RUSSIA: Is this Putin's new leading lady?

Russian President Vladimir Putin just announced his divorce from his wife of 30 years.

'We Face a Very Serious Chinese Military Threat'

Japan's former defense minister talks to FP about cyberattacks, the East China Sea face-off, and whether North Korea's Kim Jong Un is a puppet dictator.

SOUTH KOREA Blames North for Cancelled Talks

South Korea's unification minister says the cancellation of high-level talks with the North is an unfortunate but necessary part of its new relationship with Pyongyang.

The talks, which were to be held Wednesday in Seoul, were called off at the last minute because of what appears to be a relatively minor disagreement over who would represent each country.

Unification minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said Wednesday the blame for the cancelled talks lies with the North, which he said must show ...

Abenomics Threatens Japan’s F-35s?

Wednesday security links:
In an interview with Defense News, Satoshi Morimoto, Japan’s former defense minister, warned that the country’s plans to procure 42 F-35 fighter jets by 2021 could be delayed by two years due to the devaluation of the yen. Tokyo had plans to import for the first four JSFs by 2017 and locally assemble the remaining 38.

In other F-35 news, the House Armed Services Committee in the U.S. Congress rejected an amendment that would have frozen funding for the JSF program for the 2014 defense budget.

In further F-35 news, Breaking Defense reports that U.S. Air Force’s version fired its first in-flight air-to-air missile and its concurrency cost estimates dropped by the negligible figure of US$500 million.
Meanwhile, in non-F-35 news, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin announced on Tuesday that his country will have a “pre-emptive missile destruction system by 2020” to guard against threats posed by North Korea.  The system will detect signs of an impending missile launches, allowing Seoul to take pre-emptive action to destroy the missiles. This is consistent with South Korea’s “active deterrence” military doctrine, which Kim unveiled earlier this year.

Foreign Policy's John Reed provides a slideshow of what some believe is China's new stealth bomber design.

In a new report, the Center for a New American Security examines the rise of bilateral security ties in Asia between countries not named China or the United States.

The U.S. Congressional committee, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, has a new backgrounder examining the implications of Taiwan’s declining defense spending.

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