Taiwan detected six Chinese military aircraft, seven People’s Liberation Army Navy ships and one Chinese official ship operating around the island in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. local time on Oct. 29, the Ministry of National Defense said on social media. Five of the six aircraft sorties entered the northern, central and southwestern parts […]

North Korea launched what may have been a ballistic missile at about 12:36 p.m. local time on Oct. 29, and it is presumed to have fallen near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula without reaching Japan’s territory or exclusive economic zone, Japan’s Ministry of Defense said on social media. Tokyo said Japan, the United […]

Japan will host a final assembly plant for the AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile after Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth agreed on Oct. 28 to build the facility as part of joint U.S.-Japanese missile production, Nikkei reported. The two met for about 30 minutes in Cebu, the Philippines, on the […]

A Russian Navy intelligence-gathering ship sailed southwest through the Tsushima Strait between Japan and South Korea on Oct. 27 and 28 and headed into the East China Sea, Japan’s Joint Staff Office said. The Joint Staff identified the vessel as a Vishnya-class intelligence collection ship and released a map showing its hull number, 535. That […]

A computer simulation run by South Korean and U.S. forces during this summer’s Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise ended with North Korean troops breaking through allied defensive lines and advancing to the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, a result that has deepened a dispute over when Seoul should take wartime command of […]

Posts on X lamenting the state of Japan’s Kawasaki P-1 maritime patrol fleet have drawn more than 100,000 views, as Japanese aviation enthusiasts urged the public to spread the word about the hardships facing Maritime Self-Defense Force units after reports that some newly delivered P-1s are arriving without their patrol equipment and are being stripped […]

South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has barred LIG Defense & Aerospace, the maker of the Cheongung air defense missile formerly known as LIG Nex1, from bidding on government contracts for two years after prosecutors accused the company of paying a DAPA official hundreds of millions of won in bribes during weapons development tenders, […]

Chinese Type 08 infantry fighting vehicles fitted with anti-drone roof cages and side grilles carried assault troops during Karakoram 2026, the first joint army training between China and Pakistan, now under way in Korla in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Oct. 21. The exercise has moved into its main drill […]

China and Russia sent military intelligence aircraft toward Japan on four consecutive days this week, prompting the Japan Air Self-Defense Force to scramble fighters each day, as two Chinese Y-9 aircraft crossed the gap between Okinawa and Miyako-jima into the Pacific on Oct. 20 and 21 and Russian IL-20 aircraft flew over the Sea of […]

Kadena Air Base in Okinawa will bar all vehicles made by Chinese electric carmaker BYD from entering the installation starting Oct. 26 over concerns that the cars could expose sensitive military information, Kangnam Times reported. The ban covers privately owned cars as well as contractor vehicles, taxis, delivery vans and other commercial vehicles. The 18th […]

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said on Oct. 19 that the basic policy governing how the Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces use artificial intelligence needs to be reviewed, telling lawmakers that AI development has moved faster than the 2024 guidelines can handle, the Nikkei reported. “I feel there is a need to review […]

China and South Korea completed a 10-day joint maritime law enforcement patrol in the Yellow Sea fishing zone the two countries share under their bilateral fisheries agreement, with the China Coast Guard ship Changshan and the South Korean fisheries guidance vessel Mugunghwa 42 sailing together. Over more than 210 hours at sea and more than […]

China’s Liaoning carrier group has carried out its second far-seas training deployment to the Western Pacific this year, a decade after the carrier’s first such voyage in 2016, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Oct. 24, describing the ship’s path over those 10 years as a three-step climb from training ship to combat ship to […]

China’s 48th naval escort task force returned to a military port in Qingdao on Oct. 23 after 378 days away, the longest deployment in the history of the Chinese navy’s anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia, China’s Ministry of National Defense said. The task force, made up of the […]