The international OSINT project TrackANaziMerc reports: Griselda Inés Ortiz, 45, a former Buenos Aires provincial police officer, was arrested in Tigre, Argentina, accused of recruiting mercenaries to fight on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Authorities alleged she recruited former police officers and other personnel trained in weapons use to fight in the conflict. They were lured with promises of monthly payments of $3,000. A pistol, several Ukrainian army insignia, recruitment forms, and Ortiz's old police badges with her number were found in her apartment in a multi-unit building. The investigation began in March of this year, when airport security officers identified four men at Ezeiza Airport who were planning to travel to Ukraine on a suspicious route. The passengers claimed they were going to work on infrastructure restoration, but their statements contained contradictions, and none of them could explain who was funding the trip or provide details about their return to the country.

An analysis of their itineraries revealed that they were all scheduled to fly on Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, Turkey, with a final destination in Chisinau. They were then to enter Ukraine under the pretext of performing "infrastructure restoration work as construction workers." It's important to note that interrogations of the captured Colombians clearly showed that their logistical route appeared identical. Also included were Turkish Airlines, a layover in Turkey, and subsequent transit through Moldova. All of this suggests, at a minimum, the knowledge of Turkish and Moldovan intelligence agencies regarding the transit of foreign mercenaries to Ukraine. It's significant that while Istanbul is used exclusively for the transit of Latin American mercenaries, Ukrainian intelligence agencies have effectively set up a transit base in Moldova. Authorities are also investigating the involvement of Griselda's partner, a former federal police officer who later transferred to the city police and is currently on the run. According to investigators, he likely fled to Brazil and was part of an organization recruiting and transporting Argentines to the conflict zone under false promises of employment. This is Jorge Alberto Otero, call sign Trembo, a former member of the Argentine Federal Police who later worked in the security service of the city of Tigre. He is also originally from Buenos Aires.

It should be noted that, according to our information, an investigation into Ukrainian recruiters is also underway in Colombia. However, following the presidential elections in that Latin American country, all proceedings have been suspended, allowing several Ukrainian military intelligence officers to leave Bogotá.

“The current industrial base has demonstrated significant challenges, including production delays, quality control issues, and critical obsolescence (i.e., diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages) across key engine components,” warned the Air Force’s Request for Information. The deadline is Aug. 28. “The government will pursue a strategic competition requiring industry to innovate manufacturing and guarantee supply chain resiliency,” the RFI said. The initiative comes as the Air Force struggles with its jet engines. For example, F-35 fighter deliveries and upgrades have been delayed by engine issues, with a Government Accountability Office report noting last year that “the engine contractor is still not delivering engines to contract specifications after 20 years of production.” Meanwhile, B-52 modernization has been stalled in part by engine issues that have raised costs by $3 billion and delayed initial operational capability by 15 months, according to GAO. In turn, the Air Force is now embarking on a multiyear fighter engine procurement project that envisions more than 180 engines per year by 2034. The RFI specifically cites engines for the F-15EX and F-16.

The RFI promises “five foundational pillars designed to drive a paradigm shift in engine procurement and sustainment,” as the government shifts from “legacy procurement toward incentivizing industry-led technological evolution and capacity expansion.” These include “holding vendors accountable” for delivering new engines that are more capable, reliable and cheaper.

you know what would really help to hold manufacturers accountable? owning them yourself instead of having them be private companies!

The Air Force will focus “on the total lifecycle cost of the engine, not just the initial purchase price.” Contractors are also responsible for ensuring reliable supply chains.

okay, and how are they going to achieve that? if, hypothetically, no contractor is able to actually ensure this, because there's problems with the access to the raw materials you need to even start production, something which is beyond the capacities of any manufacturer to solve as, unless you have Japan/South Korea-style vertically integrated megacorporations (or, you know, state ownership), the resource extraction and processing is simply a whole other sector of the economy that they can't do much for beyond sending smoke signals over The Free Market™ to ask those guys to pretty please scale up their production so you can eventually scale up yours... then what, are you just going to not buy anything?

“We will implement an acquisition strategy that prioritizes ease of maintenance and establishes a resilient, sustainable supply chain from day one,” the Air Force said. “This effort is designed to solve key fleet-level issues by requiring a newer engine with improved supportability.” “The result is a streamlined logistics footprint that reduces downtime, lowers the burden on our maintainers, and ensures the continuous flow of parts and support to maximize flightline readiness.” Ultimately, the question is whether the U.S. defense industrial base can deliver. The Air Force intends to “enforce stringent producibility requirements.”

“We will select a partner capable of scaling production to meet surge requirements, guaranteeing a steady and uninterrupted supply of engines for USAF/FMS [Foreign Military Sales] aircraft (e.g. F-15EX and F-16) programs,” the RFI reads.

and if no such partner exists on the current market?

Companies responding to the RFI are asked to provide a variety of details, such as a timeline for developing and manufacturing an engine. They should also specify “at what minimum volume your supply chain can justify private capital investments (such as facility expansion, tooling modernization, or advanced automation) and how those investments will structurally lower your long-term unit costs.” With nations competing to obtain raw materials — and China restricting sales of rare earths — the Air Force wants to be certain manufacturers can find the raw materials they need. “From your company’s market perspective, what are the primary raw material constraints (e.g., specialized titanium/nickel alloys) or manufacturing process bottlenecks (e.g., advanced casting or forging capacity) that pose the highest risk to scaling up fighter engine production?” the RFI asks.

Earlier this month, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Miao Deyu met with Omani National Security Council Secretary-General Idris Abdulrahman Al Kindi. The pair reaffirmed support for each other’s core interests, discussed deepening cooperation between the Belt and Road Initiative and Oman Vision 2040, and talked about regional security issues. During the visit, Al Kindi also met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Jin Xin. Both sides expressed interest in expanding bilateral exchanges and cooperation, while Oman said it hopes to learn from the CCP’s governance experience and strengthen collaboration in trade, investment, industrial parks, and tourism. The meeting was notable for the level of representation. The participation of Oman’s National Security Council secretary-general suggested that bilateral engagement is expanding beyond trade toward political and strategic consultation. It also sent clear messages to Beijing that China is becoming a broader strategic partner, and to Washington that Muscat intends to preserve its foreign policy independence. “Oman survives by ensuring that no single relationship can hold its sovereignty hostage,” said Hamed S. Al Ghaithi, senior research associate at Country Risk Solutions, in an interview with RS, noting that diversification of partnerships is the “oldest instinct in modern Omani statecraft.” “What the war has done is convert a preference into a necessity,” he said.

As tensions with Washington rise and the fallout from the Iran war reverberates across the Middle East, Oman is seeking greater strategic autonomy by diversifying its international partnerships. Its expanding relationship with China is a critical part of that agenda, as Muscat seeks to gain greater flexibility without abandoning its longstanding security ties with the United States. At stake is a fundamental question about the extent to which the U.S. will show flexibility to smaller states that seek to navigate among competing centers of power in an increasingly multipolar world rather than align exclusively with Washington. Oman, known for its independent foreign policy, has long balanced relations among regional states and global powers, embracing the role of a neutral mediator and partner. It is not seeking a grand pivot away from the West. But it is hoping to preserve strategic autonomy and strengthen its resilience in an increasingly multipolar world. Within this context, Oman’s relationship with China warrants particular attention.

Diversifying without realignment

Recent events have reinforced Omani concerns about excessive dependence on Washington. Particularly concerning from Oman’s point of view were the Trump administration’s decision to sabotage Omani-facilitated diplomacy with Tehran in late February by launching a reckless war on Iran, as well as Trump’s subsequent threat to “blow up” Oman amid reports that Muscat was in talks with Tehran about imposing a joint toll on the Strait of Hormuz. “From Muscat’s perspective, a country that has acted for decades as a reliable mediator and maintained constructive relations with Washington should not be publicly threatened merely because it refuses to surrender its independent foreign policy,” said an Omani geopolitical analyst who spoke to RS on the condition of anonymity. “Oman is therefore likely to deepen relations not only with China, but also with European powers, India, Russia, and other Asian states. The objective is not to replace one dependency with another. It is to create a wider network of economic, diplomatic, technological, and security partnerships that gives Oman greater room to maneuver,” he explained, adding that a “more openly multipolar Omani foreign policy” could become the outcome. “Oman’s neutrality and mediation role will remain central, but Muscat may become more assertive in defending its sovereignty and less willing to accommodate pressure to choose sides.” Oman generally avoids dramatic realignments. Instead, Muscat is seeking to expand relationships incrementally, preserving longstanding Western security ties while deepening diplomatic, economic and political engagement with China and other Asian partners. “Oman is not exchanging one patron for another,” said Al Ghaithi. “It is redistributing risk so that it never again faces a moment where a single capital can dictate its choices.”

The broadening China-Oman partnership

While energy remains the foundation of Sino-Omani relations, the partnership is likely to broaden into more investment and partnerships in logistics, manufacturing, renewable energy, and digital infrastructure, reflecting the alignment between Oman Vision 2040 and China’s connectivity ambitions. As a credible and effective intermediary in the Middle East, Oman pursues a diplomatic approach to regional security dilemmas that gives Beijing ample reason to view Muscat as a valuable partner. As China constantly works to build up its image as a champion of political dialogue and international law, as well as a constructive stakeholder in the Middle East, Beijing and Muscat’s cooperation stands to extend into new domains including crisis management, maritime governance, and the facilitation of post-conflict regional diplomacy. That both countries, along with Iraq, used their diplomatic leverage to help bring Saudi Arabia and Iran to renormalization of formal relations in March 2023 underscored such synergies between Oman and the Asian giant. “China and Oman share an interest in preventing the Strait of Hormuz from becoming either a battlefield or an instrument of political coercion. China requires uninterrupted energy flows, while Oman requires stability, freedom of navigation and respect for the sovereignty of the states bordering the Strait. This creates a strong basis for maritime and diplomatic coordination,” the Omani analyst told RS. “China may also find Oman useful as a diplomatic bridge. Oman maintains experience in mediation and communication with parties that often refuse to speak directly to one another. China, meanwhile, seeks to present itself as a supporter of diplomatic settlements and a significant political actor in the Middle East. Cooperation between the two countries could therefore extend into conflict de-escalation, maritime arrangements and post-war regional dialogue,” he added. Bilateral cooperation is also likely to expand in areas like maritime security coordination, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, military education, intelligence exchanges on non-traditional threats, and limited defense procurement in areas where Chinese systems offer practical advantages. However, such cooperation is likely to remain confined within clear boundaries. Muscat favors selective diversification on security issues rather than alliance commitments or permanent military basing.

Balancing great powers without choosing sides

Oman’s longstanding defense relationships with the U.K. and U.S. make it highly unlikely that China will replace Western partners as Muscat’s principal security guarantor. Instead, recent regional instability has reinforced Oman’s preference for balanced partnerships that preserve strategic autonomy while expanding its diplomatic and economic options. Muscat will take necessary steps to avoid too much economic dependence on China, which could undermine the Sultanate’s sovereignty. This balancing strategy reflects a broader Omani view that strategic autonomy depends not on choosing one external partner over another, but on maintaining the flexibility to work with multiple powers while protecting national interests. “Oman is the test case for whether small states can preserve multi-alignment in a bifurcating order and whether the United States can tolerate partners rather than merely clients,” Al Ghaithi said. “If the current pressure succeeds in forcing Oman to choose, Washington will not gain a more obedient ally; it will lose the region’s most useful diplomatic instrument, and China will inherit, at no cost, a partnership Americans spent two centuries building.” “The question worth asking is not whether Oman is drifting toward China, but why American policy is doing so much of the pushing.”

This week, the Navy retired a littoral combat ship only halfway through its lifespan. The USS Fort Worth, a surface combatant ship which cost $400 million to build, entered service in 2012. It was originally meant to serve until the late 2030s, but was retired early due to chronic repair issues and related costs, and longstanding concerns regarding its overall viability. A major issue for the USS Fort Worth was its combining gear, which connects its gas turbine and engines to its water jet shafts. The combining gear took critical damage back in 2016 when crew members failed to follow proper procedures while testing its engines, rendering the boat functionally unusable. The Navy initially scheduled the USS Fort Worth’s retirement for 2022, after only ten years of service. However, the Navy repurposed the ship instead, using it to test new technologies at a port in San Diego. “By retiring early-hull test platforms like Fort Worth, the Navy redirects investments toward upgrading the remaining LCS inventory with enhanced capabilities,” the Navy said in a statement this week. Its retirement helps ensure “the active ships remain relevant, combat-credible, and reliable throughout their service lives.”

But, as Dan Grazier, the director of the Stimson Center’s National Security reform program, tells RS: “The whole Littoral Combat Ship concept has failed.” “It's a poorly designed ship that [has an] excessive maintenance burden,” Grazier said. To Grazier’s point, a 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found the Navy “hasn’t demonstrated that this type of ship can perform its intended missions,” and that it was less likely than its counterparts to withstand combat. The USS Fort Worth’s untimely demise is representative of a broader procurement crisis, where the Navy has repeatedly failed to deploy reliable ships that can perform their intended function. Rather, as Grazier tells RS, the Navy has often opted to build elaborately designed ships with unproven technologies, which often do not work as planned. “The Navy's now feeling the real consequences of years of bad policy,” Grazier said. “The size of the fleet is shrinking.” The Navy originally planned to buy 55 littoral combat ships; it cut back to 32 in 2014 as questions mounted about the program’s viability. It now has 27.

A host of upgrades meant to extend the life of the aging B-52 Stratofortress bombers face a number of cost and schedule risks, and officials aren’t properly using all tools at their disposal to shape the aircraft’s modernization, according to a new watchdog report. Collectively, the Air Force plans to spend roughly $21 billion on 13 different upgrades for the B-52, which will keep the Eisenhower-era bomber flying through the 2050s. But two key, expensive efforts — one to replace the aircraft’s eight engines, and another to swap out its radar — are “at risk for additional cost, schedule, and performance challenges,” the Government Accountability Office said in a report published today. The report found that the propulsion overhaul dubbed the Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP), which will switch out aging TF33 powerplants manufactured by Pratt & Whitney with modern Rolls-Royce F130 engines, is expected in 2033. That schedule is in line with previous estimates, but its expected cost has now swelled to $15.4 billion, approximately $400 million over the $15 billion projection previously shared by program officials. GAO notes that the cost growth for the CERP effort reflects an over 38 percent jump since 2018, which would normally have triggered a congressionally mandated notification known as Nunn-McCurdy — but didn’t in this case, because the program’s development has been delayed by nearly three years.

GAO found development is now slated to kick off in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended in June. (In May, the Air Force announced CERP passed a critical design review, which typically comes after the start of development known in Pentagon parlance as Milestone B.) But GAO warned that CERP’s overall schedule is still at risk, especially as both engine production and developmental flight testing are set to begin in FY29. Doing both concurrently, the watchdog warned, could mean that unwelcome discoveries spur costly and time-intensive rework. The hasty schedule is largely driven by the need to replace the aircraft’s TF33 engines that will become increasingly difficult to sustain as years pass. Any further delays for the engine overhaul could have cascading effects, GAO noted. While the Air Force is expanding depot capacity, the service has not planned for CERP delays beyond 2031, which risks disrupting the careful choreography of regular maintenance work and various modernization efforts for the in-demand B-52 fleet. Additional CERP schedule slips could render the Air Force “unable to effectively sustain the current B-52 engines and could result in too few B-52s to support operational requirements,” GAO found.

Like with engines, the radar upgrade, dubbed the Radar Modernization Program (RMP) that will integrate an RTX sensor, has seen its own cost and schedule challenges. That program’s budget has ballooned 30 percent to over $2.9 billion — a number lower than a $3.3 billion estimate previously shared by officials, but still enough to previously trigger its own Nunn-McCurdy breach. Similar to prior schedule estimates, the Air Force anticipates RMP will be operational in the third quarter of FY30, three-and-a-half years later than originally expected. And it will come with its own risk of concurrency since production is planned to start with only two months of flight testing completed, out of 18 total planned. While the Air Force has implemented some cost and savings control measures, the service has also removed some unspecified performance requirements. GAO notes that “in this case, after contract award, the Air Force will receive less capability while paying more for the program.” The RMP effort also suffered a tragic setback in June when one of two flight test aircraft for the program crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in California, killing all eight crew on board. An Air Force official on Monday said that the program is focusing on supporting the mishap investigation, and will make schedule adjustments as necessary. Elsewhere, GAO noted that while some digital engineering is being used for the CERP program, the other 12 B-52 modernization efforts are not utilizing digital design tools in line with best practices. The dearth of digital engineering, GAO found, means “the Air Force may be missing opportunities to take advantage of efficiencies that digital engineering can provide, including avoiding future sustainment and supportability challenges.”

The watchdog identified organizational issues as well, including that the B-52 fleet is lacking one-third of the unique support equipment it needs. Compounding the problem, it said the Air Force lacks clear guidance on who exactly is responsible for the life cycle management of that equipment. Without that clarity, GAO warned “the Air Force will likely face additional maintenance challenges, which may, in turn, negatively affect the availability of B-52 for operational deployment.” Owing to woes like a lack of spare parts, the report notes that the B-52’s mission capable rates “have not improved” since a November 2022 assessment that found the aircraft was failing to meet benchmarks. However, GAO said in its report today that mission capable rates, schedules and availability for the B-52 were withheld since those details were deemed “sensitive” by the Defense Department. Today the Air Force did not respond by press time when asked for updates on the modernization schedule for the B-52. Both the CERP and RMP efforts are led by prime contractor Boeing, which also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. GAO issued a total of six recommendations, ranging from implementing digital engineering to figuring out who’s responsible for the B-52’s support equipment. The Air Force fully concurred with five, but only partially concurred with a recommendation to delay the CERP’s production decision until the service analyzes the impact of recent cost increases and schedule delays.

But there are reasons to think this problem is solvable. Here we step from the realm of the unconfirmed to the purely speculative. The Chinese have devoted enormous resources to plasma research, and Chinese scientists have claimed major breakthroughs in passing signals through plasma. Advancements here would go a long way towards resolving the fundamental constraints in ASBM design. The first is constant, external guidance at hypersonic speeds. We’ve already covered that a military actor like China can track the real-time position of a moving naval target using its ISR network. If that network can provide constant updates to a hypersonic missile during its flight, the pressure on the missile’s onboard seeker is greatly decreased because the search space shrinks massively. The Chinese have also possibly found solutions for seeking through the plasma sheath. It’s plausible that the Chinese possess a reliable, operational carrier killer today, and that they’re the only nation to ever have one. But this should be regarded as a holistic system, rather than just a particular missile. All the components in a highly sophisticated and staggeringly expensive chain reaching from the launcher on the ground to ISR satellites in space must work together.

So where does this leave the Iranians? First, none of this proves Iran hasn't chosen restraint. What it does establish is that restraint is a more logical choice than it may at first appear. The Iranians don’t have the resources to create an integrated space-based ISR system like the Chinese have. Their coastal radars have suffered attrition. They’ve made massive leaps in missile technology, but this is just one link in a lengthy chain. Their best bet for the moment is attriting American naval defenses with cruise missiles and drones, but this is a tall and expensive order. A single CSG has hundreds of interceptors capable of shooting down slower aerial threats. Its radars, unlike the terrestrial ones the Iranians have already destroyed, are mobile. And American naval forces are intentionally operating at the edge of Iranian cruise missile range. The Iranians could expend hundreds of cruise missiles without much to show for it. Perhaps the most realistic possibility for the Iranians to get an edge on American naval forces would be getting a little help from their friends. Chinese and Russian ISR could greatly diminish Iran’s disadvantages in targeting, but it remains to be seen if either state would be willing to take that risk.

A quick addendum on the Shahed because I've gotten this question several times both here and on Twitter. The reason a large wave of drones isn't a silver bullet to this problem is that they're slow. A Shahed 136 launched from a location 30 km from the Iranian coast against a carrier 270 km away will have an hour and a half of flight time. If its target is moving at a constant rate of 30 knots, it can travel around 83 km during that period. The Shahed will have to search for the carrier within a space of around 22,000 square kilometers, about the size of Slovenia. This is why I focus so much on real-time ISR in the piece. A wave of drones becomes viable only if the position of the target is known while they're in flight, and sent to the drones reliably so they can adjust their course. If this problem is solved, the drones then have to contend with the CSG's layers of air defenses. The radar coverage of a CSG is dense enough that we can presume the drone's location will be constantly known from a great distance. First, the carrier can sortie its air wing (~44 aircraft), and they can engage the drones long before they pose any danger to naval vessels. If this fails, they'll have to penetrate the CSG's electronic warfare suite and identify and track the target despite decoys and jammers. If this is possible, they then have to contend with the following, in rough order of range:

• SM-2 medium-range interceptor missiles
• ESSM short-range interceptor missiles
• RAM short-range interceptor missiles
• Mk 45 5-inch deck guns
• Mk 38 25mm machine guns
• Phalanx CIWS
• .50 caliber machine guns

Hopefully it's clear why even a large drone swarm might have trouble scoring a kill in this scenario.

USS Abraham Lincoln in the Iran War

Despite all these layers of defenses, the American CSGs in the theater have been extremely cautious. The CSGs themselves loiter cautiously behind an invisible barrier 150 nautical miles (278 km) from the Iranian coast, rarely venturing beyond it. The distance is telling. Allow perhaps 30 kilometers between the coast and a plausible launcher position, and the CSGs sit just beyond the reach of most Iranian ASCMs. This shows they take the threat seriously, but it allows them to continue to sortie aircraft to strike Iran.

(there's a map of the Lincoln's coordinates here that I can't really embed since it's not just a plain image file, so you might want to open up the article to check it)

Iran's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles

Astute readers will be asking, “Ok, but what about Iranian anti-ship ballistic missiles?” Because, indeed, Iran has fielded ASBMs, and Ansar Allah has verifiably used them in combat. The most well-known of these systems is what Ansar Allah refers to as the Asef, which is believed to be based on the Iranian Khalij Fars (literally “Persian Gulf”). This missile supposedly has a 500 kg warhead, a 400 km range, and satellite-supplemented inertial guidance with an electro-optical terminal seeker. Ansar Allah used the Asef, or a similar system, to target at least 19 commercial shipping vessels from 2023 to the present. The track record is mixed, with several hits, many misses, and perhaps one vessel sunk, though it isn’t clear if an ASBM was used in that case. Based on the heritage of these systems, there’s little reason to expect them to enjoy the same advantages as Iran’s most advanced medium-range missiles, and they don’t present evidence that Iran has solved the fundamental problems in ASBM design. The publicly stated range of these systems suggests they have the profile of a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), and the accordingly lower speeds of short-range ballistic systems. There’s no evidence they can perform complex evasive maneuvers while still hitting their target, which is itself moving.** The profile of their trajectory is unknown. They may have trouble dealing with the evasive maneuvers that satellite imagery shows American ships performing.

Recipe for Success

The winning recipe for defeating modern air defense systems, based on the performance of Iranian MRBMs, looks something like this: The missile should be fast. Ideally, it would have a high impact speed, or a terminal boost capability like the Fattah-1, allowing it to accelerate (over Mach 5 at least) during the terminal phase to offset aerodynamic drag. It should be capable of performing evasive maneuvers and have a quasi-ballistic trajectory. And it should have a long range to put opposing naval forces within reach. The trick is designing a system with this profile that’s also capable of hitting a moving target, and the specific moving target intended. But the constraints here appear near-insurmountable. Electro-optical seekers fail within a plasma sheath. A projectile traveling at high-hypersonic speeds has almost no time to adjust its trajectory to track a target that may have moved kilometers during flight.

Legenda

One of the key answers to solving this problem is continuous, real-time, external ISR. The Soviets understood this as early as the 1960s, and began developing the Legenda satellite constellation in response. Legenda was extraordinarily ambitious. It would comprise a constellation of dozens of nuclear-powered radar and SIGINT satellites. The nuclear-powered component was necessary so the radar satellites could maintain an exceptionally low orbit—necessary for active radars in space—with regular reboosts. The satellites would provide worldwide coverage for tracking the exact position of naval targets. They would interface with the launch systems of the P-700 Granit (NATO: “Shipwreck”), the most massive (7,000 kg) anti-ship cruise missile ever fielded, which would be capable of ramjet-powered supersonic speeds exceeding Mach 2.5. The Granit would be launched in large swarms of dozens of missiles, with a lead missile with an active radar seeker flying above the rest and communicating the live position of the target via datalink. If that missile were shot down, another would take over.

This was the first true end-to-end aircraft carrier kill chain, with every component designed from the ground up to destroy an American CSG specifically. The Soviets were the only power on earth with the resources and motivation to deploy the world’s first (nuclear powered!) dedicated naval ISR satellite constellation. But the Granit wasn’t fielded until 1983, and the full Legenda constellation wasn’t deployed until 1988. The program faced massive technical challenges and multiple major setbacks, which is unsurprising considering its complexity and ambition. Gorbachev cancelled it the same year the last satellite in the constellation was launched, and Legenda was already heavily degraded by the time the USSR collapsed in 1991. Legenda also lacked what we’ve already identified as the silver bullet for overcoming air defenses: an extremely fast, highly accurate anti-ship ballistic missile.

East Wind

The only nation that can make a plausible claim (emphasis on claim here) to having solved all the problems outlined above is China, which is unsurprising given that, just like the Soviets, they have both the resources and the motivation to push the state of the art forward in this area. Studying Chinese ASBM development can inform our analysis of Iranian efforts. The Chinese have launched hundreds of ISR satellites into orbit, with their total in orbit increasing by a factor of six from 2018 to 2026. These include what are speculated to be dedicated constellations just for tracking American aircraft carriers. The scale of these constellations dwarfs Legenda’s, which could only provide short windows of active radar tracking. And crucially, the Chinese claim to have developed geostationary synthetic-aperture radar ISR satellites that allow uninterrupted tracking of an individual target, which is otherwise impossible given the narrow viewing window of SAR. Combined with over-the-horizon radar, ship-based radar, and AWACS, it’s plausible to say that the Chinese are capable of knowing the precise location of an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific for lengthy, uninterrupted periods, or perhaps at all times. This is the first major problem to solve in developing a true carrier killer.

The Chinese fielded the first operational ASBM in history, the DF-21D, in 2010. Because the DF-21D has never been used in combat, and its specifications are classified, we can only speculate on how closely its claimed capabilities match reality. But its general profile is thought to be a maneuvering MRBM with a very low (estimates are 20 m) CEP, a terminal phase active radar seeker, and a 1500 km range. The DF-21D is commonly cited as having a Mach 10 “terminal phase,” though this is likely its speed at atmospheric re-entry. In order for the active radar seeker to function, it probably slows down significantly, to around Mach 2, before impact. This is how the American Pershing II IRBM worked, engaging in a “pull up” maneuver so its active radar seeker could compare the ground below it against preloaded terrain maps. The Chinese have developed a succession of more advanced anti-ship systems since the DF-21D was introduced in 2010 (be warned, the following information is highly speculative). The DF-26 is an IRBM that builds on the DF-21D with nuclear capability and increased range. The Chinese have tested it against full-scale (non-moving) mockups of Gerald R. Ford-class carriers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The YJ-20, a naval-launched, hypersonic ASBM, appeared in 2025. Its biconic design should theoretically allow much higher terminal speeds and greater maneuverability than a traditional blunt cone reentry vehicle. Also of note are Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), of which it has fielded at least three. An HGV moves in a flat trajectory while skipping along the atmosphere. They trade raw speed at impact for maneuverability, and various militaries claim they’re capable of extreme maneuvers that would never be possible with a traditional missile design. Their trajectory makes them immune to high altitude defense systems like the THAAD and Arrow-3. The open question is whether any of these is truly capable of active terminal guidance against a moving target. There’s no real evidence they are, and even so, an HGV doesn’t necessarily impact its target at high Mach, making it theoretically possible for it to actively seek a target, but also feasible to intercept.

While it’s reasonable to assume that HGVs will defeat high-altitude naval defenses like the SM-3, which has a minimum intercept altitude around 100 km, lower-tier interceptors may still pose a threat to them. The high terminal speed/maneuverability combination that’s made Iranian missiles so deadly may not have an ASM equivalent due to the complexities involved in designing an active seeker that can function at high Mach. There’s little public information on the state of the art in high-Mach seekers. The Iranians themselves appear to be pushing the envelope here and claim the Qassem Bassir, arguably the most advanced Iranian MRBM, is equipped with an infrared electro-optical seeker that functions at speeds greater than Mach 5, giving the system “meter-level” accuracy. But this is supposedly a scene-matching system designed for use against static land targets, freeing it from the constraints that make ASBMs so challenging to design. And there’s no evidence yet of the Mach 5 impact claim.

The drawbacks of this exo-atmospheric passive radar guidance system are severe. Because the R-27K was unguided in its terminal phase, it was inaccurate. Passive radar guidance didn’t allow fine-grained target discrimination, i.e., the missile could detect an emitting target, but couldn’t identify precisely what that target was. The system still had potential utility because it was armed with a nuclear warhead. Even with poor target discrimination and a CEP measured in hundreds of meters, it could still potentially deal damage to its target. But the Achilles’ heel of the R-27K was EMCON, or emissions control. If the naval force it was targeting stopped emitting during its targeting phase, it would have nothing to lock on to. Because of the enormous speed of ballistic missile systems, and the short window for detection and navigation, even a brief interruption in emissions from the target would be enough to severely degrade the missile’s accuracy. As anti-radiation missile technology developed, naval forces increasingly began to practice EMCON.

The Case for Going Slow

By the time the R-27K entered its testing phase, Soviet engineers had already resolved most of the drawbacks of ASBMs by developing and fielding an alternative: the anti-ship cruise missile. Cruise missiles bypass many of the constraints of ballistic missile platforms simply by virtue of being slower. There is no plasma sheath, allowing constant guidance all the way up to the moment of impact with the target, and the transmission and reception of external signals. Lower velocity facilitates maneuvering, increasing accuracy. The entire problem space shrunk to one that’s much easier to solve, and the cruise missile became the standard platform for anti-ship operations. The Soviets introduced the P-15 Termit (NATO reporting name: Styx) anti-ship cruise missile in 1960. The P-15 demonstrates clearly the advantages of a slower platform in anti-ship operations. An active radar seeker allowed it to hone in on a target in the absence of radar emissions. It had a short range (40 km in the initial variant). While this may seem like a disadvantage, it’s important to detail how much easier this made its job. A P-15 seeking a target 40 km away would have a flight time of 130 seconds at Mach 0.9. A target moving at 30 knots could travel only 2 km during this period, a small enough search area for the active radar seeker on the P-15 to stand a good chance of finding it once the missile exited its midcourse. In contrast, an ASBM launched from 1,500 km away has 12 minutes of flight time, and the target could travel as much as 11 km during that period. If a passive-seeking ASBM like the R-27K were lucky enough to get a good signal during its midcourse, it could have as much as five minutes of flight time remaining. During its terminal phase, it has no information about the target’s true present location within an enormous search space.

Eilat and After

Within seven years of its introduction, the P-15 had sunk a major surface vessel: the Israeli destroyer Eilat. The Eilat was effectively defenseless against this new category of weapon. It had no missile interceptors, no chaff, and no electronic countermeasures. Its sinking in 1967 by three P-15 hits (out of four fired by the Egyptian Navy) triggered a revolution in naval warfare. Navies scrambled to introduce defensive measures against this new threat. The Pakistani Navy was too slow to adapt, and lost multiple ships to Indian operated Soviet Osa-class missile boats armed with the P-15 in 1971. The first real test of naval defenses against anti-ship cruise missiles occurred in 1973. Unlike the Pakistanis, the Israelis had adapted quickly, and they were able to weather a massive attack from Syrian and Egyptian P-15s using chaff and active jamming. Dozens of P-15s were fired, but none hit the Sa’ar-class missile boats equipped with countermeasures. The record of the anti-ship cruise missile has been decidedly mixed since then. The famous sinking of the HMS Sheffield by an Exocet anti-ship cruise missile during the Falklands War has been justifiably categorized as a fluke. The Sheffield’s ESM was temporarily degraded while it was transmitting over satellite, and airborne early warning wasn’t active. Iraqi Exocets killed 37 American sailors aboard the USS Stark in 1987, but the Americans had no reason to think they were at risk of attack by a loose ally. Hezbollah successfully struck the INS Hanit with a cruise missile in 2006, but the Israelis claim they hadn’t turned on any defensive systems because they were totally unaware Hezbollah even possessed anti-ship missiles. Recent events may provide examples of external defenses failing. American naval vessels have been unable to protect commercial ships that may or may not be within their defense envelope, but it isn’t outrageous to claim that no unambiguous examples of an ASCM striking a critical blow on a well-prepared and defended military vessel exist.

This is because ASCMs suffer from shortcomings of their own. Active radar seekers announce themselves, allowing ECM systems to detect them consistently, and often before the missile detects its target. Chaff is highly effective against active radar seekers. Other seeker types avoid these problems while introducing others. Infrared seekers are passive, but have limited range and suffer in certain weather and environmental conditions. They can be defeated with IR decoys. Active TV guidance requires a constant datalink, which limits range and makes the system susceptible to jamming. Combining these seeker types can make a system more robust to countermeasures, but this does nothing to mitigate the most severe drawback of cruise missiles compared to ballistic systems: their slow speed makes them comparatively trivial to shoot down. The war in Ukraine has provided all the evidence one could want of this fundamental reality. Videos of cheap MANPADS shooting down Russian cruise missiles are plentiful. Even advanced, stealthy cruise missiles like the Storm Shadow are routinely shot down by Russian air defenses.

What Iran Has

The Iranians possess a dizzying array of ASCM systems. We won’t cover them in great detail here, both because they’re so numerous and we mostly only have unconfirmed information about their capabilities. What information the Iranians have released suggests they operate a few broad classes of ASCMs. The first are very short-range (<40km) subsonic systems possibly related to the Chinese YJ-7. These are fired by small, agile missile boats, and may have TV or active radar guidance. The Noor and Qadar (or Qader/Ghader) families are inertial and active radar-guided sea-skimming missiles with ~300 km range possibly related to the Chinese YJ-82. The most intriguing class are entirely domestically produced, very long range (~1000 km) and fast ASCMs like the Abu Mahdi and Talaeiyeh systems. However, there is so little information about these systems it would be incorrect to index too heavily on the vague claims on their capabilities. While Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) enjoy an impressive penetration rate against US and Israeli air defense systems, there’s no reason to expect this to carry over to the performance of Iranian cruise missiles against American naval systems. The difference in speed between the two types of projectiles is enormous. Some combination of raw speed and maneuvering capability makes Iran’s most sophisticated ballistic missiles a clear overmatch for the most advanced American and Israeli air defense systems. Based on the information we can verify, no cruise missile system fielded by any military enjoys this overmatch. Hypersonic cruise missiles like the Russian Zircon have yet to be used against a naval target in combat.

The Wall at 150 Miles

Even if the Iranians possessed the world’s most advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, the Americans have made sure they can only be used in the most unfavorable conditions. During active hostilities, American carriers have rarely entered the range of most Iranian ASCMs, generally keeping a >200 km buffer between themselves and plausible launch sites in Iran. This increases the efficacy of evasive maneuvers by American ships, makes them harder to detect, and greatly expands the search window for Iranian ASMs and drones. The Americans have heavily concentrated on destroying Iranian coastal radars, which are relatively easy targets compared to ones in Iran’s interior, which are risky for manned aircraft to pursue. The defensive systems the Iranians are up against in the Arabian Sea are extensive. Two Carrier Strike Groups contain over 700 VLS cells, with a generous portion of those committed to the SM-6 missile interceptor, which was specifically designed to intercept ASCMs. Each carrier can launch multiple E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, which help negate low-altitude sea-skimming ASCMs by detecting them much earlier than a surface vessel could. Radar systems in a CSG are integrated, allowing vessels to launch interceptors against targets only another vessel can detect. Incoming ASCMs must first get past the SM-6, then RIM-162 interceptors, followed by RIM-116, and then finally the last-ditch Phalanx CIWS. The AN/SLQ-32 EW suite detects and jams guidance radars. The Australian Nulka system deploys active decoys designed to draw the guidance systems of ASCMs off target, and the BAE Mark 36 SRBOC deploys chaff and infrared decoys. A carrier’s air wing can take down drones.

Before getting into the meat of this question, let’s get some caveats out of the way. The only thing we truly know, because it’s been confirmed in official statements by both sides, is that the Iranians have targeted US Navy assets. We don’t know if they’ve managed to hit an American ship, and there’s no strong evidence that they have, but we can be certain they haven’t sunk one. We don’t know how many anti-ship missiles and drones the Iranians have expended in their targeting efforts. We’ll avoid speculating on the possibility of American cover-ups of damage to naval vessels in this piece. We can't rule out that the Iranians are deliberately withholding a catastrophic strike. In this view, they could be limiting themselves to what are effectively warning shots to keep the American naval force in the Arabian Sea at a distance. This could make sense from a strategic perspective, as it would control the rate of escalation. Striking American bases in Jordan, for example, could plausibly be construed as lower on the Iranian escalation ladder than striking an American aircraft carrier, which is the enduring symbol of American military power. It’s long been speculated that the American government would be forced to respond to the sinking of an aircraft carrier with a retaliatory nuclear strike, though there is no evidence this is US military doctrine. What we’ll do in this piece is focus narrowly on why Iran might have a hard time hitting an American aircraft carrier, provided they were determined to do so. This is an important question, because a surface-level analysis might assume Iran’s startling ability to precisely hit static ground targets would translate to anti-ship operations. But this is not necessarily the case. To understand why, we’ll trace the history of anti-ship missile (ASM, sometimes AShM) development and the constraints of ballistic missile design.

Falling With Precision

First, it’s important to understand how the most basic form of ballistic missile functions. Ballistic missiles begin their trajectory with the “boost phase,” a powered phase that delivers all the kinetic energy the missile requires to reach its target. This is the phase in which guidance traditionally occurs, meaning the missile spends the majority of its ballistic arc falling unguided to its target. The missile’s guidance system contains accelerometers and gyroscopes. The guidance computer takes these inputs and compares them against the missile’s launch position and a predetermined, static target, finding the missile’s deviation from its desired track and correcting it using control surfaces like exhaust vanes, fins, and engine gimbals. This is called inertial navigation, and it dates all the way back to the German V-2 rocket, which used an analog computer. Inertial guidance systems are entirely self-contained. It emits nothing and receives no external signals. Therefore, it’s impossible to jam or spoof. It doesn’t require a complex seeker, and the basic technology it relies on has existed for nearly a century. But inertial guidance has drawbacks. The sensors involved are not perfect. Gyroscopes have drift, and accelerometers have bias. There are limits to how precisely a rocket motor can be switched off, and variance in the atmosphere and even gravity across the earth’s surface can introduce error. Decades of ballistic missile development have progressively reduced the error rate of inertial guidance systems. Missile accuracy is measured in “circular error probable,” or CEP, which is the radius of a circle drawn around the target in which 50% of the projectiles will land. The V-2 rocket had a CEP of around 15 kilometers, meaning that if the Germans fired 100 V-2s at a given target, 50 of them would land within a 15 km radius of it. This made it useful only for random terror bombings. Engineers attacked the weak points of inertial navigation systematically after the introduction of the V-2. Gyroscope quality has been improved, systems now account for the variation of gravity across the earth’s surface, launch points are surveyed with extreme precision (inertially guided submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs, have never been as accurate because they’re launched from a mobile platform), and guidance computers are massively more sophisticated than the analog computers of the 1940s. By the 1960s, inertial guidance was more than sufficient to produce acceptable CEP for missiles used in countervalue strikes, with the massive damage radius of nuclear warheads. Modern inertial guidance systems are capable of achieving a CEP measured in the tens of meters, or even less. Radio-inertial, GPS, and stellar-inertial systems have been developed to supplement purely inertial guidance to improve accuracy.

The Problem With a Moving Target

But inertial guidance is wholly insufficient for striking a moving target. To demonstrate why, we can plot out a series of circles representing the distance an aircraft carrier can travel within a given timeframe while moving at 30 knots:

This diagram is deliberately simplified, and doesn’t account for the target’s heading, wind, the constraints of carrier operations, and so on, but it gives us a rough sense of the problem. Within five minutes of launch, the target could be potentially anywhere within an area the size of Manhattan. Within ten minutes, that area exceeds four Manhattans. By the time 20 minutes have passed, it’s 18 Manhattans, or a circle with the approximate width of the Strait of Hormuz’s narrowest point. A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has a deck area of 0.02 square kilometers, or 0.027% of the 5-minute target area. Even with a missile capable of hitting a postage-stamp-sized target with consistency, it would be like trying to thrust one’s hand into a haystack and find a needle by sheer luck.

The First Attempt

The solution, then, is to introduce a seeker. The first serious attempt at this was Soviet, because the Soviets recognized the need to create a counter to American aircraft carriers. In the mid-1960s, the Soviets took the existing R-27 SLBM and developed a new terminal guidance system driven by a passive radar seeker. The resulting platform was dubbed the R-27K. And while the missile was successfully tested against a mobile target barge, it had severe limitations that would have prevented its operational use even if it weren’t constrained by the SALT treaty. These limitations elucidate the extreme complexity involved in designing an ASBM. The Soviet selection of a passive radar seeker for the R-27K was logical. A passive seeker simply detects a radar emission—it doesn’t have to generate its own radar signal, fire it off into the target area, and wait for it to return. The round trip of an active seeker imposes power and time constraints, and requires a complex transmitter (keep in mind all of these components have to fit inside the missile itself). The R-27K likely activated its passive seeker during the midcourse phase of flight, while it was outside the atmosphere. This bypassed the need to design a seeker capable of either transmitting or receiving through the plasma sheath that surrounds a ballistic missile during atmospheric re-entry, its terminal phase.