Japan’s government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are putting the Self-Defense Forces’ staffing shortage at the center of defense policy. The plan is to improve pay and post-service support and to write the goal into the three national security and defense documents due for revision at the end of…
South Korea’s air force told lawmakers it will cut its enlisted strength by about half during the 2040s. In the nearer term it will move a fighter wing’s flying squadrons out of Gwangju so the airfield can become the site of a national semiconductor cluster. Air Force Chief of Staff…
Source: ABC News, “Federal politics live blog,” 29 October 2026, posts by Stephen Dziedzic and Olivia Caisley abc.net Defence officials told Senate estimates that there were 204 “incident reports” involving drones over or near military facilities in the 2025–26 financial year, according to ABC News. The count was 141 in…
South Korea’s navy has told the National Assembly that its light aircraft carrier program is turning into something quite different: a manned-unmanned teaming carrier of 30,000 tons or more, built mainly around uncrewed aircraft and surface vessels, with fielding targeted for the early 2040s. The briefing came on 20 October…
Russia is moving military equipment to Africa on civilian cargo ships, and some of those ships carry passengers whose identities appear to exist only on paper. That is the finding of a joint investigation by Dossier Center, Follow the Money, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Danwatch and Delfi, reported by Novaya Gazeta Europe…
Ukraine has joined the Security Cooperation Support Partnership (SCSP) of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), the agency announced on 22 October. Gerhard Heiming reports in Europäische Sicherheit & Technik that the move lets Ukraine’s defence industry bid directly on NATO tenders and gives Kyiv a closer role in…
East Germans make up a much larger share of the Bundeswehr than of the German population, and the gap is widest among the career soldiers who form the backbone of the force. They are almost absent, however, from its top ranks. The figures come from the federal government’s answer to…
One year after it opened, NATO’s new Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Bodø, in northern Norway, has filled fewer than a third of its posts. According to an NTB report published by Forsvarets forum on October 13, 2026, and based on figures the Norwegian Armed Forces provided to the…
