tank

The Government is already debating whether or not to extend fuel aid. If you don’t do it we will pay 15 euros more to fill the tank

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Next Monday, June 29, the Council of Ministers will debate whether to extend the fuel tax reduction beyond June 30, which was the established deadline. If you don’t do it, filling the tank in the middle of a vacation trip is going to hurt us a lot more than it does now. Fuel aid. In March, the Government approved a package of urgent measures to stop the rise in energy prices caused by the war between the United States and Iran. The most visible for the driver was the reduction in VAT on fuel from 21% to 10%, accompanied by a reduction in the special tax on hydrocarbons. These measures expire on June 30 and the Government has to decide now what to do with them. What is being studied. According to share From ABC, the Ministry of Economy is considering maintaining VAT at 10% for at least three more months, that is, until September. A gradual withdrawal of aid is also being studied to avoid the so-called rocket effectthat is, a sudden increase in prices from one day to the next in the middle of the high travel season. What happens if it is not extended. According to the calculations of the Spanish Confederation of Service Station Employers (CEEES), the elimination of all aid would mean an increase in the price of 29 cents per liter for gasoline and 22 cents for diesel. With current prices (around 1.46 euros per liter for gasoline and 1.53 for diesel) both fuels would rise to 1.74 euros per liter. In this way, filling a 55-liter tank would go from costing around 70 euros to close to 90. And the blow would come right in the middle of the summer operation. The diesel thing is delicate. The Iran crisis has caused a liter of diesel to cost more than gasoline, something quite unusual taking into account the lower taxation of diesel in comparison. Although the price has fallen for four consecutive weeks, it still remains 5% above what it cost before the start of the conflict, according to collect ABC. If the reduction in the special tax on hydrocarbons is withdrawn, diesel has a good chance of once again overcoming the psychological barrier of 2 euros. Why it is not so easy to extend it. The Government cannot extend these measures on its own because it needs the support of Congress. That means negotiating with the investiture parties, including Junts and the PNV, something that already generated tension in March when the first decree was approved. On the other hand, there is also external pressure, since the Bank of Spain pointed out Just a few days ago, Spain has been the country in the European Union that has mobilized the most public resources in response to this crisis (0.25% of GDP), criticizing that 75% of the measures are not focused on the most affected, but are of a general nature, as is precisely the case with the VAT reduction. The European Commission and the Treasury technicians (GESTHA) also have recommended withdrawing these subsidies considering them contrary to the energy transition. What does the transportation sector ask for? The Spanish Confederation of Freight Transport (CETM) already has asked that any extension explicitly includes the transport of goods by road. In a statement, the organization warns that “leaving transportation outside of these measures would mean ignoring the sector on which a good part of the country’s economic activity is based.” In addition, the CETM demands that the commitment to pay 20 cents per liter of fuel promised to the sector be made effective. What does the president say? Pedro Sanchez has advanced that the new decree will be “to protect the productive fabric and also the citizens”, although without specifying the exact scope of the measures. The Government warns that, even with a peace agreement between the United States and Iran, the economic effects of the conflict will continue to pressure prices for weeks or months. Cover image | Roberto Rodríguez and engin akyurt In Xataka | In February, historic rains broke the roads. Málaga has just received the go-ahead to repair the A-7 and A-45

A German driver set out to discover how much he could stretch the tank of his old diesel car. And he has done 2,400 kilometers

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Autonomy of 1,000 kilometers. It is the psychological barrier that seems to have been installed in the collective imagination when it comes to talking about electric or highly electrified cars. It doesn’t matter that it is a figure that is worthless because, obviously, it is totally inadvisable to sit in the car and put in 1,000 kilometers at a stretch between your chest and back. Right now, with a good part of the electric car market recharging 300 kilometers or more (real) in about 20 minutesthere are not many reasons to defend those ranges of more than 1,000 kilometers. And yet, such has been the insistence of those who do not trust the electric car that the manufacturers of plug-in hybrids themselves have focused their communication on selling us autonomies that exceed those 1,000 kilometers. And promise, among the electric ones, that we will see batteries that can withstand them. However, and although for everyday life it is something completely absurd, one always feels attracted to challenges like the one presented by the host and owner of the channel. Offroad adventure on YouTube. How many kilometers can your old diesel Volkswagen Passat travel? 2,300 kilometers with its little tricks He promised that he would repeat it if the video went viral. And he has done it. Elias is a German YouTuber specialized in car travel videos. His YouTube channel is full of incredible landscapes, challenges aboard his cars and videos in which he explains how he has transformed the vehicles. In one of them, he picked up an old Volkswagen Passat B5 diesel from 1998 and he decided to know how far he could go. He traveled more than 1,900 kilometers but did not manage to break the two-mile ceiling with a single tank. The promise seemed obvious: likes to the video and a new challenge ahead. No sooner said than done. More than 2,400 kilometers with just a tank? This is the title of the video in which Elias tells of his new experience with this familiar diesel with almost 30 years behind him. The car, at that time, approved an average consumption of 5.6 l/100 km (4.5 l/100 km in the extra-urban) and a 62-liter tank in Spain but in Germany, according to the data provided by the Youtuber, it reached 72 liters. That is, to cover 2,400 kilometers it was necessary to maintain a consumption of about 3 l/100 km. And with these tools, what seemed impossible was posed: how to get from Hildesheim (Germany) to the Arctic Circle with a single deposit of fuel? Let’s get to work. Elias swapped the original rims for closed hubcaps to improve aerodynamics on the wheels and reduce drag. It eliminated everything that could interfere with the exterior: goodbye to the roof bars and the antenna. He also points out that he changed some of the car’s filters to improve efficiency, as well as the lights, replaced by LEDs that consume less energy. Some air vents were covered to further improve efficiency. The YouTuber also points out that he installed a cruise control system, used low-friction oils and Michelin, which is one of the sponsors, gave him a set of low-friction tires that have been inflated to the maximum pressure allowed to reduce resistance. Searching for the sweet spot between driving at a constant speed high enough for the car to move at a low rev rate but without forcing it to downshift and increase consumption, the YouTuber manages to achieve his goal and shows how the car ends up stopping after 2,398.7 kilometers, registering an average speed of 74 km/h and a consumption of 3.0054 l/100 km. The car, in fact, at some point reaches a much lower figure, of about 2.5 l/100 km of consumption. However, in the last kilometers this figure “skyrockets” and leaves our protagonist on the verge of breaking the 2,400 kilometer barrier. Moment in which he removes the seal from the fuel tank to add a little more diesel and be able to get to a gas station. The test demonstrates how far diesels from a few decades ago were capable of reaching, but it also confirms that if the road is clear and used correctly, adaptive cruise control can save a lot of fuel by keeping the car at a sustained speed. Photo | offroadadventure In Xataka | Driving at 110 km/h instead of 120 km/h to save gas seems like a good idea. It’s just a patch

Spain has started its most ambitious defense program. It is not a tank or a drone, it is the brain to control Europe’s troops

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Spain built its land defense looking outward, integrating into foreign programs and adapting doctrines from when the tank symbolized power, deterrence and industrial sovereignty. From joining NATO in 1982 to the missions in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army was accumulating operational experience, but always with one constant: the key technology came from outside. Today, the debate no longer revolves around how many vehicles you have, but rather What role do you want to play? now that the war changes again. From cannon to code. The Ukrainian experience has finished burying the idea of ​​the battle tank as an isolated and self-sufficient platform, pushing Spain to rethink its land doctrine from the roots. Instead of investing in more armor and weight, the Ministry of Defense has opted for a conceptual leap: prioritizing information, connectivity and speed of decision as key factors of survival in a “transparent” battlefield, saturated with sensors, drones and smart munitions. In that context PAMOV is bornnot as a new tank or a combat drone, but as the nervous system that must govern all those that come after. PAMOV, the brain. The Superior Ground Combat System program, awarded to Indraseeks to define the digital architecture of the future Spanish armored combat beyond 2040. We are talking about an initial investment around the 45 million euros and a strong R&D component, one whose objective is not yet to manufacture platforms, but design and mature subsystems that will allow the integration of manned and unmanned vehicles, sensors, weapons and command and control into a single cooperative tactical network. The tank, therefore, stops being the physical center of combat and becomes just another node within a distributed “system of systems.” INDRA The tactical cloud. One of the pillars of PAMOV is the creation of a combat tactical cloud capable of fusing in real time information from on-board sensors, aerial and ground drones and external sources. As? Through artificial intelligencethe system detects, classifies and prioritizes threats, reducing crew cognitive overload and accelerating decision-making in high-pressure environments. The 360 degree visionsupported by AI and augmented reality, allows you to “see through” the armor and regain freedom of maneuver against the proliferation of drones and loitering munitions. Less tons, more platforms. Plus: the lessons of Ukraine have highlighted the limits of the continued growth in weight of battle tanks, some already close to 80 tons, with enormous logistics costs and restrictions of mobility. In this sense, Indra’s approach is committed to distribute capabilities between multiple lighter platforms, many of them unmanned, that operate in tandem with the main tank. Here are names that are common today in the Ukrainian war, such as UGVs and UASwho would advance ahead “taking on the most exposed missions and acting as extenders of ISTAR capability“, in addition to (obviously) reducing human risks. Modularity and weapons of tomorrow. The PAMOV is conceived as an open architecturemodular and scalable, one capable of being integrated into different present and future vehicles. This allows on paper to progressively incorporate new technologies, from advanced active protection systems to directed energy weapons and, in more distant phases, even future hypersonic systems without having to redesign the entire platform. Hence, it is emphasized that the key is not in the specific weapon, but in the system being able to govern, coordinate and exploit it within the tactical network at the right time. Technological sovereignty. The concept is going to be repeated more and more in the old continent. In the case of Spain, with a 95% of national developments and the participation of SMEs, startups, universities and technology centers spread across several autonomous communities, PAMOV is presented as a strategic commitment for the country. As we remembered yesterday, the nation seeks to stop being just a simple buyer or late integrator to become technology provider criticism in European programs like MARS and, in the long term, the MGCSseeking to be on par with France and Germany. The final objective is that the Spanish contribution to the European car of the future is not only steel, but intelligence that governs it. Another way to fight. Finally, and if you will, beyond technology, the impact of PAMOV points above all to doctrinal. For the Army it means moving from individual platforms to cooperative networkschange the way we command, train and operate, and prepare for high-intensity scenarios with fewer personnel and greater dependence on software. From that perspective, the future Spanish battle tank will not be defined by its caliber or its weight, but by its capacity. to connect systemsdominate the information and decide faster than the opponent. Image | Rheinmetall Defense, Oscar in the middleIndra In Xataka | Spain has been a weapons exporting power for decades. Now he has made a decision: keep them In Xataka | Ukraine has found what it needed in an unexpected ally. Spain had the missing piece against the shahed drones

Russia has a tank so ugly it seemed like a joke. And the most surprising thing is that Ukrainian drones don’t know what to do

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Since the first months of the invasion, the war in Ukraine has become in a laboratory military “tuning” in real time: armored civilian trucks with steel doors, cars with improvised cages against anti-tank missiles, artillery protected with logs or bars welded in haste. As in other long conflicts, when technology does not arrive or is not sufficient, armies resort to bungle creative. From this ecosystem of ugly, urgent and desperate solutions is born the story of the strangest tank of this war… and also one of the most disconcerting for its enemies. Strange but armored. It we have counted other times. On the Ukrainian battlefield, Russia has led improvisation to an extreme almost cartoonish, deploying tanks covered in cagesspikes, cables, rods and metal layers that have earned them nicknames such as “turtle”, “hedgehog”, “furry” or, now, “dandelion”. At first glance they seem like a joke or a symptom of industrial decay, grotesque artifacts closer to scrap than to modern military engineering, but their proliferation responds to a brutal reality: Ukraine’s FPV drones have made classic armor insufficient, forcing Russia to add outer layers whose sole objective is to gain centimeters, time and confusion against attacks that were previously lethal. Origin and evolution. These protective screens, popularly known like “cope cages”began to be seen months ago, when the proliferation of drones transformed land warfare. Initially they were installed only on battle tanks and armored vehicles, but soon they spread to a wide range of systems. Your designs vary greatly: Some structures are crude and heavy, others are better planned, incorporating metal cages, steel plates, chains, spikes, camouflage nets and even reactive armor to reinforce the most vulnerable areas. In the Russian case, some tanks have become completely coveredwhich has earned them the nickname “turtle tanks” due to its resemblance to the shell of these animals. The simple principle that unsettles drones. The logic behind these designs is so rudimentary as effective– If the drone explodes before hitting the main hull, the shock wave loses much of its destructive power. In that sense, the “latest” model, the “dandelion tank”, with branched metal rods and tensioned meshes, works as a three-dimensional barrier that detonates the FPV from a distance, while there are already versions with cables, chains or spikes that seek the same effect from different angles. There has even appeared a sort of brush cutter tank Russian. Every extra centimeter between the explosive charge and the armor increases the chances of survival, and in a front saturated with cheap drones, that minimal advantage can make the difference between a disabled vehicle and one that continues fighting. In fact, this Russian anti-FPV system has migrated to its UGVs. In a video Seen on networks, the Russians claim that this “Courier” UGV survived the attack by a Ukrainian FPV and was recovered, although remembering that the additional weight of the cables will reduce the capacity vehicle loading. From the initial mockery to the silent cup. Yes, because what began as an object of ridicule among Ukrainian soldiers laughing at the welded cages and absurd profiles, has ended in imitation. The Ukrainian forces themselves have begun to equip some of their vehicles with similar protections, and the concept has even spread to NATO armies, with Western French vehicles. testing solutions inspired by these “dandelions”. The implicit message is, above all, uncomfortable: it may be ugly, crude and inelegant, but in real war is working better that many sophisticated solutions that have not yet come to the forefront. Hidden costs and obvious limits. There is no doubt, like so many other extravagant designs in the Ukrainian war, these improvised capes are not a panacea. They add weight, raise the profile of the vehicle, reduce mobility and they offer no real protection facing precise artillery or attacks from below, a tactic increasingly exploited by Ukrainian drones. Furthermore, and here the modus operandi of war, the more time passes, the more operators learn of FPV to identify gaps, adapt trajectories or use new techniques to avoid these metal shields. They are temporary defenses, effective but doomed to lose ground as the adversary figures out how to break them. An absurd race that defines modern warfare. Still, the central fact remains: Russia has created tanks so strange that they seemed like a jokeand for a time they have achieved something unthinkable, leaving enemy drones without a clear answer. In a war of attrition, cheap and experimental, where every day they look for emergency solutionsthese grotesque layers symbolize the current conflict better than any doctrine: a constant race of trial and error, in which even the most absurd can become, even for a moment, the best defense available. Image | Telegram In Xataka | The cold is so savage that Ukraine has activated the most kamikaze option: the “50,000 Russians per month” or giving Moscow what it wants In Xataka | “A human safari”: going outside in a Ukrainian city is now equivalent to being a shooting target for drones

Samsung and Apple brought ultra-thin mobile phones to the market with little battery life. China’s response: hold my tank

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Samsung was the first, and Apple followed a few months later. The introduction of increasingly thinner mobile phones on the market did not meet any specific need, beyond reducing weight and thickness. Betting on this format, at least with the proposals of Western manufacturers, brought with it sacrifices both in camera and autonomy. In China they are clear that There is no need to sacrifice one thing or the other.. The Honor Magic8 Pro Air. Recently, Honor presented the Magic 8 Pro Air in China. The surname already tells us where the shots are going. It is a mobile phone of only 6.1mm It has the best MediaTek processor It has a 5,500mAh battery It has a triple camera system (wide angle, wide angle and telephoto). It turns out that it was possible. There are a few millimeters of difference between the Honor Magic8 Pro Air and its direct rivals, the iPhone Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. But the numbers speak for themselves. Honor magic8 Pro air iphone air samsung galaxy s25 edge dimensions 150.5 x 71.9 156.2×74.7x 158.2 x 75.6 thickness 6.1mm 5.6mm 5.8mm battery 5,500mAh Si/C 3.149mah Li-Ion 3,900mAh Li-ion camera system 50MP, 1/1.3″, OIS 64 MP, /1.2″, OIS 50MP 48 MP 1/1.56″ OIS shift sensor 200 MP, 1/1.3″, OIS 12MP,1/2.55″ The Honor device is 0.3mm thicker than an S25 edge and 0.5mm thicker than the iPhone Air. To give you context, there is a guitar pick difference and a 75% higher energy density in the case of the Chinese mobile. An outrage. Furthermore, China has shown that it is not necessary to give up a single camera to opt for this format. And when we talk about flagships, this point is key. The 10K club. Beyond demonstrating that in ultra-thin mobile phones, silicon-carbon technologies allow energy densities that were impossible until a few years ago, the “10K club” is adding more and more participants. Chinese phones with normal thickness or even less than usual with 10,000mAh batteries. The last one to join the club was Realme P4 Powerthe first mobile phone in the world with a 10,001mAh battery. These are figures that double the usual standard in the rest of the ranges. The answer? There is neither nor is it expected in the short term. China has been ahead in the race to deploy silicon-carbon batteries, one that is not so easy to get into. Such high density batteries require: Greater regulations at the transport level, especially in the European Union. Much higher prices, as Xiaomi advanced. A durability risk not yet proven. Moving towards silicon entails important changes that traditional manufacturers, accustomed to a conservative and slow strategy, are not yet willing to take on. Image | Honor In Xataka | The 80/20 rule seemed like the holy grail for cell phone batteries. It’s not as infallible as it seems.

China had a tank more typical of science fiction. Now he has added a hypersonic missile in a video that attacks Japan

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China presented in August to the world a family of vehicles that broke with the classic logic of armored warfare: the Type 100 hybrid tank and its support vehicles ZBD-100. With barely 40 tons, these armored vehicles mix the lightness of a rapid deployment tank with an electronic architecture capable of converting them into nodes of a system hyperconnected combat. Now it has presented something more disturbing: a hypersonic missile aimed at a target. The Type 100 as a symbol. The robotic turret of the armored vehicles presented, their optical and laser sensors distributed throughout the hull and the fusion of data with drones and external radars give them a situational awareness which surpasses that of many Western cars. China does not seek to reproduce the heavy paradigm of the Abrams or the Leopard, but get ahead of him: Prioritizes sensors over armor, information on raw power, mobility over mass and active survivability against direct fire. His GL-6 system active protection, based on AESA radars that monitor an entire hemisphere, represents this new philosophy: in a battlefield saturated by drones, mines and loitering missiles, armor is no longer measured in centimeters of steel, but in milliseconds of electronic reaction. And more. The autonomy of its attack modules, the use of loads capable of imitating the power of the Abrams despite the smaller caliber and the incorporation of kamikaze drones from the support vehicles point to an ecosystem expressly conceived for contemporary war. He Type 100 also shows the Chinese commitment to lighter platforms that can operate in mountains, rice fields or coastlines, with less demanding logistics and easier to deploy near Taiwan or in possible points of friction with India. Overall, this armored vehicle reflects a theoretical break: China is betting on complete computerization of land combat and the massive use of distributed systems that share data in real time, something that can be decisive if it can be reliably integrated into doctrine and training. Type 100 The leap: low-cost hypersonics. Now, private company Lingkong Tianxing’s announcement that it is already mass manufacturing YKJ-1000 hypersonic missiles at a cost equivalent to 10% of a conventional missile It represents a profound alteration of the military balance in the Asia-Pacific. The fact that a private actor has entered into the systematic production of Mach 5-7 weapons points an industrial transition important: China is moving the frontier of war innovation outside of state monopolies, accelerating technological cycles and reducing prices to levels unthinkable for equivalent programs in the United States, where long-range hypersonics around 40 million dollars per unit. A clear threat. The YKJ-1000 not only stands out for its speed and its range of up to 1,300 kilometers, enough to cover the entirety of Japan from northern China, but also for its architecture autonomy-oriented: detection, target selection, defense evasion and evasive maneuvers in mid-flight. Its ability to travel inside standard shipping containers makes it a weapon hidden deploymentdispersible and easily moved by road or ship, adding strategic uncertainty in any crisis scenario. Plus: the images that close the promotional video (several missiles flying towards targets in Japan) constitute an unmistakable message in the midst of increasing regional tensions. The promise of a future version with integrated artificial intelligence anticipates a generation of cheap, extremely fast missiles designed to overwhelm or deceive defensesgenerating a new family of threats that could multiply in numbers that current anti-aircraft systems are simply not prepared to absorb. Frame from the missile video Japan, Taiwan and an escalation. The appearance of the YKJ-1000 comes at a time when relations between China and Japan are going through its most delicate phase in a decade. The statements of the new Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, hinting at a military response if Taiwan were attacked, have been interpreted in Beijing as a strategic shift of enormous significance. It we have counted: China has responded with travel advisories, flight cancellations and a public campaign suggesting Tokyo is getting dangerously close. to a red line. For Japan, China’s accelerated militarization is not an abstract phenomenon: it is a direct challenge to its sea routes, its energy security and its commitment to deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. For China, on the other hand, Japan is an actor that can decisively influence the American presence in the region. An intimidating missile. In this context, the massive deployment of the YKJ-1000 (capable of reaching bases in Okinawa, Kyushu or Hokkaido in minutes) takes on a obvious political component: It is a weapon designed both to operate and to intimidate. Furthermore, the mobile container system complicates pre-detection, while the multiplication of low-cost hypersonic platforms increases the pressure on Tokyo to reinforce anti-missile systems which, even in their most advanced configuration, were designed for slower, more predictable threats. He result is a spiral in which Japan accelerates its rearmament, the United States reinforces its air and naval presence and China responds by further expanding its panoply of both conventional and hypersonic missiles. Armored and missiles in it ship. What makes these developments more than isolated advances is their internal coherence. So much the Type 100 as the YKJ-1000 They reflect the same emerging doctrine: war based on saturation, speed, autonomy and distributed networks. The tank is not just a vehicle, it is a sensory node capable of sharing data with drones, radars and aerial platforms. And the hypersonic missile is not just a projectile, it is a mobile, cheap and difficult to intercept weapon designed to exploit vulnerabilities in complex systems. China is incorporating into its planning the idea that future conflicts will be decided by the ability to integrate sensors, automate decisions, and generate waves of simultaneous threats that outpace the adversary’s response. An island in the background. Thus, in a hypothetical attack on Taiwan, or in a limited confrontation with Japan, this synergy could allow China to combine computerized ground forces with hypersonic attacks of saturation intended to degrade enemy defenses, air bases and command nodes in the first minutes of the crisis. An explosive … Read more

The most pacifist city in Germany lived off its legendary train factory. Now they will make it from a gigantic tank factory

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Görlitz was known for its neat historic center, its post-war memory and a practical inclination towards pacifism. For decades, the city on the eastern border fit on the German map as a haven of caution and resigned industrial melancholy, a place where work and tradition maneuvered away from military power. But that calm is beginning to show cracks that force its inhabitants to rethink what it means to maintain peace when the world seems to want just the opposite. From the steel of peace to that of war. For more than a century and a half, the town of Görlitz, on Germany’s eastern border, lived off the rhythmic sound of trains. The wagon and locomotive factories They provided work for entire generations and defined the identity of this working-class region of the former East. But that era is coming to an end. After 176 years of railway production, the historic Alstom industrial complex is being converted by the arms consortium KNDS to manufacture components Leopard II tanks and Puma armored vehicles. What was once a symbol of civil mobility and reconstruction, today is transformed in gear of the German military machine. This metamorphosis does not arise from nowhere, of course: it responds to the country’s strategic shift towards rearmamentmotivated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fear of a withdrawal of American security guarantees and a economy in decline desperately looking for new sources of employment. Between pacifism and necessity. I was counting last week the new york times that, in Görlitz, industrial reconversion divide feelings. The population, aging and punished by decades of deindustrialization since reunification, sees the production of tanks as a lesser evil. In this area where the far-right AfD party (openly pro-Russian and opposed to helping Ukraine) concentrates almost half the voteseven its local leaders have accepted the change with resignation. “It is not a cause for celebration, but we cannot oppose having work either,” recognizeaware that the loss of employment would be even more devastating than the moral dilemma of manufacturing weapons. Reconversion. The factory, which once had more than 2,000 employeesbarely kept 700 before the sale, and KNDS agrees to keep half of them and plans to multiply it in the future. In fact, the unions, led by IG Metall, were the ones who promoted the idea of ​​reorienting the plant towards the defense sector to avoid its definitive closure. In a territory marked by youth exodus and economic frustration, the arms industry has ended up offering something similar to a second chance. German military reindustrialization. The Görlitz case reflects a broader phenomenon: German rearmament as a driver of a new industrial reconversion. Since 2020, Berlin’s defense spending has increased about 80%exceeding 90,000 million euros, and the demand for specialized labor has skyrocketed. Companies such as Rheinmetall, Diehl Defense, Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems or MBDA have added more than 16,000 workers since the start of the war of Ukraine and plan to hire 12,000 more before 2026. The sector’s profits are so high that its managers increase dividends while exploring the purchase of automobile plants in decline, as that of Volkswagen in Osnabrück. The “logic”. The message from its CEO, Armin Papperger, summarize the logic of the new defense economy: if taxpayers’ money finances national security, jobs must stay in Germany. In this context, the factory conversion like Görlitz, it is perceived as an industrial policy with a dual purpose: to sustain the productive fabric and strengthen the country’s strategic autonomy. The moral dilemma. Despite the economic relief that the renaissance of the arms sector represents, it persists in German society a deep tension between the pacifism inherited from the post-war and the need to guarantee European defense. For many East Germans, who already experienced a first deindustrialization after the fall of the Wall and now suffer the loss of energy and manufacturing jobs, manufacturing tanks is a bitter way of survival. Some fear that the weapons produced will end up on the Ukrainian front, others that the rise of the business depends on the continuity of the war. “Will it be sustainable to manufacture tanks? I hope not. I hope the wars end soon,” admitted to the Financial Times a union representative. However, the reality of the market and geopolitics point in another direction: defense has become the new industrial hub European, and Germany (due to history, technological capacity and allied pressure) leads that transition. Goodbye train, hello tank. Thus, the old Görlitz factory, with its warehouses blackened by decades of metallurgical work, symbolizes the change of era that crosses Europe. Where wagons were previously welded to transport passengers, steel shells will be assembled for combat vehicles. What began as a strategy to save jobs threatens to redefine the industrial soul of the country: from civil ingenuity to military power, from the steel that united continents to that which now armors them. And a profound paradox: in a fractured political landscape, where the fear of war coexists with the need to prosper, the workers of Eastern Germany are once again the involuntary protagonists of history. Its destiny, between nostalgia for trains and the pragmatic acceptance of tanks or battle tanks, summarizes the dilemma of a nation that tries to reconcile its pacifist past with a present that pushes it, once again, to manufacture weapons to ensure its future. Image | Norwegian Armed Forces, State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Labor, Energy and Climate Protection In Xataka | The US no longer has to worry about Spain or the rearmament bill in Europe. Germany had a plan B In Xataka | The “rearmament” of Europe has begun at a Volkswagen factory in Germany: instead of cars they will produce tanks

A huge fuel tank has fallen from heaven in Argentina. And we already have suspicious: a Chinese rocket

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The afternoon is almost always quiet in the small Chaco town of Puerto Tirol, north of Argentina. On Thursday, that tranquility was interrupted by an object fallen from heaven. He had appeared on a rural property whose owner did not hesitate to call the police. The police cordoned off the area waiting for firefighters. All the investigations are already made on the Internet. What is known. The object measures 1.70 meters long by 1.20 meters in diameter. It is metallic, has a cylindrical shape and is covered with carbon fiber or a similar compound material, so it is surely a pressurized propellant tank, a piece of the space rockets known as Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV). When a satellite or a rocket re -enters the atmosphere, most of its body is burned by pressure. These containers, on the other hand, are designed to support very high pressures, so it is not strange that they survive intact. Or judging by the photos, somewhat chamuscados and frayed. What is suspected. The first identification came from the hand of the Caribbean Astronomy Society (SAC) in A Facebook post. They confirmed that it looks like a piece of space vehicle, specifically a COPV. And they pointed out that, of the most recent releases, the main candidate is a Chinese rocket released the day before. The analysis of the trajectory seems to confirm suspicions. The astrophysic and renowned Jonathan McDowell satellite tracker He corroborated this hypothesisstating that the object is “probably” the tank of the fourth stage of a Chinese jielong-3 rocket. From China to Chaco. The private company China Rocket had launched on Wednesday the eighth mission of its Jielong-3 rocket. The Y8 mission took off From a maritime platform At 07:56 UTC to put 12 satellites of the Geely Future Mobility constellation in orbit, a positioning and communications service of the Chinese automotive giant Geely. After displaying the satellites, the fourth stage of the rocket continued to orbit the earth until 9:00 UTC of the next day, when It was sighted disintegrated in the sky 15 kilometers from Puerto Tyrol. Most likely, it will not be completely burned and the deposit survived the fall. A questionable history. China has earned in recent years. The most notorious case is that of the CZ-5B state rocket, whose central stage of more than 20 tons is designed to reach the orbit and then fall to the earth unpredictably within a period of days or weeks. The reality is that this behavior is changing, and both state and private companies are actively providing their rockets on the ability to actively extend, keeping some fuel and after deploying satellites. The problem is not that. But the space garbage, and that is that the Earth’s orbit has become a landfill. There are all kinds of dead satellites and rockets in the terrestrial orbit that gradually approach the earth due to atmospheric braking. With the rise of satellite megaconstellations, every day they re -enter the atmosphere an average of three large pieces of space garbage. And in this case they do it without any control. As a result, incidents in inhabited areas are increasingly frequent. In March 2024, a fragment of a battery pallet discarded from the International Space Station crossed the roof of a house. In January 2025, A half ton ring He appeared in a town in Kenya. In February, several fragments of a spacex rocket They fell near the city of Poland. The Earth is very large and mostly depopulated or covered with water, but it is a matter of time that something happens. Therefore, space agencies such as ESA They are promoting a commitment of “zero waste” to harden the regulations of their own missions. It is necessary, yes, a global consensus. Images | Llitory region In Xataka | The fireball that crossed Spain on Sunday will not be the last one: with 8,000 Starlinks in orbit, it will be a habitual show

When the US began to investigate a nuclear waste tank he found an even worse nightmare: radioactive wasps

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If you are even the noses of the velutinasthe Backpacks and the Tigres mosquitoes and Japanesethink about this: there are people in South Carolina (USA) that what fears right now is the stalking of radioactive wasps. It sounds crazy, but it makes all the meaning of the world if one takes into account that there, near a plant in which in its day pieces for nuclear bombs were manufactured, They just found A loop with a radiation level ten times above what is allowed. The big question is … how is it possible? What happened? That a few days ago the US Department of Energy published A report which has generated Polvareda in the country’s media. And rightly. The document does not go demand and supply, renewable or prices, but of something much more picturesque: earlier than the month, on Thursday 3 to be precise, some operators located near Aikenin South Carolina, a wasps nest with a radiation level ten times higher to what federal regulations allow. The authorities insist In any case where there is no risk. Where did they find it? Near a radioactive waste tank Savannah River Sitea nuclear material processing center located in South Carolina, next to the Savannah River, and that rose to mid -last century to refine useful materials for weapons creation. The NBC chain states that in its day, at the beginning of the cold war, it was used to manufacture the plutonium nuclei necessary to mount nuclear pumps. Now the installation is dedicated to other works, such as fuel production for nuclear centrals and cleaning tasks, but some sources They point that has generated More than 625 million Of liters of nuclear waste, an amount more than considerable that, once processed, it stayed at around 129 million. 43 underground tanks remain in use. OTHER EIGHT ARE CLOSED. What did they do with the nest? They sprayed him with insecticide, they removed him and discarded him as a radioactive residue. Finally the team prepared A reporta document that took more than expected because its authors dedicated themselves to review Previous cases of fauna pollution to be sure of your criteria. The document concludes that “more actions on the land” are necessary. Is anything else known? Yes. To begin with that they only found the loop, No wasps. Aiken Standard Clarify In any case that if insects had been located, they would probably present quite lower pollution levels. The same newspaper indicates that, after detecting the nest, the radiological control operating staff (RCO) inspected the surroundings without identifying more pollution or threats to the workers. The area in which the nest appeared is inside the plant, where underground steel tanks and several meters deep are preserved. The CNN chain collect Savannah River Mission Completion statements that rule out that there is a risk that the wasps created by the loop can fly outside their facilities. The reason: the normal thing is that they do not move too far from their nests. How is it possible? That is the million dollar question. The report speaks of “inherited radioactive pollution” and “not related to a loss of control”. The event would therefore be explained by the residual radioactivity That remained when the center was fully operational, not for possible leaks. The text in any case does not seem to have satisfied the Savannah River Site Watch surveillance team, which considers that it is incomplete because it does not detail where pollution came from or how exactly came to insects. “I am furious because SRS did not explain where radioactive waste comes from or if there is any type of escape in the tanks that the public must know,” Recognize Tom Clementsgroup manager. One of the keys would be the type of nest, since not all wasps use the same materials to create their homes. Images | ILJA NEDILKO (UNSPLASH), Flo (Unspash) and Duncan Sánchez (UNSPLASH) In Xataka | Madrid suffered a rocambolesco nuclear accident in 1970. So the authorities began to collect vegetables

The Steel Tank of the huge Cz-9 rocket has just manufactured

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Spacex continues years away from any competitor, including the Chinese government. Like the rest of the world, China has been late for reusable rockets and the Starlink satellite constellation, which has an undeniable strategic value. But with Starship, the giant rocket that Spacex is developing in Texas, China is determined to cut distances. The Chinese starship. While Spacex continues to put the highest and most powerful pitcher in the world (not without some difficulty), China has stepped on the accelerator in the development of its own reusable superpesado rocket: the long march 9 (CZ-9) of 114 meters high. The renders are over. This time, the Chinese Academy of Release Vehicle Technology (CALT) has presented two real -scale prototypes of stainless steel tanks of the CZ-9. Its dimensions are not trivial: they measure 5 and 10.6 meters in diameter (Starship has a width of 9 meters). While the 10.6 meter tank fits perfectly with the CZ-9, the purpose of the 5-meter prototype is … less evident. Perhaps CALT is exploring a stainless steel version of the CZ-10, the rocket with which China wants to send astronauts to the moon, or simply using this diameter as a test bench to validate rapid manufacturing technologies (it took only 60 days to design and manufacture the tanks). The SpaceX recipe. While Spacex has the manufacture of stainless steel dominated, for China the production of tanks of this size steel is an advance, since the rockets usually be made of aluminum and carbon fiber. Calt has encountered the challenges of the material: it is more difficult to mechanize than aluminum, and more prone to buckling and deformation in the welds. Overcoming these obstacles has required, according to the state company, “several key technical advances” in assembly, welding and forming. But there are two good reasons why Spacex chose steel: its price (it is cheap and can be manufactured on a large scale) and its resistance (Starship has demonstrated a great capacity to resist the atmospheric braking), a crucial feature for a rocket that aspires to be total and quickly reusable. From partial to totally reusable. China’s plan is first develop a partially reusable version of the CZ-9, scheduled for 2030, and then evolve towards total reuse with version CZ-9BR at some point between 2033 and 2035. Another similarity with Spacex is the number of engines and the chosen fuel: 30 YF-215 methane with 200 tons of thrust each in its first stage, for a total load capacity of 150 tons to the low orbit. So that. The potential uses of CZ-9 They are so varied As in the case of Starship: establish a manned lunar base, display central gigantic solar energy in spaceto launch space telescopes and, yes, manned missions to Mars. Image | CALT In Xataka | Elon Musk’s warning to the US government is true: China is getting closer to having its own starship

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