ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

NORTH Korea could launch its biggest ever nuclear missile in an attempt to save face after a deadly tunnel collapse. By  JOEY MILLAR GETTY North Korea could launch a nuclear bomb in order to save face Around 200 people have died at one of  North Korea ’s nuclear testing after a tunnel collapsed on workers.  The disaster is a major embarrassment for North Korea, laying bare the crumbling state of the hermit state’s testing facilities.  And now one nuclear expert warned despot  Kim Jong-un  could launch a huge nuclear missile into the Pacific in a show of force.  Joshua Pollack said Kim would push for a provocative “public demonstration” to regain some control. 

On October 31, Russia conducted another cruise missile strike on ISIS in Syria amid  the Syrian Army advance against the terrorist group in the province of Deir Ezzor. The ‘Veliky Novgorod’ attack submarine of the Varshavyanka class launched 3 Kalibr cruise missiles on terrorist targets near the ISIS-held town of al-Bukamal in the province of Deir Ezzor from the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. The missiles destroyed several fortified command points, where militants and vehicles were deployed, and a large weapons depot. Previously the submarine launched Kalibr cruise missiles on ISIS targets on October 5. Click to see the full-size image

FILE IMAGE: news.sky.com 22-year-old Shabazz Suleman told  Sky News  about his time in the terrorist group. He said he spent some time in Syria in 2014 “doing aid work,” but then crossed over again in 2015 while on a family holiday in Turkey. He was caught by Turkish authorities on the border and put in jail with dozens of IS fighters where he says he bowed to “peer pressure”. He agreed to be part of a prisoner swap which the Turkish authorities had brokered with IS in exchange for Turkish hostages and has remained in IS territory for the past three years. He claimed that at the beginning he had been swayed by ISIS propaganda, calling it a “romantic jihad”, which was all about protecting civilians. “It was there to defend the Syrians – honestly I came here for that first, but ISIS changed. Four or five months into ISIS I wanted to leave,” Suleman said. He admitted receiving weapons training early on and was sent to fight on the front line of the Iraqi border, altho...

The Telegram channel Minpravda  discovered  a tender on  Federal Business Opportunity website , issued by the US Air Force. The tender is for buying RNA samples and synovial tissue from Russian citizens. The listing specifies that the donors should state the region they’re from, their age, sex and ethnicity. “All Normal Human Fresh Frozen (FF) Synovial Tissue and Normal Human Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) samples must be Russian / Caucasian origin,” reads the contract’s technical specifications. “All FF Synovial tissue and RNA samples must come from normal donors, who have no musculoskeletal injuries. This shall be confirmed by pathology. All FF synovial tissue must have a weight greater than or at a minimum of 0.25 grams.” This corresponds with previous statement by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. During a meeting of Council for Civil Society and Human Rights on October 30, he  said  that biomaterial of different ethnicities is being collected in Russia. ...

Saipov brandishes weapons after crashing the truck. Photo: CHRISTIAAN WAGENER On Tuesday, an ISIS-inspired truck-ramming attack hit the US city of New York. The pickup truck plowed down a bike path in lower Manhattan killing at least 8 people and injuring 12 others. The pickup truck crashed into another vehicle after striking people on the bike path. The attacker got out of his car holding two fake guns. Then, police shot the suspect and took him into custody. Authorities are threating the incident as a terror attack. New York Daily News ( source ): “God is Great!” [Allahu Akbar] The Uzbekistan native shouted in Arabic before a hero cop pumped a bullet into his abdomen, ending the deadly assault on a bright holiday afternoon. Authorities said he was hospitalized after the shooting, underwent surgery and was expected to survive. The attacker was identified as 29-year-old Saifullah Saipov from Uzbekistan. He migrated to the U.S. legally in 2010. Sa...

In recent weeks Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a meeting of top generals in Moscow to discuss his vision for upgrading his military. According to published accounts, he gave a largely boring talk about defeating U.S. missile defense systems to top military brass that also appeared to be bored by the talk. However, as reported by  Foreign Policy , Russian TV cameras happened to catch a glimpse (see above) of a new nuclear weapon platform that, should Moscow decide to build, could be a game-changer. The system? Status-6: An underwater sub-like drone that is designed to transport a thermonuclear weapon into foreign ports. If detonated, the weapon is capable of extinguishing major port cities like New York with blast and  massive amounts of radioactive fallout . “At the risk of understating things, this project is bat-shit crazy,” writes Jeffrey Lewis for  Foreign Policy . “It harkens back to the most absurd moments of the Cold War, when nuclear strategi...

Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah According  to The New York Times, 450 Latin American fighters have been contracted by private US companies and directly by the government of the UAE to join hundreds of Sudanese soldiers whom Saudi Arabia has recruited to fight there as part of the coalition. It is the first combat deployment for a foreign army that the Emirates has built over the past five years The program was once managed by a private company connected to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, but the people involved in the effort said that his role ended several years ago and that it has since been run by the Emirati military. Colombian, Panamanian, Salvadorean and Chilean soldiers arrived to battle the Houthi rebels who have pushed the Yemeni government out of the capital, Sana. Most of the soldiers are Colombian, as Emirati officials consider them more battle tested in guerrilla warfare, having spent decades battling gunmen of the Revolutionary Armed Forces o...

FILE IMAGE North Korea has been conducting rare mass evacuation and blackout drills throughout the country. According to the South Korean  NKNews , several cities on the east coast of North Korea undertook the war-preparation drills, including blackout and evacuation scenarios, last week. The tests did not include Pyongyang. Such exercises have reportedly been rare in recent years. “I have never heard of this type of training exercises before in North Korea, but am not surprised,” Chun In-bum, a recently retired three star lieutenant general from the South Korean army, told NKNews. “They must realise how serious the situation is.” However, a North Korean defector told the news service that he remembered such drills from when he lived in Pyonyang “sometimes three times a year … especially at the time of military exercises of ROK and US army.” The report notes North Korea may need to conduct at least one more ICBM test, this time on a long-range trajectory, to prove it ...