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Syria has delivered advanced M600 rockets to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon within the past year, Israeli defense officials said on Wednesday. The M600, a Syrian copy of the Iranian Fateh-110, has a range of 300km and carries a half-ton warhead. If fired from southern Lebanon it would be capable of hitting Tel Aviv. Latest claims of arms transfers to Lebanon follow recent accusations by President Shimon Peres that Syria Hezbollah gave long-range Scud missiles, capable of inflicting heavy damage on Israel's cities. Other government figures, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have since avoided repeating the claims and it is unclear...

At 7:00 in the evening local time on Oct. 9, 2016, a missile fired from Houthi-controlled territory around the port of Hodeida — on the Red Sea coast in northwestern Yemen — crashed into the water several miles away from U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Mason, underway in international waters near the Bab Al Mandab Strait. Mason and the destroyer USS Nitze were escorting Ponce, an amphibious assault ship that supports minesweeping helicopters. Another missile struck the sea in the same area around an hour later.

Multiple missiles have been fired at a US warship in the Red Sea - but there are no casualties, a US admiral says. More to follow...

A U.S. Navy destroyer was targeted on Wednesday in a failed missile attack from territory in Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, the second such incident in the past four days, U.S. officials told Reuters. The USS Mason, which was accompanied by the USS Ponce - an amphibious transport dock - fired defensive salvos in response to the missiles, neither of which hit the ship or caused any damage as it operated north of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The crew of a guided-missile destroyer fired three missiles to defend themselves and another ship after being attacked on Sunday in the Red Sea by two presumed cruise missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi-forces, USNI News has learned. During the attack against USS Mason (DDG-87), the ship’s crew fired the missiles to defend the guided-missile destroyer and nearby USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) from two suspected cruise missiles fired from the Yemini shore, two defense officials told USNI News. Mason launched two Standard Missile-2s (SM-2s) and a single Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) to intercept the two missiles that were launched about 7...

ASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer was targeted on Sunday in a failed missile attack from territory in Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, a U.S. military spokesman told Reuters, saying the two missiles failed to hit the ship. "USS Mason detected two inbound missiles over a 60-minute period while in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. Both missiles impacted the water before reaching the ship," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said. "There were no injuries to our sailors and no damage to the ship," he said.

Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama http://observer.com/2016/10/putins-activation-of-iskander-m-ballistic-missile-is-a-message-to-obama/ Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama The KGB officer in the Kremlin seeks one last, grand strategic humiliation for our president before he leaves office By John R. Schindler • 10/07/16 11:00am Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Prince Albert II of Monaco (not pictured) at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 6, 2016. / AFP / POOL AND AFP / YURI KADOBNOV Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images It’s long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack...

In working through some of the 7,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department yesterday, I came across one curious one sent from aide Huma Abedin to the then-Secretary of State regarding a Koran-burning in the U.S.Here is another intriguing email: https://twitter.com/bhweingarten/status/638734489531871234 It is noteworthy that this message on a sensitive subject — presumably about a meeting between then-Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Sec. of State Clinton on weapons collections in Libya — would be left unredacted, while many other emails in the Clinton trove are redacted in toto. This may be because news reports around the September 10, 2011 email date indicate...

Ship Carrying Dozen North Korean Missiles Intercepted in Arabian Sea W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 10 — A ship carrying a dozen Scud-type missiles from North Korea was intercepted in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday, U.S. officials said. They said the missiles were believed to be headed for Yemen. The ship was stopped and boarded about 600 miles east of the Horn of Africa, the officials said. U.S. intelligence had been tracking the vessel closely, said U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The ship contained about a dozen short- to medium-range...

There are real limits on the amount of AI acceptable to navy commanders.With rising security challenges in the global commons, there is growing interest in the subject of “intelligent” weapons systems. This is especially so in the maritime realm, where recent studies have shown that precision-guided weaponry and networked systems are likely to play an increasingly important role. Even while accepting autonomous systems as the future of maritime warfare, however, many find the subject of “intelligent weapon systems” to be deeply contentious. A good point of departure for the discussion on autonomous combat systems is a recent report in the...

Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “Di Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are: 1. Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels. 2. The village of...

Footage of Masyaf shows missile shaped items; IAEA urges Syria to let inspectors visit reactor that IAF destroyed in 2007. A compound in western Syria with buildings and hundreds of missile-shaped items has been identified as functionally related to a nuclear reactor Israel destroyed northeast of Damascus in 2007. Satellite footage of the site in Masyaf was obtained by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and shows a compound built in a ravine and surrounded by what appears to be a line of trenches. While there are no security measures visible in the commercial satellite imagery, ISIS said...

The Cold War has been over for 25 years now, but the United States still maintains a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems — and they don’t come cheap. For example, we still spend $2 billion a year just in operations and support costs for the U.S. ICBM force. And we are about to spend a whole lot more.

A group of lawmakers from South Korea's ruling Saenuri Party said Monday the country should consider building a nuclear-powered submarine, amid escalating provocations by Pyongyang. The remark came as North Korea on Wednesday test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) in waters off its east coast. The South Korean military said the missile flew about 500 kilometers toward Japan, making the longest flight by such a missile launched by the communist country. "South Korea's military should move to deal effectively with North Korea's SLBM threat by deploying a submarine with nuclear propulsion that can better detect and attack North Korean vessels,"...

Iran has deployed Russian-made S-300 long-range missiles in its Fordow nuclear facility, Tehran Times and other Iranian state-run media reported Sunday. State TV showed the missiles and other counter-strike weapons being transported to Fordow. The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) is a uranium enrichment facility located 20 miles northeast of the city of Qom. The site is the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility, the other one is in Natanz. In January 2012 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Iran had started producing uranium enriched up to 20%. Earlier on Sunday, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a...

The U.S. Air Force asked industry on Friday for proposals to replace the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and the nuclear cruise missile as the military moves ahead with a costly modernization of its aging atomic weapons systems. The Air Force said in a statement it expected to award up to two contracts for a new ICBM weapons system, or ground-based strategic deterrent, sometime next summer or fall. It also expected to award up to two contracts in the same time frame for a new nuclear cruise missile, or long-range standoff weapon. Modernization of the U.S. nuclear force is expected...

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the Soviet Union and the United States signed in 1987, prohibits conventional and nuclear-armed land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. The U.S. Department of State concluded in 2014 that Russia is in violation of its treaty obligations, raising doubts about the treaty's durability and how the United States should respond. At the moment, U.S. policy remains committed to the treaty and seeks to encourage Russia to return to compliance by eliminating prohibited systems, but attempts to revive the treaty could take several years and might not succeed....

A senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently threatened Israel, saying the ground is ready for the annihilation of “the Zionist regime”. The comments by IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami were made at a sermon in Tehran this past Friday prior to prayers marking Al-Quds Day. He also declared that Iran has over 100,000 missiles waiting in Lebanon alone and that tens of thousands of other missiles were placed throughout the Muslim world in order to wipe "the accursed black dot" – that is Israel – from the map of the world. Salami also threatened Kurdish leaders...

A North Korean ballistic missile is believed to have exploded on its launch pad today in its latest botched test firing. Official sources said the blast is thought to have severely injured personnel working close to the medium-range weapon. It is the latest in a series of setbacks for a ballistic weapons.

Former Pentagon official Mark Schneider warned...'The loss of GPS guidance due to [anti-satellite] attack would take out a substantial part of our precision weapons delivery capability and essentially all of our standoff capability.