15 août 2023 | International, Sécurité
Australia and Japan deepen defence ties - APDR
Australia and Japan are strengthening our defence ties with the Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) coming into effect.
16 novembre 2017 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre
Training foreign troops will be the ‘flagship’ of Canada's new UN peace strategy, top soldier says
Gen. Jonathan Vance said that despite speculation, there was never a plan in the works to deploy troops on a single UN operation.
OTTAWA—Training foreign troops will be the “flagship” of Canada's newly announced peace operations strategy, says the country's top soldier, who concedes that elements of the plan still require months more work.
Prime Minster Justin Trudeau on Wednesday took the wraps off his government's long-awaited effort to reengage with United Nations peace missions.
Elements of the strategy include $15 million in funding to boost participation by women soldiers in UN operations; an initiative to end the recruitment of child soldiers; and the promise of Canadian personnel to assist with training.
It also pledges up to six helicopters, two transport aircraft and a quick reaction force of up to 200 personnel to support UN missions.
But apart from Trudeau's promise of a single transport aircraft for UN operations based in Uganda, the plan offered no details on possible deployments.
Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence staff, said it would be “inappropriate” to say when those might start.
“I'm not even going to hazard a guess on that one right now. Step number one is now to get into detailed planning with the UN and find out . . . the what, the where and the when,” he said in an interview.
This week's announcement was months in the making. The Liberals pledged in the 2015 election to “recommit” to UN peace operations, in part by providing specialized capabilities such as medical teams and engineering support. That promise was followed in August, 2016 by a commitment to deploy up to 600 troops and 150 police officers on UN operations.
Canada's contributions to UN peace missions are at their lowest levels in years with just 23 military personnel currently assigned to such operations.
That's not likely to change soon. In the wake of Wednesday's commitments, Vance made clear that it will take many months yet of planning and discussions with the United Nations to determine how Canada's offers of personnel and equipment can best fit with ongoing missions.
“Some of the ‘when' on smart pledges is years away. Some of the ‘when' on other potential operations is sooner than that,” he said.
Some observers criticized the Liberal government for not committing personnel to a single mission, choosing instead to disperse personnel among many possible locations.
But Vance said that despite speculation, there was never a plan in the works to deploy troops on a single UN operation, saying, “I've never received guidance that said do a mission with 600 (troops).”
Suggestions that troops were headed to Mali, for example, or that the announcement had been delayed “didn't match the reality of the work we were doing,” Vance said.
“There were a lot of assumptions made about, ‘hey, we're going to Africa',” Vance said
Instead, he said that Canada was working with the United Nations “to figure out a new way of doing business.” And he said repeated fact-finding trips by bureaucrats and politicians, including visits to African countries, were not about scouting any one particular mission.
“That's us doing research . . . that allowed us to arrive at an approach that government could consider,' he said.
“We've been working for over a year to determine what are the various options available to government in terms of how to improve UN performance overall with Canadian troops,” Vance said.
Yet given that Africa is the location of many UN missions so “it's very likely a place where we would offer contributions,” Vance said.
The peace support strategy calls for a new training and advisory team to work with a nation before and during a deployment to improve their own ability to conduct peace operations. It also says that Canada will contribute to training centres and schools.
Vance said such activities will be the “flagship” of the plan.
“We're going to try and leverage the Canadian expertise, one of the best trained militaries in the world and best equipped, . . . so that UN mission performance can improve,” Vance said.
Defence analyst Dave Perry said elements of the peacekeeping strategy make sense. The problem, he said, is that the government itself had raised expectations with its drawn-out decision-making and rhetoric about its intentions.
“It wasn't just what the government was saying publicly. I think there were also a number of commitments that were strongly intimated to some of Canada's key allies,” Perry said in an interview.
“My sense is that the different options that were put forward by the department of national defence for whatever reasons weren't palatable to the government,” said Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
While he said the contributions to UN operations were “modest,” Perry said Canada is better off providing military support to other missions, such as coalition efforts to combat Daesh, or NATO roles.
“Bluntly, there are better ways of achieving Canadian national objectives in the world that through UN missions,” Perry said.
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26 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Britain confirms new nuclear warhead project after US officials spill the beans
By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — The British government has confirmed it is developing a new nuclear warhead for its missile submarines, days after the U.S. revealed the program was going ahead before Parliament had been informed. In a written statement to Parliament, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed Feb. 25 that Britain is working on a new warhead to equip it's Trident missile-armed nuclear submarine fleet. “To ensure the Government maintains an effective deterrent throughout the commission of the Dreadnought Class ballistic missile submarine we are replacing our existing nuclear warhead to respond to future threats and the security environment,” Wallace said. The announcement was not expected to be made prior to publication of the defense, security and foreign policy review scheduled for late this year. But the Conservative government's hand was forced when U.S. officials revealed last week the program was up and running. That caused a stir in the U.K., as high-profile programs like the nuclear deterrent are usually announced in Parliament first. It's only a courtesy, but if Parliament is not informed first, ministers can be forced to attend the House of Commons to make a statement. “The decision is basically a forgone conclusion, but the announcement has come sooner than expected. We were looking at probably next year but certainly not before the defense and security review due for release towards the end of the year,” said David Cullen , the director at the U.K.-based Nuclear Information Service, an independent organization promoting awareness of nuclear weapons issues. Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, and Alan Shaffer, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, separately made statements that Britain is pursuing development of its own version of the W93 warhead, which is in the assessment phase for the U.S. military ahead of replacing U.S. Navy W76 warhead. “It's wonderful that the U.K. is working on a new warhead at the same time, and I think we will have discussions and be able to share technologies,” Shaffer told an audience at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit, hosted in Washington by ExchangeMonitor. Shaffer said the W93 and the British weapon “will be two independent development systems.” Richard, in testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Feb. 20 that the W93 will “support a parallel replacement warhead program in the United Kingdom.” Wallace told Parliament that the Defence Ministry's “Defence Nuclear Organisation is working with the Atomic Weapons Establishment: to build the highly skilled teams and put in place the facilities and capabilities needed to deliver the replacement warhead; whilst also sustaining the current warhead until it is withdrawn from service. We will continue to work closely with the US to ensure our warhead remains compatible with the Trident.” The new British warhead will replace the existing weapon, known as the Trident Holbrook, which equips the four Vanguard-class submarines charged with providing Britain's nuclear deterrence capability. Cullen noted that the existing British weapon is unlikely to be very different from America's W76. “They are both fitted to the same Trident missile used by Britain and the U.S. Our assumption is the two warheads are very close, if not virtually identical," he said. The Atomic Weapons Establishment in the U.K. is undertaking a life-extension program on its stock of warheads, including replacing some electronics and systems to improve accuracy and provide performance benefits. The Trident Holbrook entered service along with the Vanguard-class submarines in the mid-1990s. Britain plans to replace the subs in the early 2030s with four new Dreadnought-class subs. Work on the £31 billion (U.S. $40 billion) boat program is already underway. Britain is also spending billions of pounds building infrastructure to support the Atomic Weapons Establishment's development, building and testing of a new warhead at sites in southern England and Valduc, France, where Britain is cooperating in hydrodynamic experiments with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission as part of a wider nuclear agreement. Cullen said there is little in the public domain on the delivery timetable for the current warhead updates. “They started delivery of the life-extended warheads around 2016/2017. The warheads will last up to another 30 years if you assume they are doing similar changes to updates being undertaken by the U.S.,” he said. “I expect Mk4A, [as the updated weapon is referred to], to come out of service in the mid-2040s with the replacement warhead being available from the late 2030s at the earliest.” Britain and the U.S. have cooperated on nuclear weapons development for decades. In 1958, they signed what is known as the Mutual Defence Agreement to formalize that arrangement. That pact remains in place and is renewed about every decade. It was last signed in 2014. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/02/25/britain-confirms-new-nuclear-warhead-project-after-us-officials-spill-the-beans/
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11 décembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Researchers Uncover Espionage Tactics of China-Based APT Groups in Southeast Asia
China-based threat actors target Southeast Asia organizations with advanced tools like PlugX and reverse proxies.