider, show new activity at the Hmeimim Air Base over the past few days and suggest that Russia is scaling down its military footprint in Syria following the shocking collapse of the Assad regime earlier this month.

An intelligence analyst familiar with the satellite imagery identified four Russian Il-76 strategic cargo planes — one of which is being loaded up with equipment — and a Yak-40 regional jet parked on the eastern flight line at Hmeimim on Sunday. Four S-400 surface-to-air missile launchers can be seen on the southern end of the apron.

The analyst also spotted three An-32 transport aircraft parked in the northwest corner of the airbase, a heavy equipment staging area on the western apron, and a disassembled Ka-52 attack helicopter being prepared for transport.

An image captured on Tuesday shows that much of the heavy equipment, including three of the S-400 launchers, is now missing from the base. One of the AN-32s is also gone, while a single AN-124 heavy transport aircraft is present.

The aircraft and equipment spotted in images on Sunday and Tuesday differ slightly from what was seen in satellite imagery last week. The analyst said three Il-76s, three An-32s, one Yak-40, and two S-400 launchers were present at the base on Friday. Two An-124s, one being loaded with cargo, could also be seen there.

The recent developments at Hmeimim appear to highlight a significant uptick in activity at the base compared to a week ago, just two days after rebel forces captured Damascus and ousted Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar Assad.

The fall of the regime brought new uncertainty for Russia's military footprint at Hmeimim and Tartus, a nearby naval facility on the Mediterranean Sea that has been emptied of warships.

Although there is evidence of Russia withdrawing some of its assets from Syria, it remains unclear at this time to what extent it may be pulling back and whether it is permanent or temporary. While some assets may be returning to Russia, others may simply be being relocated to nearby Tartus. Regardless, a drawdown of sorts appears to be underway.

Russia long supported Assad in Syria's devastating civil war, but the rebels now have the upper hand; they control the province where Hmeimim and Tartus are located. The Kremlin is said to be engaging in efforts to ensure the security of its bases with the new Syrian leadership.

The European Union's top diplomat said on Monday that some of the bloc's foreign ministers believe Russia's expulsion from Syria should be a condition for the country's new leadership because Moscow uses its bases there to facilitate activities to the south and in Africa.

"This is definitely of the worry of European security as well," Kaja Kallas, the high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, told reporters this week. "We will raise this issue with the leadership when we have the meetings on different levels."

The US and Ukraine have both confirmed the movement of Russian forces out of Syria, though the two governments have provided varying assessments on the scale of the withdrawal.

Ukraine's military intelligence agency said Monday that Russia was pulling troops from locations around Syria and consolidating them at Hmeimim and Tartus, "control over which the Kremlin seeks and hopes to maintain."

The HUR said that Moscow was using transport aircraft, including the Il-76 and An-124, to shuttle troops, weapons, and military equipment from Syria to Russia. Kyiv's aircraft identification is consistent with the planes spotted in satellite imagery of Hmeimim, although Business Insider could not independently confirm the reported activity.

The Kremlin relies heavily on Hmeimim and Tartus to project power across the region. Hmeimim is used to move military forces in and out of Africa, while Tartus is Russia's main naval base overseas and provides the country with crucial access to a warm-water port. Losing access to both these bases, which are strategically valuable, would be a major setback for Moscow.

• A US base briefly closed its airspace heading into the weekend due to heavy nearby drone activity.
• It's the latest military installation to report drone sightings nearby.
• The sightings reflect a growing challenge, but responding to the drone issue isn't easy.

A US military base in Ohio briefly closed its airspace heading into the weekend after small drones were spotted in the area, officials confirmed to Business Insider on Monday.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is the latest military installation to report drone activity in its vicinity, though, unlike some of the others, it actually interfered with operations. The development, like incidents at civilian airfields, speaks to a growing problem: a proliferation of drones that can spy on military bases or hazard their operations.

Drones, especially small quadcopters, can be easily purchased for a few hundred dollars, and as the war in Ukraine has shown, they are surprisingly versatile. In the hands of an extremist, spy or even a careless enthusiast, these systems pose a threat the Defense Department is scrambling to counter as it increasingly factors them into day-to-day operations, from battle to base security.

Drone sightings near US military bases

Within the past few weeks, there have been multiple confirmed drone sightings near two military installations in New Jersey, as well as reports of drones near US Coast Guard operations and critical infrastructure. The Department of Defense hasn't expressed great concern, saying it doesn't have evidence the drones are a threat, but it has expressed frustration over this activity. One official called the activity "irresponsible."

The development follows an unusual recent trend, with suspected drones being spotted up and down the US East Coast. In recent years, there has also been a growing trend of drone sightings and unidentified aerial phenomena near American bases, both at home and abroad.

At Wright-Patterson, small drone activity was detected around the base on Friday, leading the airfield management team to close the airspace into early Saturday over "aviation safety concerns," an Air Force spokesperson told BI.

Wright-Patterson hosts the Air Force Research Laboratory, the 655th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing, and the 445th Airlift Wing, as well as other units. The base and its two lengthy runways make it a key installation for the US military.

The Air Force spokesperson said that, in general, depending on the facility, there could be many military aircraft taking off and landing. Some of the sites also host sensitive assets, making it a risk for operators to fly small drones in the vicinity. Drones don't have to be malign to be a problem.

"To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities, or assets," Bob Purtiman, the chief of public affairs for Wright-Patterson, told BI.

"We are taking all appropriate measures to safeguard Wright-Patterson and its residents. Our units continue to monitor the airspace and are working with local authorities to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities, and assets," he added.

The War Zone, a military news site, first reported on the drone incursions at Wright-Patterson, sharing an air traffic controller recording that reported "heavy" drone activity.

The incident at Wright-Patterson followed recent drone sightings at other military installations in New Jersey: Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle. These came amid a string of reported drone activity along the East Coast over the past month.

A growing problem

A Joint Staff spokesperson told reporters on Saturday the New Jersey sightings are "not a new issue for us. We've had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now."

There have been a number of sightings of suspected drones and other unidentified flying objects around important military installations in recent years. Just last week, for instance, drones were reportedly spotted above an American base in Germany. Some have been spotted near US operations in the UK, as well as a base in Virginia, among other stateside locations.

The threat levels vary. Drones are readily available to both malign actors and harmless hobbyists alike. The challenge is that it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish which it is, and drones lower the barrier for entry on aerial surveillance and more.

"This has become a huge problem for both military and civilian airfields and will get worse as drone usage proliferates further," Mark Cancian, a defense expert and retired US Marine Corps colonel, told BI. "It certainly has national security implications as many drones fly over sensitive military facilities like Wright-Patterson."

With drones flying near civilian airports, Cancian, now a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that such activity could be a safety hazard and interfere with the flow of operations. This can be a huge disruption at a major airport with nationwide effects.

Amid the recent East Coast drone drama, runway operations at a New York airport were briefly shut down. And over the weekend, there was also a "hazardous drone operation" incident near a Boston airport.

"For military airfields, the greater concern is espionage and improper disclosure of sensitive information," Cancian said, but "safety and disruption of operations are also important."

The Pentagon recognizes the risks posed by growing drone usage and is seeking out ways to better its approach to counter unmanned systems, as a new counter-drone strategy shows.

"If a determination is made that unauthorized drones are conducting any malign or malicious activity," Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Monday, "commanders are authorized to take appropriate action to mitigate and counter these unmanned systems."

But in the US, as the Joint Staff spokesperson said, the military is limited in what it can do beyond the walls of its bases. It doesn't enjoy the same freedom of operation in the US that it has at some bases overseas. It can't simply open fire, especially near civilian areas. Ryder indicated something has to be a "clear and present danger" before it comes to that.

Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security also said during Saturday's call that they are similarly limited in their ability to respond to reported drone sightings. They urged Congress to pass legislation that would expand federal agencies' counter-drone authorities.

"The challenge for airspace management is how to deter or defeat such incursions without endangering the surrounding civilian communities or legitimate air traffic. That rules out everything kinetic," Cancian said.

"Electronic interference or, in extremis, some laser system might be the solution. Those are just now being fielded in the military," he added. "It would be years before they are widely available to military and civilian facilities."

• Drone sightings have been reported up and down the eastern US in recent weeks.
• Officials say they're investigating the mysterious aircraft — many of which have actually been crewed aircraft.
• But federal agencies stress that they need more authority to deal with the drone threat.

Federal agencies are arguing they need more authority so they can better deal with drones amid the surge in unexplained drone sightings that have caused confusion throughout the eastern US in recent weeks.

Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials said on Saturday that they are limited right now in how they can respond to the reported drone sightings that have stretched from Maryland to Massachusetts since mid-November.

Much of the mystery has centered on New Jersey, where drones have been reported around military facilities and critical infrastructure sites. The Biden administration has stressed that these drones are not the work of a foreign adversary and do not appear to be a public safety threat. A White House spokesperson said many of the suspected drones are believed to be crewed aircraft that are operating lawfully.

"While there is no known malicious activity occurring in New Jersey right now, the reported sightings there do highlight a gap in our current authorities," a DHS official said during a weekend background call with reporters.

The official said that they urged Congress "to pass our important counter-UAS legislation that will extend and expand our existing counter-drone authorities."

That legislation would leave DHS "better equipped to identify and mitigate any potential threats at airports or other critical infrastructure" but also provide state and local authorities with" the tools that they need to respond to such threats," the official added.

An FBI official agreed with that argument and said that any investigation into the drones is "limited in scope." They said there is pending legislation that, if lawmakers passed it, would expand the agency's legal authority regarding counter-drone tools and technologies.

The official said that the legislation would "help us quickly identify or quickly mitigate some of the threats."

A bipartisan bill, the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act, sponsored by Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, would expand federal agencies' oversight of drones.

Federal law enforcement officials told House lawmakers at a hearing this week that the current legal authorities they are working with aren't enough to deal with the threat that drones pose.

These restrictions are felt by the military as well, as US Northern Command said earlier that it was aware of reports of unauthorized drone flights near two military installations in New Jersey: the Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.

A Department of Defense official said the military is limited in what it can do off-base and needs to coordinate with local and federal law enforcement to take any action.

"We're also significantly restricted — and rightfully so, in fact, prohibited — from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance here in the homeland," the official said during the call with reporters on Saturday.

"We don't have the same capabilities and the same methods that we would employ in other locations outside of the homeland to determine points of origin and identify very quickly where these operators are located and then respond to that location," the official added. "We just can't do that here in the homeland."

The recent sightings follow similar incidents over the past year, with drones spotted near sensitive military sites in the US and overseas. Recognizing it has a drone issue, the Pentagon recently announced a new counter-drone strategy as it looks to uncover better ways to defeat the threat.

While the ongoing East Coast "mystery drone" saga has confused civilians and officials alike, federal agencies say many of the reported sightings are just crewed aircraft that are being misidentified as drones. However, the FBI has acknowledged that while only a small percentage of the tips it received ended up warranting further investigation, there is definitely some unexplained drone activity above New Jersey.

"We're doing our best to find the origin of those drone activities," the FBI official said. "But I think there has been a slight overreaction."

• Dozens of unidentified aircraft have been spotted over military bases, airports, and cities in the US.
• The Pentagon said Monday that DoD has "no evidence" the drone sightings pose a threat.
• A White House spokesperson said the sightings include a mix of commercial, hobbyist, and law enforcement drones.

US officials said on Monday that the mystery drones flying over US military bases, airports, and cities don't pose a threat.

On Monday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that more than 5,000 drone sightings have been reported in recent weeks, but only about 100 required further investigation.

He said the sightings have included a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as some crewed aircraft and stars mistaken for drones.

The House Intelligence Committee was expected to receive a classified briefing on Tuesday over the issue, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

The drones have been seen flying at night over New Jersey and other East Coast states since mid-November, sparking concern and speculation from officials and citizens.

Kirby told reporters that "our assessment at this stage is that the activity is lawful and legal,"

The federal government has sent advanced technology and additional personnel to assist local authorities and state officials investigating the sightings, Kirby said.

He stressed that the government does not believe the drones represent a threat to national security.

"There are more than one million drones lawfully registered with the FAA here in the US and there are thousands of commercial hobbyists and law enforcement drones that are lawfully in the sky on any given day," Kirby said.

Kirby spoke to reporters on Monday after the Pentagon indicated, drawing an analogy to vehicles that approach the base, it wouldn't shoot at something unless it presented as a "clear and present danger."

The Department of Homeland Security echoed Kirby's statement in a post to X late on Monday.

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the Defense Department has "no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus."

"We'll continue to do everything possible to investigate reports of concerning activity," he told reporters Monday. "But given how many drones are lawfully in our skies every day, we need to be careful to avoid assuming malintent or malicious behavior."

President-elect Donald Trump accused the US government on Monday of withholding information about the drones.

"The government knows what is happening," he said during public remarks at Mar-a-Lago. "And for some reason, they don't want to comment. I think they'd be better off saying what it is. Our military knows, and our president knows, and for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense."

"Something strange is going on," Trump said of the recent developments. "For some reason, they don't want to tell the people."

Mayors of 21 towns in New Jersey sent a letter Monday to the state's governor, Phil Murphy, demanding more transparency.

"Despite inquiries made to relevant authorities, we have yet to receive satisfactory answers about the purpose, operators, or safety protocols governing these flights," the letter says.

Where have residents reported seeing drones and unidentified aircraft?

Residents and officials have reported spotting unidentified aircraft, believed to be drones, flying above New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio in recent weeks.

Murphy, the New Jersey governor, said late Monday that he had received a briefing from FBI Newark on their investigation.

"We are ready to assist the federal government in getting to the bottom of this," he added.

Murphy told reporters on Monday that some of the suspected drones spotted over his state are "very sophisticated" and can "go dark" the "minute you get eyes on them." Others have described the flying objects as bigger than normal hobby-style drones and able to avoid detection.

"This is something we're taking deadly seriously and we've gotten good cooperation out of the feds, but we need more," Murphy said.

Drones have been spotted near Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, both military bases in New Jersey, and an airport in New York serving the public and the military.

However, officials have stressed such sightings are not necessarily unusual.

"This is not a new issue for us. We've had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now," the spokesperson for the Joint Staff said Saturday. "It's something that we routinely respond to in each and every case when reporting is cited."

There have also been reports of suspected drones following a US Coast Guard vessel, as well as local police statements on the presence of unidentified aircraft near critical infrastructure.

US Northern Command, which is responsible for overseeing the protection of the US homeland, said over the weekend it was "aware and monitoring the reports of unauthorized drone flights in the vicinity of military installations in New Jersey."

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio acknowledged that drone activity near the base led officials there to close its airspace for several hours late Friday night and into Saturday.

A recording of a controller from the Wright-Patterson air traffic control tower that was shared by The War Zone, which first reported the incursions, urges an aircraft to "use extreme caution for heavy UAS movement on the base."

What are officials saying about these mystery drones?

Trump said Friday on Truth Social that there are mystery drones being sighted all over the country. "Can this really be happening without our government's knowledge," he wrote. "I don't think so!"

He suggested that they be shot down. Other officials have expressed concern about shooting them down due to the threat to local populations of falling debris. Neither kinetic nor electronic warfare methods are particularly ideal near civilian areas.

New Jersey State Assemblyman Brian Bergen told CNN News Central's Sara Sidner on Monday that "we shouldn't be shooting things down right now."

"Look, I was an attack helicopter pilot in the US Army. I flew overseas. I have seen bullets fly through the sky. It's not a great idea to do over the United States," he said. "Things should not be shot out of the sky. That is a very dangerous thing to do."

The FBI and New Jersey State Police issued a joint statement on Monday warning of "a concern with people possibly firing weapons at what they believe to be a UAS," as well as increased incidences of pilots being dazzled by lasers.

There could be "deadly consequences" of these actions, they said.

Amid the confusion on the drones, there has been a lot of speculation, including from officials.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey said on Fox News last Wednesday that the drones came from an Iranian "mothership" off the East Coast of the United States, citing "very high sources."

Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh rejected the congressman's claim in a press conference later that day, saying "there is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there's no so-called mothership launching drones toward the United States."

Singh said that the Pentagon has no evidence that the reported drone sightings are the work of a foreign adversary. While Iran does have vessels that can carry drones, they were spotted off its southern coast as recently as Thursday — debunking Van Drew's claims.

He doubled down on Thursday, saying the government isn't telling the truth. The congressman said it could be another ship belonging to another foe. A Department of Homeland Security official said Saturday that there is no evidence of any foreign-based involvement in sending drones ashore from vessels in the area.

"We're doing our best to find the origin of those drone activities," an FBI official told reporters Saturday. "But I think there has been a slight overreaction."

Local officials, meanwhile, have been calling for additional information.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Saturday called for increased federal oversight of drones and said runways at Stewart International Airport in Orange County were shut down for an hour due to unidentified drone activity. "This has gone too far," she said.

Hochul called on Congress to strengthen the Federal Aviation Administration's oversight of drones and provide counter-unmanned aircraft equipment to local law enforcement. On Sunday, she posted to social media that the federal government was sending a "drone detection system" to her state.

Previous unidentified flying objects and drone sightings

There have been a number of sightings of suspected drones and other unusual flying objects over or around military installations in recent years.

In February 2023, for example, the United States shot down three unidentified objects flying over American airspace over the course of three days. The incidents were part of a saga that followed the US takedown of a spy balloon off the coast of North Carolina the government said came from China.

As for drone activity, The Wall Street Journal reported in October that drones had been spotted over a military base in Virginia and the Energy Department's Nevada National Security Site the year prior. Retired US Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, until March of this year the head of Air Combat Command, said that he learned about the sightings in December 2023, when officials at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia reported seeing dozens of drones flying over the base at night. It's unclear who was behind those incidents.

While the federal government says that the latest sightings are not the work of adversaries or a public security threat, multiple recent incidents near bases have raised national security concerns.

For instance, federal authorities on Monday charged a Chinese citizen residing in California, Yinpiao Zhou, with failure to register a non-transportation aircraft and violation of national defense airspace. The Justice Department accused Zhou of using a drone to photograph Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County on November 30.

Police arrested Zhou at the San Francisco International Airport before he boarded a China-bound flight.

And another man, Fengyun Shi, a Chinese national, was sentenced to six months in federal prison in October for photographing US Navy ships with a drone in Virginia. Fengyun, a student at the University of Minnesota, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of unauthorized use of aircraft for the unlawful photographing of a designated installation.

The FBI official who spoke to reporters on Saturday said of the most recent sightings: "We are doing everything we can, alongside our partners, to understand what is happening and whether or not there is more nefarious activity that we need to explore."

• F-35 combat operations have often been against terrorist and militant targets.
• Israel used the fighter jet in widespread strikes against Iran in late October.
• The success of that operation underscores the F-35's ability to battle higher-level threats.

F-35 stealth fighters have been flying combat missions in the Middle East for years now, though largely in permissive airspace against lower-level targets. The jet's recent victory against Iran's air defenses, however, highlights its ability to combat higher-level threats.

Britain's top military officer shared last week that when Israel used its fifth-generation F-35s to execute retaliatory strikes against Iran in late October, it wiped out nearly all of Tehran's air defenses and hammered its missile production sites.

The suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses through penetrating strikes — that is the kind of higher-level mission for which the jet was made.

The F-35 has historically been used against weaker targets with either limited or nonexistent air defenses. Israeli F-35s have previously battled Syrian surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft batteries and engaged in strikes on Iranian targets, but the expensive fighter jet has largely been employed against non-state actors like ISIS, the Taliban, and the Houthis.

Israel's recent operation against Iran, which fielded very capable Russian-made surface-to-air missile systems, emphasizes how the jet is capable of engaging in combat at a higher level.

Mark Gunzinger, a retired US Air Force colonel who flew the B-52 Stratofortress bomber, told Business Insider that without the F-35, it would've probably been "a far more risky mission."

The 'power' of the F-35

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is an advanced single-engine, multi-role strike stealth fighter jet made by American defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Multiple variants of the aircraft are in use by several countries, including Israel.

Michael Bohnert, a licensed engineer at the RAND Corporation, said that the F-35 was designed to replace existing fighter jets like the F-117, F-16, and F/A-18 with increased stealth, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), and other capabilities.

"The F-35 is a great plane conceived out of the 1990s Pax Americana," Bohnert told BI.

Israel, which operates a subvariant of the F-35A model designed for air force operations, was the first to fly the fighter jet in combat in 2018. The US military has since used it in missions across the Middle East.

The F-35 fighter faced probably its most daring operation in late October, when Israel struck Iran in response to Tehran's huge missile attack at the start of the month.

"Israel used more than 100 aircraft, carrying fewer than 100 munitions, and with no aircraft getting within 100 miles of the target in the first wave, and that took down nearly the entirety of Iran's air-defense system," said Adm. Tony Radakin, the UK's chief of defense staff.

Radakin, speaking in London at a December 4 lecture hosted by the Royal United Services Institute, said Israel demonstrated "the power" of jet and the "disproportionate advantage of modern ways of fighting" in its strikes against Iran.

His remarks appeared to mark the first confirmation from a Western government that Israel used the fifth-generation aircraft in the strikes. It was reported shortly after the operation that Israel flew its F-35s and fired air-launched ballistic missiles.

Radakin's praise of the F-35 came after Elon Musk criticized the jet and dismissed its stealth capabilities. The aircraft is the Pentagon's most expensive weapons program, but it is widely considered a key warfighting capability for US allies and partners.

The F-35 is not just a fighter jet; it also acts as a bomber with penetrating ISR capabilities, a battlespace command and control platform, and an electronic warfare aircraft.

"The F-35's capabilities are not a theory — they're a reality," said Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, "and now they're proven in combat against Russian-imported S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries that have been touted as the answer to stealth."

Bohnert said the F-35 "did exactly what it was designed to do" against Iran.

In the aftermath of the strikes on Iran, an Israeli security official told BI that the hits "accurately targeted" Iran's radar and air-defense systems, putting the country at a "disadvantage."

While the F-35 demonstrated its combat prowess against Iran, the jet would face a tougher fight in a conflict between Western powers and Russia or China, which field more advanced air-defense systems and have their own fifth-generation aircraft.

And the F-35 isn't without its own challenges. The program faces rising costs and readiness issues. Mission capable rates are declining, even as program costs go up. Bohnert said it will be important to increase the aircraft's maintenance and logistics capacity for any higher-end conflict.

Still, the F-35 is demonstrating its combat potential today, as Radakin and others have said. And the fighter jet's advanced combat capabilities are not lost on Congress, where House lawmakers in their 2025 fiscal year defense spending bill called for more F-35s than what the Pentagon initially requested.

The jet's development came with more than its fair share of difficulties, but, Gunzinger said, the "F-35s today are operational and ready for the fight."

• In new satellite imagery, Russia's military appears to be packing up equipment at a key airbase in Syria.
• The images show transport aircraft ready to load cargo at the Hmeimim Air Base on Friday.
• Russia's military footprint in Syria fell into uncertainty after rebel forces ousted Bashar Assad.

Russia appears to be packing up military equipment at one of its bases in Syria, new satellite images show. They are the latest indication that Moscow is scaling down, if not withdrawing, its footprint from the country following the stunning collapse of the Assad regime.

Images captured Friday by Maxar Technologies and obtained by Business Insider show two An-124 heavy transport aircraft at Russia's Hmeimim Air Base. The front of the planes are lifted, indicating that they are ready to load equipment or cargo.

In another image of the Hmeimim base, a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter is seen being taken apart and likely prepared for transport, according to Maxar. The company said elements of an S-400 air-defense unit are also being prepared for departure from the weapon's previous deployment site near the coastal city of Latakia.

Additional imagery collected Friday shows Russia's warships are still missing from its base in Tartus, a port city south of Hmeimim on the Mediterranean Sea. Several frigates, replenishment oilers, and a submarine could be seen at the facility earlier in the month, but they were all gone by Monday.

Some of the vessels have been spotted several miles off the coast. It's unclear whether the warships will return to Tartus; their presence at sea could be for safety reasons rather than a full evacuation.

The US has not confirmed any major Russian military withdrawal from Syria but has pointed out that some forces are, in fact, departing.

"What we're seeing is a consolidation of assets, including some Russian forces leaving Syria," Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters Wednesday. "What they're doing with their facilities and bases, that's for them to speak to."

Analysts, likewise, have called attention to the latest activity.

"A larger number of Russian transport aircraft can now be seen at Khmeimim," Michael Kofman, a Russia expert and senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a social media post.

"The S-400 battery is packing up for transport. While tactical aviation is still there, RF appears to be consolidating at Khmeimim and Tartus," he said. "In short, a withdrawal is under way."

Even if Russia is moving forces out of its bases in Syria, it may only be a partial military withdrawal and not a complete evacuation.

The new satellite imagery comes a day after Ukraine's military intelligence agency, known as the HUR, said Moscow was evacuating its bases in Syria and has been flying multiple military transport aircraft between Hmeimim and Russia every day.

BI was unable to independently verify Kyiv's assessment.

Russia's military presence in Syria became tenuous last weekend as rebel forces captured Damascus and ousted Bashar Assad, the country's longtime dictator. Assad has since fled to Moscow with his family.

Russia supported Assad in Syria's civil war for years, in return securing a foothold in the country, but the rebels now have the upper hand. They control the province where Tartus and Hmeimim are located. The Kremlin is engaging in efforts to ensure the security of its facilities with the new Syrian leadership, but it's unclear if any arrangements are official.

Losing both Tartus and Hmeimim would be a setback for the Kremlin, which relies heavily on the bases to project its power across the region and beyond. Tartus is Russia's main naval base overseas, providing the country with critical access to a warm-water port. Moscow uses Hmeimim to move military forces in and out of Africa. That makes these bases strategically valuable.

War analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, wrote on Thursday that Russia "is very likely hesitant to completely evacuate all military assets from Syria in the event that it can establish a relationship with Syrian opposition forces and the transitional government and continue to ensure the security of its basing and personnel in Syria."

• Mysterious aircraft sightings have been reported around New Jersey lately.
• The incidents have fueled theories, including that Iran may have launched the systems from a ship.
• Iran does have drone-carrying vessels, but satellite images show they're far from the US right now.

Newly captured satellite imagery shows that Iran's drone carriers are off its southern coast, thousands of miles away from the eastern United States.

The images back up the Pentagon's refutation of a New Jersey lawmaker who suggested that one of the Iranian ships was operating nearby and responsible for the rash of reported drone sightings in the congressman's state lately.

An image captured on Thursday by Maxar Technologies, a commercial satellite-imagery operation, and obtained by Business Insider shows three Iranian vessels that were modified to carry drones in the Persian Gulf off the southern coast of Iran.

Iran's drone ships aren't anywhere near the US. There's been significant hysteria surrounding developments in New Jersey, with some misidentifying crewed aircraft as drones. That doesn't, however, mean the US doesn't have a drone problem.

The military has been increasingly concerned about the threat posed by drones, which lower the barrier to entry for surveillance and attack operations, as has been seen in global conflicts and a range of incidents in the US.

The New Jersey sightings

Since mid-November, dozens of suspected drones have been spotted at night flying over New Jersey, including near several military installations, raising concern among civilians and state officials and drawing comparisons to similar incidents in other areas.

US Northern Command said it was "aware and monitoring the reports of unauthorized drone flights in the vicinity of military installations in New Jersey," including near the Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.

A drone swarm was also observed near a US Coast Guard vessel off the Jersey coast, and local police in the state have also detailed incidents around critical infrastructure such as water reservoirs and train stations.

The Pentagon has assessed that the drones don't appear to be the work of a foreign adversary or entity, but there doesn't yet appear to be any explanation for the mysterious incidents.

John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, said the US had "no evidence" that the reported drone sightings were a national security or public safety threat. He added that the government hadn't been able to confirm the reported visual sightings and that some suspected drones were crewed aircraft operating lawfully.

Amid the confusion about the drones, which have been described as bigger than hobbyist drones and able to avoid detection, a theory about the reported drones emerged from Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who, citing "very high sources," said these drones were linked to an Iranian mothership.

"Iran launched a mothership, probably about a month ago, that contains these drones," the Republican congressman told Fox News on Wednesday, adding that "it's off the east coast of the United States of America." He said that "they've launched drones."

The Pentagon challenged that theory, saying that "there is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there's no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States."

Iranian drone carriers

Iran has turned several container ships into militarized drone carriers in recent years. Satellite imagery disclosed that the newest of the vessels, the Shahid Bagheri, had left its berth for the first time by the end of November. There was some speculation the ship was off to sea trials.

Open-source intelligence accounts tracked these ships to Iranian coastal waters as recently as Wednesday. The new satellite images BI obtained show the vessels were still there as of Thursday, contradicting Van Drew's claims.

He doubled down on Thursday, saying drones could have been launched from hundreds of miles out at sea. The congressman stressed that the drones could be from another adversarial country such as China.

"Here's the deal," Van Drews said. "They don't know what it is. They don't know what it's about. They haven't taken one down to analyze it. They have no idea where it came from."

"We are not being told the truth," he said.

The congressman has said the drones should be shot down. There are real challenges, though, to employing some sort of kinetic or electronic-warfare countermeasures in civilian areas. The military has been grappling with this issue.

The military's drone problem

The reported New Jersey incidents aren't a new phenomenon. They follow other mysterious drone sightings, some around sensitive military sites in the US and overseas, such as Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and RAF Lakenheath in the UK, which hosts American forces and aircraft.

Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of Northcom and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in October that there had been hundreds of drones reported flying over US military installations in recent years.

The general, according to reports on the roundtable discussion, said many might be hobbyists, but he also said the drone threat and the need to counter it were "growing faster" than the military could react to from a policy and procedure standpoint.

The Pentagon recently announced a new counter-drone strategy to address the growing threat posed by uncrewed systems operating over American soil and abroad to US installations and troops. The priority is figuring out better ways to defeat the threat.

"The Department is mitigating the potential negative effects of unmanned systems on US forces, assets, and installations — at home and abroad. A critical portion of our efforts, particularly in the near-term, comes from improving our defenses, with an emphasis on detection as well as active and passive defenses. The Department will ensure our forces and priority installations have protection," the Pentagon said in a fact sheet.

While US officials have said there's no clear link between the New Jersey incidents and America's adversaries right now, the developments still highlight concerns over the national security implications of drone incursions.

Just this week, for instance, federal investigators said a Chinese citizen residing in the US was arrested while preparing to board a China-bound flight after being accused of flying a drone and taking photos of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

• The US shot down a ballistic missile for the first time from Guam in a major test this week.
• The event comes as the Pentagon increasingly looks to protect key military infrastructure on Guam.
• Guam would almost certainly be a target in a war with China, which has missiles that can reach the island.

The US military shot down a ballistic missile for the first time from Guam this week, marking a significant step toward strengthening defenses on the Pacific island well within reach of China's long-range weapons.

The US Missile Defense Agency said on Tuesday that during the FEM-02 test, it "successfully conducted a live intercept of a ballistic missile target."

The test involved launching a top interceptor munition, the RIM-161 Standard Missile-3 Block IIA, jointly developed by RTX and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, from the Aegis Guam System, an advanced air-defense battery. The SM-3, which costs nearly $30 million, then struck an air-dropped medium-range ballistic missile target off the coast from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base.

The Aegis Guam System, made by defense contractor Lockheed Martin, consists of an integrated AN/TPY-6 and vertical launch system based on the Mark 41 shipborne missile system. American warships, such as destroyers and cruisers, use these vertical launch systems to fire missiles and defend against incoming threats, as they have been doing for over a year in Middle East conflicts.

Lockheed said in a statement that the test gives the Department of Defense a better understanding of the Aegis Guam System's ability to counter missiles. It said the AGS could help "with pacing the Indo-Pacific threats." The Pentagon routinely characterizes China as its "pacing challenge."

Rear Adm. Greg Huffman, the commander of Joint Task Force-Micronesia, a senior command established earlier this year, hailed the missile test as "a critical milestone in the defense of Guam and the region."

The admiral said that "it confirmed our ability to detect, track, and engage a target missile in flight, increasing our readiness to defend against evolving adversary threats."

The newest test, the MDA said, is a step toward the future Guam Defense System; the agency explained that "the future is focused on defending Guam and protecting forces from any potential regional missile threats." As part of the US Pacific Deterrence Initiative, the US is planning to dramatically bolster Guam's defenses over the coming years.

Defending US forces from Chinese missiles

The intercept test comes as the Pentagon seeks ways to better protect important military infrastructure on Guam from China's expanding arsenal of ballistic missiles. DoD has repeatedly highlighted the Chinese missile threat in its annual China military power reports, yet there are concerns about readiness to confront the threat.

Some US lawmakers warned earlier this year that the US is unprepared for a potential Chinese missile strike on bases in the Indo-Pacific, highlighting the need for additional active and passive defenses.

The military installations on Guam routinely host American bombers and warships on rotational visits, as well as communications and surveillance operations, making the small island and its defense essential to US national security interests in the region. Chinese military planners also know the island's value.

China's People's Liberation Army Rocket Force boasts thousands of missiles, including the DF-26, a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile. The DF-26 is nicknamed the "Guam Express" because it can reach US forces on the island, some 2,500 miles from Beijing. It also has an anti-ship role, leading it to it sometimes being described as a "carrier killer." The Chinese military is also developing the DF-27 hypersonic missile expected to also be able to range Guam.

Chinese ballistic missiles have not been tested in combat, but conflict experts say that the US could face a threat unlike anything it's seen before in a conflict with Beijing. This potential scenario has underscored a need for more robust air defenses, and this effort is underway in Guam, which would be a key target.

"Within the context of homeland defense, a top priority for the Department of Defense, Guam is also a strategic location for sustaining and maintaining United States military presence, deterring adversaries, responding to crises, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region," the MDA said in a statement. There's long been a recognition that Guam needs more defenses. This test moves that forward.

• The sudden collapse of the Assad regime has raised questions about Russia's future in Syria.
• Russia has long enjoyed a military footprint at two key bases in the country.
• New satellite images show what Moscow's warships and aircraft are doing now.

Newly captured satellite imagery shows what the Russian military in Syria is doing following the collapse of the Assad regime.

The images taken this week by Maxar Technologies and obtained by Business Insider show Russian aircraft are still present at the Khmeimim airbase, but Moscow's warships are no longer stationed at its nearby naval facility in Tartus.

Russia supported Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar Assad, in his brutal civil war. But Moscow's military footprint in the country fell into uncertainty over the weekend after rebel forces captured Damascus and ousted Assad following a rapid offensive that lasted just days. Assad has since fled to Moscow.

The Kremlin relies heavily on its bases in Syria to project its power, and losing them would be a major setback, not something that Russia needs amid its war in Ukraine. Tartus is Russia's main naval base abroad, and it provides the country with crucial access to a warm-water port. Meanwhile, Moscow uses Khmeimim to move military forces in and out of Africa.

A satellite image captured on Monday shows Russian aircraft, helicopters, and military equipment at the Khmeimim airbase near the coastal city of Latakia. At the adjacent civilian Bassel Al-Assad International Airport, lots of activity was spotted.

It is unclear at this time if assets have already left and whether Russia will hold its position at this base.

Imagery captured on Tuesday shows Russia's warships are missing from its naval facility in Tartus, a port city located on the Mediterranean Sea. At least two frigates were spotted several miles off the coast.

Five Russian surface vessels — three frigates and two replenishment oilers — and a submarine were spotted at the Tartus base earlier in the week, but they had left the facility by Monday and were still gone the next day.

It's unclear if and when the warships will return to port; their presence out in the Mediterranean could be for safety reasons amid all the uncertainty on land rather than a full evacuation from Tartus.

The new imagery comes amid questions over Russia's future control of the Tartus and Khmeimim bases, which it has held for years. The country's defense ministry has not publicly signaled any major force posture changes.

Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that Moscow was withdrawing from its bases and evacuating its forces. BI was unable to confirm this independently. The ships are out of port, but the specific reason isn't certain.

The Kremlin said that it is taking steps to ensure the security of its bases through conversations with the new Syrian leadership as details of the transition government become clearer. Russian state media has said rebel forces control the province where its facilities are located.

If Russia is unable to retain access to these bases, it could spell trouble for Moscow in the region.

Conflict analysts with the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, wrote in an assessment on Monday that "the potential loss of Russian bases in Syria will have major implications for Russia's ability to project power in the Mediterranean Sea, threaten NATO's southern flank, and operate in Africa."