The former director of Brazil’s Federal Highway Police, Silvinei Vasques, was arrested in Paraguay on early Friday morning (Dec. 26).

Sentenced by the country’s Supreme Court to 24 years and six months in prison for his involvement in the coup plot aimed at keeping onetime President Jair Bolsonaro in power after his electoral defeat in 2022, he was arrested at an airport in Paraguay while attempting to board a flight to El Salvador.

According to the prosecution, Vasques participated in a group that coordinated the use of police forces to support Bolsonaro’s illegitimate permanence, ordering agents to set up checkpoints that would hinder voters on their way to the polls to vote for then-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the second round of the 2022 elections, held on October 30 of that year.

Vasques is also said to have attended the meeting of October 19, 2022, in which the use of highway police operations to prevent voters from voting in the second round was discussed. He is credited with the phrase, “the time had come for the Federal Highway Police to pick a side in the dispute.”

During the trial of the former police director and other defendants in the so-called Nucleus 2 of the criminal case involving the coup plot, by the first panel of the Supreme Court, on December 9, Vasques’ lawyers argued he did not act to prevent Lula’s voters from traveling to the polls in the second round of the 2022 elections.

Vasques had his preventive arrest ruled in August 2023 and spent a year in custody until Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes granted him provisional release upon compliance with a series of precautionary measures – such as the use of an ankle tag and the cancellation of his passport.

In a report published on the G1 website, journalist Andréia Sadi attributes to the current director of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, the information that Vasques left Brazil without judicial authorization after breaking his ankle tag. When approached and arrested by Paraguayan authorities, Vasques reportedly had an original Paraguayan passport with false personal information.

The Federal Police were reached by our team and had not commented on the information reported by G1 as of the publication of this article.

A new Pentagon Inspector General report says that the Army and Navy misrepresented the academic qualifications of some recruits, allowing both services to exceed federal limits on low-scoring enlistees. The report, released earlier this month, is based on a yearlong review of the services' Future Soldier and Future Sailor preparatory courses, which are new "pre-boot camps" created in recent years. The programs have helped the Army and Navy enlist more recruits amid a national recruiting crisis by taking applicants with low entrance exam scores or fitness shortfalls and aiming to prepare them for service — addressing the deficiencies — in a matter of weeks or months. The Defense Department Inspector General found that the Army and Navy miscalculated the number of low-scoring recruits they enlisted by counting test scores earned after applicants completed the preparatory courses, rather than the scores they received before entering those programs. That approach allowed both services to exceed federal limits on low-scoring recruits without notifying the Secretary of Defense, as required by the rule. The secretary has the authority to raise those limits, but must also inform Congress.

The Pentagon disputed the report's findings, arguing that the scores that should count are those earned at the end of the preparatory courses, not those taken beforehand. "Improving a recruit's academic skills is a primary reason for creating the [Future Soldier and Future Sailor Preparatory Courses]," William Fitzhugh, the acting assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs, wrote in a memo to the inspector general. "Improved academic skills, and the resulting AFQT scores, enable such recruits to pursue a broader range of occupations, which benefits them and the Military Services." Federal law caps the number of recruits who score low on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, known as Category IV applicants, at 4% of the total number of recruits who ship to boot camp each year. Category IV applicants score between the 10th and 30th percentiles on the exam, which assesses subjects such as reading comprehension, math, and mechanics. Such recruits "tend to exhibit below average trainability and on-the-job performance," the report said. The cap is intended to ensure the services attract enough high-scoring recruits to fill technically demanding roles, such as cyber operations, intelligence, and special operations, as well as many logistics and administrative jobs that also require strong academic performance.

Had the services used applicants' original test scores, the Navy would have classified more than 11% of its 2025 enlistments as Category IV recruits, compared with just over 7% when counting scores earned after the preparatory course. The Army also exceeded 10% of Category IV recruits, though the report did not say by how much. The findings come as the Army and Navy begin to emerge from a yearslong recruiting crisis that left both services thousands of recruits short in recent years. Nearly three-quarters of American youth do not meet either the military's fitness or its academic requirements to qualify for service, and fewer than ever are likely to consider military careers, making innovative recruiting efforts critical. A previous inspector general report raised concerns about "less restrictive testing standards" in the Army's preparatory course and found that some participants struggled with English as a second language. The Pentagon also disputed those findings.

The Su-57 delivered to Algeria will differ from the version flown by Russia’s elite squadrons, as export fighters almost always do. Any differences are likely to be found in engines, electronics, and software access, not in the aircraft’s basic airframe.

On the Russian side, the ‘full’ Su-57 is built around a stealth-leaning airframe with internal weapons bays, an AESA radar complex (N036 Byelka) with multiple antenna arrays, a powerful IRST, 360-degree defensive sensors, and eventually the new “second-stage” engine known as Izdeliye 30.

Export aircraft, by contrast, are almost certain to fly with the earlier AL-41F1-series engines: still capable of supercruise and 3D thrust vectoring, but without the same fuel efficiency and thrust margin Russia is chasing for later domestic blocks.

The more significant downgrades are invisible. Avionics and sensor-fusion software determine what the aircraft can actually do with the data its sensors collect. Certain radar modes, electronic-intelligence libraries, and parallel-processing capabilities are unlikely to be included in export builds. Electronic-warfare packages and datalinks will similarly be sanitized, with fewer jamming techniques loaded and tighter controls over encryption and waveforms.

Weapons integration is also controlled. While the Su-57 is designed to carry a broad suite of standoff and anti-radiation missiles internally, export versions will not include nuclear roles, and the longest-range or most sensitive systems may be withheld.

Stealth coatings, too, differ. Russia retains its most sensitive materials for domestic units, with export variants tuned to be slightly less demanding and slightly less classified.

Still, the Su-57E represents a generational leap for Algiers – a level of capability unmatched in the region.