Novel artificial intelligence (AI)-based tactical decision aids developed by Roke and CGI Defence in conjunction with the UK Defence Science and Research Laboratory (Dstl) have been demonstrated on two Royal Navy (RN) warships in an operational exp...
Since assuming office on 20 January, US President Joe Biden has repeatedly underscored that the United States is returning to the forefront of multilateral diplomacy, reversing the global withdrawal under his predecessor, Donald Trump. Addressing the African Union Summit on 5 February, Biden promised to “rebuild partnerships around the world and re-engage” to confront destabilising issues ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic to the continent’s multiple conflicts.
One of Biden’s first acts in office was to sign an executive order overturning T...
On 15 April 2021, the United States sanctioned several Russian entities for their involvement in the SolarWinds hack, a cyber-espionage operation that it attributed to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba vneshney razvedki: SVR). Washington denounced the attack on the supply chain and the undue burden on the private sector and invoked Russia’s past behaviour as an argument for strongly responding to the cyber operation. However, it is less clear why the US adopted sanctions for this particular cyber-espionage campaign, as many ot...
US President Joe Biden has said that the recently reached co-operation agreement between the US and Taiwanese coast guards will “help ensure” that the United States “is positioned to better respond to shared threats in the [Indo-Pacific] region and...
Borey (Project 955A)-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) fleet, according to local media reports.
USS Seawolf is pictured visiting Royal Navy base Clyde (Faslane) in Scotland in September 2020. (Tony Roper)
Following Russia's recent ‘Umka 2021' military drills, which took place in March within the Arctic circle, a review is now under way to better place the SSBNs to counteract threats and deployments of NATO forces that operate in the North, Russian newspaper Ivestia reported on 11 Ma...
Ten years after the Syrian civil war began in March 2011, President Bashar Assad has failed to unite Syria under his rule, or to return the situation in the country to its pre-war position of powerful and repressive authoritarian rule. Syria remains divided into three principal areas of control – the Damascus government, Kurdish territories, and Turkish-backed, opposition-controlled areas in the north-west and north-east – and is undermined by a variety of external powers and non-state actors that are themselves engaged in often overlapping...
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...
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 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...
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...