The latest coverage of the Defense Department, State Department and aerospace industry.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan doubled down on his objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO in separate phone conversations with the leaders of the two countries and NATO Saturday.
President Biden on Saturday signed legislation authorizing $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine while on his first trip to Asia.
Russia is firing senior commanders for their stumbles in the early stages of the Ukraine invasion, and a “culture of cover-ups” will likely strain Moscow’s forces in the days ahead, British intelligence officials said Thursday.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday that U.S. intelligence estimates there is a “genuine possibility” that North Korea will conduct a long-range missile test or nuclear test as President Biden prepares for his first trip to South Korea and Japan later this week.
Hundreds of contractors are displaying their cutting-edge weapons, vehicles, equipment and other eye-popping gadgets at a major U.S. Special Operations conference running this week in Tampa, Florida.
Russia’s navy later this year will deploy a drone torpedo armed with a megaton-class nuclear warhead capable of destroying entire cities or ports, according to the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the military alliance stands ready to seize a historic moment and move quickly on allowing Finland and Sweden to join its ranks, after the two countries submitted their membership requests.
The strategically key southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol appeared to fall to Russian forces on Tuesday, a rare breakthrough for Moscow as its forces remain largely bogged down in much of the country after nearly three months of hard fighting, according to Western intelligence assessments.
China’s ruling Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army are subverting the rules-based international order and increasing global efforts to expand power, the U.S. admiral in charge of Pacific forces told a House hearing Tuesday.
The prime minister of Greece on Tuesday issued a stark warning to members of Congress about the future of democracy and the need to stand by Ukraine amid its war with Russia.
U.S. intelligence officials told members of Congress on Tuesday that sightings of unidentified flying objects continue to be “frequent” and that roughly 400 detections have been reported by service members — a nearly threefold increase — since last year.
President Biden signed an order Monday to redeploy hundreds of U.S. troops to Somalia to counter the Islamic extremist rebel group al-Shabab, an effort that American military leaders said had been hampered by President Donald Trump’s late-term decision to withdraw forces from the country.
Hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, including wounded men carried out on stretchers, left the vast steel plant in Mariupol where they mounted a dogged last stand and turned themselves over to Russian hands, signaling the beginning of the end of a siege that became a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to Moscow’s invasion.
Belarus has deployed special operation forces along the Ukrainian border, complicating Kyiv’s military strategy even though the Eastern European ally of Russia hasn’t been directly involved in the conflict, British intelligence officials said Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nearly 3-month-old invasion of neighboring Ukraine suffered reverses on the battlefield and in the halls of power Sunday as long-neutral Finland said it would apply to join the NATO military alliance and neighboring Sweden signaled it wouldn’t be far behind.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday as part of an announced visit to Kyiv.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Russian counterpart Friday, making the first time the two men have been in contact since Moscow launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February.
U.S. troops will have access to Greek military bases for five years after the country extended a bilateral military agreement, saying it was necessary to stabilize a region roiled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and tensions in the eastern Mediterranean.
President Biden is looking to nudge Southeast Asian leaders to be more outspoken about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the issue continues to be a delicate one for many members of the region’s 10-country alliance with deep ties to Moscow.
Ukrainian forces wiped out nearly all the armored vehicles in a Russian battalion that attempted to cross a river in eastern Ukraine, British intelligence officials said Friday.
The trial of a Russian soldier accused of killing a Ukrainian civilian opened Friday, the first war crimes trial since Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor.
Russian officials were quick to promise retaliation Thursday as Finland’s top leaders confirmed they were ready to abandon decades of neutrality and apply to join the NATO military alliance “without delay.”
ANALYSIS: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was designed to topple the government in Kyiv, fracture NATO and cement Moscow’s status as a fearsome 21st-century military machine and an irreplaceable energy kingpin that could use its oil and gas reserves to bully Europe.
The United States clashed with China and Russia on Wednesday over their strong opposition to the U.S. push for new U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its missile and nuclear programs.
President Biden’s summit with Southeast Asian leaders begins Thursday, and China is warning participating nations that American attempts to exert influence over the region could stoke confrontation.
Sens. Marco Rubio and Dianne Feinstein might not agree on much, but they’ve joined together in calling for a part-time adjunct to America’s newest military force.
China is building up the military forces needed to invade and take over Taiwan by 2030, posing what a top U.S. intelligence official described Tuesday as an “acute” threat to the island democracy.
Invading Russian military forces remain bogged down in Ukraine and have shifted to a war of attrition, two senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday.
Russian forces pounded away at the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, as part of an apparent effort to disrupt supply lines and weapons shipments. On the other end of the southern coast, they hammered a steel plant where Ukrainian fighters are denying Moscow full control of another critical port.
Cut off from supplies and under siege, a senior leader of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment says his unit will fight to the “last bullet” as Russian forces continue to assault Ukraine’s final holdout in Mariupol.
Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his war in Ukraine on Monday and likened the conflict to last century’s fight against Nazi Germany, but the Kremlin faces serious questions about its ability to replenish its ranks as casualties mount and its wartime tactics face growing scrutiny at home and abroad.
China has developed a unique hypersonic weapon in space that can strike targets on earth with a nuclear warhead from any angle. Beijing is expected to use its expanding power to coerce Taiwan, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command told Congress.
Military heroes can come in all shapes, sizes and leg quantities. Some may be the tough-talking, machine gun-wielding figures that John Wayne played in numerous Hollywood movies. But others have four legs and like nothing more than a belly rub and a nice cheese snack after a hard day on the job.
Former President Donald Trump is calling Mark T. Esper “weak and totally ineffective” as his defense secretary promotes a memoir that claims Mr. Trump wanted to shoot racial justice protesters in the legs and fire missiles into Mexico to stop drug cartels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday sought to cast Moscow’s military action in Ukraine as a forced response to Western policies and a necessary move to ward off a potential aggression.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is determined to retake the island of Taiwan despite Moscow’s military struggles to take over Ukraine, according to CIA Director Bill Burns.
Russian forces stepped up their assault on eastern Ukraine on Sunday and drew global condemnation after an airstrike reportedly killed 60 people sheltering inside a school, the latest example of what U.S. officials say is a clear pattern of war crimes committed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army.
The speaker of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, on Saturday accused the U.S. of being directly involved in military operations against Russia in Ukraine.
The inauguration of a conservative South Korean president is expected to pave the way for greater military and diplomatic coordination between Washington and Seoul in response to escalating North Korean nuclear and missile threats, as well as to China’s expanding pressure tactics against smaller countries in Asia.
The flagship of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet did not have its radars in operation in the moments before it sank on April 14 when struck by a pair of Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles.
If Sweden decides to become a member of NATO, the alliance is ready to ramp up its military presence in the Baltic Sea and along the country’s borders during the initial application phase, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
Russia’s ground assault on a steel plant in Mariupol stretched to a second day Friday despite Moscow’s claims it only wanted to seal off holdout fighters in the southeastern Ukrainian city, British intelligence officials said.
SpaceX brought four astronauts home with a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, capping the busiest month yet for Elon Musk’s taxi service.
Russian forces launched another assault Thursday on holdout fighters at the Azovstal steelwork plant in Mariupol, a city that is key to President Vladimir Putin’s push to put southeastern Ukraine under his control.
Belarus’ authoritarian leader defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said he was doing “everything” to stop the war, in a sit-down interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.
South Korea’s incoming defense minister said he’ll push for tighter military “cohesion” between Washington and Seoul in response to increasingly aggressive North Korean posturing Wednesday — comments that came just after the North had carried out another ballistic missile test.
She stood in just her bathrobe in the freezing basement of the Mariupol theater, coated in white plaster dust shaken loose by the explosion. Her husband tugged at her to leave and begged her to cover her eyes.
North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters on Wednesday, South Korean and Japanese officials said, days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un vowed to speed up the development of his nuclear weapons “at the fastest possible pace” and threatened to use them against rivals.
Chinese “wolf warrior” diplomats and state-controlled media actively promote the Russian government’s line and disinformation on the Ukraine war, contrary to Beijing’s claim of being a neutral party toward the conflict, the State Department charged this week.
Aid workers prepared hot food, wheelchairs and toys Tuesday for civilians slowly making their way to relative safety from the pulverized remnants of a steel plant in the city of Mariupol, besieged for months by Russian forces.
Russia will end its participation in the International Space Station over objections to Western sanctions against the country for its war against Ukraine.
Ukraine on Monday claimed it has sunk a pair of Russian patrol boats, using TB2 drones supplied to them by Turkey.
Russia has committed about 65 percent of its entire ground combat strength to the invasion of Ukraine, but a vigorous defense and a growing cache of firepower mostly provided by NATO members have blunted the advance, according to an analysis released Monday by the British Ministry of Defense.
A top-level U.S. congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in Warsaw on Monday to express gratitude to Poland for their humanitarian and other support for Ukraine.