war

So few babies have not been born since the Civil War

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Barcelona is a dynamic city, destination for thousands of foreigners looking for a new life in Europe and a territory that takes years seeing how its census grows almost uninterruptedly. Still, that doesn’t mean its demographic engine is well-oiled. On the contrary. The latest data published by the City Council show that, after almost a decade of decline, in 2025 its birth rate marked the second lowest level since 1900. Since the beginning of the 20th century there was only one year in which fewer babies were born in Barcelona: 1939, when the Civil War ended. In fact, if the Barcelona census remains more or less afloat it is basically thanks to the flow of immigrants. What has happened? That the Barcelona City Council has published their official demographic data as of January 1, 2026 and the general ‘photo’ they leave is full of chiaroscuros. The city’s population remains more or less stable, with 1,729,963 registered0.1% less than the previous year. It is not a bad figure if you take into account that Barcelona has been gaining residents from 2022 and that at the beginning of the century the census barely exceeded 1.5 million. What’s more, the local government relates this slight decline of 0.1% to a simple administrative issue. In his opinion they are explained (at least in part) because there are people who were still registered in Barcelona without living there and have now “regularized” their situation. “Barcelona is the administrative and physical gateway to the territory,” clarify the deputy mayor, Jordi Valls. Resident population in Barcelona (1900-2026) Perfect, right? Not quite. It is true that the loss of population has been minimal, almost negligible, and that Barcelona has been gaining population practically since the beginning of the century; But that doesn’t mean the city’s demographic engine is working well. On the contrary. Its vegetative balance (the difference between births and deaths) is in the red. To be more precise, last year Barcelona saw how they died 3,549 neighbors more than those who were born. This data is explained because, although in general the number of deaths was reduced, the number of births decreased even more. The statistics of the City Council also reveal that this imbalance occurs in practically the entire city. “The negative natural balance is spread across all districts with the exception of Ciutat Vella, where for the third consecutive year there are more births than deaths,” clarify from the Consistory. This is an interesting note because of what it reveals to us about the birth rate in Barcelona. Are so few children born? Yes. The Barcelona statistical office counted last year 11,012 birthsa bad fact no matter how you look at it. Not only does it represent a decline of 1.3% compared to 2024. If we broaden the focus we see that this decrease aggravates the negative trend that the municipality has suffered since 2017 and, above all, distances it (even further) from the peaks in birth rates that it registered during the ‘baby boom’. For reference, the 11,012 births in 2025 are almost three times lower than those recorded in 1973, when the city saw 31,689 cradle Barcelonans born. The 2025 figure is in fact the second lowest in the entire historical series of the Barcelona Department of Statistics and Data Dissemination, which dates back to 1900. Since then there has only been one year in which fewer babies were born: 1939. That year they came into the world in Barcelona. 8,992 people. It is not surprising if we take into account that it was the last of the war and in 1938 the municipality had registered a record number of deaths (almost 28,200). At that time the total registry was also very inferiorit barely exceeded a million. Births and deaths (1900-2025) Immigrants, emigrants and administrative movements (1971-2025) How is the census maintained? Thanks to immigration, basically. “During 2025 the natural balance between births and deaths was -3,549 people, but it was offset by a positive migration balance of +11,383 people,” recognize the City Council, which confirms that the flow of foreigners “continues to be the essential component of demographic dynamics.” This is not an isolated fact or something temporary. From the Town Hall confirm that the population arriving from other countries has been “the protagonist of demographic growth” in Barcelona so far in the 21st century. Last year, in fact, the number of those registered with foreign nationality rose another slight 0.7%. Can we go further? That immigration has become the great demographic driver of Barcelona is something that can already be felt in its social structure. The “native population” was no longer the majority in 2019 and today in the city it is easier to meet people born in other places than in a Barcelona hospital. To be more precise, the City Council calculates that on January 1 the native population barely represented 44.6% of the total. In Barcelona there are 626,924 people registered who were born outside of Spain, the vast majority (53.2%) from America, although there are also many residents born in Pakistan, Morocco, Italy and China. And that among a long list of 181 different nationalities. Almost a third (30%) of those born abroad have already acquired Spanish nationality and today they represent 11% of the registry. What happens with age? The municipal statistics They also allow us to understand how the Barcelona population pyramid evolves. Another interesting indicator, since, although the immigrants who come to the city tend to be young, the average age of the general population has risen to 44.6 years. Nothing surprising if we take into account that the pyramid is clearly widening at the summit. As of January 1, there were 1,196 people residing in Barcelona who had already blown out the 100 candles, an all-time high. Meanwhile, the number of homes in which children and adolescents live is decreasing, and they do not even represent a quarter. What does increase is the education of the population: 37.4% of those registered over … Read more

During World War II, a bell was buried to protect it. A farmer found it in 2024

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One morning in August 2024, Laurynas Družas once again passed his metal detector around his village, Antašava, in northern Lithuania. But this time, unlike the previous ones, he was lucky: He found something he had heard about all his life. In fact, explains This farmer by profession, who bought his first metal detector when he was 18. There it was, two meters underground, the bell of his town’s church. The bell tower of the Jackaus church had been without a bell since 1942 because someone had kept it safe in the middle of the Second World War. Maybe too good, because getting her back had become a chimera. Saving the San Jacinto Bell. In 1942 Lithuania was occupied by the Nazis within the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The previous year, the United States had joined the fray and Germany had failed in its attempt to conquer the east in Operation Barbarossa. In this scenario, the bell of Saint Hyacinth of Antašava disappears. Druzas account that the townspeople risked their lives to hide it from the occupiers with all the sense in the world: it is worth remembering that the Nazi party issued a decree to confiscate the bells and melt them for war purposes. And be careful because at that time there were no tractors: they did it with a horse, a cart and brute force. Quite an act of resistance, protection of heritage and a truly dangerous mission to hide a bell that weighs more than half a ton behind the backs of the Nazi occupiers. The bell became a legend. And time passed, Antašava said goodbye to the Nazis, Lithuania ceased to belong to the USSR to become independent in 1990 and the bell was still missing. The problem was that, as the years went by, those who knew where the bell was buried began to forget the exact place: the landscape changes, bushes grow and memory becomes blurred. But people knew that there was a bell in the bell tower and that it was hidden and the story was passed from generation to generation. In fact, Laurynas’ grandmother knew approximately where she was because as a child an uncle showed her the area. Grandma forgot the exact location, but not the idea of ​​finding it. He passed that “obsession” on to his grandson who, 82 years later, found it. A bell with 100 years of history. The bell of the Antašava church was cast in Poland in 1908 in a foundry that, as confirmed by the Polish “campanologist” Dr. Piotr Jamski, is still active today in the hands of a different family than the original. After 82 years underground, its state of conservation It was almost perfectneither the bell nor the wood show any signs of deterioration, as Laurynas Družas himself described after the discovery. The only thing missing was the clapper, which according to oral tradition was dismantled the same night the bell was buried and kept separately in a house in the town, although it is still missing. When the discovery came to light, heritage professionals they took care to verify its authenticity and origin. Back to the bell tower. In August 2025, a year after the discovery, the bell he returned to his houseto the church of San Jacinto. Polish technicians installed the system to make it ring next to the other bell that was already in the bell tower. Vidmantas Družas, Laurynas’s uncle and church bell ringer, account that the two bells are now connected and ring by pressing a button. In Xataka | We have found a fortress from the Bronze Age: it had been hidden under the Romanian forest for almost five millennia In Xataka | Some 5,000-year-old tombs went unnoticed for millennia. Until we look from the sky Cover | Authorius Vilensija and Vadym Alyekseyenko

Spain has been without an essential weapon for war for years. Airbus has found the solution in Seville, and fires torpedoes and sonobuoys

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One of the most outlandish ideas of World War II was to convert old B-17 bombers into giant loaded drones. with almost ten tons of explosives. The pilots would take off, activate the remote control system and parachute before the plane continued toward its target without a crew. The project it was a failurebut it left a curious lesson: finding submarines and destroying hidden targets has always required the development of some of the strangest and most advanced technologies of each era. The capacity that Spain lost. Modern warfare still relies on highly sophisticated technologies, but some capabilities remain as essential as they were decades ago. One of them is the surveillance and pursuit of submarines. Spain lost that tool in December 2022 with the withdrawal of veterans P-3 Orionleaving a void that was especially striking for a country with thousands of kilometers of coastline, a strategic position between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and intense naval activity in its waters. Since then, the Armed Forces have lacked an aircraft capable of locating, tracking and attacking enemy submarines, a situation that is now beginning to be resolved. thanks to a program developed entirely in Seville. Cockpit of the new maritime patrol C295 The answer comes from Andalusia. Airbus advances in the construction of the new C295 MPAa version specifically designed to return to the Air and Space Army a capability that had been missing for years. The program has already passed several important industrial milestones, including powering up systems and commissioning the engines of the first aircraft. The company ensures that the deadlines remain as planned and that flight tests will last for more than a year before the delivery of the first unit in 2028. Beyond a simple replacement, Airbus considers this development the most ambitious project carried out on the C295 platform and aspires to turn it into an international reference within maritime patrol. View of the interior of the warehouse from the airplane ramp The return of the submarine chaser. The characteristic that distinguishes this aircraft from the rest of the C295 versions is its ability to combat underwater threats. The device will be able to carry between two and four Mk46 or Mk54 torpedoes and deploy up to sixty sonobuoys, small floating sensors that listen to sounds underwater and allow hidden submarines to be located. The combination of both systems returns to Spain a fundamental tool for contemporary naval warfare. For years, the country has lacked a platform capable of searching for submarines at great distances, classifying them, tracking their movements and, if necessary, attacking them. The new plane recovers precisely that function, one of the more complex and strategic within any modern air force. An arsenal of sensors. Anti-submarine warfare depends on both sensors and weapons. Precisely for this reason, the C295 MPA will incorporate a very extensive set of specialized equipment. Among them are synthetic aperture radarselectro-optical systems, magnetic anomaly detectors capable of perceiving the presence of large metallic masses underwater, automatic vessel identification systems and an advanced acoustic system to process information collected by sonobuoys. Added to this are self-protection equipment against missiles, encrypted satellite communications and tactical data links that will allow information to be shared in real time with other naval and air units. An industrial project. Although Airbus leads the program, development has also become in a shop window of the Spanish defense industry. Companies such as Indra, SAES and Tecnobit participate by providing self-protection systems, acoustic sensors and encryption equipment. The contract also includes simulators, infrastructure, training and logistical support, consolidating a technological ecosystem that goes far beyond the manufacture of the aircraft itself and reinforces Seville’s role as one of the main military aeronautical centers in Europe. Much more than a new plane. The acquisition of eight devices of maritime surveillance and eight of maritime patrol is part of an investment greater than the 1.7 billion eurosto which other contracts for new versions of the C295 have been added. The program reflects the extent to which Spain is rebuilding capabilities considered essential in an international context where submarines once again play a leading role. In essence, the history of new C295 MPA It is not just about a plane that has just come off a Sevillian assembly line, but rather about how a country that had lost one of the most important tools to control its seas is recovering the ability to find invisible threats underwater and respond to them with its own means. Image | Airbus In Xataka | The S-82 is Spain’s second new generation submarine: it has just completed a critical test before delivery In Xataka | Spain is selling military technology for scrap: the latest was a Navy submarine for 130,000 euros

Cold War spy satellites

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Ander Izaguirre is the author of Return to the country of Elkano. It is a book that mixes travel chronicle with adventure narration. The story begins in Guetaria, where he returns after touring the Basque country by bicycle, taking as the backbone of history the figure of Juan Sebastián Elcano, considered the first person to complete a complete circumnavigation of the world. An idea is repeated several times in the book: the world has always been much more connected than we think. The starting point, in this case, is something that happened more than 500 years ago. What could the life of a person who crossed the planet five centuries ago be like when there are still people today who do not go beyond the borders of their country or their hometown? In its pages it talks about the connections between empires and geopolitical struggles to control trade routes. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand how in those days a person could travel thousands of kilometers and metropolises could trade with each other. But, personally, I find it much more complicated to imagine JUlius Caesar traveling along the Nile or Cleopatra living in Rome on the edge of the new year count with its Julian calendar. We are talking about a handful of years prior to the supposed birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Imagine if we go back further. As much as 4,000 years. That is, around the year 2,000 BC In two leaps we have begun to ask ourselves how our world could be interconnected just 500 years ago to how it would be more than 4,000 years ago. And to that question, some archaeologists believe they have found an answer. A river highway in Mesopotamia And our colleagues Motorpassion They bring us the story of one of those discoveries that will delight history fans. For many years it has been known that mesopotamian cities They have been using an intricate system of tunnels and water management for their irrigation for thousands of years. The invention was so effective that by adding all the conduits that have been active at some point, it is believed that it may have the same distance as there is between the Earth and the Moon, according to National Geographic. These tunnels were used, as we say, to move water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers but also to serve as a refuge for the inhabitants of these cities, both from the scorching heat of the desert and from possible enemy invasions. This has been, until last year, what was thought. And using spy images and the use of LiDAR, research has continued to advance until making sense of a new use of these channels. According to the researchers who have developed Identifying the preserved network of irrigation canals in the Eridu region, southern Mesopotamia, published by the University of Cambridge, These canals would also serve as a river highway to trade between towns. In the 1960s, the United States launched a spy satellite project called CROWN. These satellites took photographs of the terrain in the middle of the Cold War and the declassified file has allowed researchers to detect subtle changes in the terrain that are impossible to detect from the ground. The photographs revealed small differences in the vegetation, which shows commercial roads and passenger traffic for millennia. But using LiDAR, researchers have also managed to bring to light some cities that were hidden, as was the case of an extension near Abarkuh where those famous canals were discovered. The great discovery, however, has been to verify that these canals were not only used to transport water through complex hydraulic systems or to cool the environment. Everything indicates according to the latter research which were also used to move goods, resources and wealth between city-states such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash or Eridu. With this discovery, it is considered that we are facing one of the oldest and most extensive logistics networks in history and the key to understanding how grain, copper, wood or precious stones were traded then thanks to flat-bottomed ships that would move through these canals and not only through the visible bed of the Tigris and Euphrates. Photo | Semhur and Ali sabih kadhim In Xataka | When there was a lunar eclipse, Babylon trembled. Texts from 4,000 years ago announced all misfortunes

No missiles, no rifles, no bombs. Ukrainian drones are carrying a type of cargo unprecedented in war: elderly people

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During the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, an American pilot began to throw chocolates tied to small cloth parachutes on children watching the planes from Tempelhof airport. That improvised initiative ended up becoming the famous “Operation Little Vittles“, one of the most unexpected images of the Cold War: military aircraft used to carry hope instead of weapons. Decades later, Ukraine is finding equally unusual uses for its war machines. Lifesaving robots. For years, unmanned vehicles were associated with a very specific idea: transporting weapons, ammunition or explosives where the risk for soldiers was too high. The war in Ukraine is expanding that definition with an image that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. In some of the most dangerous sectors of the front, the same ground drones that are part of the war machinery are being used to evacuate elderly people trapped between bombings, mines and artillery fire. In a conflict marked by the automation of combat, one of the most unexpected loads carried by these vehicles are not projectiles or supplies, but old people who no longer have a safe way to leave their homes. Rescue through no man’s land. The last known operation took place near Limánin the Donetsk region. While carrying out a logistics mission, a ground drone unit from the Kraken group was approached by a woman who asked for help to leave the area along with three other people, one of them injured by shrapnel. After coordinating the procedure for days, the operators sent a Zmiy Logistic vehiclea kind of remote-controlled four-wheeled buggy capable of transporting up to about 500 kilos of cargo. The drone traveled about 16 kilometers to the agreed point, rpicked up the four evacuees and began the return journey to a river crossing where Ukrainian soldiers completed the rescue and took the wounded to a hospital. The impossible life in the gray zone. These rescues They show a less visible reality of war. Despite years of fighting, there are still civilians living in the so-called “gray zone”, a strip of land disputed between both armies that can reach between 16 and 20 kilometers wide. There are practically no public services, shops, schools or hospitals left there. Power outages are common and bombings are part of the daily routine. However, many older people continue to resist in those places because they don’t want to leave the houses where they have lived all their lives, because they care for sick relatives or because they hope that the war will end before being forced to leave permanently. Iron soldiers on a new mission. It is not an isolated case. They remembered in Insider that in early April, another 77-year-old Ukrainian woman was evacuated from the same area using a ground drone operated by the 60th Mechanized Brigade. The images They went around the world because the soldiers approached her with a blanket on which a message as simple as it was revealing could be read: “Grandma, get on.” The scene summarizes the extent to which these systems are evolving. Originally designed to transport supplies, plant explosives or even assemble remote weaponry, the so-called “iron soldiers” are beginning to take on rescue tasks that previously would have required exposing soldiers or volunteers to extreme danger. Total automation. Behind these stories there is a much deeper transformation. Ukraine and Russia are accelerating the incorporation of unmanned ground vehicles to carry out missions that They are too risky for people. Some carry ammunition, some carry medical supplies, and some incorporate remote-controlled weapons. The Ukrainian goal is especially ambitious: Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has announced the purchase of 25,000 ground drones during the first half of 2026 and aspires for all frontline logistics to one day depend on these systems. During the first quarter of the year alone, unmanned vehicles performed more than 21,500 missions. Unexpected consequences. The usual image of military innovation may be associated with increasingly destructive systems, but the Ukrainian experience is showing an unexpected consequence of that technological revolution. The same robots that were born to keep soldiers away from danger are being used to remove vulnerable civilians from some of the most dangerous places in Europe. As militaries race to automate combat, ground-based drones are proving military technology can play a role, too completely different: become the ultimate escape vehicle for those trapped in the ruins of an endless war. Image | ArmyInform In Xataka | Storks have become the best anti-drone weapon of war. And Russia and Ukraine are taking note In Xataka | Ukraine has been terrorizing Russian soldiers with its heavy drones for years. Now they are literally giving it back.

In 1967 a war closed the Suez Canal for eight years. Half a century later, the Strait of Hormuz looks into the same abyss

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When war broke out between Egypt and Israel in 1967, fifteen commercial ships were trapped in the Suez Canal. The captains dropped anchor assuming they would only have to wait a few days for the fighting to end. They were right about the duration of hostilities: it was the Six Day War. However, It took eight years for the canal to reopen. When the ships were finally able to set sail in 1975, only two were still seaworthy. The rest had rusted so much under the desert sun that They went down in history as the “Yellow Fleet”. Almost sixty years later, history rhymes in the Persian Gulf. Ninety days after the war between the United States, Israel and Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February, the most important maritime passage in the world remains closed. Dozens of oil tankers wait at anchor, waiting for a diplomatic agreement that always seems imminent but never arrives. The optimism trap on Wall Street The analyst Javier Blas, in your column for Bloombergexposes the dangerous complacency with which the world is facing this closure. The financial industry operates under an adapted version of Stein’s Law: “The Strait cannot be closed forever because it would cause too much economic damage; therefore, it will reopen soon.” The problem with this logic is that the economy has not yet inflicted the pain necessary to force peace. As Blas points out: For Washington: The war is proving politically cheap. The US economy is riding with quarterly growth of more than 4% and the S&P 500 index is close to historical highs, having risen almost 10% since the start of the conflict. For Tehran: Even as the currency plummets and inflation chokes the population, the Iranian regime has demonstrated for decades an almost inexhaustible capacity to absorb economic punishment when it considers it faces an existential threat. While the mediators seek an agreement in Islamabadinertia maintains the illusion of normality. The market has absorbed the disappearance of about 20 million barrels per day thanks to accumulated inventories and massive releases of strategic reserves. Qero the global tank is emptying. June: The end of logistics inertia If we do not see shortages on the streets it is due to pure physics of transportation: a supertanker moves at the speed of a bicycle. The fuel that the West consumed in the spring left the Gulf before the first missile fell. However, the data They already show the cracks in the system. Global demand fell by 5 million barrels per day in April, the largest consumption destruction since the COVID-19 pandemic. And the blow is already felt at home: Funcas warns thatIf the conflict continues, Spanish inflation will exceed 4% and growth will fall to 1.8%. In addition, the multimillion-dollar extra cost of fuel for airlines such as Iberia or Vueling directly threatens the waterline of Spanish tourism. The real precipice has a date: June. With the arrival of summer, the peak driving season and the massive use of air conditioning will collide with inventories at multi-year lows. Furthermore, a diplomatic reopening it would not solve the physical problem: Clearing the mile-wide Hormuz safe lane would require months of complex naval operations. However, the impact of this crisis goes far beyond the gas pump. As the physical shortage of crude oil becomes undeniable, the most serious repercussions are brewing in the bowels of the global financial system: The fracture of the petrodollar: The unwritten agreement of 1974, which guaranteed security in the Gulf in exchange for crude oil being sold in dollars and reinvested in US debt, is breaking down. Countries like India They are selling their US Treasury bonds to obtain liquidity and pay for much more expensive oil. The bond market: The persistence of energy inflation has skyrocketed sovereign bond yields. 30-year Treasury bonds in the US exceeded 5.15%. The cost of real life: If government bonds yield above 5%, 30-year mortgages are inexorably approaching 7%. This translates into more expensive loans, lower business investment and a paralysis of the real estate market. As several analysts warn, undoing the economic damage from Hormuz could require an induced recession to curb borrowing costs. The bypass of the desert While the world waits, some actors have already given up on Hormuz. United Arab Emirates has accelerated urgently the construction of a gigantic pipeline that bypasses the strait, with the goal of exporting 3.5 million barrels a day directly to the Gulf of Oman by 2027. It is “prudent planning for the worst scenario,” and a clear sign that Abu Dhabi believes the waterway could remain threatened for years. Half a century ago, no one imagined that 15 ships would spend a decade rotting in the sun in Suez for a war that lasted less than a week. Today, the world assumes that the Hormuz crisis will be a temporary blip. But as the days go by, the shock absorbers wear out and the financial markets creak. The oil is simply still waiting in the sea. Image | Photo by Jens Rademacher on Unsplash Xataka | The war in the East has reached an unexpected agreement: one where the US does not discuss Iran’s missiles, bombs or uranium

A Ukrainian stork has managed to outwit a Russian drone in flight. The video is the best clue about who will win the war

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Exactly a decade ago, the Dutch police presented a plan that seemed straight out of a medieval movie: training eagles to shoot down drones in full flight. That project lasted less than a year, because the birds They were too unpredictable and the propellers too dangerous even for them, but 10 years later it seems that they were not so wrong. The stork that left a Russian drone behind. In the middle of a war where Ukraine and Russia compete to automate battlefield, a seemingly trivial video has become an unexpectedly powerful metaphor. what we see: A Russian interceptor drone chases a Ukrainian white stork in mid-flight until the bird suddenly makes a sharp turn, leaving the device chasing shadows. The scene lasts just a few secondsbut it summarizes something much deeper: modern warfare is obsessed with creating machines that imitate capabilities that nature perfected millions of years ago, although we are still far from achieving it. The image is especially symbolic because the white stork is one of the national animals of Ukraine and because the video inadvertently exposes the enormous limitations that many drones continue to have when faced with an enemy as seemingly simple as a bird. The great military obsession. For years, military engineers they try to replicate the capabilities of birds flight. Modern drones can travel hundreds of kilometers, transmit video in real time or attack targets with enormous precision, but they remain much less agile than animals capable of instantly changing the shape of their wings, taking advantage of thermal currents or performing extreme maneuvers without losing stability. The video stork It does exactly that: detect danger, alter its trajectory and escape from a device specifically designed to intercept moving targets. The difference reveals a key problem with today’s autonomous war. Drones still rely heavily on relatively predictable trajectoriesimperfect sensors and reaction capacities much lower than those of biological organisms evolved to survive in the air. Drone warfare as an ecosystem. The conflict in Ukraine has accelerated the evolution of drones to unprecedented levels. Let us remember that at the beginning of the war they were relatively simple reconnaissance tools… and now there are coordinated swarmsinterceptors aerial FPVplatforms long range suicide bombers and autonomous systems capable of searching for targets by themselves. In parallel, the sky begins to fill with absurd situations and almost surreal where birds and machines share the same airspace. In the early years there were trained eagles to shoot down police drones. Today, just the opposite is happening: drones that chase birds because their radar signatures are too similar to those of enemy devices. Some species, such as storks or pelicans, are comparable in size to certain military drones and create enough confusion to cause real errors in combat. Nature is several steps ahead. The episode also leaves an uncomfortable conclusion for the military industry: the capabilities that militaries desperately seek already exist in nature. Birds master something that drones still cannot combine well: agility, energy autonomy, collective coordination and instant adaptation to the environment. An albatross, for example, can travel entire oceans taking advantage of wind currents Without spending much energy, Harris hawks or eagles coordinate extremely complex cooperative attacks. no centralized communicationand storks use thermals to gain altitude practically free. Meanwhile, defense engineers still experience with deformable wings, biomimetic systems and algorithms that allow drones to react with the same fluidity. The result is paradoxical: the more autonomous military technologies advance, the more evident it is that they continue to try to achieve abilities that a bird naturally possesses. A video that says much more. The Ukraine War will probably be remembered as the drone laboratory most important in modern history. Both sides are learning in real time how to automate attacks, saturate defenses and dominate airspace at low cost. But he stork video points towards something even more important: the winner will not necessarily be the one who has the most drones, but rather the one who manages to build capable systems to adapt to the environment with the flexibility of a living organism. Therein lies the great technological race that is beginning to take shape. Armies no longer just want fast or cheap machines, they also want platforms that learn, react, collaborate and survive like animals. And while Russia and Ukraine transform the sky into a permanent surreal experiment, a simple stork has just remembered that nature, for now, continues playing in another league. Image | Jean-Raphaël Guillaumin In Xataka | Ukraine has been terrorizing Russian soldiers with its heavy drones for years. Now they are literally giving it back. In Xataka | The war has entered the phase of mathematics: cheap Russian missiles are destroying the scarce Ukrainian interceptors

The greatest Japanese military taboo after the Second World War has just been blown up. China and North Korea are to blame

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In 1945, Japan emerged from World War II with a new Constitution that, in practice, prevented him have again offensive aircraft carrier. Eight decades later, one of its largest ships is once again preparing to operate fighter jets from the deck alongside the US Marines. Japan leaves its historical limits behind. Japan is entering a military phase that for decades avoided describing openly. He “Kaga”officially classified as a helicopter destroyer, will operate in June F-35B stealth fighters of the US Marine Corps in joint exercises that definitively bring the country closer to a light aircraft carrier capability. The gesture is much more important than it seems because it breaks a deeply rooted political and historical barrier since World War II: the idea that Japan should strictly limit its offensive capabilities. Tokyo continues to avoid the term “aircraft carrier,” but operational reality is beginning to look more and more like classic shipborne aviation. The Kaga and a return. The transformation of the “Kaga” and its twin “Izumo” It has been underway for years, but now it is entering the truly decisive phase: operate fighter aircraft fifth generation from deck in real conditions. The planned exercises with the US F-35B will include “cross-deck” maneuvers, where Marine aircraft take off and land from a Japanese ship. all this requires modifications depth in the deck, thermal resistance to withstand vertical landings and new coordinated procedures between pilots, sailors and technical personnel. Although Japan has placed the F-35Bs under the control of its Air Force and not the Navy, the practice brings the country enormously closer to having fully functional small aircraft carriers. A US Marine Corps F-35B lands aboard Kaga during training exercises in 2024 China and North Korea behind. The great driver of this transformation is the deterioration of the strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific. China multiply your pressure naval around Taiwan and the East China Sea as North Korea maintains a constant capacity of military destabilization. In this context, Tokyo needs to disperse its air capacity and reduce dependence on vulnerable ground bases. There the F-35B enters: a fighter capable of taking off over very short distances or landing vertically from relatively small decks. For Japan, this offers enormous flexibility in an archipelago full of islands and long sea distances. Each converted ship expands the number of platforms from which the country can project air power. USA as accelerator. The direct involvement of the US Marine Corps makes clear the extent to which Washington is acting as an accelerator of Japanese military transformation. The Marines already made the first historic landings on the “Izumo” in 2021 and since then they have accompanied practically all phases of the program. The “Kaga” even traveled to the United States for specific tests with F-35B and has already operated alongside British and American aircraft linked to the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales. More than simple maneuvers, these exercises serve to integrate allied doctrines, logistics and procedures in a possible regional crisis scenario. The Indo-Pacific is filling up. The change also reflects a broader trend: the proliferation light aircraft carrier and ships capable of operating F-35Bs throughout the US allied network. United Kingdom, Italy, South Korea and potentially Spain sfollow similar paths to maintain embarked aviation without the need for gigantic nuclear supercarriers. He F-35B It has thus become the centerpiece of a new generation of medium navies capable of projecting air power from relatively compact platforms. Japan fits that model perfectly, especially in a scenario where war in the Pacific could force aircraft, ammunition and fuel to be dispersed across multiple moving points. The real test begins now. Until now, much of the Japanese program had still been experimental or symbolic. The real test begins with regular operations, long deployments and the ability to sustain stealth fighters on deck for weeks. That is where it will be measured if the “Kaga” It definitively ceases to be a “helicopter destroyer” to become, in practice, a a light aircraft carrier fully operational. And there, too, the most profound change is perceived: Japan is gradually leaving behind the defensive military culture to adapt to an increasingly Indo-Pacific more militarizedcompetitive and unpredictable. Image | hunini In Xataka | Japan has just crossed a line unprecedented since World War II: China has responded with supersonic missiles In Xataka | Japan has made a historic decision in the face of US uncertainty: deploy missiles that reach North Korea and China

From Cold War bunkers to bunkers wherever

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In 1961, Switzerland required by law that practically every new building incorporate access to nuclear shelters. Decades later, the country still has more places in bunkers than inhabitantsa European rarity that for years seemed like a paranoid exaggeration and that today many governments are beginning to look at with different eyes. Europe looks underground again. For decades, European bunkers were treated like uncomfortable relics of the Cold War, spaces buried under modern cities that survived converted into warehouses, parking lots, swimming pools or simple historical curiosities. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed radically that perception. Governments, architects, urban planners and citizens have returned to thinking in terms that seemed to have disappeared from the continent: shelter, civil protection, urban survival and the ability to resist prolonged bombings. The most striking thing is that Europe is not only rebuilding former military shelters; is starting to convert any space underground available in potential emergency infrastructure. Garages, subway stations, tunnels, basements or sports centers become part of a new defensive geography where the priority is no longer winning a war, but ensuring that cities can continue functioning under attack. Finland never stopped preparing. I remembered the new york times that while much of Europe dismantled its civil protection systems after the end of the Cold War, Finland decided to keep intact a culture of refuge deeply linked to its history with Russia. In Helsinki, thousands of underground spaces spread under the city can become operational shelters in just 72 hours. The most surprising thing is that many operate daily such as playgrounds, parking lots, swimming pools, concert halls or sports facilities. Finnish logic has always been clear: if another war comes, civil protection cannot be improvised. The Russian invasion of Ukraine made that mentality, for years seen as a kind of Nordic obsession inherited from the 20th century, come to light. seem almost prophetic. Suddenly, families who had never thought about shelters began asking where the nearest one was, architects began debating underground protection again, and European governments began to study the finnish model as if it were a practical manual on how to survive near Russia. Germany and discovery. Latest German turn reflects the extent to which the perception of war has changed in Europe. Berlin once had about 2,000 shelters public during the cold warbut today it only preserves a few hundred partially usable for a population of more than 80 million people. Reuters counted last week that the important thing about the new German plan is not only the investment of billions in civil protection, special vehicles or warning systems, but the implicit acceptance of an uncomfortable reality: the State no longer believes it is possible to guarantee universal refuge for the entire population. Instead of rebuilding huge networks of bunkers like those of the 20th century, Germany is opting for a much more more flexible and pragmatic based on mobile alerts, improvised shelters and rapid reaction capacity. The symbol of this new strategy is not an armored concrete door, but a notification on the mobile phone indicating to the citizen which is the nearest basement or station. The war in Ukraine changes the idea of ​​security. The Ukrainian experience has destroyed many Western certainties about modern warfare. For years, many European experts assumed that future conflicts would be technological, precise and limited, making large civil refuge infrastructures unnecessary. Ukraine showed exactly the opposite: massive attacks on cities, drones over residential areas, bombings of civil infrastructure and millions of people taking refuge in metro stations once again became part of the European landscape. That finding appears constantly in the German and Finnish debate. Architects who previously considered shelters obsolete recognize now that Russia has returned to Europe a form of war much closer to the classic bombings of the 20th century than to the surgical conflicts imagined after the end of the Cold War. The uncomfortable question. Behind the return of the bunkers there appears a politically explosive issue: that of who can protect themselves really if a war breaks out. Germany is beginning to publicly assume something that it avoided verbalizing for decades: there will never be enough places for everyone. Seen this way, the debate no longer revolves solely around building shelters, but about priorities, access and real response capacity. Who receives the alert first? Who manages to arrive on time? What happens to the elderly, sick or people without mobility? Even during the Cold War, European shelters could only cover a limited part of the population, but then they worked too as a political symbol: They represented the idea that the State remained capable of protecting its citizens even under nuclear threat. Today that illusion is weakening and civil protection is beginning to be understood more as social resilience than as an absolute guarantee of survival. The underground returns to the board. Ultimately, the Berlin case sums up this transformation perfectly. Under the German capital there is still a gigantic network of tunnels, bomb shelters, adapted stations and military structures built between the Third Reich and the Cold War. For years they were archaeological or tourist spaces managed by historical associations as Berliner Unterwelten. Now some are beginning to be partially reconditioned for real civil protection uses. The significant thing is that no one is talking about resisting a total nuclear exchange, but rather about surviving to drone attacksconventional missiles or localized bombings similar to those seen in Ukraine. Europe is thus entering a scene unprecedented since the end of the 20th century: the return of shelter mentalitynot as an ideological symbol of opposing blocs, but as a practical response to the feeling that war has once again become a tangible possibility within the continent. Image | GetArchive In Xataka | There is a 50-ton “nuclear reactor” in a bunker in Fuenlabrada: it has been donated by Amancio Ortega In Xataka | A secret Nazi bunker in Germany hides the most sought-after treasure on the entire planet: hundreds of tons of rare earths

the largest ballistic attack of the entire war

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In 1983, during a soviet drill of nuclear attack, thousands of people spent hours sheltering in the depths of the kyiv metro while authorities rehearsed how to survive to a rain of missiles on the city. Four decades later, the same underground stations have once again been filled with families, improvised mattresses and air raid sirens in the middle of a new war over Europe. The night everyone feared. Over the past weekend, Russia launched the major ballistic attack of the entire war in an offensive that for hours turned the Ukrainian capital into a continuous succession of explosions, fires and anti-aircraft alarms. The magnitude of the bombing was not only in the number of drones and missiles used, but also in the type of weapons used: Moscow once again resorted to Oreshnik missilean intermediate-range ballistic system originally designed to carry nuclear warheads and whose mere presence has a strong psychological effect on the Ukrainian population and defenses. For months, kyiv had warned of the possibility of a combined attack designed specifically to overwhelm the Patriot batteries and hit the city with an intensity not seen since the end of 2024. The feeling in Ukraine was that Russia was preparing something differenta show of force intended both to destroy infrastructure and to convey the idea that it still retains the capacity to escalate despite recent setbacks on the front. Oreshnik and the return of nuclear fear. The appearance of the Oreshnik has partially changed the nature of the air war over Ukraine because it functions not only as a conventional weapon, but also as a political tool of strategic intimidation. The missile releases multiple warheads during flight that fall at high speed in trajectories difficult to intercept even for the American Patriot systems, one of the few shields capable of stopping Russian ballistic missiles. Although Oreshnik’s previous releases had caused damage relatively limited and it is believed that they used simulated charges, in Ukraine the problem is not only physical destruction but the normalization of a weapon associated with the Russian nuclear arsenal. The Ukrainian and Western authorities had been alerting of preparations for use and the population of kyiv responded by filling subway stations and underground shelters even before the first detonations began. Wear phase. The attack also exposed a problem that worries kyiv greatly: Ukraine depends almost entirely of Patriot missiles to stop ballistic projectiles and the reserves are increasingly limited after the enormous consumption of interceptors during the war between the United States and Iran. Russia appears to have detected this vulnerability and is using large combined drone salvoscruise missiles and ballistic missiles to force Ukraine to quickly expend extremely expensive and difficult to replace defenses. On this occasion, Moscow launched dozens of ballistic missiles and Ukraine only managed to intercept a relatively small part, a figure that reveals the extent to which the Russian strategy simply seeks to saturate the enemy defensive system through volume and simultaneity. The worrying thing for kyiv is that the math works in the Kremlin’s favor: manufacturing drones and missiles is much cheaper and faster than producing Patriot interceptors. The Russian response. The offensive came just hours after Ukraine will hit facilities Russian forces and attack a base of the Rubicon drone unit in Lugansk, one of the most important unmanned warfare formations of the Russian army. Moscow presented the bombing of kyiv as direct retaliation and Vladimir Putin publicly ordered the preparation of a response after denouncing Ukrainian attacks against supposed civilian targets. However, the strategic context goes far beyond simple revenge. Russia goes through an awkward moment on the front: its ground advances have slowed considerably, Ukraine has managed to attack energy infrastructures deep within Russian territory, and waves of Ukrainian drones have even forced reduce symbolic acts like the Victory Day parade in Moscow. I remembered the new york times that the massive attack on kyiv also seems to respond to the Kremlin’s need to regain psychological initiative and convey that it can still impose enormous costs on Ukraine despite the accumulated wear and tear. kyiv as an eternal laboratory of war. If you like, the Ukrainian capital has become an extreme example of how contemporary wars are evolving: entire cities operate permanently under aerial threat while the population learns to live with attacks capable of paralyzing civilian infrastructure for hours. He bombing damaged subway entrances used as shelter, destroyed buildings, burned markets and left symbolic scenes such as the melted arches of a McDonald’s among the still smoldering ruins. At the same time, the attack showed how the border between conventional warfare, psychological warfare and technological competition is increasingly diffuse. Ukraine is trying to compensate for its industrial inferiority by hitting Russian refineries, logistics centers and drone bases with long-range strikes, while Moscow responds by resorting to a mix of volume, aerial terror and weapons designed to send strategic messages as well as destroy targets. The precedent that worries the West. Finally, the Financial Times reported that there is a growing feeling in kyiv that Russia is using Ukraine as a scenario to test how Western defenses react to massive and prolonged attacks with advanced ballistic missiles. Zelensky insisted before and after the attack in which the repeated use of the Oreshnik and the continuity of this escalation create a global precedent for future conflicts, especially at a time when the United States and Europe observe with concern the arsenal expansion similar in countries like China, Iran or North Korea. From that perspective, what happened in kyiv would not only affect Ukraine: it also serves as a warning about how they could future wars develop between powers with great missile capabilities and limited anti-aircraft defenses. The most uncomfortable conclusion for the West is that Russia seems convinced that it has found a relatively effective formula for wearing down modern defensive systems through massive, repetitive attacks that are increasingly difficult to contain. Image | Russian Defense Ministry In Xataka | Russia has found something more important than … Read more

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