The U.S. scrambled fighter jets Wednesday to track and deter four Russian military aircraft flying near Alaska. The Russian Tu-95s and Su-35s flew in international airspace but entered the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said in a statement.

Russian aircraft regularly breach that zone. NORAD officials stressed that the presence of Russian warplanes there is not seen as a threat to the U.S. or Canada. But the incident comes on the heels of multiple instances in which Russian aircraft and drones are accused of violating sovereign NATO airspace over Europe.

The encounter also occurred a day after Mr. Trump made global headlines by asserting during a meeting in New York on Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that NATO members should shoot down Russian jets engaged in the war on Ukraine if those jets enter an alliance member’s airspace.

Washington Times special correspondent Guillaume Ptak and the Threat Status digital team have released an exclusive video from the front line of the Russia-Ukraine war that goes inside the increasing reliance by both sides on small FPV drones.

The video features sobering footage from the battered Ukrainian industrial town of Kostiantynivka in the Donbas heartland. Ukraine is currently producing about 200,000 FPV drones per month, with 4.5 million planned for 2025. Russia’s production capacity is seen to be dramatically more robust.

U.S. adversaries, including North Korea, Iran and organized criminal networks, are studying the way the drones are impacting the war, while learning how to build and deploy them in ways that could reshape global conflict on the near horizon.

The risk of a conflict in space involving China is a major worry because tests, incidents or other events could quickly escalate to a major debris-causing fight that would severely disrupt the usability of space, according to U.S. Space Force intelligence officials who spoke at this week’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

China has deployed multiple space weapons in recent years and has conducted a missile test that blasted a satellite and created thousands of pieces of potentially damaging debris. China also has robot satellites that can crush satellites, lasers that can disrupt satellites and cyber capabilities that can target space controls. Any tests or exercises involving these systems could be misperceived as impending attacks and set off a war.

To control such dangers, the Space Force is working on “responsible campaigning” — military jargon for limiting damaging space missile tests that could create dangerous debris. Brig. Gen. Brian D. Sidari, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence for the U.S. Space Command, said on a panel at this week’s conference that this is a particular problem with China. “The Chinese don’t believe what we say,” he said. “They believe what they see. So you have to do operations to ensure they know the boundaries of what’s going on.”

U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman asserted during a keynote address at this week’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that “developing and delivering space warfighting capability” is a “vital part” of the service’s DNA. “The time has come for us to focus on enhancing the speed and effectiveness of our deliveries,” he said. “Because if we fall behind, the Joint Force and the nation will feel the consequences.”

The general said the focus on the speedy delivery of capabilities is already generating successes. He pointed to the launch of the Space Development Agency’s “Tranche 1” proliferated architecture. A Space Development Agency statement earlier this month said the satellite constellation will consist of 154 operational space vehicles, including 126 transport layer and 28 tracking layer space vehicles, “plus four missile defense demonstration SVs, equipped with optical communications terminals and Ka-band radio frequency receive/transmit capability.”

Gen. Saltzman touted the launch of two state-of-the-art GPS satellites over the past year, saying it previously took the Space Force almost two years to prepare and launch similar satellites, and “now it takes us only three months. He emphasized how intense and consequential conflicts, such as the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, demonstrate the need for rapid capabilities delivery.

Sweden is one of the “more impressive defense spenders in NATO and recently announced a defense budget of 2.8% of gross domestic product for 2026, expecting to reach 3.1% by 2028,” writes Wilson Beaver, who notes that Sweden made the announcement “even before all NATO countries, except Spain, agreed to increase their core defense spending to 3.5% by 2035 in The Hague this summer.

“Sweden’s defense industrial base is one of the most impressive in NATO, and it’s also one of the major European producers of fighter jets,” Mr. Beaver, a senior policy adviser in the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation, writes in an op-ed for The Times.

“The Gripen, produced by the Swedish defense company Saab, is one of the most formidable European fighter jets, comparable to the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale. The Gripen is leased by multiple countries, including Czechia, which recently extended its lease of 12 of the fighter jets until 2035,” he writes. “Gripen fighter jets recently saw combat for the first time and performed admirably as the Royal Thai Air Force employed them in response to Cambodian rocket attacks.”

• Sept. 25 — Building the Space Force We Need and the Intelligence to Support It, University of Texas at Austin’s Intelligence Studies Project

• Sept. 25 — Counterforce in Contemporary U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance

• Sept. 25-30 — U.N. General Assembly High-level Week 2025, United Nations

• Sept. 30 — Growing the Midwest Quantum Ecosystem, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Oct. 6 — Big Deal, Small Deal or No Deal? Possible Outcomes of a Trump-Xi Summit, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Oct. 8 — Investing in the North Korean People: Broadening Access to Information in North Korea, Stimson Center

• Oct. 8 — Relearning Great Power Diplomacy: A Conversation with Wess Mitchell, Hudson Institute