Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
A huge question mark hangs over Canadian defense policy, mainly over its F-35 purchase.
Trump: ‘We Don’t Need Canada’
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he could raise tariffs on all Canadian automobile-related exports by up to 50%.
An F-35A Lightning II assigned to the 419th Fighter Wing, Hill Air Force Base, Utah takes off from the Air Dominance Center during Sentry Savannah on May 11, 2022.
Sexual assaults reported by deployed troops doubled last year, according to Pentagon officials, while the total number of reports across the entire military fell slightly, according to newly released Department of Defense statistics.
Among U.S. troops deployed to specific countries, those in Poland reported twice as many assaults as those in any other nation, according to the Pentagon’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, which was released Friday with data from fiscal year 2025.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has urged Donald Trump to “finish the job” in Iran following a prolonged period of economic pressure on Tehran.
Speaking with CNN’s State of the Union, Pence described the continuation of military action as “inevitable” as President Trump seeks a long-lasting solution to the conflict in the Middle East.
Vice President of the United States Mike Pence speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. By Gage Skidmore.
When will the war between Ukraine and Russia end?
It doesn’t seem like any endgame is anywhere close to arriving, as the two countries haven’t held peace talks in months, and if anything, the war has continued to escalate.
Putin with a Rifle. Image Credit: Russian State Media.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the at the BRICS+ meeting (via videoconference). Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Oil shipments through the embattled Strait of Hormuz appear to be increasing even as Iran insists it has full control over the waterway, as Gulf producers now use a nightly convoy organized and protected by the U.S. military and vessels sail without tracking signals.
While the current situation appears to be unsustainable, with Iran threatening to escalate strikes, a combination of methods, including ship-to-ship transfers, is helping keep millions of barrels moving out of the strait and onto world markets.
Oil Platform. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Generic Oil Tanker Image.
Ukrainian officials reportedly drew up plans to send as many as 1,000 AI-guided drones per night toward Moscow’s airports, according to The Atlantic.
Citing two unnamed sources speaking on condition of anonymity, the operation, codenamed “M&Ms”, would have involved nightly assaults on Moscow airports in order to keep Russian airspace closed.
Ukraine Drone. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
A spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declined to comment, while another unnamed official for the president’s office described the plans as “total nonsense”.
Mobilize The Women — Feed The Meat Grinder
Keith Kellogg, the former special envoy for Ukraine and Belarus under President Trump, went to Kyiv this week and outlined the ‘framework’ that he says the USA will continue to use in its dealings with the government in Ukraine. The special envoy’s vision does not differ from that of the rest of the ‘globalist’ globalist establishment of officials, bureaucrats, academics, etc. who have been managing the conflict in Ukraine for years.
Many things that the U.S. has done throughout its war in Iran this year have not turned out exactly as hoped. But the war’s effects appear to have reduced the value of Iran’s currency, the rial. And more such pressure is coming.
According to Newsweek, the rial has fallen to an all-time low of 2.02 million to the dollar, ahead of a new sanctions regime that President Donald Trump is set to announce Monday as part of what he calls “Economic D-Day.”
A U.S.
Ukraine Vows to Fight On As Russia Scales Up Electronic Warfare: A NATO fighter jet shot down a drone over eastern Latvia last week.
The incident comes amid the news that Ukraine has stepped up long-range attacks on Russian refineries and logistics infrastructure in an effort to undermine Moscow’s war effort.
Putin New Year’s Message. Image Credit: Russian Government.
The Defense Department is planning to put industry-built robotic vehicles through their paces in North Dakota this fall amid a broader push by U.S. military components to add uncrewed systems to their fleets.
The Joint Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) demonstration, dubbed GroundBreaker 1, is slated for mid-October at Camp Grafton, according to a notice published Aug. 21 on a government contracting website.
Officials are currently accepting white papers from vendors. Notably, only members of the DoW Drone OTA Consortium are eligible to participate.