Defense

President Donald Trump’s decision to shift the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier to South America in his campaign against drug cartels is pulling the ship out of the Mediterranean Sea at a time when a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been threatened by new strikes in Gaza. The U.S. is set to be in the fairly unusual position of having only a single aircraft carrier deployed…

BERLIN — A Russian transport aircraft of a type linked to the country’s military and former Wagner mercenary group has landed in the Venezuelan capital over the weekend, signaling heightened Russian interest in the Latin American country. The Ilyushin Il-76 transport aircraft with the registration RA-78765 arrived in Caracas on Sunday after a two-day journey that took it from Russia via…

Since 1945, the U.S. Army has been designed to defend Europe. Despite detours into counterinsurgency in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the core of the Army remains a large force of heavy mechanized brigades. But the times are changing. The Obama administration shifted American strategic policy from Europe to Asia. Today, the Trump administration is prioritizing homeland defense, the Western…

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — When Singapore’s defense minister, Chan Chun Sing, spoke at the launch ceremony of a novel class of warship for his country’s navy this week, he likened the vessel to the fictitious spaceship Battlestar Galactica. “It isn’t just a ship by itself, but one that’s integrated with artificial intelligence and an evolving brain,” he said of the new 8,000-ton…