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The U.S. Air Force launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile test from California in a show of nuclear readiness. The test launched at 11:01 p.m. PT from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the base announced on Friday. It was a "routine" activity "intended to demonstrate that the United States’ nuclear deterrent is safe, secure, reliable and effective," according to the announcement. "A test launch displays the heart of our deterrence mission on the world’s stage, assuring our nation and its allies that our weapons are capable and our Airmen are ready and willing to defend peace across...

A Russian official has boasted that Russia would destroy NATO countries in "half-an-hour" if conflict escalated to the use of nuclear weapons. Dmitry Rogozin, Head of Russia’s Space Agency Roscosmos and former Deputy Prime Minister, said Sunday that in the event of a nuclear war, "NATO countries will be destroyed by Russia in half-an-hour." ON WORLD WAR II ANNIVERSARY, ZELENSKYY SAYS EVIL HAS RETURNED He stressed that such an event "cannot be allowed because the consequences will impact the [entire] Earth."

China has reacted furiously after Australia signed a new three-way security alliance with the US and the UK and vowed to build nuclear-power submarines. China's Washington DC embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu accused the nations of adopting a 'Cold War mentality' towards China in reference to the stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. Countries 'should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties,' he said. 'In particular, they should shake off their Cold-War mentality and ideological prejudice.' Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday morning unveiled Australia's role in a landmark tripartite...

Vladimir Putin boasted yesterday that Russia had the power to launch an 'unpreventable strike' against its enemies in a show of strength following the confrontation with Britain in the Black Sea. The Russian president told a navy day parade in St Petersburg: 'We are capable of detecting any underwater, above-water, airborne enemy and, if required, carry out an unpreventable strike.' It comes as military officials announced tests of advanced new weapons – some of which come from an arsenal Mr Putin has described as 'invincible'. He added: 'The Russian navy today has everything it needs to guarantee the protection of...

Nato chiefs, thrown into a panic by fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attack the West, are scrambling to put together a force of 300,000 troops which they can put on 'high alert'. Relations between Russia and the West have plunged in the last year, with Moscow's insistence on backing its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, at all costs leading to serious tension with the US, Britain and France. Most Nato members cut their defence spending dramatically since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 but Russia has been bolstering its military capabilities, holding parades involving more than 100,000 troops...

Chinese and Russian media have started suggesting the possibility of a China-U.S. war. While the national news agency in China calls it “inevitable,” a Russian news agency listed a number of indications that it said “proved’ the two nations were heading toward a military conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday other countries should not have the illusion that they can attain military superiority over Russia, Interfax reported. "No one should have the illusion that they can gain military superiority over Russia, put any kind of pressure on it. We will always have an adequate answer for any such adventures," he was quoted as saying in an address he will present next week on the Defenders' of the Fatherland Day holiday. The report of Putin's comments came the same day British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said that Putin posed a "real and present danger"...

Over the last several months, Chinese leader Hsi Chin-p’ing and the Chinese Communist Party have repeatedly exhorted the People’s Liberation Army to “be ready to win a war.” Hsi has repeatedly called for greater military modernization, increased training, and enhanced overall readiness of the Chinese army, navy, and air force. These repeated calls have alarmed China’s neighbors from New Delhi to Washington. The question on everyone’s mind: what is all this preparation for? Is the Chinese leadership preparing for something? Are they gearing up for a military operation, or merely the option to carry one out? Or is there a...

North Korea has issued a fresh warning of an "all-out war", urging the United States to stop military drills and what it described as "nuclear blackmail". The country also refused to sign a non-aggression pact that John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, offered last week on condition of denuclearisation. In a thinly veiled threat to strike the United States, the North's National Defence Commission (NDC), chaired by leader Kim Jong-Un, said the US government must withdraw its policy of hostility against the North if it wants peace on both the Korean peninsula and the "US mainland".

America's most sophisticated stealth jet fighters have been quietly deployed to an allied base less than 200 miles from Iran's mainland, according to an industry report, but the Air Force adamantly denied the jets' presence is a threat to the Middle East nation. Multiple stealth F-22 Raptors, which have never been combat-tested, are in hangars at the United Arab Emirates' Al Dafra Air Base, just a short hop over the Persian Gulf from Iran's southern border, the trade publication Aviation Week reported.

Iran has more to lose than America in current standoffIran is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. Go ahead, make our day. On Monday, Parviz Sarvari, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, said, “Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.” Closing the strategically important strait has long been viewed as one of Iran’s trump cards in the give-and-take with the United States and the West. The impact of a strait crisis is overrated....

US aircraft carrier will join a major anti-submarine naval exercise with South Korea next week in a show of strength to North Korea after the sinking of a warship, reports said Wednesday. South Korea, which accuses the North of torpedoing its ship Cheonan in March with the loss of 46 lives, is also mounting a diplomatic drive at the United Nations but indicated it would not seek new sanctions. The USS George Washington will leave its base in the Japanese port of Yokosuka around Saturday and arrive in the Yellow Sea early next week, Yonhap news agency quoted a military...

A competition between military leaders to show the most loyalty toward North Korean leader Kim Jong-il may have been behind the North’s firing artillery shells near the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea last week. But that may not have been the only motive. Kim Jong-il reportedly gave the go-ahead for the North’s military to fire shells and it’s possible the move was meant as a saber-rattling display intended to gain leverage with the United States. “It is highly likely that the reclusive nation’s excessive devotion to its leader led to the shooting,” a high-ranking South Korean defense official...

China's indignant reaction to the announcement of U.S. plans to sell weapons to Taiwan appears to be in keeping with a new triumphalist attitude from Beijing that is worrying governments and analysts across the globe. From the Copenhagen climate change conference to Internet freedom to China's border with India, China observers have noticed a tough tone emanating from its government, its representatives and influential analysts from its state-funded think tanks. Calling in U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman on Saturday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the United States would be responsible for "serious repercussions" if it did not reverse the...

WASHIGTON – It would take the Army time to "shift gears" if it needed to fight against North Korea, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Thursday. Right now, the Army is focused on the counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but North Korea’s recent saber rattling has raised the prospect that the Army might be called upon to fight a conventional war. "I have said publicly for some time that if we had to shift gears, it would probably take us about 90 days or so to shift our gears and to train the folks up that were...

As expected (and they do tend to shoot off their mouths a lot with threats and big talk), North Korea delivered "the threat" tonight in an official statement out of their Korean Central News Agency (link to the original Japanese language report). North Korea is threatening Japan with military action if Japan takes down their Taepodong-2 (which they refer to as a "satellite") from the skies this week.Conservative Japanese daily Sankei (online) reports from Japan (in Japanese) a little while ago:HERE If above link does not work.

Iranian leaders today brushed off the threat of sanctions or military attack over their controversial nuclear drive, insisting the West was powerless to halt the Islamic republic. The tough rhetoric came after the regime dismissed appeals from UN's atomic watchdog chief Mohamed Elbaradei to freeze its uranium enrichment programme and calm suspicions it is seeking the bomb. "Today, thank god, the Iranian nation is a powerful one and we are going to have a dialogue with the world from a position of power," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northeast of the country. "Everything we have is from...

Iran: Stealth 'Flying Boat' Successfully Tested Tuesday, April 04, 2006 TEHRAN, Iran — Iran said Tuesday it had tested what it called a "super-modern flying boat" capable of evading radar. State TV showed a brief clip of the boat's launch. "Due to its advanced design, no radar at sea or in the air can detect it. It can lift out of the water," the television said. It said the boat was "all Iranian-made and can launch missiles with precise targeting while moving."

Coinciding with increased tensions with Iran over the resumption of illicit uranium enrichment, the U.S. Air Force has dispatched additional warplanes to the region in a not-so-subtle sign, military sources say. An entire wing of F-16s, the Air National Guard's 122nd Fighter Wing based in Fort Wayne, Ind., left for a base in southwest Asia on Tuesday. A wing is usually about 72 aircraft and several hundred support personnel. F-16s and support personnel from the 4th Fighter Squadron of the 388th Fighter Wing based at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, also deployed recently to Iraq. The squadron has 12 F-16s....

The North Korea Central News Agency released posters depicting North Korea's military power on January 20, 2003. The letters read, 'U.S. imperialists shouldn't carelessly provoke war.' A Russian envoy held six hours of talks with reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and described the meeting on the nuclear standoff between Pyongyang and Washington as substantive and successful. (Korean News Service/Reuters)