ReportWire

Tag: Military technology

  • Russians place flowers at burnt out tanks in Baltic cities

    Russians place flowers at burnt out tanks in Baltic cities

    [ad_1]

    TALLINN, Estonia — Burnt-out Russian tanks seized by Ukrainian forces last year have gone on display in recent days in the capitals of the three Baltics states, where Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians are turning out to view them and snap photos in sympathy with the Ukrainians defending their homeland.

    But among those visiting the tanks are also members of the countries’ sizeable ethnic Russian minorities, some of whom placed flowers and lit candles to commemorate the fallen Russian soldiers and express support for Moscow.

    The Russian gestures of support for Russia’s side in the war have set off some arguments, and at least one fist fight in Vilnius — underlining the tensions that are simmering in the Baltic nations between the Baltic majorities and the countries’ sizeable Russian minorities.

    On Wednesday, supporters and opponents of the war argued in front of a burned-out Russian T-72 tank struck by Ukrainian forces near Kyiv on March 31. It stands on Freedom Square in the center of the Estonian capital, a space adorned with Ukrainian and Estonian flags and where the Ukrainian anthem could be heard from nearby St. John’s Church.

    The Estonian Defense Ministry on Saturday called the tank “a symbol of Russia’s brutal invasion. It also shows that the aggressor can be defeated. Let’s help Ukraine defend freedom.”

    Last week, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced that the tanks were going on display in the three Baltic capitals, and to Berlin as museum exhibits, following similar displays in Poland and the Czech Republic last year.

    Anatoly Yarkov, a 78-year-old Soviet army veteran who showed up to see the tank in Tallinn, said that he feels bitter about Ukraine fighting against Russia in a war that he said had been rooted in the 1991 collapse of the USSR.

    “Russian tanks are burning again like it happened during the war with the Nazis,” Yarkov said. “The Russian people always stood against the Nazis, no matter what flag they used. And I’m very sorry to see that the Ukrainians aren’t on our side today.”

    Russian government officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have promoted a false narrative that Moscow’s military is fighting against neo-Nazis even though Ukraine has a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust and who heads a Western-backed, democratically-elected government.

    As some Russians placed flowers on the tank in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, the city authorities put a garbage container in the vicinity with a sign saying it’s “for flowers, candles & Soviet nostalgia.”

    Not all Russians are taking Moscow’s side.

    Marina, a 60-year-old Russian citizen who didn’t give her last name for reasons of personal security, said she condemned the invasion of Ukraine and hailed Ukrainians for fighting back.

    “This Russian tank could have rolled into the Estonian city of Narva, which Putin might have declared a Russian city,” she said, adding that her children and grandchildren have Estonian citizenship. “And I understand very well that only heroic resistance of the Ukrainians saved my children from that bloody scenario unfolding in Estonia.”

    Also visiting the tanks are Ukrainians who have been turned into refugees by the war.

    Anastasia Olezhko, an 18-year-old who fled the Ukrainian city of Mariupol when Russian tanks fired on the city, said that “I saw such Russian tanks, and one of them destroyed my house in Mariupol, of which only the foundation was left.”

    “How could I feel about it?” she exclaimed.

    In Berlin, the tank also became a site of homage. Pro-Russia sympathizers placed red roses on a destroyed tank that was displayed in front of the Russian Embassy. The roses were eventually removed. The Russian Embassy denied that it had organized the placement of the flowers, but said that it welcomed the “heartfelt gesture by German citizens and our compatriots in Germany.”

    ___

    Vanessa Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. Frank Jordans contributed to this report from Berlin.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Drones fly deep inside Russia; Putin orders border tightened

    Drones fly deep inside Russia; Putin orders border tightened

    [ad_1]

    KYIV, Ukraine — Drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow, signaling breaches in Russian defenses as President Vladimir Putin ordered stepped-up protection at the border.

    Officials said the drones caused no injuries and did not inflict any significant damage, but the attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning raised questions about Russian defense capabilities more than a year after the country’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

    Ukrainian officials did not immediately take responsibility, but they similarly have avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.

    Although Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

    Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

    The drone attacks targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.

    A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.

    The drone did not cause any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object.”

    Pictures of the drone showed it was a small Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.

    Russian forces early Tuesday shot down another Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.

    Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in the capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighboring Adygea. It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed a facility it was supposed to attack.

    Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency reported a fire at the oil facility, and some other Russian reports said that two drones exploded nearby.

    While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod have become a regular occurrence, other strikes reflected a more ambitious effort.

    Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.

    Andrei Medvedev, a commentator with Russian state television who serves as a deputy speaker of Moscow’s city legislature and runs a popular blog about the war, warned that the drone strikes could be a precursor to wider attacks within Russia that could accompany Ukraine’s attempt to launch a counteroffensive.

    “The strikes of exploding drones on targets behind our lines will be part of that offensive,” Medvedev said, adding that Ukraine could try to extend the range of its drones.

    Russia hawks urged strong retaliation. Igor Korotchenko, a retired Russian army colonel turned military commentator, called for a punishing strike on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv.

    Another retired military officer, Viktor Alksnis, noted that the drone attacks marked the expansion of the conflict and criticized Putin for failing to deliver a strong response.

    Also on Tuesday, authorities reported that airspace around St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, was temporarily closed, halting all departures and arrivals at the main airport, Pulkovo. Officials did not give a reason for the move, but some Russian reports claimed that it was triggered by an unidentified drone.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said it was conducting air defense drills in western Russia.

    Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.

    Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.

    In another development that fueled tensions across Russia on Tuesday, an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several regions. Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country.”

    Meanwhile, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appeared to show a Russian warplane in Belarus that Belarusian guerrillas claimed to have targeted as largely intact.

    Tuesday’s high-resolution images from Planet Labs PBC and Maxar Technologies showed the Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft after what Belarusian opposition activists described as an attack on the Machulishchy air base Sunday outside the Belarusian capital of Minsk.

    However, a discoloration could be seen on the aircraft’s distinctive, circular rotodome above its fuselage that could be damage. That discoloration wasn’t seen in earlier images of the aircraft at the air base. The Maxar image also showed what appeared to be vehicles near the airplane as well.

    Belarusian activists supporting Ukraine alleged that the aircraft was seriously damaged. Russian and Belarusian officials did not comment on the claims.

    In Ukraine, four people were killed and five others wounded Tuesday by renewed Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a Telegram.

    A 68-year-old man was also killed as Russian forces shelled Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.

    The fiercest fighting continued to be in eastern areas of Ukraine, where Russia wants control over all four of the provinces it illegally annexed in September.

    Ukrainian officials said Russian forces have deployed additional troops and equipment, including the latest T-90 battle tanks, in those areas.

    In a video address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked U.S. industrialists for supporting Ukraine and voiced hope for their support in rebuilding the country after the war. Zelenskyy noted that the country faces a “colossal task” to restore hundreds of thousands of damaged sites, including “whole cities, industries, productions.”

    ___ Associated Press Writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this report from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Japan OKs new budget incl. hefty arms cost to deter China

    Japan OKs new budget incl. hefty arms cost to deter China

    [ad_1]

    TOKYO — The lower house of Parliament approved Tuesday a budget for the coming fiscal year that includes a record 6.8 trillion yen ($50 billion) in defense spending, part of Japan‘s effort to fortify its military as China’s influence in the region grows.

    The 2023 defense budget, up 20% from a year earlier, includes 211.3 billion yen ($1.55 billion) for deployment of U.S.-made long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be launched from warships and can hit targets up to 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away.

    The planned purchase of the Tomahawks has drawn criticism over the cost, with opposition lawmakers blasting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for prioritizing arms spending over other issues such as Japan’s shrinking population.

    “The improvement of childcare has been neglected for more than 10 years,” Chinami Nishimura, a lawmaker with the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, told a lower house budget committee meeting Tuesday. “Why did the budget for spending so much money on Tomahawks get approved so quickly?”

    “I don’t think it’s about choosing between one or the other,” Kishida responded. “Both are important for the lives and livelihood of the people.”

    Japan is to pay the United States another 110 billion yen ($830 million) in the coming fiscal year, which begins in April, for equipment and software needed to launch the Tomahawks plus fees for technology transfers and training.

    Kishida told a parliamentary session Monday that Japan will purchase 400 units of Tomahawks.

    Passage of the 114 trillion yen ($836 billion) budget by the lower house of parliament, the more powerful of its two chambers, ensures it will be enacted by the end of March regardless of any decision by the upper house.

    The hefty defense budget is the first installment of a five-year, 43-trillion-yen ($315-billion) military spending plan as part of Japan’s new National Security Strategy, which was announced in December.

    The new strategy includes developing a “counterstrike capability” to preempt enemy attacks, a controversial change given Japan’s commitment to retain only defensive capabilities after its defeat in World War II. Military spending is due to nearly double within the next five years as Japan builds up its defenses in response to potential threats from China, North Korea and Russia.

    The new spending target conforms to NATO standards and will eventually push Japan’s annual defense budget to about 10 trillion yen ($73 billion), the world’s third biggest after the United States and China.

    Kishida has called Japan’s rapidly aging and shrinking population a national crisis and promised to compile a package of comprehensive measures to tackle the problem in coming months. A new government department, the Children and Families Agency, is due to be launched in April to help coordinate government policies on various social issues including child poverty and child abuse.

    The budget allocates 4.8 trillion yen ($35 billion) for the new agency, but experts say more funding and broader social changes are needed to alleviate the burdens of child care and education and encourage younger Japanese to marry and have children.

    Government statistics released Tuesday showed births in 2022 fell to a record low 799,728, dropping below 800,000 for the first time since 1899 and at a faster-than-expected pace than earlier predicted. The number of births last year was one-third of the peak of nearly 2.7 million in 1949.

    The 2023 budget also allocates more than 850 billion yen ($6.25 billion) to the Economy and Industry Ministry to help phase out use of fossil fuels and 53 billion yen ($388 million) to promote digitalization and increase domestic manufacturing of computer chips.

    On Tuesday, government-backed chip maker Rapidus announced plans to build a new semiconductor plant in Chitose on the northern main island of Hokkaido. Rapidus said it plans to launch a prototype line in 2025, with mass production of cutting-edge chips planned for “the second half of the 2020s.”

    Rapidus includes automaker Toyota Motor Corp., electronics makers Sony Group Corp. and NEC Corp., SoftBank Corp., Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and computer memory maker Kioxia. The company recently announced a tie up with International International Business Machines Corp. in the development and production of 2-nanometer chips.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • North Korea says it test-fired long-range cruise missiles

    North Korea says it test-fired long-range cruise missiles

    [ad_1]

    SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Friday it test-fired long-range cruise missiles in waters off its eastern coast a day earlier, adding to a provocative streak in weapons demonstrations as its rivals step up military training.

    The U.S. and South Korean militaries didn’t immediately confirm the exercise, which North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said were intended to verify the reliability of the missiles and the rapid-response capabilities of the unit that operates those weapons.

    The launches would have taken place as the United States and South Korea held a simulated military exercise in Washington aimed at sharpening their response to North Korean nuclear threats.

    KCNA said the exercise involved four missiles, which flew for nearly three hours, drawing oval and figure-eight patterns above the sea, and showed that they can hit targets 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) away.

    North Korea first tested a long-range cruise missile system in September 2021 and has implied they are being developed to be armed with nuclear warheads.

    It also test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile Saturday and a pair of short-range missiles Monday to demonstrate dual ability to conduct nuclear strikes on South Korea and the U.S. mainland.

    North Korea said Monday’s short-range launches were a response to the United States flying B-1B bombers to the region for joint training with South Korean and Japanese warplanes on Sunday in a show of force following the North’s ICBM test.

    Prior to the ICBM launch, North Korea vowed an “unprecedentedly” strong response over a series of military drills planned by Seoul and Washington. North Korea for decades has described the annual U.S.-South Korea drills as rehearsals for a potential invasion, although the allies say their exercises are defensive in nature.

    North Korea is coming off a record year in weapons demonstrations with more than 70 ballistic missiles fired, including ICBMs with potential to reach the U.S. mainland. It also conducted what it described as simulated nuclear attacks against South Korean and U.S. targets in response to the allies’ joint military exercises.

    Leader Kim Jong Un doubled down on his nuclear push entering 2023, calling for an “exponential increase” in nuclear warheads, mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons targeting “enemy” South Korea and the development of more advanced ICBMs.

    The U.S. Department of Defense and South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the U.S. and South Korean militaries conducted a simulation at the Pentagon on Wednesday that was focused on the possibility of the North Korean use of nuclear weapons. The allies also discussed various adoptions to demonstrate their “strong response capabilities and resolve to response appropriately” to any North Korean nuclear use.

    The Americans during the meeting highlighted the Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, which states that any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies and partners is “unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime,” the U.S. Department of Defense said. It was referring to a legislatively mandated document that spells out U.S. nuclear policy and strategy for the next five to 10 years.

    The U.S. and South Korean delegations also visited U.S. nuclear submarine training facilities at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia, where they were briefed on the mission of Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. U.S. officials at the base described such forces as key means of providing U.S. extended deterrence to allies, referring to a commitment to defend them with the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear ones.

    In face of the North’s growing threats, South Korea has been seeking stronger reassurances from the United States that it would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear capabilities to defend its ally from a North Korean nuclear attack.

    “The United States will continue to work with (South Korea) to ensure an effective mix of capabilities, concepts, deployments, exercises, and tailored options to deter and, if necessary, respond to coercion and aggression by (North Korea),” the Department of Defense said in a statement.

    The U.S. and South Korean militaries have another joint computer-simulated exercise and field training scheduled in March, which South Korean officials say would involve the allies’ biggest live-fire training in years.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Putin suspends Russia’s involvement in key nuclear arms pact

    Putin suspends Russia’s involvement in key nuclear arms pact

    [ad_1]

    MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Tuesday that Moscow was suspending its participation in the New START treaty — the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States — sharply upping the ante amid tensions with Washington over the fighting in Ukraine.

    Speaking in his state-of-the-nation address, Putin also said that Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so, a move that would end a global ban on nuclear weapons tests in place since Cold War times.

    Explaining his decision to suspend Russia’s obligations under New START, Putin accused the U.S. and its NATO allies of openly declaring the goal of Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.

    “They want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time,” he said.

    Putin argued that while the U.S. has pushed for the resumption of inspections of Russian nuclear facilities under the treaty, NATO allies had helped Ukraine mount drone attacks on Russian air bases hosting nuclear-capable strategic bombers.

    “The drones used for it were equipped and modernized with NATO’s expert assistance,” Putin said. “And now they want to inspect our defense facilities? In the conditions of today’s confrontation, it sounds like sheer nonsense.”

    Putin emphasized that Russia is suspending its involvement in New START and not entirely withdrawing from the pact yet.

    The New START treaty, signed in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The agreement envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.

    Just days before the treaty was due to expire in February 2021, Russia and the United States agreed to extend it for another five years.

    Russia and the U.S. have suspended mutual inspections under New START since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Moscow last fall refused to allow their resumption, raising uncertainty about the pact’s future. Russia also indefinitely postponed a planned round of consultations under the treaty.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trudeau: US fighter shot down object over northern Canada

    Trudeau: US fighter shot down object over northern Canada

    [ad_1]

    VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that on his order a U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the U.S. took similar action over Alaska.

    North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined U.S.-Canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude Friday evening over Alaska, U.S. officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.

    Trudeau spoke with President Joe Biden, who also ordered the object to be shot down. Canadian and U.S. jets operating as part of NORAD were scrambled and it was a U.S. jet that shot down the object.

    Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told a news conference in Ottawa that the object, flying at around 40,000 feet, had been shot down at 3:41 p.m. EST, approximately 100 miles from the Canada-U.S. border in the central Yukon. A recovery operation was underway involving the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP.

    Hours later, in the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday night it had closed some airspace in Montana to support Defense Department activities. NORAD later said the closure, which lasted a little more than an hour, came after it had detected “a radar anomaly” and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. The aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, NORAD said.

    F-22 fighter jets have now taken out three objects in the airspace above the U.S. and Canada over seven days, a stunning development that is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has sent them.

    At least one of the objects downed was believed to be a spy balloon from China, but the other two had not yet been publicly identified.

    While Trudeau described the object Saturday as “unidentified,” Anand said it appeared to be “a small cylindrical object, smaller than the one that was downed off the coast of North Carolina.” A NORAD spokesman, Maj. Olivier Gallant, said the military had determined what it was but would not reveal details.

    Anand refused to speculate whether the object shot down over Canada came from China.

    “We are continuing to do the analysis on the object and we will make sure that analysis is thorough,” she said. “It would not be prudent for me to speculate on the origins of the object at this time.”

    Anand said to her knowledge this was the first time NORAD had downed an object in Canadian airspace.

    “The importance of this moment should not be underestimated,” she said. “We detected this object together and we defeated this object together.”

    She was asked why a U.S. jet, and not a Canadian plane, shot the object down.

    “As opposed to separating it out by country, I think what the important point is, these were NORAD capabilities, this was a NORAD mission and this was NORAD doing what it is supposed to do,” she said.

    Anand didn’t use the word “balloon” to describe the object. But later, Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defense staff, said the instructions given to the planes was “who ever had the first, best shot to take out the balloon had the go-ahead.”

    Trudeau said Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for study. The Yukon is westernmost Canadian territory and the among the least populated part of Canada.

    After the airspace closure over Montana, multiple members of Congress, including Montana Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester, said they were in touch with defense officials. Daines tweeted that he would “continue to demand answers on these invasions of US airspace.”

    Just about a day earlier, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot out of the skies above remote Alaska. Officials couldn’t say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.

    Kirby said it was shot down because it was flying at about 40,000 feet (13,000 meters) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in surveillance.

    According to U.S. Northern Command, recovery operations continued Saturday on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.

    In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new details on what the object was. It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery.

    “Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said.

    On Feb. 4, U.S. officials shot down a large white balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

    The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon has said. The U.S. has said Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.

    China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticized the U.S. for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”

    The Navy continued survey and recovery activities on the ocean floor off South Carolina, and the Coast Guard was providing security. Additional debris was pulled out Friday, and additional operations will continue as weather permits, Northern Command said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • China says it’s looking into report of spy balloon over US

    China says it’s looking into report of spy balloon over US

    [ad_1]

    BEIJING — China said Friday it is looking into reports that a Chinese spy balloon has been flying in U.S. airspace and urged calm, adding that it has “no intention of violating the territory and airspace of any sovereign country.”

    Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning also said she had no information about whether a trip to China by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken planned for next week will proceed as scheduled.

    At a daily briefing, Mao said that politicians and the public should withhold judgment “before we have a clear understanding of the facts” about the spy balloon reports.

    Blinken would be the highest-ranking member of President Joe Biden’s administration to visit China, arriving amid efforts to mitigate a sharp downturn in relations between Beijing and Washington over trade, Taiwan, human rights and China’s claims in the South China Sea.

    “China is a responsible country and has always strictly abided by international laws, and China has no intention of violating the territory and airspace of any sovereign country. As for the balloon, as I’ve mentioned just now, we are looking into and verifying the situation and hope that both sides can handle this together calmly and carefully,” Mao said.

    “As for Blinken’s visit to China, I have no information,” she said.

    A senior defense official told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. has “very high confidence” that the object was a Chinese high-altitude balloon and was flying over sensitive sites to collect information.

    One of the places the balloon was spotted was over the state of Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

    Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the balloon is “currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”

    Ryder said similar balloon activity has been seen in the past several years and the government has taken steps to ensure no sensitive information was stolen.

    President Biden was briefed and asked the military to present options, according to a senior administration official, who was also not authorized to publicly discuss sensitive information.

    Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised against taking “kinetic action” because of risks to the safety of people on the ground. Biden accepted that recommendation.

    The defense official said the U.S. has “engaged” Chinese officials through multiple channels and communicated the seriousness of the matter.

    Blinken’s visit was expected to start this Sunday in an effort to try to find common ground on issues from trade policy to climate change. Although the trip has not been formally announced, both Beijing and Washington have been talking about his imminent arrival.

    The senior defense official said the U.S. prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the balloon if ordered. The Pentagon ultimately recommended against it, noting that even as the balloon was over a sparsely populated area of Montana, its size would create a debris field large enough that it could have put people at risk.

    It was not clear what will happen with the balloon if it isn’t brought down.

    The defense official said the spy balloon was trying to fly over the Montana missile fields, but the U.S. has assessed that it has “limited” value in terms of providing intelligence it couldn’t obtain by other technologies, such as spy satellites.

    The official would not specify the size of the balloon but said commercial pilots could spot it from their cockpits. All air traffic was halted at Montana’s Billings Logan International Airport from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, as the military provided options to the White House.

    A photograph of a large white balloon lingering over the area was captured by The Billings Gazette. The balloon could be seen drifting in and out of clouds and had what appeared to be a solar array hanging from the bottom, said Gazette photographer Larry Mayer.

    The balloon’s appearance adds to national security concerns among lawmakers over China’s influence in the U.S., ranging from the prevalence of the hugely popular smartphone app TikTok to purchases of American farmland.

    “China’s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed,” Republican Party House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted.

    Tensions with China are particularly high on numerous issues, ranging from Taiwan and the South China Sea to human rights in China’s western Xinjiang region and the clampdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong. Not least on that list of irritants are China’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its refusal to rein in North Korea’s expanding ballistic missile program and ongoing disputes over trade and technology.

    On Tuesday, Taiwan scrambled fighter jets, put its navy on alert and activated missile systems in response to nearby operations by 34 Chinese military aircraft and nine warships that are part Beijing’s strategy to unsettle and intimidate the self-governing island democracy.

    Twenty of those aircraft crossed the central line in the Taiwan Strait that has long been an unofficial buffer zone between the two sides, which separated during a civil war in 1949.

    Beijing has also increased preparations for a potential blockade or military action against Taiwan, which has stirred increasing concern among military leaders, diplomats and elected officials in the U.S., Taiwan’s key ally.

    The surveillance balloon was first reported by NBC News.

    From an office window in Billings, Montana, Chase Doak said he saw a “big white circle in the sky” that he said was too small to be the moon.

    “I thought maybe it was a legitimate UFO,” Doak said. “So I wanted to make sure I documented it and took as many photos as I could.”

    ___

    Associated Press news assistant Caroline Chen in Beijing and writers Matthew Lee, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller in Washington, D.C., and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Iran says drone attack targets defense facility in Isfahan

    Iran says drone attack targets defense facility in Isfahan

    [ad_1]

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said early Sunday, causing some damage at the plant amid heightened regional and international tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic.

    The Iranian Defense Ministry offered no information on who it suspected carried out the attack, which came as a refinery fire separately broke out in the country’s northwest and a 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck nearby, killing two people.

    However, Tehran has been targeted in suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow war with its Mideast rival as its nuclear deal with world powers collapsed. Meanwhile, tensions also remain high with neighboring Azerbaijan after a gunman attacked that country’s embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and wounding two others.

    Details on the Isfahan attack, which happened around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remained scarce. A Defense Ministry statement described three drones being launched at the facility, with two of them successfully shot down. A third apparently made it through to strike the building, causing “minor damage” to its roof and wounding no one, the ministry said.

    Iranian state television’s English-language arm, Press TV, aired mobile phone video apparently showing the moment that drone struck along the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway that heads northwest out of Isfahan, one of several ways for drivers to go to the holy city of Qom and Tehran, Iran’s capital. A small crowd stood gathered, drawn by anti-aircraft fire, watching as an explosion and sparks struck a dark building.

    “Oh my God! That was a drone, wasn’t it?” the man filming shouts. “Yeah, it was a drone.”

    Those there fled after the strike.

    That footage of the strike, as well as footage of the aftermath analyzed by The Associated Press, corresponded to a site on Minoo Street in northwestern Isfahan that’s near a shopping center that includes a carpet and an electronics store.

    Iranian defense and nuclear sites increasingly find themselves surrounded by commercial properties and residential neighborhoods as the country’s cities sprawl ever outward. Some locations as well remain incredibly opaque about what they produce, with only a sign bearing a Defense Ministry or paramilitary Revolutionary Guard logo.

    The Defense Ministry only called the site a “workshop,” without elaborating on what it made. Isfahan, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Tehran, is home to both a large air base built for its fleet of American-made F-14 fighter jets and its Nuclear Fuel Research and Production Center.

    Separately, Iran’s state TV said a fire broke out at an oil refinery in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It said the cause was not yet known, as it showed footage of firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze.

    State TV also said the magnitude-5.9 earthquake killed two people and injured some 580 more in rural areas in West Azerbaijan province, damaging buildings in many villages.

    Iran and Israel have long been engaged in a shadow war that has included covert attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities.

    Last year, Iran said an engineer was killed and another employee was wounded in an unexplained incident at the Parchin military and weapons development base east of the capital, Tehran. The ministry called it an accident, without providing further details.

    Parchin is home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency has said it suspected Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons.

    In April 2021, Iran blamed Israel for an attack on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged its centrifuges.

    Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but Israeli media widely reported that the country had orchestrated a devastating cyberattack that caused a blackout at the nuclear facility. Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency.

    In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its top nuclear scientist.

    Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. U.S. intelligence agencies, Western nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have said Iran ran an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003.

    The United Nations’ top nuclear official, Rafael Mariano Grossi, recently warned that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build “several” nuclear weapons if it chooses.

    Efforts to revive a 2015 agreement with world powers that placed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities ground to a halt last year. Both the U.S. and Israel have vowed to prevent Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, and neither has ruled out military action.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • EU official: Russia shifts war focus to ‘NATO and the West’

    EU official: Russia shifts war focus to ‘NATO and the West’

    [ad_1]

    TOKYO — A senior EU official said Friday that Russia has taken its war against Ukraine to “a different stage” by making indiscriminate attacks on civilians and non-military targets, while criticizing Moscow for triggering recent moves by Germany and the United States to send advanced tanks to Ukraine.

    Stefano Sannino, Secretary General of the European Union’s European External Action Service, defended German and U.S. provisions of the military equipment to Ukraine, and criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for waging a war on NATO and the West.

    Sannino, speaking at a news conference in Tokyo as part of an Asia-Pacific tour, said Putin had “moved from a concept of special operation to a concept now of a war against NATO and the West.”

    He said German and U.S. tank provisions are meant to help Ukrainians defend themselves in the war, rather than making them attackers.

    “I think that this latest development in terms of armed supply is just an evolution of the situation and of the way Russia started moving the war into a different stage,” Sannino said. He added that Russia is making “indiscriminate attacks” on civilians and cities and no longer military targets.

    The EU is not moving the war into a different stage but is “just giving the possibility of saving lives and allowing the Ukrainians to defend (themselves) from these barbaric attacks,” Sannino said.

    Germany and the U.S. announced Wednesday they will send advanced battle tanks to Ukraine, offering what one expert called an “armored punching force” to help Kyiv break combat stalemates as the Russian invasion enters its 12th month.

    The announcement marked the first stage of a coordinated effort by the West to provide dozens of the heavy weapons, which Ukrainian military commanders said would enable counter-offensives, reduce casualties and help restore dwindling ammunition supplies.

    U.S. President Joe Biden said his country will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks, reversing months of persistent arguments by Washington that they were too difficult for Ukrainian troops to operate and maintain.

    The U.S. decision followed Germany’s agreement to send 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from its own stocks.

    Sannino was in Japan this week to discuss further strengthening cooperation between the EU and Japan and other Asia-Pacific nations as they face growing challenges that also affect the region.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • German caution on Ukraine arms rooted in political culture

    German caution on Ukraine arms rooted in political culture

    [ad_1]

    BERLIN — Germany has become one of Ukraine‘s leading weapons suppliers in the 11 months since Russia’s invasion, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz also has gained a reputation for hesitating to take each new step — generating impatience among allies.

    Berlin’s perceived foot-dragging, most recently on the Leopard 2 battle tanks that Kyiv has long sought, is rooted at least partly in a post-World War II political culture of military caution, along with present-day worries about a possible escalation in the war.

    On Friday, Germany inched closer to a decision to deliver the tanks, ordering a review of its Leopard stocks in preparation for a possible green light.

    There was still no commitment, however. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius rejected the suggestion that Germany was standing in the way but said, “we have to balance all the pros and contras before we decide things like that, just like that.”

    It’s a pattern that has been repeated over the months as Scholz first held off pledging new, heavier equipment, then eventually agreed to do so.

    Most recently, Germany said in early January that it would send 40 Marder armored personnel carriers to Ukraine — doing so in a joint announcement with the U.S., which pledged 50 Bradley armored vehicles.

    That decision followed months of calls for Berlin to send the Marder and stoked pressure for it to move up another step to the Leopard tank.

    “There is a discrepancy between the actual size of the commitment and weapons deliveries — it’s the second-largest European supplier — and the hesitancy with which it is done,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a Berlin-based senior analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.

    Scholz, an unshakably self-confident politician with a stubborn streak and little taste for bowing to public calls for action, has stuck resolutely to his approach. He has said that Germany won’t go it alone on weapons decisions and pointed to the need to avoid NATO becoming a direct party to the war with Russia.

    As pressure mounted last week, he declared that he wouldn’t be rushed into important security decisions by “excited comments.” And he insisted that a majority in Germany supports his government’s “calm, well-considered and careful” decision-making.

    Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Scholz listed some of the equipment Germany has sent to Ukraine, declaring that it marks “a profound turning point in German foreign and security policy.”

    That is, at least to some extent, true. Germany refused to provide lethal weapons before the invasion started, reflecting a political culture rooted in part in the memory of Germany’s own history of aggression during the 20th century — including the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

    “No German chancellor, of no party, wants to be seen out front in pushing a military agenda — you want to try all other options before you resort to that,” Kleine-Brockhoff said. “And therefore for domestic consumption, it is seen as a positive thing for a German chancellor not to lead on this, to be cautious, to be resistant, to have tried all other options.”

    Scholz does face calls from Germany’s center-right opposition and some in his three-party governing coalition to be more proactive on military aid; less so from his own center-left Social Democratic Party, which for decades was steeped in the legacy of Cold War rapprochement pursued by predecessor Willy Brandt in the early 1970s.

    Scholz “decided early on that he does not want to lead militarily on Ukraine assistance,” Kleine-Brockhoff said, though “he wants to be a good ally and part of the alliance and in the middle of the pack.”

    But the cautious approach “drives allies crazy” and raises questions over whether they can count on the Germans, Kleine-Brockhoff acknowledged.

    Berlin kept up its caution on the Leopard tank even after Britain announced last week that it would provide Ukraine its own Challenger 2 tanks.

    The hesitancy isn’t just an issue between Berlin and Kyiv, since other countries would need Germany’s permission to send their own stocks of German-made Leopards to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw would consider giving its tanks even without Berlin’s permission.

    “Consent is of secondary importance here. We will either obtain it quickly, or we will do the right thing ourselves,” Morawiecki said.

    British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The Guardian and other newspapers this week that “to its credit, the German government’s position on military support for Ukraine has moved a very long way since the eve of the Russian invasion.”

    But he argued that the tank issue has become “a litmus test of Germany’s courage to resist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s nuclear blackmail, overcome its own domestic cocktail of fears and doubts, and defend a free and sovereign Ukraine,” and that Scholz should lead a “European Leopard plan.”

    Whether that will eventually happen remains to be seen. Scholz’s government has insisted on close coordination with the United States, a possible reflection in part of the fact that Germany — unlike Britain and France — relies on the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

    On Friday, Scholz’s spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, denied reports that Germany had insisted it would only deliver Leopard tanks if the U.S. sends its own Abrams tanks. He rejected the notion that Berlin is trailing others and insisted it is taking the right approach.

    “These are not easy decisions, and they need to be well-weighed,” he said. “And this is about them being sustainable, that all can go along with them and stand behind them — and part of a leadership performance is keeping an alliance together.”

    The U.S. has resisted providing M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, citing extensive and complex maintenance and logistical challenges with the high-tech vehicles. Washington believes it would be more productive to send German Leopards since many allies have them and Ukrainian troops would need less training than on the more difficult Abrams.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Russia’s hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas

    Russia’s hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas

    [ad_1]

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sent a frigate armed with the country’s latest Zircon hypersonic missile on a trans-ocean cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine.

    Russia touts that the Zircon missile can evade any Western air defenses by flying at an astounding 7,000 miles per hour (11,265 km/h).

    Here is a glance at the ship and its weapons.

    THE PRIDE OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY

    Commissioned by the navy in 2018 following long trials, the Admiral Gorshkov is the first ship in the new series of frigates which were designed to replace the aging Soviet-built destroyers as a key strike component of the Russian navy.

    Armed with an array of missiles, the ship is 130-meters (427-feet) long and has a crew of about 200.

    In 2019, it circled the world oceans on a 35,000-nautical mile journey.

    INTENSIVE TESTS

    The Admiral Gorshkov has served as the main testbed for the latest Russian hypersonic missile, Zircon.

    In recent years, the Zircon has undergone a series of tests, including being launched at various practice targets. The military declared the tests successful and Zircon officially entered service last fall.

    Zircon is intended to arm Russian cruisers, frigates and submarines and could be used against both enemy ships and ground targets. It is one of several hypersonic missiles that Russia has developed.

    THE NEW WEAPON

    Putin has hailed Zircon as a potent weapon capable of penetrating any existing anti-missile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (over 620 miles).

    Putin has emphasized that Zircon gives the Russian military a long-range conventional strike capability, allowing it to strike any enemy targets with precision.

    Russia’s hypersonic weapons drive emerged as the U.S. has been working on its own Conventional Prompt Global Strike capability that envisions hitting an adversary’s strategic targets with precision-guided conventional weapons anywhere in the world within one hour.

    Putin heralded Zircon as Russia’s answer to that, claiming that the new weapon has no rival, giving Russia a strategic edge.

    Months before ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin put the U.S. and its NATO allies on notice when he warned that Russian warships armed with Zircon would give Russia a capability to strike the adversary’s “decision-making centers” within minutes if deployed in neutral waters.

    Speaking via video link during Wednesday’s sendoff ceremony, Putin again praised Zircon as a “unique weapon” without an “equivalent for it in any country in the world.”

    In response, the Pentagon said it is monitoring the ship, and did not think it presented a threat that could not be countered.

    “We are aware of the reports regarding the Russian launch of a frigate, the Admiral Grorshkov. We will continue to routinely monitor its activities as we maintain awareness of our operating environment,” said Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Roger Cabiness. “While we do not comment on specific capabilities or speculate on hypotheticals, the Department of Defense remains confident in our ability to deter our adversaries and defend United States national security interests at any time, in any place.”

    OTHER RUSSIAN HYPERSONIC WEAPONS

    Russia has already commissioned the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles for some of its ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles that constitute part of Russia’s strategic nuclear triad. Putin has hailed the Avangard’s ability to maneuver at hypersonic speeds on its approach to target, dodging air defenses.

    The Russian military has also deployed the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on its MiG-31 aircraft and used them during the war in Ukraine to strike some priority targets. Kinzhal reportedly has a range of about 1,500 kilometers (about 930 miles).

    PATROL DUTY

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin on Wednesday that the Admiral Gorshkov will patrol the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean, but didn’t give further details.

    Shoigu said the Admiral Gorshkov’s crew will focus on “countering the threats to Russia, maintaining regional peace and stability jointly with friendly countries.” He added the crew will practice with hypersonic weapons and long-range cruise missiles “in various conditions.”

    Some military experts say a single, hypersonic missile-armed warship is no match for the massive naval forces of the U.S. and its allies.

    But others noted that the frigate’s potential deployment close to U.S. shores could be part of Putin’s strategy to up the ante in the Ukrainian conflict.

    “This is a message to the West that Russia has nuclear-tipped missiles that can easily pierce any missile defenses,” pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov wrote in a commentary.

    —-

    Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed to this report from Washington.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Russia’s hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas

    Russia’s hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas

    [ad_1]

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sent a frigate armed with the country’s latest Zircon hypersonic missile on a trans-ocean cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine.

    Russia touts that the Zircon missile can evade any Western air defenses by flying at an astounding 7,000 miles per hour (11,265 km/h).

    Here is a glance at the ship and its weapons.

    THE PRIDE OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY

    Commissioned by the navy in 2018 following long trials, the Admiral Gorshkov is the first ship in the new series of frigates which were designed to replace the aging Soviet-built destroyers as a key strike component of the Russian navy.

    Armed with an array of missiles, the ship is 130-meters (427-feet) long and has a crew of about 200.

    In 2019, it circled the world oceans on a 35,000-nautical mile journey.

    INTENSIVE TESTS

    The Admiral Gorshkov has served as the main testbed for the latest Russian hypersonic missile, Zircon.

    In recent years, the Zircon has undergone a series of tests, including being launched at various practice targets. The military declared the tests successful and Zircon officially entered service last fall.

    Zircon is intended to arm Russian cruisers, frigates and submarines and could be used against both enemy ships and ground targets. It is one of several hypersonic missiles that Russia has developed.

    THE NEW WEAPON

    Putin has hailed Zircon as a potent weapon capable of penetrating any existing anti-missile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (over 620 miles).

    Putin has emphasized that Zircon gives the Russian military a long-range conventional strike capability, allowing it to strike any enemy targets with precision.

    Russia’s hypersonic weapons drive emerged as the U.S. has been working on its own Conventional Prompt Global Strike capability that envisions hitting an adversary’s strategic targets with precision-guided conventional weapons anywhere in the world within one hour.

    Putin heralded Zircon as Russia’s answer to that, claiming that the new weapon has no rival, giving Russia a strategic edge.

    Months before ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin put the U.S. and its NATO allies on notice when he warned that Russian warships armed with Zircon would give Russia a capability to strike the adversary’s “decision-making centers” within minutes if deployed in neutral waters.

    Speaking via video link during Wednesday’s sendoff ceremony, Putin again praised Zircon as a “unique weapon” without an “equivalent for it in any country in the world.”

    OTHER RUSSIAN HYPERSONIC WEAPONS

    Russia has already commissioned the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles for some of its ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles that constitute part of Russia’s strategic nuclear triad. Putin has hailed the Avangard’s ability to maneuver at hypersonic speeds on its approach to target, dodging air defenses.

    The Russian military has also deployed the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on its MiG-31 aircraft and used them during the war in Ukraine to strike some priority targets. Kinzhal reportedly has a range of about 1,500 kilometers (about 930 miles).

    PATROL DUTY

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin on Wednesday that the Admiral Gorshkov will patrol the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean, but didn’t give further details.

    Shoigu said the Admiral Gorshkov’s crew will focus on “countering the threats to Russia, maintaining regional peace and stability jointly with friendly countries.” He added the crew will practice with hypersonic weapons and long-range cruise missiles “in various conditions.”

    Some military experts say a single, hypersonic missile-armed warship is no match for the massive naval forces of the U.S. and its allies.

    But others noted that the frigate’s potential deployment close to U.S. shores could be part of Putin’s strategy to up the ante in the Ukrainian conflict.

    “This is a message to the West that Russia has nuclear-tipped missiles that can easily pierce any missile defenses,” pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov wrote in a commentary.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Poland signs deal to buy 2nd batch of U.S. Abrams tanks

    Poland signs deal to buy 2nd batch of U.S. Abrams tanks

    [ad_1]

    WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s defense minister on Wednesday signed a deal to buy a second batch of U.S Abrams main battle tanks as Warsaw beefs up its defensive capabilities and strengthens military cooperation with Washington in light of Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine.

    Officials said Poland is the first U.S. ally in Europe to be receiving Abrams tanks.

    Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak signed the $1.4 billion deal at a military base in Wesola, near Warsaw. The agreement foresees the delivery of 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks with related equipment and logistics starting this year.

    Attending the signing ceremony were U.S. deputy chief of mission in Poland Daniel Lawton and U.S. Brig. Gen. John Lubas, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division, elements of which are stationed in southeastern Poland close to the border with Ukraine.

    The deal follows last year’s agreement for the acquisition of 250 upgraded M1A2 Abrams tanks that will be delivered in 2025-26. Poland is also awaiting delivery of U.S. HIMARS artillery systems and has already received Patriot missile batteries.

    Speaking in Wesola, Polish and U.S. officials said the deals strengthen Poland, the region and NATO’s eastern flank as the war in Ukraine continues.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Drone advances in Ukraine could bring dawn of killer robots

    Drone advances in Ukraine could bring dawn of killer robots

    [ad_1]

    KYIV, Ukraine — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.

    The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.

    That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own.

    Experts say it may be only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy them.

    “Many states are developing this technology,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a George Mason University weapons innovation analyst. ”Clearly, it’s not all that difficult.”

    The sense of inevitability extends to activists, who have tried for years to ban killer drones but now believe they must settle for trying to restrict the weapons’ offensive use.

    Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine has been doing “a lot of R&D in this direction.”

    “I think that the potential for this is great in the next six months,” Fedorov told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

    Ukrainian Lt. Col. Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the front that human war fighters simply cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines.

    Ukrainian military leaders currently prohibit the use of fully independent lethal weapons, although that could change, he said.

    “We have not crossed this line yet – and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what will happen in the future.” said Honchar, whose group has spearheaded drone innovation in Ukraine, converting cheap commercial drones into lethal weapons.

    Russia could obtain autonomous AI from Iran or elsewhere. The long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones supplied by Iran have crippled Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians but are not especially smart. Iran has other drones in its evolving arsenal that it says feature AI.

    Without a great deal of trouble, Ukraine could make its semi-autonomous weaponized drones fully independent in order to better survive battlefield jamming, their Western manufacturers say.

    Those drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which both currently require a human to choose targets over a live video feed. AI finishes the job. The drones, technically known as “loitering munitions,” can hover for minutes over a target, awaiting a clean shot.

    “The technology to achieve a fully autonomous mission with Switchblade pretty much exists today,” said Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, its maker. That will require a policy change — to remove the human from the decision-making loop — that he estimates is three years away.

    Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that the machines don’t err and take the lives of noncombatants.

    The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia if they have used autonomous weapons offensively – and whether they would agree not to use them if the other side similarly agreed. Neither responded.

    If either side were to go on the attack with full AI, it might not even be a first.

    An inconclusive U.N. report suggested that killer robots debuted in Libya’s internecine conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full-automatic mode killed an unspecified number of combatants.

    A spokesman for STM, the manufacturer, said the report was based on “speculative, unverified” information and “should not be taken seriously.” He told the AP the Kargu-2 cannot attack a target until the operator tells it to do so.

    Fully autonomous AI is already helping to defend Ukraine. Utah-based Fortem Technologies has supplied the Ukrainian military with drone-hunting systems that combine small radars and unmanned aerial vehicles, both powered by AI. The radars are designed to identify enemy drones, which the UAVs then disable by firing nets at them — all without human assistance.

    The number of AI-endowed drones keeps growing. Israel has been exporting them for decades. Its radar-killing Harpy can hover over anti-aircraft radar for up to nine hours waiting for them to power up.

    Other examples include Beijing’s Blowfish-3 unmanned weaponized helicopter. Russia has been working on a nuclear-tipped underwater AI drone called the Poseidon. The Dutch are currently testing a ground robot with a .50-caliber machine gun.

    Honchar believes Russia, whose attacks on Ukrainian civilians have shown little regard for international law, would have used killer autonomous drones by now if the Kremlin had them.

    “I don’t think they’d have any scruples,” agreed Adam Bartosiewicz, vice president of WB Group, which makes the Warmate.

    AI is a priority for Russia. President Vladimir Putin said in 2017 that whoever dominates that technology will rule the world. In a Dec. 21 speech, he expressed confidence in the Russian arms industry’s ability to embed AI in war machines, stressing that “the most effective weapons systems are those that operate quickly and practically in an automatic mode.”

    Russian officials already claim their Lancet drone can operate with full autonomy.

    “It’s not going to be easy to know if and when Russia crosses that line,” said Gregory C. Allen, former director of strategy and policy at the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

    Switching a drone from remote piloting to full autonomy might not be perceptible. To date, drones able to work in both modes have performed better when piloted by a human, Allen said.

    The technology is not especially complicated, said University of California-Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, a top AI researcher. In the mid-2010s, colleagues he polled agreed that graduate students could, in a single term, produce an autonomous drone “capable of finding and killing an individual, let’s say, inside a building,” he said.

    An effort to lay international ground rules for military drones has so far been fruitless. Nine years of informal United Nations talks in Geneva made little headway, with major powers including the United States and Russia opposing a ban. The last session, in December, ended with no new round scheduled.

    Washington policymakers say they won’t agree to a ban because rivals developing drones cannot be trusted to use them ethically.

    Toby Walsh, an Australian academic who, like Russell, campaigns against killer robots, hopes to achieve a consensus on some limits, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people.

    “If we are not careful, they are going to proliferate much more easily than nuclear weapons,” said Walsh, author of “Machines Behaving Badly.” “If you can get a robot to kill one person, you can get it to kill a thousand.”

    Scientists also worry about AI weapons being repurposed by terrorists. In one feared scenario, the U.S. military spends hundreds of millions writing code to power killer drones. Then it gets stolen and copied, effectively giving terrorists the same weapon.

    To date, the Pentagon has neither clearly defined “an AI-enabled autonomous weapon” nor authorized a single such weapon for use by U.S. troops, said Allen, the former Defense Department official. Any proposed system must be approved by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two undersecretaries.

    That’s not stopping the weapons from being developed across the U.S. Projects are underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, military labs, academic institutions and in the private sector.

    The Pentagon has emphasized using AI to augment human warriors. The Air Force is studying ways to pair pilots with drone wingmen. A booster of the idea, former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, said in a report last month that it “would be crazy not to go to an autonomous system” once AI-enabled systems outperform humans — a threshold that he said was crossed in 2015, when computer vision eclipsed that of humans.

    Humans have already been pushed out in some defensive systems. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield is authorized to open fire automatically, although it is said to be monitored by a person who can intervene if the system goes after the wrong target.

    Multiple countries, and every branch of the U.S. military, are developing drones that can attack in deadly synchronized swarms, according to Kallenborn, the George Mason researcher.

    So will future wars become a fight to the last drone?

    That’s what Putin predicted in a 2017 televised chat with engineering students: “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”

    ———

    Frank Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press journalists Tara Copp in Washington, Garance Burke in San Francisco and Suzan Fraser in Turkey contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    ———

    This story has been updated to correct when the U.N. report was issued. It came out in 2021, not last year.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Drone advances in Ukraine could bring dawn of killer robots

    Drone advances in Ukraine could bring dawn of killer robots

    [ad_1]

    KYIV, Ukraine — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.

    The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.

    That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own.

    Experts say it may be only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy them.

    “Many states are developing this technology,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a George Mason University weapons innovation analyst. ”Clearly, it’s not all that difficult.”

    The sense of inevitability extends to activists, who have tried for years to ban killer drones but now believe they must settle for trying to restrict the weapons’ offensive use.

    Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine has been doing “a lot of R&D in this direction.”

    “I think that the potential for this is great in the next six months,” Fedorov told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

    Ukrainian Lt. Col. Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the front that human war fighters simply cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines.

    Ukrainian military leaders currently prohibit the use of fully independent lethal weapons, although that could change, he said.

    “We have not crossed this line yet – and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what will happen in the future.” said Honchar, whose group has spearheaded drone innovation in Ukraine, converting cheap commercial drones into lethal weapons.

    Russia could obtain autonomous AI from Iran or elsewhere. The long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones supplied by Iran have crippled Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians but are not especially smart. Iran has other drones in its evolving arsenal that it says feature AI.

    Without a great deal of trouble, Ukraine could make its semi-autonomous weaponized drones fully independent in order to better survive battlefield jamming, their Western manufacturers say.

    Those drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which both currently require a human to choose targets over a live video feed. AI finishes the job. The drones, technically known as “loitering munitions,” can hover for minutes over a target, awaiting a clean shot.

    “The technology to achieve a fully autonomous mission with Switchblade pretty much exists today,” said Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, its maker. That will require a policy change — to remove the human from the decision-making loop — that he estimates is three years away.

    Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that the machines don’t err and take the lives of noncombatants.

    The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia if they have used autonomous weapons offensively – and whether they would agree not to use them if the other side similarly agreed. Neither responded.

    If either side were to go on the attack with full AI, it might not even be a first.

    An inconclusive U.N. report last year suggested that killer robots debuted in Libya’s internecine conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full-automatic mode killed an unspecified number of combatants.

    A spokesman for STM, the manufacturer, said the report was based on “speculative, unverified” information and “should not be taken seriously.” He told the AP the Kargu-2 cannot attack a target until the operator tells it to do so.

    Fully autonomous AI is already helping to defend Ukraine. Utah-based Fortem Technologies has supplied the Ukrainian military with drone-hunting systems that combine small radars and unmanned aerial vehicles, both powered by AI. The radars are designed to identify enemy drones, which the UAVs then disable by firing nets at them — all without human assistance.

    The number of AI-endowed drones keeps growing. Israel has been exporting them for decades. Its radar-killing Harpy can hover over anti-aircraft radar for up to nine hours waiting for them to power up.

    Other examples include Beijing’s Blowfish-3 unmanned weaponized helicopter. Russia has been working on a nuclear-tipped underwater AI drone called the Poseidon. The Dutch are currently testing a ground robot with a .50-caliber machine gun.

    Honchar believes Russia, whose attacks on Ukrainian civilians have shown little regard for international law, would have used killer autonomous drones by now if the Kremlin had them.

    “I don’t think they’d have any scruples,” agreed Adam Bartosiewicz, vice president of WB Group, which makes the Warmate.

    AI is a priority for Russia. President Vladimir Putin said in 2017 that whoever dominates that technology will rule the world. In a Dec. 21 speech, he expressed confidence in the Russian arms industry’s ability to embed AI in war machines, stressing that “the most effective weapons systems are those that operate quickly and practically in an automatic mode.” Russian officials already claim their Lancet drone can operate with full autonomy.

    “It’s not going to be easy to know if and when Russia crosses that line,” said Gregory C. Allen, former director of strategy and policy at the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

    Switching a drone from remote piloting to full autonomy might not be perceptible. To date, drones able to work in both modes have performed better when piloted by a human, Allen said.

    The technology is not especially complicated, said University of California-Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, a top AI researcher. In the mid-2010s, colleagues he polled agreed that graduate students could, in a single term, produce an autonomous drone “capable of finding and killing an individual, let’s say, inside a building,” he said.

    An effort to lay international ground rules for military drones has so far been fruitless. Nine years of informal United Nations talks in Geneva made little headway, with major powers including the United States and Russia opposing a ban. The last session, in December, ended with no new round scheduled.

    Washington policymakers say they won’t agree to a ban because rivals developing drones cannot be trusted to use them ethically.

    Toby Walsh, an Australian academic who, like Russell, campaigns against killer robots, hopes to achieve a consensus on some limits, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people.

    “If we are not careful, they are going to proliferate much more easily than nuclear weapons,” said Walsh, author of “Machines Behaving Badly.” “If you can get a robot to kill one person, you can get it to kill a thousand.”

    Scientists also worry about AI weapons being repurposed by terrorists. In one feared scenario, the U.S. military spends hundreds of millions writing code to power killer drones. Then it gets stolen and copied, effectively giving terrorists the same weapon.

    The global public is concerned. An Ipsos survey done for Human Rights Watch in 2019 found that 61% of adults across 26 countries oppose the use of lethal autonomous weapons systems.

    To date, the Pentagon has neither clearly defined “autonomous weapon” nor authorized a single such weapon for use by U.S. troops, said Allen, the former Defense Department official. Any proposed system must be approved by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two undersecretaries.

    That’s not stopping the weapons from being developed across the U.S. Projects are underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, military labs, academic institutions and in the private sector.

    The Pentagon has emphasized using AI to augment human warriors. The Air Force is studying ways to pair pilots with drone wingmen. A booster of the idea, former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, said in a report last month that it “would be crazy not to go to an autonomous system” once AI-enabled systems outperform humans — a threshold that he said was crossed in 2015, when computer vision eclipsed that of humans.

    Humans have already been pushed out in some defensive systems. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield is authorized to open fire automatically, although it is said to be monitored by a person who can intervene if the system goes after the wrong target.

    Multiple countries, and every branch of the U.S. military, are developing drones that can attack in deadly synchronized swarms, according to Kallenborn, the George Mason researcher.

    So will future wars become a fight to the last drone?

    That’s what Putin predicted in a 2017 televised chat with engineering students: “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”

    ———

    Frank Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press journalists Tara Copp in Washington, Garance Burke in San Francisco and Suzan Fraser in Turkey contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US says Chinese intercept could have caused air collision

    US says Chinese intercept could have caused air collision

    [ad_1]

    BEIJING — The U.S. military says a Chinese navy fighter jet flew dangerously close to an Air Force reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea earlier this month, forcing the American pilot to maneuver to avoid a collision.

    U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement Thursday that the incident occurred Dec. 21 when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy J-11 flew in front of and within 6 meters (20 feet) of the nose of an RC-135, a type of large reconnaissance plane operated by the U.S. Air Force.

    The U.S. plane was “lawfully conducting routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace,” the statement said. Its pilot was forced to “take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” it said.

    China frequently challenges military aircraft from the U.S. and its allies, especially over the South China Sea, which China claims in its entirety. Such behavior led to a 2001 in-air collision in which a Chinese plane was lost and pilot killed.

    “The U.S. Indo-Pacific Joint Force is dedicated to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and will continue to fly, sail and operate at sea and in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law,” the statement said.

    “We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law,” it said.

    China deeply resents the presence of U.S. military assets in the South China Sea and regularly demands its ships and planes leave the area. The U.S. says it is fully entitled to operate in and over the South China Sea and ignores the Chinese demands.

    Such dangerous incidents persist despite U.S.-China agreements on how to deal with unexpected encounters.

    The U.S. and others have also accused China of harassing military aircraft and ships in the East China Sea off the Chinese coast and as far away as the Horn of Africa, where China operates a naval base.

    There was no immediate response from the PLA, the military wing of China’s ruling Communist Party, to the latest U.S. complaint.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • South Korea stages drills simulating downing of North drones

    South Korea stages drills simulating downing of North drones

    [ad_1]

    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea staged large-scale military drills Thursday to simulate shooting down drones as a step to bolster its readiness against North Korean provocations, three days after the North flew drones into its territory for the first time in five years.

    South Korean warplanes and helicopters failed to bring down any of the five North Korean drones spotted south of the border Monday before they flew back home or vanished from South Korean radars. One of them traveled as far as northern Seoul. That caused security jitters among many people in the South, for which the military offered a rare public apology Tuesday.

    Thursday’s training involved land-based anti-air guns, drones playing the role of enemy drones, and a total of 20 fighter jets, attack helicopters and unmanned assets. While there was no actual live-fire, it was still the country’s first set of major anti-drone drills since 2017, according to military authorities.

    The drills near Seoul set up diverse scenarios of border infiltrations by small enemy drones, under which the mobilized South Korean military assets practiced how they could detect, track and shoot them down, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

    Also on Thursday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol reiterated his push to build a stronger air defense and get tough on North Korean provocations. The North’s drone flights followed its record number of missile tests this year that some experts say is part of an effort to pressure the United States and its allies to make some concessions like sanctions relief.

    “Whether they have nukes or whatever weapons of mass destruction they have, we must send a clear message to those who repeat provocations. We must not be frightened of (their nukes) and we must not hesitate,” Yoon said during a visit to a weapons development agency. “To obtain peace, we must prepare for a war that (we can win) overwhelmingly.”

    Yoon said Tuesday his government will advance the planned establishment of a military drone unit and introduce high-tech stealth drones.

    North Korea’s state media hasn’t commented on South Korea’s announcement of its reported drone flights. But some observers say North Korea likely sent those drones to test South Korean and U.S. readiness. They say North Korea also likely assessed that drones could be a cheap yet effective method to trigger security concerns and an internal divide in South Korea.

    In response the North’s drone flying, South Korea said it sent three of its surveillance drones across the border in a rare tit-for-tat measure. North Korea didn’t make any reaction, according to South Korean defense officials.

    This week, North Korea is under a key ruling party meeting to review past projects and determine policy objectives for 2023. During its third day Wednesday, leader Kim Jong Un expressed hopes that local Workers’ Party officials would report successes on their jobs and duties to live up to the party’s trust in them, state media reported Thursday, without elaborating what their tasks are.

    In an earlier session, state media cited Kim as setting forth new goals to solidify his country’s military power, an indication that he would continue his run of weapons tests.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Minister: Ukraine aims to develop air-to-air combat drones

    Minister: Ukraine aims to develop air-to-air combat drones

    [ad_1]

    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine has bought some 1,400 drones, mostly for reconnaissance, and plans to develop combat models that can attack the exploding drones Russia has used during its invasion of the country, according to the Ukrainian government minister in charge of technology.

    In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov described Russia’s war in Ukraine as the first major war of the internet age. He credited drones and satellite internet systems like Elon Musk’s Starlink with having transformed the conflict.

    Ukraine has purchased drones like the Fly Eye, a small used for intelligence, battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance.

    “And the next stage, now that we are more or less equipped with reconnaissance drones, is strike drones,” Federov said. “These are both exploding drones and drones that fly up to three to 10 kilometers and hit targets.”

    He predicted “more missions with strike drones” in the future, but would not elaborate. “We are talking there about drones, UAVs, UAVs that we are developing in Ukraine. Well, anyway, it will be the next step in the development of technologies,” he said.

    Russian authorities have alleged several Ukrainian drone strikes on its military bases in recent weeks, including one on Monday in which they said Russian forces shot down a drone approaching the Engels airbase located more than 600 kilometers (over 370 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

    Russia’s military said debris killed three service members but no aircraft were damaged. The base houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine.

    Ukrainian authorities have never formally acknowledged carrying out such drone strikes, but they have made cryptic allusions to how Russia might expect retaliation for its war in Ukraine, including within Russian territory.

    Ukraine is carrying out research and development on drones that could fight and down other drones, Federov said. Russia has used Iranian-made Shahed drones for its airstrikes in Ukrainian territory in recent weeks, in addition to rocket, cruise missile and artillery attacks.

    “I can say already that the situation regarding drones will change drastically in February or March,” he said.

    Federov sat for an interview in his bright and modern office. Located inside a staid ministry building, the room contained a vinyl record player, history books stacked on shelves and a treadmill.

    The minister highlighted the importance of mobile communications for both civilian and military purposes during the war and said the most challenging places to maintain service have been in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and Kyiv regions in the center and east of the country.

    He said there are times when fewer than half of mobile phone towers are functioning in the capital, Kyiv, because Russian airstrikes have destroyed or damaged the infrastructure that power them.

    Ukraine has some 30,000 mobile-phone towers, and the government is now trying to link them to generators so they can keep working when airstrikes damage the power grid.

    The only alternative, for now, is satellite systems like Starlink, which Ukrainians may rely on more if blackouts start lasting longer.

    “We should understand that in this case, the Starlinks and the towers, connected to the generators, will be the basic internet infrastructure,” Federov said.

    Many cities and towns are facing power cuts lasting up to 10 hours. Fedorov said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree that instructs mobile phone companies to ensure they can provide signals without electricity for at least three days.

    Meanwhile, with support from its European Union partners, his ministry is working to bring 10,000 more Starlink stations to Ukraine, with internet service made available to the public through hundreds of “Points of Invincibility” that offer warm drinks, heated spaces, electricity and shelter for people displaced by fighting or power outages.

    Roughly 24,000 Starlink stations already are in operation in Ukraine. Musk’s company, SpaceX, began providing them during the early days of the war after Fedorov tweeted a request to the billionaire.

    “I just stood there on my knees, begging them to start working in Ukraine, and promised that we would make a world record,” he recalled.

    Federov compared Space X’s donation of the satellite terminals to the U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launchers in terms of significance for Ukraine’s ability to mount a defense to Russia’s invasion.

    “Thousands of lives were saved,” he said.

    As well as the civilian applications, Starlink has helped front-line reconnaissance drone operators target artillery strikes on Russian assets and positions. Federov said his team is now dedicating 70% of its time to military technologies. The ministry was created only three years ago.

    Providing the army with drones is among its main tasks.

    “We need to do more than what is expected of us, and progress does not wait,” Federov said, scoffing at Russian skill in the domain of drones. “I don’t believe in their technological potential at all.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • North Korea’s Kim lays out key goals to boost military power

    North Korea’s Kim lays out key goals to boost military power

    [ad_1]

    SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presented unspecified goals to further bolster his military power next year at a meeting of top political officials, state media reported Wednesday, in an indication he’ll continue his provocative run of weapons displays.

    Kim’s statement came as animosities with rival South Korea rose sharply this week as the South accused the North of flying drones across the rivals’ border for the first time in five years. This year, North Korea already performed a record number of missile tests in what experts call an attempt to modernize its arsenal and increase its leverage in future dealings with the United States.

    During the Tuesday session at the ongoing plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim analyzed new security challenges in international politics and on the Korean Peninsula and clarified principles and directions to take in external relations and fights against enemies to protect national interests and sovereignty, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

    Kim “set forth new key goals for bolstering up the self-reliant defense capability to be pushed ahead with in 2023 under the multilaterally changing situation,” KCNA said, without elaborating.

    Some observers say the new goals could be related to Kim’s push to expand his nuclear arsenal and introduce a spate of high-tech weapons systems such as multi-warhead missiles, a more agile long-range weapon, a spy satellite and advanced drones. They say Kim would eventually aim to use his boosted nuclear capability to force its rivals to accept the North as a legitimate nuclear state, a status he would think is essential in getting international sanctions on his country to be lifted.

    On Monday, South Korea’s military fired warning shots and launched fighter jets and helicopters, after detecting what it called five North Korean drones that violated the South’s airspace. South Korea also flown its own surveillance assets, in a likely reference to unmanned drones, across the border into North Korea in response.

    South Korea’s military said it had failed to shoot down the drones and offered a public apology over causing security concerns. President Yoon Suk Yeol called for strong air defense and high-tech stealth drones to better monitor North Korea.

    Some experts say the North Korean drone flights might have been designed to test South Korean and U.S. readiness and neutralize a previous inter-Korean tension-reduction agreement. They say North Korea likely assessed its drones as a cheap yet effective method to cause security jitters and a domestic divide in South Korea.

    Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, said Tuesday that South Korea has had little anti-drone trainings since 2017, a year when his liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in was inaugurated. In an apparent effort to blame the alleged lax air defense system to Moon’s engagement policy toward North Korea, Yoon said that “I think our people must have seen well how dangerous a policy relying on the North’s good faith and (peace) agreements would be.”

    Yoon’s comments triggered a backlash from Moon’s liberal opposition Democratic Party, which accused the president of trying to shift a responsibility for his government ’s security policy failure to someone else.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • S. Korea fires warning shots after North drones cross border

    S. Korea fires warning shots after North drones cross border

    [ad_1]

    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s military fired warning shots and scrambled aircraft after North Korean drones entered the South’s airspace on Monday, South Korean officials said, days after the North launched two ballistic missiles in its latest testing activities.

    Several North Korean drones crossed the inter-Korean border and were detected in the South’s territory on Monday morning, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.

    South Korea’s military broadcast warnings and fired warning shots before it launched fighter jets and attack helicopters to shoot down the North Korean drones, the Defense Ministry said. It wasn’t immediately known if the drones were shot down.

    It’s the first time for North Korean drones to enter South Korean airspace since 2017, when a suspected North Korean drone was found crashed in South Korea. South Korean military officials said at the time that the drone photographed a U.S. missile defense system in South Korea.

    North Korea has previously touted its drone program, and South Korean officials said the North has about 300 drones. In 2014, several suspected North Korean drones were found south of the border. Experts said they were low-tech but could be considered a potential security threat.

    Last Friday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The launch was seen as a protest of the South Korean-U.S. joint air drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal.

    This year, North Korea has conducted an unprecedented number of missile tests in what some experts call an attempt to improve its weapons and pressure rivals to make concessions such as lifting sanctions in future negotiations. Recently, the North also claimed to have performed major tests needed to acquire its first spy satellite and a more mobile intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

    [ad_2]

    Source link