The Royal Navy currently has zero attack submarines available for operations, with all five of its Astute-class hunter-killer boats docked for maintenance or technical issues.
According to multiple reports, the entire fleet of Astute-class submarines — HMS Astute, Ambush, Artful, Audacious, and Anson — is alongside, leaving Britain without a single operational nuclear-powered attack submarine for the first time in recent memory.
NATO?
HELSINKI — Finland joined NATO just over three years ago, expecting to walk into an efficient and well-funded defensive alliance capable of warding off its belligerent Russian neighbors.
Finnish government leaders are not afraid to admit that they found NATO to be much more disorganized and underfunded than they hoped, echoing recent complaints from President Donald Trump.
BRUSSELS/BERLIN – The U.S. expects European NATO allies and Canada to swiftly increase the number of manned and unmanned aircraft and ships they contribute to the alliance’s defence plans as Washington steps back in these areas, a top U.S. general said on Wednesday.
The statement by U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s top commander and the head of U.S. forces in Europe, followed a decision by the Trump administration to shrink the pool of U.S. military capabilities available to NATO in a crisis.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO and told its European members they will have to take over primary responsibility for the conventional defence of the continent.
NATO has said it stands ready to defend “every inch” of allied territory and condemned the “recklessness” of Russia, after a Russian drone struck an apartment block in eastern Romania overnight.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte telephoned Romanian President Nicușor Dan to convey the alliance’s “absolute solidarity” and his thoughts for those injured in the strike, the former Dutch prime minister said in a post on social media.
Donald Trump is set to slash the arsenal of US fighter jets, warships and submarines reserved for NATO allies should a military crisis erupt in Europe.
A military envoy sent by Pete Hegseth blindsided senior NATO officials in a classified Brussels briefing late last week, revealing US firepower committed to defending Europe will significantly decline, Der Spiegel and Reuters reported.
The US fighter jet commitment to NATO is to be slashed by a third, while the Navy will withdraw destroyers from the alliance’s pool.
The Pentagon wants to see Canada articulate a clear plan on how the country intends to meet NATO’s new military spending benchmark before resuming binational defence planning co-operation.
The absence of a plan to spend 3.5 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product on the military, plus an additional 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence infrastructure, appears to be at the heart of this week’s suspension of the U.S.–Canada Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD).
Senior Pentagon officials, speaking on background Thursday to mostly Canadian journalists, also cited the absence of a decision on whether to proceed with the full purchase of American-made F-35 fighter jets as another major irritant.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to reassure allies over US decisions on troop deployments in Europe.
Rubio’s intervention at the end of a Nato foreign ministers’ meeting in Sweden came after President Donald Trump said the US would send an extra 5,000 troops to Poland.
That decision was a week after a planned deployment of 4,000 troops to the country was cancelled and days after an announcement that US troops would be pulled out of Germany.
The Pentagon on Tuesday said that it was reducing the number of US Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) in Europe from three to four.
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement that the US was reducing the number of its soldiers on the continent as a result of a “comprehensive, multilayered process” focused on US posture in Europe.
A BCT comprises 4,000 to 4,700 personnel, according to a congressional report.
The Liberal government is nominating Canada’s top military commander to be the next chair of the NATO military committee when the post becomes vacant next year.
Defence Minister David McGuinty announced the candidacy of Gen. Jennie Carignan on Wednesday and said she’ll continue in her current role until next year.
An election for the post will be held in September.
A golden parachute jump?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wonders what the point of the United States remaining in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is if countries in the alliance won’t help the United States when needed.
Rubio made the comments on Wednesday in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity aboard Air Force One en route to the summit in China. He questioned whether the countries are actually committed to an alliance with the U.S. after several NATO countries refused to grant the U.S. permission to use its air bases for operations in the war with Iran. Rubio was miffed with those countries’ decision.
VILSECK, Germany—A line of tattooed, beefed-up men with bushy beards and American accents formed at the bakery in this tiny Bavarian town on a recent May morning. U.S. muscle cars are driven down the medieval streets here, where Americans outnumber Germans 2 to 1.
Enclaves like this sprouted across Germany in areas occupied by U.S. forces after World War II, shaping the society around them for several generations. Elvis Presley served near here in the 1950s and performed at the local pub.
But Germany’s “Little Americas” are dying out.
Latvian and Canadian troops are conducting a large-scale exercise with ground drones for the first time, taking remote warfare out of the skies and applying it directly to the battlefield.
They’re taking lessons from ex-Ukrainian soldiers and tech companies in a stunning reversal of training roles, and scrambling to adapt the new technology just as the Baltic country is plunged into a political crisis over a mistaken aerial drone strike on an oil storage facility.
“For me, it’s no doubt that drones are coming into the game,” said Latvian Lt.-Col. Andris Bruveris, commander of the Second Mechanized Infantry Battalion, known as the Iron Battalion.
For years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been playing a sleazy double game: presenting himself to the West as a regional mediator and responsible NATO ally while simultaneously transforming Turkey into a sanctuary for Hamas terrorists outside the Gaza Strip.
New revelations emerging from Israeli security investigations have shattered any illusion that Turkey’s relationship with Hamas is limited to “political support” or “diplomatic engagement.” The evidence increasingly points to a situation far more alarming: Turkey has become a primary operational, logistical, and financial hub for Hamas’s global terror infrastructure.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has claimed that Europe has “gotten the message” from President Donald Trump, who has vowed consequences for the disloyalty displayed by supposed allies during the conflict with the Islamist Iranian regime.
Last week’s announcement of the withdrawal of around 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany—followed by Donald Trump’s warning that there will be “many more”—has shaken Europe’s strategic landscape at a particularly sensitive moment.
Not only because of the scale but because of the transatlantic context: direct political friction between Washington and Berlin, war in the Middle East, and a NATO that is once again questioning itself.
Germany remains the main U.S. military hub in Europe, with more than 36,000 personnel, key infrastructure such as Ramstein and Stuttgart, and a central logistical role for operations across three theaters—Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The announced withdrawal affects only a fraction, but the message Washington intends to send carries greater weight.
