President Petro Poroshenko said during a Tuesday Ukrainian television interview that the threat of “full-scale war” with Russia could be imminent as tensions rise following the Russia-Ukraine incident near the Kerch Strait on Sunday.
Poroshenko condemned what he described as a rapidly increased Russian military presence on the border with Ukraine, saying, “The number of [Russian] tanks at bases located along our border has tripled,” according to the AFP. Continue reading
BRAZEN HOSTILITY: HMS Duncan was buzzed by 17 Russian fighter jets (Pic: GETTY)
A ROYAL Navy warship was harassed by 17 Russian fighting jets in an “unprecedented” show of military force near the annexed Crimean Peninsula.
HMS Duncan was sailing through the Black Sea with a fleet of NATO warships when the Russian fighter jets swooped in a display of “brazen hostility”.
Video of the dramatic moment in May earlier this year is being aired as part of the Channel 5 documentary following the operations of the Type 45 destroyer in the volatile region. Continue reading
iStock.com/Alan_Lagadu
Britain now has fewer than half of the naval vessels it had in 1990, the Telegraph reported on June 21. In that time, there has been a 60 percent decrease in the number of submarines, frigates and destroyers in the Royal Navy, according to a 2013 Ministry of Defense report. The service had two aircraft carriers in 1990: It currently has zero.
Britain’s defense budget has decreased dramatically. Today, Britain’s military spending is a little over half of what it was 25 years ago. Its defense spending has decreased from a Cold War high of 3.8 percent of its gross domestic product to only 2.2 percent, just above the nato minimum.
Despite keeping its nato commitment, Britain has lost its naval supremacy and is “at a historic ebb in firepower,” according to National Interest.
Britain does not recognize the need to maintain its defenses against military threats. Instead, it prioritized funding for foreign aid, the National Health Service and other domestic welfare programs. In the past, health, education and defense spending were equal. But expenditures in these non-defense areas have roughly doubled since 1990. Today, Britain spends almost six times more taxpayer cash on welfare than it does on defense. Continue reading
HMS Sutherland is being deployed to the Pacific (Beutner/ullstein bild via Getty)
THE UK has deployed a third navy warship to the Asia-Pacific as diplomatic tensions with North Korea continue to rise. HMS Albion will join HMS Sutherland and will help enforce UN sanctions against North Korea, as well as take part in joint training and exercises with regional allies.
The Ministry of Defence previously announced that HMS Argyll would also be deployed, arriving in the region later in the year to take part in an exercise with Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. Continue reading
Files released on Monday by the British government reveal new evidence about one of the most prolific Soviet spy rings that operated in the West after World War II, which became known as the Portland Spy Ring. Some of the members of the Portland Spy Ring were Soviet operatives who, at the time of their arrest, posed as citizens of third countries. All were non-official-cover intelligence officers, or NOCs, as they are known in Western intelligence parlance. Their Soviet —and nowadays Russian— equivalents are known as illegals. NOCs are high-level principal agents or officers of an intelligence agency, who operate without official connection to the authorities of the country that employs them. They often pose as business executives, students, academics, journalists, or non-profit agency workers. Unlike official-cover officers, who are protected by diplomatic immunity, NOCs have no such protection. If arrested by authorities of their host country, they can be tried and convicted for engaging in espionage. Continue reading
Under one scenario, HMS Queen Elizabeth, pictured, along with 12 F-35B fighter jets, would be brought into service early to join US warships off the Korean peninsula
- One option involves deploying UK’s new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth
- Comes after Trump warned ‘only one thing will work’ when dealing with DPRK
- A senior Whitehall source said: ‘We have plenty of ships to send’
The Armed Forces are preparing for a potential war with North Korea, sources have revealed.
Officials have been instructed to draw up plans for how Britain would respond if war broke out with Pyongyang amid heightening tensions between the West and dictator Kim Jong-Un. Continue reading
In The Possessed, Dostoyevsky has his character Shatov exclaim:
If a great people does not believe that the truth is only to be found in itself alone (in itself alone and exclusively); if it does not believe that it alone is fit and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it would at once sink into being ethnographical material, and not a great people…
Put another way, if a nation has confidence in itself, it continues as a viable political entity. Once it loses that, it lacks cohesion and becomes only a collection of random people living together. Continue reading
Those who protect us deserve better.
The Royal Navy is a laughing stock that can no longer properly protect the British people due to savage government cutbacks, military sources have revealed.
13 of the Navy’s 19-strong fleet of Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers are unable to go to sea due to a lack of manpower, fuel and supplies. Continue reading
HMS Queen Elizabeth could be vulnerable to attack by missiles (EPA)
THE Royal Navy’s new £3billion aircraft carrier is “vulnerable to low-cost missiles”, a terrifying industry report has revealed.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth, which was built in various yards around the UK before being assembled in Fife, could be sunk by cheap missile readily available to regimes across the globe, according to a a paper by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
According to the institute, both China and Russia were already directing investment into such weaponry and have eroded the military dominance by the West. Continue reading
HMS Ocean sails into the sunset
Possible cuts will leave Britain incapable of the offensive.
Under the cover of darkness on May 21, 1982, British forces landed on the beaches of San Carlos in the Falklands. The 2 Para, 40 Commandos, and the 3 Para and the 41 Commandos conducted an unopposed amphibious assault, assisted by special forces, in a campaign to retake the capital city of Stanley. By the time the sun rose, the rest of the 3rd Commando Brigade was onshore to repulse the Argentinian counterattack.
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The British could not have won the Falklands War without using their amphibious capabilities. The Thatcher government received a great deal of praise for the war, and it was a moment that made Britain believe in itself again as a major power. Ironically, all of that would have been impossible if the Conservative government’s plan of cutting the aircraft carriers and amphibious fleet had come about earlier. The Falklands War saved the Royal Navy.
Remarkably, the current Conservative government is planning similar cuts, by retiring the Royal Navy’s last aircraft carrier, the hms Ocean. Continue reading
And now, for a glimpse into how insanely unprepared America and the West is for a real war against Russia. This is but one of many examples where military technology and systems are out-dated, out-matched and out-gunned, or simply non-existent.
Everyday Americans have no clue as it’s business as usual with their 9-to-5 jobs and following their favorite NFL team or the Kardashians.
Nato is searching for two potentially dangerous Russian submarines
NATO ships and aircraft are desperately hunting for two deadly Russian cruise-missile submarines amid fears the fleet was ready to strike French and US aircraft in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Fears for the safety of French carrier Charles de Gaulle and US craft USS Eisenhower have increased following reports that two Russian Oscar-II submarines are shadowing the aircraft carriers in the waters off the coast of war torn Syria.
Both carriers have been launching air strikes against the brutal Islamic State regime while a Russian flotilla of warships has been operating in the same area. Continue reading
Gibraltar has been at the heart of a territory dispute between the UK and Spain for years
A ROYAL Navy patrol boat has fired three flares at a research vessel from Spain amid increasing tensions over the Rock.
Spanish oceanographers onboard research vessel Angeles Alvariño anchored in British waters as they attempted to drop a sonar buoy.
A Gibraltar Squadron speedboat was scrambled to stop them after radio contact failed.
Royal Navy ship the HMS Sabre then fired three warning flares, eventually forcing the research ship to leave. Continue reading
The Royal Navy is hunting for Russian subs off the coast of Scotland
THE ROYAL Navy is hunting for up to six rogue nuclear armed Russian submarines off the cost of Scotland.
Three NATO coalition search planes, their anti-submarine frigate HMS Sutherland and a Trafalgar class hunter-killer submarine are searching for the vessels amid increased tensions.
NATO has reported Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has almost reached Cold War levels after Russia doubled the number of submarine patrols. Continue reading
If anything is likely to trigger World War III, it will be a North Korean EMP disguised as a weather satellite, falling out of the sky over the American mainland. That is likely the opening kick.
Potential WWIII triggers are located in Poland, Syria and the South China Sea
Several flashpoints could erupt into a global conflict involving the US, China and Russia, it is claimed
THE world is closer to a catastrophic and bloody World War III than at any other point in the past 60 years, experts have warned.
Russia and China, both of which are pumping vast amounts of money into their militaries, could soon rival the US in terms of power and prestige.
All three nations want to remain a global superpower – if not the only one – and are preparing for war, it is claimed.
As mentioned in previous posts, Spain will be gunning for British territory now that Brexit is in motion. The Brexit leaves the rest of the EU bitter and as a form of punishment will support Spain’s bid to take Gibraltar. Great Britain will receive no support since it exited and is no longer part of the EU.
See the following previous posts for more information:
Post-Brexit headlines for June 24, 2016, and more
Royal Navy Fires Warning Shot At Spanish Boat In Gibraltar
Will Brexit Mean the End of the UK’s Control of the Falklands and Gibraltar?
British nuclear submarine ‘surfaces off Gibraltar’ as row with Spain heats up
British warships must be sent to Gibraltar to “protect it from Spain” during Brexit negotiations, a former Ministry of Defence special adviser has said.
Known as The Rock, Gibraltar lies at the end of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain, but its 30,000 residents have voted several times to remain a British Overseas Territory.
After an overwhelming 96 per cent Remain vote in June’s EU referendum, Spanish foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo swiftly called for the UK to share sovereignty, but the move was snubbed by Westminster. Continue reading
Global Geopolitics 