- Kratos Defense and Security has confirmed that it successfully completed the first flight of its Thanatos stealth UCAV.
- The company’s next tests will focus on the Thanatos’ integrated systems and their ability to meet mission requirements as stipulated by the Department of Defense.
- While not being confirmed, it is strongly suggested that the Thanatos is being built to serve with the U.S. Air Force.
- Kratos is also developing other combat drones for the U.S. Armed Forces, particularly the XQ-58 Valkyrie stealth UCAV, which could serve with the Air Force and Marine Corps in the next few years.
(Natural News)—Kratos Defense and Security has confirmed the successful first flight of its stealthy unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), the Thanatos.
The exact date of the flight was not disclosed due to the sensitive nature of the project. The flight was conducted to validate the aircraft’s basic aerodynamic design, marking a significant milestone in the development of the highly classified stealth drone program.
Steve Fendley, president of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division, stated that the drone’s flight abilities have been effectively proven. The company is now shifting its focus to testing Thanatos’ integrated systems to ensure it meets mission requirements.
“We’re not trying to figure out ‘Does the airplane fly?’ We’re now trying to figure out ‘Does the integrated system tick the mission box?'” Fendley said. (Related: Mysterious drones swarmed a U.S. military airbase for 17 days; officials say they don’t know who operated them.)
The Thanatos UCAV was first unveiled in November 2023 through a 3D artist’s rendering included in Kratos’ financial report. The design features a single-engine, tailless configuration with a diamond-shaped wing, blended air inlets and a recessed engine exhaust, all of which contribute to its low-observability characteristics. The aircraft’s design also lacks traditional vertical and horizontal stabilizers, reflecting Kratos’ emphasis on stealth technology.
Kratos likely to sell Thanatos to the Air Force
While the identity of the customer for the Thanatos remains undisclosed, the aircraft’s design includes both the markings for Kratos and the United States Air Force, strongly suggesting that the drone’s first operator will be the Air Force.
The company has expressed strong interest in the upcoming Increment 2 of the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, which aims to integrate unmanned assets with Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platforms.
The CCA program, also referred to as the “Loyal Wingman” concept, envisions unmanned aircraft operating alongside crewed fighters to enhance mission effectiveness. Fendley highlighted the potential of CCAs to augment fifth-generation fighter aircraft and offboard systems from fourth-generation aircraft, particularly in electronic warfare to improve survivability.
Kratos has prior experience developing UCAVs under the CCA program, specifically with its experimental XQ-58 Valkyrie stealth UCAV, which is currently in testing with the Air Force and the Marine Corps.
The Valkyrie, which is runway-independent and capable of launching via rockets or a trolley, has demonstrated its operational relevance during exercises like Emerald Flag in October 2024. During this mission, the Valkyrie successfully passed targeting data to Marine Corps F-35Bs, marking a significant step in closing the kill chain.
Fendley noted that the Department of Defense has increasingly prioritized runway independence, a feature that Kratos has incorporated into its UCAV designs. While it is unclear whether the Thanatos will share this capability, the company is exploring conventional takeoff and landing systems with retractable gear.
In terms of manufacturing, Kratos has designed its UCAVs with scalability in mind. A study on the feasibility of a 1,000-unit production run for the Valkyrie revealed that propulsion systems would be the primary constraint. Kratos is collaborating with GE Aerospace to develop scalable engines for future systems, including CCAs.
Watch this Dec. 17 episode of “Brighteon Broadcast News” as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, discusses the possible use of drones with radar invisibility technology in the United States.
This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
- Mach 7 drone illustrates China’s latest leap in hypersonic technology.
- Ukraine claims to be developing “unstoppable” AI-controlled drones that can attack targets on the battlefield.
- Iran has developed a new, high-tech combat drone for Russia to use in Ukraine.
- Fully autonomous KILLER DRONES now closer to reality as rapid development of AI continues.
- Advanced swarming drones operated by U.K. defense ministry ready for deployment within months.
Sources include:
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
