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THE STOP BUZZER PROBLEM
Military GPS jamming was active when a medevac plane flew into a New Mexico mountainside on May 14, killing all four people aboard, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board. It is the first time the NTSB has publicly identified military jamming as a possible factor in a crash.
The Trans Aero MedEvac Beechcraft King Air 90 was flying from Roswell to Ruidoso before dawn to pick up a patient. Pilots Keelan Clark and Ali Kawsara and flight nurses Sarah Clark and Jamie Novick were killed. About six minutes after takeoff, one of the pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had lost GPS. Three other aircraft in the area reported the same problem. A controller asked the military at nearby White Sands Missile Range to pause its jamming test. The military did, but resumed once the controller reported the medevac crew had a visual fix on the airport. The aircraft crashed five minutes later, striking a ridge in the Capitan Mountains. The NTSB’s report does not say whether the crew was told the jamming had resumed. The impact sparked a wildfire that burned more than 12,000 hectares over the following month.
This is not the first time controllers have raised alarms about being overridden. Anonymous safety reports filed with NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System show a controller in 2021 describing being dismissed after requesting a pause, with staff telling them they would not comply. A controller who filed a report in 2024 called the practice of delaying a pause “a danger to the flying public.”
One source familiar with the matter, speaking to IEEE Spectrum on condition of anonymity, said FAA managers have told controllers that halting a single military GPS test costs between $5 million and $10 million. Neither White Sands nor the FAA would comment on that figure.
Todd Humphreys directs the University of Texas at Austin’s Radionavigation Laboratory. He said the jamming the medevac crew likely encountered was a preventive, high-powered signal the Army uses to mask separate GPS-spoofing tests happening deeper in the range. He said the jamming is intense enough to reach low Earth orbit satellites. White Sands testing has previously been linked to navigation disruptions more than 500 kilometers from the range, reaching into neighboring states and Mexico. GPS interference testing there has continued since the crash, with jamming scheduled on at least 12 days as of late July.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Four Americans doing emergency medical work died after a known, years-long pattern of air traffic controllers being overridden when they asked the military to pause GPS jamming for safety. This happened inside the United States, to Americans, and it has drawn almost no national coverage.
Sources: IEEE Spectrum (US, specialist/industry — NTSB report details, ASRS controller reports, Humphreys analysis, cost estimate); DroneXL (US, drone industry press — ongoing jamming schedule since crash); Gadget Review (US — flight timeline, crew names)
THE HORMUZ TOLL PLAN
Iran and Oman have made real progress toward a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, regional officials told the Associated Press Tuesday, a potential breakthrough after a prior agreement collapsed in June.
Under the emerging plan, ships would enter the Persian Gulf through a route controlled by Iran and exit through a separate route controlled by Oman. Officials said the arrangement would include service fees for security and environmental protection. The two countries reached an earlier interim deal in June to reopen the strait and begin 60 days of broader talks. That agreement collapsed as hostilities in the strait escalated; the 60-day deadline is roughly two weeks away.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave a different account of the same question Tuesday. Asked whether ships would pay tolls to transit the strait, he told reporters, “I think it would be freedom of movement.” That does not match what regional officials described to the AP as an emerging fee structure. An Iranian negotiator said the broader arrangement could last one to three months. It would create a situation, the negotiator said, “where Iran is dominant.”
Qatar, Oman, and Pakistan are facilitating contact between Iran and the United States, according to Qatari officials, though no final agreement has been reached. Qatar’s emir spoke with President Trump by phone Tuesday about de-escalation, his office said, without providing further detail.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that progress had been made, though nothing was final yet, and that he expected an agreement soon. He described the strait as already open, with oil currently moving through it, but said increasing traffic through the waterway remains the immediate focus. Denuclearization, he said, is the ultimate goal of the broader negotiations.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas normally moves through the Strait of Hormuz, and it has been effectively closed for months. The Treasury Secretary and the regional officials actually negotiating the reopening cannot agree on whether ships will have to pay tolls to use it.
Sources: US News via AP (international wire — deal terms, June agreement collapse, Bessent quote); CNN (US — Rubio quotes, Iranian negotiator quote, Qatar emir call)
THE OTHER STRAIT
While Iran and Oman negotiate over Hormuz, a second chokepoint roughly 3,500 to 4,000 kilometers away by sea route has been under its own blockade for weeks. Yemen’s Houthis declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia in late July. Bab al-Mandab, the strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, has not recovered since.
The Houthis deployed missiles and drones near the strait and attacked two Saudi crude carriers on July 25. Saudi Arabia responded by diverting oil away from the strait entirely, routing crude through a pipeline to its Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea instead. Traffic through Bab al-Mandab fell to its lowest level in months, according to shipping data from the analytics firm Kpler. Insurance rates for vessels attempting the route have climbed sharply.
Reuters reported in late July that the Houthis were considering charging ships a fee to transit the strait. Regional sources told the wire service the idea was raised with Iranian officials, and that Iranian advisers were helping set up an authority to collect it. The Houthis denied this on August 1, saying in a statement that their transit service is voluntary and free, and warning shipping companies not to pay anyone claiming otherwise.
Euronews has described the Houthis’ approach as modeled directly on “Iran’s Hormuz playbook.” The Houthis are part of the same Iran-aligned network as Hezbollah and Iraqi militias.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: A fifth of the world’s oil moves through Hormuz. Roughly 5 percent of world seaborne oil trade moves through Bab al-Mandab, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Both chokepoints are now disrupted by Iran-aligned actors using strikingly similar tactics.
Sources: Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Houthi fee denial, Reuters report on fee authority); The Hill (US — Kpler traffic data, Saudi pipeline diversion); Euronews (European, multilingual, broadly centrist — “Hormuz playbook” framing, Axis of Resistance context); CNBC (US — missile and drone deployment, blockade declaration, July 25 tanker attack); The National (UAE — Hormuz-to-Bab al-Mandab shipping-lane distance); US Energy Information Administration (US government primary source — Bab al-Mandab share of world seaborne oil trade)
ZERO OF TWENTY-EIGHT
Russia launched 115 drones and 28 missiles at Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight into Wednesday. Ukraine’s air force intercepted 98 of the drones. None of the 28 missiles were intercepted.
At least 17 people were killed. In Kyiv itself, one woman died and at least 24 people were wounded as strikes sparked fires in four districts, according to the city’s military administration. Fourteen more people were killed in the wider Kyiv region, with more than 20 wounded, regional officials said. “Kyiv region experienced one of its most tragic enemy attacks yet again tonight,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration, wrote on Telegram.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tied the attack to sanctions policy. “A significant portion of Russian ballistic missile production is not currently under sanctions,” he wrote. “New steps are needed from the G7, from the EU, from everyone who supports the protection of life.” July was Ukraine’s deadliest month for civilians since April 2022, with at least 377 killed and 2,129 wounded, according to United Nations figures.
Ukraine carried out its own strikes overnight, hitting a sorting center belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest e-commerce company, in Russia’s Tula region. Two apartment buildings and other industrial facilities in the area were also damaged, according to local officials. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said at least 61 people were killed and 327 wounded in Russia over the last week of July from Ukrainian drone strikes and shelling. That figure has not been independently corroborated.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Ukraine intercepted more than 85 percent of the drones fired at its capital overnight and zero percent of the missiles. Kyiv has been warning for months that it is running short on the interceptors that stop exactly this kind of attack, and last night’s numbers are what that shortage looks like in practice.
Sources: Euronews (European, multilingual, broadly centrist — casualty breakdown, Tkachenko quote, missile and drone counts); CNN (US — July civilian toll, Wildberries counter-strike, Russian Foreign Ministry claim); ABC News (US — Zelenskyy quote, drone interception figure)
WAR DAY 159 | NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,485+ killed (tracker base of 3,468 as of June 10 per Al Jazeera live tracker, plus at least 17 confirmed killed in US strikes July 9-10 per Iran Health Ministry — floor estimate; strikes since July 11 not yet independently confirmed)
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,321 killed (Al Jazeera live blog, updated July 8)
🇮🇱 Israel: 35+ killed (tracker frozen June 10)
🌍 Gulf states / Iraq: 131 killed (tracker frozen June 10; does not reflect Iranian strikes on Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, and Oman since)
🇺🇸 US military: 13 killed, 381 injured (Al Jazeera live tracker, last updated June 10 — does not reflect ongoing strikes)
🇵🇸 Gaza: 73,381+ killed cumulative since October 7, 2023 (Gaza Health Ministry, via Al Jazeera), 174,231 wounded; 1,254+ killed and 4,121 wounded since the October 11 “ceasefire” — separate conflict tracked independently of the war numbers above
🛢️ Brent crude: $80.33/barrel (OilPrice.com)
⛽ US national gas average: $4.08/gallon (AAA)
Sourcing note: Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Gulf states, and US military figures reflect the same methodology carried since Day 158: the Al Jazeera tracker’s June 10 baseline where unchanged, supplemented by independently confirmed additions where available. All remain floor estimates. Gaza figures are sourced separately to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose casualty records UN agencies and independent researchers have treated as a reliable floor count, not an overcount.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
