ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Stephen Dinan -      The Washington Times               Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, speaking in New York, said that while the U.S. hasn’t learned of any Islamic State plans to attack the U.S. itself, the terrorists are intent on killing Americans they encounter overseas. (Associated Press)   There is no current intelligence suggesting Islamic State militants are plotting attacks on the U.S., Homeland Security officials told Congress on Wednesday, but they acknowledged the dangers of a terrorist trying to sneak across a porous southern border or a lone wolf attack inspired by the insurgents’ advances in Iraq and Syria . Hours before President Obama made his case for an expanded military response to combat the Islamic State — also known as ISIL or ISIS — top Homeland Security intelligence officials said the terrorists have the potential to develop into a direct danger to the U.S., but for now it’s a remote threat.

By Susan Jones  (CNSNews.com) - NBC News Correspondent Richard Engel, reporting live from Kurdistan in northern Iraq Wednesday night, said U.S. troops are on the ground in Iraq and avoiding reporters. "I know there are already American boots on the ground where I am now," Engel told MSNBC. "They are not necessarily firing their rifles or kicking down doors, and we're not going on embeds with these troops. "They are troops who are staying away from reporters, they are embedded with local fighters trying to guide in air strikes, gathering intelligence -- the kind of thing you would have thought the Green Berets would have done many years ago, and which are now being done by Navy SEALS and Delta Force and other Special Operations Forces.  "Can you conduct a secret war like this, a war by remote control to dislodge ISIS, to dislodge this terrorist group, this militant murderous group from large parts of Iraq and large parts of Syria? We will see. It is an open

Russia could use ballistic missiles, such as the Yars , with conventional warheads to counter CPGS.(RIA Novosti / Vadim Savitskii) A highly-placed Defense Ministry official says that Russia may be forced to match the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which prescribes that a non-nuclear US missile must be able to hit any target on Earth within one hour. “Russia is capable of and will have to develop a similar system,” Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said during a public discussion of the Russian rearmament program for the decade of 2016 through 2025. “But mostly we will concentrate on countering CPGS, as our military doctrine is a defensive one.” But the official denied that the Kremlin was setting off for another Cold War-style arms race with the West. “This is not in these plans, and I hope will never happen,”said Borisov. “We simply want to protect our civilian population from outside threats.” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov.(RIA Novosti / Micha

Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) stand guard at a checkpoint in the northern Iraq city of Mosul.(Reuters / Stringer) The Central Intelligence Agency believes the Islamic State militant group “can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters” throughout both Iraq and Syria, CNN reports. If true, that would mean the Islamic State’s numbers have more than doubled compared to the agency’s last estimate, which pinned the group’s total amount of fighters at roughly 10,000. "This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence," a CIA spokesperson told CNN. In addition to updating its estimates regarding the Islamic State’s fighting force, a separate US official also told the news channel that the US government is already conducting surveillance flights within Syria’s borders. The United States is