Steeljaw Scribe

 
We are about one-third of the way through Iran’s annual “Ten Days of Dawn” observation which celebrates the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.  The occasion serves as a platform for Iran to boast about progress under the Islamic Republic and demonstrate military, scientific and [...]

Gulf BMD Deployments
Lots in the news today – let’s start in the Gulf:
US officials have let it be known that it now has Patriot batteries in four Gulf states – Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. US anti-missile ships are also being stationed in the Gulf.  All this comes as the impasse over [...]

From China today comes news today of a successful missile intercept test  :
“BEIJING (AP) — China announced that its military intercepted a missile in mid-flight Monday in a test of new technology that comes amid heightened tensions over Taiwan and increased willingness by the Asian giant to show off its advanced military capabilities. The official [...]

A few of us  (here   and over at Galrahn’s site) have been banging the drum for the last few years re. the potential threat posed by China’s ASBM (Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile) which appears to be a variant of the DF-21 (itself, an apparent derivative of the Pershing II MRBM).  There has been limited releasable [...]

Writing in today’s Japan Times Online  , columnist Michael Richardson raises several, hoary arguments as to the possible effectiveness of missile defense vs. massive retaliation as a form of deterrence vis-à-vis the DPRK’s l’enfant terrible and the latest brewing crisis on the Korean peninsula.  We say “hoary  ” because true to the definition, the arguments [...]

April 2015.  Over a landscape made all the more surreal by the dim light of a waning moon, an F-22 continues its patrol, the sensors embedded in its skin alive, searching.  Across the night sky digital datalinks reach out, carrying their payload of data – a threat radar to the east – a Navy EA-18G [...]

Couple of major milestones for the Advanced Hawkeye program announced today:
Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP):
An Acquisition Decision Memorandum, signed June 11 by the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, gave the Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye program approval to enter low-rate initial production. Having demonstrated that it has met all acquisition milestone criteria, [...]

As if the 29 April statement from the DPRK Foreign Ministry   wasn’t provocative enough, comes the latest missive dated 29 May (full statement here  ):

As long as the UNSC fails to respond to the DPRK’s just demand, the DPRK will not recognize any resolution and decision of the UNSC in the future, too.
Third, if [...]

Looks like the missiles of spring are coming back for return engagement this summer:

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea may this month test a missile designed to fly as far as U.S. territory and may also be gearing up for skirmishes with the South around their disputed sea border, South Korean media reported on Monday.

and

SEOUL, South [...]