Taipei, Taiwan (UPI) Jan 17, 2017 -
A $3.4 billion Taiwanese program to upgrade its F-16A/B Fighting Falcons got underway this week with the first four aircraft flown to a plant in Taichung.
The retrofitting of the aircraft to a "V" configuration is being performed by Taiwan's Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. in Taichung with Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the aircraft.
According to the Taipei Times, the fo ...
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Moscow (UPI) Jan 17, 2017 -
Russia's military successfully test-fired a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the country's defense ministry.
The missile, one of Russia's first ICBMs developed after the fall of the Soviet Union, was fired from the Plesetsk spaceport and struck its target at a firing range in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russian defense authorities say the test was conducted to confi ...
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Brussels (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
Lithuania can use EU funds to install surveillance systems on its border with Russia's militarised Kaliningrad exclave but not to build a fence, the EU said on Tuesday.
Vilnius has said it wants to build a fence on the border with Kaliningrad amid concern from fellow Baltic states over the Russian military build-up.
The so-called exclave of Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Poland and Li ...
moreEU says Lithuania can use funds for border surveillance, not fences
Brussels (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
Lithuania can use EU funds to install surveillance systems on its border with Russia's militarised Kaliningrad exclave but not to build a fence, the EU said on Tuesday.
Vilnius has said it wants to build a fence on the border with Kaliningrad amid concern from fellow Baltic states over the Russian military build-up.
The so-called exclave of Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Poland and Li ...
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Russia test-fires Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile
Moscow (UPI) Jan 17, 2017 -
Russia's military successfully test-fired a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the country's defense ministry.
The missile, one of Russia's first ICBMs developed after the fall of the Soviet Union, was fired from the Plesetsk spaceport and struck its target at a firing range in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russian defense authorities say the test was conducted to confi ...
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Taiwan begins F-16 upgrade program
Taipei, Taiwan (UPI) Jan 17, 2017 -
A $3.4 billion Taiwanese program to upgrade its F-16A/B Fighting Falcons got underway this week with the first four aircraft flown to a plant in Taichung.
The retrofitting of the aircraft to a "V" configuration is being performed by Taiwan's Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. in Taichung with Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the aircraft.
According to the Taipei Times, the fo ...
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 China to develop prototype super, super computer in 2017 
Beijing (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
China plans to develop a prototype exascale computer by the end of the year, state media said Tuesday, as it seeks to win a global race to be the first to build a machine capable of a billion, billion calculations per second.
If successful, the achievement would cement its place as a leading power in the world of supercomputing.
The Asian giant built the world's fastest supercomputer, th ...
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 Russia-China Joint Space Studies Center May Be Created in Southeastern Russia 
Krasnoyarsk (Sputnik) Jan 17, 2017 -
A joint-working space center of Russian and Chinese specialists could be built in Russia's southeastern Zabaikalsky Territory, the press service of the region's head said Monday in a statement.
A center for joint work of Russian and Chinese specialists in the sphere of space studies could be built in Russia's southeastern Zabaikalsky Territory as a part of the comprehensive plan of the reg ...
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 Russia, China Work on Joint High-Precision Satellite Navigation System 
Moscow (Sputnik) Jan 18, 2017 -
Russia and China are in the process of setting up a joint Differential Corrections and Monitoring (SDCM) high-precision satellite navigation system, China National Space Administration (CNSA) chief representative in Russia Zhang Yuan said Tuesday.
"We are not in the process of implementing [the system]," Zhang told RIA Novosti in response to a question on the time frame for building the sy ...
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Raytheon completes qualification testing of next-gen GPS Launch and Checkout System 
Aurora CO (SPX) Jan 18, 2017 -
Raytheon has reached another milestone in developing the U.S. Air Force Global Positioning System Next-Generation Operational Control System, known as GPS OCX, with the completion of the Factory Qualification Test of the Launch and Checkout System (LCS). GPS OCX will unleash dramatically increased performance and security of the GPS system that benefits millions of people worldwide.
Raythe ...
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 Russian Smerch, Uragan Rocket Launchers to Get Stealth Cloaks 
Moscow (Sputnik) Jan 18, 2017 -
Russia will outfit its Smerch and Uragan heavy multiple rocket launchers with specially designed canvas tents to make them invisible to enemy satellites and radar, the Moscow-based newspaper Izvestia wrote.The first eight such tents, equipped with their own systems of ventilation, fire control, power supply and heating, will arrive at a missile brigade of the Eastern Military District stationed ...
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 US-led coalition strikes IS near Syria's Al-Bab 
Washington (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
The US-led coalition has conducted four strikes near the Syrian town of Al-Bab, a significant move that will help Turkish forces fighting the Islamic State group there, a US official said Tuesday.
"These strikes were the result of continued cooperation with Turkey, and we saw a window of opportunity where it was in our mutual interests to get those targets destroyed," coalition spokesman Col ...
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 Damascus says Israel missiles caused airbase explosions 
Damascus (AFP) Jan 13, 2017 -
The Syrian army said on Friday that Israeli missile strikes caused a series of explosions at an airbase outside Damascus before dawn.
"In a desperate attempt to support terrorist organisations, Israeli enemy aircraft launched missiles from the north of Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) at 00:25 am (2225 GMT Thursday)," a military source told the state SANA news agency.
"The Syrian armed ...
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Davos, Switzerland (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
China's President Xi Jinping warned Tuesday against scapegoating globalisation for the world's ills or retreating behind protectionist walls, days before Donald Trump takes office.
In what amounted to a rewriting of the global economic order, led for decades by the United States, Xi used his debut speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos to insist that globalisation was irreversible despi ...
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Manila (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
China's militarisation of the South China Sea is "very troubling" and neither peaceful nor friendly, the Philippines' defence secretary said on Tuesday.
President Rodrigo Duterte has sought to improve his nation's relations with China by adopting a non-confrontational approach over their competing claims in the strategically vital waters.
But, even as other senior government officials so ...
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Phnom Penh (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
Cambodia has cancelled upcoming military exercises with the United States, the defence ministry said Tuesday, denying the decision was made to appease regional ally China, with which it conducted joint drills last month.
American and Cambodian troops had been due to take part in the annual "Angkor Sentinel" joint exercise this summer, which has been held for the past seven years.
But de ...
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Vilnius (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
The United States and Baltic NATO allies Estonia and Lithuania signed military deals on Tuesday as President-elect Donald Trump's pro-Moscow stance stokes uncertainty about future commitments.
Fellow Baltic state Latvia has also inked a similar agreement defining the status of hundreds of US troops that are to be deployed this year to deter a more militarily aggressive Russia on NATO's vulne ...
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Davos, Switzerland (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
The rise of China will be a source of global stability not conflict, major oil supplier Saudi Arabia said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.
"As China gets integrated into the world, and into the world financial and economic systems, it has a tremendous interest in stability of those systems," Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said.
"And so I think the rise of China sho ...
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Brussels (AFP) Jan 18, 2017 -
Europe must pull together or risk being sidelined as Donald Trump signals the end of a postwar transatlantic partnership credited with keeping the peace for the past 70 years, analysts and officials say.
Fears about the US president-elect's isolationist stance became a reality this week when Trump challenged basic assumptions about the role of an "obsolete" NATO and backed the break-up of th ...
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Narva, Estonia (AFP) Jan 18, 2017 -
A machine guns rattles as pale and exhausted teams of Estonian weekend warriors struggle to climb a final obstacle: the wall of Narva Castle facing their country's powerful neighbour Russia.
The bullets fired on the snowy banks of the Narva river separating Estonia from Russia are blanks, but the steely determination of volunteers participating in Utria Assault, the NATO member's biggest ann ...
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Trento, Italy (SPX) Jan 18, 2017 -
What have been appositely referred to as the "military's smartest toys," robot boats have just become a lot smarter, and so has the US Navy.
It has taken the US government some time, but its team of researchers and developers have begun to discover the effectiveness of swarming by means of autonomous boats - Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) or Autonomous Surface Craft (ASCs). The Office of ...
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Natal, Brazil (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
Brazil's government Tuesday ordered the armed forces to help secure the country's overcrowded jails as police fought to separate rival gangs of inmates in one prison following a massacre.
Inmates climbed on the roof and set up barriers of furniture in a northeastern jail inhabited by warring rival drug gangs vowing to behead each other.
Police fired rubber bullets to try to keep apart tw ...
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Washington (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
The outgoing Barack Obama administration announced Tuesday a contribution of half a billion dollars to the UN Green Climate Fund, just three days before Donald Trump takes over the White House.
The $500 million payment, announced by State Department spokesman John Kirby in a statement, is the second from the United States to support the United Nations Green Climate Fund, which aims to mitiga ...
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Ljubljana (AFP) Jan 17, 2017 -
Dogs in a small Slovenian town went "crazy", according to a local newspaper, after salt from a dry-cured ham factory was mistakenly used to de-ice snowy roads.
Italian dry-cured ham, known as prosciutto, is considered a delicacy but no-one in Sezana, near the Italian border, ever expected to see it appearing on their pavements.
"The winter service operator in Sezana (last week) spread sa ...
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