22 July - RCAF Traffic Technicians load COVID-19 related humanitarian and medical supplies on a CC-177 Globemaster to be flown to Hounduras as part of Operation GLOBE 20-02.
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IN THE NEWS
Sep 22
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance must embrace non-European countries to expand its influence in light of China's growing military power. “The rise of China is fundamentally shifting the global balance of power,” he told a virtual conference. “Using NATO more politically is valuable to send a clear and unified political message, because together NATO allies represent half the world's economic and military might.”
Sep 22
Germany evidently is trying to find a way to let non-European countries participate in the emerging defence cooperation plan. “It is an important issue to solve, particularly for close NATO partners,” Karl-Heinz Kamp, a Ministry of Defence special envoy, said during a recent virtual conference.
Sep 22
Japan's defense budget for the upcoming fiscal year is ¥5.4 trillion (approximately C$65.6 billion). A 1.63 per cent rise from 2020, it will be the 10th consecutive increase.
Sep 22
U.S. Army Futures Command has given the green light to development of electrically-powered tactical and combat vehicles. “The requirement also aims to increase operational reach across all maneuver formations through electric propulsion, which offers a variety of operational and tactical benefits,” it says. “These include the potential to double operational duration, implement silent mobility . . . and potentially reduce the Army’s logistical burden by nearly half when fully implemented.”
Sep 22
Airbus Defence and Space has been selected by the European Space Agency to coordinate development and construction of two radar satellites for monitoring polar ice and snow topography. The €300-million venture to improve understanding of climate change and maritime operations involves suppliers in 19 countries.
Sep 22
A former U.S. Coast Guard commandant, Adm Paul Zukunft, says efforts by the U.S. and its allies to counter growing Chinese and Russian presences in the High Arctic are hampered inadequate intelligence. “We have significant domain awareness challenges, and that really begins in the high latitudes,” he told a recent virtual conference. “Things start to get pretty dark once you get up higher than 72 degrees north.”
Sep 22
The commanding officer of the Northfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia has been dismissed as the U.S. Navy struggles with returning ships to service. A USN spokesman said Capt Kai Torkelson’s dismissal was “tied to issues related to a loss of confidence in leadership to correct underlying performance issues.” A recent Government Accountability Office audit highlighted “persistent and substantial maintenance delays that hinder the readiness of aircraft carriers and submarines.”
Sep 22
The recently-retired Chief Learning Officer of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, John R. Kroger, says he was “deeply impressed” by the professionalism of the personnel with whom he served, but fears that the USN has “drifted badly off course” under the Trump administration. The USMC veteran and now president of a global non-profit organization says short-term civilian leaders’ failures have damaged the USN’s effectiveness, undermined morale, and jeopardized national security.
Sep 22
An Army reservist who also is a New York City police officer has been charged with being an “intelligence asset” for China, monitoring the Tibetan independence movement in the U.S. Court files state that Tibetan expatriate Baimadajie Angwang worked for handlers at the Chinese consulate in New York.
Sep 21
The U.S. has imposed new sanctions on 27 individuals in Iran’s defense ministry and elsewhere in its nuclear program, a move rejected by key European allies as well as Russia and China. It also imposed new sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, accusing him of having conspired with Iran “to flout the UN arms embargo.”
Sep 21
The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the Veterans Benefits Administration could do a better job of handling the cases of some 18,000 former military service personnel now living abroad. While it says claims processing has been accelerated in recent years, it has made five suggestions for further improvements.
Sep 21
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has given all federal departments and agencies until the end of today to deal with a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows which was disclosed more than a month ago. The agency warns that failure to apply an update released by Microsoft could have dire consequences.
Sep 21
David MacNaughton, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, has been cited by the federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner for improper lobbying less than a year after he left office. Nine ministers, aides and senior public servants were involved in the meetings requested by MacNaughton on behalf of Palantir Technologies Canada, a subsidiary of a privately-held U.S. software company.
Sep 21
Military spouses and common-law partners are the focus of a Department of National Defence initiative designed to open up opportunities for employment in the federal public service overall. The new initiative builds on an existing platform designed to identify openings within DND.
Sep 21
The only NATO operational command in North America, Joint Force Command Norfolk, has been stood up in Virginia. It is tasked with reinforcing the alliance’s Atlantic presence with an array of multi-domain capabilities. The Department of National Defence has told FrontLine that two Canadians have been posted to JFCN but that its complement will be increased to six by mid-2021.
Sep 21
The global proliferation of new weapons puts North America’s political autonomy and financial stability at risk, according to the CDA Institute. Among other things, it urges NORAD to give priority to development of All Domain Awareness capabilities to detect, identify, and track new threats at great distances.
Sep 21
The German and French defence ministers used a visit to Airbus Defence and Space headquarters in Manching, Germany, to stress the importance of fostering key European defence programs. Guillaume Faury, CEO of the parent Airbus Group, called the unprecedented joint visit “a clear signal of the importance of a strong and capable defence industry for Europe.”
Sep 21
Ever since a senior U.S. Air Force official disclosed recently that a prototype next-generation fighter had been tested, there has been intense speculation about how it was manufactured. Washington-based analyst Byron Callan offers some insight.
Sep 18
This year's wreath laying ceremony, on Sunday 20 Sept, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain can be watched on Facebook this year, as COVID restricts spectators on site. Vintage Wings of Canada aircraft, which represent those flown in the Battle of Britain by the Royal Canadian Air Force, will fly over the Beechwood National Military Cemetery at an altitude no lower than 1000 feet above the highest point of the cemetery before resuming a higher flying altitude.
Sep 18
DND is making it easier for military spouses and common-law partners to find secure and meaningful jobs. Today, the Military Spouse Employment Initiative will open up opportunities for them across the entire federal public service.
Sep 17
U.S. President Donald Trump “personally would have no problem” selling Lockheed Martin F-35s to the United Arab Emirates or other Middle East buyers despite objections from Israel. He shared his stance ahead of 15 September White House signing agreements designed to normalize Israel’s relations with the UAE and. Bahrain.
Sep 17
President Donald Trump says he wanted Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad assassinated in revenge for his forces’ use of chemical weapons against civilians in 2017. “I had him all set,” Trump said in a TV interview, adding that his Defense Secretary at the time, retired Marine Gen Jim Mattis, “was against most of that stuff.”
Sep 17
Iran has rejected two proposed Canadian class-action lawsuits over its missile shoot-down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 shortly after takeoff from Tehran last January. “The Canadian court has no jurisdiction,” a foreign ministry spokesman says. However, a Toronto lawyer involved in one action says the case is within Canadian jurisdiction through the 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.
Sep 17
The relationship between increasingly advanced and more complex aircraft electronics and pilots’ ability to manage the latest generation of aircraft is being studied by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In one incident, spatial disorientation evidently caused the Japanese pilot of a Lockheed Martin F-35 to crash into the Pacific.
Sep 17
With 5G becoming the next generation of mobile telecommunications, China’s involvement in the technology remains a widespread concern because of national security questions. Most of the concern is in the U.S. but it also has become a political conundrum for Canada and other allies. The Australian Strategic Policy Initiative has taken a close look at the issue.
ISSUES & IDEAS
This year’s biennial two-week Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) has finished off with a bang. In fact, lots of bangs that resulted in the sinking of a ship.
Three bids for replacing Canada's ageing fighter aircraft were received before the 31 July deadline. In advance of that much-delayed decision, contracts for new fighter facilities at 4 Wing Cold Lake and 3 Wing Bagotville are moving forward.
Ross Fetterley reflects on annual defence budgets and the impact on capabilities from long-term funding shifts as COVID continues to force the federal government to implement measures that will inject liquidity into the economy.
FEATURED ARTICLES 2020 |
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BY ROBBIN LAIRD
The Royal Australian Navy plays a big part in Australia’s extensive transformation process. The new procurement approach has been labelled a “continuous shipbuilding process,” and has the potential to impact defence procurement processes of its allies.
General Jonathan Vance, Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), announced, in March 2020, the list of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) appointments, promotions, and retirements for 2020, and then announced his own retirement in July.
FrontLine has gathered the key industry leaders in the defence and national security sectors. These are the project primes and specialized subcontractors that provide Top Quality solutions for these critical sectors.
In naval warfare, one of the best tools for area denial is the anti-ship missile system. Iran is developing sophisticated anti-ship missile systems to counter any offensive advantage posed by its adversaries.
Personnel changes in your defence community include: Raytheon, DRS, ADGA, MDA, DND, Canadian Embassy in Washington, Cdn Forces College, and Climatopolis.
BY KEN POLE
Accurate plotting of a potential enemy's next moves has seen militaries worldwide rely increasingly on sophisticated technologies for strategic advantage, and that's where NATO's Airborne Early Warning & Control force comes in.
BY CHRIS MACLEAN
Will 2020 finally be the year in which listening turns to hearing, and then to action? Change has begun. Hopefully our leaders will embrace and assist this grassroots progress, but if not, to borrow from General Mattis, we can still do it together. What will you do?
BY KEN POLE
As 2020 rolled in, few could have guessed that members of the Canadian Armed Forces would soon be helping elderly Canadians battle an invisible enemy: the novel coronavirus that had emerged in China's Wuhan province in late 2019.
BY EUGENE GERDEN
Despite the pandemic, many European NATO members are considering raising their combat potential as one way to stimulate economies that were negatively affected by efforts to control and mitigate the effects of COVID-19.
COVID-19 is both a threat-event and a national security concern, able to expose vulnerabilities of a nation and set the stage for grey-zone tactics by adversaries.
BY JAMES FRYER
A clearer distinction between 'compulsory' and 'discretionary' missions will help ensure the military's relevance for the most important challenges facing Canadians.
BY ROSS FETTERLY
As COVID continues to force the federal government to implement measures that will inject liquidity into the economy, now is the time to reflect on annual defence budgets and the impact on capabilities from long-term funding shifts.
BY STEPHEN SADLER
Toronto Police Trainers analyze recent protests from a best practices and crowd management perspective. Updated and consistent training is one part of the solution to change response tactics from aggressive escalation to serving the public right to peaceful protest.