Many countries around the world are now threatened by rising sea levels in coastal areas as a result of climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps. Russia is experiencing such a scenario in the Arctic. But it is also facing another serious... MORE

The Russian military operation in Syria has highlighted “urban warfare,” information security and electronic warfare (EW) as crucial elements of how Moscow envisions the “wars of the future” will be fought. However, Russia’s top brass is currently allocating a central role to the development of... MORE

Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov paid a visit to Israel, on September 11, to discuss cooperation in the military and military-technical spheres with the host country’s leading defense industry enterprises. While there, he also toured the Command and Control Center (CCC) of the Israeli Armed... MORE

As the operations against Islamic State (IS) in al-Raqqa and Deir al-Zour remain the focus of attention in Syria, a group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has quietly and quickly consolidated near-total dominance over Idlib — the last remaining opposition-held province in the country.... MORE

Egypt’s Hasm Movement has released a review of its activities over the course of the first year of its operations. From July 16, 2016 to July 16, 2017, Hasm claims to have killed 27 members of Egypt’s “interior military militias” and wounded 56 more. In... MORE

  During the Russian war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and later the conflicts in Chechnya in the North Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s, the Russian military went into battle without unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and apparently saw no necessity to acquire them. Instead,... MORE

The first known targeted assassination using a drone took place in Yemen on November 3, 2002. The drone launched a hellfire missile that struck a Land Cruiser carrying six suspected members of al-Qaeda, including Sinan al-Harithi, thought to have been involved in the bombing of... MORE

Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) program has made headlines in recent months, after several of its drones were shot down outside the country’s borders, over Pakistan and Syria (Dawn, June 20). These incidents come as the country is beefing up its counterterrorism efforts, following the... MORE

In early July, the United States, Russia and Jordan agreed to support a “de-escalation zone” in the southwestern Syrian governorates of al-Quneitra, Daraa and part of the governorate of Suwayda (TASS, July 31; Hurriyet, July 22). The de-escalation zone agreement was the product of a... MORE