Introduction Currently, only limited analytical discussion exists regarding the command authorities over China’s land-based ballistic and cruise missile inventory. Much of the discourse surrounding the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF)—the military service that operates most of China’s land-based precision strike systems—focuses on nuclear command... MORE

On July 29, Azerbaijan and Turkey launched a two-week long round of joint military exercises with the participation of ground and air forces from both countries. The military drills involving land forces were held from August 1 to 5, in Baku and Nakhchivan; while the... MORE

In recent years, Russia repeatedly demonstrated the increasingly advanced orbital maneuvering capabilities of its satellites by conspicuously moving them closer to Russian, United States and European orbital space assets. These experiments involved the Cosmos 2499 satellite in 2014 (Habr, November 23, 2014), Cosmos 2504 in... MORE

The weather in July brought rain to Crimea—but still not enough to save the peninsula from its severe multi-year drought. That same month, the volume of freshwater in Crimea’s reservoirs decreased by almost 8.5 million cubic meters. By August, the amount of reservoir water left... MORE

“Frozen” is a Western mischaracterization of Russia’s protracted conflict undertakings against Moldova in Transnistria, against Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and now of the desired end to Russia’s intervention in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas. Those conflicts never “froze” in a political sense—not even after the... MORE

Dating back to at least 1732, youth military-patriotic upbringing has historically been an integral aspect of the Russian/Soviet version of patriotism. And though the government’s support for such initiatives dipped somewhat following the collapse of the Soviet Union, they again regained their former centrality in... MORE

Introduction Successfully realizing the ambitions of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will require the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to guarantee the protection of its workers, businesses, and critical infrastructure in BRI countries. The first part of this short series of articles discussed Beijing’s... MORE

The Volga-Don Canal, the last of the great Stalinist-era construction projects, which involved the use of German prisoners of war and Soviet GULAG prisoners to move more than 150 million cubic meters of earth and pour more than 3 million tons of concrete, marked its... MORE

President Vladimir Putin used the July 26, 2020, Navy Day and the Main Navy Parade in St. Petersburg to once again promote Russia’s “superweapons,” which will ostensibly give the Russian Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF) “a unique advantage” over its Western counterparts. According to Putin, “The... MORE

In March 2020, eight personnel in the German-led, multinational North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) battalion in Lithuania tested positive for the novel coronavirus (The Baltic Times, March 24). From a defense-planning standpoint, the spread of COVID-19 to the Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) units stationed along... MORE