ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On July 3, China launched two Type 055 guided missile destroyers from their dry docks in Dalian, Liaoning province, the Chinese media says. Type 055 class vessels are designed for long-range air defense, anti-surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare. This kind of warships could accompany future carrier strike groups of China,  which continues to expand its carrier program . The destroyers launched in July follow two others launched in May 2018 and June 2017 respectively. China has a total of six Type 055 guided missile destroyers in various stages of construction, which the lastest launched in March 2018. The People’s Liberation Army Navy is going to get at least Type 055 destroyers in the coming years. Photos: Click to see the full-size image Click to see the full-size image Click to see the full-size image Click to see the full-size image

Written by Caitlin Johnstone; Originally appeared at  her blog I’ve been noticing videos going viral the last few days,  some  with  millions of views , about Muslim women bravely fighting to free themselves from oppression in the Middle East. The videos, curiously, are being shared enthusiastically by many Republicans and  pro-Israel hawks , who aren’t traditionally the sort of crowd you see rallying to support the civil rights of Muslims. What’s up with that? Well, you may want to sit down for this shocker, but it turns out that they happen to be women from a nation that the US war machine is currently escalating operations against. They are Iranian. Whenever you see the sudden emergence of an attractive media campaign that is sympathetic to the plight of civilians in a resource-rich nation unaligned with the western empire, you are seeing propaganda. When that nation is surrounded by other nations with similar human rights transgressions and yet those transgressions are

F-511 TCG Heybeliada, the lead ship of the MİLGEM project, near the Prince Islands to the southeast of Istanbul, 2011. DHA photo Turkey has won a tender to build four corvettes for the Pakistan Navy, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said in a statement on July 5. “It is [a] multi-billion dollar project and Turkey has undertaken such a sophisticated project for the first time in the international arena. Negotiations were going on for over six months. They have been completed after a really difficult and exhaustive period, and the agreement was signed today,” Canikli said during an official visit to Montenegro. The defense minister described the deal as “the largest single export in the history of Turkish defense industry”. Turkey and Pakistan signed a goodwill agreement for the construction of four Turkish Ada class (also known as MİLGEM) corvettes in 2015. Under this agreement, two corvettes will be built in Istanbul and two others in Pakistan’s Karachi. The Paki

Written by Elijah J. Magnier:  @ ejmalrai ; Originally appeared at  his blog Russian advisors visiting the Syrian capital Damascus are confident that the US forces will pull out of al-Tanf and will also aim to completely withdraw from north of Syria (al-Hasaka and Deir-Ezzour) in the next six months. According to top decision makers based in Damascus, the US President Donald Trump is pushing his administration to approve an already prepared total withdrawal plan. Despite Trump’s limited knowledge of foreign policy and being unaware of the consequences of his decisions in the international arena, however, he found no convincing elements – said the sources, who asked to remain anonymous – in the presentation by his administration where US forces could benefit from the continuation of their presence in such a hostile environment and without suffering hits in the future. Trump’s biggest fear to see the US special forces deployed in the north of Syria and in Iraq returning to the co

Source: naval.com.br The Brazilian Navy has received the multi-purpose helicopter carrier HMS Ocean (L12) from the British Navy. The helicopter carrier was commissioned on 29 June in the UK. In The Brazilian Navy it will have another name – the PHM Atlantico (A140). The warship was purchased by Brazail under a $98.76 million worth contract reached by the sides on February 19. Since then, the ship had been undergoing maintenance work by Babcock and BAE Systems. The PHM Atlantico is 203.43 m long and displaces 21.578 tonnes.

A screenshot from the video A thief has stolen the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) military attaché’s posh SUV with secret files. Ynet reports ( source ): The official vehicle of an IDF attaché in a European country was stolen last week while the attaché’s driver and bodyguard were standing right next to it, Yedioth Ahronoth has learned. The attaché arrived at a hotel for a meeting with an IDF general who was visiting the city for work purposes. As he entered the meeting in the hotel, the local driver and the Israeli bodyguard were standing outside the luxury Audi jeep with its engine turned on. A thief arrived from the other side, quickly entered the vehicle and drove away. A video documenting the incident shows the bodyguard running after the car, but it was already too late. Immediately after the vehicle was stolen, it was neutralized by remote control with the assistance of the Audi company, and the thief was forced to abandon it. The car was later found in a neighbor

Written by  Matthew Jamison ; Originally appeared on  strategic-culture.org The recent  shredding  of over  70 years  of  American  foreign  policy  with regards to the  location  of the US Embassy in the State of Israel has been a  major   catastrophic   inflection  point in the tortured history of the State of Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the American/Israel uber-special Alliance. It has also been a  crystallization  moment for many such as myself who once were unwavering and unquestioning supporters of Israel and defenders of Israel in an overwhelmingly hostile anti-Israel environment in the UK and Europe. I was always pro-Israel alongside being pro-Palestinian State and believed strongly in Israel’s right to exist and the creation of a State of Palestine living side by side a State of Israel. I believed passionately in the policies and leadership of the likes of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin – the Oslo peace process – along with the heirs to such traditions in the form

Back in April, we  discussed  how the U.S. Army M1 Abrams tank, an American third-generation main battle tank, was in the process of being upgraded with an invisible missile shield that will destroy all chemical energy anti-tank threats and other threats before reaching the vehicle. It is part of a modernization program that the Pentagon is preparing its main battle tank for the next evolution of hybrid wars, expected to start in the mid-2020s, or before. According to  The Times of Israel , the U.S. Army awarded a contract worth $193 million for Israel’s TROPHY Active Protection System (APS) for its Abrams tanks “in support of immediate operational requirements,” Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced. Designed to block incoming anti-tank missile threats, the Trophy system has four radar antennas and fire-control radars to track incoming threats such as anti-tank-guided-missiles (ATGMs), and rocket-propelled grenades (RGPs). Once the system detects a projectile, it will aut