China’ Long March 10B Rocket Closes Gap on Space Launch Capabilities

July 21, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - On July 10, 2026 China successfully launched a payload to orbit and recovered the first stage booster of its Long March 10B rocket system making China only the second nation after the US to do so. 

The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) through its commercial subsidiary - China Rocket Company - has developed the Long March 10B - featuring a reusable first stage recovered by landing under its own power on a recovery ship using a cable net system. 

In function, it is similar to the US-based SpaceX’s Falcon 9 which can return to landing pads on shore or land on recovery ships at sea using deployable legs. By eliminating the legs from the first stage booster and using the cable net system, the Long March 10B saves weight that can be used instead for additional fuel. 

Both the Long March 10B and the Falcon 9 use kerosene and LOX (liquid oxygen) fueled engines - though each system uses different types of engines. The Long March 10B has 7 engines, while Falcon 9 has 9. 

The Long March 10B can carry 16 metric tons into orbit in reusable configuration while the Falcon 9 can carry 17.5 metric tons into orbit - fairly comparable. 

China seeks to examine, refurbish and relaunch this recovered booster a second time by the end of 2026. 

This was only the second test of the Long March 10B - the first occurred in February this year featuring a planned soft-landing at sea next to the recovery ship after propelling China’s new manned spacecraft - the Mengzhou - to maximum dynamic pressure (the highest speed and pressures within the Earth’s atmosphere) before conducting a launch abort test which was also successful.

To have successfully designed, tested, and successfully recovered a first stage booster with capabilities on par with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in just 2 attempts is a monumental achievement considering the multiple failures that took place when developing the Falcon 9 itself.  

Why China’s Success is Important

In 2020 and 2021 China was outpacing the US in space launches. By 2022 the US had surpassed China, and every year since the US has surpassed China solely because of SpaceX’s ability to launch, recover, and reuse its rocket fleet - where China - until now - has been forced to fully expend every rocket it launches.

Over the years SpaceX has launched and recovered its Falcon 9 rockets over 600 times. 

In 2025 - last year - the US launched a total of 181 rockets - China 92-93 - Russia 17 - meaning the US launched more rockets than both China and Russia combined. 

The US has exploited this advantage in launch cadence by building the Starlink (approximately 10,000 active satellites) and now the Starshield (approximately 200 active satellites) low earth orbit satellite constellations used to wage war around the globe - from Russia to Iran and eventually against China itself. 

Russia and China have been deploying their own versions of these low earth orbit satellite constellations for low latency communication for both civilian and military applications - but because of their lower launch cadence - they have many times fewer satellites of this kind in orbit - thus coverage and resolution lags behind their US counterparts.

The Ukraine War is a US war on Russia

July 16, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - As the Western media continues shaping narratives depicting a growing divide between the US and Europe regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine - a narrative involving an increasingly disinterested and disengaging US with an increasingly desperate and confrontational Europe - it is important to remember precisely how this war was started and why, as well as the material reality shaping its continuation. 

By doing so, it is revealed the only "division" taking place between the US and Europe is a “division of labor,” a phrase literally spoken  by the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels in February 2025 delegating the continuation of what is a US proxy war on Russia to Europe while the US redirects resources toward Asia. 

Precisely because the war in Ukraine is a US proxy war on Russia, and the fact that Ukraine’s trained military manpower and territory continue to contract under the pressure of Russia’s strategy of attrition, to continue the war will require introducing additional pools of trained military manpower - and to extend Russia further - to do so along a wider front. 

The military build-up of the Baltic states appears to be at a minimum an attempt to fix Russian forces along their border with Russia. The worst case scenario for Moscow would be for the US to repeat with its Baltic state proxies what it has already done in 2008 with its Georgian proxies and what it has done from 2011 onward with its Ukrainian proxies - attack Russia and its allies militarily, precipitating wider war along a wider front.  

Western European nations, including the so-called “coalition of the willing,” led by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have implemented Secretary Hegseth’s directives from February 2025 enthusiastically - directives including to “double down” on arming Ukraine, “spending more on defense,” and convincing the European public of the “threat facing Europe” (meaning Russia). 

With this in mind, it is clear there is not only no split of any kind between the US and its European proxies, Washington’s European proxies have demonstrated unflinching servile obedience even at the cost of placing themselves on the precipice of war with neighboring nuclear-armed Russia themselves.  

The Larger, Long-Engineered War on Russia

Surrounding Russia with a number of geopolitical and economic crises to “extend Russia” with the hope of eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse, is the subject of numerous US policy papers spanning the entirety of the post-Cold War period. 

There is even a paper published by the RAND Corporation literally titled, “Extending Russia,” listing a number of measures the US has since implemented verbatim before and since its publication in 2019. 

The paper lays out the economic and geopolitical measures the US has since used to both prepare the grounds for this current proxy war, and to both perpetuate and expand it over time. These measures include targeting Russia’s energy exports including specifically targeting pipeline expansion (Nord Stream, since destroyed by the US), the imposition of sanctions on Russia, the destabilization, destruction and/or the political capture of Russia’s allies both along its borders and beyond (including Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and Armenia, as well as Syria), and the arming of Ukraine itself following its political capture by Washington in 2014. 

This latter measure, the RAND paper admits, would inevitably invite in wider conflict with Russia - and it did. The paper also admitted the measure would likely end in “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” and that, “it might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.”

The purpose of US policy is not to necessarily “defeat” Russia in Ukraine, or in Georgia, or Armenia, Syria, or in any other particular region - but to create a multitude of crises mounting ever increasing pressure on Russia to create cracks and collapse wherever opportunities allow, and eventually precipitate overall collapse following pressure along a large and growing collection of fronts. 

And this is precisely what the US is doing. 

It doesn’t matter that Ukraine can’t win the current US proxy war against Russia - or that Europe collectively might not be able to either. US objectives are to create a growing conflict that eventually outpaces Russia’s ability to respond and defend itself against. 

Similar strategies have been used against other targets of US “regime change” including Libya, Syria, and Iraq spanning decades before finally and fully succeeding. 

Thus, the measure of Russia’s success is not simply on the battlefield in Ukraine, but its success or failure in defending itself against this much wider campaign of US-driven encroachment - a campaign that has transcended all US presidential administrations since the end of the Cold War without exception and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. 

The US War on Iran Continues

July 3, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US continues to playact diplomacy with Iran regarding the latest “memorandum of  understanding” (MOU) signed, then immediately violated by the US, re-negotiated, and supposedly agreed upon again - using the pause in all-out war to carefully shape the battlefield ahead of what will inevitably be another round of large-scale aggression. 

In the interim, the US continues striking at Iran and its allies across the region at will. 

This process takes place within the context of US policy papers for years admitting diplomacy in and of itself would be used against Iran to create a pretext for war rather than be used as a means of preventing it. 

The US has implemented precisely this policy through multiple instances of the US deliberately betraying diplomatic processes including the violation of the so-called “Nuclear Deal” (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) and two back-to-back US decapitation strikes carried out in the middle of US-Iranian “negotiations” between 2025 and 2026. 

These most recent chapters of US duplicity follow decades of war aimed at West Asia, imposing US domination over the region and slowly encircling and isolating Iran - both through interference, terrorism, and military aggression aimed at Iran itself, as well as at Iran’s network of allies.

US policy papers have long noted Iran’s regional network of allies as key to its national security policy, even specifically describing it in terms of defensive and retaliatory capabilities. 

One such paper, the RAND Corporation’s 2009 “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East ,” under a section titled, “Iran Pursues a Multifaceted Regional Strategy Marked by Strengths and Limitations,” explains: 

“Iran fields a weak conventional force. Iranian leaders have long trumpeted their shift to an asymmetric strategy of homeland defense that would exact intolerable costs from an invader. Much of this rests on notions of “mosaic defense,” partisan warfare, and popular mobilization of Basiji auxiliaries.”

And that:

“Iran has limited leverage over so-called proxy groups. To compen-sate for its conventional inferiority, Iran has long provided financial and military support to a variety of non-state Islamist groups. According to Revolutionary Guard doctrine, this “peripheral strategy” is intended to give strategic depth to Iran’s homeland defense, taking the fight deep into the enemy’s camp. In the cases of Hamas and Hezbollah, this strategy also buys Iran legitimacy among Arab publics who are frus-trated with their regimes’ seemingly status quo approach. In effect, Tehran is being “more Arab than the Arabs” on issues such as Palestine. 

In supporting major Shi’ite militant groups in Iraq and Lebanon, Tehran may expect a degree of reciprocity. This is particularly the case in the event of a U.S. strike, in which Iran might expect these groups to act unflinchingly as retaliatory agents.”

Thus, US policymakers are fully aware Iranian support for organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, or the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq are defensive in nature rather than an irrational, aggressive, expansionist policy of coercion or even “terrorism” as US political theater depicts it as amid the process of selling US wars of aggression against Iran to the American and wider global public. 

This also means that US policymakers are keenly aware that in order to isolate and undermine Iran itself, it needs to undermine or completely eliminate this strategic depth Iran has created across the region first. 

And this is precisely what has driven US policy in the region regarding Iran for at least the past 26 years including US war, occupation, and proxy war in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq as well as Syria. 

US Prepares Terrorist Army to Expand its Dirty War on China

June 23, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US media has invested in recent years in rehabilitating Uyghur Chinese extremists now based in Syria, depicting them as “freedom fighters” whose ultimate goal is to “liberate” (carve off) territory in western China, and are preparing to fight China across Eurasia - adding to an already ongoing dirty war the US has been waging against China over the 20th and 21st centuries.

  

A Familiar Pattern 

From the Cold War to present day, the United States has actively created and used the world’s worst terrorist organizations to advance US geopolitical objectives worldwide. This includes the creation and use of Al Qaeda (through local chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood) in the 1970s and 1980s in Syria and their export to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union until their withdrawal in 1989. 

It also includes the use of these same terrorists to divide and disrupt unified resistance to invading US forces in Iraq from 2003 onward, and the eventual region-wide US reordering of the Arab World spanning Libya and Egypt in North Africa to Yemen and Syria in the MIddle East beginning under the likewise US-engineered “Arab Spring” in 2011. 

From North Africa to Central Asia, the US has admittedly utilized terrorist organizations listed by the US State Department itself as such, to both target nations the US military cannot attack directly and to serve as a pretext for US invasions and occupations in nations the US seeks to attack more directly. 

Other episodes in which this US strategy has been employed include against both Russia in its southern Caucasus region and even as far as China in East Asia. 

While both Russia and China appear to have successfully neutralized this malicious method of proxy warfare utilized by Washington within their respective borders, the US continues not only arming and building up terrorist forces for future conflicts, but is also shaping public perception to depict such use of US-sponsored terrorism as somehow supporting “freedom fighters” against “authoritarian” governments. 

US Media Reintroducing Uyghur Terrorists as “Freedom Fighters” 

A troubling sign that the US continues seeking to use extremists specifically tailored for attacking China and its investments and projects across Eurasia, is a May 2026 National Public Radio (NPR) article titled, “The foreign fighters who helped topple Assad — and why China worries about them.” 

The article - only the latest of many spanning recent years - portrays the largest segment of foreign fighters involved in the US-backed overthrow of Syria in 2024 - Uyghur extremists from China’s western region of Xinjiang - as simply fleeing persecution in China and incidentally ending up aligned with and fighting alongside Al Qaeda. 

The article mentions the previously US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization (until June 2025) Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Uyghur fighters were recruited into as an Al Qaeda affiliate which ultimately overran Syrian forces in 2024, toppling the Syrian government.

HTS’ figurehead Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (now referred to as Ahmed al-Sharaa) has even been designated as Syria’s defacto president by the US and its proxies and has even been invited to the White House by current US President Donald Trump despite previously having a 10 million USD reward on his head by the US government itself.

The moral flexibility of the US regarding Al Qaeda based on whether the US is trying to justify direct military intervention in Syria before the government’s collapse or cement a terrorist-led proxy regime afterwards is the central hallmark of the decades-spanning use by Washington of terrorist organizations to target, undermine, topple, then politically capture targeted nations. 

US Cements Political Capture of Armenia as it Advances “Extending Russia” Strategy

June 15, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The United States continues pursuing its decades-spanning policy of maintaining global primacy by encircling and containing rivals as described in the 1992 New York Times article, “U.S. Strategy Plan Call for Insuring No Rivals Develop.”

As part of this long-standing strategy the US has developed specific plans to encircle and contain key nations including China, Iran, and of course Russia. These plans often overlap - as degrading the power and influence of one targeted nation reduces the combined power and influence of all three as well as the multipolar world order they seek to construct. 

For Russia specifically, the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground” lays out policy options the US has clearly pursued for years leading up to its publication and ever since. 

These options targeting Russia include those of an economic dimension such as, “hinder petroleum exports,” “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions,” “impose sanctions,” as well as geopolitical measures like “provide lethal aid to Ukraine,” “increase support to the Syrian rebels,” “promote regime change in Belarus,” “exploit tensions in the south Caucasus,” “reduce Russian influence in Central Asia,” and “challenge Russian presence in Moldova.” 

Virtually all of these options have been implemented in one way or another - from the US sending lethal aid to Ukraine the same year this paper was published under the first Trump administration, to the continued arming of terrorists in Syria by the US culminating in the collapse of the Syrian government in 2024, to the physical destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines as well as constantly expanding US-led sanctions and maritime interdiction operations targeting Russian energy exports. 

Exploit Tensions in the South Caucasus: Politically Capturing Armenia 

In light of the recent elections in Armenia (in the south Caucasus region) and the President of the European Commission Ursula Van Der Leyan congratulating Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan by exclaiming, “the spirit of the Velvet Revolution you led in 2018 is alive and well,” it appears that once again the US objective of “extending Russia” has been further advanced. 

While many have been tempted to assign Armenia’s pivot away from its traditional Russian partnership to the European Union and NATO to European influence - the US government itself engineered the protests in 2018 Van Der Leyan referenced, with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) itself admitting in its 2018 annual report that: 

NED’s many grantees in Armenia were in the forefront of the “Velvet Revolution” last spring that swept from office a corrupt and autocratic president who wanted to manipulate the constitution to retain power. In subsequent elections held in December, the party alliance of the new Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won 70 percent of the vote, setting the stage for building accountable and effective government ministries, reforming the judicial system, and strengthening the media as a critical watchdog over government performance.

By “corrupt and autocratic” the NED means a government that does not answer to Washington at the expense of its own national interests, and by “accountable and effective ministries,” the NED means accountable to and effective at serving Washington - even at the cost of Armenia’s own interests. 

Organizations involved in the US-engineered “Velvet Revolution” in Armenia and the subsequent cementing of US political capture over the nation include the “Union of Informed Citizens” whose 2021 annual report admitted extensive US government backing and direction continued well after the 2018 protests - as well as Boon TV which is admittedly funded by the NED’s European counterpart, the unimaginatively named “European Endowment for Democracy.”   

Just like with other nations the US has politically captured, Armenia’s “color revolution” and “regime change” were just the beginning. With a client regime in place, the floodgates of foreign interference by the US are opened. 

The NED reported the following year in its 2019 annual report that US government interference shifted from producing desired outcomes during elections to consolidating political control in their aftermath, noting, “since the 2018 revolution in Armenia, NED grantees have shifted their focus from holding a corrupt regime accountable to supporting governance reform.” 

Again - language like “corrupt regime” and “reform” translate into a government unwilling to subordinate itself to US interests and consolidating US control. 

The same 2019 NED annual report notes how “several NED grantees have entered government,” demonstrating how US-engineered protests not only seek to overturn a targeted government, but replace it with a US-prepared and selected client regime. 

NED subsidiaries like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) announced in their own 2020 report regarding Armenia the launching of two programs, “the Intern Program of the National Assembly of Armenia and the Katarine Women’s Political Leadership Program.”

The same report mentioned, “a graduation ceremony for the Institute’s Young Political Leadership Strategy Program.”