IRAN - Three US Navy-backed Saronic Corsair one-way attack sea drones struck Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base on Sunday, according to US Central Command. The operation marks the clearest sign yet that the US military has taken a page directly from Ukraine's maritime warfare playbook, using expendable, autonomous, suicide stealth drone boats to penetrate a heavily defended naval facility - much cheaper than a million-dollar missile. More broadly, the combat debut of suicide drone boats and AI-enabled loitering munitions shows how technologies once thought to be in the future - perhaps the 2030s - are being pulled forward into the present.

USA - Picket Defense Systems is developing a next-generation counter-drone turret designed to eliminate the delays conventional systems face when targeting fast-moving, one-way attack drones or incoming swarms. This is a major vulnerability confronting the US military and allied forces as drone threats proliferate across modern battlefields that Picket plans to solve. Its Inferno RTC uses a 54-barrel hemispherical array that continuously maintains 360-degree coverage, allowing the turret to select and fire the optimal barrel without needing to rotate and lock onto the target first. Picket appears to be targeting the civilian counter-drone market with a dual-use turret designed for critical infrastructure, data centers, energy facilities, airports, stadiums, and commercial ports. Our late-January note revealed a shocking reality that many high-value assets around the world remain largely vulnerable to low-cost kamikaze drones.

MIDDLE EAST - Early this Sunday, Iran launched its widest single-night attack of the war so far: mixed salvos of Zolfaghar ballistic missiles and drones simultaneously targeting US facilities in five countries – Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Prince Hassan air base in Jordan and Duqm harbour in Oman. As ever, damage reports vary, but it does seem that casualties were light. The significance, however, lies in one of the reasons the missiles got through. Many had reportedly been upgraded to make use of China’s encrypted BeiDou-3 satellite-navigation system. This made them significantly harder to stop and much more expensive to do so. This is because there are basically two ways to stop a missile which is coming at you, or at something you are trying to protect. “Hard kill” involves hitting the incoming threat with a projectile of some sort, usually an interceptor missile of your own, sometimes a cannon shell or a bullet. That’s spectacular, filmable and – in the case of interceptor missiles – typically very expensive. “Soft kill” defeats the enemy missile without touching it: jamming or spoofing its seeker head or navigation, or seducing it away from the target with active or passive decoys, flares or chaff.

UK - In a nondescript building in Wokingham, Berkshire, sit hundreds of people who have one of the most important jobs in the country. The control-room engineers at the National Energy System Operator (NESO) balance Britain’s electricity supply and demand. If they don’t get it right, the lights go out. Their job has changed drastically over the last decade. Gone are the days when operators could call up one of 40 gas or coal power plants to ask them to crank up the juice. Now operators deal with more than 3,000 generators, most of them wind and solar farms, which are uncontrollable and unpredictable. This is, in part, why I have been approached by multiple whistleblowers from within NESO who are concerned that it is getting harder to keep the lights on in Britain. Few things can be more serious. As we saw in last year’s Iberian blackout, without electricity, people die. That is not me being overly dramatic; it is a simple and tragic fact.

UK - Families are being encouraged to claim sickness benefits to help cover their energy bills, a government review has found. Last week, a report by Sir Stephen Timms, the social security minister, said Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) were not working “as intended” and predicted the cost of disability handouts would reach £41 billion a year at the end of the decade. The rise has been fuelled by a sharp rise in the number of recipients claiming PIPs for mental health conditions such as anxiety and ADHD.

USA - On Sunday night, armed sea drones were deployed for the first time in combat by the US military. Three unmanned boat-like vessels struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. The 24-foot Corsair drones were manufactured by Texas-based Saronic Technologies, which was founded in 2022 by a former member of the US Navy Seals, the elite special operations force. The attack is the latest demonstration of how rapidly the nature of warfare is changing, and the impact of a growing legion of start-up defence tech companies on global conflicts. Ukraine has been called the “first AI war” and the first large-scale drone war, with AI-powered drones and software playing a critical role in defending Ukraine against Russia. As tensions escalate between powerful nations, some of the world’s biggest investors and businesses are positioning themselves to profit from the shifting nature of war and the prospect of future conflicts, or even a Third World War.

USA - The US struck Iran's coastal defenses and missile sites on Wednesday after reimposing a naval blockade of its ports, while Iran threatened to shut off more regional energy exports, saying it was engaged in an "existential war" with America. The latest escalation comes days after a fragile truce collapsed, raising the specter of a return to full-scale war, though analysts generally see that as less likely. Hostilities have intensified since Iran said late on Saturday it had closed the Strait of Hormuz. Military operations are also keeping ships from transiting the vital artery, which carried about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war. The war has killed thousands of people and displaced millions, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, where conflict restarted between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

IRAN - Many believe Iran is currently operating with four overlapping centers of authority – and that each is vying for supreme power. Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been an autocratic theocracy, ruled with an iron fist by the supreme leader – first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini until his death in 1989, and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until he was killed on February 28, 2026, in an airstrike. Today’s Iran is no longer what it once was. What it has become is the subject of controversial interpretations. Some believe that Iran is no longer a republic of any kind but has morphed into a dictatorial, mafia-style oligarchy in military uniform. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), they maintain, exercises total control over political, economic, and strategic decisions while preserving a theocratic veneer for the purposes of internal and international legitimacy.

JAPAN - In a Departure From Post-WW2 Limits, Japan Begins To Build a New Centralized Intelligence Agency. Post-WW2 Japan has operated under significant limitations on its military (the Self-Defense Forces) and its intelligence agencies. But right now, the Asian island-nation is leaving these restraints in the past, as the new government tries to build a centralized intelligence agency – something that is only natural in most countries, but still controversial there. Japanese leaders have privately approached partners such as the United States, Australia, and Germany in recent months for advice on technology, staffing, and priorities, according to interviews with officials from Japan and elsewhere. Sanae Takaichi [Prime Minster of Japan] has reversed bans on weapons exports and is presiding over the ‘biggest defense buildup in the postwar era’.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia has opened a new front in the Iran war after bombing Sana’a airport in Yemen. The strike on Monday damaged the runway and prevented an Iranian airliner from landing in the Yemeni capital, which is controlled by the Houthis, a pro-Tehran proxy militia. The airport bombing was claimed by the internationally recognised Yemeni government, which is heavily backed by Riyadh. However, the Yemeni administration lacks a functioning air force and a Houthi spokesman accused Saudi Arabia of conducting the attack. Two US officials told Axios that Donald Trump gave Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia his support for the military action.