The Late Night Pour | Aim Point
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| FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026 · DAY 224 |
| The Late Night Pour |
Aim Point
Day 224. The Congressional Research Service reported this week that 45 Reapers are among the 81 US aircraft lost or damaged in this war. Most people couldn’t tell you what a Reaper is, so here’s a story about one. (Stars and Stripes · CRS count, Oct 7)
It comes from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel who was Colin Powell’s chief of staff, and he tells it about his son.
The son flew the Reaper, an Air Force drone with a 66-foot wingspan, a propeller, a camera and Hellfire missiles under the wings. Nobody rides in it. The pilot sits at a console and flies it over a satellite link, and in this case the console was in Nashville while the drone was over Afghanistan, more than 7,000 miles away. (Air Force · MQ-9 Reaper fact sheet)
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By the colonel’s account, the enemy had nothing that could reach it, so it could circle over a firefight while the pilot watched the ground on a screen and talked by radio to the Americans down there. Sometimes the voice on the radio belonged to the leader of a Special Forces team asking for a missile on an enemy 50 feet from where he stood. Soldiers have a radio call for a strike that close to their own people, which is “danger close.”
One day a man on the ground asked for something closer than that. He gave his own position and told the pilot, “Your aim point is me.”
The pilot refused, because you don’t fire on your own people and the rules say so. The man told him to do it anyway and said he wouldn’t be there when the missiles landed.
So the pilot did it. The team cleared out as soon as the call was made, and by the time the missiles came down, the Americans were gone and the enemy was standing on the spot they’d left.
That’s the colonel’s telling, and I can’t check the strike itself. What I can check is the console: a bio of the colonel puts his son in the Tennessee Air National Guard in Nashville, and the Guard’s 118th Wing flies Reapers from Berry Field, at the city’s airport. (Military Religious Freedom Foundation · Wilkerson bio; Air National Guard · 118th Wing at Berry Field)
I spent the week reading counts of targets destroyed, jets flown and drones lost, and none of them has a column for what happened on that radio, which was one man deciding to trust another with his life and being right. It’s the only thing I heard all week that I couldn’t put a number on.
Riyadh Takes the Airport Attacks to the Security Council; Trump and Putin Talk for 90 Minutes
Day 224. Saudi Arabia’s UN envoy, Abdulaziz Alwasil, told an emergency Security Council session Friday that Thursday’s strikes on King Khalid airport were a “blatant act of aggression” and asked the council to enforce its arms embargo on Ansarallah. The Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed 136 targets in Yemen the same day; Ansarallah’s media says strikes on Sanaa’s airport killed two. Seven airlines, Emirates and Lufthansa among them, have suspended Riyadh flights. Trump and Putin spoke for about an hour and a half. The Kremlin says Trump welcomed Russia’s part in settling the Iran war, and Trump says Russia will ship diesel. At a rally in Syracuse he said of Iran, “Either they give us everything, or they don’t exist any longer.” In the Gulf, a supertanker took a projectile off the UAE and put out the fire, and the Revolutionary Guard claimed a hit on a gas carrier off Oman that nobody has confirmed.
| The session: emergency Security Council meeting; Riyadh asks it to enforce the arms embargo on Ansarallah and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea · Alwasil, Oct 9 |
| The coalition: 136 military targets destroyed Friday; air support for Yemen’s army “around the clock” · al-Maliki, Oct 9 |
| Sanaa: two killed in strikes on the airport; four fires put out, one at a factory · Ansarallah media, civil defence, Oct 9 |
| The skies: Lufthansa, Air India, PIA, flydubai, Etihad, Emirates and Air Arabia suspend Riyadh flights; Britain, France, Germany, Australia and Canada advise against travel to parts of the kingdom · Oct 9 |
| The call: about 90 minutes; Trump welcomed Russia’s role in an Iran settlement, the Kremlin says · Oct 9 |
| The rally: no attack before Nov 3, Trump repeated, and he’s ready to “finish it off” if Tehran doesn’t give way · Syracuse, Oct 9 |
| The Gulf: the Panama-flagged supertanker Gem No.2 hit 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera, UAE; the IRGC claims the Vietnam-flagged gas carrier NV Sunshine · UKMTO, Vanguard Tech, Sepah |
Pakistan Confirms Its Forces in Riyadh, Rules Out Crossing into Yemen
Foreign ministry spokesman Sajjad Haider Khan told reporters in Islamabad on Friday that Pakistan keeps a “substantial number of forces as well as resources” in Riyadh, there to defend Saudi territory and not to cross the border after Ansarallah. He wouldn’t say whether more have arrived. Earlier reporting put the force near 8,000 with fighter aircraft, mostly guarding oil infrastructure, under the three-way defense agreement Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara signed in August, which grew out of a bilateral Saudi-Pakistani pact signed in 2025, before any of this.
Navi Pillay Takes the Peace Prize; Israel and Trump Object
The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave Friday’s prize to the South African jurist, 85, “for her work to promote peace and international law.” Pillay defended Nelson Mandela under apartheid, sat on the Rwanda tribunal and the ICC, ran the UN human rights office, and chaired the UN inquiry that found last year that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel’s foreign ministry called the award a “grotesque weaponisation”; Trump called it a “disgraceful and embarrassing decision” and told a rally he’d never heard of her. South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa called it a “profound tribute.” Pillay took the committee’s call for a joke and said she wanted to verify it.
Kyiv Claims Three Russian Missile Sites in One Night
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces hit three Russian facilities overnight into Friday: the Redkino Experimental Plant in Tver Oblast, which makes components of Decilin-M, the fuel in Kh-55 and Kh-101 cruise missiles, plus the Barmin launch-complex institute and an ICBM scrapping center, both in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. Tver governor Vitaly Korolev confirmed a fire at Redkino and said no workers were hurt. Russia sent 136 drones at Ukraine the same night, and local authorities count 41 killed across the country in a day, 35 of them in Donetsk Oblast. Putin told Trump on Friday that Russia would consider when to resume peace talks, the Kremlin says.
Stocks End the Week Higher as Consumer Sentiment Hits a Five-Month Low
The S&P 500 rose 0.59% Friday to 7,811.54, the Dow added 0.83% to 51,654.95 and the Nasdaq gained 0.64% to 27,366.17, leaving all three higher for the week. Tech recovered from Thursday’s OpenAI scare. The phone companies didn’t: T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T fell hard after SpaceX agreed to buy a nationwide block of spectrum. Delta missed estimates and cut its outlook, citing a fuel bill $6B higher this year. The University of Michigan’s October sentiment reading fell to 46.3, the lowest since May. Gold settled near $4,221 an ounce and the 10-year Treasury yield ended at 5.24%.
A Ferry Sick-Out Puts the Engine Room’s Pay Gap on the Table
23 engine-room workers called out sick Monday, leaving Washington State Ferries able to crew six of 18 boats and shutting three routes at once, the first time three have gone down together, by the agency’s own alert history. The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association says it didn’t organize the callouts, and points at the conditions: posts funded at the Coast Guard minimum, members logging up to 1,500 hours of overtime, engineers starting at $130,000 against about $203,000 for staff masters. State law bars ferry workers from striking and the contract runs to June 2027.
Iowa Beats the Huskies, 41–24; Kraken Win in Detroit
No. 20 Iowa beat Washington 41–24 at Husky Stadium on Friday, its first trip to Montlake in 63 years. The Hawkeyes led 27–3 at halftime and ran for 263 yards, Kamari Moulton scoring from 56 and 3. Huskies quarterback Demond Williams Jr. left hurt late in the first half; Elijah Brown threw three touchdowns in relief. Washington was sacked six times and is 3–3. The Kraken opened a five-game road trip by beating Detroit 6–3 on two Frederick Gaudreau goals and 38 Philipp Grubauer saves. Leonard Williams will play Sunday when the 3–1 Seahawks host the unbeaten 49ers. White Sox at Guardians, Game 5, is Saturday in Cleveland.
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