ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The Brazilian Navy has selected MBDA's Sea Ceptor to provide the local area air defence for its next generation Tamandaré class corvettes. After the UK's Royal Navy (RN) and the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN), Brazil's is now the third navy to have chosen Sea Ceptor. With discussions also well advanced with other leading navies around the world, Sea Ceptor is rapidly establishing a significant user community. A production contract was awarded by the UK MoD in September 2013 for Sea Ceptor to provide the next generation Air Defence capability and so replace the Seawolf system on the Royal Navy's Type 23 frigates from 2016 onwards. Sea Ceptor will subsequently be transferred to the Royal Navy's new ships as they start entering service, when the Type 23s are replaced by the future Type 26s. This long term commitment to Sea Ceptor by the Royal Navy is a solid assurance to each new member of the weapon's user community of the longevity of this new system over the y...

Armed men, believed to be Kurdish fighters, run after an explosion during fighting against Islamic State militants at a location west of Kobani November 23, 2014 (Reuters / Osman Orsal) An attack by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) jihadists on the Syrian border town of Kobani has come from Turkish territory for the first time, a Kurdish official said. IS forces advanced from the Turkish territory to attack the border crossing between Kobani and Turkey, according to Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's prominent Kurdish Democratic Union Party. The Islamic State "used to attack the town from three sides. Today, they are attacking from four sides,"Khalil is cited as saying by AP. The assault began with an armored vehicle suicide attack on the border crossing, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Heavy fighting also took place southwest of Kobani, where the IS militants used tanks to reinforce their ground troops. At least eight Kurdish fighters and 17 ji...

Reutets/Shawn Nickel/U.S. Air Force The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has not been weakened since US-led airstrikes began in September, Syria’s foreign minister said, adding that nothing will change until Turkey increases security at its borders. "All the indications say that [the Islamic State] today, after two months of coalition air strikes, is not weaker," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen TV on Friday. US-led airstrikes in Syria against the IS began as part of a larger effort to battle the jihadist group after it had seized vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria. Despite carrying out airstrikes in Syria, Washington has refused to work with the country’s government, stating that it wants to see Bashar Assad ousted. Turkey shares the latter stance with the US. Muallem noted that until Ankara is forced to step up security at its borders, the Islamic State cannot actually be defeated. "If the Security Council and Washi...

The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for hacking into multiple news websites on Thursday, including the New York Times, CBC and the Telegraph. Visitors saw this pop-up message: “you’ve been hacked by SEA.” Most of the news organizations hit were in the UK and the US. US sites hit included the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNBC, CBC and Forbes. The SEA said on its Twitter feed that the attacks were designed to coincide with the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. "Happy thanks giving, hope you didn't miss us! The press: Please don't pretend #ISIS are civilians. #SEA,"said the Tweet. Happy thanks giving, hope you didn't miss us! The press: Please don't pretend #ISIS are civilians. #SEA pic.twitter.com/ZXzMWbXoYp — SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) November 27, 2014 In the UK, affected media organizations included the Telegraph, the Independent and the Evening Standard. A part of our website run by a third-party was compromised earlier ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (AFP Photo) The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war. The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome”the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that”. The tone was impatient. The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even though Swedish law allows...

By The Saker How is that for a ridiculous headline? You like it? Well, it is just a little variation of a BBC headline today : Nato commander warns Russia could control whole Black Sea Here is an except from this article: Russia's top military commander, Gen Valerii Gerasimov, has warned that US "militarisation" of the annexed Florida Peninsula could be used to exert control over the whole Gulf of Mexico. Well, the real excerpt was just slightly different: Nato's top military commander, Gen Philip Breedlove, has warned that Russian "militarisation" of the annexed Crimea Peninsula could be used to exert control over the whole Black Sea. So is there a difference? Of course not. Except one: American exceptionalism, of course. Come to think of it, there is another difference: the US and NATO just tried to take control of Crimea via the Maidan color revolution whereas Russia did not try to take control of Florida. That, of course, also begs the following q...

A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq after conducting airstrikes in Syria, in this U.S. Air Force handout photo (Reuters/U.S. Air Force) The US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria has killed 865 people since the start of the airstrikes in late September, at least 50 of them civilians, a new report from the UN chief reveals. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the strikes alone cannot defeat the militant Islamist group and cited estimates of civilian casualties caused by the bombing. “The international coalition continued airstrikes against ISIL in Syria on a near-daily basis with reports of some 865 people killed, including 50 civilians, in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Hasakeh, Idlib and Raqqa since strikes began,” the report said. Meanwhile, the “armed opposition and designated terrorist groups continue shelling government-controlled areas, including in civilian-populated areas... including in Damascus, Homs, Hama and ...

The orbital maneuvers of a mysterious object Russia launched earlier this year have raised concerns that the satellite may be a space weapon of some sort. The speculation centers on "Object 2014-28E," which Russia lofted along with three military communications satellites in May. The object was originally thought to be space junk, but satellite trackers have watched it perform a number of interesting maneuvers over the past few weeks, the Financial Times reported Monday (Nov. 17). Last weekend, for example, 2014-28E apparently met up with the remnants of a rocket stage that helped the object reach orbit. [The Most Destructive Space Weapons Concepts] As a result, some space analysts wonder if Object 2014-28E could be part of an anti-satellite program — perhaps a revived version of the Cold War-era "Istrebitel Sputnikov" ("satellite killer") project, which Russian officials have said was retired when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. Mi...