JROC’s Next Target: ‘Integrated Air & Missile Defense’
Theresa Hitchens | Breaking Defense
The next “strategic directive” from the Joint Requirements Oversight Board (JROC) instructing the services how to shape future forces will focus on “integrated air and missile defense,” says Joint Chiefs Vice Chair Gen. John Hyten. As a first step, he told the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala. today, the JROC will do a “capability gap assessment of everything in that portfolio” to be completed sometime in the fall — and which will be folded into the Defense Department’s ongoing Missile Defense Review. That IAMD capability review will eventually result in a strategic directive, which will mandate the joint requirements for an “overarching structure” for integrated air and missile defense that future service programs will need “to plug into,” Hyten explained.
Iran President Picks Hawkish Diplomat to Lead Nuclear Talks
Golnar Motevalli | Bloomberg
Iran’s new president picked a hawkish Foreign Ministry veteran with close ties to the military elite to replace Mohammad Javad Zarif as the nation’s top diplomat, underscoring the shift in power that’s clouding the resumption of nuclear talks with world powers. Hossein Amirabdollahian, a fluent Arabic speaker and previously deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, was proposed for the role in a list of cabinet ministers presented to lawmakers on Wednesday by President Ebrahim Raisi.
U.S., Russian Defense Chiefs Talk by Phone About ‘Strategic Stability’
Radio Free Europe
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, have spoken by telephone about ongoing “strategic stability” talks launched last month after a recent presidential summit. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on August 11 Austin and Shoigu discussed “transparency and risk-reduction efforts following the July 28 resumption of the U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue.” The Russian Defense Ministry said the two talked about “the results of bilateral consultations on strategic stability, as well as issues of global and regional security.”
Another ICBM Test Successful, Air Force Says
James R. Webb | Military Times
Airmen of Air Force Global Strike Command launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a test re-entry vehicle from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 12:53 Pacific Time Wednesday morning, the Air Force said in a release. While stripped of its nuclear payload for the launch, the ICBM contained conventional explosives aboard a Hi-Fidelity Joint Test Assembly re-entry vehicle, which successfully detonated above the water’s surface near Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, some 4,200 miles from the launch site.
N Korea Repeats Threat as US Says Joint Drills Are Defensive
Kim Tong-Hyung | Associated Press
North Korea on Wednesday repeated a threat to respond to U.S.-South Korean military exercises it claims are an invasion rehearsal, while the United States insisted the drills were “purely defensive in nature” to maintain the South’s security. In a statement released by state media on Wednesday, senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol condemned South Korea for continuing the allied drills and warned of unspecified counteractions that would make Seoul “realize by the minute” that it had walked into a security crisis.
Russia’s 1st Regiment of Avangard Hypersonic Missiles to Go on Combat Alert by Yearend
TASS
The first regiment of strategic missile systems with the Avangard boost-glide vehicle will go on combat duty by the end of this year, 13th Missile Division Commander Major General Andrei Cherevko said on Tuesday. “Measures continue in the 13th missile division to rearm it with new strategic missile systems. The task set for 2021 stipulates completing procedures to place the first missile regiment with the Avangard missile systems on combat duty,” the commander reported to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during the single military output acceptance day.