Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
To apply a morbid paraphrase to Charles Dickens’s 19th-century literary classic “A Tale of Two Cities,” the current and seemingly interminable (having raged since early 2022) Russia-Ukraine War could be very much characterized nowadays as “A War of Two Cities.”
Besides channeling the late great Mr.
Three tankers loaded with Saudi crude for China and India turned around in the Red Sea on Tuesday and headed north toward Suez rather than sail past the Yemeni coast.
Nobody fired at them. One was the Xin Long Yang, a very large crude carrier holding about two million barrels, which had left Yanbu a day earlier, stopped short of the Yemeni border, and reversed. The Rodos and the Amazon made the same call.
STRAIT OF HORMUZ (May 1, 2012) The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), left, and the guided-missile cruiser USS Cape St. George (CG 71) transit the Strait of Hormuz.
In March 2022, a week after the Russian President and former KGB Lt. Col. who sits in the Kremlin decided to invade Ukraine, then-US President Joe Biden used the occasion of his annual State of the Union address to declare that Russia’s Vladimir “Putin is now isolated from the world more than ever.”
The prediction for a few scant days was that Russia had transitioned from being a state of concern to an aggressive, rogue nuclear power bent on imperial conquest.
Su-33 Flanker from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
While it’s hard to say Ukraine is truly “winning” the war, it would be equally unfair at this stage to suggest that it is losing.
Russia has taken enormous military and economic hits in recent weeks, thanks to Kyiv’s expanding long-range strike campaign.
President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin walk on the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday, August 15, 2025.
Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, July 21, U.S. President Donald Trump indicated that the U.S. military is preparing another major attack on Iran, this time targeting one of the country’s most secretive nuclear sites.
“If we left right now, it would take Iran 20, 25 years to rebuild. Okay? And we’re not finished at all,” he said.
Israeli F-16I Fighter. Image Credit IDF
F-16I Sufa. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
The MiG-31 Foxhound first entered service in 1981 as a successor to the MiG-25 Foxbat.
Originally designed around one mission—defending the vast Soviet airspace from intruding US bombers and cruise missiles—the end of the Cold War could have ended the MiG-31’s career.
MiG-31 Flying High Russian Air Force. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Instead, Russia kept the jet in service, repeatedly modernizing the platform rather than replacing it.
At the 7-8 July NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, leaders of the transatlantic alliance went through the usual formulaic program that accompanies all meetings of this type.
There was the standard and obligatory “class picture” of all the heads of state standing at the podium with the NATO emblem on the wall behind them.
Russian T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
T-90M. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Those same national leaders gave their perennial declarations of unequivocal and never-ending support for Ukraine.
The Pentagon will soon start its selection cycle for the next cohort of companies with production-ready capabilities that the military can quickly operationalize for real-world use via the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies, or APFIT program.
Lawmakers and a team led by Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael hosted an event that filled a large caucus room in the Cannon House Office Building on Tuesday, where APFIT awardees showcased their products and spotlighted recent milestones for U.S.
Between the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, Oil Prices Are Rising: The situation in the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, and Russia is affecting oil prices, which have risen dramatically since the resumption of hostilities between the US and Iran on July 7.
Current oil prices, as of 12:47 p.m. on Wednesday, are at $86.30, a rise of $1.96 a barrel since yesterday and about $11.00 a barrel since hostilities resumed, according to Oil Price.com.
Littoral Combat Ship USS Cooperstown. Image Taken By National Security Journal October 14, 2025.
As a former rotor head, this is great video.
The footage shows the unit providing covering fire as commandos rush aboard the aircraft, with a door gunner engaging suspected threats during the extraction. The video also appears to show a malfunction involving an M249 machine gun, though details remain unconfirmed.
Open-source reports claim the unit was conducting a “hot extraction” during a counter-narcotics operation following an engagement with suspected drug traffickers. The video’s location, date, and authenticity have not been independently verified by SOFX.