“Russian government-affiliated actors launched coordinated cyber attacks against Ukrainian government and military targets before and during the attack and seizure of Ukrainian ships and sailors on November 25, a private intelligence firm announced this week. The attacks appeared to be aimed at stealing information that would have been relevant to planning

“Greece’s defense minister is appealing to his austerity-battered countryfolk for a crowdfunding effort to raise money for new warships, promising to donate part of his own salary. Panos Kammenos says he will open a bank account on Jan. 1 where members of the public can make donations ‘for new frigates

“How do you detect submarines in an expanse as large as the ocean? The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers. It’s one of many potential military applications for so-called engineered organisms,

“While Russia is surely claiming territorial dominion over Crimea, the highly contested root of the conflict here, Moscow knows that the Sea of Azov likely won’t turn into the kind of international debacle China created with ludicrously expansive claims in the South China Sea, and that gives Russia enormous leverage.

“Ukraine’s parliament is to decide whether to bring in martial law, after Sunday’s capture of three of its naval vessels and 23 crew members by Russia. The three ships were sailing off the coast of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, when they were seized. Russia opened fire,

“Western observers have likely underestimated the number of Chinese nuclear submarines in development, but overestimated how many are operational, a new analysis suggests. In particular, only half of China’s nuclear-armed SSBNs appear to be in operation. Photos of the Bohai Shipyard and the Longpo Naval Facility produced by Planet Labs suggest

“By turning reefs and atolls in the disputed South China Sea into fortified artificial islands, complete with anti-aircraft Surface-to-Air Missiles, China has transformed ‘what was a great wall of sand just three years ago [into] a great wall of SAMs,’ the US commander in the Pacific said here today. The militarization

China’s upcoming response to the American B-2 bomber, two decades in the making, may alter U.S. military defense posture in the pacific region, according to analysts. Discussing the bomber, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies emphasized that the bomber was a part of a larger modernization

“The historical ‘air gap’ separating industrial control systems from enterprise networks meant that factories and shipyards were more or less immune to cyber-attack. As long as systems were air-gapped it didn’t matter how pernicious or effective the cyber-threat became, we felt confident that these virtual concerns couldn’t impact our physical

“Japan plans to develop a large underwater drone to monitor its remote islands as Tokyo continues to build up assets set to guard against Chinese incursion. The unmanned submersible will be unveiled in a Ministry of Defense’s policy document that lays out the island nation’s five-year plan from April 2019.