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France made history by being the first country in the European Union to invoke the mutual defense clause following the brutal attacks in Paris.The French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union while in Brussels, USA Today reports.According to the text of the clause, “if a member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states shall have toward it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” This is the first time article 42.7 has ever come into play. French officials have opted...

It's hard to believe we twice elected a president who refuses to defend the United States. I think people who used to dismiss our criticism of President Obama as extreme are now realizing just how naive they were. On the morning before the ISIS terrorist attacks in Paris, Obama was bragging that ISIS is contained. Are you kidding me? Even before the attacks everyone knew ISIS was on the march and couldn't possibly be contained. What have you done to contain them, by the way? And why are we even talking about "containment" instead of wholesale destruction of a known...

November 14, 2015: GOP Presidential candidate and front-runner Donald Trump spoke to thousands at a rally in Beaumont, TX at the Ford Park Arena. Trump spent the majority of the time talking about immigration...

Rand Paul had his best debate moment Tuesday when he challenged Marco Rubio on his plans to increase defense spending by $1 trillion. "You cannot be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs you're not going to pay for," said Paul. Marco's retort triggered the loudest cheers of the night: "There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. The Chinese are taking over the South China Sea. ... the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world." Having called for the U.S. Navy...

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is removing a senior military assistant, Army Lt. Gen. Ron Lewis, from his position after learning about allegations of misconduct, Carter announced Thursday. "I directed that this matter be referred to the inspector general of the Department of Defense for investigation," he said in a statement. A senior defense official would not discuss the nature of the alleged misconduct but said Carter was "very surprised" to learn of the allegations.

During last night's Republican presidential debate, Rand Paul criticized Marco Rubio's "plan for $1 trillion in new military spending" as "not very conservative." Rubio responded by inaccurately describing Paul as "a committed isolationist" and declaring (twice) that the United States needs to be "the strongest military power in the world." But Rubio did not explain why a bigger Pentagon budget is necessary to accomplish that goal. After all, the U.S. already devotes much more money to military spending than any other country. Paul said "we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined." According to the latest...

For the past week, the White House has been talking about its first-day promise to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay — on the last day, if need be, of Barack Obama’s presidency. And it might take that long, too, because Congress has overwhelmingly passed a new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to fund the military that extends a prohibition on transfers from Gitmo. Obama isn’t likely to issue a veto, either: The Senate voted 91-3 on the $607-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which lays out broad defense policy requirements and restrictions.Obama vetoed the original bill largely...

Big changes are underway in Ottawa since the Liberals’ big election win. One of these is the appointment of Lieutenant Colonel Harjit Sajjan, a former anti-gang police detective, highly decorated soldier, military intelligence genius, and Canada’s newest Minister of Defense. Sajjan moved to Canada from India when he was just five years old. Joining the military at 18 after being initially rejected, he served one tour in Bosnia, three tours in Afghanistan, and was the first Sikh to command a Canadian Army regiment. In other words, this is one bad-ass, been-there-done-that Cabinet officer. During his time time in Afghanistan, he...

Congress may be (but it isn’t known when) preparing to override President Barack Obama’s decision to veto a $612B defense bill. Obama’s reasoning for vetoing the bill: it doesn’t have enough money. Number one, it keeps in place the sequester that is inadequate for us to properly fund our military in a stable, sustained way and allows all of our armed forces to plan properly. I have repeatedly called on Congress to eliminate the sequester and make sure that we’re providing certainty to our military so they can do out-year planning, ensure military readiness, ensure our troops are getting...

Two weeks of air and missile strikes in Syria have given Western intelligence and military officials a deeper appreciation of the transformation that Russia’s military has undergone under President Vladimir V. Putin, showcasing its ability to conduct operations beyond its borders and providing a public demonstration of new weaponry, tactics and strategy.

Link to the pollSome people seems to think that Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey of Tennessee said something controversial when he suggested that these are troubled times; that Christians are under attack, and that it would be wise for Christians to obtain a concealed carry permit and be willing to defend themselves.  From the timesfreepress.com:“Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West,” he wrote.“While this is not the time for widespread panic,” Ramsey added, “it is a time to prepare. I would encourage my fellow...

Congressional negotiators have come up with a plan to cut costs at the Department of Defense which represents a compromise between proposals from the House and the Senate. Assuming this comes up to a vote and is approved there’s going to be a 25% reduction in the civilian workforce in addition to the introduction of a new retirement plan for the troops. Government Executive Magazine has the details. The 2016 defense authorization compromise bill would require $10 billion in cuts, half of which must occur by fiscal 2018. The one-quarter staff reduction was a compromise between the 20 percent...

Russia and Iran have stepped up coordination inside Syria as they move to safeguard President Bashar al-Assad’s control over his coastal stronghold, according to officials in the U.S. and Middle East, creating a new complication for Washington’s diplomatic goals. Senior Russian and Iranian diplomats, generals and strategists have held a string of high-level talks in Moscow in recent months to discuss Mr. Assad’s defense and the Kremlin’s military buildup in Syria, according to these officials. U.S. officials said they haven’t unraveled the full extent of the cooperation or its intention. “We assume [the Russian buildup in Syria is] being coordinated...

President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, at the dawn of what would be called the “American Century,” sent the Great White Fleet on a 14-month-long world cruise, Consisting of four naval squadron including four battleships each accompanied by their escorts, it was a signal that America had arrived as a world power and was going to be a player. By sending five warships into Alaskan territorial waters while President Obama visited the 49th state to eat bear-killed salmon, rename Mt. McKinley, and warn of non-existent climate change,, China has made a similar statement that it intends this to be the Chinese...

BATAAN, PHILIPPINES—The Philippines ongoing territorial tensions with China have led it to try to modernize its military, which for years had one of the smallest budgets in Asia. The country is spending more on more advanced ships and planes, but it is also trying to entice arms manufacturers to set up shop locally. Each day 200,000 bullets are produced at the Government Arsenal. But it is not enough to supply the Philippine Armed Forces with the ammunition it requires. The facility’s director, Jonathan Martir, explained a plan to open a defense economic zone, a tax-free place for foreign arms manufacturers...

One month ahead of its scheduled start date, Israel began to build a new security security fence on its eastern border with Jordan on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced after a cabinet meeting. “Today, we are starting to build a fence on our eastern border,” Netanyahu announced. “In the first stage, we will build it from Timna to Eilat in order to protect the airport being built there.” The 20 mile-stretch between the two cities encompasses the southernmost part of Israel, which is located just a handful of miles from the Sinai Peninsula and Saudi Arabia–two known hotbeds...

Politico ran an article titled “The GOP’s Fantasy of a Bigger Nav [1]y” that is long on editorializing and short on facts or history.The article argues against reversing U.S. seapower’s decline. If nothing else, the article performs a useful service by encouraging a national debate as the Navy continues to shrink: little such debate has occurred about the Navy’s contraction by more than half since the Reagan administration.At stake is whether the U.S. will be required to defend itself at its coasts, and whether the international order that has existed since World War II will survive. U.S. seapower is...

It does not bode well that an Obama administration that assures us that the nuclear deal with Iran will not be violated by the mullahs is clearly looking the other way as Iran’s ally Russia blatantly violates the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed with the former Soviet Union. The Obama White House is sitting on a Pentagon risk assessment report completed last month that states “that the breach involved a new missile that violates the limits set by the treaty. The treaty bans holding, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges of between 310 miles...

The Pentagon insists that Ashton Carter supports Barack Obama’s goal to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Earlier today, the Defense Department’s spokesman announced that the military had a plan at the ready for that purpose, and only needed some additional signatures to forward it to Congress. “The Secretary and this department continue to support the president’s goal of closing Guantanamo Bay, and we’re working to make a plan that will do that,” Navy Captain Jeff Davis announced.The Daily Beast’s Nancy Youssef hears something different from the White House. According to their sources, Carter has delayed approving additional...

HONOLULU (AP) - The U.S. military says it has successfully tested an interceptor that can shoot down ballistic missiles as well as airplanes. The Missile Defense Agency said Monday the destroyer USS John Paul Jones tested the technology during a series of flight tests off the Hawaiian island of Kauai over the past week. Raytheon Missile Systems spokeswoman Heather Uberuaga says the tests used a modified version of the SM-6 missile the Navy already uses.