Free Republic

The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois. Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation,...

A ship bound for Syria from North Korea and detained in Cyprus on an Interpol alert for suspected arms smuggling was carrying an air defense system, Cypriot authorities said. The shipment was billed as weather-observation equipment on the freight manifest of the Panamanian-flagged Grigorio 1. The ship was carrying 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles. "The radars on the 18 trucks appear to be part of an air defense system," a police spokeswoman said.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry said Sunday it had "solid proof" that Israel had carried out a deadly attack on its main port last week, using advanced technology to blind the country's radar system to enter unidentified via a civilian air space course. Two Apache AHA64 helicopters flew in via the Red Sea and attacked the "two Sudanese subjects… reflecting the Israeli desire to kill and liquidate" its targets, the ministry was quoted by the SUNA news agency as saying. The ministry was maintaining its stance that neither of the targets had been involved in the trafficking of weapons from Iran to...

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea has begun activating observation cameras and radars around the coastal site in the northeast, a South Korean report said Sunday, as the communist country prepares to launch a rocket in defiance of international warnings. The top part of the rocket mounted at the Musudan-ri launch pad has also been uncovered, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed South Korean official. The report did not say whether a satellite was mounted on top. South Korea's Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service, the country's main spy agency, declined to confirm the report.

Russian defense experts warned this week that Ukraine could retaliate against a major price hike on their Russian gas imports by letting the United States use its early warning radar bases for ballistic missile defense. The Russian military establishment is taking very seriously the possibility that strongly pro-American Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko could dramatically tilt the balance of global strategic power by giving the United States an advance radar base in the historic former Russian naval fortress of Sevastopol on the Black Sea. An article published in the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta Monday cited several military sources indicating that Ukraine...