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Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG), using publicly available open-source information. Check out last week’s report here .

Aircraft from Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5 embarked on USS George Washington , including F/A-18 Super Hornets, F-35C Lightning IIs, and an E-2D Hawkeye, participated in a live-fire sinking exercise (SINKEX) during exercise Valiant Shield in the Western Pacific over the weekend. The ex-USS Juneau , a decommissioned Austin-class amphibious transport dock ship that was involved in both the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm, was sent to the bottom by U.S. and partner forces approximately 40 nautical miles northeast of Guam.

George Washington Conducts Sinking Exercise during Valiant Shield 2026. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nicolas Quezada. Petty Officer 3rd Class Nicolas Quezada

“The evolution brought together air, surface, and subsurface assets in coordinated strikes, allowing crews to sharpen critical skills in weapons employment and target engagement under realistic conditions that no simulator can fully replicate,” according to a press release from Task Force 70 Public Affairs. A torpedo fired by a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force diesel-electric submarine, JS Jingei , delivered the final blow .

Multilateral, Joint Forces execute sinking exercise during Valiant Shield 2026. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Anthony Vilardi. Seaman Apprentice Anthony Vilardi

A few thousand miles to the east, USS Theodore Roosevelt , with a packed flight deck, arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, on June 23 ahead of the biennial exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2026. The 30th iteration of RIMPAC is the largest ever and will feature 30 partner nations, 31 surface ships, five submarines, 15 national land forces, more than 200 aircraft, and 30,000 personnel in and around the Hawaiian Islands. Roosevelt hosted service members from partner nations and the local community during an open ship tour event over the weekend.

USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) arrives at Pearl Harbor. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Erik Melgar. Petty Officer 1st Class Erik Melgar

Back in the continental United States, USS Nimitz joined 25 other ships for a fleet formation photo exercise (PHOTOEX) in the Atlantic Ocean on June 25 as part of the inaugural Fleet Exercise (FLEETEX) 250. FLEETEX, a large-scale multinational maritime exercise , includes a series of “structured multilateral training events at-sea, aimed at building cohesiveness, validating tactical procedures, and strengthening the interoperability of participating units.” Warships, aircraft, and personnel from the U.S. and 13 allied countries were involved in the two-week exercise that wrapped up today.

USS Nimitz Participates in FLEETEX 250. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Johnathan McCune. Seaman Johnathan McCune

Nimitz pulled into Mayport, Florida, the following day to disembark family and friends who were aboard for a Tiger Cruise. Nimitz and several other participating ships will sail to New York City this week to take part in the seventh International Naval Review 250 from July 3-8.

Notably, Boeing’s MQ-25A Stingray demonstrator drone was spotted on Nimitz’s flight deck, which you can read about in detail here , and the C-2A Greyhound made its last trap aboard the flattop, marking the end of an era in naval aviation as the CMV-22B Osprey takes the reins for the “no fail” carrier onboard delivery mission.

MQ-25 Stingray demonstrator drone, also known as T-1, spotted embarked on USS Nimitz. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Gina M. Gallia. Petty Officer 3rd Class Gina Gallia

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower continues working up off the east coast and was most recently underway in the Jacksonville Operating Area with her AIS transponder turned on . Eisenhower is conducting carrier qualifications and supporting East Coast Fleet Replacement Squadrons, according to DVIDS . On the west coast, USS Carl Vinson got underway for training on June 25.

IKE Conducts Carrier Qualifications in Atlantic Ocean. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Miguel Santiago. Petty Officer 2nd Class Miguel Santiago

Two aircraft carriers remain on station in the Middle East: USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George H.W. Bush . Both carriers were spotted conducting flight operations over the past week in the U.S. Central Command-5th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR). With the blockade lifted while negotiations are ongoing – and both sides still exchanging weekend tit-for-tat blows – neither appears to be leaving the AOR, for now.

Abraham Lincoln Conducts Flight Deck Operations. U.S. Navy photo. U.S. Central Command Public Affa

Note: Positions are general approximations. Non-deployed LHA/LHD amphibious warships are not shown.

Contact the author: ian.ellis-jones@teamrecurrent.io

The post Where Are The Aircraft Carriers: June 29, 2026 appeared first on TWZ .

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Have you ever played 'comp stomp?' When I want to arrange an RTS playdate with a mix of casual and hardcore friends with wide gaps in skill level, it's the only way to play without someone (or perhaps everyone except the guy who can time his build order) getting smoked. Load into a map against a bunch of AI opponents, form an alliance with your buds, and proceed to mercilessly gang up on the bots. There's just one problem with comp stomp: it usually sucks.

It can be fun to mow down crummy AI here and there, but it's the equivalent of getting a bunch of people together for a baseball game and then deciding, well, let's actually go to the batting cages instead and all practice our swing next to each other. RTS bots tend to either try and fail to mimic a decent human player or cheat out the wazoo, and if there's no real contest, no threat big or clever enough to push me into genuine improvisation and panic, I'm hardly playing an RTS at all.

Enter Dawn of War 2's The Last Stand , a decidedly Warhammer 40,000 answer to comp stomp. It might be an apocalyptic hell-future where everyone in the universe hates each other, but when you're down to a single measly commander unit and surrounded on all sides by waves of souped-up aliens, there's no time to be choosy about allies.

(Image credit: Relic Entertainment) Where to play

(Image credit: Relic Entertainment) In 2011, the popular mode was spun off as The Last Standalone on Steam, but that version is no longer available. The best way to play it now is via Dawn of War 2: Anniversary Edition , a 2024 re-release that includes all the original's expansions.

It's RTS by way of Killing Floor: take cover, work together, kill 'em all. If everyone on your team dies, it's over.

The Last Stand retains the chill vibes of comp stomp because of its cooperative setup, but it's hard enough that everyone in a lobby has to rely on one another. The first few waves are breezy, small packs of jobber orks and tyranids, but soon the game starts chucking much heftier units at you: artillery, infantry with grenades and rockets, and anti-everything monsters and bosses. The sort of stuff you can't kill with just one unit.

With enough kiting and clever use of whatever active abilities you've brought with you, getting through all 20 waves is a doable, lengthy challenge. But the game does not make it easy, and that's the best part—rather than ape strategies a real player might use, The Last Stand opts for the blunt force approach. The game tries to crush you in an avalanche of hopeless odds, with one wave going so far as to pit you against exact copies of your own characters, retaining the ability to revive each other and use whatever gear you've collected against you.

It's careful to extend a hand both to novices, who can get a feel for the game without having to worry about juggling several squads or managing the macro aspect that just becomes noise in a rushed PvP match, and to experts, for whom it becomes a de facto arcade mode. Score multipliers stack up based on how long you all go without dying, how many control points you're able to hold at once, and how quickly you best each wave. At first it’s a struggle just to see the end, and as you improve, it becomes a race to get there as efficiently as possible.

Where some casual RTS modes try to relieve the tension by making it certain you and your friends will win, Dawn of War 2 does it by making it likely you and your friends will lose, at least until you’ve taken your licks. That sort of punishment is exactly what I come to Warhammer adaptations to drink deep of; it’s the grim darkness of the far future! I don’t want the privilege of an even fight, I want to be beset on all sides, drowning in horrors, sustained by lonely rage at the futility of every spent magazine. It doesn't seem like I'm alone.

(Image credit: Relic Entertainment) When I queue up for standard games in Dawn of War 2 these days, I tend to get bored of waiting before I find a single match. But with The Last Stand? I'm rarely left waiting for long, and you can still find people discussing the mode online these days, 15 years after Dawn of War 2's final expansion came out.

The same is true of other co-op modes in the genre, like Starcraft 2's excellent two-player missions. But I think The Last Stand has a unique quality that makes it worth going back to even if you don't play RTS at all: it mutates the genre’s DNA so much that it actually just cracks the code on a PvE MOBA, and because it's ( almost ) the only one, it takes the genre crown by default.

To MO-BE, or not to MO-BE

In this mode, nearly all the conventions of standard RTS play are stripped away. You only control a single hero unit, and you cycle between a few simple abilities restrained by resource costs and cooldowns. Sound familiar?

Dawn of War 2's standard PvP modes had already ( controversially , at the time) done away with base-building and labyrinthine research trees to focus on lean, tactical scraps. Last Stand just takes that distillation to its natural conclusion.

You might think of this as cynical trend-chasing now that the traditional RTS is an aging carcass and MOBAs remain a big deal , but The Last Stand first debuted in October 2009—the s ame month League of Legends released. If anything, the mode was sort of forward-thinking for its time.

It's the perfect time for it to have come out, I reckon, because it has a lot of MOBA-esque ideas without feeling too similar to League or Dota. It feels like the result of alike influences rather than an impulse to ride the wave. As you play, you unlock wargear: weapons, accessories, and armor, each of which grants you new abilities and fundamentally alters your playstyle. Two space marine captains at the same level might play completely differently, with one toting a supportive healing aura and ranged bolter and the other tackling every witch in sight with lightning claws and heavy armor.

(Image credit: Relic Entertainment) Even today, when there are so many great Warhammer-themed games all competing for your attention, it has a larger-than-average smorgasbord of playable xenos from the tabletop. Dawn of War 2: Retribution's base roster of factions each lend a single hero: the orkish mekboy can be anything from an oppressive rocket-wielding tankbuster to an explosive, randomly teleporting imp, while the chaos sorcerer can possess enemies (yes, even a clone of himself!) or simply melt them with hellfire. The playstyles range from gimmicky as all hell, like that teleporting mekboy, to straightforward and suitable for learning the game, like the imperial guard hero who can call in a retinue of AI-controlled soldiers.

(Image credit: Relic Entertainment) After Retribution's release, The Last Stand was furnished with a faction selection even beyond that of the core game: the Necron overlord and (my favorite) the Tau battlesuit are a mite overpowered, but as a fanboy of the greater good who still wishes Fire Warrior was a decent game, I think I'm owed that. These factions are rarely playable in Warhammer videogames, most of which stick you in a familiar human body or its genetically super-enhanced astartes counterpart, and getting to draft your own uneasy alliance in this mode is a treat for fans of the tabletop game and its lore.

I think it says something about the hunger people have for a mode like this that it still attracts a chatty, if extremely small , group all these years later when so many alternatives exist. Darktide and Space Marine 2 might have bigger, more lavish horde-blasting modes for shooter fans, but there’s just something so very Warhammer about watching all the carnage unfurl from a bird’s eye view, anxiously wondering whether to dive behind cover or charge into melee.

It’s a smooth shot of what I dig about both MOBAs and Relic's more tactics-oriented strategy games, like standard Dawn of War 2 and Company of Heroes, while remaining accessible to newcomers as it straddles two genres notorious for their complexity. Because you're struggling against enemies you often can't solo and there's no economy to manage, no one can outscale their teammates so hard the challenge is trivialized. And there’s just enough build variety that every player gets to make their personalized mark shaving seconds off each wave.

Dawn of War 4 (Image credit: Deep Silver) Like plenty of dweebs addled by plastic glue fumes, I am looking forward to the release of Dawn of War 4 later this year, but it is more accurate to say I am specifically waiting to see its reprisal of Last Stand. While I'm glad DoW 4 looks to give diehard fans of the first game what they've been missing for the last two decades, the sequel more or less converted me to its RPG-inspired ' ding gratz lol ' way of thinking, and I'm more keen to see an evolution of its best ideas than I am a base-building blast from the past. I got countless hours out of this mode in DoW 2 despite its spartan setup for progression and nearly no baked-in replayability aside from the score attack aspect—the waves are always the same, and there are only two maps.

I'm hoping DoW 4 can remix things just enough to keep it fresher for longer, without compromising the purity nor the brutality that make The Last Stand so special.

Best Warhammer games : Fantasy epics

Best Warhammer 40K games : The complete ranking

Best Warhammer TTRPGs : Across all three settings

Best Warhammer 40K books : Grimdark novels

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Nearly 2,000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius buried a vast collection of scrolls in ash and scorched them into solid black lumps. Now, without unrolling them, researchers have virtually read two of them —‬ and uncovered what may be a work by a well-known Stoic philosopher.

The breakthrough comes from the Vesuvius Challenge , an international research effort to digitally read the scrolls that were preserved when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by ash and pumice in A.D. 79. Papyrologists, who study and preserve the ancient manuscripts, announced June 25 that they had digitally unwrapped the surviving portion of one scroll, known as PHerc. 1667, revealing roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) of continuous Greek text across 20 columns. Researchers also recovered more than 70 columns of text from a second scroll, PHerc. 172.

"For nearly two millennia, many of these texts have been physically preserved but intellectually inaccessible," Brent Seales , Vesuvius Challenge co-founder and a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, said in a statement . "Today ‪—‬ after years of interdisciplinary work combining advanced imaging, artificial intelligence , academic research and an innovation contest ‪—‬ we are finally able to read them."

Over the past few years, Seales and his team have used a synchrotron to essentially X-ray inside the scrolls and detect the ink ancient Romans used to write. The letters are then studied by papyrologists, who translate the text.

Part of PHerc. 1667 was physically opened in the 1980s, but overlapping layers obscured the writing so badly that the scroll was given a readability score of zero, Federica Nicolardi , a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, said in the statement.

The handwriting and text of PHerc. 1667 suggest the scroll dates to the second or third century B.C., making it one of the oldest scrolls in the Herculaneum collection. This early date means it could not have been authored by Philodemus of Gadara , the first-century-B.C. Epicurean philosopher whose writings dominated the Herculaneum library.

Experts think the text reads more like a Stoic treatise on ethics and human behavior, and it specifically mentions Aristocreon, the nephew and pupil of the influential Stoic philosopher Chrysippus . Very little of Chrysippus' own writing has survived, so if the attribution holds up, it would be a significant addition to the historical record of early Stoic thought.

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In a separate discovery, researchers identified a new book title within scroll PHerc. 139. The end of the scroll references Philodemus' eighth book of "On Gods." While this treatise had previously been known to exist, the new discovery reveals the work extended across at least eight volumes. Experts plan to reexamine other texts in the Herculaneum collection for additional volumes that may belong to the same series.

More than 600 Herculaneum scrolls remain unopened. It's thought that the villa was once owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar .

How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius? Find out by taking our Pompeii quiz!