Israel’s military has disclosed that it has foiled a move by Palestinian Hamas militants to hack into Israeli troops’ smartphones. It uncovered the plot several months ago but let it continue under surveillance until they shut it down.  Dozens of troops were targeted by Hamas agents posing as young women, enabling them to download malware.

Seven variants of a malware program associated with North Korea prompted the U.S. intelligence community to issue a warning 17 February to the public and private sectors. The “Hidden Cobra” program evidently includes a remote-access trojan which would enable hackers to upload and download files as well as monitor victims’ microphones, clipboards and screens.

More than $1 billion for 75 light attack aircraft is included in the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command budget and the preference is for rapid acquisition of an off-the-shelf platform. “Whatever it turns out being is going to be non-developmental,” says SOC Commander LGen James Slife. The leading contenders, both single-engine turboprops, are the Embraer-Sierra Nevada A-29 Super Tucano and the Textron AT-6B Wolverine.

NATO defence ministers have agreed to expand the Canadian-led military training mission in Iraq. In announcing the plan during a two-day meeting in Brussels, Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg says details needed to be worked out and approved by the Iraqi government.

The U.S. Department of Defense has been blocked by a federal judge from going ahead with a $10-billion contract with Microsoft Corp. to provide cloud-based data storage. The injunction remains in effect until “further notice from the court” due to a legal challenge by Amazon, which argues that the DoD made numerous errors in awarding the contract. It also says President Donald Trump exerted undue influence through his frequent criticism of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

In the largest year-over-year increase in a decade, global defence spending rose by approximately four per cent last year from 2018. Among other things, the International Institute for Strategic Studies says in its latest Military Balance annual summary that European spending rose 4.2 per cent and that overall spending in Asia had jumped by 50 per cent in the last decade.

A U.S. Army corporal court-martialled in 2018 for, among other things, disrespecting a gunnery sergeant officer, evidently was justified in telling the non-commissioned officer commit a sexual act against himself. A Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals tribunal has set aside that element of the corporal’s sentence on grounds that the instructor had badgered him into using the expression.

U.S. Cyber Command wants to spend $11.6 million to procure systems which would enable its personnel to deploy abroad on “hunt forward” missions to block malicious cyber activity. The proposed project is proposed for 2021 within the Air Force envelope.

Members of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee were astonished and flummoxed to learn that membership in a white supremacist or neo-Nazi group doesn’t mean automatic removal from military service. They were reacting to testimony by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and its Army equivalent which seemed to draw a distinction between simple membership in an extremist organization and “active" participation.

The U.S. has been advised of the impending cancellation of a decades-old agreement permitting U.S. forces to train in the Philippines. Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin said a notice on behalf of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been openly critical of the U.S., was delivered to the embassy in Manila. The embassy said the U.S. would “carefully consider how to best more forward to advance our shared interests.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadian military personnel during a brief visit to Kuwait that they are a key factor in the “fight” against Islamic militants in Iraq and elsewhere. He also said Canada, as a country “so lucky in so many different ways and blessed with the lives we live”, needs to be involved in curbing terrorism worldwide.

The U.S. has identified four Chinese military officers it has charged with overseeing a massive 2017 cyberattack on Equifax which resulted in the theft of personal data on more than 147 Americans and some foreign nationals listed in the credit-rating agency’s files. The whereabouts of the four suspects is unknown and China denies the allegations.

A civilian psychiatrist says that when Army veteran Lionel Desmond, who committed suicide after killing family members in January 2017, was suffering from a mental illness likely exacerbated by inadequate therapy. Dr. Ian Slayter testified 10 February at a Nova Scotia inquiry into the deaths that when he met Desmond in October 2016, there was no evidence that the former Afghanistan sniper had received follow-on therapy after in-patient treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Department of Defense is proposing to increase spending on developing and procuring new weapons with the funds coming from savings by retiring manned and unmanned aircraft and ships. The DoD budget proposal presented to Congress 10 February sets out a $705.4 billion agenda, down 1.1 per cent from 2019.

An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile fitted with a re-entry vehicle has been tested successfully by USAF Global Strike Command. An official says the modernized weapon is a “visible indicator” of U.S. deterrence capabilities.

U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie has fired Deputy Secretary James Byrne less than five months after Congress approved the former Marine’s appointment. No specific reason was given in a terse statement issued by Wilkie’s office.

Ambassador James Jeffrey, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the special envoy to the international coalition against Daesh, is worried by what he sees as a limited but increasing incidence of Russian contractors violating deconfliction agreements with U.S. forces by moving into Syrian Democratic Force’s territory.

Decision-making in military operations, especially those conducted remotely, would be greatly enhanced if the Department of Defense introduced a fifth-generation network, according to the Congressional Research Service. The DoD is expected to experiment with the technology at four bases this year.

Plans for a new Future Combat Air System involving France, Germany and Spain apparently are bogged down by delays in getting Spain fully onboard in a timely manner. Dassault and Airbus are the lead contractors for France and Germany while Indra Sistemas, designated by Spain as its national prime, has yet to agree to a work-sharing agreement with the other primes and their supply chains.

A California hospital is slated to become the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ first 5G-enabled facility, a development which is expected to lead to more timely care as health professionals are able to share more detailed diagnostic images as well as patient files.

Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China, told a special parliamentary committee meeting in Ottawa 05 February that in the immediate aftermath of a senior Huawei executive being detained in Canada and China’s arrest of two Canadians, there was virtually no dialogue between the two countries. Rather, he said, the anger on both sides was such that the first conversation was probably one of his most unpleasant experiences as a diplomat.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, says U.S. deployment of a new submarine-launched nuclear weapon is evidence of Washington’s belief that it could wage a limited nuclear conflict. He was reacting 05 February to a Pentagon official’s confirmation that an upgraded warhead had been fitted onto Trident II intercontinental ballistic missiles.

ADS Group, the main British defence industry lobby, says the prospects of continued joint equipment development with the European Union, as well as market access and security cooperation, are up for discussion. Its chief executive officer says a key issue to be addressed in the aftermath of Brexit is whether British companies can have continued access to EU funding.

Several weeks after activities were suspended in northern Iraq, Canadian Special Operations Forces Command troops have resumed training and assistance as part of a U.S.-led coalition against Daesh. CANSOFCOM commander MGen Peter Dawe acknowledged 03 February that the uncertain state of the Iraqi government, coupled with street protests, has created a “complex” operating environment.

Six Turkish soldiers are reported dead and nine others wounded after Syria forces shelled a contested area in northwest Idlib province. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says at least 30 Syrian troops were “neutralized” by retaliatory fire and he also has warned Russia “not to stand in our way” in Ankara’s dealings with Damascus.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, played down their governments’ different approaches to a number of issues in their countries’ relationships with China, but are there deeper differences? Tom McTague, a London-based staff writer for The Atlantic, tries to come to grips with fundamental policy choices.

A $127.4-million contract to produce two C-37B business jets for the U.S. Air Force has been awarded to Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. Variants of the Gulfstream G550 long-range twinjet, they will be used for transportation of senior officials. Gulfstream also secured an $80.1-million modification to its contract to maintain C-20 (Gulfstream III/IV) and C-37 (Gulfstream V) platforms flown not only by the USAF but also the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says the U.S. will not step back from its total deployment of troops in Africa. Instead, he said 30 January, there would be a “rebalancing” of its presence with some deployments increasing, some decreasing and others not altered.

The U.S. has unveiled a Gator Landmine Replacement Program which relies on "smart" controllable wirelessly-networked munitions as an alternative to more conventional "dumb" anti-personnel models which were banned by 160 countries through a treaty signed in Ottawa in 1999. The U.S. is among a group of countries which never ratified that agreement.

The latest report from the federal Commissioner of Firearms, for 2018, shows there was an increase of nearly 24 per cent in the number of restricted firearms registered in the first three years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's administration. The total was 1.16 million compared with 978,347 in 2015 after tighter controls were signalled by the Liberals in that year’s election campaign. There also was a slight drop in the number of prohibited weapons registered nationally.

The U.S. Department of Defense evidently is a step closer to having swarming drones that it can launch and recover from larger aircraft. It has been confirmed that it completed a partly successful inaugural test deployment of a Dynetics X-61A Gremlin from a Lockheed Martin C-130A transport in November. Alabama-based Dynetics was awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract in 2018.

The world’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp., has reported record sales of nearly $60 billion in 2019, up 11 per cent from the previous year, and its chair, Marillyn Hewson, expects further gains this year. All of divisions increased their sales, earnings and backlog, notably a 20 per cent jump in the missiles and fire control arm.

Some 160 Canadians trying to get out of China as a potentially deadly coronavirus continues to spread will be evacuated on an aircraft being arranged by the federal government. Confirmed by Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne, the plan requires the cooperation of authorities in China who have quarantined large parts of the country.

Chinese state media reports that two military aircraft “expelled” a U.S. warship from the vicinity of a disputed island in the South China Sea. The littoral combat vessel Montgomery was involved in a “freedom of navigation operation” but Beijing’s 25 January response was a reminder of China’s aggressive expansionism in the Western Pacific Basin.