This year’s ‘biggest ever’ Balikatan exercises kicked off as Manila took delivery of a state-of-the-art missile system from India – and had hopes for US$2.5 billion in US military aid.

A video of the incident showed one of the helicopters clipping the rotor of the other before the two crashed to the ground at Lumut naval base in the western state of Perak.

The Mobile Cooperation Team initiative was first set up in 2017 as part of Tokyo’s efforts to train and equip the coastguards of Southeast Asian nations that felt threatened by China’s presence.

Disinformation campaigns waged by China and Russia fan misperceptions amid years-long ‘drumbeat of very negative information’, says Kurt Campbell.

Manila has received its first batch of BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles from India, in a carefully timed shipment observers say is the start of a ‘clear push’ to expand military sales with Southeast Asia.

Swedish think tank finds regional expenditure on armed forces rises at its highest rate in a decade.

A long-delayed US$61 billion in funding for Kyiv’s forces has cleared the House but still needs a vote in the Senate.

The SH-60K reconnaissance helicopters carrying a total of eight crew lost contact near Torishima island, about 600km south of Tokyo.

Yemen’s Iran-based Houthi rebels have attacked almost 100 vessels in the vital trading route of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in months of strikes.

Beijing will feel ‘inconvenient’ as Washington steps up trilateral military cooperation to stem Pyongyang threats, expert says.

The Ukrainian president is seeking more air defence systems from Western allies after a drone of fatal drone and missile attacks from Russia.

Next week’s iteration of the annual joint exercise will be the biggest and a clear signal to Beijing, observers say.

The US and UK on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran as concern grows that Tehran’s unprecedented attack on Israel could fuel a wider war in the Middle East.

Mid-range launcher now in the Philippines is a ‘powerful weapon’ capable of retaliatory strikes on mainland China, analysts say.

Impact of study on US military’s F-22 fighter jet could be great given range of its air-to-air missiles and required radius for ground bomb attacks, says team.

Up to 17,000 participants are expected to take part in the exercises, including 16,000 members of the Philippine and US military forces.

Six vessels would participate in the Balikatan exercise that involves a simulation of an armed recapture of an island near the South China Sea.

Legislation comes amid alarm in Washington over volume of material moving from Beijing to Moscow and said to be turning up on battlefields in Ukraine.

Washington should offer ‘alternatives to what our competitors are offering’, says Foreign Relations committee chair, referring to Beijing’s advances.

President Zelensky called on Kyiv’s allies to rush in air defence support after the city, which had a pre-war population of 300,000, became the latest target of an intensifying Russian air strike campaign.

The BBC found that more than 27,300 Russian soldiers died during the second year of the war, a 25-percent increase on the first year.

The 80-page document unveiled on Wednesday explicitly calls out ‘China’s coercive tactics in pursuit of its strategic objectives’. Australia’s optimistic assumptions for the post-Cold War era ‘are long gone’, the defence minister said.

The video call between Secretary Lloyd Austin and Admiral Dong Jun, who was appointed defence minister in December, is the latest sign of a thaw in US-China relations.

In the last few months, political observers have noted Singapore’s political elite expressing greater empathy for the plight of Palestinians.

The destroyed Trypilska thermal power plant was the largest energy facility near Kyiv and was built to have a capacity of 1,800 megawatts, more than the pre-war needs of Ukraine’s biggest city