
As NATO races to supply Ukraine before Trump takes office, Europe is struggling to touch two percent of its GDP on defence expenditure while Russia plans to spend more than 32 percent of its national budget on its military.
F-35C fighters from the U.S. Marine Corps’ VMFA 314 squadron aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln conducted multiple strikes on Houthi weapons storage facilities in Yemen. The F-35C stealth fighter model has longer, folding wings and, like the F/A-18, is designed to be launched from the catapults of aircraft carriers, allowing it to carry heavier payloads than the F-35B.
The strategy paper that is said to be an evolving, ‘living document,’ includes ‘detailed plans’ for eventualities that range from defending Germany to deterring Russian manoeuvres on NATO’s eastern flank and anticipates that Germany might have to become a ‘hub for tens or hundreds of thousands of troops’ that have to be transported east, besides logistics for war materiel.
Damage to submarine communication cables between new NATO members Finland and Sweden and their alliance partners Germany and Lithuania was likely sabotage, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday. “No one believes that these cables were cut by mistake,” Pistorius said in Brussels at an EU defence ministers meeting to discuss the different threats facing the European Union.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has published a new video to instruct potential Russian sources on how to get in touch with them. As such, the 1 minute and 34 seconds-long video is subdued as it begins — from the background music and narrator’s voice, it could be an advertisement for a new insurance policy or investment fund offered by a Swiss bank.