China Plans Naval Exercises in Western Pacific

BEIJING - Chinese state media reported June 9 that China would conduct naval training drills in the western Pacific later this month, amid lingering fears among Beijing's neighbors about its military ambitions.
The exercises will take place in international waters and are "not targeted at any specific country," the defense ministry said in a statement carried by Xinhua news agency.

The ministry did not offer further information about the location of what it called a "regular" drill, nor did it say which ships would participate.
Military observers are keenly awaiting the launch of the country's first aircraft carrier, which is currently based in the northeast port city of Dalian.
Earlier in the week, a top official in China's People's Liberation Army gave the first confirmation of the existence of the carrier in an exclusive interview with the Hong Kong Commercial Daily.
Gen. Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff of the PLA, said the 990-foot refurbished Soviet carrier "is being built, but it has not been completed," without elaborating.
Qi Jianguo, another PLA general staff official, told the newspaper that the carrier would not enter other nations' territories, in accordance with Beijing's defensive military strategy.
"All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers - they are symbols of a great nation," Qi was quoted as saying.
China is involved in a number of simmering marine territorial disputes with its neighbors.
It has claimed mineral rights around the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and argued that foreign navies cannot sail through the area without Beijing's permission.
In April, Adm. Robert Willard, head of U.S. Pacific Command, nevertheless said China's navy had adopted a less aggressive stance in the Pacific after protests from Washington and other nations in the region.

Russia Says NATO Not Listening on Missile Shield

BRUSSELS - NATO and Russia failed to reach a breakthrough on a missile shield project in Europe on June 8 with the Russian defense minister complaining that Moscow's demands were falling on deaf ears.
After talks between NATO defense ministers and their Russian counterpart in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen dismissed Russian demands for a legal guarantee that the project was not directed at Russia.

"It would be in the interest of Russia to engage in a positive cooperation with NATO and focus on real security challenges instead of some ghosts of the past that don't exist anymore," Rasmussen said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed at a NATO summit in November to explore the possibility of cooperating with the former Cold War foe on a system to protect Europe's population from the threat of ballistic missiles.
Fearing that the system would undermine its nuclear deterrent, Moscow has since then demanded a legally binding guarantee that the missile shield was not aimed at Russia.
The Western military alliance has also rejected Medvedev's idea of dividing the European continent into sectors of military responsibility, with Rasmussen saying the two sides should keep their systems separate.
"NATO is not hearing us for the moment," said Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. "NATO's position is not acceptable to Russia," he said, adding however that Russia still hoped to reach an agreement.
Despite the lack of a breakthrough, Rasmussen said he was optimistic that a deal could be reach in time for the next NATO summit hosted by the United States in May 2012.
"The Russians have their positions and their interests, we have our positions and our interests, and now the political challenge is to build a bridge and we still have some time," he said.
"I would expect us to make steady progress. It would be hard work but I'm still optimistic. I think at the end of the day we can reach a solution."
In the meantime, NATO defense ministers adopted an action plan on June 8 to forge ahead with the missile shield project, which an alliance official said is expected to be completed by 2018.

NATO Plans Force to Respond to Cyber Attacks

TALLINN - NATO wants to beef up its cyber defense capabilities with the creation of a special task force to detect and respond to Internet attacks, an alliance expert said at a conference on cyber security here on June 8.
"NATO is planning to establish the Cyber Red Team (...) that would provide a significant contribution to the improvement of NATO's cyber defense capability," Luc Dandurand and expert with NATO's C3 Agency told delegates to the alliance's third annual cyber defense conference.

The new NATO cyber force could be involved in simulating threats and controlling readiness to response, gathering and using public information from open sources, scanning and probing networks as well as conducting denial-of-service attacks against specific services or networks, according to Dandurand.
The Symantec cyber security firm recently reported that web-based attacks in 2010 were up 93 percent from 2009.
"The need for such a team is obvious," Dandurand said, adding it would primarily be tasked with detecting, responding to and assessing the "damage cyber attacks can cause in a military sense."
Dandurand also highlighted legal and privacy issues that must be addressed before NATO's cyber force can take shape.
"The two main issues identified at this point are the need to legitimize the Cyber Red Team activities that could otherwise be construed as the malicious or unauthorized use of computer systems, and the potential for invasion of privacy resulting from cyber red team activities," he told experts gathered at NATO's Tallinn-based Cyber Defence Centre.
"Cyber-attacks against Estonia in the Spring of 2007, during Russia's operation in Georgia in 2008, and the many more cyber attacks we have seen worldwide since then have shown us there is a new kind of war that can cause a lot of damage," Maj. Gen. Jonathan Shaw, a British defense ministry official told delegates.
"We need a response system and we need to learn to respond fast. In the cyber world you have to do lot of homework before the attack in order to be effective," he added.
The three-day conference, which kicked off June 7 and is attended by 300 international cyber experts, focuses on the legal and political aspects of national and global Internet security.

NATO Addresses Cyber Security at Tallinn Meeting

TALLINN, Estonia - Three hundred global cyber experts gathered in Tallinn on June 7 for a NATO Cyber Conflict conference focused on the legal and political aspects of national and global Internet security amid a rise in attacks.
"The special focus at the conference this year is on generating cyber forces (...) the technologies, people and organizations that nations require to mitigate cyber threats that have been increasing with rapid speed," Col. Ilmar Tamm, head of NATO's Tallinn-based Cyber Defence Centre told AFP as the forum got underway .

According to Tamm, the Symantec cyber security firm recently reported that "web-based attacks in 2010 were up 93 percent from 2009."
"This calls for frameworks in both legal and strategic aspects which would guide the decision makers on how to act on these cases," Tamm said.
The Tallinn conference will coincide with a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels where a new cyber defense policy for NATO will be adopted.
Meanwhile, at the third annual Tallinn meeting, experts from 37 countries are to share cutting-edge cyber security research, Tamm explained.
Among others, Ralph Langner, the German computer scientist who conducted much of the ground-breaking research on the Stuxnet worm, will present an analysis of what has been called the world's first cyber weapon.
Keir Giles from the U.K. Conflict Studies Research Centre is to analyze global cyber attacks from Russia and whether they can be seen as acting under a so-called Russian Cyber Command.
Talks will also focus on the recent U.S. government decision to treat cyber attacks as military attacks and make relevant legislative changes.
"The support the U.S. initiative has got in many other states, including Estonia and the U.K., indicates nations' increasing willingness to discuss military responses to cyber attacks," Tamm told AFP.
"With cyber incidents becoming more and more intrusive, it is a logical step for militaries to develop capabilities to counter cyber attacks and be prepared to engage in proportional response to cyber attacks," he added.
Though in practice, "it will be challenging to tailor a cyber response that would respect the rules of combat related to civilian objects and collateral damage," he added.

Otokar Wins $63.2M Armored Vehicle Deal

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's leading armored vehicles manufacturer, Otokar, announced it won a $63.2 million deal to sell its six-wheel-drive armored vehicle, the Arma, which it launched in 2010.
Otokar said in a press release that this is the second export contract the company secured after the launch of the Arma. The first contract came from an unnamed Middle East country and was worth $10 million. Otokar did not name the new buyer country for reasons of contractual confidentiality.

Otokar, based in Arifiye, near Istanbul, is owned by Turkish business conglomerate Koc Holding. The armored vehicles maker also is listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.
Otokar said it will complete deliveries for the new Arma deal in 2012. CEO Serdar Gorguc said that he saw strong prospective demand for the Arma from an increasing number of armies worldwide. Otokar's armored vehicles have been sold to more than 20 countries, he said.
The Arma is an amphibious tactical wheeled armored vehicle. Company officials say it has a high degree of ballistic and mine protection thanks to its high steel hull. But Otokar's signature product is the Cobra, a four-wheel-drive tactical armored vehicle, exported to nearly 10 countries in the Balkans, the Middle East and Southeast Asia since the mid-1990s.
Otokar also is the Turkish prime contractor for a multibillion-dollar program for the design, development and manufacturing of Turkey's first domestically produced main battle tank, the Altay.

PLA 20 Years Behind U.S. Military: Chinese DM

SINGAPORE - There is a 20-year gap between China and the U.S. military in equipment, weapons and systems, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie told the 10th Shangri-La Dialogue on June 5 in Singapore.

Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie speaks on international security cooperation during the annual Asia-Pacific forum in Singapore on June 5. (Roslan Rahman / AFP)

"I would call the gap big," he said. Liang acknowledged that China's military modernization has improved, but the "main battle equipment of our services ... is mainly second-generation weapons." China does not have a large arsenal of third-generation weapons, systems or platforms. "For example, the army is still being motorized, not mechanized," he said.

Liang conceded that China's military modernization has drawn the attention and concern of the international community and there have been questions over China's capability, but China does not "seek hegemony" and has a right to defend its "core interests," which include protecting its sovereignty.
After years of ignoring the Shangri-La Dialogue, China sent an unprecedented senior-level delegation. The annual conference is sponsored by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), officially known as the IISS Asia Security Summit, and includes the attendance of defense ministers from across the globe, including U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Liang said military-to-military relations with the U.S. were improving. The U.S. just concluded meetings in May with senior Chinese defense officials in Washington for the Security and Economic Dialogue, and the Pentagon hosted a separate visit by Gen. Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff, People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Gates visited China in January for high-level talks designed to get military-to-military exchanges back online after they were severed to protest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan in 2010.
There was some discussion at the summit over an incident May 26 in the South China Sea involving three Chinese vessels harassing a Vietnamese oil survey ship. Though both China and Vietnam downplayed tensions at the Shangri-La, there were obvious signs of Chinese anxiety.
A Chinese PLA officer showed up at a press conference held by Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh, Vietnam's deputy minister of defense, and took notes. When a journalist asked if she was "spying on the Vietnamese" she refused to answer.
One of the prominent features of this dialogue was China's "big footprint," said Singapore-based Tim Huxley, executive director, IISS-Asia. Not only was this the first Shangri-La to include a Chinese defense minister, it was also the first time there were five Chinese speakers in three of the five closed-door special sessions, he said.
Other high-level Chinese delegates included Rear Adm. Guan Youfei, deputy chief, Foreign Affairs Office, Ministry of National Defense; Senior Col. Ou Yangwei, director, Center for Defense Mobilization Studies, National Defense University; Major Gen. Song Dan, deputy director general, General Office, Central Military Commission; Lt. Gen. Wei Fenghe, deputy chief of general staff, PLA; and Xiao Jianguo, director, Department of Ocean Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

BAE, Dassault Aim for Quick Action on UAV Project

PARIS - BAE Systems and Dassault Aviation could deliver a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft system in 2016 if Britain and France sign a joint development and production contract this year, company executives said June 8.
The two companies could design and build in five years a new 8-ton, twin-propeller surveillance air vehicle with 24-hour endurance, Dassault international director Eric Trappier told journalists.

BAE, the British aerospace giant, and Dassault, the French aircraft maker, unveiled the name of their joint UAV project, dubbed Telemos, for which a full-scale model will go on static display at the Paris Air Show, which opens June 20.
"We're ready," Trappier said. "If a contract were signed in 2011, we could deliver in 2016."
The planned drone also would be designed to carry a range of bombs, such as the GBU and armement air-sol modulaire (AASM) precision weapons.
The design teams would be staff members with combat aircraft experience at BAE and Dassault, and would vary between 50 to 100 personnel.
Peter Richardson, BAE's director of staff and technology, said that since money is tight, the UAV would be built under "a fully integrated program." There would be flexibility for national requirements for mission systems and sensors, but the aim would be to "eliminate duplication," he said.
London and Paris would need to each invest 500 million euros ($731.9 million) in the program, which would include design, development, build and support, Trappier said.
The companies hope for a quick launch decision by London and Paris, which identified cross-channel cooperation on a MALE UAV, and later a combat unmanned air system, in the bilateral defense treaty they signed last November.
Asked if there is room in the project for EADS, Trappier said if EADS has equipment and competences, it could take part, but the two companies leading the project are BAE and Dassault.
In a June 7 closed-door session, EADS Chief Executive Louis Gallois told members of the French parliament's defense committee that if Britain and France go ahead with the BAE-Dassault offer, the European defense company would be forced to pursue its own MALE UAV effort, an industry executive said. The EADS project would be based on the company's Talarion Advanced UAV, the executive said.
Rival UAV offers from BAE-Dassault and EADS would repeat the competition between the Eurofighter Typhoon and Rafale twin-engine combat jets, which should be avoided, Gallois said.
Trappier said, "It's better to have two competing offers than zero offers."
French Defense Minister Gérard Longuet told the lawmakers he wanted to speed up the work with the British partners on defining the requirement for the MALE drone, newsweekly Le Point reported.
Asked about a possible role for Italian industry, Trappier said, "This is the locomotive." The program would be open to other partners. "We are not against Europe," he said.
For the UAV's engines, Rolls-Royce and Safran could collaborate, but there also is a Canadian option, while Thales and Selex UK could work jointly on the aircraft's radar, Trappier said.
Telemos is the name in Greek mythology of a Cyclops sentinel who warned of an attack by the warrior-wanderer Ulysses. That classical reference illustrates the drone's ability to anticipate events, Trappier said.
Notwithstanding that alert, Ulysses outwitted Polyphemus, put out his single eye with a red-hot pointed olive stake and escaped