Monthly Archives: July 2015

Military, NATO, Russia, United States

Russia performs combat drills in regions shared with NATO states…

RUSSIAN MILITARY 

Intro: Russian military practice live firing and anti-submarine combat in Baltic and Arctic

The Russian navy is continuing anti-submarine combat drills in both the Baltic and the Arctic Barents Sea.

Russian military operations have been steadily increasing this year, but the ones being carried out in the Baltic and Arctic are the most controversial. This is largely due to Russia sharing both regions almost exclusively with NATO member states.

Its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad borders Poland on one side and Lithuania on the other, while the other four countries who have a territorial claim on the Arctic besides Russia are all NATO members – Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States.

Russian corvette Soobrazitelny: one of the ships of the latest class of corvettes of the Russian Navy, the Steregushchy class. It joined the Baltic Fleet in 2011. The ship is fitted with anti-aircraft capabilities.

Russian corvette Soobrazitelny: one of the ships of the latest class of corvettes of the Russian Navy, the Steregushchy class. It joined the Baltic Fleet in 2011. The ship is fitted with anti-aircraft capabilities.

Intelligence suggests that the Russian Baltic Fleet have sent out three corvette vessels (Boykiy, Stoykiy and Soobrazitelny), along with two anti-submarine Ka-27PL helicopters, against its designated enemy. This is believed to be the Russian submarine Vyborg.

The Vyborg is deemed by military analysts as one of the quietest submarines in the world, and in this instance was tasked to disrupt the ships’ landing attempts.

After tracking the submarine, the corvettes and helicopters managed to force the submarine to resurface. The ships have also practiced live artillery fire at naval and aerial targets.

Russia’s North Fleet also sent out vessels to simulate anti-submarine combat, dispatching the Brest and Yunga anti-submarine ships into the Barents Sea near the Arctic. These crews have performed torpedo attacks and have fired the reaction engine-bomb installation RBU-6000, which relates to the fleet’s anti-submarine rocket launcher.

Intelligence also suggests that the ships have conducted practice with its naval fleet air-arm, not just with the Ka-27 helicopters but also with its Il-38 maritime patrol plane. They have also performed refined communications and simulated emergency responses on board.

In May, too, Russia practiced live firing in the Baltic when it sent its largest amphibious hovercraft into the region. Defence officials from both Lithuania and Estonia have expressed concern at the number of Russia military exercises near their territories, saying that such snap drills by Russia could be exercises being used as cover for a larger redeployment of forces toward their borders.

 

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Britain, Defence, Europe, Government, Military, NATO, Politics, United States

UK commits to defence spending of 2 per cent of GDP for next five years…

DEFENCE SPENDING

Britain has committed in meeting the NATO target of spending 2 per cent of national income on defence, the Chancellor announced in the Budget.

Military chiefs applauded the decision although there are fears of ‘creative accounting’ – because intelligence spending could be included in the figures.

The Commons foreign affairs committee chairman, Crispin Blunt, said: ‘The pledge to meet the NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP on defence is not quite as profound as it appears.

‘The Government is apparently changing the way they measure defence spending to meet this important target by including expenditure outside the MoD budget, including £2.5 billion on the secret intelligence agencies.’

The pledge will likely be welcomed both by NATO and the US, who have both voiced concerns about the importance of meeting this target.

Whilst welcoming the announcement Admiral Lord West warned: ‘If this is creative accounting I would be very disappointed.’

George Osborne said the Government would spend 2 per cent of GDP on the military every year of this decade and raise the defence budget by 0.5 per cent a year in real terms. Until now, ministers had not committed to spending at that level beyond the current financial year – prompting pressure from backbench MPs and military chiefs.

Mr Osborne said: ‘The Prime Minister and I are not prepared to see the threats we face to both our country and our values go unchallenged.

‘Britain has always been resolute in defence of liberty and the promotion of stability around the world. And with this government it will always remain so.’

The Chancellor announced a new fund, worth up to £1.5billion a year, which will be spent on intelligence items such as cyber security.

Recent figures released by NATO revealed that Britain is line to spend 2.1 per cent of national income on defence this year. But this includes all of the £1billion cross-departmental fund known as the Conflict Pool, which is used to support fragile and war-torn states rather than military operations.

The UK is just one of four of NATO’s 28 member states who currently meet the 2% target and last month the U.S. called for billions more to be spent citing the situation in the Balkans. ‘I think it’s clearly the view at NATO that the Ukraine situation has been a game-changer,’ said Robert Bell, the U.S. secretary of defence representative in Europe.

NATO announced in June that it would be ‘naming and shaming’ the Western European countries which failed to spend more than 2% of their gross domestic product on defence, at the same time that US President Barack Obama expressed his concerns at the G7 summit that UK spending would fall.

The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review which is taking place this year will review the threats facing Britain and its ability to tackle them. Writing in a British newspaper last month, defence secretary Michael Fallon said that the review will ‘be positive and assertive about Britain’s place in the world: ready, willing and able to act to defend our values as we always have done.’

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Defence, Government, NATO, Politics, United States

U.S. defence budget to cut 40,000 troops over next two years…

U.S. ARMY DEFENCE CUTS

The proposed cuts to the U.S. defence budget would reduce the active-duty Army from its current size of around 490,000 soldiers to about 450,000, its smallest number since before the United States entered World War Two.

The troop reductions were first announced in February 2014 when then-Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled the Pentagon’s budget for the 2015 fiscal year. The figures were also included in the Pentagon’s four-year planning document, the Quadrennial Defense Review 2014.

Defence officials have confirmed that the Army was moving ahead with the plan to reduce uniformed and civilian personnel and was expected to announce further details about which units would be affected by the cuts.

The personnel cuts come as the Pentagon is attempting to absorb nearly $1 trillion in reductions to planned defence spending over a decade.

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