Free Republic

In case anyone wondered what the Kim regime was up to yesterday, the North Korean state-run media would like to clear up the confusion. The simultaneous launch of four mid-range ballistic missiles was a practice run for the war than Kim Jong-un insists is coming, a little target practice using Uncle Sam as a bulls-eye. The firing range practice got a significant response from the US that raises the stakes for both China and South Korea: North Korea was practicing to strike United States military bases in Japan with its latest barrage of missiles, state media in Pyongyang reported...

New evidence suggests Iran received help from Venezuela with its nuclear program despite a decade of U.N.-mandated sanctions aimed at curbing the rouge regime’s controversial nuclear and ballistic missile programs. A 2009 document obtained by Brazil’s leading weekly, Veja magazine, shows late dictator President Hugo Chavez signing off on the release of funds to help Iran with its nuclear ambitions. Specifically, the document states the funds were to be designated for the import of equipment for a gunpowder factory and the development of production plants for nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, elements used in rocket propulsion for Iran’s government. There is also...

When Iran test fired a new ballistic missile on Sunday, an act it confirmed this morning, it was aware it was taking a calculated risk and, more importantly, was testing America's response and resolve to preserve Obama's nuclear deal. It got the answer this afternoon, when shortly before 2pm, President Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said the United States was officially putting Iran on notice on Wednesday over its "destabilizing activity" after it test-fired a ballistic missile over the weekend. "As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," Flynn told a White House briefing, without explaining...

Russia’s deadliest new nuclear weapon currently under development, the new super-heavy thermonuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) RS-28 Sarmat may be in trouble, the Russian Nuclear Forces Project (RNFP) reports. One sign: repeated delays in the missile’s first ejection test, which tests the mechanism of a missile leaving its launch container, according to a January 19 blog post on the RNFP website.“The first sign was the delay with be first ejection tests–they were moved from 2015 to the end of 2016 and now to 2017 (for all we know, this may be the end of 2017). The delay was sort of...

Video footage shot by a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet squadron over Syria shows a pair of Russian Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker-E fighters armed with a pair of older R-27 air-to-air missiles but what appears to be a single R-77-1 RVV-SD active radar-guided missile.

The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency successfully launched a salvo of two Raytheon Standard SM-6 Dual I missiles against a medium-range ballistic missile target earlier this week. USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53)—an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyer—conducted the test shortly after midnight on Dec. 14 to demonstrate a Sea Based Terminal endo-atmospheric defensive capability. "This test demonstrated the capabilities MDA and the Navy are delivering to our fleet commanders," Vice Adm. Jim Syring, director of the MDA said in a statement. "The SM-6 missile and the Aegis Weapon System continue to prove that they are critical components of...

Terrorist commander announces on Hamas TV that the terror organization is offering missiles to any army willing to attack Israel. video at link

Russia will deploy two advanced missile systems to its far-west territory of Kaliningrad in a direct response to NATO expansion in eastern Europe, a pro-Kremlin Russian lawmaker said Friday. Kaliningrad is a parcel of land disconnected from the Russian mainland that sits on the coast of the Baltic sea, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. A Russian deployment of S-400 surface-to-air missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander balistic missiles to Kaliningrad, with its proximity to NATO member states, will undoubtedly heighten concerns among leaders of the transatlantic security alliance, who were already nervous over incoming American leader Donald Trump’s commitment to their collective...

Of the 31 states that have declared their opposition to taking in Syrian refugees, one state, Kentucky, has a specific reason to be wary of the background check process: previously two Iraqi refugees who settled in Bowling Green turned out to be al Qaeda-linked terrorists with the blood of American soldiers on their hands, an ABC News investigation found. In the wake of the Kentucky case, the U.S. halted the refugee program for Iraqis for six months, a fact the Obama administration did not disclose to Congress at the time, officials told ABC News in the 2013 investigation.

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...