Tag: missiles
China To Parade High-Tech Weaponry In Signal Of Strength, And Shop Window

China To Parade High-Tech Weaponry In Signal Of Strength, And Shop Window

By Megha Rajagopalan

BEIJING (Reuters) – From ballistic missiles to fighter jets, China has rolled out a host of high-tech weaponry ahead of a parade next week commemorating victory over Japan in World War Two, in a signal of Beijing’s growing confidence in its military might.

China has poured capital into developing its home-grown weapons industry with an eye toward export markets as it projects greater military power in disputed waters in the South and East China Seas.

Qu Rui, a military official and deputy director of the office organizing the parade, says all the weapons and equipment on show would be Chinese-made, 84 percent shown for the first time. “They represent the new development, new achievements and new images of the building of the Chinese armed forces,” he said at a recent briefing.

Chinese officials have repeatedly said the military parade is not directed at any other country, but diplomats and experts say countries with which Beijing has territorial disputes, including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, may react with uneasiness to the broad display of military power.

“It’s possible that Japan and Southeast Asian countries will interpret this as a kind of warning to them,” said Xie Yue, a political scientist at Tongji University. “I can’t say whether that’s warranted or not.”

State media has reported that the parade, which involves more than 10 foreign military delegations including Russia, is the first in which China has showed off such a broad array of weapons.

BIGGEST DISPLAY YET

Qu said 12,000 Chinese troops would take part, along with 500 pieces of equipment and nearly 200 aircraft. Air echelons on display will include bombers, fighters and carrier-based aircraft.

Several ballistic missiles – including one that analysts say is capable of reaching a U.S. base in Guam – were spotted during parade rehearsals, Shao Yongling, a senior colonel from the PLA Second Artillery Command College, told the state-owned Global Times newspaper.

The Second Artillery Force, the nuclear force, is set to display seven types of missiles including conventional and nuclear models, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing unnamed military sources. “The scale and number of missiles will surpass any previous outing,” the source told Xinhua.

The parade will also involve modern tanks and missile-launchers, state media has reported. An upgraded long-range bomber will also be on display, flying in formation over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Thursday, a leading pilot of the formation told Xinhua.

The latest version of the J-15 aircraft carrier-based fighter jet has also been seen in rehearsals, Beijing-based air defense expert Fu Qianshao told the Global Times. Medium-sized early warning and control aircraft, used for surveillance and other missions, will lead ten formations at the parade.

A formation of military helicopters flew over Beijing during a parade rehearsal last weekend as tanks rolled through parts of the capital.

Sino-Japan relations have long been affected by what China sees as Japan’s failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during the war. Western and Chinese historians estimate millions of Chinese civilians were killed.

Jack Midgley, a defense expert at Deloitte, said next week’s parade was not necessarily meant to send a message to the West or other countries in the region.

“It’s to demonstrate China has achieved first-world status with its military, and to display its products for foreign buyers,” he said, adding much of the weaponry will already be familiar to foreign military analysts and intelligence services.

(Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Photo: Paramilitary policemen and members of a gun salute team fire cannons during a training session for a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War Two, at a military base in Beijing, China, August 1, 2015. China will hold the parade on September 3, Picture taken August 1, 2015. (REUTERS/Stringer)

North Korea Claims Ability To Mount Nuclear Warhead On Missile

North Korea Claims Ability To Mount Nuclear Warhead On Missile

By Andrew Davis, Bloomberg News (TNS)

HONG KONG — North Korea said it has developed the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile, signaling the country may now have the ability to launch a nuclear attack against the United States.

South Korea and the U.S. military have been divided over whether North Korea could shrink a warhead sufficiently to fit it on a nuclear-tipped missile. A spokesman at the National Defense Commission in Pyongyang said the military has mastered the engineering and will diversify its nuclear weapons, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday.

North Korea has successfully detonated three nuclear devices at a test site and has been improving the range of its ballistic missiles in defiance of United Nations sanctions over its weapons program. The U.S., China, and South Korea have been unable to convince the Kim Jong Un regime to return to disarmament talks, and there are signs that North Korea is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal.

The announcement comes weeks after the country released video of Kim watching what the official media said was the launch of a ballistic missile from a submarine. U.S. and South Korean officials have questioned the veracity of the test, with Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok saying on May 11 that the North was still likely years away from being able to master a submarine missile launch.

South Korea has also questioned whether its rival can miniaturize a warhead, with Kim Min Seok saying in February there was no evidence that the government in Pyongyang has the ability to tip a missile with a nuclear warhead.

That assessment contrasts with the position of William Gortney, the head of the U.S. Northern Command, who said April seventh that North Korea does have the technology and has also managed to deploy a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile — the KN-08 — capable of reaching the U.S.

“Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland,” Gortney said. “We have not seen them do that” and “we haven’t seen them test the KN-08.”

North Korea last tested a nuclear device in February 2013; just how many warheads North Korea has been able to build remains a mystery. Top Chinese nuclear weapons experts have increased their estimates of North Korean warhead production beyond most previous U.S. projections, the Wall Street Journal reported on April 23.

The Kim regime has 20 warheads and has the capacity to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to double its arsenal by next year, the paper reported, citing people briefed on the matter. That compares with the estimate of 10 to 16 warheads released in February by U.S. researcher Joel Wit.

Photo: Steve Herman via Flickr

U.S. Can’t Confirm Death Of Khorasan Group Leader: Rice

U.S. Can’t Confirm Death Of Khorasan Group Leader: Rice

Washington (AFP) — U.S. airstrikes in Syria have had an “important impact,” U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice said Wednesday, but it is unclear if they have killed the head of the Khorasan group, an Al-Qaeda offshoot.

The strikes by U.S. warplanes and cruise missiles targeted the Islamic State movement as well as the little-known Khorasan group, which Washington said has said was plotting attacks against U.S. targets.

“We think the strikes had an impact, important impact,” Rice told NBC news, 36 hours after Washington expanded its bombing campaign from Iraq to Syria, backed by allies in the region.

“Obviously, this won’t be the last of our efforts. But this was a first wave.”

She added: “We feel very good about our success. We’ll continue to take a look and we’ll be doing more.”

Rice said the United States at this point is unable to confirm that the airstrikes succeeded in killing Khorasan’s alleged leader, long-standing Qaeda operative Muhsin al-Fadhli.

“We can’t confirm that at this stage. We’ve seen reports on social media to that effect. We will continue to look for signs as to whether or not that’s, in fact, the case,” Rice told NBC.

The coalition aims to destroy the Islamic State group, which controls a swath of territory in Iraq and Syria, has murdered two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker and is locked in a brutal war with Iraqi and Kurdish authorities.

AFP Photo/Wang Zhao

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U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists In Syria

U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists In Syria

Damascus (AFP) — The United States and its Arab allies unleashed deadly bomb and missile strikes on jihadists in Syria on Tuesday, opening a new front in the battle against the Islamic State group.

Dozens of IS and Al-Qaeda militants were reported to have been killed in the raids, which Washington said had partly targeted extremists plotting an “imminent attack” against the West.

Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S.-led operation, which involved fighter jets, bombers, drones and Tomahawk missiles fired from U.S. warships.

The strikes marked a turning point in the war against IS militants, who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, and declared an Islamic “caliphate”.

The fact that the five Arab nations joining the strikes are Sunni-ruled will also be of crucial symbolic importance in the fight against the Sunni extremists of IS.

Washington had been reluctant to intervene in Syria’s raging civil war, but was jolted into action as the jihadists captured more territory and committed atrocities including the beheadings of three Western hostages.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime gave a muted initial response, saying it had been notified in advance of the strikes and supported “any international effort” against the jihadists.

The Pentagon said the raids had destroyed or damaged IS fighter positions, training compounds, command centers and armed vehicles in the jihadist stronghold of Raqa and near the border with Iraq.

– ‘Huge impact’ –

An anti-regime activist in Raqa, Abu Yusef, said that IS had redeployed its fighters in response.

“The impact of the strikes has been huge,” he told AFP via the Internet.

The jihadists “are focused on trying to save themselves now,” he added.

The raids prompted many residents to run from their homes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

“Civilians who live near IS positions across Syria have fled,” director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

It follows a recent exodus of tens of thousands of residents into neighboring Turkey in response to a jihadist assault on a strategic Kurdish town in northern Syria.

IS militants have warned the U.S.-led campaign would be met with a harsh response, and an IS-linked Algerian group on Monday threatened to kill a French hostage within 24 hours if Paris did not end its participation in air strikes in Iraq.

The group said it was responding to an IS call to kill Westerners whose nations are among 50 countries that have joined the campaign to battle the jihadist group.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls ruled out negotiation and said Paris would continue its air strikes.

-‘Al-Qaeda plot’ –

Washington said it launched 14 strikes — including 47 Tomahawk missiles — against IS targets around the jihadist stronghold of Raqa, as well as in Deir Ezzor, Albu Kamal and Hasakeh on the border with Iraq.

Its five Arab allies “participated in or supported” the attacks. Jordan and Bahrain said they deployed warplanes.

Four air strikes were also conducted Monday in neighboring Iraq, the Pentagon said, bringing the total number of U.S. raids in that country to 194.

In Syria, eight strikes were carried out on a group of “seasoned Al-Qaeda” veterans to disrupt “imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests”, the Pentagon said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 50 Al-Qaeda militants were killed, as well as more than 70 members of IS.

Eight civilians, including three children, were also among the dead, it said.

The new strikes came less than two weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama warned that he had approved an expansion of the campaign against the IS group to include action in Syria.

Obama was preparing to give his first public remarks on the raids from the White House at 10:00 am (1400 GMT) on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.

Washington has said the goal of the strikes is to degrade the group’s capabilities so it can be taken on by local ground forces including the Iraqi army and moderate Syrian rebels, who are to be trained and equipped by the coalition.

Syria’s opposition — which had pleaded for the strikes — welcomed the new raids, but urged sustained pressure on Assad’s government.

“This war cannot be won by military means alone,” National Coalition president Hadi al-Bahra said.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, Israel downed a Syrian fighter jet over the Golan Heights, indicating that it had crossed a ceasefire line into the Israeli-occupied sector.

Israeli army radio said it was apparently a MiG-21 which was shot down by a surface-to-air Patriot missile, with the wreckage landing on the Syrian-controlled side of the plateau.

AFP Photo/Mohammed al-Shaikh

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