A News Aggregator That Covers The World's Major Wars And Conflicts. Military, Political, And Intelligence News Are Also Covered. Occasionally We Will Have Our Own Opinions Or Observations To Make.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony of the "Year of Chinese Tourism in Russia" at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, March 22, 2013. Reuters
China has plans to build stronger military ties through developing armed forces-technical training cooperation with Russia to boost geopolitical relations. Beijing insists that cooperation between the world’s second- and third-most powerful militaries should not be considered a threat to any third party. “China hopes to develop an all-around and broad cooperation with Russia, including in military-technical cooperation, to gradually strengthen practical cooperation of the two states [as well as strengthen] friendly exchanges between the peoples of our countries,” Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui told RIA Novosti, Russia’s state-owned news agency, in an interview.
WNU Editor: Talk about a Russia - China coalition has been around for decades .... so this speculation is nothing new. But it is true that both countries are now cooperating economically, and that diplomatic/political relations are now at levels that I have never seen (with the exception of when I was stationed there in the 1980s).
Aerial footage finds smoking-gun evidence of Russian army involvement in the conflict. More war is inevitable. Dnipro-1, one of Ukraine’s many pro-government volunteer regiments, today released a video compiling drone footage of a Russian military camp just south of the village of Sontsevo in the Donetsk region. Two drone flights were made over the same area, two weeks apart. Over that time, the camp grew from a small collection of tents and engineering vehicles into a fully-fledged forward operating base (FOB), complete with tanks, communications equipment, personnel quarters and even new roads. [150630-vaux-russia2-embed]
WNU Editor: This video is from a pro-Ukrainian militia .... so yes .... I am cautious and and skeptical on what they are reporting. And what do I see on the video .... tanks, military equipment, soldiers .... all filmed from thousands of feet in the air. Are they Russian-separatists? Russian soldiers? Even maybe a Ukrainian base filmed by accident (or not). I do not know the answer ... but for what it is worth the video is above (with an interesting sound track).
Skirmishes between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels continue despite a truce signed in February, giving little cause for hope of an end to the conflict “This doesn’t smell like peace to me,” said the Monk, sighing heavily in his makeshift control centre, a former chandelier shop in the basement of a block of flats, near the remains of what not long ago was Donetsk international airport. “There is shooting all the time,” he said. A 47-year-old former police officer from Donetsk whose real name is Oleg Gorlenko, he was given his nom de guerre, he said, because he never cheated on his wife. He has been fighting the Ukrainian army for more than a year and does not believe in the current ceasefire. “Often it’s hard to tell who is shooting at whom. Nobody knows what anyone else is doing. But it definitely isn’t a ceasefire.” WNU Editor: Everyone that I know in Ukraine is telling me the same thing .... the front-lines are dangerous, but so are many other regions that are kilometers away from the front lines. From what I can tell .... the entire eastern part of Ukraine is a dangerous place for Ukrainian soldiers, a fact that even the Ukrainian news web sites are now finally acknowledging .... Kurakhove, a Ukrainian-controlled city 10 kilometers from the war front, is on edge with residents divided (Kyiv Post).
Ukraine suspended its purchases of Russian natural gas after European Union-mediated price talks collapsed Tuesday. Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said he was "surprised" that Ukraine was demanding a much deeper discount than what he was offering. He said the price the Ukrainians wanted was out of line with current market conditions, and that the decision to stop buying Russian gas was political. Ukraine said the price cut Russia was offering was not low enough. But it said it would fulfill its contract to send Russian gas to the EU through pipelines running across Ukrainian territory.
WNU Editor: Winter is only 6 months away.
More News On Russian - Ukrainian Gas Talks Collapsing
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits across from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and other advisers, Vienna, Austria, June 27, 2015 (State Department photo).
Welcome to what could turn out to be the most important, and potentially the most destructive, week in international diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. In the next seven days, we are meant to reach three major turning points in global affairs. On Tuesday, major powers are meant to conclude an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. On the same day, Greece is supposed to make a 1.6 billion euro payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but may fail to do so. And on Sunday, Greek voters will vote in a referendum on the latest bailout package offered by its creditors in the eurozone and the IMF. The Greek government says it wants them to reject the deal, arguing that the terms are too austere, especially over pensions.
Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- June 30, 2015
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday confirmed Greece had not made its 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) loan repayment to the Fund, making it the first advanced economy to ever be in arrears to the Fund. The missed payment, the largest in the Fund's history, is equivalent to a default, in that both imply a breach of Athens' obligations. IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said Greece can now only receive further IMF funding once the arrears are cleared.
The FBI is setting up command centers at each of its 56 field offices across the country ahead of the July 4th weekend over fears of a possible ISIS-inspired terrorist attack. This graph shows all the field offices except for the ones in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico
Following a warning bulletin from several US agencies about potential terrorist threats around the 4 July weekend, the FBI is establishing command centres to monitor possible terrorist activities.
The bulletin, released on 27 June, stated there was no known active plots, but instead served as a general warning.
Following a warning bulletin from several US agencies about potential terrorist threats around the 4 July weekend, the FBI is establishing command centres to monitor possible terrorist activities.
The bulletin, released on 27 June, stated there was no known active plots, but instead served as a general warning.
A map showing the risk threat of popular holiday destinations, as determined by Gov.uk. The high risk areas are those where there is a high level of known terrorist activity, as opposed to a general threat area where only some level of known terrorist activity is present
See where around the world the Foreign Office believes a terror attack is most likely to happen
The theat of terrorism is rated "high" in more than 30 countries around the world, according to the Foreign Office, with summer holiday favourites such as Spain and France given the same rating as Libya, Pakistan and Somalia.
Other popular travel destinations to receive the Foreign Office's highest terror threat level include Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Australia and Belgium.
Despite stock sell-off, administration says U.S. has little to fear from eurozone crisis. U.S. stocks tanked on Monday with the Dow giving up all its gains for the year as Greece headed toward default and possible exit from the eurozone common currency union. And the White House said: not our problem. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 350.33 points, or close to 2 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Nasdaq each also lost around 2 percent as Greece kept its banks shuttered, fearing a run on cash, and prepared to default on its debt on Tuesday. Asked about the stock market decline and Greece on Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest basically shrugged it off. “The fact is the U.S. exposure to Greece is small, in terms of our direct exposure,” he said. “We do continue to urge all sides to contribute to pragmatic discussions.”
Racked by financial woes since 2008, Greece has all but defaulted on its loans after the failure of talks with with the European Union and its various creditors. The country is heading towards a high-stakes referendum next week that could result in the country eventually leaving the Eurozone. Still, despite Greece's staggering economic problems, the country has consistently maintained one of the highest defense expenditures as a percentage of GDP in all of Europe. For 2015, NATO projects that Greece will spend 2.4% of its GDP on defense, which is actually a 0.1% increase in spending over 2014. The previous year, the country's debt as percentage of GDP was at 175%, while its economy contracted by 3.3%.
WNU Editor: If everything is about to collapse .... the one institution/group/organization that the government will (definitely and always) spend its money on is .... the military, national police, riot control, security, tear gas, prisons, intelligence, physical security, etc.. For Greece .... no one should be surprised that its military budget is the only thing that is not being cut .... but in fact being increased.
On a personal note .... when the economy collapsed in Russia in the 1990s .... some of my cousins started a security company that specialized in installing security for homes/commercial businesses/government buildings (i.e. grills, bullet proof glass, reinforced steel doors, commercial iron gates, cameras, etc.). Their business .... after 20 years .... is still booming.
Vast amounts of German money are at stake if Greece goes bankrupt -- with liabilities as high as €84 billion. Even though that figure is a large one, it would be paid over years and dangers to the Berlin budget are limited. "So far, Germany hasn't had to spend a single euro from the federal budget on Greece." It's a line one has heard dozens of times on German talk shows in recent years. Soon, though, the claim may no longer hold true. A Greek insolvency is now within the realm of possibility and if the country does go bust, it could directly burden the German federal budget. But how many billions of euros in German money are actually at stake? It may seem like a simple question, but there are no easy answers, because Germany's actual liability for Greek debt depends on a number of factors.
WNU Editor: A good analysis on who Greece owes the most money to .... which in this case is Germany. But while €84.5 billion is a lot of money .... in the entire scheme of things .... a drop in the bucket for the German economy and its government.
Less than 10% of the money was used by the government for reforming its economy and safeguarding weaker members of society. Only a small fraction of the €240bn (£170bn) total bailout money Greece received in 2010 and 2012 found its way into the government’s coffers to soften the blow of the 2008 financial crash and fund reform programmes. Most of the money went to the banks that lent Greece funds before the crash. Unlike most of Europe, which ran up large budget deficits to protect pensioners and welfare recipients, Athens was then forced to dramatically reduce its deficit by squeezing pensions and cutting the minimum wage.
WNU Editor: This analysis ignores the years before the 2008 financial crisis when the Greek government .... with the backing of the voters who voted them in .... spent the money that they borrowed on projects like the Olympics in 2004 and .... of course .... social programs, infrastructure, and government jobs. Money that bought votes .... but money that had to eventually be paid back one day. But Phillip Inman is correct that after 2008 .... with exposure running in the hundreds of billions in Euros .... the "powers that be" scrambled to convert this debt exposure from private institutions to the public ones .... hence socking today's taxpayers with the bill.
The referendum called by Greece’s prime minister is a bad idea, but at this stage it’s about the best available. Greek banks have been shut down to avoid a meltdown; bailout talks with European creditors are frozen; Athens does not have the money to pay 1.6 billion euros due to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday, threatening default and withdrawal from the euro. So, confronted with conditions from the lenders that he dismissed as “insulting,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made the surprise announcement on Saturday that he was putting the matter before Greek voters in a referendum to be held July 5.
Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials On The Greek Crisis -- June 30, 2015
German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out new negotiations with Greece until after it votes on a proposal from creditors, leaving virtually no hope left to avert a midnight default despite a plea from Athens for a last-minute bailout extension. As the clock ticked down on Tuesday toward midnight, when billions of euros in locked-up bailout funds are due to expire, euro zone finance ministers called a conference call (1:00 a.m. EDT) to discuss the Greek request. Merkel said there could be no new negotiations until after a July 5 referendum that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called on an offer made last week by creditors, which Tsipras has told Greek voters to reject.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry - seen through a hotel chandelier - and his advisers sit with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and their counterparts on June 30, 2015, in Vienna, Austria.
VIENNA - Negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, which were under a Tuesday deadline, have been extended until July 7, U.S. officials say. Participants "have decided to extend the measures under the Joint Plan of Action until July 7 to allow more time for negotiations to reach a long-term solution - a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - on the Iran nuclear issue," U.S. spokeswomen Marie Harf said. The announcement came amid continuing talks in Vienna.
General Babaker Zebari, who has been in the job for a decade, retires as PM Abbadi acknowledges military's failures. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi has "retired" the army's chief of staff, the most senior officer removed since rebel fighters overran large parts of the country last year, his spokesman has said. General Babaker Zebari "has been retired" on Abbadi's orders, Saad al-Hadithi told the AFP news agency on Monday, without providing further details.
Military And Intelligence News Briefs -- June 30, 2015
Ike’s Arsenal Eisenhower poured money into the Air Force to develop its Cold War triad of nuclear threats—land-based and sea-based missiles, ICBMs and bombers. The heavy spending didn’t let up under JFK. | Reagan’s Build-Up Claiming that the United States had “unilaterally disarmed” before he took office, Reagan oversaw a massive defense build-up. Some say the the Soviet Union’s struggle to keep up brought on its demise. | Bush’s Surge The historic peak of Army spending authority came during two land wars—in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where the military was in the midst of a 30,000-strong troop surge. Source: Department Of Defense, Budget Authority by Branch
The Joint Chiefs keep ordering up ambitious new war plans. But their biggest battle might be with each other. At first, it’s hard to see Operation Desert Storm as anything less than an unparalleled American military victory. The battleship U.S.S. Missouri began the campaign to forcibly remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait by firing four Tomahawk cruise missiles at military command and control centers in Baghdad in the early morning hours of January 17, 1991. “I’ll never forget the day we launched these,” a Missouri crew member who witnessed the Tomahawk attack later wrote. “We listened to CNN radio from Baghdad after we had launched our birds. For an hour, everything was calm, but we knew sorties were on the way. Then all hell broke loose.” In all, the United States fired 297 Tomahawk missiles from ships and submarines during the Gulf War, of which 282 reached and destroyed their targets. Nine of the missiles failed to fire, six fell into the water after their launch, and two were shot down. The Tomahawks’ carefully tabulated success rate of 94.94 percent was revolutionary, the most precise delivery of munitions on target in the history of warfare. And the Tomahawks were just one of an array of air assets used in the war’s earliest days to destroy Iraq’s military and leadership infrastructure.
WNU Editor: This is a long read, but it gives an insight into how Pentagon planners go about planning to fight the next war.
More than 100 people were feared dead after a military transport plane ploughed into a residential area shortly after take-off in northern Indonesia on Tuesday, in what may be the deadliest accident yet for an air force with a long history of crashes. "For the moment we know there were 113 people (on board). It looks like there are no survivors," Air Marshal Agus Supriatna told Metro TV in the Sumatra city of Medan, adding that some of the passengers were air force families.
More News On Today's Indonesia Military Transport Plane Crash In The Sumatra City Of Medan
The Pentagon said on Monday that the explosion of a rocket launched by SpaceX over the weekend demonstrated the Pentagon's need for two companies with the capability to launch national security payloads into space. "It think it underscores the reason that we've been adamant about maintaining assured access to space through the use of two independent launch capabilities," Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters at a briefing.
Rhetoric about nuclear weapons is heating up between Washington and Moscow, but there is no need to reinstate the foolish and wasteful arms race that dominated the Cold War period. For one reason, the security challenges have changed. Having 1,500 or more deployed U.S. nuclear warheads on land- or sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs or missiles, will not help a U.S. president defeat terrorists or deal with proxy wars somewhere in the world — or even protect American assets in the new confrontational arenas of space and cyberspace. There also are the astronomical costs for modernizing not just the current triad of delivery systems — the strategic submarines, bombers and land-based ICBMs — but also continuing the life-extension programs for the nuclear stockpile and upgrading the nuclear weapons-building complex itself. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the cost for all that modernization would average $18 billion a year from 2021 through 2035 — or $252 billion over that 14-year period.
WNU Editor: I suspect that this debate is now starting .... and for good reason .... nuclear forces are expensive to develop , manufacture, and maintain .... and with a looming $1 trillion price tag for the U.S. taxpayer .... some hard questions (and discussions) will need to take place.
Hypersonic weapons can achieve speeds over five times faster than the speed of sound (Mach 5) and they are the latest version of precision guided munitions (PGM) that make up part of the larger family of long-range strike weapons systems. In the United States, hypersonic weapons are pursued in the context of the conventional prompt global strike (CPGS) commonly defined by officials as a technology of “high-precision conventional weapons capable of striking a target anywhere in the world within one hour’s time.” Outside the United States, states such as China or Russia have been pursuing this promising technology in secrecy. Therefore, we have little information regarding the stage of development the Russians or Chinese have achieved.
A-10s of the 81st Fighter Wing sit at Spangdahlem Air Base in 2012. At top — A-10s from the 188th Fighter Wing take part in an exercise. Air Force photos
Fed auditors blast Air Force’s baseless Warthog retirement plan
Two years ago, the U.S. Air Force annoyed the other military branches, Congress and the general public when it announced a plan to quickly retire its roughly 300 A-10 Warthog attack jets — rugged tank-killers that have flown down-and-dirty close air support, or CAS, for American ground troops since the 1991 Gulf War.
The Air Force’s rationale for dumping the A-10s keeps shifting. Now government auditors have poked holes in the flyboys’ latest justification — that the branch must drop the ungainly Warthogs in order to free up maintainers for the slowly-growing fleet of pricey F-35 stealth fighters.
WNU Editor: My advice to the Air Force brass is simple. If you want to drop this plane find a replacement that can fly the same mission for the same cost.
Defense analysts combine sci-fi and reality to portray future weapons, gadgets.
Tech like virtual reality, robotics and increasingly fast Internet is changing the way we live, but how will it evolve a generation from now, or even change the way we fight a global war? The new science fiction thriller “Ghost Fleet” takes on questions like that by drawing inspiration from real-life prototypes and emerging sectors of technology to depict how both war and everyday life look in the future just a few decades from now. The book goes on sale on Tuesday.
Authors Peter W. Singer and August Cole expand their research as defense analysts into the realm of imagination about a not-too-distant future that could find the U.S. at war with a great power like China. Singer is a strategist at the New America Foundation and a consultant for the U.S. military. Cole is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and a former defense reporter with The Wall Street Journal.
WNU Editor: This looks like my "must read" fiction book for this summer.
New stealth fighter is dead meat in an air battle. A test pilot has some very, very bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The pricey new stealth jet can’t turn or climb fast enough to hit an enemy plane during a dogfight or to dodge the enemy’s own gunfire, the pilot reported following a day of mock air battles back in January. “The F-35 was at a distinct energy disadvantage,” the unnamed pilot wrote in a scathing five-page brief that War Is Boring has obtained. The brief is unclassified but is labeled “for official use only.” The test pilot’s report is the latest evidence of fundamental problems with the design of the F-35 — which, at a total program cost of more than a trillion dollars, is history’s most expensive weapon.
Turkish soldiers stand guard near the Mursitpinar border gate in Suruc, Sanliurfa province, Turkey, as Syrian Kurds wait in tents behind the border fences to cross into Turkey, June 27, 2015. Islamic State attacked the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani on Thursday, which lies to the northwest of Hasaka on the Turkish border. It is reported to have killed at least 145 people in and around Kobani in what the Observatory has described as one of the worst massacres carried out by Islamic State in Syria. The YPG has described the attack on Kobani as "a suicide mission" rather than an attempt to capture the town. Murad Sezer/Reuters
A year after Islamic State declared a caliphate on territory seized in Iraq and Syria, the al Qaeda splinter group faces military pressure from a U.S.-led coalition but remains a potent force holding key cities, the Pentagon said on Monday. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Defense Department spokesman, said the militant group has lost a quarter of the land it controlled at the height of its expansion and has broken and run on several occasions in northern Syria in the face of an offensive by Kurdish-led forces. But Islamic State militants still control the Iraqi city of Mosul, where leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared last July to declare himself the head of the new caliphate, which had been proclaimed on June 29, 2014. The group recently captured the key Sunni city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's vast western province of Anbar.
WNU Editor: Nothing new in this Pentagon report ..... it is stating the obvious. If there is a bright note ... it is that the Islamic State has lost territory in the past few months, and their fighters have fled when confronted by disciplined Kurdish forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R), Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem (back to camera) attend a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 29, 2015.Reuters/Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti/Kremlin
Russia has promised to support Syria's government "politically, economically and militarily." President Vladimir Putin also called on the Middle East to unite against the 'Islamic State' (IS).
Speaking in the Russian capital of Moscow on Monday, Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said he received the pledge of support for Syrian President Bashar Assad during a surprise meeting with his Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Quashing rumors that Russia would no longer support Assad, Putin said on Monday that his country's policy "which is intended to support Syria, Syria's leaders and its people, remains unchanged."
"We are convinced that in the end the Syrian people will be victorious," Putin said. WNU Editor: This meeting was a surprise. My guess is that the Syrian government wants more support .... and it looks like they are going to get it. But while everyone is smiles and happy handshakes, I suspect that many in the Kremlin are now making bets amongst themselves on how long Bashar Assad will actually last.
More News On Russia Reiterating Its Support Of The Syrian Regime Of President Bashar Assad
