Free Republic

Big trouble may be brewing in little Moldova, which is starting to look like a staging area for the European Union to offset an emerging Russian victory in Ukraine. Whether such a plan, if attempted, would succeed is not clear. But Moldova is not the most stable country in the world with the nation split between pro-EU and pro-Russian elements. US troops are now in Moldova with Romanians, ostensibly for a military exercise called JCET 2024 (Joint Command Exchange Training). The exercise started on April 1 and will continue until April 19. According to a Moldovan Ministry of Defense statement,...

An F-35A Lightning II assigned to the 354th Fighter Wing (FW) takes off during an Agile Combat Employment exercise on Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, July 13, 2021. Agile Combat Employment exercises ensure the 354th FW is able to deploy, disperse and maneuver combat capability to create dilemmas for near-peer adversaries. Photo: US Air Force / Airman 1st Class Jose Miguel T Tamondong The Warzone reported that the full-rate production decision came more than four years later than planned, with the primary reason for the latest holdup being delays with the Joint Simulation Environment tests. Those tests, the source mentions,...

If NATO is so much against sending troops to Ukraine, why doesn’t NATO demand that the soldiers already there be sent home? On Monday, February 26, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany would not provide its Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine because doing so would require German troops to be sent there to operate them, just as the British are operating the Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles. The British cried foul and accused Scholz of a “flagrant abuse of intelligence” – meaning that Scholz confirmed what everyone already knows, that NATO officers and trained personnel are in Ukraine...

In a shocking statement that has now been withdrawn, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote that Ukraine has lost 100,000 soldiers and 20,000 civilians in the Ukraine war. This conforms to comments made by US Joint Chief of Staff head General Mark Milley, who in a speech at a conference hosted by New York’s Economic Club said that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war and that the number of troop casualties is probably the “same” for Ukraine’s army. Ukraine’s heavy casualties are a signal that Washington’s de facto war with Russia...

NEW YORK – What if they had a tech war and nobody came? This updated version of a meme from the 1960s Vietnam War protests may well apply to America’s most drastic trade restrictions against a rival since the Cold War. The world’s top player in semiconductor technology, Holland’s ASML, has opposed high-profile US demands to stop selling its machines to China, and there’s no indication the Dutch government is ready to yield to Washington. Indeed some media reports have interpreted a statement by the Dutch trade minister as a rejection. ASML makes the world’s best lithography machines, and has...

New Longbow 1 and 2 drones can both fly and swim, are cheaper than hypersonics and no known missile defense can stop them ...This week, The Eurasian Times reported that Chinese researchers from Harbin Engineering University had unveiled two cross-medium prototype submarine drones that can both swim and fly. The drones, named Longbow 1 and Longbow 2, can each carry a 1-kilogram payload and dive to 100 meters underwater. Longbow 1 is a fixed-wing drone while Longbow 2 features a folding wing design... ...Professor Ji Wangfeng of China’s Naval Aviation University said in the Eurasian Times report that cross-medium weapons...