Hafeet Rail covers a distance of 238 kilometers, with the aim of developing a transportation system that will further deepen the economic integration between the two Middle Eastern countries. The project’s key infrastructural components include 2,500-meter-long tunnels, 36 viaducts, 21 over-bridges, 39 underpasses, and 881 culverts.

“Construction work is continuing at an accelerated pace at several strategic locations along the routes, such as Al Ain, Buraimi, Wadi al Jazi, and Suhar,” Hafeet Rail Company noted.

Given the fact that the route passes through urban and industrial areas, mountainous terrain, and deep valleys, the venture is deploying specialized engineering solutions, including large-scale excavation and the implementation of large engineering facilities such as bridges and tunnels, in addition to integrated flood protection systems, to ensure the system operates in a safe and sustainable manner.

Apart from connecting more than 12 passenger stations and cities across the two countries, the project will also link five major ports and more than 15 integrated freight facilities. While work has been ongoing in regions like Al Ain, Al Buraimi, Wadi Al Jizzi, and Suhar, significant excavation and backfilling works have been undertaken, totalling approximately 27 million cubic meters, in addition to over 100,000 cubic meters of concrete work.

As per the authorities, the project has achieved over 10 million safe work hours without any serious injuries, reflecting a commitment to safety and quality standards.

“The project also includes the construction of 60 bridges, some reaching heights of up to 34 meters, along with tunnels totalling approximately 2.5 kilometers in length, all within an infrastructure designed for the efficient transport of heavy goods,” Hafeet Rail Company said.

Sohar Port, a deep-sea port in the Sultanate of Oman, located midway between Muscat and Dubai, along with its surrounding industrial zone, is expected to be among the project’s primary beneficiaries.

The rail link will reduce the time required to transport goods to Gulf markets, enhancing the port’s attractiveness as a regional logistics hub. It is also expected to attract new industrial investments to the Omani regions like Al Buraimi and Suhar and adjacent economic zones, particularly in domains like heavy and light industries and storage and distribution centers.

While the Hafeet Rail project will attract investments to the construction, engineering, and logistics sectors of both Oman and the UAE, it will also support the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by expanding their participation opportunities in the project’s supply chains and services.

“The project will also enhance the competitiveness of local products by facilitating import, export, and distribution processes, thereby increasing the competitiveness of Omani companies in regional and global markets,” Hafeet Rail Company concluded.

The post All you need to know about Hafeet Rail, envisioned to deepen Oman-UAE ties appeared first on International Finance.

In 2025 and 2026, this route has generated enormous excitement. Record numbers of ships are making the crossing. Chinese container vessels are completing the journey in under three weeks. India is signing mineral deals with Russia that could send a new category of cargo through the frozen north. On paper, the Arctic is open for business.

But the full picture is considerably more complicated, and considerably less flattering. While one set of numbers is climbing, another is falling. The route is simultaneously booming and contracting, expanding in one narrow slice while collapsing in the far larger slice that actually matters. Understanding why requires separating two very different things that often get confused in the headlines.

Two Routes in One

When analysts talk about the Northern Sea Route, they are actually describing two distinct corridors that happen to share the same geography.

The first is a domestic Russian export pipeline. Giant tankers loaded with liquefied natural gas and crude oil depart from Russian Arctic ports and sail to customers in Asia. This traffic makes up roughly 82% of everything that moves on the route. It is not international trade in the conventional sense. It is Russia shipping its own natural resources to paying customers.

The second is genuine international transit, where a ship travels the full length of the route from one end to the other without stopping at Russian ports. Think of a Chinese container ship loading goods in Shanghai and sailing them all the way through Arctic waters to a port in Germany. This is the category that is genuinely booming, and it is also the far smaller of the two.

In 2025, the total cargo moved along the Northern Sea Route fell for the second year in a row, dropping to 37.02 million metric tonnes, roughly 870,000 tonnes less than in 2024. This reverses years of growth and sits quite far from the Russian government’s official targets of 80 million tonnes by 2024, and 200 million tonnes by 2030.

At the same time, the number of international transit voyages reached a record 103 in 2025, up from 97 the year before. Those voyages moved approximately 3.2 million tonnes of cargo. So, the transit boom is real, but it is also responsible for less than 9% of the route’s total traffic.

Peter Sand, Chief Analyst at freight intelligence platform Xeneta, put the scale of the transit trade in stark perspective. “The number of ships transiting the Northern Sea Route last year was a record high. But we counted 15 ships, so that’s what a record high looks like,” he said. On the economics, Sand was equally direct: “Shorter distance is clearly attractive. But you still have to factor in expensive transit costs.”

Why Container Ships Are Coming

The surge in container transits is not happening because the Arctic route has suddenly become easy or cheap. It is happening because the alternative routes have become painful.

Since late 2023, militant groups in Yemen have been attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea near the Bab al-Mandab strait, one of the world’s busiest waterways. In response, most major shipping lines diverted their vessels around the southern tip of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. By mid-2024, traffic through the Suez Canal had fallen by roughly 70%, costing Egypt an estimated $800 million a month in lost revenue.

For a Chinese exporter, rerouting around Africa adds enormous distance, time, and fuel cost to every shipment. In that context, the Arctic option began to look less like a gamble and more like a reasonable hedge. Chinese operators, primarily NewNew Shipping Line and Sea Legend, moved roughly 400,000 tonnes of container cargo through the Arctic in 2025, a 2.6-fold increase on the previous year. Not everyone is convinced.

Søren Toft, Chief Executive of Mediterranean Shipping Company, the world’s largest container line, was categorical: “The debate around the Arctic is intensifying, and commercial shipping is part of that discussion. Our position at MSC is clear. We do not, and will not use the Northern Sea Route.”

The route’s possibilities were demonstrated dramatically when the container ship Istanbul Bridge completed the first direct container connection between China and the United Kingdom via the Northern Sea Route, finishing the crossing in a record 20 days at an average speed of 16.7 knots. The same season, the vessel Newnew Polar Bear departed Shanghai on July 16 and arrived at the Russian port of Arkhangelsk in under a month, delivering 497 containers carrying auto parts, PVC film, and steel before loading Russian timber for the return leg.

South Korea is watching closely. Its Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries scheduled a September 2026 container transit to evaluate whether it could replicate China’s Arctic logistics model. South Korean shipyards already lead the world in building large ice-capable commercial vessels, and Japan has deep expertise in research icebreakers. Between them, the two countries could form a powerful North Pacific logistics network feeding into the Arctic corridor.

What Actually Drives the Route

For all the excitement about containers, the Northern Sea Route’s economic engine runs almost entirely on fossil fuels. Energy cargoes make up 83% of all traffic. Liquefied natural gas alone accounts for 58% of total volumes, crude oil for 21%, and gas condensate for roughly 4%. The port of Sabetta, the main export terminal for the massive Yamal LNG project in Siberia, handled about 90% of the route’s entire cargo turnover in 2025, moving 29.1 million tonnes.

The volume contraction in 2025 is happening precisely because these fossil fuel operations are running into serious trouble. LNG shipments fell 2.7% due to maintenance shutdowns at the Yamal plant and a shortage of the specialised ice-capable vessels needed to run them. Crude oil exports from Gazprom’s Novoportovskoye field are, in what officials diplomatically call, a ‘smooth decline’, which is a polite way of saying the oil field is running dry. Coal shipments through the route collapsed by nearly 29%.

The route’s future growth was supposed to come from two enormous new projects. Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 was designed to produce nearly 20 million tonnes of gas a year from three production trains. Rosneft’s Vostok Oil was described as the largest new oil development on earth in two decades, holding an estimated 45 billion barrels of reserves with a target output of 115 million tonnes a year by 2033. Between them, these two projects were supposed to deliver the volumes that would justify Moscow’s infrastructure investment and its ambitious shipping targets.

Neither is producing anywhere near what was planned.

How Sanctions Broke the Dream

Western sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have created a chokepoint that no icebreaker can smash through.

Arctic LNG 2 depends on a fleet of approximately 21 highly specialised Arc7 ice-class LNG carriers. These are not ordinary tankers. They are purpose-built vessels capable of navigating independently through thick Arctic ice. Russia ordered 15 of them from its domestic Zvezda shipyard. By early 2026, exactly one had been delivered. The rest of the construction programme is frozen because the shipyard cannot access the imported marine equipment, specialised cryogenic containment systems, and international financing it needs. The alternative, building them at South Korean yards, which are the world’s leading builders of such vessels, is entirely blocked by sanctions.

Four Arc4 LNG carriers were actually completed in 2024 at Hanwha Ocean in South Korea, but they are currently sitting idle off the coasts of Indonesia and Europe. Even though the European Union removed several of these vessels from its sanctions lists in July 2025, no international operator will charter them. The reputational risk and the fear of secondary sanctions are simply too great.

Arctic LNG 2 did manage to export 16 gas cargoes in late 2025, but it is operating only its first production train at a fraction of its designed capacity, often selling gas at steep discounts to Asian buyers because it has no other options. Novatek has now put all three successor projects, Arctic LNG 1, Arctic LNG 3, and Ob LNG, on indefinite hold.

Vostok Oil has not shipped a single commercial cargo.

Transporting the cargo requires a 770-kilometre pipeline to the Kara Sea, a deep-water port called Sever Bay, and a fleet of up to 50 vessels, including at least 10 Arc7 tankers. As of 2026, the pipeline is less than half built, the port is under construction, and the specialised fleet does not exist. US sanctions imposed on the project’s operator, RN-Vankor, in January 2025 further restricted access to the technology needed to move forward.

On January 1, 2027, the European Union’s ban on Russian LNG imports takes effect. In February 2026, 100% of Yamal LNG exports were still flowing into EU ports, totalling over 1.5 million tonnes in that month alone. Europe is not just a customer. It provides transshipment facilities, vessel maintenance, crew changes, and insurance services for the 14 specialised Yamalmax Arc7 carriers that run the Yamal operation. Replacing those services for Asian routes would require Novatek to source an estimated 32 to 40 additional conventional LNG carriers. Under the current sanctions environment, that is essentially impossible.

The Shadow Fleet and NATO’s Response

Russia’s workaround for the sanctions blockade has been to build a ‘shadow fleet’, a collection of ageing, poorly maintained tankers operating under obscure ownership structures, frequently flying flags of convenience, and regularly switching off or spoofing their tracking systems to hide where they are going, and where they have been.

Shadow fleets are nothing new. Iran and Venezuela have used similar arrangements to keep their oil moving. But the Arctic amplifies the risks to an entirely different level. A mechanical failure in the Mediterranean can be handled with tugs and salvage crews. The same failure in the Barents Sea, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest port, in temperatures that can kill an exposed person in minutes, is a potential catastrophe.

An oil spill from an uninsured, structurally substandard tanker in Arctic waters would be an environmental disaster on a scale that would take decades to address.

Malte Humpert, founder of The Arctic Institute, has been direct about the trajectory. “It’s not a question of if, just a matter of when,” he said of a major accident or spill.

Research shows that pollution concentrations along sections of the route are exceeding maximum permissible limits.

European nations have responded aggressively. In January 2026, fourteen European countries issued a joint declaration warning that shadow fleet tankers without valid safety documents and internationally recognised insurance would be classified as stateless vessels under international maritime law, giving coastal states the legal authority to intercept and detain them. That rhetoric quickly became action.

Belgian and French forces boarded the tanker Ethera in the North Sea on suspicion of false flagging and forged documents. French naval commandos boarded the Grinch, a crude oil tanker owned by a Moscow-based company but flying a Comoros flag, in the Alboran Sea, and escorted it to Marseille. Swedish coast guards took control of the cargo vessel Caffa in the Baltic Sea to inspect its documents and seaworthiness. These interceptions were in European waters, but they establish the legal precedent and the operational willingness to police the routes that Russian Arctic oil must use to reach global markets.

The Ice Problem Is Getting Worse, Not Better

A widely repeated assumption about Arctic shipping is that climate change is steadily melting the ice and making the route easier to navigate every year. The reality is far more dangerous.

The overall Arctic sea ice maximum in winter 2026 reached 14.278 million square kilometres in March, tying the 2025 record as the lowest ever recorded in 47 years of satellite data. But within that global picture, regional behaviour was violent and unpredictable. A persistent, unstable polar jet stream drove fierce Arctic winds that expanded sea ice in the eastern Bering Sea by 60% in just two weeks.

The ice pushed abnormally far south, blocking the False Pass shipping channel in the Aleutians, and extending down to within 30 miles of Unimak Pass, a vital route for westbound commercial vessels heading into the Pacific.

Ships facing this kind of ice do not just risk damage from the ice itself. Wind-driven sea spray at near-freezing temperatures instantly freezes onto a vessel’s hull and superstructure, building up hundreds of tons of ice that can alter the ship’s centre of gravity, and capsize it.

The logistical consequences were severe. AIS tracking data from March 2026 showed that commercial vessels entirely abandoned the ice-choked Unimak Pass. Traffic through the alternative Amukta Pass surged by 800% year-on-year. Routes plotted entirely south of the Aleutian Islands saw an 88% increase in traffic as shipmasters chose longer journeys to guarantee they would arrive at all.

This matters enormously for the viability of the Northern Sea Route as a container shipping corridor. Modern container logistics depend on precision scheduling, with arrival times calculated to the hour. A route capable of generating a 60% ice expansion across a critical chokepoint in a fortnight is fundamentally incompatible with the reliability that global supply chains require. Research has also identified a correlation between ocean heat flowing into the Arctic through the Bering Strait and sea ice conditions across the following summer, meaning that conditions a year ahead remain difficult to predict with confidence.

Why the Maths Still Does Not Work for Containers

Even setting aside the ice anomalies and the geopolitics, the basic economics of running container ships through the Arctic are extremely challenging.

The route is shorter, there is no question about that. Rotterdam to Yokohama via the Suez Canal is roughly 12,840 nautical miles. Via the Northern Sea Route it is about 5,770 nautical miles. At 16 knots, the Suez voyage takes around 33 days; the Arctic crossing takes around 15. That is a significant saving in fuel and time.

But the savings are eaten up by a cost stack that applies to every Arctic voyage, and has no equivalent on southern routes. Mandatory icebreaker escorts charged by Russia’s state nuclear fleet operator, Rosatomflot, can easily reach $180,000 per voyage even during relatively mild autumn conditions. Insurance premiums for Arctic operations are routinely $40,000 to $50,000 higher per voyage than equivalent Suez coverage.

Bureaucratic friction adds further cost. The Suez Canal requires 48 hours’ advance notice for transit, while the Russian administration requires permit applications up to four months in advance, making it impossible to respond to the spot-market conditions that modern shipping alliances depend on. Basic permits and compliance add another $20,000 per voyage.

The per-container economics are similarly unflattering. Based on standard calculations for a vessel travelling at 16 knots and consuming 45 tonnes of fuel per day at $650 per tonne, the cost of shipping one empty container unit via the Arctic works out to roughly $648. On filled containers, factoring in directional imbalances, costs can double.

Humpert, of The Arctic Institute, sees the imbalance as structural. “The NSR will exist only as a transport route with mostly one-directional traffic,” he said. “Outside factors, such as unfavorable market conditions, varying ice levels and the lack of available Russian icebreakers, may yet dash Mr Putin’s hope to establish the route as a northern export highway.”

There is also a fundamental size problem. The Suez Canal regularly accommodates vessels carrying 24,000 containers or more. The shallow straits and narrow icebreaker-cleared channels of the Arctic limit viable vessels to roughly 2,000 to 4,000 containers. The fuel savings of a shorter journey are essentially cancelled out because the same cargo requires five or six smaller ships instead of one large one.

The Suez route also generates revenue at multiple intermediate ports along the way, places like Singapore, Colombo, Jeddah, and Piraeus, while the Arctic offers no commercial stops at all across thousands of kilometres of uninhabited coastline.

The Bigger Strategic Picture

Russia’s control of the Northern Sea Route is not purely economic. Moscow treats the route as internal national waters, requiring foreign vessels to obtain advance permission, carry Russian pilots, and pay Russian icebreaker fees. This gives Russia surveillance of foreign ships near sensitive military installations and allows its Northern and Pacific naval fleets to move without transiting NATO-monitored straits.

Russia’s official position is bullish. Vladimir Panov, Special Representative for Arctic Development at Rosatom, described a corridor in ascent: “The Northern Sea Route is developing rapidly, becoming a viable and efficient global logistics route. This is facilitated by various factors, including the development of advanced technologies, the construction of new-generation nuclear icebreakers, and growing interest from international shippers.”

Western allies have begun pushing back directly. In early 2026, the United States, Canada, and Finland launched the ICE Pact, a collaborative programme to jointly build allied icebreakers. The strategic intent is to create an escort capability that does not depend on Russian assets, allowing allied nations to accompany commercial vessels through the Northern Sea Route under international maritime law without paying Russian tariffs.

NATO simultaneously launched the Arctic Sentry framework in February 2026, integrating surveillance systems from Nordic allies to create continuous monitoring from the Baltic to the Arctic Ocean, tracking Russian military movements and providing independent navigational intelligence to commercial operators.

The Suez Canal, meanwhile, is recovering. Since the beginning of 2026 it has processed 1,315 vessels carrying a total of 56 million tonnes, generating $449 million in revenue, a marked improvement on the equivalent period a year earlier. Major carriers, including CMA CGM and Maersk, have reaffirmed their commitment to the route. As CMA CGM’s CEO put it plainly, there is no alternative to the Suez Canal.

The Northern Sea Route will continue to grow in specific, narrow circumstances for Chinese state-aligned operators willing to pay premium costs for geopolitical insulation, for Indian mineral supply chains being built outside Western and Chinese control, and for Russia’s own hydrocarbon exports when its projects eventually come back online. But the idea of the route as the next great artery of global trade remains, for now, a story about what might one day be possible rather than what is actually happening.

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The integration means that customers of both Fits Cargo and Expedite All can now book, track, and manage their shipments directly through the Unisys Cargo Portal, rather than juggling separate systems for different legs of a journey. That end-to-end visibility is something the freight industry has been moving toward for years, and this deal, announced on May 6, represents another concrete step in that direction.

To understand why this matters, consider what currently happens when a business ships goods internationally. An air freight booking might go through one portal, customs documentation through another, and last-mile ground delivery through an entirely separate carrier system. Each handover is a potential point of failure, delay, or lost information. Platforms like Unisys Cargo Portal Services try to collapse these steps, so that a single interface handles the full chain.

“Expanding our bookings with Fits Cargo and connecting ground delivery through Expedite All provides clients with more options and demonstrates how we’re helping shippers reimagine the logistics experience. We’re empowering our clients to move freight smarter and faster, all within one trusted portal,” said Sean Tinney, senior vice-president and general manager of Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS), Unisys.

Unisys had launched the portal in 2022, and has steadily added partners since. It already processes millions of shipments annually and counts major names in aviation among its users, including airlines, general sales agents, and freight forwarders. Recent integrations have included Air France-KLM and Lufthansa Cargo, two of Europe’s biggest cargo operators.

The addition of Fits Cargo brings greater international air freight reach, while Expedite All addresses a persistent weak link in many supply chains, which is the final stretch of a delivery within the United States. Last-mile logistics is often the most expensive and least efficient part of the journey, partly because routes and volumes vary so unpredictably. AI-assisted optimisation tools are increasingly being used to address this, and platforms that bring all stakeholders onto one system make that optimisation considerably easier.

For businesses that move goods regularly, the appeal is fewer systems to manage, less manual data entry, and a clearer picture of where their cargo is at any given moment. In an era when speed and reliability have become competitive differentiators, that kind of visibility is a baseline expectation.

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A new facility opened by Rhenus Group (a German logistics company headquartered in Holzwickede, near Dortmund) near Bangkok on May 11 is part of an effort to close that gap. The warehouse is located at 601 Moo 15, Bang Sao Thong Sub-District, Bang Sao Thong District, Samut Prakarn Province.

Rhenus, a global logistics company with a broad footprint across Europe and Asia (operating in 63 countries with 1000+ warehouses), has opened the specialised warehouse for dangerous goods near two of Thailand’s most strategically important trade gateways, Suvarnabhumi Airport and Laem Chabang Port.

Suvarnabhumi is one of Asia’s busiest international airports, while Laem Chabang is Thailand’s largest deep-sea port and handles the bulk of the country’s container trade.

The facility is built to handle classes 3 through 9 of dangerous goods, which, under international classification systems, covers everything from flammable liquids and toxic substances to corrosive materials and miscellaneous regulated items. The facility includes temperature-controlled storage, which is critical for certain chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and industrial compounds that degrade or become unstable outside specific conditions.

Services at the warehouse include packing, labelling, and documentation, all of which are required under IATA and ICAO regulations for the air and sea transport of hazardous materials. Incorrectly labelled or documented dangerous goods can be refused at ports, grounded at airports, or worse, cause incidents in transit.

The facility operates around the clock, offering 24/7 services to accommodate the continuous flow of international trade.

The head of Rhenus operations for the Asia-Pacific region described the facility as a move that ‘boosts supply chain resilience for high-value and regulated cargo’. That phrase captures the dual nature of much of what will pass through this warehouse. Dangerous goods are often also high-value goods, whether they are industrial chemicals, battery components for electronics, or pharmaceutical raw materials. Handling them well is not just a matter of safety; it is a business imperative.

For Thailand and the broader Southeast Asian region, the opening reflects a broader pattern of logistics infrastructure investment driven by rising manufacturing activity and growing trade links with China, Europe, and the Middle East.

Rhenus has been actively expanding its air freight operations in the region, and this Bangkok warehouse fits into that larger strategic push. By positioning a world-class dangerous goods facility at the heart of Thailand’s export infrastructure, the company is signalling confidence in Southeast Asia’s continued growth as a manufacturing and trade hub, and making a practical bet that regulated cargo volumes will keep rising.

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The airport launched a direct freight service to northern Thailand in partnership with K-Mile Air, a Thai cargo airline. The route connects Abu Dhabi to Chiang Mai, the largest city in Thailand’s north, and a significant hub for agricultural produce, handicrafts, and light manufacturing. Flights began in May 2026 with a Boeing 737-400F freight aircraft.

The route’s cargo focus comprises three main categories: perishables, e-commerce goods, and general freight. Perishables are particularly important here. Northern Thailand produces fresh fruits, flowers, and agricultural products with short shelf lives that require fast, reliable air connections to reach markets in the Middle East and beyond. A direct route removes transit delays that connecting through Bangkok or another hub would introduce, making it viable to move time-sensitive products that might not have been commercially feasible to air freight before.

E-commerce is the other major driver. Cross-border online shopping has grown significantly in both the UAE and Thailand, and direct air cargo links are the backbone of fast international delivery. As consumers in the Gulf increasingly purchase goods from Southeast Asian sellers, and vice versa, reliable freight infrastructure becomes central to the viability of those trade flows.

In the seven-day reporting period ending May 3, total cargo traffic at AUH reached 2,216 tonnes per day, up 18% from 1,878 tonnes at the start of the year. The growth is being driven by freight cargo, which has more than doubled from a baseline of 389 tonnes per day to 851 tonnes, a 119% increase.

Freight cargo now accounts for 38% of total throughput, up 21 percentage points from baseline levels. Daily freighter movements have grown 42% over the same period, with wide-body freight operations rising roughly 55% to reach 17 movements per day.

On the trade flow side, inbound freight volumes averaged 612 tonnes per day, up around 91%, while outbound volumes of 239 tonnes per day represent a 251% surge. AUH cargo throughput also grew 15% year on year, a strong performance reflecting both new route additions and rising volumes on existing ones.

The UAE’s geographic position has always been a natural advantage for cargo operations, sitting within eight hours’ flying time of roughly two-thirds of the world’s population. Airports like AUH are increasingly working to turn that geographic asset into a systematic logistical one.

For Thailand, the route opens a direct connection to a major Middle Eastern trade gateway. Thai exporters, particularly those in the north dealing in perishables or premium goods, now have a more direct path to Gulf markets and the broader network those markets connect to.

For the wider region, this kind of bilateral route development is part of an ongoing reconfiguration of global air cargo networks. This shift moves away from reliance on a handful of dominant hubs toward a more distributed web of direct connections, better suited to the speed and specificity that modern trade demands.

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The logistics and commercial zone will cover 3 million sq. metres, similar in size to the city of Yiwu in China, and is being developed with an estimated USD 2 billion.

The container terminal at Ain Sokhna Port will be developed with an initial investment of USD 400 million and a planned capacity of 2 million containers.

Jiangsu Provincial Port Group Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Huanshi Logistics Co., Ltd., will undertake the project, a statement published on the Facebook account of the Egyptian Cabinet Presidency said.

This momentum fits into broader investment activity in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, which announced in December that it would host three new industrial projects with a total investment of USD 1.15 billion, bringing total investments in the zone to USD 5.1 billion in the first six months of the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The newly released statement noted, “At the beginning of the meeting, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs emphasised the Egyptian government’s commitment to strengthening cooperation with China in various economic fields, noting that China is a strategic partner for Egypt.”

Walid Gamal El-Din, chairman of the General Authority for the SCZONE, said that Chinese companies are among the top investors in the SCZONE, and that he is ready to provide all the support required to companies that want to establish new investments in the economic zone.

Counsellor Mohamed El-Homsani, the official spokesman for the Cabinet, said that the meeting discussed several new projects by Chinese companies to be implemented in the Egyptian market, including within the SCZONE, the New Administrative Capital, and other industrial zones. El-Homsani added that the meeting also reviewed the Chinese Hurricane Group’s plan to establish a 100,000 sq. metre industrial zone.

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Think of a transshipment port as a giant sorting centre for cargo. Ships offload containers there, and smaller vessels carry them to their final destinations. Right now, Vietnam depends heavily on foreign ports, mainly in Singapore and Malaysia, for this kind of work. Can Gio is designed to change that.

The project is led by Terminal Investment Limited (TiL), the port-building arm of MSC, the world’s largest shipping company. TiL owns 49% of the venture. The Vietnam Maritime Corporation (VIMC) holds 36%, and Saigon Port holds the remaining 15%.

The port will be built in Can Gio district, at the mouth of the Cai Mep-Thi Vai river, and will cover roughly 571 hectares with a 7.5-kilometre berth line along the water. The first phase will have two to four berths capable of handling 250,000-ton ships.

By 2030, it should be processing 4.8 million containers (measured in TEUs, the standard shipping unit) per year. At full build-out in 2047, it will have 13 berths with an annual capacity of 16.9 million TEUs, enough to dock the largest cargo ships in the world, which carry up to 24,000 containers in a single voyage.

The economic upside for Vietnam is substantial. The port is expected to generate annual revenues between VND 34 and 40 trillion, equivalent to roughly $1.52 billion. It will also create between 6,000 and 8,000 direct jobs. Beyond the terminal itself, the project will spur coastal urban development and the construction of a dedicated sea-crossing bridge connecting Can Gio to the wider transport network.

For Vietnam, this is about more than shipping. It is part of a broader strategy to attract manufacturing that is moving out of China, reduce its dependence on foreign logistics middlemen, and lower costs for its own exporters.

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You could have, for example, America’s fighter jets, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and massive cargo aircraft, which require elite crews to operate. Although these weapons could turn the tide of war, they were also a message of deterrence; we have better machines, therefore we are harder to defeat.

As of 2026, all that’s changed, and new technology is defining how wars are fought and how goods are moved around the world.

The Old Ways Of War

The old ways were about creating the perfect machine. According to defence analysts, Western militaries were obsessed with building ’exquisite platforms’. This means they wanted to create technically flawless, ultra-capable, and expensive weapons to deter their adversaries.

Serhiy Goncharov, the CEO of the National Association of Ukrainian Defence Industries, which represents about 100 Ukrainian companies, told Business Insider that the West’s philosophy of fielding limited numbers of cutting-edge systems could be a serious disadvantage in a prolonged war. He claimed that those systems are good to have, but mass is key.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former defence minister of Lithuania, a NATO ally bordering Russia, said that while the West focused on new and expensive weaponry that takes a long time to manufacture, Russia had been ’building something cheap, that’s expendable, that’s fast’.

The F-35 Lightning II fighter jet and the C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft are some of the best examples of this policy. They are extraordinary machines and a testament to incredible feats of engineering. Both cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate.

However, they have major weaknesses. They are too expensive to be lost in battle, very complicated to replace quickly, and entirely dependent on human beings to fly them.

This last point matters more than all the others because humans are organic. They get tired, they experience fear, and they need food, rest, and the psychological will to keep moving. If a C-130 is shot down, you lose an expensive aircraft, the crew, the supplies they were carrying, and the ability to resupply the troops waiting at the other end.

In a world where missiles are AI-driven with deadly accuracy, and modern battlefields are expanding their theatres into the Indo-Pacific, Ukraine, and the Middle East with dense networks of radar arrays, surface-to-air missiles, and electronic jamming equipment, these kinds of aircraft are sitting targets.

Defence planners call these areas ‘Anti-Access Area Denial’ (A2/AD) zones. To keep things simple, these are regions where your expensive, irreplaceable aircraft can be shot down as soon as they enter. The exquisite platform now turns out to be a single point of failure dressed up as a super-weapon.

Losing Is Now Part Of The Plan

Nobody wants to lose a billion-dollar piece of equipment at the first sign of trouble. So, a new, radically different military philosophy is taking hold at defence ministries across the world. They call it the ’economy of attrition’.

The idea is simple, yet counterintuitive. If assets are very likely to be destroyed in a modern war, the best course of action is not to prevent it, but to build systems that can be destroyed by the dozen while the mission continues anyway.

ALSO READ: Choking of Strait of Hormuz tests limits of war risk insurance

Instead of one colossal and invincible aircraft, it may be better to deploy hundreds of cheaper, autonomous ones. If the enemy shoots down 10 of them, the other 90 can still complete the mission. If those units cost less to build than the enemy’s resources used to destroy them, you eventually win the war of attrition by turning the enemy’s military strength into a financial liability.

Governments and militaries are building networks of self-piloting aircraft, ground robots, and underwater vehicles, all connected by a centralised artificial intelligence. These systems are capable of sustaining military operations without putting a single human being in direct danger.

Equipment is now designed to be lost in battle.

The Drones That Could Replace A Fleet Of Cargo Planes

There is a new doctrine at the Pentagon, and even at allied and enemy HQs. Militaries have decided to replace cargo planes with drones. A primary example of this doctrine in action is the Grid Aero Lifter Lite, built by a California-based startup. It is an autonomous cargo drone without a pilot, a co-pilot, or life support systems. It is built with minimal moving parts, can be assembled quickly in remote locations, and is priced at a fraction of what a single C-130 costs to procure and operate.

Aero CEO Arthur Dubois, “We’re focused on solving major problems for the warfighter, starting with contested logistics. Those same challenges of range, resilience, and operating in constrained environments also define many commercial, humanitarian, and remote operations. This funding allows us to rapidly field autonomous aircraft to deliver scalable capability into real-world operations to meet growing demand across missions.”

The rapid fielding is catching the attention of major investors. Ben Hemani, founding partner at Bison Ventures, pointed to Grid Aero’s execution speed, “What Grid Aero has accomplished in less than 18 months is rare. Not only have they already built their flagship aircraft, but they are also building a logistics capability that operates where traditional systems can’t. We’re excited to fund the next phase of their growth, as they move from rapid development to real-world scale.”

The Grid Aero approach to logistics is very different from the old method of hub-and-spoke logistics, where goods flow from a central warehouse outward along fixed delivery routes. It is replaced by what Dubois calls ’the grid’, a distributed mesh network where hundreds of thousands of nodes operate simultaneously across a wide area.

The Grid Aero Lifter is a drone carrier that features advanced self-healing capabilities, ensuring that if drones are lost, the AI instantly reroutes the remaining units to cover gaps and maintain network integrity. To operate effectively in contested military zones where GPS is routinely jammed, the system utilises visual odometry, which allows the drones to navigate by reading the landscape much like a human does. Furthermore, the entire swarm benefits from real-time learning, as every drone continuously shares its data with all other units to ensure they learn and adapt together as a single entity.

Regarding the shift toward these swarms, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said, “You know, if I can have one guy command and control 100 aircraft, that’s a lot easier than having to have a pilot in every single one. It puts a lot fewer American lives at risk.”

Advent Of The Mechanical Foot Soldier

There are drones in the air, but there is something even more dramatic on the ground. In February 2026, a San Francisco startup by the name of Foundation Robotics delivered its first Phantom MK1 humanoid robot to Ukraine for combat testing on the front lines. These machines are somewhat similar in concept to a prototype T-800 model from the Terminator movie.

The Phantom MK1 is science fiction coming to life. The MK1 stands at 180 centimetres, weighs 80 kilograms, and is encased in jet black steel with a tinted glass visor where its face should be. It’s not a remote-controlled toy operated by someone at a comms station. It’s a completely AI-powered machine designed to replace a human infantryman. There are currently 2 Phantom MK-1 prototypes in the Ukrainian theatre.

“You should really work hard to give the US military smarter tools so that they can be more effective,” Sankaet Pathak, founder of Foundation Robotics, told TechFirst.

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He is not shy about giving the Phantom an M4 Carbine, adding, “If you’re first body in and you’re docile, then the enemies are not going to really expose themselves. So, you have to be the first body in and deadly.”

The 20 internal electric motors provide the ability to climb stairs, navigate rubble-filled urban environments, and enter low bunkers that wheeled military vehicles cannot reach. It’s also designed to emit a thermal heat signature indistinguishable from a human being, deliberately tricking enemy sensors into firing at it instead of the real soldiers nearby. In short, it’s a decoy and a grunt.

The psychological effects on the enemy are clear. The robots do not feel pain, they are not afraid of anything, and they do not get shocked or confused. A human soldier, on the other hand, would flinch if he got hit in the chest, and might drop and stop fighting. A Phantom humanoid robot hit in the chest still keeps shooting. This relentlessness is deeply demoralising to human opponents in a way that no weapon was fully anticipated to be.

However, the model is not perfect. The battery drains rapidly under the immense energy demands of 20 motors running simultaneously, while the complex joints remain highly vulnerable to damage. Foundation is already addressing these issues through the release of the Phantom MK2, which was expected to come out by the end of April 2026, featuring a waterproof chassis and improved battery life.

Foundation proclaimed that it will produce 50,000 Phantom MK-1 units by 2027. Hordes of robot soldiers might flood Ukraine by this time next year.

However, these humanoid robots also have civilian applications with a foundation aiming to sell them at $100,000 per unit as warehouse and industrial logistic workers. They can perform in conditions that are hazardous for humans, and can work almost around the clock without wages, protest or exhaustion.

Ground Robots Already Saving Lives

There is a robotic ground vehicle operating in Ukraine called the Milrem THeMIS, which is built in Estonia. It is a heavily built, tracked robot designed for endurance and heavy lifting.

Running on a hybrid diesel-electric engine, it can operate for up to 15 hours straight. It is mostly used for casualty evacuation, rolling forward under fire to retrieve wounded soldiers and carrying them to safety, which spares human medics from being shot while doing so. The vehicle has the capability to carry up to 750 kilograms, extendable to 1,200 kilograms, and can climb 60-degree slopes.

The long-term vision for these machines is expanding. “In the future, robotic systems will take over soldiers’ tasks on the battlefield,” notes Raul Rikk, the Capability Development Director at Milrem Robotics. “We envision robotic systems that can respond to verbal commands, similar to traditional military units.”

Like aerial drones, the dual-use potential is massive.

“While our current focus is primarily on defence due to the ongoing war in Ukraine,” Rikk added, “we have a strong track record of developing unmanned prototypes for civilian applications, including firefighting, street cleaning, and forest planting.”

The Rheinmetall Mission Master SP, built in Germany, operates on a completely different philosophy from the Milrem THeMIS. It is fast, quiet, and ultra-powered, leaving no heat or sound signature for an enemy to detect. It uses the Wolfpack software, which allows multiple units to coordinate autonomously so that they can surround a perimeter or scout ahead without any human giving moment-to-moment commands.

Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force is currently testing both these technologies, pointing to a future where THeMIS handles brute, sustained work while the Mission Master executes stealth and precision.

The Kill Web

Autonomous robot armies utilise technology to integrate logistical carriers for effortless troop transport, resilient robotic foot soldiers capable of enduring heavy fire, and robot medics designed for evacuations, strikes, and reconnaissance.

They are all tied together with an even more powerful technology. In 20th-century military communication, the process worked in a straight line. A radar spots a target and notifies a command centre, which then sends a pilot to destroy the target. This was known as the ’kill chain’. Before the kill chain could be completed, the target often moved.

The kill chain is now being replaced by the ’kill web’, a decentralised AI network that connects every drone, robot, soldier, satellite, and radar into one seamless system. Software platforms like Anduril’s Lattice serve as the brain of this web by processing data from thousands of sources simultaneously and identifying threats in fractions of a second.

This autonomy extends into the deep ocean. The navies of the world are deploying autonomous underwater vehicles to protect the 1.39 million kilometres of fibre optic cables on the ocean floor that carry 99% of global internet traffic and the kill web’s foundational data. Companies like Anduril are already building for this domain with autonomous submarines like the Dive XL.

“It’s not remote-controlled by this computer. It’s doing it on the brain, on the submarine itself. If I told it to go off and perform some mission that’s months long, like, ‘Go to this target, listen for this particular signature, and if you see this signature, run; if you see this one, hide; if you see this one, follow it’, it could do that all on its own without being detected, without communicating with it,” Palmer Luckey explained.

Bloodless Wars

The singular, expensive, irreplaceable weapons of the past are giving way to a vast, self-healing, intelligent network of expendable machines, which keep fighting, delivering, and communicating no matter what is thrown at them.

The Pentagon’s traditional contractors, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, are slowly losing ground to startups that focus on the economy of attrition. The US Air Force’s autonomous wingman drone programme was recently awarded to Anduril and General Atomics, bypassing Boeing and Lockheed entirely.

Not so long ago, venture capitalists were not too keen on defence investments, but now they’re flooding into these ’new primes’ with the reasoning that autonomous defence capability and supply chains are prerequisites for global stability. It represents a massive geopolitical shift. As Palmer Luckey puts it, “I’ve always said that we need to transition from being the world’s police to being the world’s gun store.”

The drone that resupplies soldiers under fire today will be the same technology delivering packages to your doorstep next year. Similarly, the software currently coordinating robot soldiers will soon be managing warehouse inventories, while the underwater robots guarding fibre-optic cables will simultaneously protect military communications, and your ability to stream videos or read this article.

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First Quantum Minerals is engaged in the production of copper, nickel and gold, and related activities, including exploration and development. Its Cobre Panamá mine was placed in a phase of Preservation and Safe Management in November 2023.

The total stockpile is estimated at approximately 38 million tonnes of mineralised ore at varying grades, containing about 70,000 tonnes of recoverable copper.

The decision does not mean the mine is being reopened, but it has raised new questions about environmental protection, economic ramifications, and the viability of the project in the long term.

James Devas, who manages Corporate Affairs for Toronto-headquartered First Quantum Minerals, told International Finance that the approval is only for processing existing stockpiles. A full restart would require meeting additional technical, environmental, and regulatory criteria that have not yet been defined within a broader government framework.

Not A Restart, But Controlled Processing
First Quantum Minerals stressed that the approval does not mark a return to full-scale mining operations. The work being done now is part of a Preservation and Safe Management Plan to deal with material that had already been mined. The government of Panama is undertaking the processing of stockpiled ore under its control. It states the decision was based on environmental concerns, such as acid rock drainage and long-term site stability, after technical assessments found the material posed an environmental risk if not properly managed.

Government Decision Driven By Technical And Environmental Assessments
Government statements indicate that the resolution was based on technical reports and environmental assessments that were conducted after audits and recommendations from the Ministry of Environment (MiAmbiente).

Officials have emphasised that the removal and processing of stockpiled concentrate will decrease the environmental risk rather than lead to full-scale resumption of mining operations. The government characterised the decision as a responsible act of environmental stewardship and regulatory compliance.

Environmental Safeguards And Oversight Mechanisms
One of the central concerns raised by International Finance was how environmental standards would be maintained during processing, to which First Quantum Minerals responded that all operations will be conducted in accordance with the approved Preservation and Safe Management Plan and in consultation with government authorities. Ongoing environmental management includes water treatment to control pH levels, maintenance of sediment ponds, control of surface water and erosion within the tailings management facility, and compliance with the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) commitments remains in effect during this period.

Jobs For Locals, Benefits For Local Community
Local community involvement was addressed by commitments to prioritise employment and economic participation. First Quantum Minerals stated that it would try to re-employ former workers and local community members previously employed at Cobre Panamá, and that the processing programme will create more than 1,000 additional jobs for a total of around 3,000 jobs, with indirect jobs created in logistics, equipment supply, transportation, catering, and other supporting industries, helping to stabilise local economies in areas that have been affected by the closure of the mine since 2023.

Operational Scale, Logistics, And Investment Requirements
Logistics will still be a challenge, as there is an estimated 38 million tonnes of stockpiled ore to process, but the existing infrastructure (crushers, conveyors and flotation circuits) will be used, and only minor repairs are needed after the extended shutdown.

The company expects preparation and pre-commissioning work to take up to three months before stockpile processing commences.

First Quantum Minerals expects about $250 million in capital investment for plant recommissioning, inventory replenishment, and sustaining capital. It anticipates operating costs of between $12.00 and $12.50 per tonne milled, with higher unit costs expected during the early ramp-up. Systems will be brought back online and tested. The facility will likely operate at about one-third of capacity during start-up.

Economic Significance And Export Implications
The company did not respond when asked whether this phase could offset Panama’s economic losses from the 2023 shutdown, but noted that copper exports from stockpiles have been a significant part of Panama’s export performance while the mine was suspended and that the restart of processing would bring a significant revenue stream back to the country as well as back into global copper supply as demand tightens.

Legal And Strategic Outlook
In a legal and strategic development, First Quantum Minerals announced it suspended arbitration proceedings under both ICC and Canada–Panama FTA mechanisms. It did this to allow dialogue with the government of Panama while maintaining its legal rights. But there are larger questions about the long-term future of the asset, such as whether the site will move toward full reopening, continued maintenance, or eventually closure. It reaffirmed its commitment to dialogue to reach a sustainable solution with the government.

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The policy, which is expected to support transport enterprises in the Southeast Asian country, will also reduce logistics costs, in addition to stimulating economic activity during the implementation period.

“In addition, inland waterway vessels operating between domestic ports and terminals will also benefit from fee exemptions. These include vessel tonnage fees, port and terminal entry and exit charges, and inland waterway reporting fees, costs that account for a significant share of waterway transport expenses,” the Circular noted.

The new policy is expected to provide a solid boost to Vietnam’s pursuit of becoming a major logistics hub in Asia and beyond. In 2025, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh signed a decision approving the National Strategy for the Development of Vietnam’s Logistics Services for 2025-2035.

This became a historic occasion, as the Southeast Asian country adopted, for the first time, a comprehensive, long-term framework to build a globally competitive logistics sector, while accommodating elements such as digital transformation and green and sustainable growth within the roadmap.

Since then, Vietnam has upgraded its approach toward the logistics sector, recognising it as a key economic sector with high added value and strategic importance to the Southeast Asian nation’s economic competitiveness.

Under its national strategy, between 2025 and 2035, Vietnam wants to ensure that the value added by the logistics sector reaches 5%-7% of its national GDP, growing at an average of 12%-15% annually. By 2050, logistics services are expected to contribute 7%-9% of GDP, maintaining a yearly growth rate of 10%-12%.

While 70%-80% of domestic enterprises are expected to use outsourced logistics services by 2035, the ration, by 2050, will increase to 90%. Vietnam also eyes bringing down its logistics costs to 12%-15% of GDP by 2035, and 10%-12% by 2050.

Apart from breaking into the top 40 countries in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) by 2035 and the top 30 by 2050, the roadmap also envisions digital transformation playing a central role in Vietnam’s makeover as a global logistics hub, with 80% of businesses expected to adopt digital solutions by 2025, a ratio that will become 100% by 2050.

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