A Chinese fighter pilot performed an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” near an American surveillance aircraft operating over the South China Sea last week, according to US military. The incident – which the Pentagon says is part of a pattern of behavior by China – comes at a time of already heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over issues including Taiwan and an alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down after traversing the United States earlier this year. The Chinese plane “flew directly in front of and within 400 feet of…
Tag: US military
Microsoft says China-backed hacker targeted critical infrastructure in US and Guam
Microsoft said on Wednesday it had uncovered malicious activity by a state-sponsored actor based in China aimed at critical infrastructure organizations in Guam and the United States. Microsoft said it assessed with “moderate confidence” that this Volt Typhoon campaign “is pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises”. Volt Typhoon has been active since mid-2021. Guam is home to major US military facilities, including the Andersen air force base, which would be key to responding to any conflict…
Open secrets: inside the 21 April Guardian Weekly
A major new cache of classified US military documents emerged last week, revealing sensitive western intelligence in areas such as the Ukraine war, Russia and Chinese affairs. But, just as astonishing as the information within the documents was the story of how they emerged. This week we find out how a young, racist gun enthusiast and low-level US national guardsman came to be charged under the Espionage Act, suspected of leaking hundreds of top secret files on the gaming chat server Discord. “A top view of the Pentagon popped up…
The tiny Philippine island on the frontline of the US-China battle for supremacy
The azure waters are inviting and its long stretches of clear white sand are spotless. But hardly anyone is swimming or sunbathing. Fuga Island is not a holiday destination. The residents of the remote community of just over 2,000 on the northern tip of the Philippines are farmers and fishermen – growing palay and corn; raising native chicken, pigs and goats; and catching their bounty from the sea. However, things are changing on Fuga Island. These days a detachment of marines watches its coastline closely. The coast guard also regularly…
What is the Aukus submarine deal and what does it mean? – the key facts
In a tripartite deal with the US and the UK, Australia has unveiled a plan to acquire a fleet of up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, forecast to cost up to $368bn between now and the mid-2050s. Australia will spend $9bn over the next four years. From this year Australian military and civilian personnel will embed with US and UK navies, including within both countries’ submarine industrial bases. From 2027 the UK and the US plan to rotate their nuclear-powered submarines through HMAS Stirling near Perth as part of a push…
Aukus will bolster stability in the Asia-Pacific, not undermine it | John Blaxland
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is set to commit Australia to the biggest national industrial redevelopment project since the Snowy Hydro electricity scheme and the British-Australian nuclear weapons research collaboration of the 1950s. The project involves considerable risk. Spanning three nations (each with multiple jurisdictions) over two or more decades, including the governments of multiple presidents and prime ministers in three countries. This seems inconceivably difficult on one level – were it not for the galvanising effects of: the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and adversarial China; the fallout from Brexit,…
FBI lab will get to the ‘guts’ of Chinese balloon – White House
The US has finished work to recover sunken remnants of the Chinese balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina and the debris reinforces that it was for spying, officials have said. The White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, said the wreckage included “electronics and optics” but declined to say what the US had learned from it so far. “It’s a significant amount [of recovered material], including the payload structure as well as some of the electronics and the optics, and all that’s now at the FBI laboratory…
Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloon
A group of amateur balloon enthusiasts in Illinois might have solved the mystery of one of the unknown flying objects shot down by the US military last week, a saga that had captivated the nation. The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says one of its hobby craft went “missing in action” over Alaska on 11 February, the same day a US F-22 jet downed an unidentified airborne entity not far away above Canada’s Yukon territory. In a blogpost, the group did not link the two events. But the trajectory of…
Chinese spy balloon may have been blown off intended course – report
The US is reportedly examining the possibility that the Chinese spy balloon was pushed off course by strong winds when it entered US airspace, having tracked it since its launch days earlier. Of the four flying objects shot down by the US in recent weeks, only the first has been attributed to Chinese surveillance efforts. The balloon took off from China’s Hainan island, before travelling on a path which appeared to go over Guam, according to the Washington Post on Tuesday. It then took an “unexpected” turn to the north,…
Three objects shot down by US jets may be ‘benign’ balloons, White House says
Three unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets since Friday may turn out to be balloons connected to “benign” commercial or research efforts, a White House official said on Tuesday. The US has not found any evidence to connect the objects to China’s balloon surveillance program nor to any other country’s spy program, national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters. “We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China’s] spying program, or…