The Turkish military reported on 24 November that an air attack, allegedly by Syrian government forces, killed three of its soldiers and wounded 10 near the northern Syrian city of al-Bab. A few hours later, seven more Turkish soldiers were wounded in a second attack.

The Turkish-backed offensive, a coalition of Syrian rebel groups supported by Turkish troops, was launched on 24 August to take the border town of Jarabulus to target the Islamic State group, and also to hamper the aims of both the Syrian Kurdish forces, which are considered a threat to Turkey because of their affiliation with the outlawed PKK.

Turkey’s offensive was preceded by a rapprochement with Russia after an eight-month rift triggered by Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet in late 2015. The rekindling of ties led to speculation about a secret deal on Syria between Turkey and Russia.

The attack, as was reported, may have been a warning shot to keep Turkey away from al-Bab.

There is also a common assumption among some experts that Russia, despite its approval of the Turkish-led operation, will not permit Turkish-backed groups to capture al-Bab because Russia fears Turkey and its Syrian rebel allies will then be able to threaten the Syrian government's Aleppo operation.

“Assad and Iran, although for different reasons, are not happy with the restored ties between Russia and Turkey,”

Assad fears that such a cooperation may in the long term lead to a political settlement that forces him to share power with opposition groups.

"Iran, also, fears that the two countries [Russia and Turkey] share a common interest in limiting its influence in Syria, and therefore might have colluded with Assad to sabotage these restored relations.”

If Turkey were to succeed in brokering such a deal, it would likely improve its relations with Russia and secure a more active political role in the conflict, which would further empower Russia and sideline the US.

It also indicates that Turkey’s attempt to capture al-Bab is likely to be permitted and guaranteed by Russia.

This is the chilling scenario simulated by the British Army in one of the most realistic war games ever staged, revealed in these exclusive photographs obtained by The Mail on Sunday.

Our dramatic pictures show the incredibly life-like exercise on Salisbury Plain, intended to simulate President Putin’s forces invading Estonia, according to Army sources.

Taking part were troops due to be deployed early next year to shore up Nato forces in the Baltic states.

Every detail was as close as possible to those British soldiers will experience if Putin goes into Estonia.

WASHINGTON, DC — The only nation to have used nuclear weapons this century will be able to strike Seattle in four years, former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said on Wednesday.

“I really do think that it is very likely by the end of Mr. Trump’s first term the North Korean’s will be able to reach Seattle with a nuclear weapon onboard an indigenously produced intercontinental ballistic missile,” Hayden said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“Now, will it be a high-probability shot, they have technical issues, so probably not. But then again, what kind of odds are you comfortable with when it comes to Pyongyang?” Hayden said.

“After the December 2012 launch, the South Korean navy dredged up off the ocean floor the stages of the North Korean missile, Klingner explained. “South Korean and US officials assessed the missile had a 10,000 km range which covers a large part of the US.”

Fast forward to this year, on February 7, a month after North Korea’s purported hydrogen-bomb test, the rogue regime fired a long-range rocket it claimed was carrying a satellite for its space program.

The launch, which was largely viewed as a front for testing an intercontinental ballistic missile, was not only successful but also showcased the North’s technological advancements.

“After the February 2016 launch, experts assessed it could have a range of 13,000 km, covering the entire US,” Klingner said, which makes the Seattle range estimate “outdated,” he added.

According to Klingner, even the rocket with a range of 10,000 km would compromise approximately 120 million people.

The House voted for the first time today to explicitly authorize the incoming Donald Trump administration to arm vetted Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles.

Mattis is well known in military and foreign policy circles for his aggressive determination to take on America’s foes, notably Iran, including in Syria and Iraq. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee as far back as January 2015, however, he opined that the time for supporting moderate rebel fighters against Assad's forces had "passed."

“If Trump decides not to end American military support for the rebels, providing MANPADs could help the opposition maintain its positions in Idlib, which I suspect is where Russian air power will be concentrated on after Aleppo falls to the regime."

President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to speak with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, making him the first U.S. leader to do so in four decades, is much bigger than a phone chat. We’re literally arming China’s enemy.

China complains each time America completes a sale to Taipei, but they’ve grown to accept it as business and move on. But actually recognizing its leaders is a slap in the face, as a far as Beijing is concerned.

In reality, though, none of the what Taipei is buying from the U.S. will equip it to invade Beijing.

China’s also seen as a bully to our allies in the region (Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei) who claim parts of the South China Sea.

The U.S. recently approved the sale of F-15QA aircraft worth $21.1 billion. It also approved the sale of F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Aircraft worth $10 billion. Both are major offensive hardware sells.

Weapon: Javelin Guided Missiles (208)

Value: $57 million (Federal Registry Link)

Description: It is a portable one-man armored vehicle and bunker buster that is considered easy to use, according to Raytheon. It has a range of about 2,500 meters.

Weapons: Assault Amphibious Vehicles (36), .50 Caliber M2 machine guns (30)

7.62mm M240 machine guns (6)

Value: $375 million (Federal Registry Link)

Weapons: Four Multifunctional Information Distribution Systems (MIDS) On Ship Low Volume Terminals (LVTs) and Four Command and Control Processor (C2P) units

Value: $75 million (Federal Registry Link)

Weapons: Seven hundred sixty-nine (769) TOW 2B Aero, Radio Frequency (RF) Missiles (BGM-71F-Series), Fourteen (14) TOW 2B Aero, Radio Frequency (RF), (BGM-71F-Series) Fly-to-Buy Missiles, Forty-six (46) Improved Target Acquisition System (ITAS), Four (4) ITAS spares

Value: $268 million (Federal Registry Link)

Weapons: The sale, refurbishment, and upgrade of two (2) Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigates (FFG-7) being provided as Excess Defense Articles (EDA). Each vessel will be equipped with the MK-92 Mod 6 Fire Control System, the SSQ-89V(9) Anti-Submarine Warfare System, the MK-75 76mm Gun System, Phalanx 20mm Close-In-Weapon System (CIWS) (Block l B), MK-13 Guided Missile Launching System (GMLS), AN/SLQ-32 Electronic Warfare System, SPS-49 Start Printed Page 7520 Radar, SQR-19 Towed Array Sonar, SQS-56 Sonar, spare and repair parts, publications and technical documentation, personnel training and training equipment, provisioning, system integration, U.S. Government and contractor logistics, engineering, and technical support services, and other related elements of logistics and program support.

Value: $190 million (Federal Registry link)

Weapons: Thirteen (13) MK 15 Phalanx Block lB Baseline 2 Close-in Weapons System (CIWS) Guns, Eight (8) CIWS Block 1 Baseline 0 to Block 1B Baseline 2 upgrade kits

Two-hundred and sixty thousand (260,000) Rounds of 20mm MK 244 MOD 0 Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabots (APDS)

Non-major defensive equipment: 20mm dummy rounds; spares to support the installation, maintenance and operation of the MK 15 Phalanx Block l B Baseline 2 systems; classified and unclassified publications; software; training; technical assistance; installations; other technical assistance; and logistical support.

Value: $416 million (Federal Registry Link)

Media reported that Iranian holding company IFIC continues to own a 4.5 percent stake in the German firm.

"Israeli money, Iranian profits," a headline in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Sunday.

ThyssenKrupp told AFP that IFIC owned around seven percent of the company until May 2003, when it fell below five percent, without providing details on the size of its current stake, if any.

Reports at the time said the United States had pressured ThyssenKrupp to reduce Iran's stake to below five percent.

The Iranian state's representative on the company's supervisory board was also removed.

Israel is reportedly negotiating to buy the three submarines at a combined price of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion), to replace the oldest vessels in its existing Dolphin fleet, which began entering service in 1999.

It already has five of the state-of-the-art German submarines, with a sixth due for delivery in 2017, Maariv newspaper reported.

The Pakistani army launched a search for a new infantry rifle in November 2015. Preliminary trials took place at the beginning of 2016 with five rifles — the FN SCAR, CZ-806 BREN 2, Zastava M21, Beretta ARX-200 and Kalashnikov AK-103.

The army appears to have tentatively selected the CZ-806 BREN 2.

It’s unclear exactly which caliber the new Pakistani BREN 2 might fire, but initial reports suggested a move toward NATO’s standard 5.56-by-45-millimeter round. However, C.Z. appears to have also offered the BREN 2 chambered in 7.62-by-39-millimeter.

The BREN 2 is versatile and modular enough to meet multiple operational requirements — and could simplify training if Pakistan retains both the 7.62-by-39 and 7.62-by-51 calibers. C.Z.’s rifle is also more cost-effective to manufacture than the FN SCAR or Beretta ARX-200 are — an important factor for the cash-strapped Pakistani military.

The CZ-806 BREN 2 represents a massive improvement in capability and modularity over the Pakistani army’s current Cold War-era small arms. The 806 has the benefit of being a refinement of the earlier 805 used by the Czech armed forces. In 2015 C.Z. made weight and production cost reductions by improving the 806’s manufacturing process.

Following operational feedback from the Czech army, C.Z. made a number of ergonomic improvements to the 806, adding a new folding stock and a non-reciprocating cocking handle and adjusting to the rifle’s ambidextrous controls.

This is the final chapter in a groundbreaking investigation by Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Roy Gutman that documents Bashar al-Assad’s sinister contributions to the creation of the so-called Islamic State. It demonstrates the dictator’s complicity in the horrors that ISIS has imposed inside Syria while plotting and inspiring terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. These are all facts that President-elect Donald Trump should take into account when he talks glibly about working with Russia and Assad to fight against ISIS.

As we saw in the previous two chapters, Assad first tried to ingratiate himself with Western leaders by portraying the national uprising against him in 2011 as a terrorist-led revolt. When that failed, he released jailed Islamic extremists who’d fought against U.S. troops in Iraq, then staged phony attacks on government facilities, which he blamed on terrorists.

Far from fighting ISIS, Assad looked the other way when it set up a state-within-a-state with its capital in Raqqa, and then left it to the U.S. and others to try to take the battle to the Islamic extremists.

REYHANLI, Turkey—In the spring of 2012, hundreds of militant Islamists crossed into eastern Syria from Iraq under the eyes of the Assad regime’s extensive security apparatus.

The jihadists arrived in groups of three, sometimes five, then it became hundreds, he said. “Everyone of them started to bring his friends,” al Nasr said. The majority joined Jabhat al Nusra, a group that publicly declared its affiliation with al Qaeda in April 2013 and then split into two groups, Nusra and the Islamic State. Some of the infiltrated jihadists joined Ahrar al Sham, a third and seemingly more moderate Islamist group.

Yet a two-year investigation reveals a more complex picture, for the regime has mounted operations in collaboration with Islamic State and at times has fought it, sustaining serious losses.

What is clear is that the Assad regime has a long-established relationship with the Islamic State, dating back to the war in Iraq, when Syria funneled thousands of volunteers to fight the U.S. occupation. It jailed well over 1,000 jihadists on their return, only to release them in 2011 as Syrians staged a national uprising against the regime. And many of those are the leaders of ISIS today.

Secretary of State John Kerry went further in November 2015, when he said that ISIS was “created” by Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who released 1,500 jailed jihadi prisoners, and former Iraqi premier Nouri al Maliki, who released 1,000.

ISIS had few, if any, confrontations with the Syrian military, which continued to operate a major base outside Raqqa. Even after ISIS raised an enormous black flag at offices over former Syrian government offices, and made it its de facto capital, effectively claiming sovereignty over state territory, no Syrian aircraft targeted those locations.

Abu Khalil, who was interviewed in a friend’s apartment in Reyhanli, southern Turkey in December 2014, was puzzled at the ease with which ISIS seized bases. “Sometimes you’d feel that (the Syrian army) were giving up and withdrawing without a fight,” he said. “Were they afraid of al Qaeda because al Qaeda has suicide belts? Or was there cooperation with the regime? I didn’t manage to find this out. It is the biggest question of all.”

“And the leadership would give them money and support.” He said ISIS would pay the dowry for a Syrian bride, usually in the range of $1,000, but often give sums much higher, up to $4,000. But Syrians were shut out of the bonanza, and that’s one reason many of them quit ISIS, Abu Khalil among them. He left the organization in September 2013.

One of the most biggest puzzles at the time was how ISIS disposed of weapons it captured. “When we got loot from military bases, we never saw any of it,” he said. Later, he learned that most of the weapons they captured had been sent to Iraq.

“We had 500 fighters in the area and needed reinforcements in Al Bab,” recalled Isam al Nayif, then with the Liwat al Tawhid brigade of the Free Syrian Army, now living in Nizip, southern Turkey. As rebels dispatched reinforcements from nearby Minbij, ISIS sent a convoy from the vicinity of a government base to the west, in Kuweires. “We intercepted a radio call ordering the Air Force to bomb the convoy coming from Minbij,” he said. Twenty-five rebels were killed. But the ISIS convoy proceeded unhindered, and the rebels abandoned Al Bab. (Syrian Kurdish forces, aided by U.S. airstrikes and a U.S.-organized force of Arab tribes, recently ousted ISIS from Minbij.)

A senior Turkish official, interviewed in Ankara, said that its radio intercepts had captured a Syrian military commander telling Islamic State militants that they should vacate an area before 6 a.m. because aerial bombing would begin then. In another intercept, a regime commander was overheard suggesting giving an award to the Islamic State for its active cooperation.

When ISIS attacked the ancient city of Palmyra and the entire district of Tadmur in May 2015, the Syrian army evacuated many of its bases in advance, put up only a modest defense and let its weapons warehouses to fall into the radicals’ hands. As this was under way, the regime and ISIS engaged in perhaps the most clearcut of all the cases of collaborate.

“We’ve seen Assad providing air support for ISIS. There has to be some kind of an agreement there,” said a Defense Department official, who spoke anonymously because he wasn’t authorized to be quoted by name. He added: “This has happened more than once.”

He said the Islamic State continues to send car bombs as their weapon of choice against moderate rebel forces, but not against the Assad forces or its allies, even against the Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Force, with the United States has allied itself. And as the regime with heavy Russian air backing ended the rebel siege of the towns of Nubul and Zahra, “ISIS didn’t fire a bullet,” he said.

The Russian Defense Ministry has begun deploying the Harmony deepwater acoustic monitoring system, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia.

After completing the installation in 2020, the military will be able to "see" what is happening in the most remote and previously inaccessible areas of the world's oceans, including the movements of foreign ships and submarines.

The Defense Ministry's general contractor, Spetsstroi, is constructing a new command post for managing the system on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. A special plant to produce Harmony's components will be built in the closed city of Severomorsk in the Murmansk Region 930 miles north of Moscow.

The Harmony system consists of a network of robotized ocean bed stations that can work autonomously at temperatures ranging from 14 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. This stability is obtained with the help of special lithium polymer batteries that have an automatic energy-consumption control system.

Harmony will use sonars to conduct acoustic monitoring of the world's oceans. When it detects an object, it will send a signal along a cable to a buoy floating on the surface, which in turn will send the data through a satellite to the command post.

If necessary, the station can shut down by itself and then be picked up by a nearby submarine. Such a system will give the military almost full control of the waters at a distance of hundreds of miles.

Dmitry Kornev, editor of the Internet project Militaryrussia, says that Harmony's first carrier was the B-90 Sarov diesel electric submarine, which became part of the fleet in the beginning of 2008. Tests were carried out on several experienced models.

However, nuclear submarines appear to be a more appropriate base for this system. The Khabarovsk and Belgorod submarines, which will become part of the Russian Navy by 2020, are more suitable for the role. They will guarantee that the system functions in the best possible way.

In particular, the Belgorod is scheduled to enter the water at the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017. Military historian Dmitry Boltenkov says that consequently, the Russian Navy can start using Harmony on a partial basis in the near future.

In 2010, China’s first—and only, so far—Qing-class submarine sailed out to sea following nearly six years of construction. Displacing 6,628 tons submerged and measuring exactly the length of a football field at one hundred yards long (ninety-two meters), it is by most accounts the largest diesel submarine ever built.

Unlike the vast majority of diesel submarines, the Type 032 can fire not only long-range cruise missiles, but submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with the capacity to send a nuclear warhead across the ocean.

The first operational AIP powered submarine was the Swedish Gotland, which entered service in 1996. Using a Stirling engine, it could operate submerged for thirty days at a time. The small and nearly silent diesel sub successfully penetrated the antisubmarine defenses of U.S. aircraft carrier task forces in several war games.

Since then, China has built fifteen Yuan-class Type 039A (aka Type 041) diesel submarines using Stirling AIP technology, with another twenty planned. The torpedo-armed Yuan-class subs are intended, like the Swedish Gotland, to serve as stealthy short-range boats for stalking enemy vessels in coastal waters.

Four or five additional VLS cells on the Qing class’s bow can fire JL-18B Yingji (Eagle Strike) antishipping cruise missiles, which surge to speeds of Mach 2.5 on their terminal approach. The JL-18B is supposedly satellite guided, and is variously credited with a range of 110 to more than three hundred miles. The Type 032 can also launch the slower but longer-range CJ-20A cruise missiles, a derivative of the CJ-10.

Rounding out the Qing class’s armaments is an unconventional pairing of a single standard 533-millimeter torpedo tube with an extra-large 650-millimeter tube. The Type 032 also has facilities to accommodate and deploy up to fifty special-forces personnel—an increasingly common feature in modern submarines.

Earlier this week, Russia lost yet another fighter jet off its aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov. That’s at least the second one since the carrier began it’s first-ever combat deployment in November. Satellite photos now suggest that Russia has entirely given up on using the carrier to launch strikes.

Another huge blow to Russia’s military credibility came on December 4, when footage tweeted by Rami al-Lolah showed what appeared to be Russia’s vaunted S-300 missile defense system catastrophically malfunction in Syria.

The S-300, in addition to the previously deployed S-400, were thought by experts to provide Russia with an almost impenetrable air defense zone within Syria and the Mediterranean. Even President Obama admitted that Russia’s air defenses considerably limit the US’s options in Syria.

In keeping with the 1936 Montreux Convention, US naval ships cannot stay in the Black Sea more than 21 days, but it looks like the Pentagon could disregard these limitations.

The US Sixth Fleet, headquartered in Napes is operationally organized into six task groups consisting of carrier ships, amphibious forces, landing forces, logistics forces and special operations units that are present in the Mediterranean for a period of 6 to 8 months.

The Sixth Fleet has at its heart a task force of one or two aircraft carriers, two missile cruisers, sixteen frigates and destroyers in addition to submarines, landing ships, Marine units and bases in Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Turkey and other European countries.

US naval ships with the Aegis integrated naval weapons system  on board are part of the US missile defense system and can weaken the impact of Russia’s retaliatory missile strike.

In addition, there is a number of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles regularly patrolling waters off Russia’s Crimean peninsula.

“The latest developments in Aleppo suggest that some kind of understanding has been reached, with Turkey reportedly mediating on behalf of the rebels and their families for their withdrawal to Idlib. Ankara is in a hurry because of its paranoia over the Syrian Kurdish statelet it sees emerging along its border. It is desperate to stop the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from physically linking all the cantons under its control. This, in turn, means preventing the YPG from taking the town of al-Bab from the Islamic State and also striking a deal with Russia, and by extension with the Assad regime, presumably at the Syrian Kurds’ expense.”

“Developments in al-Bab are linked to clashes in Aleppo. Turkey is reportedly transferring opposition fighters withdrawn from Damascus, Homs and Aleppo to the al-Bab region to form a paramilitary force under its control. Turkey sees control of al-Bab as a key for its ruling Justice and Development Party to have a say in the future of Syria and to prove the futility of Kurdish aspirations to form and control a corridor along the Turkish border. Both the United States, which supports Turkey, and Russia, which gave Turkey the green light to advance on al-Bab, are suspicious of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his intentions. Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, allowed the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to advance toward al-Bab in between the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and Assad's troops. This enabled YPG-SDF fighters to create a de facto buffer zone between the Turkish forces and the Syrian army.”

“another problem is Turkey’s inability to impose its rule and achieve stability, thus leaving the people at the mercy of the Islamic militant groups Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham. As long as the Syrian army needs al-Bab to recapture Aleppo, Turkey won’t be able to take the risk of capturing al-Bab. Syria’s defense industry’s main components and the biggest international airport are just south of al-Bab.”

“There is also talk of Syrian army cooperation with the Kurds regarding al-Bab, Turkey’s primary target in its Operation Euphrates Shield,” Tastekin writes. “Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) want to turn the zone between Manbij and Afrin into a safe zone for the Kurds. The Turkish army is trying to thwart that goal. Some observers interpreted the Syrian army’s shelling of Turkish-supported groups advancing to al-Bab as signaling the regime’s support for the Kurds.”