“Invisibility cloaks” and other future advances in military camouflage techniques could violate the Geneva conventions, a top military lawyer has warned.

Refinements of technologies that are already used on stealth bombers could breach compliance with international laws regulating armed conflict if equipment is disguised or soldiers’ weapons are hidden, according to Bill Boothby, a former air commodore and deputy director of RAF legal services.

Scientists and military contractors are spending tens of millions of pounds researching methods for generating effective invisibility through more sophisticated “metamaterials” – substances designed to absorb or bend light and/or radar waves in order to conceal approaching aircraft or troops.

Israeli officials have privately said Russian forces sent in last year to help Syrian President Bashar Assad turn the tide against a now five-year-old rebellion also served to restrain his anti-Israeli allies - Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

Israel was further helped by a hotline to the main Russian airbase at Hmeymim in Syria, which let it continue covert strikes to foil suspected Hezbollah or Iranian operations against it on Syrian turf without fear of accidentally clashing with Moscow.

He clarified that the Russian decision was made in an effort to promote negotiations between the sides. "Russia is sending a clear message to everyone involved in the Syria crisis - it's time to give political dialogue a chance, a change for an internal Syrian dialogue between the government and the different factions in the opposition," he said. 

Zvi Magen, formerly Israel's ambassador to Moscow, told Ynet that "the discussion is not the withdrawal of troops, but the announcement that they will stop fighting, and that has a different type of meaning. Russia is probably not going anywhere, but it was more important for Putin to announce that he is now stopping the fighting."

The Russian Defense Ministry jointly with domestic defense contractors is developing demountable auto bridges invisible for the potential enemy's detection systems, Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov said on Monday.

"The bridges must be invisible for [the enemy’s] modern detection means to raise the survivability of bridge-crossing," he said.

According to Bulgakov, the new structures are being developed of composite and other innovation materials to facilitate the bridges’ assembly and reduce their weight while the carrying capacity and the length of the bridge spans will be increased.

Last week, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) commissioned its seventh Soryu-class diesel-electric attack stealth submarine, christened the JS Jinryu, at a ceremony held at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture in central Japan, according to a MHI press release.

The commissioning ceremony was attended by senior Japanese defense officials including State Minister of Defense Kenji Wakamiya, JMSDF Chief of Staff Tomohisa Takei, and Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency Commissioner Hideaki Watanabe.

The JS Jinryu is the seventh Soryu-class submarine delivered to the JMSDF and the fourth built by MHI. (Other ships were built by the Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation.) “MHI also built the first Soryu-class submarine, and has produced a total of 26 submarines at the MHI Kobe Shipyard over the last 70 years,” the MHI press statement reads. The keel for the JS Jinryu was laid in February 2012. The vessel was launched in October 2014.

Chemezov notes that the Kremlin has made a $400 billion dollar overhaul of their military a priority.

“If we are talking about the defense sector, our businesses aren’t experiencing particularly big economic pressures from the financial market, because there’s an opportunity to export abroad, and thanks to that, we are making a pretty good profit, and plus domestically, our defense orders also aren’t small,” Chemezov said.

When asked specifically if the Armata tank family was impacted by the cuts, Chemezov said it’s “already in serial production.”

“Money has already been invested, and if we stop without finishing, then that will be lost money. Everything that has been started will be finished, and money will be allocated to it,” Chemezov said.

ISIS has created a youth wing called Fityan al-Islam, meaning boys of Islam. The precedent seems to have been set by the former Baathist regime of Saddam Hussain in Iraq, which in the late 1970s established the Futuwah (Youth Vanguard) movement with the most important Iraqi child soldier units known as Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam’s Lion Cubs.

Apparently after studying the Nazi regime, which created the Hitler Youth, ISIS is now busy training and indoctrinating children en masse.

ISIS lays its hands on, the group has taken its brutality involving children way beyond anything Hitler or Saddam ever did

ISIS has abducted between 800 and 900 children ranging between the ages of 9 and 15 from various regions of Mosul city and province

Many are being trained as spies, preachers, soldiers, executioners and suicide bombers

Media outlets within the “caliphate” have issued statements warning that children who refuse to conform with ISIS orders will be flogged, tortured or raped.

The girls fair no better. While in captivity young women and girls have been taken and raped on a daily basis by ISIS fighters. Most girls are being processed to be molded as wives and mothers of future soldiers. As if shaping an unborn army, estimated ++31,000 women living under ISIS rule are currently pregnant

Asked how many Russian aircraft the United States has seen withdrawn from Syria, Cook said, “Small number of aircraft.”

“Less than 10, that’s what we have seen,” the spokesperson added.

As the US makes a military and strategic “pivot to Asia,” it is entering a highly complex and fluid geopolitical environment.

China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors in the South China Sea have become a major point of contention in the region and maybe even a source of future violent conflict — and the rising superpower is far from the only country in the area with conflicts on its borders.

This map shows that the borders in Asia aren’t nearly as fixed as they might seem. China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, have numerous simmering boundary disputes. So do regional powers like Russia and Japan, along with more peripheral players in central Asia and the South China Sea.

Russia's partial pull-out from Syria does not end its mission but could be seen as a message to President Bashar al-Assad that Moscow wants him to take peace negotiations seriously, according to analysts.

"It was becoming clear to them that their objectives in Syria were not necessarily the same as Assad’s,” she said.

“The Russians were angered by Assad’s presidential decree to set 13 April for the elections. They felt that such a decision upended the Vienna timetable [on peace talks] and finally they were very angry with [Walid] Moallem’s ‘red line’ about Assad – setting a precondition when the agreement was there were no preconditions,” she added

“The primary message is to Assad, the secondary message is to the Americans and the Arab governments saying 'we are serious about the political process'. The third message is to the opposition that they should also be serious.”

“I don’t think [the Russians] would object to the idea of Assad eventually contesting elections, but I don’t see them fighting for it and I don’t think they share Assad’s objectives that he has to regain control over all of Syria,” Slim said.

“[Assad] in a way took Russia for granted and that is partly what Putin is trying to say: ‘you cannot take us for granted. We are not going to help you achieve control over all of Syria, we are not going to help you not negotiate in good faith, we are not going to help you if you are not serious about the political process.’”

“What the withdrawal does is put pressure on the Assad regime, because they have to be wondering whether or not the Russians will come back in or not.

“From the Halls of Montezuma, To the shores of Tripoli, We fight our country’s battles, In the air, on land, and sea.” So opens the official hymn of the United States Marine Corps, and it covers the great scope of the American military. The Marines in particular find themselves fighting in all domains, with the Air Force, Army, and Navy each getting their fair share of air, land, and see. Yet as war evolves, and as the military looks to the future of combat, there are places it hasn’t yet fought. The Pentagon wants ideas on how to fight a war in megacities and caves. And they want to know by next week.

Today, there are at least 148 underground transit systems in cities across the world, and with them, lots and lots of tunnels and alternative routes through cities. Fighting a war in the future may mean fighting in a giant city, and it may mean fighting literally underground.

Nawaf Khalil of the Democratic Union Party told The Associated Press that his party is not lobbying for an only-Kurdish region but wants to see the "model of federalism applied to all of Syria."

Khalil, in a phone interview, says the area envisioned for northern Syria would include representation for Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds.

The declaration is expected to be made at the end of a Kurdish conference that is being held Wednesday in the town of Rmeilan in northern Syria.

To the untrained eye, the Reuters article might seem to suggest that this tsunami alert center is a new development with potentially nefarious intentions, particularly given China’s recent behavior in the South China Sea. While some of these assertions can be debated, it is important to get some facts straight first.

First, the idea of a Chinese tsunami alert center is not a new one and has in fact been in the works for years.

China then openly offered to build its own tsunami early-warning center in subsequent UN meetings. In September 2013, as was widely reported by Chinese media outlets, Beijing’s proposal to build the center was approved by the assembly of the IOC within UNESCO, and China’s National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center was made responsible for building the center.

Second, tsunami warning centers typically do not cover one body of water exclusively, and China’s new one appears to not only cover the South China Sea. For example, the U.S.-based PTWC mentioned earlier issues advisories to countries of the Pacific Ocean as well as the South China Sea and Caribbean, while the Japan-based JMA issues advisories for the Northwest Pacific as well as the South China Sea. Up to this point, according to China’s State Oceanic Administration which Wang now heads, Beijing’s new tsunami early-warning center had been meant to cover not just the South China Sea, but also the Sulu and Sulawesi Seas.

Third and finally, while one would not put it past Beijing to use its new tsunami alert center as part of its expansionist agenda in the South China Sea, up to this point it has yet to do so. The Reuters article suggests China may be using the center for “bolstering its jurisdiction in the disputed waters” of the South China Sea, which would be in line with its “assertive pursuit of territory.” And, indeed, given China’s assertive acts there as well as some of its rather laughable justifications for them, it is not too hard to imagine Beijing publicizing the tsunami early-warning center as part of the range of “public services” – as navy chief Wu Shengli put it last year – that it can provide in the South China Sea with its reclamation and future militarization efforts

According to him, the Mi-28UB helicopter will be largely similar in characteristics to the Mi-28NE export version with the dual control system that makes it possible to control the helicopter both from the pilot’s cockpit and from the cockpit of the operator pilot who acts as an instructor.

Barannikov said that the company is currently in negotiations with "two or three foreign customers" on possible supplies of the Mi-28NE helicopters. "And at the MAKS-2015 exhibition about five or six countries took a serious interest in them", the Rostvertol deputy director said.

According to him, the countries that have experience in using real combat helicopters and operating Russia’s Mi-8 and Mi-24 type helicopters are the customers for Mi-28NE.

Barannikov also said that the Mi-28 helicopters are equipped with the VK-2500 engines manufactured by a Russian company, so there is no problem with the engines.

"Keeping all the functions of an attack helicopter, the dual-control Mi-28NE greatly simplifies the training process of military pilots who need flying hours on the Night Hunter. The new helicopter has a larger cockpit, equipped with modern energy-attenuating seats", the holding said earlier on Wednesday. According to Rostvertol, the first prototype of the Mi-28NE helicopter with dual flight controls was made in 2014, and in late 2015 the joint state tests were completed. Two contracts on the helicopters’ supply to foreign customers have been signed by now.

"The unique capabilities of the new combat helicopter open excellent prospects for its sale both in Russia and abroad", Russian Helicopters CEO Alexander Mikheyev was quoted by the company’s press service.

The dual-control Mi-28NE is a new-generation all-weather attack helicopter. Its main objectives are to destroy armored vehicles, hit low-flying low-speed air targets, aerial reconnaissance, as well as target detection for combat helicopters and warplanes.

On Oct. 19, 2001, 200 U.S. Army Rangers parachuted onto a dry lake bed near Kandahar, Afghanistan. After securing the drop zone and finding a nearby Taliban compound empty, the elite soldiers boarded a number of U.S. Air Force MC-130H Combat Talon II transports and left the battlefield.

Even if Taliban forces had been nearby, they lacked radars to spot the incoming raiders or large numbers of deadly surface-to-air missiles that might’ve scuttled the American mission before it even started. Even so, the Pentagon sent stealthy B-2 bombers to hit nearby targets before the Rangers touched down.

Against a more high-tech enemy, the specialized troop-carriers and their human cargo might’ve been much more vulnerable.

By 2009, the Air Force’s commando headquarters had started looking at acquiring a stealthy transport plane to make infiltrating hostile areas a safer proposition. Dubbed “Project IX,” the proposed plane would have filled multiple “gaps and shortfalls” in existing aircraft such as the Combat Talon, according to the Air Force.

“Project IX will provide significantly better aircraft performance,” Air Force officials write in a concept document that War Is Boring obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. “The … configuration has yet to be determined and additional analysis will be required.”

Most importantly, the new plane would take advantage of “low-observable” technology — in other words, it would be stealthy. A radar-evading shape would be central to the design. Like the Air Force’s upcoming B-21 bomber, the project would require the utmost secrecy.

“There are lessons learned and precedents for such responsibility regarding other specialized aircraft (F-117, B-2, F-22, etc.),” the report explains. “Project IX will take full advantage of them.”

A graphic in the report features nondescript black silhouettes to depict the Project IX planes in their larger context. No other art is present in the declassified portions of the document.

The new commando transport would have to be just as good on impromptu dirt airstrips as it was on well-maintained, concrete runways. Of more than 10,000 airfields around the world in a 2007 National Geospatial Intelligence Agency database, fewer than 1,500 were paved, according to the document.

The choppers are being sold off by Witham Specialist Vehicles Limited, which hocks surplus equipment for the British Ministry Of Defense (MoD) just like GovPlanet does for the American military over here.

A fleet of about 30 Sea Kings, which can carry 27 people and lift about 5,000 pounds on slings, are now sitting at the unused Grantham airfield in conditions ranging from potentially-flyable to “lawn art only” according to the Telegraph.

But what lawn art! Witham’s Managing Director Paul Southerington says the “hulks” could be bought for £10,000 to £20,000 ($14,000 to $30,000) while “working” helicopters would be over $200,000.

So far it looks like they’ve only listed this three-pack of Sea King HC4 Commando MK 4 variants that were designed to run in the mountains of Afghanistan. You can buy them directly from military storage for £150,000 ($211,723.52) with all necessary paperwork, but you’ll have to provide your own engines to get them off the ground.

According to a report in the Marine Corps Times, the military’s Semper Fidelis contingent is finally adding moving targets to its list of marksmanship qualifications. Soon, in addition to stationary targets, Marines will also need to know how to successfully gun down a mobile object.

The precise training method is still in development—the request was reportedly made to the Weapons Training Battalion in October, and made public in February—but apparently Marines have been talking about their lack of success with moving targets “for years.”

The actual practical implementation of a training method, however, is a tad more complicated. There are a few shooting ranges right now that serve as testing sites for moving targets, but they’re expensive because of the targets themselves: ROBOTS!

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — In 2013, the Cyber Command was given the mission set to stand up a Cyber Mission Force capable of supporting US combatant commanders across the whole of the Department of Defense. In 2016, CYBERCOM will meet 90 percent of its goal to stand up 133 cyber teams.

"I believe fiscal year [20]16 is a tipping point for us as an organization, where we will go from a focus on developing capacity to a focus on actually employing the capacity that we have been developing over the last three years," Roger stated.

The group, known as the Grandsons of Salahadin after the famed 12th-century Muslim Kurdish leader, has already captured several villages in the IS-controlled border region between Jarabulus and Azaz following Turkish artillery attacks and missile strikes. In response, IS hit the Turkish town of Kilis earlier this month, killing two civilians.

But threats to attack the YPG unless it withdraws from territory seized from opposition rebels during an advance by pro-government forces in northern Syria last month have stoked concerns of a possible “Kurdish civil war”.

Mahmoud Abu Hamza, a Grandsons of Salahadin commander based in Turkey, told Middle East Eye that the group was backed by both the US and Turkey and considered itself part of the international coalition fighting IS.

“Turkey doesn't support us with arms. Our arms are American,” he said.

"This organisation is best understood as Turkey's attempt to activate a Kurdish proxy in Syria. Turkey is willing to consider a Kurdish force that is part of that equation, but it has to be anti-PKK,” he added.

Galip Dalay, a senior associate fellow on Turkey and Kurdish Affairs at Al Jazeera Center for Studies, also told MEE that Ankara was ready to support a Kurdish force in the fight against IS provided it also opposed the YPG's military and political ambitions.

Upgraded air surveillance capabilities go hand-in-hand with the more active role that the Coast Guard has assumed since 2012 in both Japan’s territorial waters and its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). At a ceremony commissioning of two additional patrol vessels last year, Admiral Yuji Sato, Commandant of the Japan Coast Guard, emphasized that “this is one of the largest-ever investments in the 66-year Japan Coast Gua

According to the press release, the H225 Super Puma will be equipped with advanced search and rescue mission systems and “operated in security enforcement, territorial sea guard duties as well as disaster relief missions.”

The 11-ton, twin-turbine H225 Super Puma can accommodate up to 19 passengers. It is equipped with state-of-the-art electronic instruments and autopilot, and, according to the company press release, “offers outstanding endurance and fast cruise speed and can be fitted with various equipment to suit any role and purpose.”