ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

China's air force said it deployed an armed drone to multinational anti-terrorism drills today, underscoring the country's rapid progress in developing unmanned aerial vehicles. The drone, which wasn't identified by type, carried out a successful mission in which it destroyed a mock enemy command vehicle with a missile, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted air force spokesman Shen Jinke as saying. Shen said the drone's ability to monitor, identify and destroy objects below in real time makes it an important tool in fighting terrorists. China says radicals fighting Chinese rule in the vast northwestern region of Xinjiang have used illicit border crossings and desert encampments that could be monitored from above. Chinese aerospace firms have developed dozens of drones, known also as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. Many have appeared at air shows and military parades, including some that bear an uncanny resemblance to the Predator, Global Hawk and Reaper models used ...

If it is true that we are entering an era of “new cold war” between the NATO powers and their BRICS-affiliated resistance bloc counterparts – and it is true according to all the usual globalist think tanks and media mouthpieces – then this war will not be fought with armies on battlefields but with corporations and pipelines and contracts. And if economic warfare is the new normal for the 21st century, then Russia and China have just revealed one of their key weapons in this fight. It is neither a missile nor a tank, not a stealth fighter nor an electromagnetic weapon. No, it’s something altogether more fearsome: a credit rating agency . The announcement was made early this month by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. “In the beginning, the agency will assess Russian-Chinese investment projects with a view to attracting of [investors from] a number of Asian countries,” the minister said on a recent trip to Beijing. “Gradually, based on the progress and authority of such an agen...

AFP Photo / Karim Sahib About 930 France’s residents and citizens, including 60 women, are either already fighting in Iraq and Syria or are planning to go there, the country’s interior minister said. Dozens of women and children were stopped on their way there. “930 French citizens or foreigners usually resident in France are today involved in jihad in Iraq and Syria,” France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Le Journal du Dimanche. According to Cazeneuve, at least 350 people “are on the ground, including 60 women.” “Around 180 have left from Syria and 170 are en route for the zone,” he said, adding that about 230 people want to get to the areas with Islamic militants. Also, at least 36 have already died fighting alongside the ISIS jihadists. These numbers are not included in the 930 figure, he added.  There are those who “claim to have left on a humanitarian mission,” said the minister, adding that this is not true as French authorities “have reliable information that ...

Reuters / Alaa Al-Marjani Islamic State radicals gain more than $3 million per day just from oil sales, while also earning huge sums from human trafficking and extortion, report US intelligence officials and experts. They are wealthier than any other terror group in history. The Islamic State group which seized huge terrorizes in Iraq and Syria, is now controlling eleven oil fields in both countries, US analysts told AP. They added that the militants are selling oil and other products via old established networks under the noses of Kurdish, Turkish and Jordanian authorities.  The resources of the Islamic State (IS) exceed that “of any other terrorist group in history,” a US intelligence official told the agency on condition of anonymity. According to the analysts, the illegal oil is usually transported in tanker trucks. “There's a lot of money to be made,” said Dr. Denise Natali, who worked in Kurdistan as an American humanitarian official and is now a senior research fellow at N...

  U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the Krtsanisi military training base outside Tbilisi September 7, 2014. (Reuters/David Mdzinarishvili) US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he was not aware of a secret deal to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons. His words contradict earlier statements by an aide to President Petro Poroshenko that the US is backing Kiev’s military with arms. “I'm not aware of any kind of a secret deal that was made in Wales about supplying lethal weapons to the Ukrainians,” Hagel told journalists on a visit to Turkey’s capital, Ankara. Earlier, Poroshenko aide Yury Lutsenko wrote on his Facebook page that the US, along with France, Italy, Poland and Norway, will supply modern weapons to Ukraine. The agreements were reached at the Sept. 4-5 NATO summit in Wales, Lutsenko wrote , adding that the West will also send military advisers to Ukraine. However, Hagel later denied the report Sunday, saying that Washington has not made an offer of "...