ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

PLAN Naval Aviation Matures and Practices Catapult Launches Written by Brian Kalman exclusively for SouthFront; Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years. He currently resides and works in the Caribbean. The Liaoning CV-16 aircraft carrier and assigned naval aviation units conducted their first live fire training exercises in the Bohai Sea sometime last week. The drills exhibited the J-15 Flying Shark’s ability to carry both PL-12 air-to-air missiles and YJ-83 anti-ship missiles aloft, despite the weight limitations imposed by the ski-jump STOBAR operations inherent in the Liaoning’s design. STOBAR, or Short Take Off-But Arrested Recovery, is a form of aircraft carrier operation that requires an angled ski-jump ramp to aid aircraft in getting airborne on take-off, and uses a series of cables to arrest the aircraft upon landing. The Liaoning also engaged aerial targets with close-in defense systems,...

The Kurganets-25 is a tracked, modular platform developed for the Russian military. It’s expected that the Kurganets-25 will evolve into various models replacing tracked armored platform that are now in service with the Russian Army.

Videos, showing an al-Nusra terrorist and his wife, sending their little daughters to blow themselves up in Damascus, have been published online. Photo: twitter.com / Syria_Protector On Friday last week, a police station was bombed by a child suicide bomber in Midan neighborhood of  Damascus , the Syrian state-run Ikhbariya news channel reported. According to the Reuters news agency, citing an unnamed witness in the area of the blast, a young girl of about nine years of age entered the police station and, after asking to go to the toilet, blew herself up. As it was reported, the bomb on the child might have been detonated remotely by someone else, and the child was just used. Later, a video, showing consequences of the explosion and the body of the child after the bombing, was published online by the Ruptly video news agency. A few days later, it became known that the suicide bomber was a 7-years-old girl named Islam, who, along with her 9-years-old sister Fatimah, ...

The situation in Debaltsevo direction has stabilized by December 21. The People’s Militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) has managed to recapture several heights. By December 21, the situation in Debaltsevo direction has stabilized, the Colonelcassad blog reported. The Ukrainian Armed Forces did not manage to achieve significant progress in the direction of the villages of Logvinovo and Kalinovka and moved away from the most part of the occupied territory after the suffered losses. At the moment, the fights have a positional character that is enough typically for episodic escalations, which gradually fade after several days of hostilities and turn into a standard situation for the war in Donbass of 2015-2016. Using the superior artillery fire, the Donbass People’s Militia tries to oust the enemy from the positions, which are still controlled by Ukrainian troops, and then come into them with the infantry forces and restore the status quo, which existed before the offensive o...

Police stand in front of the truck which ploughed last night into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016 © Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters While 100 percent security is hard to achieve, it is also ineptitude on the part of the European authorities managing public safety which are to blame for allowing the Berlin Christmas market attack to happen; experts told RT. A truck plowed into a Christmas market in western Berlin on Monday evening killing 12 people and injuring dozens more in what has been called a terrorist attack. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Tuesday: “There is much we still do not know with sufficient certainty but we must, as things stand now, assume it was a terrorist attack.” She also added it would be hard to bear if it turned out that the “person who committed this act was someone who sought protection and asylum.” Hugh Bronson, a member of the Berlin parliament for AfD told RT that the tragedy would be followe...

© Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters EU states have reached an agreement on stricter gun controls following a wave of attacks which have terrorized Europe over the past two years. The move aims to limit the means by which extremists could obtain deadly weapons legally. Trends Terrorism in Europe The EU Commission announced that 28 members reached a political agreement with the European Parliament to tighten gun control laws which have been in place since 1991. The debate on stricter gun control measures has persisted since 2015, following the Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead. “After a year of discussions, the European Parliament and Council have reached a provisional political agreement on the Firearms Directive,” the commission said in a press release. The main changes to the Firearms Directive include placing a ban on semi-automatic firearms. These include automatic firearms transformed into semi-automatic firearms, long semi-automatic firearms of length less than 60cm, long se...

Written by Brian Kalman exclusively for SouthFront Immediately following the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, it is important to take note of the role that western mainstream media played in his death. What we know at this point is that the assassin, Turkish police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas, shot the Ambassador multiple times in the back, and shot him again after he collapsed to the floor. The assassination occurred in front of an audience of the press, at the official opening of an art exhibit meant to express the nuanced history of Turkish-Russian relations over the ages. The assassin’s words were immortalized in front of the cameras, and they are important to review in full: “Allahu Akbar!” “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria! Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!” “You will not be safe!” “Back up! Back up!” (directed at someone moving towards him.) “Only death can take me away from here. Whoever has a role in this cruelty, they will p...

The Future Combat System gives way to Mobile Protected Firepower Written by  Brian Kalman  exclusively for  SouthFront ;   Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years. He currently resides and works in the Caribbean. On October 12, 1999, then acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, outlined his vision of the future of the U.S. Army when he stated that it must be, “light enough to deploy, lethal enough to fight and win, survivable enough to return safely home . . . and lean and efficient enough to sustain themselves whatever the mission.” His comments echoed the desire of Donald Rumsfeld, acting Secretary of Defense the following year, to totally transform the U.S. Military into a force that could deploy and fight faster than ever before, anywhere in the world, and that could leverage new technologies and information systems as force multipliers ...