Category: News

NORTH KOREA: Military parade in Pyongyang

To mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Workers' Party on 10 October, the sea-based intercontinental ballistic missile Pukguksong-4s was also displayed at the obligatory military parade in Pyongyang. This is likely to be the improved version of the missile that was launched underwater a year ago on a test basis but is said to have only a limited range. With this designation, the underwater system joins the ranks of the actual long-range strategic land systems known as Pukguksong-1 and -2. So far, the only evidence of a carrier submarine as the basis for this voluminous missile is the graphic of an extended Kilo-class...

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COLOMBIA: A brief summary of the drug hunt

A brief summary of the drug hunt in the Pacific-Caribbean navy shows that a good 130 tonnes of cocaine and 35 tonnes of marijuana were caught in the first nine months - that's around 4.5 billion dollars in commercial value, which organised crime and armed gangs in the region would have used to support their illegal activities. Just at the end of October, another two-tonne catch with a street value of 65 million dollars was made on his way to Mexico. A highly motorised, self-built semi-submersible was used for this, in the belly of which were 120 watertight packages containing well over a thousand brick-sized, neatly pressed blocks of coke - for later collection with...

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INDIA: Indian Navy missile test

It must be the big time for missile tests. On 23 October, India released one of its 16 KH-35 Uran missiles from the corvette Prabal (Veer class, Tarantul I) and sank a decommissioned frigate at maximum range (75 miles). Even though the Prabal was only put into service as an Indian replica after 2000, the type of ship and missile still originate from Russian developments of the 1970s. The shooting took place as part of a large-scale manoeuvre to demonstrate the operational readiness of the Indian armed forces, which are facing Chinese troops in the Himalayas in a tense situation....

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FRANCE: Future short-range defence system

At the end of October, the decision on the French Navy's future short-range defence system was made at the Directorate General for Armaments (DGA) in Paris. RapidFire, the 40-millimetre TCA 40 compact gun developed by Nexter and Thales with a rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute and an effective range of 4000 metres, was selected. Compared to the Phalanx (20 mm) and Goalkeeper (30 mm) systems, which operate according to the Gatling principle, the TCA 40 has a lower rate of fire but is more versatile in terms of range and ammunition variety thanks to the 40-millimetre ammunition: the system selects the optimum ammunition from five different types to suit the threat. Both the centralised control via a command and weapon deployment system...

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CHINA: 170 days at sea without land contact

Since December 2008, the Chinese People's Liberation Navy has been participating in international maritime defence operations in the Gulf of Aden. The last contingent, consisting of the destroyer Taiyuan (Luyang III class, type 052D), the frigate Jingzhou (Jiangkai II, type 054A) and the supply ship Chaohu, returned to its home port of Zhoushan south of Shanghai in mid-October. In the previous six months, the convoy had escorted almost fifty predominantly Chinese cargo ships in the crisis region, travelling 100,000 nautical miles as a trio. Since leaving Zhoushan at the end of April this year, the three ships are said to have had no land contact whatsoever to avoid any possibility of infection: 170 days at sea! Not...

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