Free Republic

Lockheed bets on F-35 upgrades to remain relevant in an airpower race with China that favors revolution over evolution US F-35 in a file photo. Image: US Air Force Bested at the next-generation US fighter competition, Lockheed Martin is betting big on turning the F-35 into a “fifth-gen-plus” fighter — retrofitting tomorrow’s tech into yesterday’s jet to stay in the game. This month, multiple media sources reported that Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet announced that the defense giant will not challenge the US Air Force’s decision to award the US$20 billion Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter contract to rival...

In a sharp criticism of NATO’s European members that has become increasingly common in the Trump administration, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued a stark warning, urging the alliance’s member states to dramatically increase their defense budgets or risk undermining the credibility of the entire organization.“NATO is only as strong as the commitments of its members,” Rubio told The Free Press in an interview. “If the US is carrying the lion’s share, with European nations as mere junior partners, that’s not a true alliance—it’s a dependency.”Rubio’s comments come amid rising frustration in Washington over NATO’s continued reliance on...

The Kremlin said on Monday that the position of US President Donald Trump's administration on ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine gave Moscow satisfaction, but declined to comment on Trump's hopes for deal this week. US envoy General Keith Kellogg said on Sunday that NATO membership was "off the table" for Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly said previous US support for Ukraine's bid to join NATO was a cause of the war. "We have heard from Washington at various levels that Ukraine's membership in NATO is excluded," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters." Of course, this is something that causes our...

https://x.com/WarClandestine/status/1896373700834041941Clandestine@WarClandestine·Mar 2Did you catch that?Zelensky admits that if Ukraine gets NATO membership, then he has “fulfilled his mission”.His mission is not to govern Ukraine. His mission is NATO membership for Ukraine, which would immediately trigger WW3.The reason his mission is WW3, is because that’s the only scenario where he MIGHT survive. His only way out is if NATO comes in and takes over the fight with Russia directly. That’s his plan, but realistically he would need the US in order to pull it off.Zelensky, and his Deep State handlers, are literally trying to initiate full-scale WW3, in an effort to...

President Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports triggered the usual response from Ottawa. First under Justin Trudeau and now under his successor, Mark Carney, Canada’s political class didn’t just protest—they retaliated, slapping on symbolic countermeasures and ... Outrage as policy—the Canadian default setting when Washington asserts leverage. But beneath the indignation lies a more straightforward truth: Canada had it coming. Canada has basked in American economic and military protection for years while shirking its responsibilities. Regarding trade, defense, energy, and foreign policy, successive Liberal governments have treated the U.S.-Canada relationship as a one-way arrangement—Washington provides the muscle, and Ottawa collects the...

Following pressure from the globalist mafia, Romanian authorities banned front-runner Calin Georgescu from running for president. Georgescu wanted peace in Ukraine and a democratic Romania.After the Romanian authorities canceled the first round of elections won by anti-Globalist Calin Georgescu, and detained him for questioning in a bogus prosecution, Georgescu was BARRED from running in the May poll, in which he is the leading candidate with 40% of vote intentions.Bucharest exploded in chaos after the decision was announced.On Thursday, Tucker Carlson posted his video interview with Călin Georgescu. During their talk – around the 15:39 minute mark – Georgescu talks about...

A German military assessment exposes major issues with NATO weapons in Ukraine. The PzH 2000 howitzer, while advanced, is so technically fragile that its combat usefulness is in doubt. The Leopard 1A5 tank is used mostly as makeshift artillery due to weak armor. The Leopard 2A6 is too expensive and complex to maintain at the front. Air defense systems also face problems. The IRIS-T works well, but ammo is too costly and scarce. The Patriot system is called “unsuitable for combat” because its MAN carrier vehicles are outdated and lack spare parts. This information was revealed in a transcript of...

NATO is a corpse. All that remains is the grotesque performance art of a diplomatic zombie stumbling from summit to summit, mouthing tired clichés about “shared values” and “burden sharing,” even as its core strategic logic lies rotting beneath the surface. The Atlantic Alliance, once the steel scaffolding of Western security, has become a hollow ritual. Its military readiness is an illusion. Its political cohesion is fraying. Its future, if it has one, lies not in revival—but in reinvention or replacement. This is not a triumphalist declaration from the Kremlin or Beijing. It is a sober diagnosis, grounded in realism...

As part of a broader effort to rid the Pentagon of “weak leadership” and inaction, the Trump administration has ousted a senior NATO official, whose firing was previously suggested by a conservative research group. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield was reportedly fired from NATO’s military committee over the weekend. She was the first woman to oversee the Naval War College, a position she held until 2023. In addition to leading a joint reconstruction team in Afghanistan, Chatfield was a Navy helicopter pilot and one of the 32 members of NATO’s military committee. On Tuesday, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced...

Japan expressed interest Tuesday in participating in the NATO command for its Ukrainian mission based in Germany in what would be a major boost in ties with the largely European alliance. Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani announced his country’s interest during talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Tokyo. After providing the war-torn country with defense equipment and support, Japan now wants to join NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, or NSATU, headquartered at a U.S. base in the German town of Wiesbaden. Nakatani said Japan wants to further deepen security cooperation with NATO and that participation in...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is assuring fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization member nations that the United States considers the defense alliance indispensable. Rubio made the comments during his address to the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday. He dismissed panicked speculation that President Donald Trump was planning to pull out of the alliance. "As we speak right now, the United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been. And some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see in the global media and some domestic media in the United States about NATO is...

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha says more pressure must be exerted on Russia to agree to a peace deal as he meets NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stressed on Thursday that any ceasefire or peace deal to stop the war in Ukraine must be "lasting". "I commend of course the American efforts to break the deadlock, that is important. We have to make sure that whenever a ceasefire or a peace deal is reached that it is enduring, that it is lasting," said Rutte on Thursday. Rutte emphasised that the outcome of this war is...

PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned fellow EU countries that joint defence is still realistic, but urged continued military cooperation with the US The Danish government will support a series of small steps to reinforce the EU's joint foreign and security policy this autumn, when member nations begin the dirty work of negotiating a new constitutional treaty for the European partnership. Denmark will neither contribute to majority-rule resolutions on defence, nor move to withdraw the military defence of Europe from the NATO alliance with the US, Rasmussen said Monday at an EU conference at Copenhagen's Industriens Hus. The prime minister warned...

Germany has embarked on its first permanent foreign deployment since World War II, with the nation's parliament approving the dispatch of troops to eastern Lithuania, along NATO's eastern boundary. This marks a historic moment for Germany, as it will be the inaugural occasion of a continuous German military presence overseas since the Second World War. The full operational capability of the unit is expected by 2027. Brigadier General Christoph Huber, who leads the brigade, stated, "We have a clear mission. We have to ensure the protection, freedom and security of our Lithuanian allies here on NATO's eastern flank." While Germany...

Democrat Delaware Sen. Chris Coons told CNN Monday that the “average middle American” is too dumb to identify Greenland on a world map. Coons criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to purchase Greenland from Denmark and make it U.S. territory for resource and national security purposes, arguing that the plan will not resonate with the average American because they do not even know where the island is. Trump said no options for acquiring Greenland are off the table, emphasizing that a takeover of the island is a necessity to protect the U.S. against the threat of Russia and China’s increasing influence...

The Russo-Ukrainian War is now three years old, and the third Z-Day, on February 24, 2025, was marked by a substantively different tone than prior iterations. On the battlefield, Russian forces stand significantly closer to victory than they have at any point since the opening weeks of the war. After reversals early in the war as Ukraine took advantage of Russian miscalculations and insufficient force generation, the Russian army surged in 2024, collapsing Ukraine’s front in southern Donetsk and pushing the front forward towards the remaining citadels of the Donbas. At the same time, 2025’s Z-Day was the first under...

THE first-ever orbital rocket launched from Europe has crashed into the ground and exploded moments after its take off. German startup Isar Aerospace’s uncrewed Spectrum rocket fell into the sea and burst into flames just 40 seconds after blasting off from Norway’s Arctic Andøya Spaceport on Sunday. The dramatic fireball marked a fiery end to what had been billed as the continent’s first-ever orbital launch attempt — seen as a major step in Europe's bid to break into the booming commercial satellite market. The 28-metre Spectrum rocket lifted off at 12.30pm local time (10.30 am UK) after weather delays earlier...

This is the gravest crisis for Western security since the end of World War Two, and a lasting one. As one expert puts it, "Trumpism will outlast his presidency". But which nations are equipped to step to the fore as the US stands back? ... Donald Trump is the first US President since World War Two to challenge the role that his country set for itself many decades ago. And he is doing this in such a way that, to many, the old world order appears to be over - and the new world order has yet to take shape....

Throughout Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, repeated and escalating warnings of the potential for a wider war have only raised fears in the Baltic states that they could be next in the crosshairs of the Kremlin. Talk about a potential Russian invasion is "very common at parties, gatherings, lunch breaks, water cooler talk," Gabija Stasiukyne, a 32-year-old living in Vilnius, told the Kyiv Independent. "It’s everywhere. The conversation inevitably turns in the direction of — what are you going to do?" Lithuania's government is also taking the threat seriously — the country reinstated conscription in 2015, and Vilnius in January...

“A New World Order With European Values.” Emblazoned across banners and signs, those words met the participants at this week’s meeting of the World Forum in Berlin. Each year, leaders, executives, journalists and academics gather to address the greatest threats facing humanity. This year, there was little doubt about what they view as the current threat: the resurgence of populism and free speech. In fairness to the Forum, “a New World Order” likely sounds more ominous for some civil libertarians than intended. While the European Union is a transnational government stretching across 27 nations, the organizers were referring to a...