Latest news with #defenceMinistry
South China Morning Post
23-06-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Why more young Chinese have military academies in their sights
Advertisement The defence ministry's announcement last month that three new military academies would start recruiting high school graduates from this summer has been viewed more than 8 million times on social media platform Weibo. Many users said they were excited to have the opportunity to serve their country. The new academies are the People's Liberation Army Ground Force Service Academy in Hefei, Anhui province; the PLA Information Support Force Engineering University in Wuhan, Hubei; and the PLA Joint Logistics Support Force Engineering University in Chongqing. But recruitment will not be expanded – the total number of new recruits will be 'basically the same' as last year, the ministry said, without elaborating. The new academies have incorporated some units from existing military schools. Those mergers are part of a restructure of the military education system in recent years, which the ministry said was being done to create a 'more efficient and higher quality' system for nurturing talent and to achieve what it called a 'core need for war preparation'. The ministry has also scrapped the requirement for military academy students to have three years of work experience before they can become commanders. From this year, students can sit postgraduate entrance exams to follow this career path immediately after they graduate from a military academy.
Free Malaysia Today
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Finland summons Russian diplomat after suspected airspace violation
Finland's defence minister Antti Hakkanen said an investigation into yesterday's incident has been launched. (AFP pic) HELSINKI: Finland on Wednesday summoned Russia's charge d'affaires for talks, a day after a Russian military aircraft was suspected of violating Finnish airspace, the foreign ministry told AFP. Finland's defence ministry said on Tuesday that it believed a Russian military aircraft had violated Finnish airspace off the coast of Porvoo, east of the capital Helsinki. The foreign ministry said it would provide more details after the talks. The incident came only weeks after a similar incident, which was also followed by a summoning of Russia's diplomatic representative. Finland, which joined Nato in 2023 after Moscow's fully-fledged invasion of Ukraine a year earlier, shares a 1,340km border with Russia. 'An investigation into the alleged violation of airspace was launched immediately,' defence minister Antti Hakkanen said of Tuesday's incident, adding that the coast guard would head the inquiry. Moscow has repeatedly warned Finland of possible repercussions over its decision to join Nato, amid heightened tensions. Hakkanen told AFP in mid-May that Finland was 'closely monitoring and assessing Russia's activities and intentions'. He was commenting after the New York Times published satellite images appearing to show an expansion of Russian military infrastructure near the border.
South China Morning Post
09-06-2025
- South China Morning Post
Explosion rocks US airbase in Japan's Okinawa; 4 injured
An explosion occurred at a Japanese military facility inside a US airbase in Okinawa, officials said, with local media reporting non-life-threatening injuries. A defence ministry spokesman said they had received reports of an explosion at the Japan Self-Defence Forces (SDF) facility inside Kadena Air Base in the southern Japanese region. Jiji Press and other local media said four injuries had been reported, but none were life-threatening. Public broadcaster NHK said, citing unnamed defence ministry sources, that the explosion may have occurred at a temporary storage site for unexploded bombs, with officials trying to confirm the situation. 'We've heard there was an explosion at the SDF facility and also heard there were injuries but we don't have further details,' said Yuta Matsuda, a local official of Yomitan village in Okinawa. More to follow …
Reuters
28-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Exclusive: NATO to ask Berlin for seven more brigades under new targets, sources say
BERLIN, May 28 (Reuters) - NATO will ask Germany to provide seven more brigades, or some 40,000 troops, for the alliance's defence, three sources told Reuters, under new targets for weapons and troop numbers that its members' defence ministers are set to agree on next week. The alliance is dramatically increasing its military capability targets as it views Russia as a much greater threat since its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Exact figures for NATO's targets - either overall or country by country - are hard to verify as the information is highly classified. One senior military official who, like the other sources spoke on condition of anonymity, said the target for the total number of brigades that NATO allies would have to provide in future will be raised to between 120 and 130. This would mean a hike of some 50% from the current target of around 80 brigades, the source said. A government source put the target at 130 brigades for all of NATO. Neither the German defence ministry nor NATO responded immediately to requests for comment. In 2021, Germany agreed to provide 10 brigades - units usually comprising around 5,000 troops - for NATO by 2030. It currently has eight brigades and is building up a ninth in Lithuania to be ready from 2027. Providing a further 40,000 active troops will be a big challenge for Berlin, however. The Bundeswehr has not yet met a target of 203,000 troops set in 2018, and is currently short-staffed by some 20,000 regular troops, according to defence ministry data. Last year, Reuters reported that NATO would need 35 to 50 extra brigades to fully realise its new plans to defend against an attack from Russia and that Germany alone would have to quadruple its air defence capabilities. Furthermore, the new NATO targets do not yet reflect any provisions for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe, sources said, the prospect of which has rattled Europeans due to NATO's defence plans that rely heavily on U.S. assets. Washington has said it will start discussing its reduction plans with allies later this year. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has told Europeans that the United States can no longer be primarily focused on European security. During the Cold War, Germany maintained 500,000 troops and 800,000 reserve forces. Today, alongside Poland, it is tasked by NATO with providing the bulk of ground forces that would be first responders to any Russian attack on the alliance's eastern flank. NATO members have massively increased defence spending since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and have been urged to go further by Trump, who has threatened not to defend countries lagging behind on defence spending. At a summit in The Hague next month, the alliance's head Mark Rutte will seek an agreement from national leaders to more than double their current spending target from 2% of GDP to 5% - with 3.5% for defence and 1.5% for more broadly defined security-related spending. In a historic shift, Germany recently loosened its constitutional debt brake so that it can raise defence spending, and it has backed Rutte's 5% target. German Chief of Defence Carsten Breuer has ordered his country's forces to be fully equipped by 2029, by which time the alliance expects Moscow to have reconstituted its military forces sufficiently to attack NATO territory.
