Russia is in the process of developing its next-generation of nuclear submarines, TASS reported last week. According to Vladimir Dorofeyev, CEO of Malakhit Marine Engineering Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, his company is working on a new submarine based on a “network centric system” in accordance with the Russian military’s bold 2050 shipbuilding plan:

The work on the fifth generation of submarines is already underway. The project will be implemented after the Yasen nuclear submarine construction project is completed.

Periodic announcements by Russia’s shipbuilding industry that it is working on a next-generation submarine have been made repeatedly over the past couple of years.

In any case, waiting for the completion of the Yasen project could take a while. The 13,800-ton, 390-foot long and highly automated Yasen-class of Russian attack submarines was supposed to replace older Soviet-era multi-purpose nuclear submarine models by 2020.

Yet, the exorbitant costs of the submarines — estimated to be twice as much as the new Borei-class SSBNs – has so far led only to the commissioning of one out of eight SSGNs, with a further three to four vessels likely to be completed by 2020.

The first of six Yasen-class multi-purpose attack nuclear submarines (SSGN) projected to enter service in the Far East over the next ten years will join the Pacific Fleet in 2017 at the earliest. Russia’s Northern Fleet currently operates one Yasen-class SSGN, the K-329 Severodvinsk, but was projected to receive six SSGNs of this class by 2020, which, given the current status of the Yasen-class program seems highly unlikely.

Due to these delays, the Russian Navy decided that it will upgrade ten project 971 SSN Akula-class and project 949A SSGN Oscar-class II nuclear-powered submarines by 2020 (see: “Russia to Upgrade 10 Nuclear Submarines by 2020”).

Very little information is available about the likely features of Russia’s fifth-generation sub. Back  in 2013, the Malakhit Design bureau announced that it will be equipped with new stealth features, new noise reduction technology, automated control systems, reactor safety, and long-range weapons.

In last week’s interview, Dorogeyev, however cautioned that not everything on the sub will be revolutionary new technology: “The reactor [of the subs] will be certainly based on new principles, but there will be no revolution, and it is not needed after all.” He is also paraphrased as saying that the “boats’ dimensions and speed, although remaining significant parameters, will cease to be of prime importance.”

Given the current financial constraints of the Russian armament industry and the general dissatisfaction with the Yasen-class, the new fifth-generation sub will in all likelihood be smaller, and carry fewer missiles, in comparison to the Yasen-class SSGNs.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Nearly two decades after the fall of dictator Suharto forced Indonesia's military out of politics, the army is inching back into civilian roles, risking a setback for democracy in this Southeast Asian nation and perhaps even for the turbulent region.

The army has signed agreements with government ministries and state companies that involve it in areas such as providing security for airports, bus stations and railways and helping farmers increase their crops. Some officials have called for army involvement in Indonesia's anticorruption agency to counter attempts by police and their political allies to neuter an institution that is effective and feared.

Jokowi recently nominated an army general to head all military forces, breaking with the schedule of a reform-minded convention of rotating the post between the navy, air force and army.

"I think it is obvious that the move is calculated to bring the army on side given that the president is having so much trouble from friends and foes alike," said Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesia expert at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. "It is only the army that can scare the police."

PUERTO PRINCESA, PHILIPPINES – The U.S. State Department’s No. 2 diplomat on Friday compared China’s behavior in pursuit of territory in the South China Sea to that of Russia in eastern Ukraine.

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken called China’s large scale reclamation projects in the South China Sea, “a threat to peace and stability.”

He said the United States took no position on the merits of competing claims in the disputed sea, but had a strong interest in how those were pursued, and in preserving freedom of navigation.

“The way forward is for China, and all claimants, to freeze their reclamation activities and resolve their difference in accordance the rule of law,” he said.

“In both eastern Ukraine and the South China Sea, we’re witnessing efforts to unilaterally and coercively change the status quo — transgressions that the United States and our allies stand united against,” Blinken said in a speech at the Center for a New American Security think tank.

Blinken’s comments came as top officials in the Philippines claimed that China was pressing ahead with the construction of artificial islands on at least two reefs that are also claimed by Manila, despite Beijing’s pronouncement that some work would end soon.

A US Navy official confirmed a plan to deploy its warships for rotational patrols in Southeast Asia as it concluded naval training exercises with Philippine forces in Palawan waters.

The week-long Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT 2015) maritime exercises between US and Philippine naval forces saw the USS Forth Worth and Philippine warships BRP Ramon Alcaraz and BRP Gregorio del Pilar  sailing in the Sulu Sea.

The CARAT exercises involved the correct maneuvering of ships, search and rescue operations and gunnery exercises while a US P-3C Orion surveillance plane and the Philippines’ Islander plane flew overhead.

A highlight of the gunnery exercises was a target shooting by three warships at sea wherein the USS Forth Worth demonstrated the firing power of its MK110 57mm gun which discharges 220 rounds per minute at a target some 17 kilometers away.

A US Navy offiial said this type of exercises is the appropriate solution for problems in the sea.

“Regional challenges demand regional solutions. The ability to go to sea and get to know each other and learn how each other operate is very very important,” US Navy Capt. Fred Kacher, commander of Destroyer Squadron 7, said.

The US Navy admitted that it plans to enhance its forces in Southeast Asia including the deployment of four warships to patrol the region.

In 2012 TFB published an extensive post about a homemade rifle being used by the PKK in their fight against Turkey. Recently, a photo has surfaced of the same rifle but with a few upgrades and thus I’m calling it the Gen 2. The additions seem to be the removal of the monopod, more ventilation holes in the handguard, different metals or finishes, an improved compensator, and some other changes. A reader on the previous post left this to say about it-

Its called Zagros, it’s range is 3500 + meters.
Single shots.
Was very effective in the Iran vs pkk war in 2011.
Made from ZPU.

By ZPU I’m assuming the barrel is taken from a 14.5mm ZPU anti aircraft gun.

WASHINGTON – With a deadline looming on nuclear talks with Iran, Tehran has revealed it has developed a “filter” to protect against an electromagnetic pulse attack targeting key national security facilities.

In a little-noticed comment, Saeid Rahimi, director of the Kosar Information and Communication Technology Institute, told the Tehran-based Mehr News Agency that Iran had obtained such products despite Western sanctions.

Rahimi said Iran had acquired the technology, based on illegally acquired surge arresters, at “considerable costs and various strategies.”

Rahimi said his Kosar ICT “knowledge-based group has managed to domestically manufacture” the EMP filter for the first time in Iran.

The filter, which has been approved by security authorities, will be installed “in a number of vital centers in Iran,” he said.

Former Defense Department analyst Michael Maloof’s “A Nation Forsaken” exposes the threat that could send America back to the 19th century in a literal flash.

In an email to WND, George Anderson, founder of Emprimus, a company dedicated to protecting critical U.S. infrastructures from a natural and man-made EMP event, said that such equipment is “specialized” and is prohibited from export to Iran.

Brazil is apt to purchase Russian Pantsir air defense systems as early as in the first half of 2016, Brazilian Ambassador to Russia Jose Vallim Guerreiro said. “A general decision on the purchase has been made…As far as I know, the deal is expected in the first half of 2016,” Guerreiro told RIA Novosti.