• Ukrainian troops on the front lines can earn up to $10,270 a month based on how much they fight.
• That's nearly 30 times the average salary in the country.
• The bonuses are part of a new push to overhaul Ukraine's pay and contract system.

Ukraine is implementing a new bonus system that rewards frontline troops with cash for feats in battle or carrying out combat missions.

The incentives are part of a salary and contract overhaul announced on June 12, after years of Kyiv struggling with recruitment and reports of absence without leave, or AWOL.

The defense ministry said on Tuesday that the new system would apply to combat missions or tasks from the start of June, with payouts to be received in July.

The highest bonuses vary based on performance, and primarily apply to troops in the most dangerous roles, such as assault infantry, combat medics, and gunners. Each frontline soldier gets a base monthly pay of 20,000 hryvnias, or $446, but could earn up to 460,000 hryvnias, or $10,270, a month based on their service.

The full payout would be nearly 30 times the average salary in Ukraine before the war began; government statistics from January 2022 said the country's average monthly salary was 14,577 hryvnias.

A day at a Ukrainian-held position earns the soldier another 10,000 hryvnias, while each day carrying out more aggressive missions, such as reconnaissance, evacuation, or recapturing friendly territory, nets them 20,000 instead.

The biggest daily bonus is 40,000 hryvnias for each day spent in assault operations that result in a Ukrainian advance. The bonuses don't stack, so a soldier can only earn one per day — whichever is highest.

Then there are bonuses for taking a Russian soldier prisoner, which is 100,000 hryvnias split among all troops involved directly in the capture, and destroying an enemy asset or killing a Russian soldier, which is worth 15,000 hryvnias.

Commanders and their teams can earn an extra 30,000 hryvnias a month for performing combat tasks, and 50,000 hryvnias for running operations from command posts, depending on the time they spent on missions that month.

The grand total of these payments is capped at 460,000 a month, the Ukrainian defense ministry said.

While stationed temporarily in rear areas, troops instead receive a minimum monthly pay of 30,000 hryvnias. Ukrainian soldiers regularly rotate between fighting near or at the front lines and resting in safer towns and strongholds.

Drone pilots' and specialists' salaries are different, with a scale that pays more the closer they are to the front lines, up to a maximum of 120,000 hryvnias. They can also get bonuses of up to 100,000 hryvnias for participating in combat or performing command roles.

The defense ministry said it was also implementing a new system that allows troops who have gone AWOL to return to the military under the best-rated units and immediately receive gear, meals, and clothing.

The measure seeks to fix a loophole that led dissatisfied Ukrainian troops to avoid the bureaucracy of applying for transfers and force a move by going AWOL.

Ukraine's defense ministry has embarked on an aggressive overhaul since January under Mykhailo Fedorov, who was appointed to lead the ministry after a stint as the country's minister for digital transformation.

The 35-year-old has pledged to address many of the systemic issues and gripes that have plagued Ukraine's forces for years, including low morale and lack of command transparency.

"This is only the first stage of the comprehensive transformation of the Defense Forces of Ukraine," the ministry said on June 12.

• Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots at a British civilian yacht on Sunday.
• The frigate Admiral Grigorovich was in the English Channel when it opened fire with small arms.
• A retired British couple said they were sailing on the yacht when they encountered the frigate.

A Russian frigate opened fire in the English Channel on Tuesday, firing warning shots with small arms near a UK-registered civilian yacht, London and Moscow said.

The warship Admiral Grigorovich fired several shots — single rounds, not automatic fire — near the Bright Future, a sailing yacht, roughly 20 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight outside UK territorial waters.

The UK assesses that the Grigorovich was signaling to other vessels that it was drifting instead of maneuvering under power, possibly leaving the warship feeling vulnerable. It sounded warnings before opening fire.

"Following attempts to contact a British vessel in the channel, the Grigorovich fired warning shots," a UK defense ministry spokesperson told Business Insider. "These were not aimed at the vessel and were an attempt to prevent a possible collision."

Russia's defense ministry said the frigate had attempted to contact the Bright Future with radio, signal flares, and sound signals, but opened fire after receiving no response and seeing the yacht "following a dangerous course."

"After closing the distance to 150 meters, the frigate's commander decided to carry out the preemptive fire at the vessel's course with small arms," Moscow said.

A retired British couple on board the Bright Future told the BBC that the two vessels were not on a collision course and that the yacht had adjusted its path after the Admiral Grigorovich issued five horn blasts.

The incident follows the UK's Royal Marines' separate seizure of the MV Smyrtos, a tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet, off the southern coast of England on Sunday.

The boarding operation was a first for the UK, involving two British warships, reconnaissance aircraft, and helicopters.

While both events occurred in the English Channel, the UK defense ministry said that the seizure and Tuesday's warning shots from the Admiral Grigorovich were isolated incidents.

"HMS Mersey has been monitoring the Russian vessel, and support has been provided to the crew of the yacht," the defense ministry spokesperson said.

Still, the Russian navy has been repeatedly reported to be escorting shadow fleet tankers in convoys. The Admiral Grigorovich, part of the Black Sea Fleet, was spotted convoying two tankers in the English Channel in April, just after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer had given British forces the authority to seize shadow fleet vessels.

Retired Royal Navy Commodore Steve Prest, now an associate fellow at the UK's Royal United Services Institute, said it is possible that the Grigorovich's commanding officer decided to open fire after they got too nervous about an unresponsive yacht near the warship.

However, Prest said in comments shared with Business Insider, given the context of the shadow fleet and the Royal Marines' seizure of the Smyrtos, "I think this is the Russians baring their teeth," adding that Moscow "very rarely will do something like this in an uncalculated, haphazard way."

Prest said Russia may be trying to signal to other ships preparing to go through the English Channel: "Hey, look, we are here, we are serious, and we are prepared to stand our ground, so let's not have any miscalculation."

The 409-foot-long guided-missile frigate is the lead ship of its class and was commissioned in 2016. The ship's main armament consists of eight vertical launch cells for land-attack cruise missiles and a 100mm naval gun.

June 16, 2026: This story was updated to reflect comment from the UK Defense Ministry.

• A new tax meant for electric vehicles has come back to bite Ukraine's surging ground drone industry.
• Without the 20% VAT, Ukraine could have produced 5,000 more UGVs, an industry association CEO said.
• The tax, introduced in January, threw the local ground drone industry into disarray for months.

An electric vehicle tax that came into force this year inadvertently cost Ukraine thousands of ground drones it needs on the front lines, the CEO of a major defense trade association said.

Had the 20% value-added tax, which went into effect in January, not been introduced, Ukraine's military could likely have bought 5,000 more uncrewed ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, said Ihor Fedirko, the CEO of the Ukrainian Council for Defense Industry.

"We know that our government is procuring 25,000 in the first half of this year. If they could procure 20% more, that's 5,000," Fedirko told Business Insider. "For our armed forces, that's a lot."

The new tax also threw the local ground drone industry and military into disarray at the start of the year, causing contracts to dry up for months and several major manufacturers to nearly go out of business, he added.

Ukrainian lawmakers are now racing to undo the tax, with some politicians saying it's handicapped a key war industry that Kyiv is trying to rapidly expand.

Nina Yuzhanina, a lawmaker for Ukraine's European Solidarity party, said in a statement last week that the EV tax "almost ceased" the supply of ground drones to the military in some areas.

She and 44 other Ukrainian parliamentarians introduced a bill on May 19 aiming to fix the core issue: because uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, are so new, they were lumped together with EVs by the country's trade standards. The new law would define the drones as a separate good, exempting them from the 20% tax.

The bill is set for discussion over the next two weeks, but Fedirko estimates that if the law passes immediately, it would still take about two months for its effects to fully trickle down and restore production.

That comes as Ukraine's defense ministry said it plans to buy a total of 50,000 ground drones by the end of the year. Ukrainian UGVs can cost between $5,000 to $100,000 apiece, depending on the type of system and the gear it's equipped with.

"The exemption would save more than eight to 10 billion hryvnias, which is about $200 million," Fedirko said of the tax's impact on the local industry. "For us, it's a huge number."

How Ukraine began taxing its own war production

This year's VAT on ground drones is unusual for Ukraine. Under martial law, most of the country's war industries aren't subject to any such taxes.

This sort of consumption tax is collected at every step of the supply chain, but is typically eventually passed on to the end consumer — in this case, Ukraine's own military.

Ground drone manufacturers didn't actually have to worry about the tax until recently; Ukraine had been exempting EV duties since 2018.

But that exemption expired on January 1.

Military procurers found that their ground drone budgets needed to be 20% higher, but initially were confused by the new process because defense equipment and weapons are exempt from VAT by default, Fedirko said.

Amid the turmoil, drone makers couldn't find state contracts — the lifeblood for major manufacturers — for three months, he added.

"Three months without procurement, that's crazy. It's impossible to live without it," Fedirko said.

Production chaos while at war

The Ukrainian defense ministry highlighted the bottleneck in April, saying it was working quickly to "unblock" contracts and speed up deliveries.

But local firms had struggled to stay afloat in the meantime. A 20% cut to a firm's budget, in an industry already desperate for financing, can be a killer blow.

The new VAT also adds weeks of bureaucratic delay for an industry at war, with firms having to loop in state tax services and meticulously document the procurement process.

Fedirko said some firms may have had to drop capacity to a third of last year's to stay solvent, with cuts to employees or engineers.

A few tried to reclassify their drones as tanks or armored vehicles, while others sold their UGVs to volunteer organizations such as ComeBackAlive, which supplies military units on an ad hoc basis.

Tencore, the manufacturer of the popular tracked TerMIT drone, said it had to rely on these volunteer organizations when it couldn't find state contracts for five months.

"For UGV manufacturers, the VAT issue was not an accounting detail," the firm told Business Insider. It works with the Ukrainian Robotics Force association, which falls under Fedirko's UCDI umbrella.

A fix six months in the making

It's taken Ukraine this long to address the tax problem because military ground drones were so new that lawmakers had trouble defining them, Fedirko said. European Union commodity rules, on which Ukraine bases its own goods classifications, also don't have clear specifications for these uncrewed systems.

Though ground drone procurement resumed in the spring, manufacturers like Tencore say the months of delay have already cost frontline troops the equipment they need.

"For Ukraine, six months feels like infinity," Fedirko said.

When reached by Business Insider, the defense ministry declined to comment on the parliamentary bill introduced last week, saying it's not allowed to influence its consideration or debate.

However, it said Ukraine's UGV industry has so far grown to over 280 companies, with 550 types of drones for sale.

As the war moves into its fifth year, Ukrainian troops are increasingly relying on these platforms to conduct missions on the front lines, including logistics, evacuations, and attacks on Russian positions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in April that his forces had used ground drones to carry out over 22,000 missions in the first three months of 2026 alone.

• Around 600 Google employees urged CEO Sundar Pichai to reject classified Pentagon AI deals.
• They said they want to see AI benefit humanity, not be used for autonomous weapons or surveillance.
• Google and the Pentagon are in talks to use Gemini in classified settings, per a recent report.

Around 600 Google employees sent a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday, urging him not to let the company's AI technology be used by the US military for classified operations.

The letter, signed by employees in Google's DeepMind and Cloud divisions, cited a recent Information report that Google and the Pentagon were negotiating the use of Google's Gemini AI in classified settings.

"As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and that they do make mistakes," the employees wrote in the letter. "We feel that our proximity to this technology creates a responsibility to highlight and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses."

"Currently, the only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads," employees continued in the letter. "Otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them."

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Google has not yet responded to the letter, said Jane Chung, the founder of Justice Speaks, a communications firm representing the workers. Bloomberg first reported on the letter.

Google has long faced internal pushback to its efforts to work with the US military. In 2018, it decided not to renew Project Maven, a Department of Defense contract to integrate AI into military operations, following pressure from hundreds of employees. Palantir later picked up the deal.

The same year, Google established a set of AI principles, including a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance. Last year, it updated those AI principles to remove wording around weapons and surveillance.

The company also secured new contracts with the Pentagon last year to use its AI and cloud products. In March, the company said it would provide the Pentagon with AI agents in a non-classified setting. It also told Google DeepMind employees during a January meeting that they should expect more of these types of deals.

In the letter, Google employees raised concerns that classified work would lead to a lack of oversight into how the company's technology is used.

"We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways," the employees wrote. "This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond."

Read the full letter below:

Dear Sundar,

We are Google employees who are deeply concerned about ongoing negotiations between Google and the US Department of Defense. As people working on AI, we know that these systems can centralize power and that they do make mistakes. We feel that our proximity to this technology creates a responsibility to highlight and prevent its most unethical and dangerous uses.

Therefore, we ask you to refuse to make our AI systems available for classified workloads.

We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways. This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance but extends beyond. Currently, the only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads. Otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them.

Making the wrong call right now would cause irreparable damage to Google's reputation, business, and role in the world. At this very moment, the safety of our own workforce and critical infrastructure are under active threat. Human lives are already being lost and civil liberties put at risk at home and abroad from misuses of the technology we're playing a key role in building.

We know from our own history that our leaders can make the right choices, for ourselves and for the world, when the stakes are high.

Today, we call on you, Sundar, to act according to the values on which this company was built, and refuse classified workloads.

• US Air Force A-10 Warthogs were part of the rescue operation for downed airmen in Iran.
• The A-10s were in a "Sandy" role supporting search and rescue.
• The Air Force has pushed for the retirement of its A-10 fleet, deeming them obsolete.

US Air Force A-10 Warthogs, decades-old attack aircraft the service has been pushing into retirement, were part of the risky rescue missions to retrieve downed American airmen in Iran.

The Warthogs flew in their "Sandy" roles, supporting search and rescue while engaging in close-in battles at low altitudes. The rescue marks the latest involvement of the A-10 in the US war in Iran despite the Air Force's plans to imminently shelve its remaining fleet.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared details on the aircraft used in the mission during a Monday briefing on the rescue of the pilot and weapon systems officer after an F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran last week.

Caine said that a task force including A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, commonly called Warthogs, "audaciously penetrated enemy territory in broad daylight" to rescue the F-15E pilot. "This was an incredibly dangerous mission," he added, sharing the task force faced Iranian fire while locating and retrieving the downed pilot.

In the operation, the A-10s, along with other aircraft, including drones, flew in so-called "Sandy" roles, "violently suppressing and engaging the enemy in a close-in gunfight" to draw attention away from the rescue activities, as well as keep the enemy at bay.

During the engagement, one A-10 aircraft was hit by enemy fire. The pilot flew it into friendly airspace but determined that they wouldn't be able to land it. The pilot ejected as the plane went down. They were recovered safely.

"A 'Sandy' has one mission: get to the survivor, bring the rescue force forward, and put themselves between that survivor on the ground and the enemy," Caine said.

The "Sandy" role originated during the Vietnam War as the call sign for A-1 Skyraiders leading combat search-and-rescue missions. These aircraft located downed airmen, coordinated rescue efforts, and suppressed enemy fire to protect helicopters.

As the A-1 retired, the Sandy role — a mission, not a platform — passed to aircraft like the A-10 Warthog.

These “Sandy" aircraft are part of the larger CSAR package, which includes HH-60 helicopters and highly trained rescue personnel, HC-130 refueling tankers, fighter escorts, and intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance assets.

"The A-10 force and the rescue force did a fantastic job," Caine said Monday. Earlier in the war, the top general highlighted the involvement of Warthogs in hunting down Iranian fast-attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz.

The A-10's days are, however, numbered. The Air Force is planning the aircraft's retirement, though it has run into roadblocks. Congressional intervention has repeatedly thrown the attack plane a lifeline and prevented the service from fully retiring the entire fleet. There are over 160 Warthogs in service.

Pushing for the retirement of the fleet, Air Force leadership has previously argued that "the aircraft does not deter or survive against our pacing challenge," a reference to China. The service has been looking into whether F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters can fulfill the A-10's missions, such as close-air support. Supporters of the A-10 argue no other aircraft can currently fulfill its missions.

The A-10 was introduced in the 1970s and intended to be a tank-killer capable of blunting a Soviet armored assault. It can carry rockets, missiles, and bombs, but is best known for its 30mm GAU-8 Avenger seven-barrel Gatling-style autocannon.

• Russia has equipped its cheap "Molniya" strike drones with more battery power and better cameras.
• The modifications allow Russia to use these drones for a new purpose — battlefield reconnaissance.
• Moscow doesn't need to rely too heavily on its more expensive reconnaissance drones.

Russia has boosted the range and vision of its fixed-wing Molniya drones, turning cheap, crude aircraft into more capable platforms that can now scout as well as strike in Ukraine.

The upgrades let Moscow lean more on the Molniya ("lightning" in Russian) for battlefield reconnaissance, replacing the pricier surveillance drones like the Supercam and Orlan-10.

Russia has been equipping some of its Molniyas with additional batteries to extend their range, a high-definition camera, and a mesh modem for better communications, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, an advisor to Ukraine's defense ministry, told Business Insider.

The Molniyas have historically been considered one-way attack drones that carry a warhead and explode on impact. They have been adapted for other missions, though, including carrying smaller first-person-view (FPV) quadcopters, resembling a mothership.

Beskrestnov, a prominent Ukrainian drone warfare expert, said Russia began operating newly modified Molniyas around two months ago and has increasingly used them for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) purposes since then.

The Molniya ISR variant lacks a warhead and is instead equipped with advanced surveillance electronics, including a microcomputer and a rotating camera with a 10-fold optical zoom, according to a US military weapons information portal.

The modified Molniyas are significantly cheaper than the more traditional fixed-wing Supercam S-350 or the Zala Z-16, well-known Russian reconnaissance drones estimated to cost up to $100,000 apiece. The inexpensive Molniyas are made of light materials such as plywood, foam, and aluminum.

Beskrestnov said that Russia can obtain 10-15 Molniyas for the same price. The saturation of Ukrainian interceptor drones over the battlefield has pushed Moscow to opt for cheaper, more expendable assets for reconnaissance and targeting.

He speculated that this shift is driven by increased Ukrainian interceptor activity.

Dimko Zhluktenko, a soldier in Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment, said the modified Molniya drones are relatively easy to manufacture, giving Russia an ideal price for reconnaissance missions. He called these efforts "the war of scale" in a social media post earlier this month.

Neither Russia's defense ministry nor its US embassy responded to a request for comment on the Molniya ISR developments.

Russia and Ukraine have been constantly modifying their drones during the war to try to gain an advantage before the other side either catches up with the technology or develops a defensive countermeasure.

One of the biggest changes is a shift from radio links — easily jammed — to fiber-optic cables that are largely immune to the electronic warfare saturating the battlefield.

These fiber-optic cables have primarily been used to operate smaller FPV drones. However, Russia has begun using them with larger, fixed-wing platforms such as the Molniya.

Russia and Ukraine have taken their innovations a step further with unusual armaments, in some cases equipping drones with air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles to hunt down aircraft.

• A Ukrainian corps has released a video of its troops using exoskeletons on the battlefield.
• Two soldiers can be seen loading artillery shells on a Howitzer with the help of the tech.
• The 7th Air Assault Corps said they reduce physical load by 30% and help troops move faster.

Ukrainian forces say they're testing exoskeletons in battle for the first time, deploying them in logistics and combat positions on the Pokrovsk front.

The 7th Air Assault Corps posted a video on Friday of its 147th Separate Artillery Brigade demonstrating the new tech.

The exoskeletons are designed to be buckled at the waist and legs, with the apparatus wrapping behind the user's back and weaving toward the front of their knees. It also features two actuators at the hip that serve as hinges.

Each exoskeleton, the corps said, is meant to reduce the load on leg muscles by 30%, helping troops move at up to 12 mph for about 10 miles.

Clips showed two soldiers using the exoskeletons to carry and load artillery shells on a French CAESAR self-propelled Howitzer.

"Every day, artillerymen endure heavy physical loads. They carry 15 to 30 shells daily, each weighing 50 kg," said Colonel Vitalii Serdiuk, the corps' deputy commander, in a statement attached to the video.

The exoskeleton appears to be foldable, allowing it to fit inside a briefcase; the corps said the device itself weighs about 4.4 pounds.

Captions on the video said the exoskeletons are equipped with artificial intelligence that adapts in real time to the load on the soldier's legs and spine, allowing them to function in 10 different modes.

The 7th Air Assault Corps said this was the first time that any Ukrainian unit had trialed such technology in combat, and that the exoskeletons it received were test samples.

The US has also been designing its own exoskeletons, such as the Army's SABER, a soft, wearable exosuit that is strapped to the back and around each leg to reduce spinal strain.

Another example is Lockheed Martin's ONYX, a lower-body exoskeleton with knee actuators that wraps around the legs, but it hasn't been made standard-issue for the US military.

• Cheap drones, missiles, and mines make chokepoints like Hormuz harder for the US to secure quickly.
• The US Navy could need weeks or months to fully secure shipping lanes.
• Even limited transit disruptions can spike oil prices and rattle global markets.

The "load-bearing assumption" among some investors that US Navy warships can easily keep vital chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz open in times of conflict is slowly crumbling, steadily driving oil prices higher, a leading energy consultant said this week.

Robert McNally, a former Bush administration energy advisor and president of Rapidan Energy Group, told Business Insider on Wednesday that the market situation could worsen as US efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which handles 20% of the world's oil flows, drag on and as the potential scale of the looming energy crisis hits investors.

There is a "belief that something like this either can't happen, which was the belief before, or can't go on for long," McNally said, but as time goes on, "the remaining reservoir of just disbelief" that an essential energy chokepoint could be restricted for this long "is going to drain away," pushing prices higher in "the world's, by far, largest energy disruption in history."

To militarily secure the oil route for tanker movement, US forces will first need to substantially degrade Iran's missile, drone, and mine threats, the oil consultant and a military analyst said. That campaign could take weeks or months — long enough to significantly drive up oil prices and rattle global markets.

Surging prices and bleak predictions

The US has already been at war with Iran for weeks now. Over a dozen foreign oil tankers have been struck amid the fighting, and Brent crude prices have been climbing, jumping recently to over $100 per barrel, up from about $70 just before the conflict began, briefly surging toward $120 in the latest spike before edging back down. Year to date, oil prices have risen 78%, largely driven by disruptions created by the Iran war.

McNally predicted bleaker market outcomes if the war continues or if the conflict's combatants — the US, Israel, and Iran — target the so-called "crown jewels" of the global energy system, escalating the crisis rather than reining it in.

Israeli strikes on the South Pars Gas Field in Iran on Wednesday and Tehran's retaliatory strike on Qatar's LNG gas facility have set the stage for that kind of tit-for-tat escalation, even as President Donald Trump attempts to manage the increasingly volatile situation via his social media accounts.

Despite growing market concerns, the US Navy hasn't stepped in to escort oil tankers the way it has in past periods of conflict and tension in the Middle East. Trump administration officials have said that escorts might be an option when it's "militarily possible."

"It takes a while to secure a strait. Iran has a lot of asymmetric layered capabilities," McNally said, pointing to "potent" weaponry ranging from coastal defense missiles to mines to mini-submarines. An escorting warship accompanies a tanker to protect it from threats like missiles, small boats, and even attack drones that Iran can use with little notice in the strait or on the approaches to it.

Escort missions come only "after you pummel Iran for weeks," he said.

US Central Command, which oversees American operations in the Middle East, said on Tuesday that US forces had dropped 5,000-pound bunker busters against hardened anti-ship cruise missile targets along the Iranian shoreline. And on Thursday, the command released video footage of strikes on Iranian naval targets that "threaten international shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz."

US armed forces have so far sunk over 120 Iranian naval vessels while also targeting naval drone facilities, storage centers for sea mines, and torpedo production sites. Additionally, A-10 attack aircraft are in the fight, gunning for Iranian fast boats.

The US military is "zeroed in on dismantling Iran's decades-old threat to the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz," CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said on Monday.

"And we're not done," he said.

A process, not a quick fix

Assumptions that the US can quickly and easily secure vital sea lanes have been shaped by past conflicts where American naval power restored order relatively quickly.

During the Tanker War in the 1980s, US-led escorts helped keep oil flowing despite attacks in the Gulf between Iran and Iraq, and in later conflicts, the US military demonstrated the ability to rapidly overwhelm adversaries.

Those experiences, McNally said, have reinforced a broader expectation in certain markets and policy circles that any disruption to key chokepoints would be short-lived and manageable. That assumption is now colliding with very different threats.

"The weapons proliferation has just dramatically expanded," Bryan Clark, a retired US Navy officer and a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

"You can sort of hang on forever by just using Shahed drones and little drone attack boats," he said, adding that "drones are going to be the biggest threat."

In heavily constricted waterways, like the Strait of Hormuz, which is just 21 nautical miles across at its narrowest point, state and non-state actors can "basically create an ambush situation where you can target shipping," he said.

An Iranian anti-ship cruise missile could hit a tanker in the strait within seconds, giving warship crews very little time to react. And that is only one potential threat.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group in Yemen, seized on that exact opportunity in recent years, targeting both military and commercial vessels around the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

To forcefully curb the Houthi threat, the US launched Operation Rough Rider in March 2025. That effort took 52 days and more than $1 billion to get the rebels to stand down — and shipping still hasn't fully recovered, as many commercial shipping companies have opted for higher prices and longer transit times rather than face the elevated security risks.

The current situation carries greater complexities. Iran has a much deeper arsenal than its proxies, and it has leverage as long as it is willing and able to fight. There are no alternative routes to the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers loaded with crude oil or LNG.

Launching a naval escort mission in the Strait of Hormuz "would pretty much take up all of our deployed forces in that region," Clark said. Without allied support, which isn't coming together, "it's going to take at least a dozen destroyers to do the escort mission."

"They would be all tied up doing that," he said.

Israel, waging war against Iran alongside the US military, has a small surface fleet. US European allies have balked at entering the conflict, though some have deployed ships to defend their assets in the region. Some allies have shown support in condemnations of Iran, but for a potential escort mission, the US could be forced to go it alone, relying on a mix of combat air patrols and naval power.

Clark warned that the mission could go on for months because the Iranians "can hold out for a long time, given the number of weapons they've squirreled away." The Pentagon has acknowledged the challenge of weaponry buried over decades.

As cheap weapons like Shahed drones lower the barrier to entry for precision strike for countries like Iran and aggressive non-state actors like the Houthis, McNally said that it looks like oil disruption is increasingly becoming a tool of coercion in modern conflict. These vessels are being targeted, not merely caught in the crossfire, and that will demand shifts in strategic-level thinking.

Even without a full shutdown of important chokepoints, any disruption alone can shake global markets. In energy markets, delays and uncertainty can trigger price spikes. That's leverage for malign actors, even those limited in conventional military might.

McNally said that "folks will be watching very closely how successful we will be in the coming weeks in suppressing that."

• A Pentagon official recently demonstrated how a Palantir tool can be used to support strikes.
• Cameron Staley, the Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer, praised Palantir's Project Maven.
• According to multiple reports, the US military has relied on Maven to help carry out its war with Iran.

A top Pentagon official provided a rare look inside how the military uses Palantir's Project Maven to carry out strikes.

Once you detect something you want to target, "this is what we do," Cameron Stanley, the Department of Defense's chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, said during a presentation at Palantir's AIPCon 9.

"Left click, right click, left click," he said.

Palantir posted a video of Stanley's demonstration over the weekend showing how the system could use satellite imagery alongside multiple data feeds, including a flight-tracking system.

Using the system, he highlighted how the list of potential targets could be narrowed to a specific car in the parking lot.

In another part of the demo, Stanley showed how artificial intelligence is used to identify "what the best asset" is to carry out the strike. For the demonstration, it was a mounted .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun on a Stryker armored fighting vehicle.

"We've gone from identifying the target, to now coming up with a course of action, to now actioning that target all within one system," Stanley said. "This is revolutionary."

We were having this done in about eight or nine systems, where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to a desire end state, in this case actually closing a kill chain," he said, pointing to combat footage of a strike.

"When we started this, it literally took hours to do what you just saw," he said of the process of going from detection to targeting to decision-making to engagement. "We've been able to reduce that time significantly."

Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his deputies are somewhat cagey about exactly what Project Maven entails, given its classified uses. Citing information "in the papers," Karp said that his company has provided the US and its allies an advantage on the battlefield.

"The fact that you can now target more precisely, more accurately, more quickly, and that, meaning America, can do all these, organize the total power of our fleet and all of our resources, and bring it to bear against our adversaries and enemies has shifted the way in which war is fought," Karp told CNBC on the sidelines of the conference. "And I have read that Palantir's Project Maven is the core backbone of that."

The Army's Commander and Staff Guide to Data Literacy says that Maven is part of "the cutting-edge capabilities" troops rely on "to assist in targeting and executing strikes."

"While MSS can greatly enable the decision-making process, staff members will need to have a cursory understanding of how these emerging systems function to fully appreciate their capabilities and limitations," the guide reads, referring to the Maven Smart System.

The MSS has been an integral part of the US's War in Iran, The Washington Post recently reported. Anthropic's Claude is embedded in the system, a topic of major discussion after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to effectively blacklist the AI startup after it refused to give the Pentagon unfettered access to its AI models.

Business Insider has not independently confirmed Maven's use in Operation Epic Fury nor the integration of Anthropic's models into Maven's systems. Spokespersons for the Pentagon and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's products within six months. Anthropic has sued the Pentagon, the Executive Office of the President, and a host of other federal agencies to block Hegseth and Trump's directives.

Initially overseen by Google, Palantir took over Project Maven, part of the software company's highly successful partnerships with the US and allied governments. Karp boasted last year that Palantir's products are so popular that he doesn't have time for US allies who hassle the company with endless meeting requests.

"I'm telling governments all over the world, look, we're not showing up to do this sales call for Maven," Karp told podcaster Molly O'Shea in November 2025. "You know it works. We know it works. Show up to my office and explain how you're going to make this easy for us, because we don't have huge bandwidth."

• Western militaries need to study one Ukrainian operation in particular for drone warfare lessons.
• Officials say Operation Spiderweb, which struck dozens of Russian jets, offers key lessons.
• The US Army's drone course director told Business Insider it's "the one event that I teach to the students."

Western militaries are investing heavily in drone warfare after seeing their impact in Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion. And while it isn't necessary to absorb every lesson, current and former military officials say one major operation is worth studying closely.

Maj. Rachel Martin, director of the US Army's Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course designed to accelerate training on small drone warfare, told Business Insider that the 2025 Operation Spiderweb is "the one event that I teach to the students."

Offensive potential

In the operation, Ukraine smuggled drones into Russia, drove them to positions close to Russian airfields, and launched them at strategically valuable aircraft. The Ukrainian drones hit 41 Russian warplanes and caused an estimated $7 billion in damage.

The strikes showed how arsenals of small, cheap drones can destroy high-value military assets far from the front — and how difficult they are to defend against.

The operation was complex and took roughly a year and a half of planning, but, Martin said, it showed "that a small amount of money could be spent to destroy something at the strategic level," in this case, bombers and other high-dollar aircraft.

It cost Russia billions of dollars when it "is already hurting financially from being in a prolonged war."

Seeing that kind of low-cost attack destroying assets that could take years to replace, she said, "was a big eye-opening experience for the world." It highlighted not only what was possible with attack drones on offense, but also critical vulnerabilities.

Defensive realizations

The Ukrainian operation sparked a realization in the West about the need for significantly more protection at air bases, especially those hosting essential mission tools, such as nuclear deterrence elements.

Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, the deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration for the US Air Force, said of the operation last year that "disruptive" technologies like the drones seen in the Ukraine war "will have big implications not just for our bomber force or our nuclear force but really any critical infrastructure."

"We have counter-drone capabilities at these bases. Do we need to continue to modernize? Do we need to accelerate?" he said. "Yeah, absolutely, all that."

The majority of the most strategic US air assets are based inside the continental US. American airpower also depends heavily on warplanes stationed at air bases around the world. Defending against drones has proven challenging at both home and abroad, as the Tower 22 disaster and a number of domestic incidents have highlighted.

European air bases have likewise grappled with the challenge of drones, making the lessons of Operation Spiderweb particularly poignant.

Retired Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, who spent 36 years in the British Royal Air Force and served as its director of joint warfare, said last month that Operation Spiderweb holds key lessons that NATO allies need to learn.

When it comes to modern drone warfare, the West has more to learn from operations like Spiderweb than from day-to-day front-line drone fighting, he said at the UK think tank Chatham House. The West doesn't necessarily need to engage in heavy quadcopter warfare at the front when it has artillery and substantial airpower.

"The lessons that we need to learn are more from Operation Spiderweb, where Ukraine employed these drones in a much more sophisticated way and really did start to take out some significant targets," Bagwell said. That operation had a high-level strategic effect on a stronger adversary for a comparatively lower cost. It's asymmetric warfare that the West can't ignore.

Picking up lessons from the war

The US is using drone warfare in ways beyond what Spiderweb demonstrated, drawing on other lessons from the war. In its war with Iran that started last month, it has used drones to attack Iranian targets, including the new one-way attack LUCAS drones.

It's also still employing traditional drone tactics, using platforms like the uncrewed strike and reconnaissance drone MQ-9 Reaper.

The Army's new drone course is just one of the many ways that it is advancing its drone warfare capabilities, along with other moves like plans to buy at least a million drones in the next two or so years. Allies across NATO are taking similar steps.

Martin said their power is undeniable, and the course itself was created because the Army could see that it was behind in small drone warfare and needed to fix that. But the US is not in the same existential fight that Ukraine is, nor is it facing the same weapons shortages.

Drones have kept Ukraine in the fight against Russia even as other weapons ran out. They haven't been decisive, though, indicating that deep stocks of traditional and advanced weaponry still matter.

The US Army course teaches soldiers that drones aren't always the right weapon.

Bagwell also cautioned against leaning too heavily on drones. He said that drones have been "hugely useful" for Ukraine, but "these have not won the war for either side."

He said that Ukraine has "had to adapt and fight the way they can only fight, and I applaud them for what they have done. But there is a question for us in the West as to whether that is the way we want to fight."

• The US military has stepped up its efforts to target Iran's mines, drone boats, and torpedoes.
• This comes after US officials said American strikes destroyed dozens of Iranian ships.
• These tactical efforts reflect an effort to curb Iran's ability to attack the Strait of Hormuz.

The US military is broadly targeting Iran's naval combat capabilities, expanding strikes beyond just warships to mines, drone boats, and torpedoes, the admiral overseeing the Middle East operations said on Monday.

Adm. Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, reiterated in a video statement that eliminating Iran's "naval threats" is one of three military objectives of the American strike campaign, which just surpassed the two-week mark.

Cooper shared imagery showing the aftermath of recent US airstrikes on military sites, among which were a naval drone storage facility and buildings used to produce light- and heavy-weight torpedoes.

The US also hit more than 90 military targets on Kharg Island off the coast of Iran over the weekend, destroying storage bunkers for naval mines, among other targets, Cooper said.

Kharg Island is located roughly 300 miles from the strategic Strait of Hormuz and is the centerpiece of Iran's vast oil sector, handling 90% of its crude exports.

President Donald Trump said last week that the US military operation spared Iranian oil infrastructure at Kharg Island, although he threatened to reconsider if Iran decides to interfere with shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a small body of water between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that serves as one of the world's most important naval choke points.

"We're also zeroed in on dismantling Iran's decades-old threat to the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz," Cooper said Monday. "Through a combination of air, land, and maritime capabilities, we have successfully destroyed over 100 Iranian naval vessels, and we aren't done."

The US military said last week that it had damaged or destroyed more than 60 Iranian ships and 30 minelayers since the start of Operation Epic Fury on February 28. Satellite imagery obtained by Business Insider shows several destroyed vessels in Iran's ports in the early days of the war.

US forces have used MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to sink multiple Iranian ships, including a submarine, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Friday.

The expansion of airstrikes beyond warships reflects the Trump administration's efforts to restrict Iran's ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz and other waterways, where the Iranians are more likely to fight with covert, asymmetrical capabilities than traditional surface combatants.

American and Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of people and wounded thousands more in Iran, while Tehran's missile and drone attacks have killed dozens in Israel and the Gulf states, according to local health ministries, officials, and media reports.

Meanwhile, at least 13 US service members have been killed, with at least 140 wounded, since the start of combat operations against Iran. The most recent losses were the six crew members who died after their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq on Thursday.

• A US Navy destroyer used an SM-3 interceptor to down an Iranian ballistic missile on Friday.
• It's the third time in two weeks that a Navy destroyer used the SM-3 to defend NATO airspace.
• SM-3s are among are top missile interceptors, but they come with a hefty price tag.

US Navy destroyers operating in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea have been launching SM-3s — among America's most high-end interceptors — to defend NATO airspace against incoming Iranian ballistic missiles.

On Friday, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Oscar Austin fired at least one SM-3, or Standard Missile-3, interceptor to bring down an Iranian ballistic missile in Turkish airspace, a defense official told Business Insider.

It marked the third time since February 28, when the US and Israel started striking Iran, that a Navy destroyer has used an SM-3 to down an Iranian missile in Turkish airspace, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military developments.

Turkey's national defense ministry said earlier that NATO air and missile defense assets deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean intercepted the Iranian missile. There were no casualties or injuries, although debris fell in the southern city of Gaziantep.

Turkey hosts several important bases for American and NATO forces, including Incirlik and Konya air bases, and an Iranian strike against those facilities could trigger a significant escalation in a war that has already spread across the Middle East.

The Oscar Austin is one of three American destroyers currently positioned in the Eastern Mediterranean. The use of SM-3 interceptors comes amid broader air defense operations across the Middle East. The US and its allies in the region have shot down thousands of Iranian missiles and drones since the start of Operation Epic Fury less than two weeks ago.

The SM-3 uses a kinetic kill vehicle to destroy short- to intermediate-range missiles during the midcourse phase of flight. It can engage targets in space, unlike the Navy's other interceptors, and is outfitted on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers.

There are multiple variants of the SM-3, manufactured by US defense giant RTX and, for the latest variant, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

US destroyers first used their SM-3s in combat in April 2024 to defend Israel from an Iranian missile attack, and the US Navy fired them again several months later in October after another barrage from Tehran.

These interceptor missiles don't come cheap, though. The SM-3 Block IB variant, for instance, is estimated to cost roughly $10 million on the low end, while the newer Block IIA costs around $28 million.

It's unclear how many SM-3s the Navy has expended during combat in the Middle East. Air defense doctrine can call for firing at least two interceptors for each incoming missile, so the bill for the latest engagements above Turkey could already be substantial.

Navy leadership has warned in recent years that the US has been firing its SM-3s at an alarming rate. Service officials have warned that they need a lot more of these interceptors to counter threats in the Pacific, such as China and its theater ballistic missiles.

• US forces used ATACMS to sink Iranian warships during Operation Epic Fury, the top US general said.
• Gen. Dan Caine announced that US artillery has helped to render the Iranian navy ineffective.
• ATACMS provide substantial striking power to ground forces.

The top US general revealed Friday that American troops involved in Operation Epic Fury have used a ballistic missile system to sink Iranian warships, including a submarine, offering some insight into the targets US artillery is engaging in this war.

Artillery soldiers and Marines are "sinking ships, destroying depots, and launching Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS," and "Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSMs," Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Friday press briefing.

"From outside Iran, our Army and Marine artillerymen are hitting sites that Iran relies on to project power beyond their borders," he said.

"In just the first 13 days of this operation, our artillery forces have made history," Caine said.

"They fired the first precision strike missiles ever used in combat, reaching deep into enemy territory," he said. "They've used Army ATACMS to sink multiple ships, including a submarine."

US forces are "continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation. He said that the US military is targeting mine-laying vessels and the ability to target commercial vessels.

"In less than two weeks, we've rendered the Iranian Navy combat ineffective and continue to attack naval vessels, including all of their Soleimani-class warships, which were armed with anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft weapons," Caine said.

Other naval targets sunk include Iran's new purpose-built drone carrier.

Army Tactical Missile Systems are typically used to target land-based targets, such as enemy air defense systems and logistics hubs.

Each missile costs upward of $1 million, depending on the range and type of warhead. ATACMS missiles can hit targets out to as far as about 200 miles away and are fired using the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or M240 Multiple Launch Rocket System launchers. The HIMARS can also fire PrSMs and much shorter-range guided rockets.

The Lockheed Martin-built ATACMS is guided by GPS and inertial navigation that tracks its flight toward a designated target, and hence cannot be used to accurately fire on moving targets. For this reason, it's likely that the ships destroyed were pierside or moored.

The ATACMS augments the strike power of Army and Marine Corps artillery, allowing land force commanders to hit critical targets without relying on air or naval forces to deliver the strike. The system was designed during the Cold War and first used in combat in the 1991 Gulf War.

The Ukrainians have also used their limited supply of US-provided ATACMS to hit Russian military facilities. With these weapons in short supply, Ukraine has since developed its own domestically built capabilities.

US forces have attacked over 6,000 targets in Iran, Caine said on Friday. As the US and Israel have established air supremacy over Iran, allowing bombers and fighters to fly overhead, they've shifted to munitions like gravity bombs, which are much cheaper to produce and more plentiful in the US arsenal than missiles.

• A KC-135 refueling aircraft "went down" in Iraq, the US military announced Thursday evening.
• A second unidentified aircraft was involved but landed safely.
• All six crew members were killed in the crash, the military said Friday.

The US military said on Friday that all six crew members were killed after their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq on Thursday.

The deaths mark the US Air Force's first losses since the start of Operation Epic Fury on February 28.

Seven other US service members have been killed in action during the war, with at least 140 others injured. Many of them have returned to duty; some, however, were more seriously wounded.

CENTCOM said it is investigating the KC-135 incident, which occurred at roughly 2 p.m. ET on Thursday in western Iraq. It said that the "loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire."

"The identities of the service members are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified," the military said.

The US first acknowledged on Thursday that it had lost a KC-135 refueling aircraft supporting the combat operations against Iran. A second aircraft involved in the incident landed safely.

This crash marks the fourth American aircraft loss since the start of Epic Fury, the Pentagon's name for US operations against Iran, nearly two weeks ago.

Just days into the war, CENTCOM announced that three US F-15E Strike Eagles were downed by friendly fire over Kuwait. The aircraft were lost, but all six aircrew members ejected safely.

The KC-135 Stratotanker is an Air Force asset that supports the broader joint force by refueling other aircraft — including fighter jets, bombers, and cargo aircraft — in notoriously complex midair refueling operations.

It is essentially a flying gas station that executes fuel transfers at high speed with aircraft in proximity.

March 13, 2026 — This story has been updated with the latest information from US Central Command, which has revealed the loss of all crew members.