On the morning of 12 May Azeri forces crossed the Azeri-Armenian border in the Sev Lake area, about 30 km northwest of the Lachin corridor that connects Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated during an emergen...

National governments, the EU, and NATO are considering how to expand their individual and joint military mobility (MM) efforts across Europe during the next decade, with a broad emphasis on speeding up procedures for transit movement across national borders.  The Dutch Ministry of Defence has worked with civil authorities to create three multimodal corridors of infrastructure for military movements across the Netherlands: road (photo of CV90 infantry fighting vehicles moving by highway), rail, and inland waterways. (Dutch MoD)  “We want a wel...

A number of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) fast in-shore attack craft (FIAC) conducted unsafe and unprofessional manoeuvres on 10 May and failed to exercise due regard for the safety of US forces, as required under internati...

The EU’s new goal of creating a so-called initial entry force for rapid expeditionary deployment to regions in crisis sounds good on paper but is fraught with thorny political, financial, and pragmatic problems that the 27 EU countries must resolve if the force is to see the light of day.  The EU’s proposed rapid reaction entry force faces political, financial, and pragmatic hurdles. (Getty Images)    An EU diplomatic source told   Janes  on 10 May, “A ready-to-go insertion force would mean 24/7 standby troops and assets, whic...

The Lockheed Martin contractors who are supporting the Iraqi Air Force’s fleet of F-16 multirole fighters have left Balad Air Base again due to security threats, the US company has confirmed.  The company confirmed an earlier Reuters report on 10 M...

India’s military has been widely employed to assist the country in its fight against the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic by providing doctors, medical staff, and transporting essential supplies such oxygen, medicines, and equipment from overse...

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has accused the China Coast Guard (CCG) of “shadowing” and “blocking” Philippine Coast Guard (PGC) vessels that were conducting what it described as “legitimate maritime patrols and training exerci...

China and Russia have shifted their pandemic-related disinformation strategies against the West from distortions about face-masks and the Covid-19 virus itself to Europe’s “failed” public health campaigns and alleged attempts to suppress non-Western vaccines, according to the EU’s European External Action Service (EEAS). In its 28 April analysis of fake news about the virus and its impact, the EEAS stated, “Since the beginning of 2021 state-sponsored disinformation has intensified, targeting in particular Western-developed vaccines. ‘Vaccine’...

The governments of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have agreed to a ceasefire following a border clash over access to water resources that led to dozens of people being killed and many more injured.  The agreement was signed on 1 May during negotiations...

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have clashed over access to water resources along the northern border lying between the Sogdia Province of Tajikistan and the Batken Region of Kyrgyzstan.  The conflict began on 28 April, with the press department of the T...

The United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines told the White House-hosted Leaders Summit on Climate on 22 April that climate change “must be at the centre of a country’s national security and foreign policy”. Haines said climate change “needs to be fully integrated with every aspect of our analysis in order to allow us not only to monitor the threat but also critically think to ensure that policymakers understand the implication of climate change on seemingly unrelated policies”.  Notably, the summit included a specif...

The European Parliament (EP) approved on 28 April the European Union’s long-standing proposed Terrorist Content Online Regulation. With the EP’s adoption, the legislation is scheduled to enter into force 20 days after its forthcoming publication in...

As US and coalition troops begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fighting between Afghan government forces and the Taliban continues to intensify, with the first three months of the year seeing a sharp increase in the number of enemy-initated attacks (EIAs) compared to the same period last year.  In his latest quarterly report to the US Congress, US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko quoted the Pentagon as saying that while the number of EIAs registered between 1 January and 31 March decreased...

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is deliberating a plan for the regional group to deploy a military force to Mozambique to help stabilise the northern Cabo Delgado province where Islamist insurgents are overwhelming security forces...

Ethiopia’s general election, originally scheduled for August 2020 but delayed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, is set for 5 June. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is looking to secure a mandate for his Prosperity Party (PP), formed in November 2019 out of the parties in Ethiopia’s former ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), with the exception of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), with which he went to war in November 2020.  The conditions for holding the polls are worse than in 2020. Despite limited...

A second report into the circumstances leading to the loss of the Royal Norwegian Navy (RNoN) guided-missile frigate HNoMS Helge Ingstad has concluded that the ship could have been saved if the crew had been better trained in damage control procedures and more familiar with the ship’s stability characteristics.    The Norwegian frigate HNoMS   Helge Ingstad  takes on water after colliding with the tanker   Sola TS  on 8 November 2018 in the Hjeltefjord near Bergen.  (MARIT HOMMEDAL/AFP via Getty Ima...

Russia has issued an international notice to pilots (NOTAM) creating no fly zones over Crimea and parts of the Black Sea from 20–24 April in order to practise convoy protection and surface attack drills. ”The area has been declared temporarily dang...

Russia has continued its build up of amphibious forces in the Black Sea for upcoming exercises with the passage of four Project 775 Ropucha-class large landing ships through the Bosphorus on 17 April.    The Russian Northern Fleet Project 775 Ropucha-class large landing ship  Kondopoga  is pictured transiting the Bosphorus en route to the Black Sea on 17 April.  (Devrim Yaylali)    The four ships –  Kaliningrad  and  Korolev  from the Baltic Fleet, and  Kondopoga  and  Aleksan...

In a statement released on 13 April, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet warned that Myanmar was moving towards a “full blown conflict”. The comments followed the killing of at least 82 people when security forces opened fir...

A team from the US Naval Air Systems Command’s (NAVAIR’s) Naval Air Traffic Management Systems Program Office (PMA-213) has completed certification of the precision approach and landing system (PALS) fitted to the UK Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth ahead of the ship’s first operational deployment in late May.    An F-35B prepares to land aboard the RN carrier HMS   Queen Elizabeth  . In March, the Naval Air Traffic Management Systems Program Office completed a critical step in readying the ship for its fir...