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China has lately been resorting to defiant and audacious acts like claiming its territorial rights over waters around artificial island it has built in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea and unilaterally designating an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea. While these acts are visible to all, the real front battle line lies deep in the sea where submarines are principal players. This article attempts to provide in-depth descriptions of the real picture of submarines of the Maritime Self-Defense Force and their roles, as little has so far been made known about them. During the...

On November 30th President Obama will join hordes of our ecological betters from around the world at the Paris Climate Summit. Weighty topics of how to save the planet will be discussed and agreements are expected which will further push the cause of eliminating carbon, fossil fuels and everything else we rely on to keep civilization chugging along. One of the leaders in the field of green energy and allegedly reduced carbon emissions has been Great Britain, which makes it all the more odd that just before the big confab kicks off, they’ve , preferring to focus on converting...

KUALA, LUMPUR – Asia-Pacific leaders gathered Sunday for an annual summit where they condemned terrorism but remained apart on growing tensions in the disputed South China Sea.

MOSCOW--China is set to buy 24 Sukhoi-35 fighter jets from Russia in a deal worth more than $2 billion (246.3 billion yen), an industry source told Reuters on Nov. 19, in a move that may help the Kremlin's strained finances. A spokeswoman for Russian state holding Rostec confirmed a deal between the two countries had been signed involving Su-35 fighter jets, but declined to provide details. The deal makes China the first foreign buyer of the Su-35, one of Russia's most advanced military aircraft, and is one of the largest contracts for military jets signed between the two countries. Russia...

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday (in a room with a governor who said he'd refuse refugees) that she understood the concerns over the security risks, but that the United States needed to accept refugees, as reported by AL.com. Rice made the remarks at the 38th annual Southeast U.S.-Japan conference, in Birmingham, Alabama, according to the publication. Among those in attendance was Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) who had released a statement Sunday that said he would not "stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm's way." He was one of 13 governors...

It’s a coin toss between China and Turkey for the title of least honest country, according to a new study. As part of a 15-nation honesty study, researchers from the University of East Anglia had the 1,500 subjects participate in a coin flip, telling them they’d get up to $5 every time it came up heads. The researchers theorized that if the percentage reporting heads was over 50 percent, participants were being dishonest, since heads statistically shows up only half the time. An estimated 70 percent of Chinese participants lied — the most dishonest of the bunch, according to the...

Japan's Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced that it will conduct a live fire experiment of the new XASM-3 supersonic anti-ship missile in the Sea of Japan next year. The missile will be tested against a decommissioned Destroyer of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). XASM-3 is currently in development by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Japanese MoD to replace the existing ASM-1 and ASM-2 missiles. XASM-3 missile fitted on a Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-2 Fighter The test-firing will be done at a firing range designated “G airspace” close to Komatsu air base. According to the Japanese MoD aerodynamic and...

Japan's first commercial passenger plane in half a century made its maiden flight on Wednesday, in a breakthrough for the country's long-held ambition to establish an aircraft industry able to challenge some of the major players in global aviation. The Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) successfully completed a 1.5-hour return flight from Nagoya Airport to test Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp's ability to bring the 100-seat class plane into service after three years of delays. The unit of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T), which built the World War Two-era Zero fighter, is hoping the $47-million regional jet will help it oust Canada's Bombardier Inc...

SAN ANTONIO — Norman Kleiss lives in a modest apartment in San Antonio. When I first reached him on the telephone, I almost started to shake. It was like going back in time. I could hear the engines roar over the Pacific Ocean; the tide of World War II was about to change. “So you want to talk about the Battle of Midway?” Kleiss asked. Boy, did I. It’s incredible that still living among us is this amazing American war hero. Norman Jack “Dusty” Kleiss is 99 years old. What did he do in the war? With fuel running low,...

Possible discovered of America by Marco Polo before Colomb: account in VSD 'America - its West coast - would have been discovered by Marco Polo some 200 years before Christophe Colomb, according to a chart of the Library of the Congress in Washington examined since 1943 by the FBI and whose history is told in published review VSD Wednesday. This document, brought to the Library in 1933 by Marcian Rossi, an American naturalized citizen originating in Italy, “represents a boat beside a chart showing part of India, China, Japan, the Eastern Indies and North America”, indicates the report/ratio of...

China recently conducted a flight test of a new missile capable of knocking out U.S. satellites as part of Beijing's growing space warfare arsenal. The test of a Dong Neng-3 exoatmospheric vehicle was carried out Oct. 30 from China's Korla Missile Test Complex in western China, said two defense officials familiar with reports of the test. A Chinese press report also provided details of what was said to be a missile defense interceptor flight test carried out Nov. 1. Photos of the missile's contrails were posted online.

Energy: The resident wants to decarbonize the planet by killing fossil-fuel production and its high-paying jobs. Almost no other nation is following his lead despite the promises that will be made at the Paris climate summit. Last week we learned in a Reuters report that Asia will build 500 coal-burning electric generation plants this year alone. An additional 1,000 are planned in China, India, Japan, Indonesia and other countries. The latest projections are that 40% of the added power generation in Southeast Asia by 2040 will be coal-fired. Does this sound like a continent that's taking the alarm bells of...

Transmittance spectrum of the 54Al2O3-46Ta2O5 glass in the UV/vis region. The inset picture shows the glass sample used for the transmittance experiment. Credit: (c) 2015 Scientific Reports (2015). DOI: 10.1038/srep15233 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (Phys.org)—A team of researchers with The University of Tokyo and Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute has created a type of glass that is stronger than many metals. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how they overcame one of the major hurdles in creating glass imbued with extra amounts of an oxide of aluminum, by using what they call aerodynamic levitation. Glass that does...

SEOUL – Although the leaders of Japan and South Korea agreed this week to take prompt action on the issue of Korean women and girls forced into wartime Japanese brothels, it remains uncertain whether they will settle the dispute by year’s end.

Australian defense planners are looking at the possibility of a naval sail-through close to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea, in case the government decides to follow its close ally the U.S. in testing Beijing’s territorial claims. “Australia has been looking at options,” said one official in Australia’s military familiar with operational planning. The official spoke after the American guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen sailed early Tuesday within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, one of seven sand and rock outcrops in the Spratly chain on which China has built artificial islands. The U.S. considers the area international waters,...

This image, posted on the Chinese website Weibo, shows what appears to be a Chinese Su-27 Flanker derivative very similar to Russia’s Su-34 Fullback fighter-bomber. The picture coincides with rumors that a new Chinese fighter type flew recently but we have no way to authenticate the image at this time. There is no prior indication that Russia has licensed Russian aircraft designer Sukhoi’s Su-34 fighter-bomber to China, but this has not stopped China from building its own Sukhoi clones before. Currently China has multiple indigenous Su-27 Flanker derivatives in production, including the Shenyang J-11B, a Su-27 knock-0ff and the carrier...

Japanese tire maker Bridgestone Corp (5108.T) said it would buy auto parts retailer Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack (PBY.N) for $835 million to expand its retail presence in the United States. The deal will boost Bridgestone's retail network by more than a third in the United States, the company said. Bridgestone operates a chain of auto care and tire stores in the United States through its Bridgestone Retail Operations (BSRO) unit. "Bridgestone is looking to expand its market share in services and tires ... it's a little harder to understand what they might do with (Pep Boys') retail operations but...

After sending robots into the Fukushima nuclear reactor (and seeing them mysteriously die), perhaps this is the reason why Japanese officials have decided to re-start the building of a huge ice-wall for 'containment'. As Fukushima Diary reports, TEPCO’s camera caught a possible aquatic living creature in retained coolant water of Reactor 3.

Just months after being rejected by South Korea and weeks after first flight, Boeing’s KC-46A has been selected by Japan to supplement the nation’s KC-767 tanker fleet. The announcement came from Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani on Friday, and constitutes a significant win for Boeing after a troubled start to the next-generation tanker development programme with the US Air Force. The Pegasus tanker can almost see the end of its development phase, after achieving first flight 25 September from Paine Field in Washington, following a roughly nine-month delay. According to Boeing, KC-46 is particularly attractive to Japan as it will...

A trio of Chinese Navy vessels that are making an around-the-world trip will be visiting Mayport, Florida on November 3rd through the 7th. This visit comes as tensions are increasing between U.S. and China over the South China Sea, with the Navy ready to sail within China’s man-made islands claim on disputed territorial waters. The three ships involved with the visit include the Type 052C Luyang II class guided-missile destroyer named Jinan. The 052C Luyang II class is roughly analogous to an Australian Hobart Class destroyer, not necessarily in raw capability but in general configuration. The Hobart Class is roughly...