Free Republic

Geneva: The US is following an egocentric foreign policy that is leading to global arms control agreements being devalued, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. It is vital "to stop the degradation of international arms control", Lavrov told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, urging Washington to resume talks on halting nuclear proliferation and banning weapons in space.

The U.S. Department of Defense officially adopted a series of ethical principles for the use of Artificial Intelligence today following recommendations provided to Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper by the Defense Innovation Board last October.

The US Navy and Boeing announced Monday they had flown two fighter jets in exercises under the control of a third jet nearby, proving that multiple pilotless combat missions can be run from a separate aircraft.

The US Defense Department announced Tuesday that it has deployed a submarine carrying a new long-range missile with a relatively small nuclear warhead, saying it is in response to Russian tests of similar weapons.

More than 120 surface-to-air guided missiles have been supplied by Russia to Turkey along with a regiment set of S-400 air defense missile systems, a military diplomatic source told TASS on Monday.

A startup focused on “invisible computing” Thursday unveiled a smart contact lens which delivers an augmented reality display in a user’s field of vision. The Mojo Vision contact lens offers a display with information and notifications, and allows the user to interact by focusing on certain points.

Apple and the US government are at loggerheads for the second time in four years over unlocking iPhones connected to a mass shooting, reviving debate over law enforcement access to encrypted devices. Attorney General Bill Barr said Monday that Apple failed to provide "substantive assistance" in unlocking two iPhones in the investigation into the December shooting deaths of three US sailors at a Florida naval station, which he called an "act of terrorism."

New video footage has emerged showing two Iranian missiles tearing through the night sky and hitting a Ukrainian passenger plane, sending the aircraft down in flames and killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.

Soldiers and Civilians with the U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Ansbach Provost Marshal Office (PMO) practiced and qualified with the Army’s new weapons system during a range at the Oberdachstetten Training Area Jan. 9-10. Prior to being issued the M17 and M18 Modular Handgun System (MHS), the PMO used the M9 Beretta, a 1980s-era pistol. During the range, the reaction to handling and firing the new weapon was positive.

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.

A campaign of cyber attacks has been targeting US natural gas pipeline operators, officials acknowledged, raising security concerns about vulnerabilities in key infrastructure.

In terms of sheer numbers, the Type 98 of the People's Republic of China, Pakistan's Al-Khalid, and the Russian Federation's T-90 (including India's licensed T‑90S) will continue to dominate the market, accounting for 54.73 percent of all new tanks rolling out worldwide, worth 43.79 percent of the market, through 2021.

Washington politicians and all Americans can accomplish anything if they follow the example set by U.S. troops, President Barack Obama said during his State of the Union address tonight. All of official Washington – including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and all the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- was in the House of Representatives to hear the president’s address.

British and French ships joined a US carrier group in a six-strong flotilla of warships which passed through the sensitive Strait of Hormuz, Britain's Ministry of Defence said.

The emergence of peer competitors, not terrorism, presents the greatest long-term threat to our national security. Over the past decade, while the United States concentrated its geopolitical focus on fighting two land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, China has quietly begun implementing a strategy to emerge as the dominant imperial power within Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Within the next 2 decades, China will likely replace the United States as the Asia-Pacific regional hegemonic power, if not replace us as the global superpower.1 Although China presents its rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic, its construction of naval bases in neighboring...

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama plans to place new restrictions on the use of atomic weapons as part of a major US nuclear policy overhaul, a senior administration official said. In an interview with The New York Times, Obama said he would make exceptions for "outliers like Iran and North Korea," but stress non-nuclear deterrence and eliminate Cold War ambiguities about when such weapons could be used. Obama unveils his strategy on Tuesday, two days before signing a treaty with Russia to slash stockpiles of long-range nuclear warheads by a third, and less than a week before hosting world leaders at...

The decision last week by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to approve $150 million in military aid to Yemen is the latest effort to shore up the government there as a war on terror ally. But if victory could be bought, the war would have been over long ago... The Yemen aid package represents a near trebling of US military assistance to the government headed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which received $67 million last year. It is the latest in a series of efforts undertaken or supported by the US to turn the tide in its global conflict with...

WASHINGTON: A US firm sought to quiet a controversy over coded Biblical references inscribed on gunsights used by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, announcing it was providing kits to remove them. Muslim and religious freedom groups reacted angrily after it emerged this week that Trijicon has multi-million-dollar contracts to supply hundreds of thousands of the gunsights to the US military. Critics charged that the company was putting US troops in danger in Muslim-majority nations where US military presence is already bitterly resented.

Iran has arrested eight local British embassy staff, triggering London's fury and further exacerbating tensions with the West over the post-election turmoil in the Islamic republic. The latest backlash against what Iranian leaders have branded as foreign "meddling" came as opposition leaders continued to defy the regime, rejecting a panel set up to hold a partial recount in the hotly-disputed presidential vote.

France and Germany have decided to delay for six months a decision on the future of the problem-plagued Airbus A400M military transport plane, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the fate of the plane being built by Airbus, a subsidiary of European aerospace giant EADS, during a meeting at the Elysee presidential palace. "We talked about the A400M and decided that it would be good to give ourselves a small delay of six months to continue discussions and to find the best possible solution," said Sarkozy at a joint news conference.