Would Trump actually attempt to implement his plan to defeat ISIS — that is, “bomb the shit out of them” and then “take the oil” of Iraq? Or was that just the bellicose bluster of the campaign trail?

Wall Street investors seemed convinced that the president elect would be good for defense industry giants like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, whose stocks surged in the wake of Trump’s win. It’s unclear whether that indicates a belief in more armed conflicts or simply more bloated military spending.

Under President Obama, the U.S. has waged war in or carried out attacks on at least eight nations — Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria. A Clinton presidency promised more, perhaps markedly more, of the same — an attitude summed up in her infamous comment about the late Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. “We came, we saw, he died.”

“Trump does not believe in war. He sees war as bad, destructive, death and a wealth destruction.” Of course, Trump himself said he favors committing war crimes like torture and murder.

So there’s good reason to assume Trump will be a Clintonesque hawk or even worse, but some reason to believe — due to his propensity for lies, bluster and backing down — that he could also turn out to be less bellicose.

Given his penchant for running businesses into the ground and for economic proposals expected to rack up trillions of dollars in debt, it’s possible that, in the end, Trump will inadvertently cripple the U.S. military.

Troops in Indonesia have shown they do not need a boat in order to navigate through troubled waters.

A drill to mark the 71st anniversary of the country's military being founded has been held - during which marines were made to walk through waist-deep water.

Pictures showing troops wearing distinctive purple berets and camouflage gear show the unusual ceremony celebrating the formation of the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI).

It seems Russian President Vladimir Putin and Shinzō Abe, prime minister of Japan, know more about the future of U.S. national security priorities under President-elect Donald Trump than the troops and diplomats

Trump talked to Putin on Monday. And he reportedly met with Abe on Thursday in New York. But his transition team reached out to the Pentagon and several other agencies for the first time only on Thursday afternoon, a defense official told The Daily Beast. Throughout his first week as president-elect, Trump has forged ahead with crafting U.S. foreign policy apparently without the input of the relevant departments.

Most presidents-elect do not have extensive talks with foreign leaders without at least consulting the U.S. government for background information, a summary of the current policy, or advice on how to proceed.

With so few details, U.S. national security officials, particularly those who will serve in the next administration, are left reading tea leaves and statements to figure out what’s being negotiated. Pentagon and State Department officials said they were not aware of the calls beforehand.

The best source of information about Trump’s conversation with Putin came Thursday, from the Russian state media news service Tass, which reported that during the 30-minute call the two talked about the war in Syria, the future of Ukraine, and setting up a date to meet after Jan. 20.

The Russians are saying in their statements about talks with Trump that they want better relations with the U.S. Yet Russia continues to bomb U.S. allies in the Syrian city of Aleppo on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

He has said he wants to work with Russia to defeat the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Syria, and he said Putin was a better leader than President Obama.

Almost two decades after buying the hull from Ukraine in 1998, China’s sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, has finally been declared combat ready.

China’s aircraft carrier, as well as the rest of its rapidly modernizing navy, puts Beijing in an elite club with the greatest naval powers in the world. The development has raised eyebrows in the Pacific and globally, as China ignores international law, builds and militarizes artificial islands in the South China Sea, and threatens and bullies its neighbors.

The MoD is used to having Harpoon missiles, however due to budgetary concerns the Navy will be forced to use its 4.5 inch gun with a range of just 17 miles.

Without the Harpoon Block 1C system, the Navy's escort fleet — that is, Type 45 anti-aircraft destroyers and Type 23 anti-submarine frigates — will be left with purely defensive missile weapons, various automatic guns of up to 30mm caliber and a single 4.5" medium gun.

As a result, the Royal Navy warships will now be less capable of fighting enemy vessels than they were in the 19 century.

According to Mike Winnerstig, security policy analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, this decision embodied Sweden's efforts to boost its defense capabilities.

"If you group together these kinds of systems on Gotland, you can control quite a lot of territory in the mid-Baltic," Mike Winnerstig told the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen. Whereas Winnerstig acknowledged that Sweden hardly is a primary goal for Russia, he argued that the price of invading Gotland has increased significantly, calling the missile defense a "tripwire."

In September, Sweden stationed 150 troops on Gotland, to boost the defense of the strategically important island.

"We have about 150 men on Gotland, which is not much. In the past, when you wanted to defend Gotland for real, there were regiments that could mobilize about 25,000 troops to the island's defense. There's a certain difference," Mike Winnerstig told Expressen.

Tal Afar, a city 40 miles west of ISIS-held Mosul, is poised to become “the city of revenge” for Iraq’s powerful Shia militias who were forced out of the city after an insurgency by the Islamic State’s predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, in 2005.

“The scene is set for an extremely dangerous episode to unfold in Tal Afar, between Shia militias, who are seeking revenge for the devastation wrought on them by Sunni jihadists since 2005, and ISIS fighters who, if history is our guide, would prove to be highly capable in their defense of the town,” Gareth Stansfield, a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center and professor of Middle East politics at the University of Exeter, wrote earlier this month.

Shia militiamen backed by Iran — known as the Hashd al-Shaabi — have already begun the move to recapture the strategic city.

Recapturing Tal Afar from ISIS would mean severing one of the jihadists’ last remaining corridors from Iraq into Syria.

“The worst [ISIS] killers of all come to Tal Afar,” a senior Iraqi official told The Independent on the condition of anonymity earlier this week.

But the city’s liberation will inevitably be tinged by sectarian motivations.

“We are coming to Tal Afar to avenge Hussein,” Qais al-Khazali, the leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shi’a militia, said in Baghdad last month, referring to the third Imam of Shia Islam.

Another wild card that could further complicate the impending battle for Tal Afar is Turkey, which feels an obligation not only to protect Sunni Turkmen in the city but also to quell Iran’s influence in northern Iraq and Syria by keeping the Iran-backed Shia militias at bay.

Turkey infuriated Baghdad — and its Russian and Iranian allies — last December when it ignored Iraq’s request to stay out of the Mosul battle and deployed roughly 500 troops to a military base near Bashiqa, Iraq, to train and advise local forces.

Tensions have been growing between the Turks and the Iraqis ever since.

“So many actors are focused on preventing a Turkish-Hashd conflict,” Knights said. “Turkey knows that going to war with the Hashd means going to war with a major neighbour, Iraq. Many international actors would work tirelessly to avoid such an outcome before it unfolded – and indeed they are warning and shaping the actions of both Turkey and the Hashd now behind the scenes.”

The Super Hornets are legacy planes that will be phased out by 2018 in favor of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IIs. The most action these planes have seen took place during the Iraq War, when they acted as strike planes and helped with aerial refueling. Outside of the warzone, however, they look a lot calmer.

The new station, which will cover a key direction from which the country can be targeted by a missile strike, is intended to complete a missile attack warning system circuit on the perimeter of Russian territory.
Russian defense enterprises are to build a heavy-duty radar station to warn of potential missile strikes on Russia, according to Sergei Boyev, chief executive of the holding company that will construct the missile attack warning system.

The Voronezh-DM type radar station will be deployed in Russia's northwest near the city of Murmansk (1,160 miles north of Moscow), where Boyev says it "will cover the main missile-threat direction" in the western area.

The new station will be able to detect ballistic, space and aerodynamic objects, including cruise missiles.

How the missile attack detection system works

The Voronezh-type radar station allows the Russian Defense Ministry to see, in sectors, what is happening around Russian territory at a distance of up to 3,600 miles (6,000 km).

The station is one of three elements of an integrated missile attack warning system.

Russia receives first Il-22PP Porubschik electronic countermeasures planes
Russia receives first Il-22PP Porubschik electronic countermeasures planes
"The first level concerns space. For example, our Tundra-type satellites, which the Russian Defense Ministry sent into orbit last year, report on the launches of ballistic missiles from potential enemy territory," said a source from Russia's defense industry.

In his words, the Voronezh type radar station, or those equivalent to it, then tracks the warhead's flight trajectory and aims the missile defense systems at the warhead.

"The satellites record the launch and then we must determine where the missile is heading – to Russia or South America. It’s this system that gives the target designation to the antimissile defense systems. And such a radar station covers the distance from St. Petersburg to the U.S. coast," added the source.

Turkey is looking into joining a Chinese- and Russian-led alliance known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters Sunday at the end of his official tour of Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

France, Germany, and Belgium — home to Brussels, where the EU is headquartered — have long opposed Turkey’s accession into the EU. Erdogan’s reluctance to sign on to certain membership requirements, and his increasingly authoritarian leadership over Turkey

“From time to time, we see insults directed at myself, claims that there was no freedom of expression in Turkey,” Erdogan said Sunday.“Meanwhile, terrorists prance around in French, German and Belgian streets. This is what they understand of freedom.”

“Erdogan feels much more comfortable and at home among the authoritarian regimes of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization rather than facing the scrutiny and criticism of the European family of nations,”

Joining or even threatening to join the Shangai bloc, moreover — which is heavily influenced by Russia and China — would rattle the West

“Erdogan knows that the EU views Turkey as critical to staunching the flow of refugees into Europe,” said Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum. “He has a long history of making these types of threats in order to pressure Europe into concessions of various sorts. It’s a gambit that will probably be successful if recent history is any guide.”

“In theory, SCO membership would not require Turkey’s exit from NATO,” geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk firm Eurasia Group, told Business Insider on Tuesday. “In practice, however, it would severely strain Ankara’s ties with other NATO members.”

“Putin will make sure that this is a slow and painful process for Turkey and the transatlantic alliance,” he said. “He knows that as a rogue and dysfunctional NATO ally, Turkey is of greater use to Moscow than as a defector to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”