Dispatch
Short, dated reporting filed as events move.
September 2026
Satellite Images Show Fire Damage at Saudi Pipeline Pumping Station
Global Recon mapped six heat clusters along Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline corridor. New dated imagery adds evidence of fire damage; attribution and oil-flow losses remain unresolved.
US Navy tests robotic refueling for unmanned vessels at sea
A Virginia trial transferred fuel to an unmanned boat at sea. Autonomous rendezvous and refueling remain the next test.
June 2026
Ukraine Strikes St. Petersburg
Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and the Security Service struck the Russian corvette Boikiy at 06:35 on June 3, hitting the Project 20380 vessel as it sat in the Veleshchynsky dry dock at the Kronstadt naval base near St. Petersburg, more than 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian-controlled territory. The General Staff […]
Hormuz Closure Strands Gulf Fertilizer Past the Spring Planting Window
More than three months after maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz collapsed on February 28, fertilizer cargoes remain stranded in the Persian Gulf and food shipments into the region’s ports have been choked to a fraction of normal volume. Kpler and Bloomberg ship-tracking placed 44 fertilizer-laden […]
May 2026
Europe Moved to Block Starlink the Same Day the Pentagon Made It the Backbone of US Military Comms
The US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract on May 26 to build the Space Data Network Backbone, a proliferated low Earth orbit constellation designed to move data from sensors to shooters in near real time. The SDN will use Starshield satellites, the militarized variant of Starlink, and must […]
Mines Found on Tanker at Russian Port
Russia’s FSB said divers found two magnetic mines attached near the engine room of the Liberia-flagged LPG tanker Arrhenius after it arrived at Ust-Luga on May 20 from the Belgian port of Antwerp. Each device contained roughly seven kilograms of plastic explosive. The Investigative Committee said the mines were factory-made […]
Pakistan Is Mediating US-Iran Talks While Its Troops Defend Saudi Arabia
Pakistan is the sole active mediating channel between Washington and Tehran on the nuclear file. The Iranian response to the US proposal Trump rejected as “totally unacceptable” on May 10 was delivered via Pakistani mediators. Reuters reported May 18 that Pakistan has also deployed approximately 8,000 troops, a squadron of […]
The US Says It Blockaded 85 Ships. Iran Says It Escorted 26 Through.
CENTCOM says it has redirected 85 commercial vessels and disabled four since the US naval blockade of Iran began April 13. The IRGC Navy said Wednesday it coordinated the transit of 26 vessels through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours, including tankers and container ships, […]
Aramco Says Oil Markets Won’t Normalize Until 2027
Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told first-quarter earnings analysts on May 11 that even an immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would not return the oil market to balance for months, and that a closure extending past mid-June pushes normalization into 2027. The market has lost roughly one billion barrels […]
Saudi Arabia and UAE Struck Iran During the War
Reuters reported Tuesday that the Saudi Air Force conducted covert airstrikes inside Iran in late March, the first known Saudi military action on Iranian soil, citing two Western and two Iranian officials. The disclosure came one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the UAE struck Iran’s Lavan Island refinery […]
The Base Iraq Couldn’t See, and Washington Couldn’t Disown
The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Israel built a covert forward operating base in Iraq’s western desert before the February 28 air campaign against Iran, with U.S. knowledge but without Iraqi consent. The site sits in a dry lakebed at 31.67°N, 42.45°E, roughly 180 kilometers southwest of Karbala. Sentinel-2 imagery […]
The Tanker Market Bet Against Diplomacy
A five-year-old VLCC now trades $9 million above the price of a brand-new Korean newbuild contract, according to Signal Ocean’s latest Tanker Market Monitor. Suezmax sits flat between the two age groups. Aframax has inverted as well. On the resale side, buyers are paying 21 to 35 percent over newbuild prices for prompt availability, with the VLCC resale premium reaching $45.5 million over a fresh contract. Signal Ocean’s own framing: the age depreciation curve has been lost.
Half of Russia’s Iran-War Oil Windfall Is Being Paid Back to Oil Companies
Russia’s Finance Ministry reported April oil and gas revenues of 855.6 billion rubles after the Iran-war price spike pushed Brent above $125 a barrel on April 30. The headline number landed one week after the Economic Development Ministry reported Russia’s first quarterly GDP contraction since early 2023, a 0.3 percent […]
Anduril’s Golden Dome Team Is a Newspace Bench
Anduril Industries on May 5 named the subcontractors it will use to prototype space-based interceptors for the Space Force’s Golden Dome program. The team is Impulse Space, K2 Space, Inversion Space, Voyager Technologies, and Sandia National Laboratories. Lockheed, Northrop, and Raytheon are not on it. Anduril’s award is one of […]
Project Freedom Is Not Earnest Will
CENTCOM began supporting Project Freedom on Monday with guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft, unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members, framed by the White House as a humanitarian effort to free vessels trapped by Iran’s blockade.
April 2026
Ukraine Is No Longer Just Hitting Russian Oil. It Is Hitting the Switchboard.
The Perm LPDS sits at the convergence of three Transneft trunk lines and the LUKOIL-Permnefteorgsintez feed. The April 29 SBU strike is the second hit on a Transneft routing node in two months, following Kaleykino on February 23. Sources: Transneft Kama Region records, SBU statement, Reuters, Ukrainska Pravda, OilPrice.com.
Abu Dhabi’s Three Moves
The United Arab Emirates announced its withdrawal from OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1, ending six decades of membership and stripping the cartel of its third-largest producer at the moment it can least absorb defection. The announcement, carried by state news agency WAM and confirmed by Energy Minister […]
Three Budget Lines, One Bottleneck
Within seventy-two hours last week, the Pentagon disclosed three procurement decisions that share the same industrial base. Space Systems Command announced 20 Other Transaction Authority awards worth up to $3.2 billion to 12 companies for Golden Dome boost-phase interceptor prototypes, with an initial capability demonstration targeted for 2028. Space Systems […]
CENTCOM’s Conditional Contraband Doctrine Outlasts the Ceasefire
U.S. Central Command on Thursday published an updated advisory asserting the right to board and seize Iran linked vessels regardless of location on the open seas, classifying crude oil, iron, steel, aluminum, machine tools, and dual-use electronics as “conditional contraband” subject to capture beyond neutral territory. Gen. Dan Caine, […]
AZEC+ as China’s Hormuz Problem Made Visible
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced Wednesday at the AZEC Plus online summit that Japan will deploy a $10 billion financial support package through the Japan Bank for International Cooperation to help Southeast Asian economies procure crude oil during the Hormuz supply shock. The package, equivalent to roughly 1.2 billion barrels […]
Defense Contractors Are Building Golden Dome Before the Pentagon Buys It
L3Harris Space & Mission Systems president Sam Mehta told reporters this week at the Space Symposium that the company is “building capacity and securing supply chains in anticipation of demand” for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense architecture, a break from the industry model of waiting for contracts before […]
