Author: Defenceline Webdesk

When the United States sanctioned International Criminal Court (ICC) President Akane Tomoko on August 18, Tokyo’s response was swift – and carefully calibrated. The next day, Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Kitamura Toshihiro called the move “very unfortunate,” reaffirming Japan’s consistent support for the ICC and the rule of law. Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae commented publicly on the same day, telling reporters that she considered the sanctions “very unfortunate” and would continue communicating with the United States and other relevant countries. She did not, however, say whether Tokyo would ask Washington to withdraw the sanctions. It was a statement of principle,…

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on August 18 ordered the government to shift imprisoned former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan to the hospital for examination and treatment amid growing concerns over his health. The top court issued the directive on petitions seeking Khan’s hospitalization, access to personal physicians, and meetings with family members. The transfer comes after persistent requests from his legal team and family regarding the 73-year-old leader’s health while in detention. Medical reports have noted issues with Khan’s blood pressure and cardiac health, alongside a specialized eye condition that may have affected his right eye. Khan…

WASHINGTON and AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Army is toying with new ways to deal with communication disruptions on the battlefield by trading the linear, step-by-step contingency plans soldiers once followed for mutually reinforced layers that look more like “electromagnetic camouflage,” I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane said today. “Our traditional PACE plans — primary, alternate, contingency, emergency — ways to [communicate] are dead. A sequential PACE plan, predicated on responding to failure with manual, step-by-step user actions is useless against concurrent multi-band jamming,” McFarlane told an audience at the annual TechNet Augusta conference. A boilerplate PACE plan that any soldier…

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup Island (known in Japan as Etorofu) on August 13. It’s the largest of the disputed Southern Kurils, which are known as the Northern Territories in Japan. The islands have been occupied by Russia since the end of World War II but are also claimed by Japan.  The Kuril Islands have been a constant thorn in Japan-Russia relations. The disputed islands are one of the reasons that Japan and Russia have yet to sign a peace treaty concluding World War II. Japan has long sought to foster economic cooperation with Russia as part of a…

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s Golden Dome Office has repeatedly refused requests from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a briefing on its plans, a senior CBO official said today amid criticisms from the Pentagon that the watchdog organization’s $1.2 trillion cost estimate for the missile shield is based on inaccurate information. “We have, to date, not been able to talk to the Golden Dome Office,” David Mosher, head of the CBO National Security Directorate, told the Brookings Institution. “We’ve asked them for briefings, and we have not gotten any. They’ve not been willing to do so. So, I know…

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The baseline AI layer for the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) architecture is being built by the software and technology firm Striveworks, Army officials told Breaking Defense on Tuesday. The news comes as the service prepares to roll out NGC2 at the corps-level next year with a focus on Pacific operations. “There’s going to be a lot of software data, the volume of all of that being processed at the corps level is going to be greater,” Joseph Welch, portfolio acquisition executive for command and control and counter-command and control, said in an interview here…

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On August 17, Xi Jinping delivered a speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who passed away in 2022. The speech unsurprisingly was laudatory. Jiang, Xi stated, was “a great Marxist,” “a great proletarian revolutionary, politician, military strategist, diplomat,” and “the core of the party’s third generation central leadership collective.”  Yet the speech was more than a mere commemoration. Rather, it exhibited a long-noted tendency of the CCP to “make the past serve the present” through the instrumentalization of historical narratives about itself and its leaders.…

Viper Shield forms digital armour around the aircraft, allowing pilots to counter radars, missiles and electronic threats. Credit: © L3Harris Technologies, Inc. Peru has selected L3Harris’ Viper Shield electronic warfare (EW) system for its F-16 Block 70 aircraft programme. The Viper Shield system, developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force, provides fighter aircraft with the ability to disrupt enemy radars, missiles, and electronic threats. Discover B2B Marketing That Performs Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms. Find out more In an 18 August release, L3Harris said the system…

Japanese Defense Minister Koizumi Shinjiro just arrived in India for the India-Japan Defense Ministerial Meeting on August 20. He brings with him a pragmatic doctrine currently reshaping Japanese defense industrial policy conversations: “Defense production is deterrence itself.” Particularly, he has urged the building of a “China-free” supply chain for defense equipment to ease dependency (and undermine China’s ability to weaponize that dependency). To that end, Japan has accelerated opportunities for industrial collaboration with key allies and strategic partners.  As Japan de-risks critical supply chains – covering not only defense inputs but also critical minerals and dual-use components – where does…