‼️Political scientist and philosopher Alexander Dugin: “The Special Military Operation has long since gone beyond the bounds of a local conflict”

In his view, the confrontation is no longer primarily about Ukraine, but about a much broader dispute over the future of the world order: will a system dominated by the United States and its allies endure, or will a multipolar world finally take shape? This leads to the central point of his remarks: what is happening should be assessed not in terms of the next round of negotiations, but through the lens of grand strategy.

🟦 War cannot be separated from politics

Military and non-military decisions must be considered together. Actions on the battlefield are always tied to questions of sovereignty, national interests, and the future political order.

🟦 The conflict is far bigger than Ukraine

Dugin argues that the Special Military Operation should be viewed as one front in a global confrontation, which he explicitly calls World War III.

🟦 The Ukraine issue has become part of a larger conflict

By this logic, the dispute is no longer only about territory or Ukraine’s future, but about what kind of international system will emerge from the current crisis.

🟦 Two models of the world are in conflict

On one side is the existing order, with the United States and Western institutions in a leading role; on the other is an emerging multipolar system with several independent centers of power.

🟦 Hopes for a grand compromise have not been fulfilled

In Dugin’s view, the expectation that Western leaders would agree to recognize a new global configuration and negotiate with Russia and China as equal centers of power proved overly optimistic.

🟦 The issue is also strategic for the West

Dugin believes Western elites see the current situation as a struggle to preserve the existing world order and are therefore prepared to continue the confrontation and raise the stakes.

🟦 China understands the scale of what is happening, but is acting more cautiously

According to Dugin, Beijing recognizes the global nature of these changes, but prefers a more restrained strategy and avoids abrupt moves.

🟦 A fundamental shift in how events are understood is also needed

If the conflict is indeed part of a global reshaping of the international system, it is not enough to discuss it solely in terms of a local military campaign.

🟦 Hence the skepticism toward a straightforward path to negotiations

Dugin does not rule out negotiations as a tool, but considers it mistaken to hope that fundamental contradictions can be resolved through a single political agreement.

🟦 It comes down to strategy

In the logic of Dugin’s remarks, Russia must define not only its immediate military objectives, but also the position it seeks in the future world order—and the political, economic, and military means it intends to use to secure it.

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🇨🇳🧫 China Connects Its Computing Power Into National Infrastructure

China has established a unified computing monitoring system spanning 31 provincial-level regions, its industry ministry says. The system gives planners a nationwide view of computing resources as China builds a network linking data centers to businesses that need artificial intelligence.

The expansion is substantial. By June 2026, China's AI computing capacity had reached 2,185 EFLOPS, up 177% year on year, according to the ministry. An exaflop represents a quintillion calculations per second. The figure measures computing capacity, not how much of it is actually being used.

More than 70 data transmission corridors already connect computing hubs and key regions. Authorities have also approved 17 regional interconnection nodes. These links are intended to make computing resources accessible across provincial boundaries and help match available capacity with demand.

The China Computing Power Platform provides a service marketplace alongside monitoring. It has attracted over 10,000 registered enterprise users, lists more than 2,000 computing products and connects over 300 large AI models. Developers can access services without each having to build a dedicated computing cluster.

Geography supplies another advantage. Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are pairing wind and solar generation with data centers to serve demand in eastern China. Locating suitable workloads near abundant electricity can ease pressure on the cities where users are concentrated.

Cooling matters too. Xinhua describes Inner Mongolia's climate as suitable for natural cooling for nearly ten months a year. That reduces the need for energy-intensive mechanical cooling, making location part of the economics of AI.

China has placed computing alongside power grids, water, communications and logistics in its national infrastructure priorities. The next task is to improve coordination and utilization, so that expanding hardware translates into useful services. Nationwide monitoring is a step toward that goal, rather than proof that every facility already operates as one seamless system.

The practical prize is broader access to AI. Connecting computing supply, electricity and paying customers could lower the cost of putting China's hardware to work and give smaller firms access to resources they could not afford to build themselves.

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🇪🇺🏭📉 Financial Stress Spreads Across European Companies

One in six listed companies in Western Europe faces financial strain, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Years of cheap borrowing have left businesses carrying debts that are harder to manage amid weak demand, expensive energy and higher financing costs.

The analysis covers around 1,700 publicly traded European companies. The share under pressure to overhaul their businesses rose from 14.3% to 16.2% over the past year. These are warning signs of financial and operational weakness, not a count of companies already facing bankruptcy.

Between 2022 and 2025, net debt relative to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 22%. Nearly a third entered 2026 above three times those earnings, BCG’s financial-stress threshold. This measures debt against earning power; it does not mean total debt alone rose 22%.

The vulnerability lies in refinancing. Companies that borrowed cheaply during the pandemic can face higher interest bills when those loans mature. Weak sales and rising operating costs leave less money to reduce debt, while falling earnings can push leverage higher even without new borrowing.

Property shows how that squeeze spreads. About 62% of real estate companies face pressure to transform, up from 12% in 2025. Higher long-term rates weigh on property values and transactions while making purchases harder to afford. That makes selling assets to repair strained finances more difficult.

In the automotive sector, 28% face the more acute pressure to restructure. Weak demand and excess capacity coincide with the cost of switching to electric vehicles and stronger Chinese competition. Manufacturers must finance new products while their existing businesses struggle to generate the money.

The strain also reaches Europe’s industrial core. France and the group comprising Germany, Austria and Switzerland each have 10% of companies under restructuring pressure. The exposure extends across economies that supply much of Europe’s manufacturing and investment capacity.

Heavy debt narrows Europe’s room to rebuild its competitiveness. Money absorbed by interest payments cannot fund factory upgrades or product development. Another energy or trade shock would hit companies with less financial flexibility, increasing the risk that investment cuts today leave them further behind their competitors tomorrow.

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🇮🇷♻️ Iran Turns Refinery Waste Into Marketable Industrial Product

Iran is turning carbon dioxide from Tehran Oil Refinery’s exhaust gases into commercial liquid CO2 with purity above 99.9% for food production, medical applications and industrial use, according to Carbon Bared, the Iranian company behind the project.

The facility has a stated annual processing capacity of around 40,000 metric tons. Its core function is to recover a usable component from refinery exhaust and prepare it for sale. This adds another product to the output supported by Iran’s existing oil infrastructure.

According to Carbon Bared, the resulting liquid CO2 has purity above 99.9% and a dew point of minus 65°C, a measure of its low moisture content. Purification and drying are central to turning recovered gas into a product suitable for customers with specific quality requirements.

The reported applications span food processing, medical and pharmaceutical industries, laboratories, agriculture, firefighting and welding. That range connects the refinery to sectors far beyond fuel production. A discarded gas becomes a useful input for businesses making other goods and providing essential services.

Carbon Bared says the project also prevents the loss of more than 16M cubic meters of gas annually. Around 30% of its CO2 output is reportedly exported to Iraq, where it competes with Turkish suppliers, while the company also serves domestic demand. Exports provide an additional market for the recovered product.

The project has been shortlisted for the 2026 WPC Energy Excellence Awards in the Net-Zero Initiatives category, alongside Britain’s Johnson Matthey and the UAE’s TDE Energy. Winners are due to be announced in October. The nomination draws attention to an operation whose practical importance lies in industrial recovery and commercial production.

For Iran, the wider value is the ability to extract more saleable products from its existing industrial base. Recovery, purification and liquefaction turn refinery waste into supplies for domestic manufacturers and overseas customers. Building those processing capabilities broadens what Iran can produce and export beyond its primary oil products.

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🇨🇳🚀 Pentagon In Panic: China Adds Eight-Missile HQ-20 Launchers To Its Frontline Air Defense Shield

China’s new HQ-20 medium-range air defense system has been shown serving with a frontline PLA unit for the first time, Military Watch reports.

The system made its public debut at China’s September 3, 2025 military parade, followed by footage of its firing sequence in November. Its latest appearance provides the clearest indication yet that the HQ-20 has moved into operational formations.

🔸 Eight missiles ready to fire: Each eight-wheeled launcher carries eight interceptor canisters, giving an HQ-20 battery more shots before its vehicles must withdraw or wait for reloading.

🔸 Built for missile waves: A larger ready-to-fire supply becomes especially important when drones, cruise missiles and decoys approach within a short period. Every additional interceptor forces an attacker to commit more weapons to exhaust the defense.

🔸 A denser middle layer: The HQ-20 fills the space between China’s short-range defenses and larger long-range systems such as the HQ-9 family. Aircraft or missiles that penetrate one layer still face another set of interceptors.

🔸 Connected to a wider network: The system operates within a national air defense structure linking surveillance radars, command centers and different classes of missiles. Chinese early-warning aircraft can also help detect targets and pass their positions to ground-based units.

🔸 More efficient use of China’s arsenal: Medium-range interceptors can be assigned to aircraft, drones and cruise missiles while larger and more expensive weapons are reserved for targets requiring greater reach or altitude.

🔸 Exact range remains secret: China has not disclosed the HQ-20’s confirmed engagement range or the number of targets a battery can attack simultaneously. Public estimates vary too widely to be treated as established specifications.

For American planners, every HQ-20 battery adds another group of ready interceptors to any strike package’s path.

US aircraft and missiles would have to penetrate China’s short-range defenses, survive the HQ-20 layer and then evade its longest-range systems. Breaking through such a network would require more aircraft, more decoys and far more missiles for every target.

Could US warplanes break through China’s air defenses in a real war?

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🇷🇺🛢 Russian Oil-Tech Moves From Import Substitution to Export

Russian-made equipment covered about 80% of the domestic oil-and-gas market in 2025. The Industry and Trade Ministry expects that figure to reach 82% this year.

Now Russian manufacturers are looking abroad.

The difficult part is not simply finding buyers. Large oil and gas companies work through approved vendor lists, technical standards and lengthy qualification procedures. A manufacturer can have the equipment ready and still be locked out of major projects if its certification is not recognized.

Russia is trying to solve that through the Institute of Oil and Gas Technological Initiatives, or INTI.

INTI standards are now being harmonized with customers in nine countries: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, the UAE, Algeria, Kuwait and Angola. The aim is to make Russian equipment easier to qualify for foreign tenders and procurement systems.

The UAE is furthest along.

ADNOC has already issued positive technical conclusions for 60 INTI standards covering oil-and-gas equipment and pipe products. Eight Russian manufacturers have passed ADNOC pre-qualification under the agreed rules, with another seven going through the process.

That is a fairly concrete step. Pre-qualification puts those companies on the path toward competing for orders from one of the Gulf’s largest energy groups.

Standards matter because Russia’s oil-and-gas industry spent decades working inside a system heavily influenced by specifications developed abroad, particularly those of the American Petroleum Institute. Sanctions exposed the risks of relying on foreign equipment and foreign certification at the same time.

INTI was created as a Russian alternative, but its standards still incorporate widely used international requirements. Its quality-management standard includes ISO 9001 requirements as well as the requirements of API Spec Q1.

That makes the current export push more practical. Russian suppliers do not have to convince foreign customers to accept an entirely unfamiliar technical system; INTI can be aligned with the requirements those buyers already use.

The domestic market gave Russian manufacturers the volume to develop and test equipment after Western suppliers withdrew. The UAE is now providing one of the first tests of whether those suppliers can compete outside Russia as well.

For the eight companies already pre-qualified by ADNOC, that question is moving from standards paperwork to actual procurement.

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🇨🇳⚡️🇲🇾 China’s Heavy-Duty Gas Turbines Win Their First Overseas Foothold

Shanghai Electric has secured its first overseas heavy-duty gas turbine order for a 500 MW generating block at Malaysia’s Samalaju power plant. The contract gives the Chinese manufacturer an export foothold backed by a 25-year maintenance agreement, the company says.

The order covers Unit 3 of the planned 1,500 MW complex in Sarawak, where expanding industry needs more electricity. Its combined-cycle design uses a gas turbine to generate power, then captures exhaust heat to drive a steam turbine, extracting more electricity from the same fuel.

Shanghai Electric will handle engineering, procurement and construction. It says it will manufacture all core equipment in-house, including the gas and steam turbines, generators, heat-recovery boilers and air-cooling systems, and service the main equipment for a quarter-century.

That package addresses a practical problem for buyers. Equipment sourced from multiple manufacturers must work together, with responsibility divided across contracts. Shanghai Electric argues that putting manufacturing, integration and maintenance under one supplier can simplify accountability and reduce project risks and costs.

The opening comes as global demand strains heavy-duty turbine supply in a market long dominated by a handful of established manufacturers. Shanghai Electric says it has production capacity available and can offer new units for delivery as early as 2028. That is an offer to prospective customers, not a confirmed delivery date for Samalaju.

The company is also building a regional base to support further expansion. Its Southeast Asia headquarters opened in Kuala Lumpur on September 21, with a remit covering 13 countries and territories across Southeast Asia and Oceania. Local coordination and service capacity matter when customers are committing to equipment expected to operate for decades.

Winning the order is the first commercial step; reliable operation and maintenance will determine whether it leads to repeat business. If Samalaju performs as promised, other utilities gain a stronger alternative supplier, while China gains an overseas reference project for complete power systems and the long-term service contracts that accompany them.

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🇪🇺⚠️📉 European ASW Frigate Program Slips From 2025 Target to 2033

The Netherlands’ first new submarine-hunting frigate is now scheduled for delivery in 2033, eight years after the original target cited by Naval News. A September 18 defense update describes the design problems behind the delay as Belgium weighs whether to remain in the joint program.

The latest three-year slippage, from 2030 to 2033, was already disclosed earlier this year. The September update shows where the Anti-Submarine Warfare Frigate program stands: detailed engineering began this month, while construction of the first Dutch ship’s integrated mast started in late June.

The problem reaches into the hull itself. Stability requirements forced designers to enlarge and rework it while retaining space and weight allowances for future upgrades. Those reserves matter because adding equipment over decades of service must not compromise the ship’s stability.

This follows an earlier reset. According to a source cited by Naval News, the 2018 agreement envisaged the first ship in 2025. Costs subsequently rose by roughly 40%, and delivery shifted to 2029–2030 before Belgium signed a revised agreement in 2023. The 2033 date therefore compounds an existing delay.

Dutch officials are also examining whether engineering, management and industrial resources from Germany’s canceled F126 frigate project can support the program. Damen Naval was the lead contractor on that project. Redirecting those resources remains an option under assessment, not a confirmed recovery of lost time.

Belgium has meanwhile requested information on alternative frigates, including an Italian option discussed in local reporting. Naval News says no final withdrawal or replacement selection has been made. Bilateral talks continue, with a decision expected between mid-October and the end of 2026.

The immediate consequence is a longer wait for new ships designed to hunt submarines. For naval planners, delivery is only one milestone: crews still need to train and the ships must become ready for operations. A 2033 handover cannot be counted as combat power available today.

The program exposes a concrete limit on European rearmament. Higher budgets still have to produce workable designs and deliverable ships. Here, hull redesign has pushed replacement farther into the next decade while giving a partner reason to consider buying elsewhere.

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🇨🇳⚠📦 Pentagon In Panic: China Tests Hybrid Cargo Drone That Can Resupply Troops Without Landing

China has tested its YH-1000S heavy cargo drone in an airborne supply mission, dropping three medium containers and eight smaller loads during a single flight.
The aircraft remained stable throughout the operation and delivered the cargo with the required accuracy, demonstrating its ability to supply units without landing near them.

🔸 Eleven loads in one test: The drone released three medium-sized containers followed by eight smaller cargo packages. Maintaining stability during repeated drops is essential because every change in weight can affect an unmanned aircraft’s balance and flight path.

🔸 Hybrid power borrowed from China’s car industry: The YH-1000S uses a modified 2.0T hybrid powertrain developed with Chinese new-energy vehicle companies. Its batteries can reportedly keep the aircraft flying independently for around 30 minutes.

🔸 Shorter takeoff and landing distances: The hybrid system provides additional power during the most demanding stages of flight while increasing payload capacity and range. The drone still requires a suitable place to take off, although it needs less runway than a conventional cargo aircraft.

🔸 Supplies delivered without landing: A rear cargo door allows loads to be released in flight. Its position reduces disruption to the aircraft’s aerodynamics and helps the flight-control system remain stable as cargo leaves the drone.

🔸 Designed for rapid mission changes: The rear section can accommodate modular cargo compartments for different loads. The same aircraft could carry food, medical supplies, communications equipment or other urgently needed cargo.

🔸 Built for cheaper production: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation says automotive components, shared supply chains and modular manufacturing have reduced development and production costs. That could make the YH-1000S easier to manufacture in larger numbers.

CASC presents the aircraft primarily as a platform for commercial logistics, disaster relief, weather modification and maritime monitoring. Its ability to deliver supplies from the air also gives it clear military value.

Roads, ports and local airfields are among the first targets in a conflict. Cargo drones could take off from safer locations and release supplies directly near dispersed units without risking pilots or attempting a landing under fire.

What would you trust more: a cargo drone or a human pilot?

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🇷🇺🏭📈 Aircraft and Shipbuilding Lead Russia’s Industrial Growth

Russia’s industrial output was broadly flat in the first eight months of 2026, but some parts of manufacturing were moving much faster than the headline number suggests.

The strongest growth came from “other transport equipment,” a category that includes aircraft, shipbuilding and related machinery. Output rose 18.6% year-on-year, according to Russia’s federal statistics agency.

Manufacturing as a whole grew 0.4% over the same period.
Other technology-heavy sectors also expanded. Pharmaceutical production increased 11.5%, fabricated metal products 11%, computer and electronic equipment 4.8%, and motor vehicles 4.7%.

The 18.6% figure does not mean Russian aircraft production alone grew by that amount. Aviation and shipbuilding sit inside a broader statistical category, and the data do not separate their individual contributions. Still, the composition of the growth is notable.

Russia is currently rebuilding large parts of its civilian aircraft supply chain around domestically produced engines, avionics, composites and other systems. The first MC-21 built using serial-production technologies flew this summer, while production of the domestically equipped SJ-100 is also moving toward commercial deliveries.

Shipbuilding has its own strategic role. Moscow’s long-term plans call for more domestically built civilian vessels and a much larger fleet serving the Northern Sea Route, where specialized ships and ice-capable transport are essential for Arctic trade and resource projects.

Both industries also pull in a wide network of suppliers: engines, electronics, metals, composites, machine tools and specialized engineering.

That gives the latest industrial data a wider significance.
Russia’s aggregate industrial numbers show modest growth, but investment and production are moving faster in several sectors tied directly to transport independence, Arctic logistics and domestic high-tech manufacturing.

For aircraft and shipbuilding, the 18.6% rise is an early indication that some of the industrial capacity built and reorganized over the past several years is beginning to show up in national production statistics.

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🇨🇳📝 China’s Memory Chip Push Targets Domestic Equipment To Cut Foreign Dependence

China’s biggest DRAM memory chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) plans to invest $5.2B to expand production and develop more advanced chips, with a large share of the spending expected to go toward Chinese-made semiconductor equipment.

According to a company filing, CXMT will allocate $3.6B for a new technology research and development project and another $1.6B for the second phase of a wafer testing base. Around $3.3B of the R&D budget is planned for equipment purchases.

A person familiar with CXMT’s supply chain told the South China Morning Post that the company has set an “aggressive” target for using domestic equipment, although CXMT has not publicly disclosed a specific localization percentage.

The push comes as China’s semiconductor industry works to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers for the machines needed to produce advanced chips. The hardest equipment to replace remains in areas such as etching, deposition, cleaning and inspection, where companies from the US, Japan and the Netherlands still hold strong positions.

CXMT’s expansion is aimed at narrowing the gap with global memory leaders Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. The company has already moved beyond older DDR4 and LPDDR4X products into newer DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory, while its fifth-generation G5 manufacturing platform has entered mass production.

Morgan Stanley estimates CXMT’s monthly DRAM production capacity could reach 500,000 wafers by 2028, compared with 180,000 at the end of 2025. The company is also expanding internal testing capacity to reduce dependence on external packaging and testing providers.

The development shows the next stage of China’s semiconductor strategy: increasing production while building a more independent industrial chain. A larger domestic equipment base would reduce exposure to export controls and make it harder for foreign suppliers to limit China’s access to critical chipmaking technology.

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🇮🇷💉 Iran Builds Its Own Insulin Supply Chain

Iran is preparing to bring its first domestically produced recombinant insulin to market in January 2027, after local biotechnology companies developed the ability to produce insulin analogues from the cellular stage through genetic engineering.

The project marks a shift beyond final-stage manufacturing or packaging. Iranian companies have developed the underlying production process needed to create insulin inside biological systems, a capability that requires advanced biotechnology infrastructure and specialized expertise.

According to Iran’s Vice Presidency for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, one company received a production license for insulin glargine in January 2026. After completing quality testing and regulatory procedures, its product is expected to enter the market in early 2027.

The localization effort could reduce more than $100M in annual foreign-exchange spending currently used for insulin imports. For a country facing long-term pressure on access to international markets, replacing imported pharmaceutical technologies with domestic production reduces exposure to external supply disruptions.

The insulin program is part of a wider push to localize critical healthcare production. Iranian companies are also developing domestic vaccines, infant-formula ingredients, plasma-derived medicines, and pharmaceutical raw materials, targeting products that together represent more than $800M in annual foreign-exchange costs.

One of the key areas is pharmaceutical active ingredients, where Iran currently spends around $749M annually on imported raw materials. A new program aims to combine biotechnology with petrochemical feedstocks to produce these inputs domestically rather than relying on foreign suppliers.

The same strategy is being applied to infant formula, where Iran is developing local production of four key components: formula base, whey powder, pharmaceutical-grade lactose, and standardized vegetable oil. The goal is to build a domestic supply chain instead of depending on imported inputs and foreign processing.

Iran’s healthcare localization drive shows a broader industrial approach: reducing vulnerability by controlling more stages of production, from raw materials and biological processes to finished medicines. In sectors where sanctions and external restrictions can affect supply, technological independence becomes a form of economic resilience.

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🇷🇺🖥 Russia’s Power Grid Can Support New Wave Of AI Data Centers

Russia’s data-center electricity demand is projected to rise from 14.9B kWh in 2025 to 26.2B kWh by 2030, a 76% increase driven mainly by artificial intelligence workloads. Around 70% of the additional consumption is expected to come from AI computing.

The growth comes as Russia already operates one of the world’s larger electricity systems. The country had 270 GW of installed generating capacity at the start of 2026 and produced 1,182 TWh of electricity in 2025. Even after expansion, projected data-center demand in 2030 would account for only about 2.2% of current annual generation.

The main change is where new computing capacity is being built. AI training does not require data centers to be located close to users, allowing developers to move energy-intensive workloads toward regions with available power rather than keeping everything concentrated around Moscow.

According to the National Rating Agency, the concentration of data-center capacity in the Moscow region could decline from 72% at the end of 2025 to around 51% by 2030. Over the same period, the share of regions outside Moscow and Saint Petersburg could rise from 20% to 41%.

The Urals and Siberia are becoming potential locations for large AI facilities because they combine available electricity resources with space for industrial-scale projects. One example is the planned Cloud X data center in the Irkutsk region, designed around a 154 MW power supply.

The expansion will still depend on local infrastructure. A large national power system does not automatically guarantee that every project can connect quickly, and individual regions may face limits in grid capacity and construction timelines.

Energy efficiency will also become increasingly important. New Russian data centers are expected to achieve power usage effectiveness levels of around 1.1–1.3, with AI facilities using liquid cooling potentially reaching around 1.15. Lower energy waste allows more computing capacity to be built from the same electricity supply.

As AI development becomes more dependent on access to electricity, Russia’s large energy base creates room for domestic computing infrastructure to expand beyond traditional technology hubs. The competition for AI capacity is increasingly tied not only to chips and software, but also to the ability to secure reliable power at industrial scale.

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🇺🇸✈️ U.S. In Despair: NASA Risks Costly Resurrection Of Spy Plane Grounded Since 1999

The U.S. Air Force and NASA destroyed a reported $600M stockpile of SR-71 spare parts in 2007. Now NASA appears to be trying to return one of the retired Blackbirds to flight.

Aviation Week reports that SR-71A Tail No. 844, which last flew on October 9, 1999, has been removed from outdoor display and moved into a hangar at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. The agency has also offered jobs to former Blackbird engineers.

NASA has not officially confirmed the return-to-flight project or disclosed its purpose, budget or schedule.

🔸 Washington destroyed the parts it now needs. The Air Force and NASA reportedly eliminated a $600M stockpile of Blackbird spares after concluding that the aircraft would never fly again. Replacements may now have to be manufactured from scratch or taken from museum aircraft that are almost as old as Tail No. 844.

🔸 The engines may have sat without proper care for decades. Former SR-71 engineer Mike Relja said stored J58 engines were normally rotated every 90 days and run every 180 days. He believes the engines associated with Tail No. 844 may not have received such maintenance since the aircraft’s final flight.

🔸 Much of the support network no longer exists. The Blackbird requires JP-7 fuel, triethylborane for engine ignition, specialized oils and hydraulic fluids. Purpose-built equipment used to lift the wings and remove the engines, inlet spikes and ejection seats has also disappeared.

🔸 NASA would have to rebuild the workforce. Pilots, engineers and maintenance crews would need to relearn how to operate a 59-year-old aircraft. Former personnel can recover some of that knowledge, but several specialists NASA reportedly approached are already in their seventies.

🔸 The Blackbird demanded extraordinary maintenance. Historical records describe a post-flight checklist containing around 650 items. Every 100 flight hours triggered an inspection lasting approximately 11 working days.

🔸 NASA has not explained what taxpayers would receive. The agency previously used SR-71s for research into propulsion, high-temperature materials, aerodynamics and sonic booms. No experiment has yet been announced that would justify recreating the aircraft’s entire support system.

Washington has paid to revive retired military hardware before. Reactivating the four Iowa-class battleships cost roughly $1.7B in mixed 1982–1988 dollars — around $5B today. Wisconsin returned to service in October 1988 and was retired again in September 1991.

The Blackbird could still provide a unique Mach 3 research platform. Until NASA presents a clear mission and budget, however, the project looks like the U.S. paying to recreate a capability its own government deliberately dismantled.

Is bringing back the Blackbird genius or a waste of taxpayer money?

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🇨🇳🔋 China Targets Longer-Lasting Batteries and Solid-State Production by 2030

China has released a five-year battery industry plan targeting initial large-scale use of all-solid-state batteries and 15,000 charge-discharge cycles for long-life lithium batteries by 2030. The aim is to turn advances in materials into products that factories can reliably manufacture at scale.

Published on September 28 by seven government departments, the 2026–2030 plan links research, manufacturing equipment, product standards and end uses. Its practical test will be whether Chinese producers can deliver better batteries consistently across millions of units.

All-solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte, the material that carries ions inside a battery. Bringing them into large-scale use requires breakthroughs in materials and production processes. The plan explicitly targets those industrial barriers; broad commercial adoption remains a goal.

Longer battery life addresses another constraint: replacement costs. More charge-discharge cycles can spread the cost of a battery over more electricity stored and delivered. That matters for storage systems that help grids absorb wind and solar power and supply electricity when generation falls.

Manufacturing quality is another target. Leading companies are expected to bring product defect rates down to the parts-per-billion level by 2030. Alongside improved safety and performance across different climates, tighter quality control would help make batteries more dependable in demanding applications.

Lithium batteries will remain central, with sodium and flow batteries developed alongside them. The plan connects battery development to electric vehicles, consumer electronics, low-altitude aircraft and humanoid robots, while pursuing longer-lasting storage for the electricity system.

China can build on an existing supply chain spanning materials, cells, equipment, system integration and recycling. Coordinating those links gives manufacturers a route to move research into production, supported by domestic industries that need improved batteries.

If these targets are met, China could strengthen its position as a supplier of both batteries and the technology used to make them. Longer service life and more reliable production would make electrification cheaper to sustain, raising the competitive hurdle for manufacturers trying to catch up.

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