Category: News + Intel

London, Great Britain— In an unanticipated—and highly refreshing—move, the British army is going to change its fitness tests to reflect the rigors of combat. The new tests will ditch gender and age considerations to ensure the all personnel designated for close combat duties will be up to the task. “I don’t care if you are […]

Despite a fairly limited budget and access to resources, the past few years have been dominated by discussions of Russia’s covert and hybrid warfare efforts the world over. With a Gross Domestic Product that’s a bit more than 1/18th the size of America’s and a defense budget that’s roughly 1/10th that of the most dominant […]

Madrid, Spain—A wall across the Sahara desert. That’s what President Trump has advised the Spanish government to do to curb the migrant influx. According to the Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, President Trump suggested the idea during the former’s visit to the U.S. He cited the pre-election promise to erect a wall at the American-Mexican […]

The Syrian Civil War  The Syrian conflict started in 2011 as an uprising against the government of Bashar Al Assad but quickly spiraled in a Civil War. The original rebel force, known as the Free Syrian Army, was splintered into several groups, one of which is ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). […]

London, United Kingdom—The British government has announced an additional deployment of troops in Ukraine and a package of financial support. The British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said that an extra contingent of Royal Marines would deploy to the eastern European country as an extra layer of deterrence against Russia. The Royal Marines are Britain’s premier […]

Russia’s annual military exercises occur within a four year rotation, with each year within that cycle devoted to a particular facet of Russian military operations. Last year, they held their massive Zapad (meaning “West”) drills in Belarus, prompting concerns from NATO allies in the Baltics. This year, their Vostok exercises (this time, meaning “East”) took […]

President Trump campaigned on a platform of “America first,” which included adding pressure on European allies to begin meeting their financial obligations to the NATO alliance. While Trump was certainly not the first president to harp on what the United States often refers to as “burden sharing” among its allies, his rhetoric appears to have […]

Bulford, Great Britain—The two British special forces instructors have been acquitted of negligence over the deaths of three SAS candidates in 2013. For PERSEC reasons, the two SF instructors were only identified as 1A and 1B. 1A, a captain, was the training officer in command of the march; 1B, a warrant officer, was the exercise’s chief […]

Swiss officials issued a clear demand to Russia’s Foreign Ministry to cease their illegal spying efforts within their nation on Sunday, following the revelation of another case of espionage carried out by Russian operatives within the past week. For the third time this year, the Swiss foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to answer for […]

A Russian military aircraft with 14 people on board was reportedly inadvertently shot down by allied Syrian forces as they attempted to engage incoming Israeli missile fire on Monday, exemplifying the increasingly complicated battle space Syria has become. According to statements released in Russian state media, a Russian IL-20 maritime patrol aircraft was flying over […]

Ankara, Turkey—More troops not a new naval base is what Turkey is planning for the occupied northern half of Cyprus. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the recently speculated new naval base will not be forthcoming. But he added that “we will not decrease the number of our soldiers there, but on the contrary, […]

London, Great Britain—The Islamic State (ISIS) is going through its final days, according to Major General Felix Gedney, the Deputy Commander of the allied coalition. Great Britain has been part of the Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led international coalition, since 2014. Operation Shader, the UK component, initially began as a humanitarian aid operation. Quickly, however, […]