More than 130 members of the House of Representatives are pushing back against other politicians’ call for reduced U.S. procurement of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters next year. In a newly-disclosed April 28 letter to the Armed Services Committee and a defence sub-panel of the Appropriations Committee, they urged support for the Department of Defense’s request for more fighters. “Cuts in the Fiscal Year 2022 will leave the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps with a capability gap that legacy aircraft or new variants thereof cannot fulfill,” they wrote.

Thirteen years after a former administration announced it and four years after its supposed delivery date, the announcement of a new contract for a heavy Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker is expected today. Shipyards in Vancouver and Quebec have been competing for the work ever since the government removed the project from a Vancouver yard.

Some 28,000 military personnel from 26 countries began an exercise May 4 in the Balkans and Black Sea region near Russian territories. The U.S.-led initiative is designed to test infrastructure and interoperability along NATO’s southeastern flank.

Britain’s Royal Marines have produced a video of a successful test of a jet pack for potential use in boarding parties. They normally would fast-rope from a helicopter but the suit developed by Salisbury-based Gravity Industries provides a dramatically different option.

A new light armoured vehicle prototyped for the U.S. Marine Corps at a cost of more than $6 million has been unveiled by Textron. Systems, named for a venomous water snake, the Cottonmouth advanced reconnaissance vehicle is intended to replace a General Dynamics legacy fleet which has been in service since the 1980s.

Nine more individuals, including two from Turkey’s main procurement agency, have been charged in an ongoing industrial espionage case. Others include active and retired military personnel and three persons in the private sector. The government detained 33 other individuals in January and March.

Five aircraft are competing for Finland’s potential €9-billion replacement for its fleet of legacy Boeing F-18 Hornets. They are the Saab Gripen, the Lockheed Martin F-35, the Dassault Rafale, the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet and the Airbus-BAE-Leonardo Eurofighter.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin could be meeting in a third country this summer. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says Biden “believes that such a summit would be valuable in establishing better understandings between our two countries and the possibility of getting this relationship on a more stable, predictable path.”

The U.S. Army’s concept of portable nuclear reactors to supply dependable power to combat operations is “extremely disturbing” and “based on a lie,” says the author of an academic report released by the Department of Defense. Alan Kuperman, coordinator of a University of Texas nuclear proliferation initiative, says Project Pele means higher costs and is a potential threat to U.S. personnel.

U.S. Army leaders have concluded that the modern fast-paced, multi-domain, wide-ranging style of combat could be a platform for changing the laws governing armed conflict. Gen Mike Murray, the head of Army Futures Command, says future leaders will have to rely on artificial intelligence and autonomous and semi-autonomous systems just to do their jobs.

Louise Arbour, a former Supreme Court of Canada judge as well as a former UN Commissioner for Human Rights, has been appointed to lead a review of sexual harassment and misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. She is tasked with providing “concrete recommendations” on how an external reporting system could enable victims to report issues without fear of reprisal.

The recent sinking of an Indonesian submarine with all 53 persons aboard is seen by a former Australian submarine commander as a catalyst for other navies to review the likely causes and responses to determine whether there are lessons to be learned from the tragedy.

More than 2000 travellers landing in Canada have tested positive for COVID-19 variants. Between 22 February and 22 April, 518 international air travellers tested positive for the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the UK. There are currently almost 95,000 confirmed cases of this variant in Canada.

The maiden voyage of the Royal Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will involve visits to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India even as Australia warns of threats of jurisdictional conflicts in the region.

Leonardo S.p.A. will acquire a 25.1 percent stake in the German sensor company Hensoldt at a cost of €606 million. The Italian aerospace company will be the joint largest shareholder along with a German state-controlled bank in a move Leonardo CEO Alessandro Profumo says “reflects our long-held view on the importance of building cooperation across the European aerospace and defense industry.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has disclosed in a recorded interview that his country’s diplomatic priorities have been “sacrificed” to the agenda of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The leaked portion of the lengthy interview has stirred debate ahead of the country’s presidential elections in June.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported todat that global military spending last year is estimated at more than US$1.91 trillion. It says that was a 2.6 per cent increase from 2019 and was the highest since 1988.

Turkey’s removal from the Lockheed Martin F-35 program means that engine costs to the remaining program partners will increase, says Matthew Bromberg, head of the Pratt & Whitney military engines division. The F135 engine was initially manufactured with a total of 188 parts from Turkish suppliers but professed security concerns after Turkey bought Russian anti-missile technology is resulting in much of the work being placed with more costly U.S. suppliers.

Formal designation by the U.S. of mass killings of Armenians more than a century ago as genocide have angered Turkey, a key regional ally. “Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement. “We remember so that we remain ever vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”

Four days after an Indonesian submarine went missing with 53 persons aboard off the coast of Bali, Navy Chief of Staff Yudo Margono confirmed April 24 that the vessel has sunk with no survivors. Scattered wreckage was found well below the vessel’s crush depth.

A $444-million cost overrun is being reported on a cockpit computer upgrade on the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter. The 63% overrun is on a 2018 contract for the aircraft manufacturer to develop and deliver redesigned hardware and software, a project the Government Accountability Office says has proven “more complex than originally thought.”

Assuming President Vladimir Putin signs off on a Roscosmos plan, Russia is planning to orbit a “national” space station by the end of this decade. The project, apparently with an initial budget equivalent to US$6 billion, will be “a new step in world manned space exploration,” says Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin. Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said April 21 that Russia would leave the U.S.-led International Space Station program after 2025.

U.S. Africa Command leader Gen Stephen Townsend says China’s expansion of its naval base in Djibouti is the latest sign that Beijing is looking to expand its presence in East Africa. “Around the continent they are looking for other basing opportunities,” he says. Strategically-situated at the end of the Red Sea, Djibouti also is host to several other foreign military outposts.

The Canada-U.S. border will remain closed to non-essential travel until at least May 21, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair confirmed on social media April 20, saying that “we will continue to base our decisions on the best public health advice available.” Meanwhile, a New York congressman is urging both federal governments to craft a plan to reopen the border, insisting that “with vaccines, face masks and good physical distancing, we can do so safely and successfully.”

Russia insists it has the right to restrict foreign naval movements in the Black Sea off Crimea. Ukraine, the European Commission and the U.S. have protested the tactic.

The Bank of Canada opted today to keep its benchmark interest rate at the record-low 0.25 per cent which has prevailed since March 2020. It explained that the COVID-19 response “continues to require extraordinary monetary policy support” and that the rate is unlikely to change until possibly the latter half of 2022.

Britain has agreed to spend £1.4 billion on 14 Boeing Chinook helicopters but will defer the procurement for three due to concerns about short-term budgetary issues.

Germany’s Defence Minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, says she will continue to press for armed Eurodrones even though a parliamentary budget committee wants the Franco-German aircraft to remain unarmed. The committee has agreed that the program should proceed but that that arming the platforms presents ethical challenges.

Air Force Gen Glen VanHerck, head of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, says his country must develop a more persistent Arctic presence. “You have to be on the field,” he says in a Pentagon press release, adding that capabilities are still in the “game plan development” stage. “We're not able to have the persistence that I need to compete day-to-day in the Arctic.”

The U.S. has imposed new sanctions on Russia and formally blamed its SVR intelligence agency for last year’s massive SolarWinds breach of government and corporate systems. Designed to choke off lending to the Kremlin, the sanctions against 32 entities and individuals coincided with diplomatic expulsions in Washington. Also, in collaboration with allies, the U.S. has sanctioned eight individuals and entities associated with Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the non-U.S. members of the alliance will withdraw some 7,000 troops in parallel with Washington’s planned drawdown. “We will start the withdrawal of NATO Resolute Support forces by May 1,” he confirmed after a meeting with the U.S. secretaries of Defence and State. “We plan to complete the withdrawal of all our troops within a few months.”

Interoperability with evolving cloud-computing technologies is presenting a challenge for NATO as it tries to set alliance-wide standards. France, Germany and the U.S. have already initiated their own programs but a researcher points out that “showing results quickly is important for NATO to give a common direction.”

The “ongoing build-up of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders” is the focus of a visit to Brussels by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian officials to discuss the prospect of a joint NATO statement. “There are more Russian forces massed on those borders than at any time since 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine,” Assistant Secretary of State Philip Reeker said. , who leads the State Department’s European affairs bureau, told reporters. “At the same time, Russia has had a disinformation campaign blatantly designed to falsely blame Ukraine for what are the Kremlin's own actions.”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Services says last year saw the highest level of foreign espionage and interference directed at Canadian targets since the end of the Cold War. “The fluid and rapidly evolving environment caused by COVID-19 has created a situation ripe for exploitation,” CSIS Director David Vigneault says in his latest annual report. “Violent extremism, foreign interference, espionage and malicious cyber activity, accelerated, evolved and in many ways became much more serious.”