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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is steaming toward the waters off Yemen to beef up security and join other American ships that are prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the Houthi rebels fighting in Yemen. Navy officials said Monday that the Roosevelt was moving through the Arabian Sea. The U.S. Navy has been beefing up its presence in the Gulf of Aden and the southern Arabian Sea amid reports that a convoy of about eight Iranian ships is heading toward Yemen and possibly carrying arms for the Houthis. Navy officials said...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday confirmed that Israel had acquired four new Sa’ar-class warships from Germany, reportedly to help protect off-shore gas extraction facilities. ... A spokesperson from the Prime Minister’s Office said that for the time being the deal remained an understanding, and that Germany would be footing a “nice” part of the cost. He refused to detail the cost of the ships.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=132_1419174652 Mistral Deal In Doubt: France Either Delivers Warships Or Give Moscow Refund, Says Russian Official Sounds like Russia realizes buying French warships is not a good idea, but France is now stuck in EU sanctions which prohibits it from delivering the warships. Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov has told Interfax that France must decide by the end of the year if it will deliver two mistral class warships or give Moscow a refund. He also reportedly said that the second option of a refund "might even be preferable."

CNN is reporting that the USS Bataan is being sent to the Persian Gulf with 1,000 marines on board. There is no word of a planned invasion. That will make seven warships there -- the USS Arleigh Burke, the USS Truxton, the USS Gunston Hall, the USS George HW Bush, the USS O'Kane, the USS Philippine Sea, and the USS Mesa Verde -- along with helicopters and warplanes that can be used for an invasion or for an evacuation of US citizens. There have been US drones flying over Iraq for several days, but now it's been confirmed that the...

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered a two-pronged warning to Asia Pacific nations Sunday, announcing that the U.S. will send two additional ballistic missile destroyers to Japan to counter the North Korean threat, and saying China must better respect its neighbors. In unusually forceful remarks about China, Hagel drew a direct line between Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region and the ongoing territorial disputes between China, Japan and others over remote islands in the East China Sea. “I think we’re seeing some clear evidence of a lack of respect and intimidation and coercion in Europe today with what the Russians...

Iranian Warships Headed To US Represent Threat To IsraelBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem — February 12, 2014 ... Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the graduation ceremony for the IDF Ground Forces officer training course and made the following remarks: "Today, Iran is marking 35 years since the Islamic Revolution and this 'celebration' has been marked by repeated calls for Israel's destruction. The desire to cut the Jewish People off from its homeland did not pass from the world with the establishment of the state. What has changed is our ability to oppose those who seek our lives and...

Iranian naval fleets were on their way across the Atlantic Ocean and headed toward the US, the Fars news agency reported on Saturday. “Iran’s military fleet is approaching the United States’ maritime borders, and this move has a message,” Adm. Afshin Rezayee Haddad of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet was quoted as saying.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A senior Iranian naval commander says his country has sent several warships to the Atlantic Ocean, close to U.S. maritime borders for the first time. The commander of Iran's Northern Navy Fleet, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Saturday that the vessels have already begun the journey to the Atlantic Ocean via waters near South Africa.

China Is Playing 'Chicken' With US Warships In The South China Sea GlobalPost Benjamin Carlson, GlobalPost Jan. 30, 2014, 7:51 AM HONG KONG — As anyone who has seen “Rebel Without a Cause” knows, playing chicken is dangerous for California teenagers in hot-rods. But playing chicken with warships, cruisers, and fighter jets — well, that’s just another level of crazy. Unfortunately, vessels from the US military and from other countries increasingly find themselves in such high-stakes confrontations on the East Asian seas, where China has adopted a strategy of making rivals flinch or risk collision. Just this week, Chinese sailors...

Two Iranian warships set sail Tuesday for the Atlantic Ocean on their navy's first-ever mission there, state TV reported. The voyage comes amid an ongoing push by Iran to demonstrate the ability to project power across the Middle East and beyond. The report said that the destroyer Sabalan and the logistic helicopter carrier Khark will be dispatched on a three-month voyage. "The warships will have task of securing shipping routes as well as training new personnel," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Iran's navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as saying.

Past fears that carriers were vulnerable to new technologies weren’t proven right… nor were they proven wrong. Over at The National Interest this week, former Naval Diplomat shipmate — U.S. Marines say there are no former Marines, just Marines; are there former shipmates? — Bryan McGrath wades into the debate over Tom Ricks’s Washington Post column urging the U.S. military to get smaller to get better. Let me wade in as well; the water’s fine. Ricks takes aim at the U.S. Navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in particular. He cites the expense of CVNs, but Bryan zeroes in mainly...

Russian warships enroute to Syria Russia has kept a constant presence of four warships in the eastern Mediterranean coast AFP Published: 18:47 September 5, 2013 Gulf News Istanbul: Three Russian warships crossed Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait Thursday en route to the eastern Mediterranean, near the Syrian coast, amid concern in the region over potential US-led strikes in response to the Damascus regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The SSV-201 intelligence ship Priazovye, accompanied by the two landing ships Minsk and Novocherkassk passed through the Bosphorus known as the Istanbul strait that separates Asia from Europe, an AFP photographer reported. The Priazovye...

China has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by arming western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S. maritime zones. The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls for closer economic, diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that are increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that region. “The Chinese are deftly parrying our ‘Pivot...

The Navy's Next-Generation Warship Gets Two Critical Defensive Boosts Robert JohnsonMarch 4, 2013, 8:06 AM The Navy's new $440-million Littoral Combat Ship needs some help taking care of itself. The LCS is said to be vulnerable to incoming strikes, meaning it might not survive a shootout with, say, China. Thankfully the ship may get two new life-saving escorts. First, DARPA wants to boost the Independence-class LCS drone capability to host a 27-foot wingspan Predator-like UAV. Previously it could only launch and receive a modest tactical drone like the ScanEagle. The new TERN program calls for a drone that can be...

For the entire 8 day duration of Operation Pillar of Defense, there was one major geopolitical player who had been largely quiet and certainly absent from the scene: the same player whose unflinching position over the Syria conflict has so far prevented any intervention in the civil war torn country: Russia. The same Russia which has a military base in the Syrian port city of Tarsus, and thus in its own eyes, a very substantial "national interest" role to play in the middle east, one that is certainly opposing that of the US and the pro-NATO forces, a tension that...

Three U.S. Navy amphibious warships are returning to the eastern Mediterranean to remain on standby in the event they are needed to assist Americans leaving Israel in the coming days, according to two U.S. officials. The officials stressed an evacuation remains an extremely remote possibility and the Obama administration is not currently planning for one. Americans who wish to leave the region now are able to do so using commercial airlines. But the decision to send the ships even if the event is such a remote contingency underscores the growing concern about where the Israel-Gaza conflict could be headed. "This...

Iran, the day before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at the United Nations, claimed Tuesday it successfully fired four missiles at a mock sea target representing warships. The timing of the missile tests is part of Iran’s propaganda campaign to instill fear among Israel and American leaders, who have warned that the “military option” is on the table if Tehran does not stop its unsupervised nuclear development and enrichment of uranium that can be used to manufacture a nuclear warhead aimed at Israel. The Ahmadinejad regime has claimed successful military tests at a dizzying rate, but several analysts have said...

The attack that killed four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, apparently began as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam film before turning violent, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday. Rice, appearing in NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said she was citing preliminary information and that the FBI was investigating the Tuesday night attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three others. A wave of protests and violence has swept across the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world over an obscure, amateurish movie called "Innocence of Muslims" that depicts...

<p>Russia has announced it is readying two warships to sail to Syria to protect Russian citizens, in a sign that it is taking precautions against a worsening of the security situation there.</p> <p>A spokesman for Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Vyacheslav Trukhachev, told Russia’s Interfax news agency the mission would be undertaken “in case of necessity”. His comments appeared designed to clarify speculation that warships had already set sail for Syria. Interfax had earlier quoted an anonymous official as saying that was the case on Monday morning.</p>

BEIRUT -- Russia is preparing to dispatch a pair of warships carrying a contingent of Black Sea Fleet marines to its logistics base in the Syrian port of Tartus, the Russian Interfax news agency reported Monday, in what appeared to be another sign of the deteriorating security situation in the strife-ridden nation. The report quoted an unidentified Russian naval source saying the amphibious ships Nikolay Filchenkov and Tsezar Kunikov, accompanied by the rescue tug SB-15, were “preparing for a non-routine departure” for Tartus, Russia’s only Mediterranean base.