Archive: News & Articles

On 15 March 2025 US Central Command (CENTCOM) initiated a large-scale operation consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen “in order to restore freedom of navigation”, but that isn’t what made the headlines. What did was the fact that US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz inadvertently copied in a US journalist, The Atlantic […]

The NATO Aviation Committee was hosted by the Royal New Zealand Air Force in Christchurch on 18-20 March 2025. The visit was the first time a NATO senior-policy-level committee met in the Indo-Pacific region and what NATO called “a demonstration of NATO’s commitment to boosting co-operation with its four Indo-Pacific partners: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, […]

Publishing its Joint White Paper for European Defence Readiness 2030 on 19 March 2025, the European Commission stated from the start that “Europe faces an acute and growing threat” and that, although the EU states have the “potential to unleash vast resources and latent technological and industrial power”, they are starting from a position in […]

Newly installed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked his defence minister, Bill Blair, to review Canada’s purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) amid the country’s ongoing trade war with the US Trump Administration. The move, initiated on 14 March 2025 just hours after Carney was sworn in and Blair appointed, […]

Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor in waiting, won a historic vote in the Bundestag on 18 March 2025 to facilitate the country’s biggest ever spending programme in light of Russian belligerence in Europe. The Christian Democrat Union (CDU) party leader, who won Germany’s 23 February election and is set to form a government with the Social […]

Portugal looks to be backing out of plans to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as a result of US President Donald Trump’s lack of commitment or solidarity with Europe and NATO. The Portuguese Air Force had previously indicated that the F-35 was the aircraft of choice to replace its fleet of around […]

Finland and Ukraine have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on defence co-operation between the two countries’ defence administrations. The MoU was signed by the two countries’ defence ministers, Antti Häkkänen and Rustem Umerov respectively, as they met in Helsinki on 13 March 2025. Co-operation under the MoU will be enhanced in a number of […]

UK defence and training support company MASS, part of the Cohort Group, has been awarded a two-year extension to its Joint Command and Staff Training (JCAST) contract for the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) Strategic Command, the company announced on 10 March 2025. Valued at more than GBP 17.5 million (EUR 20.8 million), the contract […]

Hamburg Messe und Congress (HMC) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) have agreed a strategic partnership to organise the Global Security and Innovation Summit (GSIS). The inaugural event is to take place at the Congress Center Hamburg (CCH) on 22 and 23 October 2025. The GSIS aims to provide a joint platform at […]

On the evening of 3 March 2025 Ukraine’s worst fears materialised when US President Donald Trump ordered a suspension of US military aid to Ukraine amid its struggle against the Russian invasion. The suspension, which was not made in consultation with US allies, followed the tempestuous Oval Office summit Trump held with Ukrainian President Volodymyr […]

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum on 3 March 2025 directing Fort Moore in Georgia to be reverted back to its original name of Fort Benning. A US Department of Defense (DoD) press release explained that, rather than the Civil War-era Confederate General Henry L Benning that the installation was originally named after, […]

Into early March the tremors from the ‘car crash’ Washington summit on 28 February 2025 between the Trump Administration and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued to reverberate, with Europe and the United States further apart than ever on how to resolve the war in Ukraine. While time will ultimately reveal whether the tempestuous Oval Office […]

As the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passed on 24 February 2025, impartial observers could be forgiven for thinking that global military geopolitics – or more specifically the US approach to it – has ‘fallen through the looking glass’. Europe’s political leadership was first put into a tailspin on 18 February 2025 when […]

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced an immediate upturn in UK defence spending in light of the war in Ukraine and the apparent abandonment of defence solidarity with Europe by the US Trump Administration. Addressing the UK House of Commons on 25 February 2025, Starmer declared, “Starting today, this government will begin the […]

As senior officials from the US Trump Administration engaged with European leaders in mid-February 2025, it became increasingly clear that Ukraine’s worst fears about lack of US support for a just resolution to Russia’s invasion of the country appear to be being realised. The first indications of this came on 12 February before a meeting […]

Russia lost 1,400 main battle tanks (MBTs) in the Ukraine War in 2024 and has lost a total of more than 4,000 MBTs since its invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In introductory remarks in London on 12 February 2025 marking the launch of […]

Less than a month after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States, his administration’s ‘war on woke’ has the Pentagon jumping through diplomatic and cultural hoops, most recently with the second renaming of one of its largest military bases within three years. In October 2022 the previously named Fort […]

With the return of war to Europe in February 2022, Germany immediately faced up to the reality of needing to bolster its long-underfunded Bundeswehr, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz setting out major defence-spending plans in his watershed ‘Zeitenwende’ (turning point) speech three days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, nearly three years on from those […]

The new Belgian coalition government formed on 31 January 2025 has laid out plans to put an end to the country’s deficient defence spending. Posting a speech on X on 8 February, a day after delivering it to an audience in Brussels comprising staff from Belgium’s worldwide diplomatic corps, Belgian Defence Minister Theo Franken said […]

On 5 February 2025 the European Court of Auditors presented its audit report on the ‘Action Plan 2.0’ of the European Commission and the High Representative for Military Mobility. The plan, originally presented in 2018, covers the period from 2022 to 2026 and aims to improve military mobility within the EU. The findings of the […]

The United Kingdom is to launch a new combined Armed Forces Recruitment Service (AFRS) in 2027 to replace the individual schemes run by the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The new service, announced by UK Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard on 6 February 2025, will provide a streamlined, single-entry point for prospective recruits […]