Weitere Netzfunde in der wöchentlichen Zusammenstellung.

It’s Official: F-35s Are Now Being Delivered Without Radars

The U.S. military has now confirmed the acceptance of at least six F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the U.S. Marine Corps without radars. This is due to issues tied to the development of the new AN/APG-85 radar, the first production lot of which is scheduled to be delivered in 2028. The prospect of radarless F-35s had first emerged publicly back in February. The AN/APG-85 is a critical component of the larger Block 4 upgrade package for all variants of the F-35, an effort that has been mired in cost growth and delays.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), disclosed the acceptance of the six radarless F-35Bs at a hearing before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week.

Two weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, released a report stating that the average F-35 full mission capable (FMC) rate across all variants had fallen from 38 to 25 percent between Fiscal Years 2020 and 2025. GAO defines FMC as an aircraft “that can perform all of its missions.” The F-35 JPO has not disputed GAO’s figures directly, but has openly disagreed with the methodology it uses to determine FMC.

“We have accepted six aircraft for the Marine Corps that do not have a radar installed. That is correct,” Masiello confirmed.

Kelly then asked if this was due to a lack of available AN/APG-85 radars, which Masiello also confirmed.

In February, the U.S. Air Force also explicitly denied receiving F-35As without radars. There is no confirmation yet that the F-35 JPO has accepted any Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force or the Navy without radars. Previous reports have said that foreign customers are not expected to be impacted at all, at least in the near-term, since none of them are currently in line to receive AN/APG-85-equipped jets.

Today, the standard radar in use on F-35A, B, and C variants is the AN/APG-81, an active electronically scanned array (AESA) type with air-to-air and air-to-ground modes that traces its roots back to the 1990s. It also has a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode, which allows it to produce high-resolution map-like images. These can be used for target acquisition and identification, as well as general reconnaissance purposes.

Anm. d. Red.: Die Schweiz soll auch Block 4 Flugzeuge bekommen. (Quelle) “Da die Schweiz vertraglich die Variante mit dem AN/APG-81-Radar bestellt hat, sind die Schweizer Auslieferungen (geplant ab Mitte 2027) von diesem spezifischen Lieferengpass nicht direkt betroffen. Die Flugzeuge kommen voll einsatzfähig mit funktionierendem Radar an” – Quelle
Wer’s glaubt…

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Sanctioning the Dollar Iran Already Left: Why Bessent’s “Economic D-Day” Is Toothless

The mechanism of pain, in every case, is the same: exclusion from the dollar-based financial system that Washington polices through its control of dollar clearing, SWIFT messaging, and correspondent banking.

That is a devastating weapon against anyone who lives inside the dollar system. It is close to irrelevant against those who have deliberately built their most important trade outside it. And Iran’s lifeline — the oil trade with China — is now largely outside it.

Follow the barrels. China is now the buyer of over 80 percent of Iran’s seaborne crude exports. Iran is shipping somewhere around 1.65 to 1.8 million barrels a day, almost all of it to the independent “teapot” refiners of Shandong, moved by a shadow fleet of more than 350 tankers using ship-to-ship transfers off Malaysia, Singapore, and the Sea of Oman, the cargoes routinely rebranded as Malaysian or Omani. And critically, the money for it increasingly does not move in dollars. Payment flows in yuan, routed through small Chinese banks and Hong Kong trading shells, settled in a growing volume of renminbi that bypasses the dollar clearing system entirely.

The plumbing for this is China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, CIPS — the settlement network the People’s Bank of China launched in 2015 precisely to clear cross-border yuan transactions without touching the Western financial architecture. Its use has surged in lockstep with the war. CIPS processed on the order of $214 billion in March 2026, hit a single-day record of 1.22 trillion yuan — roughly $178 billion — across nearly 42,000 transactions, and saw its average daily value jump about 50 percent from February to March, a spike analysts tied directly to the Iran conflict and rising yuan demand in oil trade. More than five thousand institutions are now connected. These channels allow settlement without any intermediary US bank in the chain — which is the entire point.

You cannot freeze a yuan payment out of a dollar system it never enters. That is not a loophole in Bessent’s plan. It is the plan’s foundation, missing.

There is precisely one measure that could actually bite the yuan trade: sanctioning the major Chinese banks and the CIPS architecture that clear it — cutting large Chinese financial institutions out of the dollar system and forcing Beijing to choose. And that is the step Bessent, once again, announced but did not take.

And even if he pulled that trigger, the trade is engineered to survive it. The yuan payments already move through small Chinese banks and Hong Kong front companies precisely so that the large, dollar-exposed institutions stay clean and the flow continues if a big bank is hit. The system was designed by people who assumed Washington would eventually come for it. Bessent is threatening to breach a wall its builders reinforced years ago.

Step back from Monday’s announcement and ask the longer question: what has a decade of sanctions actually done to the size of Iran’s economy? Measured properly, it has grown.

Measured by purchasing power parity — which values what Iran actually produces at the prices Iranians actually pay, stripping out the collapsed currency — Iran’s GDP has risen from roughly $1.4 trillion in 2015, when the JCPOA-era sanctions architecture was in force, to about $2.18 trillion in 2026, by the IMF’s reckoning the world’s twenty-third-largest economy. That is an expansion of more than fifty percent over the same decade of “maximum pressure” that was supposed to break it.

This is a dollar bypass, not the death of the dollar. The greenback still makes up around 57 percent of global foreign-exchange reserves against roughly 2 percent for the yuan, and only a low single-digit share of cross-border trade settles in renminbi; CIPS remains far smaller than the SWIFT-and-CHIPS system it shadows. The claim here is narrow and it is enough: a determined seller like Iran, with a willing Chinese counterparty, can route its oil revenue around the dollar — not that the world has.

Bessent has threatened to expel Iran and its partners from a financial system Iran has spent years leaving. The dollar guillotine is real, and it still falls with terrible force on anyone standing beneath it — but Iran’s oil trade stepped off the block and into the yuan, and every fresh round of dollar-weaponization only sharpens the incentive for others to follow.

You cannot sever a lifeline that no longer runs through your hands. Bessent is standing guard at a door Iran walked out of a long time ago, threatening to lock it.

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Not an Islamic NATO: The Mecca Agreement Is Building the Post-American Security Architecture — and Iran Is About to Walk In

The Western commentariat filed the Mecca agreement under a comfortable heading. When Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on August 7 — an armed attack on one to be treated as an attack on all — the reflexive label was “Islamic NATO,” a Sunni bloc, three of the Muslim world’s largest militaries welded together by sectarian identity. That reading was obsolete almost before the ink dried. What is actually taking shape is not a Sunni alliance against Iran. It is the first load-bearing beam of the post-American security architecture that Russia and China have been calling for — and Tehran is about to walk through the door.

The language was not accidental, and it did not originate in Riyadh. On April 27, in St. Petersburg, after meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Vladimir Putin called for a new security architecture in the Persian Gulf. One week later, on May 5–6 in Beijing, after his own meeting with Araghchi, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said essentially the same thing — that Beijing supports the establishment of a regional peace and security architecture in which the regional countries themselves participate, safeguard common interests, and pursue common development. Araghchi, for his part, told Putin that Iran supports a new post-war regional architecture that can coordinate development and security.

Note the two nouns Araghchi paired: development and security. That pairing is the tell, and I will return to it. Russia has floated a collective security concept for the Gulf since 2019; Lavrov reiterated it on February 28, 2026 — the very day the war began. The consistent aim is a multilateral, regionally led framework that replaces the American defense umbrella over the Gulf, installs Moscow and Beijing as the guarantors alongside the regional states, and — crucially — treats Iran not as a threat to be contained but as a legitimate pillar of the order. As Araghchi paraphrased his Chinese hosts: Iran after the war is a different country, its standing improved, a new era of cooperation ahead.

Here is what the public analysis has not yet caught up to, and what I can report from firsthand sources. On Monday morning, Field Marshal Asim Munir — Pakistan’s chief of army staff and the real architect of Islamabad’s regional strategy — is in Iran. The subject of his talks is Iran’s accession to the Mecca agreement as its fourth member.

Read that slowly, because it detonates the entire “Islamic NATO” framing. A mutual-defense pact led by the Sunni heavyweights of the Muslim world, admitting Shia Iran, is not a sectarian bloc. It is the opposite: the dissolution of the very Sunni-Shia fault line that Western strategy has exploited for a generation. And what remains, once Iran is inside, is not “NATO” of any confessional flavor. It is precisely the inclusive, regionally led architecture that Putin and Wang Yi described — a framework in which Iran sits as a legitimate pillar rather than a quarantined enemy. Mecca provided the structure. Tehran’s entry supplies the meaning.

There is a deeper irony here, and it is worth naming, because it indicts a generation of American strategy. For decades Washington treated the Sunni-Shia divide as an asset to be worked — arming and tolerating Sunni militants as instruments against Shia Iran, from the redirection of the Bush years through the Syrian war. The entire logic depended on the divide staying open. Now the principal Sunni powers of the region — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan — are themselves closing it, folding Iran into a shared framework of defense and commerce. The wedge Washington spent twenty years driving is becoming the foundation of a bloc that answers to Moscow and Beijing rather than to Washington. That is blowback of the highest order: not a weapon turned on its maker, but a fault line the maker relied upon, sealing shut.

The Mecca agreement was sold to Western audiences as a Sunni bloc and dismissed as a club of American clients. It is neither. It is the first pillar of the security architecture Putin and Wang Yi named this spring after sitting with Iran’s foreign minister — a regionally led, Russia- and China-backed framework that folds Iran in as a legitimate power and pushes the United States out as the indispensable one. When Asim Munir walks into Tehran on Monday to discuss Iran’s membership, and negotiates a tenfold expansion of trade in the same breath, he is not conducting two errands. He is laying two courses of the same wall. The Americans built their Gulf position on keeping Sunni and Shia apart and keeping the dollar in the middle. Both pillars are being pulled at once — and the structure going up in their place was drawn in Moscow and Beijing.

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Der Weg in den Abgrund

Die jüngste gefährliche Eskalation in den Beziehungen zwischen Großbritannien und Russland löst ernste Sorgen in London aus und lässt eine ähnliche Entwicklung auch für Deutschland befürchten. Das Vereinigte Königreich hat begonnen, weitreichende Drohnen an die Ukraine zu liefern und sie auch für Angriffe auf Ziele weit im russischen Kernland freizugeben. Kiew hat sie insbesondere für Attacken auf russische Erdölraffinerien eingesetzt. Russlands Außenminister Sergej Lawrow hat daraufhin erklärt, Moskau dürfe das als britische Kriegsbeteiligung verstehen. Demnach sind russische Gegenangriffe – welcher Art auch immer – erlaubt.

Auch die Bundesregierung unterstützt die Produktion weitreichender Drohnen im eigenen Land und ihre Lieferung in die Ukraine, um Angriffe tief auf russisches Territorium zu ermöglichen. Ob derlei Lieferungen bereits erfolgt sind, ist unklar. Russische Gegenschläge könnten dabei auch asymmetrisch vorgenommen werden, etwa mit Cyber- oder auch mit sogenannten hybriden Attacken. Spezielle Sorgen löst in London aus, dass die zentralen Kommunikationskanäle zu Russland abgebrochen sind. Dies ermögliche, warnt ein britischer Ex-Militärattaché, eine ungewollte bewaffnete Eskalation.

Die Ausweitung der Genehmigungen zur Nutzung weitreichender britischer Waffen für Angriffe auf Ziele weit im russischen Kernland geschieht in vollem Bewusstsein möglicher Folgen. So erklärte eine anonyme Quelle in der britischen Militärbürokratie gegenüber der Sunday Times, Russland sei lange „sehr erfolgreich“ darin gewesen, die westlichen Staaten mit Blick auf immer schwerere Angriffe auf Ziele im russischen Kernland „nervös“ zu machen. Die erwähnten jüngsten Angriffe mit britischen Drohnen auf dortige Ziele seien ein Hinweis darauf, „dass wir nicht mehr [nervös] sind“.

Im April kündigte die britische Regierung an, sie werde der Ukraine im Lauf des Jahres 2026 rund 120.000 im Vereinigten Königreich gefertigte Drohnen liefern. Wieviele davon weitreichende Waffen sind, ist nicht bekannt. Russland werde sicher „mit dem Säbel rasseln“, urteilt etwa Greg Bagwell, ein pensionierter hochrangiger Luftwaffenoffizier. Es werde vielleicht auch erklären, ab jetzt seien die Fabriken, in denen die Waffen hergestellt würden, „legitime Ziele“. Dies hat die russische Regierung allerdings bereits im April getan. Die Fertigung und die Lieferung weitreichender Waffen verwandle die daran beteiligten Länder „schleichend ins strategische Hinterland der Ukraine“, hieß es damals aus Moskau. So würden sie „in einen Krieg mit Russland hineingezogen“.

Das Beispiel Großbritannien ist für Deutschland von erheblichem Interesse, weil die Bundesregierung ähnlich vorgeht. So haben deutsche Unternehmen nicht nur begonnen, gemeinsam mit ukrainischen Firmen an deutschen Standorten Drohnen für die ukrainischen Streitkräfte herzustellen; in der Bundesrepublik seien sie vor russischen Angriffen sicher, heißt es zur Begründung. Darüber hinaus steigen das deutsch-US-amerikanische Start-up Auterion und der ukrainische Drohnenproduzent Airlogix in die gemeinsame Fertigung weitreichender Drohnen an einem Standort nahe München ein. Eine zweite Fabrik soll in Ostdeutschland errichtet werden. Das geschieht auf ausdrücklichen Wunsch der Regierung. Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius hatte bereits im September 2025 angekündigt, Berlin werde seine „Unterstützung für die Beschaffung von weitreichenden Drohnen“ durch die Ukraine intensivieren. Dazu sollten rund 300 Millionen Euro bereitgestellt werden, hieß es. Zur Zeitplanung hieß es im April, die erste Lieferung weitreichender Drohnen aus dem Münchener Umland in die Ukraine sei bereits in wenigen Monaten geplant. Ob sie jetzt bereits stattgefunden hat, ist unklar. Die Frage ist von hoher Bedeutung; denn wäre das der Fall, dann könnten auch in Deutschland hergestellte Drohnen bereits Ziele im russischen Kernland angegriffen haben. Die Bundesrepublik wäre dann ebenfalls Kriegspartei.

Zum bislang letzten Mal hätten die ranghöchsten Soldaten der beiden Staaten, der britische Chief of the Defence Staff und der russische Generalstabschef, im September 2022 miteinander telefoniert, berichtete kürzlich die Times; seitdem habe die russische Seite jeden britischen Versuch, ein erneutes Gespräch zwischen den Spitzenmilitärs zustande zu bringen, explizit abgelehnt. Nach mehreren Zwischenfällen auf hoher See in jüngerer Vergangenheit, bei denen russische Schiffe teils Schüsse abfeuerten, sei der neue Verteidigungsminister Wes Streeting unter Druck geraten, die Kommunikationskanäle wieder instand zu setzen, um eine „unbeabsichtigte Eskalation“ zu verhindern. Das gelinge bislang allerdings nicht. Es räche sich, dass Großbritannien im Mai 2024 den russischen Militärattaché an der Botschaft in London des Landes verwiesen habe; dieser habe gewöhnlich Telefonate zwischen den Verteidigungsministern arrangiert. John Foreman, ein ehemaliger britischer Militärattaché in Moskau und Kiew, warnt explizit: „Ohne eine direkte Verbindung gibt es das Risiko einer ungewollten Eskalation.“ Ein „größeres Missverständnis“ könne „dazu führen, dass Menschen sterben“. Dies gelte es dringend zu vermeiden.

Entsprechendes gilt auch für Deutschland, wo die Bundesregierung aktuell die Lieferung weitreichender Drohnen an die Ukraine unterstützt und auch sonst die verbliebenen Ruinen der deutsch-russischen Beziehungen mutwillig zerstört. Großbritannien, in dieser Hinsicht einen Schritt weiter als die Bundesrepublik, liefert das Modell für den Weg in den Abgrund.