Tag: China

Fears of the coronavirus are affecting the travel plans of over 46 million people worldwide and Chinese officials, where the outbreak started, are worried that the disease is spreading.  China’s President Xi Jinping stressed the urgency of controlling the outbreak, which is confirmed to have infected hundreds just since Friday. The number of infected people, […]

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Qassem Soleimani. War with Iran. The Afghan papers. These are some of the more important topics that have been trending in defense and foreign policy news. Russia and China, conversely, have been conspicuous in their absence. But, arguably, these two countries are the most important long-term threats to U.S. national security. […]

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin made headlines with his claim that the Russian military is the only force on the planet with fully operational hypersonic weapons. Russia’s growing hypersonic arsenal already includes the Kinzhal (Dagger), which has a range of around 1,250 miles and can travel 10 times faster than the speed of sound […]

“Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world,” Napoleon Bonaparte had allegedly said. It has been quite a while since Austerlitz and Waterloo, but the former French emperor and military genius seems to have hit the nail right on the head. Long forgotten are Mao’s economic and social experiments, namely, the […]

Iranian military spokesman Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi has announced that his country will carry out a four-day joint naval exercise with Russia and China. The exercise is set to commence on December 27th and take place in the northern part of the Indian Ocean. This all follows recent U.S. buildup in the region. In particular, the […]

In the first reported total loss of one of Russia’s exceedingly rare fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 “stealth” fighters, one of the jets crashed approximately 68 miles from the Komsomolsk-on-Amur aircraft plant in Russia, where it was likely built. The pilot ejected from the aircraft safely and was recovered soon after the incident by Russian military MI-8 […]

Last September, two Chinese diplomats were expelled from the U.S. after they barged into a U.S. Navy base in Virginia. The base in which they illegally entered houses the shooting ranges for all the East Coast SEAL Teams. The Chinese diplomats, one of who is reported to be an intelligence officer operating under a diplomatic […]

The United States is looking to further strengthen its ties with the country of Djibouti. At the request of the Djiboutian government, the U.S. is helping the small Horn of Africa nation build an elite Special Forces infantry unit, the Rapid Intervention Battalion (RIB). The unit will be trained and equipped by the U.S. The […]

Earlier this week, China’s People’s Liberation Army-Navy received its second aircraft carrier — and the first that China built on its own. The announcement that China now has two operational aircraft carriers was seen by some as a dramatic uptick in China’s maritime capabilities. But as we’ve discussed on SOFREP before, the nation’s quickly growing […]

China’s People’s Liberation Army–Navy just reached a significant milestone in its efforts to develop a globally-capable “blue water” navy, as the nation’s second aircraft carrier entered service on Tuesday. China’s new carrier, dubbed the Shandong, is not only China’s first home-built vessel of its type, it also earns the nation a place in the elite […]

As the first of its class (and perpetually troubled) super carrier USS Gerald R. Ford continues to steam toward completion and a second carrier’s (the USS John F. Kennedy) production continues, the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, laid out his vision of how the Navy needs to shift its approach to […]

The hypersonic arms race going on between Russia, China and the United States has seen its fair share of legitimate developments happen alongside a flurry of international rhetoric that sometimes doesn’t seem quite so legitimate. Now, the head of Russian ship-maker United Shipbuilding Corporation, Alexei Rakhmanov, is claiming that all modern warships in the Russian […]