A weapon thought by many to belong to military museums is making a return to active anti-insurgency operations in the North Caucasus: the armored train. First used for such purposes in the American Civil War, armored trains and the tactics associated with their use were... MORE

Statements by senior Russian defense officials raise many questions concerning Moscow’s defense posture. The Chief of the General Staff Army-General Nikolai Makarov and the First Deputy Defense Minister Army-General Nikolai Pankov recently chaired a roundtable with Russian journalists in Moscow, devoted to military reform. Noting... MORE

In the immediate aftermath of President Dmitry Medvedev signing the new Russian military doctrine most attention focused on the fact that a first preemptive nuclear strike was not mentioned in the document and on the attention given to NATO as the chief source of “danger”... MORE

A special operation in the vicinity of settlements of Arshty and Dattykh ended along the lines of a classic phrase authored by former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin: “We wanted the best, but it turned out as it always does.” This broadly advertised operation implemented... MORE

Following the Afghan Taliban intelligence coup that led to the late December suicide-bombing at an American base in Khost province that killed seven CIA agents, Pakistan’s Taliban have apparently scored an intelligence success of their own, exposing a secret U.S. operation in the North-West Frontier... MORE

Conventional wisdom in the West seems to have coalesced around the notion that the CIA’s airborne assassination campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s remote FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) is driving Pakistanis to new levels of anti-Americanism. Western news sources report routinely on... MORE

As the negotiations on a bilateral arms control treaty lumber towards conclusion, the issue of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) in Europe has regained prominence. Recently Germany, Norway, Poland, and Sweden have individually proposed that both Russia and the US eliminate their TNW from Europe or... MORE

This week, the Abkhaz separatist leader, Sergei Bagapsh, arrived in Moscow to sign a number of deals with President Dmitry Medvedev on military, logistical, financial and economic cooperation. The Russian military have been officially allowed to establish a permanent “unified military base” in Abkhazia for... MORE

Strengthening China’s military presence in Latin America is one of the many manifestations of Beijing’s increased activity on the international stage. Arms sales is a subset of the Chinese military's growing involvement in Latin America. Yet, Chinese arms sales represent a small portion of its... MORE

C4ISR (Command Control Communication Computer and Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) systems are a key measure of military capability, and an area in which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is steadily advancing. Determining how strong PLA capabilities in this area are presents some analytical challenges, as unlike... MORE