NATO Is Pushing Europeans for Fivefold Boost to Air Defenses
NATO is asking European member states to expand ground-based air-defense capabilities fivefold as the alliance races to fill a key gap in response to the threat of Russian aggression, people familiar with the matter said.
The ramp-up will be discussed at a gathering of North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday, the people said on condition of anonymity as deliberations take place behind closed doors.
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Associated Press
36 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Pope meets with child protection advisory board amid survivor calls for zero tolerance on abuse
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV met with members of the Vatican's child protection advisory commission on Thursday for the first time amid questions about his past handling of clergy sex abuse cases and demands from survivors that he enact a true policy of zero tolerance for abuse across the Catholic Church. The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which is made up of religious and lay experts in fighting abuse as well as survivors, called the hourlong audience a 'significant moment of reflection, dialogue, and renewal of the church's unwavering commitment to the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people.' The group said it updated history's first American pope on its activities, including an initiative to help church communities in poorer parts of the world prevent abuse and care for victims. The Vatican did not provide the text of Leo's remarks or make the audio of the audience available to reporters. Pope Francis created the commission early on in his pontificate to advise the church on best practices and placed a trusted official, Boston's then-archbishop, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, in charge. But as the abuse scandal spread globally during Francis' 12-year pontificate, the commission lost its influence its crowning recommendation — the creation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests — went nowhere. After many years of reform and new members, it has become a place where victims can go to be heard and bishops can get advice on crafting guidelines to fight abuse. O'Malley turned 80 last year and retired as archbishop of Boston, but he remains president of the commission and headed the delegation meeting with Leo in the Apostolic Palace. It has often fallen to O'Malley to speak out on egregious cases that have arrived at the Vatican, including one that remains on Leo's desk: The fate of the ex-Jesuit artist, the Rev. Marko Rupnik, who has been accused by two dozen women of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse over decades. After coming under criticism that a fellow Jesuit had apparently received preferential treatment, Francis in 2023 ordered the Vatican to waive the statute of limitations on the case and prosecute him canonically. But as recently as March, the Vatican still hadn't found judges to open the trial. Meanwhile, the victims are still waiting for justice and Rupnik continues to minister, with his supporters defending him and denouncing a 'media lynching' campaign against him. Leo, the Chicago-born former Cardinal Robert Prevost, has been credited by victims of helping to dismantle an abusive Catholic movement in Peru, where he served as bishop for many years. But other survivors have asked him to account for other cases while he was a superior in the Augustinian religious order, bishop in Peru and head of the Vatican's bishops' office. The main U.S. survivor group, SNAP, has also called for Leo to adopt the U.S. policy calling for any priest who has been credibly accused of abuse to be permanently removed from ministry. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
Ukraine's drone attack on Russian air bases is a lesson for the West on its vulnerabilities
The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks. 'Operation Spiderweb,' which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked at air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn't just a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defense systems against such hybrid drone warfare, military experts said. Ukraine took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow's favor. How deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine. Still, the operation showed what 'modern war really looks like and why it's so important to stay ahead with technology,' said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For Western governments, it's a warning that 'the spectrum of threats they're going to have to take into consideration only gets broader,' said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. In the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to Ukraine. Unidentified drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the U.S., the U.K and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in Norway. High-value weapons and other technology at those sites are 'big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors,' said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington. 'The time is now' to invest in anti-drone defenses, she said. Low-cost options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building decoys. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion 'Golden Dome' program using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range missiles. Not mentioned were defenses against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from abroad. Drones 'dramatically increase' the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS. 'How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?' he said. In 'Operation Spiderweb,' Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Russia. Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years ago. SBU video showed drones swooping over and under Russian aircraft, some of which were covered by tires. Experts suggested the tires could have been used to confuse an automatic targeting system by breaking up the plane's silhouette or to offer primitive protection. 'The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard,' Barrie said. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at Irkutsk's Belaya Air Base, a major installation for Russia's long-range bomber force. At least three Tu-95 four-engine turboprop bombers and four Tu-22M twin-engine supersonic bombers appear to be destroyed. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian military has adopted a creative approach to warfare . Its forces deployed wooden decoys of expensive U.S. HIMARS air defense systems to draw Russia's missile fire, created anti-drone units that operate on pickup trucks, and repurposed captured weapons. Experts compared Sunday's attack to Israel's operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and Iran. The U.S. used Predator drones more than a decade ago to kill insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away. Developments in technology have made those capabilities available in smaller drones. Hinz compared the state of drone warfare to that of the development of the tank, which made its debut in 1916 in World War I. Engineers sought to work out how to best integrate tanks into a working battlefield scenario — contemplating everything from a tiny vehicle to a giant one 'with 18 turrets' before settling on the version used in World War II. With drones, 'we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow,' he said. The Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are 'effectively irreplaceable' because they're no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West's AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these. 'Whichever way you cut the cake for Russia, this requires expense,' said Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute in London. 'You can see the billions of dollars mounting up,' Russia must repair the damaged planes, better protect its remaining aircraft and improve its ability to disrupt such operations, he said. Experts also suggested the strikes could force Moscow to speed up its program to replace the Tu-95. While underscoring Russian vulnerabilities, it's not clear if it will mean reduced airstrikes on Ukraine. Russia has focused on trying to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses with drones throughout the war, including the use of decoys without payloads. On some nights last month, Moscow launched over 300 drones. 'Even if Ukraine was able to damage a significant portion of the Russian bomber force, it's not entirely clear that the bomber force was playing a linchpin role in the war at this point,' Lee said. Ukrainian air force data analyzed by AP shows that from July 2024 through December 2024, Russia used Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s 14 times against Ukraine but used drones almost every night. Sunday's operation might temporarily reduce Russia's ability to launch strategic missile attacks but it will probably find ways to compensate, Lee said. ——- Associated Press writer Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
NATO agrees on largest armament programme in decades
NATO has agreed on the largest rearmament programme since the Cold War, sources close to the talks told dpa on Thursday. It provides for a huge expansion of deterrence and defence capacities in the coming years, as Russia continues to pose a major threat to the Western military alliance. The top priorities are long-range weapons systems, air defence and mobile land forces, according to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The rearmament programme entails specific targets for different military capabilities. Individual NATO countries are given precise instructions on what they have to contribute to joint deterrence and defence in the near future. The required capabilities were defined based on new defence plans. These also take into account assessments by intelligence services' that Russia could be ready to attack a NATO ally in just a few years, despite Moscow's ongoing war against Ukraine.
