Free Republic

Finally! Putin Showed Off A New Terrifying Hypersonic Missile That Shocked NATO The diamond in the crown of the Russian Empire and Putin’s Joker are both quite appropriate epithets. In military terms, we are discussing a hypersonic glide vehicle that flies to the target at hypersonic speed. It has a nuclear warhead of between 0.8 and 2 megatons. Three hypersonics, Zircon, Kinzhal and now the Avanguard.

Just over three decades after Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, three people have been arrested and charged under the country’s harsh new anti-LGBT laws and could face ten years in prison for membership of an “extremist organisation”.The arrests are a clear indication of how Russia has come full circle on its persecution of sexual minorities under Vladimir Putin.On March 21, the district court of Orenburg city in south-western Russia ordered the arrest of nightclub owner Vyacheslav Khasanov. The nightclub, which is called Pose, has never explicitly identified as a gay club – styling itself as a “parody theatre bar”, it...

Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American. Caspar Grosse, a German medic in that unit, said he saw the soldier plead for medical attention in a mix of broken English and Russian. It was dusk. A team member looked for bandages. That is when, Mr. Grosse said, a fellow soldier hobbled over and fired his weapon into the Russian soldier’s torso. He slumped, still breathing. Another soldier fired — “just shot him...

June 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Army awarded Lockheed Martin a multi-year contract worth $4.5 billion for its air defense Patriot Missiles system, the Pentagon said on Friday. The Patriot system is one of an array of sophisticated air defense units supplied by the West to help Ukraine, as it continues its defense against Russia's invasion. The contract covers 870 PAC-3 MSE missiles and associated hardware.

All of a sudden, the US Air Force is considering cancelling a multibillion-dollar effort to develop a new stealth fighter. Citing the high cost of the so-called “Next-Generation Air Dominance” programme and the competing demands of other projects, USAF leaders have warned they may have no choice but to cancel NGAD – and find other ways of winning control of the air in future wars. It’s a startling development for advocates of American air power. For generations, the whole US military – not to mention the militaries of America’s closest allies – have depended on the US Air Force to...