🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇹🇼 China's recent military exercises surrounding Taiwan "looked like a rehearsal" for an invasion, U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Samuel Paparo told Nikkei.

🗳 The large-scale exercises took place just after new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te took office. The drills are a part of China's pressure campaign to bring the island under its control as Beijing regards Lai as a troublemaker.

🏗 Asked about the possibility of China invading Taiwan, Paparo stressed, "What matters is [China's] own assessments," warning that Beijing continues to "build capability at an alarming rate."

💥 If shooting did break out in the region, Paparo said he is confident the U.S. and its allies and partners would "prevail in a conflict."

🇯🇵 The U.S. has been promoting "integrated deterrence" with these allies and partners. Calling the U.S.-Japan alliance "the most important alliance on the planet," Paparo touted the countries' joint operational capability. "Japanese units are within the formation, and are nearly indistinguishable in how we share, track and [in] our ability to operate tactically," he said.

🇵🇭 As for the tensions in the South China Sea, where Chinese ships have repeatedly harassed Philippine ships, Paparo said, "We're monitoring the situation, and we stand ready to come to the aid of our treaty ally, the Philippines." He added that the Netherlands, Italy and Germany will enhance deterrence in the South China Sea through efforts such as dispatching vessels.

🇰🇵 Elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region, North Korea attempted to launch a rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite on Monday. Although the attempt failed, the threat to the security of Japan and the United States has been increasing.

⚡️ "The lessons of the last five years have shown that we're living in an increasingly chaotic and disordered world," Paparo said.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/China-s-drills-appear-to-be-rehearsal-for-Taiwan-invasion-U.S.-admiral

https://archive.ph/RGODo

🏴‍☠️ 🇾🇪 🇮🇱 Statement by the Yemeni Armed Forces regarding the implementation of six military operations within the framework of the fourth phase of escalation against six ships that violated the ban on the passage of ships to the ports of occupied Palestine 5/29/2024 AD

https://t.iss.one/army21ye/1777

🇷🇺🇦🇫 The Taliban officially stated that they highly appreciate Russia's position on the issue of recognition of the Taliban and are ready to eliminate the existing problematic issues necessary for the recognition process. Apparently, the issue of recognition is really moving forward and within 1-1.5 years the Russian Federation will recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The United States has already whined that it has a negative attitude towards the possible recognition of the Taliban by Russia. Fortunately, for both the Russian Federation and the Taliban, the opinion of the United States matters somewhere around zero.

🔦🇪🇭❌🇲🇦 — The Polisario Front stroke 26-27th May 2024 two positions of the Moroccan army with rockets.

Statement from the movement :

💡 Advanced detachments of our commando army carried out a concentrated bombardment yesterday, Sunday, targeting the enemy's military trenches in the Fadra Laghrab area in the Hawza sector.

💡 Also, today, Monday, May 27, 2024, a cowardly Royal Army base was targeted in the Al-Fayyin area in the Al-Farsia sector

@saheliananalyst

🏹 🇺🇸 🇷🇺 The US gave up sending Ukraine Excalibur guided artillery shells costing $100,000 because they rarely hit their target, report says

🔶️ Russia had achieved success in jamming of US-supplied weapons, reports said.
Classified reports revealed the Excalibur shell strike success dropped from 55% to 6% last summer.

🔶️ The cost of the Excalibur has soared, according to a Government Accountability Office report, to roughly $100,000 per shell in 2022, as much as 50 times the cost of an unguided 155mm shell, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

🔶️ Russian jamming has also affected HIMARS missile and glide bombs

🔶️ The HIMARS system, which can fire rockets up to 50 miles, has also been hampered by Russian jamming, a Ukrainian military source told The Post.

🔶️ Earlier this week, a report revealed that US-supplied glide bombs were continually missing their targets as a result of Russian jamming, too.

🔶️ "The gap between where the United States should be and where we are, in my judgment, continues to expand not everywhere, but in far too many places," Nagata said at the SOF Week conference in Tampa, Florida.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-gave-up-sending-ukraine-100k-excalibur-shells-hit-targets-2024-5