The Philippine navy is quietly reinforcing the hull and deck of a rusting ship it ran aground on a disputed South China Sea reef in 1999 to stop it breaking apart, determined to hold the shoal as Beijing creates a string of man-made islands nearby.

Using wooden fishing boats and other small craft, the navy has run the gauntlet of the Chinese coastguard to move cement, steel, cabling and welding equipment to the BRP Sierra Madre since late last year, two navy officers who have been inside the vessel told Reuters in recent interviews.

The 100 metre-long (330-foot) tank landing ship was built for the U.S. Navy during World War Two. It was eventually transferred to the Philippine navy, which deliberately grounded it on Second Thomas Shoal to mark Manila’s claim to the reef in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. A small contingent of Philippine soldiers are stationed onboard.

Manila regards Second Thomas Shoal, which lies 105 nautical miles (195 km) southwest of the Philippine region of Palawan, as being within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. China, which claims virtually all the South China Sea, says the reef is part of its territory.

“We know China has been waiting for the ship to disintegrate but we are doing everything to hold it together,” said one of the officers, adding that while the work was progressing slowly, it should be finished by the year-end.

The other naval officer said welding was being done at night because of the heat. Concrete foundations were being laid inside the ship’s hull to try to stabilise it, he added.

Without giving exact dates, both sources said they witnessed the repairs taking place earlier this year. They declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Fair enough. But in practical terms, giant ray guns mounted on tanks were never very practical. Far more useful — and inexpensive — are smaller and more efficient “dazzlers,” such as on Chinese Type 99 tanks. These can blind enemy troops.

If you want to knock out an enemy tank, it’s better to use a cannon or a missile launcher rather than spending valuable time and money coming up with an optic-zapping tank that didn’t work very well in the 1980s.

The big news so far from the U.S. Army’s search for a new sidearm isn’t about what kind of pistol they’ll choose, but rather the bullets they might shoot.

In a significant shift, the military told industry representatives last week that it’s considering switching from full metal jacket to hollow-point rounds for its standard-issue sidearm ammunition. While hollow points are commonly used by police and civilians, they are banned in international warfare under the 1899 Hague Convention‘s early laws of war that the United States has followed even though the U.S. government never ratified the agreement.

Military lawyers say the move isn’t meant to skirt international law, but instead embrace the changing face of warfare. “The notion that [in modern warfare] two states agree to Marquess of Queensberry Rules is very archaic,” Richard Jackson, a special assistant to the Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters, tells The Trace.

Hollow points, also known as dum-dum rounds, are designed to expand or break apart upon impact. The rounds quickly transfer all their kinetic energy to a target, resulting in a bigger, more devastating wound. Full metal jacket or ball ammunition — the type the Army currently uses — holds together, causing smaller wound channels and often passing straight through targets.

Mirpur/Lahore - Pakistani military Wednesday shot down an Indian spy drone along the Line of Control in Bhimbher district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, a claim denied by Indian army despite ISPR’s releasing a photo of the crashed UAV.

“An Indian spy drone was shot down by Pakistani troops which intruded into Pakistan (along the Line of Control) near Bhimber today.
The spy drone is used for aerial photography,” the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a brief statement on Wednesday.

The Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (UAV) was taking aerial photographs of the border areas on the Pakistani side of the LoC when it was shot down by the Pakistani troops deputed for the security of the forward posts in Bhimbher district of AJK, the official sources confirmed to The Nation.

Industry experts said the small, unarmed model was sold commercially for aerial filming and would contain no secret military technology.
A photo supplied by the Pakistani military appeared to show a Chinese-made DJI Phantom 3, said Huw Williams, the Unmanned Systems Editor at IHS Jane’s International Defence Review, according to Reuters.

“Due to its limited operating range - about two km - if the Indian military is using the system it would most likely be for close reconnaissance or security work,” Williams.
“Our Middle East editor believes that Islamic State is using similar systems,” said the international news agency.

Scattered along America's coastlines are hundreds of rusting, mothballed Navy ships. The United States doesn't keep these reserve vessels floating around to look pretty. No, it keeps them in case of World War III.

Ghost Fleet, a new novel by P. W. Singer and August Cole, is about that scenario. Having read the book, it's one of the more plausible depictions of a major 21st century war — and one of the more realistic portrayals of cyberwar — I've seen in fiction.

In a discursive and wide-ranging interview, we talked with Singer about the book's themes, science fiction, and the future of conflict. According to him, we need to get used to the idea that our technology won't save us — and that we should reconsider some older methods of warfare that are anything but antiquated.

Some spoilers follow.

A few years from now, naval officers of the United States watch holographic presentations while wearing Google Glass style heads-up displays. Warships are smaller and leaner, with skeleton crews relying on gadgetry to make up the difference.

Drones are everywhere. But this tech turns out to be a major weakness.

The Communist Party no longer rules China. In its place is a plutocratic-military regime known as the Directorate. The regime severs its ties with the U.S. — which it perceives as a declining empire holding China back from vital energy resources. With Russian support, China launches a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet, resulting in its near total destruction.

The results are pretty horrifying. A Chinese space laser team coldly and methodically destroys most of the America's spy and GPS satellites. Washington's military computer networks are so badly compromised by jamming, spoofing, and decades of sabotage, that the beginning of the war reminded me of the opening episodes of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.

Except that the scenario plays out in the Pacific and within our lifetimes.

"We use the book to show the consequences of that ongoing campaign," Singer said regarding Chinese espionage. "So it's not just the takedown of GPS and communications networks that matters — essentially it's like pulling the nervous system out of the U.S. military."

The Philippines will station new fighter jets and two frigates as it reopens the former US naval base in Subic Bay to military use in a further response to Chinese expansionism in the disputed South China Sea.

Once one of the biggest US naval facilities in the world, Subic Bay was shut in 1992 after the Philippine Senate terminated a bases agreement with Washington at the end of the cold war.

Manila converted the facility, which was never home to the Philippine military, into an economic zone.

Defence undersecretary Pio Lorenzo Batino told Reuters the Philippine military signed an agreement in May with the zone’s operator, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, to use parts of the installation under a renewable 15-year lease. It marks the first time the massive installation has functioned as a military base in 23 years.

US warships have called regularly at Subic Bay since 2000 but only to dock during exercises with the Philippine military or to use its commercial facilities for repairs and resupply.
Using Subic Bay would allowing the Philippine air force and navy to respond more effectively to Chinese moves in the disputed South China Sea, security experts said. Subic Bay’s deep-water harbour lies on the western side of the main Philippine island of Luzon, opposite the South China Sea.

“The value of Subic as a military base was proven by the Americans. Chinese defence planners know that,” said Rommel Banlaoi, a Philippine security expert.

Officials said once Subic Bay was a military base again the US navy could have much greater access to it under a year-old agreement that gives US troops broad use of local military facilities, although that deal is on ice after it was challenged in the Philippine supreme court.
Using Subic would be the latest Philippine military move to combat China’s maritime ambitions.

Besides beefing up security co-operation with the United States, Japan and Vietnam, the military plans to spend $20bn over the next 13 years to modernise its armed forces, among the weakest in south-east Asia.

First, the assessing the capability of an aircraft – or any military equipment for that matter – by age alone is rather misleading. As I pointed out in an earlier piece, Indonesia is hardly the only country which buys secondhand aircraft, and its decision to do is partly because they are cheaper alternatives for a cash-strapped military that needs them badly and urgently (See: “Will Indonesia’s Fighter Jet Malfunction Affect its Defense Policy?”). Furthermore, an old aircraft can still be of use if it is properly maintained and serviced and if the necessary spare parts are available. The attention should thus be placed on Indonesia’s capacity to manage these aging aircraft rather than simply the fact that they are old.

Second, the scale of the aging problem in Indonesia’s military is far more extensive than is often appreciated and is therefore much more difficult to solve than it appears. In his announcement, Ryamizard did not say how many aircraft would be retired, merely referring to “equipment that is 30, 40, 50 years old, planes and helicopters.” But existing data gives us an idea of just how big this problem is. As Iis Gindarsah of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta recently noted, a majority – or 52 percent to be exact – of TNI equipment has been operated for over three decades. Among the various services, the Air Force is actually in the best shape but still 38 percent of its arsenal is over three decades old (the Navy is at at 59 percent and the Army at 54 percent).

Replacing these aging aircraft is not easy either. As I have noted elsewhere, Indonesia’s military modernization has been progressing very slowly, which is the product of a myriad of factors including budgetary constraints and its procurement process. The Air Force’s slow struggle to replace its old F-5 aircraft is a case in point. While Jokowi has vowed to boost Indonesia’s defense budget to 1.5 percent of GDP from its current 0.8 percent as the country seeks to achieve a so-called Minimal Essential Force by 2024, it is unclear what exactly this will mean for the TNI in terms of its budget to procure new aircraft (“Will Indonesia Double Its Defense Budget in 2016?”). His plan to build up the domestic defense industry is a good long-term aspiration but does little to change this equation now. Ryamizard was also silent in his announcement about whether decommissioning old aircraft would mean Indonesia procuring more planes at a quicker pace to replace them.

Thus, while Indonesia’s latest plane crash should draw everyone’s attention to the country’s aging aircraft problem, they should also be aware of the complexities and trade-offs associated with procurement and military modernization more generally as the Southeast Asian state tackles this challenge.

The adequacy of a fleet’s capabilities and limitations must be measured against concrete requirements that are determined by the expected adversary and the way the fleet will be used. We must consider those limiting factors and the need to evaluate capability against specific requirements – a specific enemy capability set rather than a generic mission assertion.

For example, say a given anti-ship missile can travel 100 nautical miles, but the sensors on the firing platform can only target out to 50 nautical miles, leaving the other 50 mile capability unusable. Say further that the target vessel can successfully defend against that missile, but its combat systems can only deal with some given number of missiles simultaneously and only against some number in total (due to defensive magazine capacity, which may or may not be greater). If the defensive capability of your target can be gauged, then a technical problem can be reduced to a capacity problem: You only need to fire more missiles than the target can defend against. But then other questions arise. What if the firing platform cannot carry that number of missiles? Or cannot fire that number near-simultaneously? What if the missiles are unreliable or poorly maintained, resulting in a significant failure rate that requires many more missiles to be fired for a successful salvo? Is the total missile inventory sufficient against the expected number of adversary units, and can firing platforms be rearmed under adversarial conditions? The answers to these questions are the real measure of what a Navy is capable of achieving.

Consider this example from history of the potential for mismatch between the intended (“design”) employment of a fleet and its actual employment. British battlecruisers in World War I possessed enormous capability on paper: They were large, fast, and heavily armed. But when pitched against the German battleship fleet – a role they were not originally envisioned for because their speed came at the expense of heavy armoring – these ostensibly capable ships were disastrously un-survivable against a peer adversary. A weapons system’s capability is irrelevant if the platform that carries it cannot survive an engagement long enough to use it.

Clearly, then, information useful for determining capability is also useful for identifying vulnerabilities. The sensitive nature of this technical and “readiness” information means governments will understandably classify it, and defense contractors will keep many technical details confidential, hindering independent research and analysis. Fortunately for researchers, the business opportunity the Southeast Asian defense market represents means that a substantial amount of useful information is still available from sales literature.

But fundamentally, discussing regional naval capability is implicitly asking how to solve problems with ships and explosives, and skips over asking whether ships and explosives are the right way to solve them. The overarching strategic narrative of South China Sea maritime disputes can be broken into three major strains: Stalled diplomatic initiative; “white hull” confrontations; and a regional naval arms race. The interest of peaceful resolution demands asking how relevant naval capability is to satisfactorily resolving the disputes respective to each state’s particular circumstances.

The Iranian military are not renowned for their love of rap, rhythm and blues music and social media but Iranian generals decided they needed a novel response to this week’s nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers.

They helped a controversial Iranian singer, Amir Tataloo, produce a video with the Iranian army and navy, which endorses the deal but upholds Iran’s right to self defense and to patrol the Persian Gulf.

WARTON, U.K., 17 July 2015. Engineers at Finmeccanica-Alenia Aermacchi in Turin-Caselle, Italy, and at BAE Systems in Warton, Lancashire, completed a series of ground-based tests of the Eurofighter Typhoon with MBDA’s Storm Shadow cruise missile, in preparation for flight trials to take place in the U.K. later this year.

Doesnt look likes a frigate to me.... just a patrol craft