military exercise

The Chinese Defense Ministry on Monday announced Falcon Shield 2023, the first joint exercise between the air forces of China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to be held next month in occupied East Turkistan, home of the oppressed Uyghur Muslims.

Azerbaijan began joint military exercises with Turkey on Tuesday, a week after Iran held its own border exercises and accused the Azeris of joining Israel’s “Zionist regime.” Azerbaijan also pushed back by shuttering a mosque linked to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Russia is currently holding its “largest military exercise in Europe for 40 years,” based on the estimated 200,000 troops participating in the drills, the Economist reported on Monday.

Tajikistan held the largest military exercise in its history on Thursday, drilling its entire 100,000-strong army plus 130,000 reservists as instability grows in its southern neighbor Afghanistan. 20,000 of those reserves have been deployed to reinforce the Afghan border.

The annual Malabar naval exercise began on Tuesday, launching from the Indian port of Visakhapatnam on the Bay of Bengal. The Malabar wargame began in 1992 as a joint exercise between the U.S. and Indian navies. Japan joined in 2015, and this year marks the return of Australia after 13 years of absence, putting all four members of the “Quad” alliance against Chinese expansionism on the roster.

China launched military drills in four separate seas on Monday — Two are being held in the South China Sea near the disputed Paracel Islands, one in the East China Sea, and one in the northern Bohai Sea, while live-fire drills are scheduled in the southern Yellow Sea.

The Taiwanese military staged its largest live-fire military drill in five years on Wednesday morning, sending 20 warships and 22 jet fighters to simulate repelling a Chinese raid on an important military port and dealing with a massive air attack across the Taiwan Strait.

Russia published flying restriction orders on Wednesday limiting flights in Cypriot airspace and over the areas adjacent to Syria following the Syrian downing of a Russian plane on Monday that killed the 15 personnel on board.

Russia’s biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold War is now underway, with a sizable contingent of elite Chinese and Mongolian troops participating. Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok on Tuesday for a bilateral summit on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum.

The Vostok 2018 military exercise in eastern Russia was already billed as Russia’s largest war game since 1981. China’s Defense Ministry announced on Thursday it will send 3,200 troops from the People’s Liberation Army to join over 100,000 Russians in exercises from September 11 to 15.

English translations of the North Korean editorials that implied dictator Kim Jong-un might withdraw from his June summit with President Donald Trump reveal North Korea was infuriated by long-scheduled U.S.-South Korean military drills. The North Koreans denounced these exercises as a “deliberate military provocation” and rejected criticism of North Korea’s human rights violations as a “senseless act of disregarding elementary etiquette.”

TEL AVIV – The IDF completed a series of drills Thursday simulating attacks from its northern border in preparation for a potential war in Lebanon, the IDF said.

India has sent an unprecedented contingent of 45 members of the country’s air force to an international military exercise in Israel.

JERUSALEM, Israel — As Russian forces conduct a major military exercise this week in northwestern Belarus, one man has ominous words to describe the latest global aggression directed by President Vladimir Putin.

South Korea’s Yonhap news service reported on Wednesday that North Korea made a very tentative and conditional offer to discuss a ban on nuclear and ballistic missile testing.

The United States announced on Monday that it will permanently station attack drones in South Korea in what may be a continuing response to North Korea’s missile launches last week, among other provocations.

Iran held large-scale military exercises over the weekend, including tests of its missile systems, in what the Iranian military said was a gesture of defiance against new U.S. sanctions.

Iran has embarked on a series of military drills, described in various sources as three- to five-day exercises, which will feature “a large volume of artillery fire and missiles.”

The chief officers of the Philippine military and U.S. Pacific Command said military ties between the two countries remained “robust” on Tuesday, despite threats from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to reduce cooperation with America in favor of stronger relationships with China and Russia.

China and Russia have begun joint naval exercises in the South China Sea, set to involve “live-fire drills, sea crossing and island landing operations, and island defense and offense exercises,” according to a Chinese navy spokesperson quoted by CNN.

Joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea are on the horizon, which means it is time for North Korea’s perennial saber-rattling. In this case, as the Associated Press reports, the erratic Communist regime is also furious that leader Kim Jong Un was added to a list of sanctioned individuals by the United States in early July.

China is making at least one gesture to de-escalate tensions in the South China Sea: it announced on Thursday that it would send a missile destroyer, and a dozen special-forces troops, to joint exercises with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, India, and the United States.

The U.S. Navy fired a test missile over Southern California on Saturday night, startling millions of residents for hundreds of miles, as a military exercise also diverted the path of flights to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The Associated Press reports that annual military exercises with South Korea have been halted–indefinitely–due to rising tensions on the DMZ and threats of war from Pyongyang. Is this a concession to North Korea’s threats, a bid to reduce tensions on the peninsula, or is it necessary to give American and South Korean units a chance to prepare for possible combat?