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Yang Hengjun, a former Chinese diplomat who became an Australian citizen, was arrested seven months ago in China. He has written extensively in the past on the rule of law, democracy and human rights.
August 27, 2019Read More
The likelihood of Hunter-B eventually entering squadron service with the Russian air force is “big,” Tom Cooper, an independent expert on Russian military aviation, told The National Interest.Russia’s prototype stealth drone has flown for the first time.On Aug. 3, 2019, a Hunter-B jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicle took off from a military test site. The flying-wing-shape drone flew for more than 20 minutes at a maximum altitude of around 2,000 feet, reported TASS, a state news organization.Hunter-B’s first flight inches Russia closer to fielding fast, armed drones for front-line missions. But there’s still a lot of work to do.With its approximately 50-feet wingspan, Hunter-B is in the same class as China’s Tian Ying drone, the U.S. Air Force’s RQ-170 surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle, the U.S. Navy’s experimental X-47B UAV and Boeing’s X-45C drone demonstrator.(This first appeared early in August 2019.)It likely is subsonic. Its shape could give it stealth qualities from some angles, but its unshielded engine nozzle probably means it easily can be detected from behind. “The drone is equipped with equipment for optical-electronic, radio engineering and other types of intelligence,” TASS reported.The likelihood of Hunter-B eventually entering squadron service with the Russian air force is “big,” Tom Cooper, an independent expert on Russian military aviation, told The National Interest.”The Russian military is running multiple UAV-related projects,” Cooper said. “Thus the emergence of this project is perfectly normal.”A Hunter-B was on the flight line when Russian president Vladimir Putin on May 14, 2019 inspected the country’s latest warplanes.Commercial satellite imagery confirmed the Hunter-B drone’s presence at the 929th Chkalov State Flight-Test Center in Russia’s Astrakhan region.It was the unmanned aerial vehicle’s first appearance since January 2019, when photos began circulating depicting the large, flying-wing UAV on the ground at an airfield in Novosibirsk in southern Russia.Other warplane types also were on the flight line at the test center, including the Yak-130 trainer and several version of the Su-30 multi-role fighter. But Putin visited Chkalov apparently mostly to hype to Su-57 stealth fighter.Putin by contrast barely mentioned the Hunter-B. “In addition to the modern and advanced military aircraft and helicopters that were shown to us, unmanned aerial vehicles were presented,” Putin said. “I emphasize that all the activities in preparation for the serial production of this technology were performed on time.”“Let’s get to work,” Putin said.Observers should not read Putin’s comments to indicate that the Hunter-B is ready for mass production and front-line service. It almost certainly isn’t ready.Hunter-B could require years of development before it enters front-line service, if it ever does so. The Kremlin likewise needs time to develop the munitions, support systems and manpower to support high-performance drone operations.”At this point, it is going to be heaviest and fastest UAV [in Russian service] if and when fielded, but additional testing and evaluation will have to take place in order for this unmanned system to be fully functional,” explained Samuel Bendett, an expert on the Russian military. “Its speed [up to 620 miles per hour] and weight — up to 20 tons — means that a host of aerodynamic, electronic and high-tech issues need to be worked out.”To be effective in service, Hunter-B will need small precision-guided munitions, Cooper told The National Interest. The Kremlin long has lagged behind the rest of the word in PGM development.But Russia’s biggest potential liability as a drone power, as well as the greatest advantage America possesses, is invisible to the naked eye.It’s not hard to build an airframe. Twenty-something cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado managed all on their own to build a stealthy drone airframe.What’s hard, when it comes to deploying fast armed drones to meaningful military effect, are the communications, control systems and computer algorithms—and the techniques and tactics for operating unmanned aerial vehicles over long distances in crowded airspace alongside manned aircraft and other forces.”The U.S. has literally decades of experience operating unmanned systems, from battlefield use in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to successful tests taking off and landing on aircraft carriers,” said Peter W. Singer, the author of several books on high-tech warfare. “Neither Russia or China has that.”David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.Image: DVIDShub.
August 27, 2019Read More
The U.S. Navy’s AIM-54 Phoenix, the exclusive long-range weapon of the F-14 Tomcat fighter, is one of the most powerful air-to-air missiles every to exist.Thirteen feet long and weighing 1,000 pounds, the rocket-propelled, radar-guided AIM-54 flew at M…
August 27, 2019Read More
On the other hand, what leverage would a Russia-China alliance have on the United States?So, now everybody wants to be Bismarck. They see themselves shaping history by artfully moving big pieces on the geostrategic chessboard. And one gambit they just …
August 27, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — In July 2019, more migrants drowned in the Mediterranean than in July 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis – and that despite a dramatically reduced number of arrivals. The 238 deaths are at least partly on the conscience of European politicians; the European Union badly needs a reasonable policy toward the nongovernmental organizations whose rescue ships provide pretty much the only hope to migrants stranded at sea.If their goal was to make undocumented migration across the Mediterranean next to impossible, Europeans finally can congratulate themselves. Die Welt, the German conservative daily, recently trumpeted “The End of the Mediterranean Route.” As of this year, deals exist that keep migrants from making each of the three possible crossings: From Morocco to Spain (the two countries signed an agreement in February, allowing Spain’s sea rescue services to take people back to Moroccan ports), from Libya to Italy (an EU deal with the former country’s weak government has existed since 2017, with EU funding for the Libyan coast guard so it can turn back migrant boats) and from Turkey to Greece (the EU has been paying the Turkish government to keep asylum seekers from crossing since 2016, although Turkey announced last month that it was “suspending” the deal).Something else that’s been different this year was Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s crackdown on Mediterranean migration. As far as arrival numbers go, it’s been a huge success.In other words, it has taken the EU about four years to build a system of agreements that brings the number of migrants arriving from Turkey and North Africa to a manageable minimum. If one believes in the distinction between genuine refugees and economic migrants, its construction makes perfect sense: These days, very few of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean are from war-ravaged countries where their lives would be directly endangered, so not many of them stand a realistic chance of asylum. Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Ivoiriens, Congolese – under EU member states’ laws, they have nothing to seek on European shores.Having built up its defenses, the EU stopped its naval search-and-rescue activities in the Mediterranean. Operation Sophia, which used to include them, is now limited to flights over the sea to monitor human trafficking. Though this effort often was dismissed as “organized hypocrisy” because it was meant primarily to deter crossings rather than pick up shipwrecked migrants, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration last month called on the EU to restart it.That’s because no framework of bilateral deals can prevent the unwanted migrants from coming, because the hardship they face in their home countries is worse than anything they may be forced to endure in Europe. And if they keep coming, they will keep drowning; someone needs to pick them up at sea.At this point, just a handful of nongovernmental humanitarian organizations specialize in this. Germany-based Sea-Watch e.V. runs two rescue ships, the Sea-Watch 3 and the Mare Jonio. Another one, Sea-Eye e.V., has one, the Alan Kurdi, named after the Syrian toddler found drowned on a Turkish beach in 2015. The Spanish charity Open Arms operates a ship of the same name. Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee, both multinational organizations, pick up migrants with the Ocean Viking. That, as of this month, is the extent of help available to those trying to make the crossing. It’s not the smallest number of NGO ships that have simultaneously plied the waters mainly between Libya and Italy, but the situation changes rapidly because the rescue vessels keep getting detained.Italy, of course, is at the forefront of the fight thanks to Salvini, who earlier this month succeeded in pushing through the Italian parliament a decree hiking fines for unauthorized docking from 50,000 euros ($55,600) to 1 million euros. But Malta, Greece and Spain also have started various legal proceedings, including criminal ones, against the migrant-rescuing charities. The NGOs, in other words, are being harassed by EU member states on the Mediterranean frontier. The worst ordeals take place when the rescue ships try to dock somewhere in Europe with migrants on board. The Open Arms spent 19 days at sea, unable to dock anywhere, before Italy finally allowed the 80 migrants it had on board to disembark last week. The Ocean Viking was refused entry to several European ports, including for refueling, for 14 days before European governments worked out – also last week – an ad hoc deal to divide up the 356 migrants it had rescued. Such case-by-case arrangements are the order of the day in the absence of a permanent EU-based mechanism. Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that 14 EU member states had agreed to a “solidarity mechanism” proposed by France and Germany, but only eight countries actually confirmed they were on board; six countries – France, Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal and Romania – took the Ocean Viking’s “passengers,” but the process was anything but “quick” and “automatic” as Macron promised.While politicians bargain over every additional migrant, the NGO ships’ captains acquire rock star status. Carola Rackete and Pia Klemp, who work for Sea-Watch, are household names in their native Germany, frequently interviewed by national media and handed prestigious awards. Last week, Klemp turned down the highest honor the city of Paris can bestow, the Medaille Grand Vermeil, accusing France of mistreating asylum-seekers. “We do not need authorities deciding about who is a ‘hero’ and who is ‘illegal’,” she wrote on Facebook. “In fact they are in no position to make this call, because we are all equal.”Both star captains are of the radical left, firm believers in the supreme value of solidarity – but also in other things with which most reasonable people would disagree. Rackete, for example, has said some of the migrants she picks up are climate refugees whom Europe has a duty to accept. Yet people like Rackete and Klemp are today the only ones with the courage and the sense of responsibility to pull desperate people out of the water.Their vessels are not “migrant taxis” for human traffickers, as Salvini has dubbed them. The respect the captains inspire is a sign that a large part of the European civil society isn’t about to accept policies that leave people stranded at sea, whether or not they have valid immigration papers. The optics of making life hard for the rescuers are horrible for the EU as a value-based organization.If the EU as a bloc is unable to agree on migration reform because of staunch opposition from the likes of Salvini and the nationalist Eastern European governments, there should be at least a coalition of the willing within the EU that would prevent the NGO ships from languishing at sea for weeks while governments work out who should take how many people.That means designating several ports where the migrants can be brought so they can be sent on without delay to host states, according to a predetermined quota. This would have nothing to do with normalizing undocumented immigration: Those who embark on the Mediterranean journey today, given all the protections the EU has put in place, are truly desperate people. None of them are risking their lives for fun. They are doubly desperate when their leaky vessels sink far from shore, and extremely lucky when a rescue ship picks them up. The 839 of them who have drowned so far this year had no such luck.The size of the coalition of the willing doesn’t really matter; even five or six wealthy European nations can afford to take a few hundred people a year each. Those countries that refuse to do it today won’t be governed by nationalists forever; one day they, too, will have governments that’ll be ashamed not to participate. In the meantime, if a coalition of the willing does exist, it should act willing rather than reluctant – these migrants have already suffered enough.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at [email protected] column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
August 27, 2019Read More
In Hong Kong, revolution is in the air. What started out as an unexpectedly large demonstration in late April against a piece of legislation—an extradition bill—has become a call for democracy in the territory as well as independence from China and the…
August 26, 2019Read More
The U.S. Navy retired the iconic Tomcat on Sep. 22, 2006 and today the F-14 remains in service with IRIAF.Iran says it has succeeded in upgrading a Grumman F-14 Tomcat and return it to service.According Mehr News Agency the process to upgrade the F-14 …
August 26, 2019Read More
The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. – The Daily Mail and General Trust has agreed to sell its energy information company Genscape to the owner of Wood Mackenzie, an oil industry consultancy, for $364 million….
August 26, 2019Read More
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “marginally more optimistic” about striking a new Brexit deal with the European Union but added that talks with the bloc could go on until the Oct.31 deadline. Graham Peters, chair of UKspace, the trade…
August 26, 2019Read More
"If you look at the U.S. society today, you see states, you see cities [and] you see businesses that are really leading in relation to climate action, the U.N. Secretary-General said.
August 26, 2019Read More
The Lebanese Hezbollah movement on Tuesday said a drone that crashed in its Beirut stronghold at the weekend contained an explosive device weighing more than five kilogrammes (11 pounds). The Iran-backed Shiite group had previously said an Israeli rec…
August 26, 2019Read More
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