JUST IN: 🇺🇸 $USDC issuer Circle receives approval to operate as a federally regulated US trust bank.

@WatcherGuru

⚠️✝ The death toll from the double earthquakes in Venezuela rises to 4,118

Post-apocalyptic scenes at OPP 26 and OPP 27 in Caribe residences. Footage taken on July 8.

🇺🇸🇮🇷⚡️- BREAKING: The IRGC Navy has announced the Strait of Hormuz is closed to all maritime traffic until "American-Zionist interference" in the region has ended.

This announcement followed targeting a ship attempting to transit the Strait.

☢️ 🇺🇸 🔋 Lightweight cells powered by nuclear waste could drive tomorrow's drones

DARPA program aims to create a 30-year battery minimally viable prototype by early 2027.

“Solar cells directly convert sunlight into electricity…Ours directly convert radiation into electricity,” said Stafford Sheehan, CEO and founder of Project Omega, which describes their radioisotope power sources as mini-generators that replace traditional batteries.

The power cells could be used in “any application where a battery dying is a pain point,” Sheehan said. “One example is on satellites: if you lose power on a satellite, you lose the satellite, it's gone…if your batteries die and you don't have any sort of backup power.”

“At a high level, we take nuclear waste, we recycle it into two products: one is fuel for reactors…the other are power isotopes, so isotopes you can use to power things,” Sheehan said.

Radioisotope power sources have been used in everything from smoke detectors to space systems. But Project Omega hopes to do it on a larger scale.

“There are over 100,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sitting in the 52 reactor sites around the country; so there's plenty of nuclear waste currently. The federal government gets sued for billions of dollars every year just because they haven't dealt with the nuclear waste,” Sheehan said. “It's very valuable to have a battery that lasts.”

Omega’s power cells consist of a solid state, or “chunk,” of isotope that will be layered with the semiconductor to generate power. They also work in extreme temperatures—something that would benefit military operations using unmanned systems in harsh environments.

“We have been using these radioisotope power systems in space for decades,” Sheehan said. “We're just taking the systems that we use for space and we're using a different isotope,” Strontinum-90, which is less hazardous than the Plutonium-238 isotopes used in similar systems.

“Over the next 18 months, the program will focus on reducing technical risk, testing system performance under realistic conditions, and generating the data needed to inform future development and transition pathways,” a PNNL official wrote in a statement to Defense One. “Key challenges include improving energy conversion efficiency, validating long-term reliability, managing radiation effects, and ensuring safe, secure handling and deployment.”

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2026/07/these-light-weight-power-cells-run-nuclear-waste-and-could-power-next-gen-drones/414585/

🇺🇦 ❌️ 🇷🇺 Ukrainian forces carried out a massive maritime strike in the Black/Azov Sea last night, hitting 28 vessels.

Ukrainian attack drones have now hit 76 ships over the last week, effectively shutting down the Sea of Azov to Russian surface traffic.

📎 OSINTtechnical

📝 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 48 Ships in 120 Hours: Ukraine’s Brutal Campaign to Cut Off Crimea | What's Going on With Shipping analysis

⚓Systematic Destruction: A breakdown of the 120-hour surge that saw 48 vessels hit, including 32 tankers, cargo ships, ferries, and tugboats.
⚓The "Mission Kill" Strategy: Analysis of why Ukrainian drones are targeting bridge structures and engine rooms to disable vessels rather than sinking them.
⚓Targeting the Lifeblood: How these strikes on the Sea of Azov directly impact the Don and Volga River systems—the essential "food, fuel, and fertilizer" corridors for the Russian economy.
⚓Logistical Siege of Crimea: Exploring the strategic goal of cutting off fuel supplies to Crimea as overland routes and the Kerch Strait Bridge remain under constant threat.
⚓The "Dark Fleet" Definition: Clarifying how Ukraine is identifying sanctioned Russian trade vessels and why even international-flagged tankers are being caught in the crossfire.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPXLPjre30o

📎 Sal Mercogliano

↖️ 🇺🇸 🌏 The Pacific’s Tyranny of Distance: The General Problem

Campbell on X: I once flew from Hawaii to Guam on a KC-10. Roughly 3,300 nautical miles. Eight straight hours at about eight miles a minute. I stared out the window the entire time. No land. No ships. Nothing.

Just empty ocean in every direction.

This map shows what that distances actually looks like for air operations across the theater.

In the Gulf War, the U.S. could generate well over 1,000 strike sorties per day from bases relatively close to the fight.

In a Pacific conflict against a peer adversary, sustaining anything close to that tempo becomes dramatically harder.

Distance changes everything — not just for fighters, but for the entire force.

This means our air refueling tanker fleet becomes exponentially more important.

In the Pacific, tankers must fly much farther just to reach the refueling tracks.

That transit burns a large share of their own fuel before they can offload anything useful.

As a result, you need significantly more tankers in the air to deliver the same amount of fuel to the aircraft that actually need it.

This isn’t mainly a tanker technology issue.

A KC-46 is more efficient than a KC-135, but on these distances the gains are relatively small.

The real constraint is physics.

Every extra mile the tanker flies to the orbit is fuel it can no longer give to a fighter or bomber.

Distance multiplies the requirement.

Contrast that with Desert Storm. Most fighter strike missions lasted three to six hours.

Tankers could get on station close to the action, offload, and then loiter for hours waiting for the next wave.

Short transits meant high efficiency and high sortie rates.

In the Pacific the same mission profile looks very different.

A tanker flying from Japan to support operations near the Taiwan Strait can face a 600–800 mile transit each way just to reach a usable refueling track.

That burns fuel it can no longer transfer and reduces time on station.

To maintain continuous support, far more tankers must be airborne at once.

Distance doesn’t just increase demand — it caps how many effective strike sorties the force can generate and sustain.

This is the general problem.

The same tyranny of distance shows up across the joint force.

It hits especially hard when the Navy relies on USAF tankers for extended operations, when bombers must reach deep targets and return, when fighters try to generate meaningful sortie rates, and when we move ISR and airlift assets across the theater.

To put hard numbers behind the map, here's the distances to RCPO (Hsinchu, Taiwan):

382 nm — RODN Kadena AB
576 nm — RPLC Clark International Airport
812 nm — RJOI MCAS Iwakuni
1,155 nm — RJTY Yokota AFB
1,298 nm — YPDN Darwin, Australia
1,342 nm — PTYA Yap Island
1,398 nm — MSJ Misawa AB
1,510 nm — PGWT Tinian International Airport
1,515 nm — PGUA Andersen AFB, Guam
2,407 nm — AYNZ Lae, Papua New Guinea
2,557 nm — PWAK Wake Island
2,561 nm — AYPY Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
2,843 nm — PKWA Kwajalein
2,911 nm — PASY Shemya, Alaska
3,103 nm — PTRO Babelthuap, Palau
3,427 nm — FJDG Diego Garcia
4,424 nm — PHIK Hickam AFB, Hawaii

📝 Martin Skold: Whole reason the Pacific War was won by island-hopping and seizing airfields. And the whole reason China is aiming to do the same - ideally by just walking in when we’re busy elsewhere.

📎 Campbell

More USMC deployment in La Guaira 👀