Last week, Vladimir Putin held a speech in which he announced some spectacular new weapons including supersonic missiles and an intercontinental ballistic missile with nuclear propulsion to give it unlimited range. Few people are as qualified to comment on the weapon announcements as Michael Kofman. He has just released part 1 in a two-part series […]
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Danish defense minister says it will take many years to improve relationship with Russia
Danish minister of defense Claus Hjort Frederiksen on Monday: Russia has chosen a path fundamentally different from ours. A path where international cooperation has become a zero sum game. […] Furthermore, Moscow has demonstrated an appetite for taking risks. I find it disturbing that that we now face a situation with much less dialogue between […]
Ukraine’s military suffers from corruption
In Ukraine, the military is suffering under corruption. Andrew Higgins has a good piece in The New York Times about the movement of large-scale corruption from the gas business to military procurement: Nearly four years into a grinding war against rebels armed by Russia, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry proudly announced last month that it had improved […]
In 2011, a Russian submarine was close to nuclear disaster in drydock
Kyle Mizokami for Popular Mechanics: Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin has admitted that a December 2011 incident involving a nuclear missile submarine almost became one of the worst nuclear weapons disasters ever recorded. The Ekaterinburg, a ballistic missile submarine, caught fire in drydock, threatening its load of liquid-fueled nuclear missiles. If the missiles had […]
Let’s hope insurgents don’t learn basic infantry skills
Why is it that Western infantry has been so dominant in battle during counterinsurgency operations? The casualty numbers are exceptionally unequally distributed between Western forces and the insurgents. Conventional wisdom attributes a lot of importance on superior technology such as air superiority, surveillance systems, precision munitions, command-and-control systems, and night vision capabilities. But what if […]
New report on Germany’s troubled equipment status
Deutsche Welle: Many primary weapons systems in the Bundeswehr are not available for training exercises or deployment, according to a new Defense Ministry study. The “Report on the Operational Readiness of the Bundeswehr’s Primary Weapons Systems 2017,” which has been seen by the Reuters news agency and the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland media group, is set to […]
U.S. Nuclear Posture Review misses the point on Russia
The Pentagon published its Nuclear Posture Review for 2018 (NPR) earlier in February. It dramatically changes some assumptions about nuclear weapons that were laid out in the previous NPR from 2010. The new NPR concludes that there has been a deterioration in international relations with a return to great power competition and a more complex […]
Things to look for in near future for Russian Baltic Fleet: Return of AGI and naval exercise
Intelligence ship Fyodor Golovin (AGI) of the Russian Baltic Fleet has been relieved off Syria and is now returning to the Baltic Sea. That reported Russian military news site flot.com on Tuesday. Fyodor Golovin was replaced on duty by the intelligence ship Ekvator of the Black Sea Fleet. Russia has had a shortage of intelligence […]
Helicopter scandals for everyone, Black Hawk to the rescue
Helicopters are a common problem for the scandinavian countries. Everyone seems struggling with deliveries, reliability, and costs. It is not a flattering story for European helicopters NH90 and AW101, and the American Black Hawk and Seahawk may be the solution everyone is turning to. Recently it made headlines that Sweden is considering not using NH90 […]
Russia has lost its economic leverage over Ukraine
Nicu Popescu has written a great article for Carnegie Moscow Center about the future relationship between Russia and Ukraine. “Those in Moscow who believe that all is not lost for Russia in Ukraine, citing the example of Georgia, which is gradually normalizing relations with Russia despite the 2008 war, are being overly optimistic. While the […]