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Sunday, September 6, 2026 – covering news confirmed from August 31 through September 5. A full chapter of Final Fantasy Resonance is now playable, and Konami has a deck-building roguelite about keeping an entire nation alive. Those two stories lead this edition of This Week in Turn-Based RPGs. The week also brought a firm date for Fate/EXTRA Record, an expansion announcement for Digimon Story: Time Stranger, and a Western release for Astonishia Story. Away from the showcases, there were substantial updates, another playable tactical deckbuilder, and several indie projects worth a closer look. Let’s start with the major announcements before…

The first F135 fighter jet engine assembled by Patria has been successfully completed at Patria’s new facility in Linnavuori, Nokia, Finland. As a strategic partner of the Finnish Defence Forces, Patria is responsible for initially assembling, and in the future maintaining, repairing and overhauling the F135 engines in Finland. The completion of the first F135 engine was celebrated at an event hosted by Patria in Linnavuori on 3 September, 2026. Patria and Pratt & Whitney, an RTX business, agreed on final assembly of the first F135 engines in February 2026. Production is underway and is planned to continue until 2030…

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Saturday for renewed talks on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. The meeting that lasted more than three hours behind closed doors ended without announcements of any breakthroughs. Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov described them as constructive, frank and useful to journalists afterward, but didn’t talk about specific outcomes. Witkoff and Kushner are expected in Kyiv on Sunday. The talks come as both sides continue to escalate aerial attacks. Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy both agreed to pause strikes on each other’s…

Vice President JD Vance said the administration would work toward giving the widow of a deceased airman killed during the war in Iran the additional military benefits allotted to families of service members killed during combat. Libby Klinner, the wife of Alex Klinner, turned to social media to share the story of her husband’s passing and the struggles her family was facing in receiving certain additional benefits since the federal government did not officially declare war on Iran. U.S. Air Force Maj. John “Alex” Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama, was among the six killed on March 12 when a KC-135…

Based on Sailor feedback, female Sailors can now purchase newly designed Service Khaki slacks with back pockets and modern fit sizing. Based on Sailor feedback, female Sailors can now purchase newly designed Service Khaki slacks with back pockets and modern fit sizing. Slacks will be available for purchase or try-on at NEX Norfolk, NEX Oceana and NEX Arlington, Virginia; NEX Great Lakes, Illinois; NEX Jacksonville and NEX Pensacola, Aviation Plaza, Florida; NEX San Diego; NEX Kitsap-Bangor, Washington; NEX Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and NEX Bethesda, Maryland, as well as online at myNavyExchange.com. “This is the first pair of slacks being introduced…

Salahdine Parnasse got his showcase performance in his octagon debut at UFC Paris.The former two-division KSW champion headlined in his home country against veteran Dan Hooker Saturday’s headliner. Parnasse was nearly a -700 favorite by the time the fight began, and it was clear almost immediately that Hooker was in a world of trouble, eventually leading to a vicious body kick that shut Hooker down, and then went crashing to the mat after a brutal left hand over the top. Parnasse then called out Max Holloway for his sophomore UFC bout.Parnasse has won six straight, stopping all six of his…

Key PointsThe 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit ran two separate forward bases at once near Camp Pendleton, one for tracking ships and one combining command operations with aircraft refueling.The exercise builds on the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept, introduced in 2019 to support distributed operations in contested waters.U.S. Marines with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit ran two separate forward operating sites at once during a training exercise near Camp Pendleton, California, testing whether the unit can track ships at sea, direct combat operations, and keep aircraft armed and fueled from multiple locations simultaneously rather than a single base. One…

Chief Fire Controlman (Aegis) Joseph Babcock, assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69), was selected as the 2026 recipient of the USS Constitution George Sirian Meritorious Service Award. The George Sirian award is given annually aboard USS Constitution to an outstanding chief petty officer selected from the worldwide fleet. The name pays homage to gunner George Sirian who served aboard USS Constitution. Babcock serves as the combat systems maintenance manager, combat systems department leading chief petty officer, and command managed equal opportunity manager. He is responsible for developing Sailors and maintaining critical combat systems equipment. “Chief…

While we all love classic fighting games, there’s one area where modern fighting games are undoubtedly superior — and that’s balance. A large part of this is that older games tended to be released as they were, since patches weren’t really a thing, and making revisions was expensive and required consumers to buy an entirely new cartridge or disc. Conversely, when a modern fighting game ends up unbalanced, it tends to get fixed before too long. Today, it’s…

The TWZ Newsletter Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy. The U.S. Air Force is targeting an approximately $10 million unit price, excluding sensors and certain other systems, for a drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. The cost of a fully kitted-out Reaper today is generally reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force is also now pushing to accelerate the program to acquire the new drones, dubbed the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), amid what it admits are “concerning” Reaper losses in the course of recent operations against…