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Every year, millions of people travel to remote, protected "dark-sky parks" in search of experiences that depend on true darkness — photographing the Milky Way's heart arcing overhead, observing nocturnal wildlife in its natural rhythm, or simply standing beneath an ink-black sea of stars unblurred by artificial light.

Scientists have long warned that rising levels of artificial light — increasingly amplified by satellite megaconstellations orbiting our planet — are steadily eroding these nightscapes , disrupting ecosystems, affecting human health and dimming views of stars and distant celestial objects. Darkness itself carries no price tag, however, meaning its loss has largely been absent from the economic calculations that guide development and outdoor lighting decisions. Now, new research attempts to translate that loss visible in monetary terms.

A study combining satellite data with on-the-ground surveys of visitors at several "gold-tier" dark-sky sites found that people were less likely to choose parks with greater artificial skyglow or poorer night-sky conditions, and showed a clear willingness to pay more for darker skies.

On average, visitors would pay about $18 more per trip for marginally darker skies, and roughly $45 more per night for a one-step improvement on the Bortle Dark Sky Scale, a widely used measure of night-sky quality.

"This may seem really small at the per-visitor and per-trip unit estimate," said Jordan Smith , the study's lead author and director of the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism at Utah State University, "but when we scale through park-wide visitation, it becomes very, very significant."

Over a four-month period, the researchers estimated that light pollution reduced the recreational value of flagship dark-sky destinations in the U.S. by between $25 million and nearly $66 million.

The figures, presented at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California, do not represent lost park revenue, but what economists call "welfare losses" — the decline in visitor satisfaction when environmental quality deteriorates. The concept is akin to paying for a concert expecting excellent sound and instead finding the speakers distorted; the performance still occurs, but it feels worth less than anticipated.

By assigning a dollar value to changes in night-sky quality, the researchers argue, policymakers gain a way to weigh the hidden costs of artificial lighting against the benefits of development and outdoor illumination.

"It's a foundational building block that allows that cost-benefit analysis to subsequently occur," Smith said.

Speaking at a press briefing during the conference, Smith said a central challenge is the gap between measuring light pollution and measuring what it costs in lived experience. Satellites and ground instruments can track where artificial light is spreading and how quickly it is increasing , he said, "but they can't tell us much about what that value is — what is actually lost due to anthropogenic light at night?"

This image of Great Basin National Park, one of the darkest places in the U.S., was taken in 2025 by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the Suomi NPP satellite. VIIRS can detect signals such as auroras, city lights and reflected moonlight. You can see the contrast between the dark sky zone and major light sources like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. (Image credit: NASA) To bridge that gap, Smith and his colleagues focused on the Colorado Plateau, a rugged region spanning Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico that contains one of the world's highest concentrations of "gold-tier" dark-sky sites, a designation that signifies the darkest and clearest night skies on Earth .

Over 82 nights in April, May, September and October, researchers interviewed visitors after dusk at campgrounds, scenic overlooks and parking areas. In total, they surveyed 634 travelers across nine destinations, including Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands and Natural Bridges National Monument, focusing on visitors whose trips depended specifically on high-quality night skies, the study notes.

By pairing survey responses with satellite measurements of nighttime brightness and local atmospheric conditions — including humidity, moonlight and airborne particles, all of which affect sky visibility — the team found a consistent preference for darker skies and a willingness to pay more for them.

The highest projected welfare losses, the researchers found, were heavily concentrated at premier destinations, led by the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks. Smaller or more remote parks showed comparatively modest total losses, a result driven by fewer visitors rather than an absence of dark-sky value, the study notes.

The researchers suggest that extending this kind of monitoring across a full year and over multiple years could help treat the night sky not only as a scientific and cultural asset, but as a measurable economic asset whose value changes with lighting policy, development and conservation.

As cities expand and artificial light continues to spread, studies like this are reframing a question once largely confined to science as an economic one: what is a star-filled sky worth?

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Video games, like any other popular form of art, can be excellent advertisements for tourism. I always get the bug to browse flights after playing a new Assassin's Creed , for instance, and I don't think that's a coincidence. On the back of Ghost of Yotei , the eponymous Yotei area of Hokkaido is pushing for more visitors, apparently signing a deal to sell associated merchandise to curious travelers.

According to Japanese outlet Nikkei, Niseko, a resort town for skiing in the area, has entered into an agreement with Sony through a third-party firm to produce a line of Ghost of Yotei items visitors can buy. The first iteration of this agreement is a set of wooden knick-knacks from Kumagera Seisakusho, a producer of pendants, fridge magnets and other products that use locally sourced timber.

The aforementioned items and many more, including pin badges, come emblazoned with symbols associated with the historic open-world game. From the promo images, it seems there are quite a few available, which will no doubt encourage hardcore fans to do some collecting.

A representative of Niseko told Nikkei that they hope the game inspires more people to visit after seeing the area through various in-game seasons. This is yet another layer to what's proving to be a happy relationship between developer Sucker Punch and Japan's tourism industry.

Ghost of Yotei's predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima , likewise caused a spike in tourists for its island setting, to the point that the local economy enjoyed a meaningful jump thanks to more guided tours and merch attached to the game. Leads from Sucker Punch even became ambassadors.

Where the Ghost series goes next might be a heated choice, as other places have surely started noticing the knock-on effect. All I know is that whenever I go to Japan, there will be two stops on my list, and two particular games made sure I won't be missing them.

When it comes to RPG design, Fallout: New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer says Ghost of Tsushima and Yotei have "some of the best armor I've ever seen"

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BRUSSELS — The European Union and China agreed on Monday to establish a new high-level consultation mechanism to manage growing commercial tensions and address the bloc’s widening trade deficit with Beijing.

Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said after meeting Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Brussels that the EU and China are launching a Trade and Investment Consultation Mechanism to tackle the economic imbalances that Brussels says are battering European industry .

Šefčovič added he would visit China in October, when he hoped to present the “first tangible results.”

The two sides issued a joint statement on the topic, the first of its kind since 2019, although Šefčovič briefed reporters alone after the bilateral. The talks were due to continue Monday evening before Wang travels to Britain on Tuesday .

The platform will be divided into four main categories: trade and investment balancing, export controls, intellectual property rights, and World Trade Organization reform.

A working group dedicated to the first topic will be launched immediately and will set up a joint mechanism to monitor trade flows. The idea, the commissioner said, is to share a set of data that both sides can agree on. Once that is in place, should there be any destabilizing spikes in imports the two sides could meet at the political level to discuss possible action.

EU leaders had signaled at a summit earlier this month that they expected “expedient action,” Šefčovič said. “What would be very important for us [is] to see the direction of travel, how we want to address the issue of the trade deficit,” he added, referring to the EU’s €1 billion-a-day trade shortfall with China that he has previously called unsustainable.

A roadmap with expected deliverables is due in the coming days, Šefčovič said, while a first assessment of whether progress is being made is expected in September.

He also welcomed Wang’s assurance that China’s existing export controls on rare earths and permanent magnets won’t disrupt EU supply chains. China, which dominates the global supply of rare earth elements, briefly throttled exports last fall in a tariff dispute with the United States.

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The United States' 250th birthday is right around the corner and what better way to celebrate than by looking for a star whose light began its journey to Earth around the time the Declaration of Independence was signed?

Starlight travels through the near-perfect vacuum of space at a staggering 186,282 miles (299,791 kilometers) per second— or the speed of light . Even at this pace, it can take hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years for starlight to reach its destination, rendering each point of light in the night sky a twinkling time capsule, which represents a snapshot in the life of a star encoded at the moment the radiation left its source.

The blue-white double star system Alpha Virginis — known colloquially as Spica — happens to shine roughly 250 light-years from Earth. In other words, the light we see today left the star's surface 250 years ago, around the time that America's founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

How to find Spica in the night sky

Finding Spica is easy. First, locate the Big Dipper , shining above the northwestern horizon in the hours following sunset in June for viewers in the U.S., with the three stars representing its "handle" pointing up and away from the horizon.

Next, draw an imaginary line following the arc of the handle out into space, until you find the red light of Arcturus, the 4th brightest star in the night sky . Continue the arc beyond Arcturus and the next dazzling bright blue-white star that you spot will be Spica, which twinkles above the southwestern horizon at sunset in early summer.

How to find Spica in the summer sky. (Image credit: Created by Anthony Wood in Canva.) The single point of light that we call Spica is actually a pair of massive stars that orbit each other once every four days, while shining with the combined light of over 12,000 suns.

Another star at a similar distance from Earth is Bellatrix, which shines at the left shoulder of the celestial hunter depicted in the constellation Orion. This variable star is also located 250 light-years from Earth, but is sadly lost from view in the glare of the sun during the summer months.

Want to get a closer look at the night sky? Then be sure to read our roundup of the best telescopes and binoculars for exploring the post sunset realm , along with our beginner's guide to amateur astronomy .

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

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Although they must have once existed, we haven’t yet spotted the first stars .

The very first stars to form in the Universe were different than the stars today: metal-free, extremely massive, and nearly all destined for a supernova surrounded by a cocoon of gas. There was a time, prior to the formation of stars where only clumps of matter, unable to cool and collapse, remained in large, diffuse clouds. It is possible that clouds that grow slowly enough may even persist until very late cosmic times.

Credit : NAOJ

Even at the observational frontiers, stellar populations aren’t pristine .

An illustration of the galaxy CR7, which was originally hoped would house multiple populations of stars of various ages (as illustrated). While we have yet to find an object where the brightest component was pristine, with no heavy elements, we fully expect them to exist, often alongside a later generation of stars that formed earlier. The merging of multiple star clusters is likely how the first galaxies and protogalaxies formed and took shape.

Credit : ESO/M. Kornmesser

They all contain heavy elements, as well as a wide mix of stars.

This plot shows galaxies from the first ~1.5 billion years of cosmic history, color-coded by redshift and plotted by their metallicity (x-axis) as a function of the dust-to-stellar mass ratios (y-axis) found within them. The majority of low-metallicity galaxies are also dust-poor and are known as GELDAs, dominating the very early Universe, while later-time, more dust-rich galaxies are much more enriched in heavy elements. No pristine galaxies or stellar populations have yet been found, as of mid-2026.

Credit : D. Burgarella et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics accepted/arXiv:2504.13118v2, 2025

There could be pristine, Population III stars among them, but that remains unproven .

This graph shows the combination of the Hubble, JWST NIRCam, and JWST NIRSpec data for galaxy RXJ2129-z8HeII. There is an unusually strong, blue tilt to the stellar spectrum of this object, but the evidence for any pristine material amidst the highly enriched gas and stars, with substantial fractions of heavy elements, that are present is too flimsy to make a compelling case for the presence of any pristine, Population III (a.k.a., the “first”) stars. No such population, as of mid-2026, has yet been found.

Credit : X. Wang et al., Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2024

However, evidence of their one-time presence might persist in “relic” galaxies .

This chain of large galaxies is found near the center of the Perseus Cluster of galaxies, with several of these galaxies being typical of the large, bright, evolved galaxies found at the centers of most massive galaxy clusters. For many of these galaxies, the stars found inside of them are primarily older and redder, with only small populations of bluer stars found inside.

Credit : NASA, ESA, and M. Beasley (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias)

Some galaxies undergo intense star-formation briefly, and then never form stars again .

Galaxy clusters, like Abell S740, are the largest bound structures in the Universe. When spirals merge, for example, a large number of new stars form, but either post-merger or by speeding through the intra-cluster medium, gas can be stripped away, leading to the end of star formation in that galaxy and, eventually, a red-and-dead final structure. It is possible that red-and-dead galaxies can form much earlier in the Universe’s history than current observations indicate, with JWST offering hints that this is the case.

Credit : NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA); J. Blakeslee

Because they expel or otherwise lose their gas , only their previously-formed stars persist.

Galaxies undergoing massive bursts of star formation expel large quantities of matter at great speeds. They also glow red, covering the whole galaxy, thanks to hydrogen emissions. This particular galaxy, M82, the Cigar Galaxy, is gravitationally interacting with its neighbor, M81, causing this burst of activity. Although the winds and ejecta are copious, this episode is not expected to completely “kill” this particular galaxy, as some gas will still persist after this episode completes.

Credits : NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI) and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)

Since brighter, bluer, higher-mass stars have the shortest lifetimes, they all die out.

When stars first form, the color-magnitude diagram (with brightness on the y-axis and color on the x-axis) looks like a curved line, from lower-right to upper-left. As the stars age, the brightest, bluest, most massive ones evolve off of this curve first. Identifying the point at which this “turn-off” occurs enables astronomers to determine the ages of the stellar populations within them, with only the youngest stellar populations containing the most massive stars. Many locations in the Universe have been identified where stars have not formed for 10 billion years or more: mostly globular clusters, but occasionally entire galaxies.

Credit : Ivan Ramirez/Wikimedia Commons

What remains are only the fainter, redder, lower-mass stars.

This is a blink comparison that plots the location of the red stars and blue stars that dominate the globular clusters in galaxies NGC 1277 and NGC 1278. It shows that NGC 1277 is dominated by ancient red globular clusters, but NGC 1278 contains many blue-colored ones. This is evidence that galaxy NGC 1277 stopped making new stars many billions of years ago, compared to NGC 1278, which has more young blue star clusters. The globular clusters located closer to the centers of these galaxies have preferentially higher metal contents, while the most distant ones have lower metal contents.

Credit : NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)

This creates “ red-and-dead ” galaxies, with the nearest major one being NGC 1277 .

The ‘red-and-dead’ galaxy NGC 1277 is found inside the Perseus Cluster. While the other galaxies contain a mix of red-and-blue stars, this galaxy hasn’t formed new stars in approximately 10 billion years. Foreground, closer objects, like stars, as well as more distant galaxies, are all ubiquitous throughout this image.

Credit : NASA, ESA, M. Beasley (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias), and P. Kehusmaa

Located within the Perseus Cluster, this cosmic time capsule resides 240 million light-years away.

This nearby galaxy, NGC 1277, although it may appear similar to other typical galaxies found in the Universe, is remarkable for being composed primarily of older stars. Both its intrinsic stellar population and its globular clusters are all very red in color, indicating that it hasn’t formed new stars in ~10 billion years. When all of the gas within a galaxy is expelled and no new gas enters, that galaxy becomes permanently “red-and-dead,” as no new populations of stars can form within it.

Credit : NASA, ESA, and M. Beasley (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias)

Astronomers recently imaged it with the EMIR instrument at the Gran Telescopio de Canarias .

Whereas most massive, late-type galaxies in the Universe exhibit a relatively standard abundance of silicon, red-and-dead galaxy NGC 1277, found just 240 million light-years away, has the strongest silicon signature ever observed in any galaxy. Because it has not formed stars in over 10 billion years, astronomers strongly suspect its silicon abundance is a signature left over from the first generation of stars.

Credit : Gabriel Pérez Díaz (IAC)

Inside, they discovered a record-setting amount of silicon .

The high silicon abundance in NGC 1277, relative to the other elements and relative to other late-type galaxies, suggests enrichment from early populations of stars. According to Anna Ferré-Mateu: “NGC 1277 is unique because it formed most of its stars at a very early stage in the history of the Universe and then evolved almost passively. While other normal galaxies have erased their original chemical signatures by mixing with others, NGC 1277 has managed to preserve that excess of silicon intact, acting as the fossil record of the infancy of the Universe.”

Credit : E. Eftekhari et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics accepted/arXiv:2606.17153, 2026

Theoretically, the first stars produced enormous amounts of silicon.

The anatomy of a very massive star throughout its life, culminating in a Type II (core-collapse) supernova when the core runs out of nuclear fuel. The final stage of fusion is typically silicon-burning, producing iron and iron-like elements in the core for only a brief while before a supernova ensues. The most massive stars achieve a core-collapse supernova the fastest, typically resulting in the creation of black holes, while the less massive ones take longer, and create only neutron stars. The first stars, when they die in cataclysms, may produce a greater relative abundance of silicon than is generally found.

Credit : Nicolle Rager Fuller/NSF

The relative silicon abundance only decreases after future stellar generations live-and-die.

The relative abundances of elements in the Solar System has been measured overall, with hydrogen and helium being the most abundant elements, followed by oxygen, carbon, and numerous other elements. However, the compositions of the densest bodies, like the terrestrial planets, are skewed to be a vastly different subset of these elements. Overall, some ~90% of the atoms in the Universe, by number (but only ~70-72%, by mass), are still hydrogen, even after 13+ billion years of star-formation. Silicon remains an abundant element today, but was likely more abundant, relative to the other elements, after only one generation of stars had formed.

Credit : 28bytes/English Wikipedia

Lacking those later generations, NGC 1277 points to early, massive-star chemical enrichment .

Whereas most galaxies don’t just have an initial population of stars, but form stars throughout their history, leading to a mix of stellar populations and an averaged-out abundance of various elements, NGC 1277 may have formed just a few major bursts of stars early on, undergoing core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae afterward, to create its relic stellar population and enhanced silicon abundance today. It could provide a unique window into evidence for the first stars as a result.

Credit : E. Eftekhari et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics accepted/arXiv:2606.17153, 2026

Remnants from the first stars may provide the best explanation.

These six “little red dot” galaxies are examples of objects that, if their brightness was caused by the stars within them alone, could not have grown to such high masses in such short amounts of cosmic time under our currently prevailing cosmological picture. It’s possible that our cosmology is wrong, but it’s also possible, and perhaps more likely, that our naive assumption about the light from these objects being entirely due to stars is wrong. Learning about their silicon abundances could help determine the role that star-formation plays, and has played, within these objects.

Credit : NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Dale Kocevski (Colby College)

Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words.

This article Could nearby relic galaxy NGC 1277 lead to the first stars? is featured on Big Think .

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The Fitbit Air is getting its first software update

It should fix problems with automatic workout detection

An old Fitbit app workaround is going away

The first software update for the Fitbit Air is rolling out now, and the hope is that it's going to fix one particular bugbear for users — but there's also bad news for those who are still using the older Fitbit app rather than the Google Health replacement.

First up, the update is rolling out now, as reported by 9to5Google , though you might not see it right away: look for a notification inside the Google Health app that an update is ready. As per Google, it contains "bug fixes and general improvements".

There's a bit more detail in a post on the Google Health support forum from last month, suggesting that there are fixes to exercise tracking, split runs, exercise exports, multiple device support, and how the device deals with lost connectivity when tracking.

As noted by Android Authority , one of the most commonly reported problems on the Fitbit Air has been the inaccurate labeling of workouts that are detected automatically — tagging runs as general workouts, for example — and this issue now seems to have been resolved.

No more Fitbit app workarounds

Google Ending Support for Fitbit App July 15, 2026 from r/fitbit

While a software update is positive news for Fitbit Air owners, those who have been clinging on to the old Fitbit app on their phones won't be pleased that Google has now closed off a workaround for avoiding the upgrade to Google Health.

As explained by Gadgets & Wearables , some users have been sideloading older versions of the Fitbit app: these older versions don't get automatically replaced by Google Health, so it's a way of sticking with the old app interface and layout.

From July 15 though, these older versions of the Fitbit app are going to stop working. Users will have no choice but to switch to Google Health, which moves around a lot of the key elements on screen and introduces a new AI coach.

Fitbit fans have been complaining loudly about the changes that the Google Health app brings with it, and many are unhappy about being forced to upgrade: "I think I'm going to have to find an alternative to the AI slop," writes one Redditor .

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One of Russia’s commercially flagged vessels in the Baltic has appeared armed with heavy machine guns, and it isn’t just any cargo hauler. The weapons fit is likely intended to provide close-in protection against naval drone attacks but is also evidence of increasingly bold measures taken by Moscow to ensure that military bases in its strategically important Kaliningrad exclave continue to be supported. After all, the ship in question, the Marshal Vasilevskiy , is a highly strategic one — Russia’s only floating storage and regasification vessel — that plays a key role in supporting Kaliningrad.

This comes at the same time that Russia ramps up efforts to protect its notorious ‘shadow fleet,’ used to circumvent Western sanctions on oil exports, despite efforts to interdict it.

Evidence of the armed tanker development was brought to light in an exclusive report from Holger Roonemaa , an investigative journalist working for Delfi Estonia , an Estonia-based news website.

Roonemaa secured the release of imagery from the Estonian Border Guard showing the Marshal Vasilevskiy operating in the Baltic Sea last month, with machine gun positions on either side of the deck above the bridge.

A close-up view of one of the heavy machine guns on the bridge of the Marshal Vasilevskiy . PPA/Delfi Estonia, with permission

The Marshal Vasilevskiy , a 945-foot liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker of 118,000 gross tonnage, was spotted by an Estonian Border Guard surveillance aircraft as it was sailing past Estonia’s western islands toward the Russian port of Bolshoi Bor in the Gulf of Finland.

The sandbagged gun positions were armed with 12.7mm Kord heavy machine guns, a belt-fed weapon that is used by infantry, as well as being mounted on vehicles and ships.

The Marshal Vasilevskiy is not a part of the shadow fleet, but it has been subject to sanctions. Moreover, this appears to be the first direct evidence of Russia installing weapons on a civilian ship in the Baltic region.

The vessel is owned by the Gazprom company and regularly supplies Kaliningrad with natural gas, with four such voyages identified since last August.

A rear view of the Marshal Vasilevskiy . PPA/Delfi Estonia, with permission

Almost certainly, the guns on the Marshal Vasilevskiy are intended to help defend against Ukrainian drone attacks.

The Kord fires at a rate of 600-650 rounds per minute and has an effective range of around 2,000 yards.

Earlier this month, Ukraine used aerial drones to attack the prestigious Russian Navy base at Kronstadt, near St. Petersburg, in what appears to have been the first strike of its kind against the Baltic Fleet .

KRONSTADT (St. Petersburg), June 3.

Birds of the @1usc_army , @usf_army hunted down and set ablaze the corvette Boikiy, a guided missile weapons carrier.

06:35, 03.06.26. Veleshchynskyi Dry Dock, Kronstadt (St. Petersburg) – the cradle of the russian Navy.

Tired after its… pic.twitter.com/2HjrlyVKdc

— 414 Magyar's Birds (@414magyarbirds) June 3, 2026

By targeting Kronstadt, Ukraine signaled the opening up of a new front in its drone war with Russia, namely against the Baltic Fleet while it is in port.

Previously, Ukraine’s naval campaign had focused overwhelmingly on the Russian Black Sea Fleet . Many successful attacks have been recorded against Black Sea Fleet vessels and facilities , forcing the general evacuation of Russian naval assets from occupied Crimea and to bases in Russia proper. Ukrainian attacks on Russian-linked shipping have also extended, to a more limited extent , into the Mediterranean.

These attacks have also involved a growing and increasingly advanced array of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs, or ‘drone boats’) as well as uncrewed underwater vessels (UUVs)

Ukraine’s proven ability to launch long-range aerial drone attacks , as seen in the video below, as well as to bring kamikaze drones closer to Russian targets , and strike them from short range, underscores the potential vulnerability of Russian tankers working the Baltic, too.

A video published online shows a Ukrainian FP-1 drone flying just a few meters above the water in the Gulf of Finland during the morning attack on Saint Petersburg. pic.twitter.com/ZTtGb71zdT

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) June 3, 2026

While Ukraine, as far as is known, has not launched any USV or UUV attacks in the Baltic, it would certainly be within its capabilities to do so.

At the same time, Russia has no doubt also considered the possibility of an Operation Spiderweb -type attack in the Baltic, in which short-range drones could be launched covertly, in mass, from locations much closer to their targets.

On June 1, the Security Service of Ukraine carried out a brilliant operation— on enemy territory, targeting only military objectives, specifically the equipment used to strike Ukraine. Russia suffered significant losses.

In total, 117 drones were used in the operation – with a… pic.twitter.com/PeD1lTx9Nw

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) June 2, 2025

In the same way that Operation Spiderweb used commercial trucks as covert launch platforms for one-way aerial attack drones, any suitable vessel could be used in the same way by Ukraine in the Baltic, whether to launch aerial drones, USVs, or UUVs.

In this context, the Marshal Vasilevskiy would be a particularly prized tanker. It is currently Russia’s only floating storage and regasification vessel, a ship that takes on board super-cooled LNG and then converts it into gas that is then fed into pipelines, in this case, in Kaliningrad.

As well as countering potential drone attacks, putting guns on the Marshal Vasilevskiy sends a signal to NATO forces not to interfere with it. Warning shots could be fired to send a message to boarding parties or helicopters. Russia’s willingness to use warning shots has been demonstrated in the English Channel earlier this month . With the Kord gun, the vessel could bring down a helicopter with ease, forcing a boarding force to kinetically attack the ship before attempting boarding.

Typically, the crew of a vessel such as the Marshal Vasilevskiy would not be trained to operate heavy machine guns. This raises the likelihood that the ship’s crew includes members of the Russian military or, more likely, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s principal security agency. It is not inconceivable that man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) could also be stowed below decks to defend against aerial drone attack.

The development comes as Russia takes increasingly forceful measures to protect the vessels of its shadow fleet. These provide Russia with a critical lifeline, allowing oil to be sold and funds generated to continue the country’s war against Ukraine. Both China and India regularly accept such deliveries.

Over the past year, European authorities have intercepted shadow fleet tankers on several occasions, typically on the grounds of flying a false flag or for being suspected of damaging undersea cables .

The Russian shadow fleet vessel Smyrtos is boarded by Royal Marines from 42 Commando and U.K. law enforcement officers on June 14. Crown Copyright

There have been previous reports indicating that shadow-fleet oil tankers regularly include former mercenaries and soldiers among their crews.

Holger Roonemaa has helped establish that almost half of the “passengers” listed as going aboard the Marshal Vasilevskiy also have backgrounds in the Russian military, the National Guard, and/or the FSB.

At the same time, Russian Navy warships are increasingly used for escort, monitoring, and security missions for shadow fleet tankers as they transit the Baltic Sea carrying sanctioned Russian oil to markets prepared to bypass Western restrictions. You can read more about this here .

Returning to this vessel, the appearance of heavy machine guns on it is significant because it illustrates Russia’s militarization of civilian shipping supporting critical operations. There are many historical precedents of merchant vessels being armed during wartime, but it remains unusual to see a commercially flagged tanker openly carrying heavy machine guns in this region. In areas with piracy, it is not uncommon for security crews on vessels to be equipped with small arms, but this is a different kind of weapon, and the ship is operating in waters with no piracy risk attached.

The Marshal Vasilevskiy photographed in port in 2019. Kees Torn

In practical terms, a pair of Kord machine guns could be effective against small drones or boats at close range, but would offer little protection against larger, coordinated attacks, let alone modern anti-ship missiles .

With that in mind, it’s possible Russia might further boost the weapons fit of the Marshal Vasilevskiy to provide more comprehensive defense. After all, this vessel is a critical asset, due to its unique capabilities in the Russian merchant fleet, and its special role supporting Kaliningrad. This makes it a strategic vulnerability that demands protection. If lost, it could have an asymmetric impact, threatening the ability to keep military assets in the exclave operational.

More broadly, this is evidence of Russia’s growing concern that logistics vessels, including civilian ones supporting critical infrastructure, could become targets in the Baltic region, too, as the war increasingly extends beyond traditional battlefields and further from Ukraine.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Heavy Machine Guns Appear On Key Russian Commercial Tanker In Baltic appeared first on TWZ .