S-400 technology helps Seoul blunt Pyongyang threat By Rakesh Krishnan Simha, Special to Russia Beyond the Headlines

S-400 technology helps Seoul blunt Pyongyang threat

By Rakesh Krishnan Simha, Special to Russia Beyond the Headlines

Advanced missile technology that went into Russia's deadly S-400 Triumf missile defense system is powering the South Korean ballistic and air defense missile programs.

Partly in response to North Korea's deployment of nuclear missiles and submarines, Seoul has beefed up its armaments industry with generous doses of Russian technology. Among the most critical projects are a submarine-launched ballistic missile and the M-SAM Cheolmae-2 medium- to long-range surface-to-air missile.

South Korea hopes to one-up the North, which is applying the technology of the Russian S-300 missile to its SLBMs. According to Lee Choon-geun, senior researcher at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea "uses more stable technology" from the S-400, which is a generation ahead of the S-300.

The S-400 is a highly advanced missile with embedded cold-launching technology. Cold-launched missiles are critical for South Korea's brand new 3000-ton Jangbogo-III submarine. During a cold launch, the rocket engine fires after the missile reaches a certain altitude. This mechanism allows ballistic missiles to be fired from under water, thereby making it possible for the submarine to remain submerged. A high-ranking military official told Korea Joongang Daily the development of the new SLBM is expected to be completed by 2020.

The Daily reports the South Korean Navy's arsenal currently includes the submarine-launched cruise missile. However, as North Korea's efforts to develop SLBM technology have almost reached completion, the need within the South Korean military to initiate a response has become urgent.

"Although the SLBM may lack the accuracy of the SLCM, which is equipped with a guidance system, its velocity and destructive capability are significantly greater," says Kim Hyeok-soo, former rear admiral and the first commander of a South Korean submarine flotilla. "The deployment of the speedy and stealthy SLBM will allow the South Korean Navy to deliver a blow to North Korea before the situation even escalates to emergency levels."

Air defense of the South

Meanwhile, the M-SAM is being jointly developed by Samsung Group and French electronics defense contractor Thales Group. Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, writes: "The M-SAM will use S-400 missile technology provided from the Almaz Antey Joint Stock Co., including proprietary information from the S-400's multifunction X-band radar. LG Corp.'s missiles' guidance systems are expected to also use Russian design elements."

The M-SAM Cheolmae-2 is designed to engage both ballistic missiles and aircraft. If the South Koreans are able to achieve anything close to Russia's S-400, they will have a fearsome weapon with which to take on the North's armory of ballistic missiles.

The S-400 has a tracking range of 600 km and the ability to hit targets 400 km away at a blistering speed of 17,000 km an hour – faster than any existing aircraft. First deployed by Russia in 2010, each S-400 battalion has eight launchers, a control center, radar and 16 missiles available as reloads.

"Given its extremely long range and effective electronic warfare capabilities, the S-400 is a game-changing system that challenges current military capabilities at the operational level of war," Paul Giarra, president, Global Strategies and Transformation, told Defense News.

According to Air Power Australia, "The S-300P/S-400 family of surface-to-air missile systems is without doubt the most capable SAM system in widespread use in the Asia Pacific region." It adds: "While the S-300P/S-400 series is often labeled 'Russia's Patriot,' the system in many key respects is more capable than the U.S. Patriot series, and in later variants offers mobility performance and thus survivability much better than that of the Patriot."

For decades, South Koreans have lived in fear of North Korea's missile threats. The new generation missiles will finally allow South Korea to close that window of vulnerability.

Changing Russia-South Korea defense partnership

As a key U.S. ally and loyal customer of American weapons, South Korea is an unlikely buyer of Russian weapons. In fact, Seoul's defense trade with Moscow grew in an unlikely way. In 1991, after the Cold War ended, South Korea extended $1 billion in cash loans and a $470 million commodities loan as a reward for Moscow's recognition of South Korea. However, the Soviet Union went under the same year.

Unable to repay the loans in cash, Russia began supplying what it had in plenty – military equipment such as T-90 tanks, infantry combat vehicles and helicopters. The first two arms-for-debt deals – all known as Brown Bear – were inked in 1995 and 2003.

However, Seoul did not want to keep importing ready-made weapons platforms, even if the South Korean military was thrilled with the high-octane Russian military gear. There were two reasons for this. One, since Seoul is closely integrated with America's military ecosystem, Russian weapons are not easily integrated. This is, of course, an old American ploy to edge out rivals and increase the market share for its own weapons. At any rate, the South Koreans decided to stop wholesale purchases of Russian weapons.

Secondly, the South Koreans became more ambitious. They wanted to build a world class military industrial complex in step with their dominance in a number of commercial sectors. The government's Defense Reform 2020 initiative is aimed at developing the country's indigenous capabilities via defense R&D. The transfer of cutting-edge S-400 technology is part of this plan.

Seung-Ho Joo and Tae-Hwan Kwak write in their book Korea in the 21st Century: "South Korea may find economic benefits in military cooperation with Russia. Seoul and Moscow can jointly develop advanced technology and high-tech weapons and sell them in the world market. The relationship between the two countries may be mutually complementary: Russia has two advantages in basic sciences and advanced technologies, while South Korea has strengths in marketing skills and capital."

The S-400 isn't cheap – it costs around $500 million per battalion. That's why only countries with deep pockets like China and India (which is negotiating a deal) will be fielding this weapon. But to the credit of the South Koreans, they beat both the Chinese and the Indians to this prized weapon by more than a decade.

Flip side of tech transfers

To be sure, Russia could face some hiccups over the transfer of such leading edge weapons. South Korea's close alliance with the United States means there is a chance of sensitive Russian technology ending up in America's hands. One of the reasons Russia is not unduly worry about U.S. stealth fighters such as the F-22 and F-25 is that the Russian air defense system is considered impregnable to these aircraft. The S-400 is one of those wonder weapons in the Russian arsenal that have neutralized the threat from fifth-generation fighters.

However, if South Korea passes on the secrets of the S-400 to the United States, it would compromise Russian – and Chinese – air defense to some extent. For instance, the 1976 flight of a Soviet defector in the top secret MiG-25 fighter forced Russia to produce new radar and missile systems for the aircraft at considerable cost.

Secondly, if South Korea integrates the S-400-based M-SAM into the American missile defense system, Russia could potentially have to face off its own missiles in any future conflict with the United States.

But with the next generation S-500 missiles coming online, Russia will not lose too much sleep over any potential leak of secrets. For, once you export something, it's a given that your competitors will get their hands on it sooner or later.

This article originally appeared at Russia Beyond the Headlines.

Chief of US Naval Operations explains why he's not afraid of China's 'carrier killer' missile

Speaking at a Center for a New American Security conference on Monday, the US Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, explained why China's DF-21D "carrier killer" antiship ballistic missile isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The DF-21D, an indigenously created, precision-guided missile capable of sinking a US aircraft carrier with a single shot, has a phenomenal range of up to 810 nautical miles, while US carriers' longest-range missiles can travel only about 550 miles away.

Therefore, on paper, the Chinese can deny aircraft carriers the luxury of wading off of their shores and forcing them to operate outside of their effective range.

But Richardson contested that notion.

"I think there is this long-range precision-strike capability, certainly," Richardson acknowledged. But "A2/AD [anti-access/area-denial] is sort of an aspiration. In actual execution, it's much more difficult."

China's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities (ISR), bolstered by a massive modernization push and advanced radar installations on the reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, have theoretically given them the ability to project power for hundreds of miles.

"The combination of ubiquitous ISR, long-range precision-strike weapons takes that to another level and demands a response," said Richardson, adding that China's extension into the Pacific created a "suite of capabilities" that were of "pressing concern."

ut the US Navy won't be defeated or deterred by figures on paper.

Richardson said:

"In the cleanest form, the uninterrupted, frictionless plane, you have the ability to sense a target much more capably and quickly around the world, you've got the ability, then, to transmit that information back to a weapon system that can reach out at a fairly long range and it is precision-guided ... You're talking about hundreds of miles now, so that raises a challenge."

"Our response would be to inject a lot of friction into that system at every step of the way [and] look to make that much more difficult," he continued.

Richardson was clear that China's purported capabilities were only speculations.

"What you see often is a display of 'Here's this launcher, here's a circle with a radius of 700 miles, and it's solid-color black inside' ... And that's just not the reality of the situation," he said.

"You've got this highly maneuverable force that has a suite of capabilities that the force can bring to bear to inject uncertainty," Richardson continued.

Richardson also went on to address the dual aircraft-carrier deployments in the Pacific and theMediterranean, saying that the deployments afforded a rare opportunity for "high-end war fighting and training," as carrier groups rarely get to train with each other in realistic, not just theoretical, situations.

Putin’s Russia is a poor, drunk soccer hooligan

Russia is not the country you think it is. Its economy is smaller than South Korea’s. Its people are poorer than Kazakhstan’s. It trails Finland in technology. And it has a smaller military budget than Saudi Arabia.

For most of the 20th century, what Moscow thought and did mattered from Havana to Hanoi. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union left behind a battered, broken shell of a country. When the Berlin Wall fell, so did Russia’s status in the world.

A boozy Boris Yeltsin was a fitting representative for a country whose average life expentency tumbled a staggering five years in the wake of the fall. There were the coups, industrial collapse, spreading corruption, and shrinking borders. After generations of fearing the Soviet Bear, the West patted it on the head, sent it some aid, and turned its eyes with expectation towards the emerging powers of Brazil, India, and China.

But Vladimir Putin’s rise to power marked a sea change in Russia’s fortunes. How the world sees Russia began to shift. The often bare-chested leader consciously cultivated a new brand, for himself, and for the country. Putin’s new Russia was a country that mattered again.

Russia hosted the Olympics, punched Georgia in the nose, took back the Crimea, invaded Ukraine, flew bombers through NATO airspace, built military bases in the Arctic, and generally flexed and posed like an oiled, aged, but still buff, body builder. And we’ve been paying increasingly rapt attention, not noticing the geriatric walker hidden just off stage. A closer look is almost shocking.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s most recent data, the Russian economy is approximately the same size as Australia and slightly smaller than South Korea. As an exporter, it is now less important than Belgium, Mexico, and Singapore.

And it is poor. The World Bank ranks Russia’s GDP per capita below Lithuania, Equatorial Guinea, and Kazakhstan. A larger proportion of its population lives below the poverty rate than in Indonesia, India, or Sri Lanka. It is ranked 67th in the world in the Global Competitive Index and 66th in the UN’s Human Development Index.

These economic woes are having serious social impacts. There are now fewer doctors than a decade ago. Life expectancy in Russia is nine years less than in the United States and is declining. Infant morality rate is two to three times higher than most of the Western world. Its alcoholism rate is now the highest on the planet, three times North America’s; and consumption of alcohol has doubled in the past 20 years. Not surprisingly, the Russian statistical agency Rosstat has identified aging and shrinking demographics as the single biggest challenge facing the country over the next 30 years.

Intellectually, Russia is a distant speck in the rearview mirror. Once, esteemed Soviet universities educated the engineers and doctors of the developing world. Now, the United Nations ranks Russia’s education system behind nearly every other European country, and on par with the Pacific island of Palau. The technological leader that launched Sputnik now produces fewer patents per capita than Iceland. Its scientific publications are cited less often than Finland’s.

In nearly every indicator of health, wealth, and influence, Russia ranks below even the middle powers. What do they have left? Guns and bombs mostly. At 8,000 nuclear warheads, it still has 700 more than the United States. It ranks second globally for combat aircraft, military satellites, and nuclear submarines. Moscow’s military budget has increased every year since Putin’s arrival in 1999.

RELATED: Russian insider says state-run doping fueled Sochi Olympics

But even these numbers are misleading. According to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Institute, Russia’s defense budget is still less than China, and Saudi Arabia. It is roughly on par with India, France, and the United Kingdom. And it is nine times smaller than the Pentagon’s budget.

The fact is, if it wasn’t for Syria, the Crimea, and some ageing warheads, Russia would get as much global attention as Slovakia or perhaps Wales. Not coincidentally, those are two nations that recently played Russia in the ongoing European soccer championship. In both cases, the results were resounding defeats for the Russians despite their opponents being one-twentieth and one-fortieth its size, respectively. In spite of these resounding defeats, which have relegated them to the bottom of the league tables, the Russian team, and its fans, still dominated the news.

When we talk about the Eurocup, we talk about Russian hooligans rioting in the stands, attacking other spectators, and even assaulting tourists on the trains home. Or we marvel at the belligerent response from Moscow when Igor Lebedev, the Deputy Chairman of the Russian parliament and a senior official in the Russian soccer official tweeted “I don’t see anything wrong with the fans fighting. Quite the opposite, well done lads, keep it up!”

Lebedev understands a lesson that has been well taught by Putin: If you can’t compete on the field, make as much noise as you can off it. Russia is so far behind economically, technologically, socially, and politically, it just doesn’t matter anymore. But it can still get our attention, and it is.

When Russia next moves its tanks to the border, we should take it seriously. It has a lot of tanks (although less than Pakistan). But we should also remember that this is not a world power. By most indicators, it’s not even a middle power. Russia is a soccer hooligan: poor, drunk, and frustrated it can’t win anymore. It can only throw beer bottles from the bleachers.

U.S. and Russian Jets Clash Over Syria

American and Russian fighter jets had a tense showdown in the skies above Syria as the Russians dropped bombs on U.S.-backed rebels.

RUSSIA SU-34

U.S. and Russian fighter jets bloodlessly tangled in the air over Syria on June 16 as the American pilots tried and failed to stop the Russians from bombing U.S.-backed rebels in southern Syria near the border with Jordan.

The aerial close encounter underscores just how chaotic Syria’s skies have become as Russia and the U.S.-led coalition work at cross-purposes, each dropping bombs in support of separate factions in the five-year-old civil war.

The near-clash also highlights the escalating risk of American and Russian forces actually coming to blows over Syria, potentially sparking a much wider conflict between the world’s leading nuclear powers.

RUSSIA SU-34

The incident began when at least two twin-engine Su-34 bombers, some of Moscow’s most advanced warplanes, struck what the Pentagon described as a “border garrison”housing around 200 U.S.-supported rebels in At Tanf on the Syrian side of the Syria-Jordan border.

The rebels had been “conducting counter-ISIL operations in the area,” the Pentagon stated on June 18, using an alternative acronym for ISIS.

The United States and its allies in Syria clearly did not expect the air strike. The rebels in At Tanf are party to a shaky ceasefire agreement between rebel forces and the regime of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad—and, by extension, the Russian military contingent backing Al Assad. The Los Angeles Times reported that Russian planes had not previously been active over At Tanf.

The Su-34s’ initial strike wounded, and perhaps killed, some of the rebels in At Tanf.

The U.S. Navy scrambled F/A-18 fighters to intercept the Russians, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Navy has deployed two aircraft carriers to the region for strikes on ISIS. As the F/A-18s approached the Su-34s, officials with U.S. Central Command—which oversees America’s wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan—used a special hotline to contact their Russian counterparts directing Russia’s own intervention in Syria.

US F-18

Arriving over At Tanf, the American pilots apparently spoke directly to the Russian aviators. “Pilots CAN communicate with one another on a communications channel set up to avoid air accidents,” Central Command confirmed in a statement to The Daily Beast.

Washington and Moscow had established the hotline as part of a so-called “Safety of Flight Memorandum of Understanding” that the two governments signed in October specifically in order to avoid the kind of aerial confrontation that occurred over Syria last week.

With the American jets flying close enough to visually identify the Su-34s, the Russians departed the air space over At Tanf. Some time shortly thereafter, the F/A-18s ran low on fuel and left the area in order to link up with an aerial tanker. That’s when the Su-34s reportedly returned to At Tanf —and bombed the rebels again.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the second strike killed first-responders assisting survivors of the first bombing run.

The next day, senior U.S. Defense Department officials organized an “extraordinary” video conference with Russian counterparts to discuss the incident. The meeting included Acting Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Elissa Slotkin and U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, a strategic planner on the Pentagon’s joint staff, plus unspecified Russian Ministry of Defense officials.

“Department officials expressed strong concerns about the attack on the coalition-supported counter-ISIL forces at the At Tanf garrison, which included forces that are participants in the cessation of hostilities in Syria, and emphasized that those concerns would be addressed through ongoing diplomatic discussions on the cessation of hostilities,” Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook explained in a statement.

"Regarding safety, department officials conveyed that Russia’s continued strikes at At Tanf, even after U.S. attempts to inform Russian forces through proper channels of on-going coalition air support to the counter-ISIL forces, created safety concerns for U.S. and coalition forces,” Cook continued. “Department officials requested Russian responses to address those concerns.”

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov confirmed, via the country’s state-owned media, that the teleconference took place—but he did not specify the results of the “extraordinary” meeting.

Russian warplanes had previously shadowed planes belonging to the U.S.-led coalition over Syria, but the coalition always described the Russians’ behavior as “professional.” By contrast, in April Russian Su-24 bombers repeatedly buzzed the U.S. Navy warship USS Donald Cook while the vessel sailed in international waters in the Black Sea. A Pentagon spokesman called the Russians’ actions in that incident “provocative and unprofessional.”

The Kremlin should be keenly aware of the potential for unwanted—and potentially destabilizing—bloodshed that exists in the air over Syria. In November, a Russian Su-24 bomber flying a mission over Syria strayed over the Syria-Turkey border into Turkey—and a Turkish F-16 fighter promptly shot it down.

The two Russian crew members ejected. One flier died when Syrian rebels on the ground opened fire on his parachute. Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces launched a complex rescue mission that ultimately retrieved the surviving pilot. One Russian marine died and a helicopter was destroyed during that operation.

The fallout from the November incident continues, with Russia and Turkey exchanging threats—and Moscow imposing economic sanctions on Ankarra including limits on some food imports to Russia from Turkey.

It’s not clear how close the U.S. fighters came to attacking and potentially shooting down the Su-34s over At Tanf. Central Command declined to say what the rules of engagement are for American pilots flying over Syria. “ROE are actually specifics that we don’t get into,” Central Command said in a statement.

The last time a U.S. military warplane shot down a Russian—actually, Soviet—plane was in 1953, over Korea or China, depending on which historians you believe. The last time a Russian or Soviet warplane shot down an American aircraft was in 1970, when a U.S. Army plane strayed over Armenia.

China builds world’s fastest supercomputer without U.S. chips

China on Monday revealed its latest supercomputer, a monolithic system with 10.65 million compute cores built entirely with Chinese microprocessors. This follows a U.S. government decision last year to deny China access to Intel's fastest microprocessors

There is no U.S.-made system that comes close to the performance of China's new system, the Sunway TaihuLight. Its theoretical peak performance is 124.5 petaflops, according to the latest biannual release today of the world's Top500 supercomputers. It is the first system to exceed 100 petaflops. A petaflop equals one thousand trillion (one quadrillion) sustained floating-point operations per second.

The most important thing about Sunway TaihuLight may be its microprocessors. In the past, China has relied heavily on U.S. microprocessors in building its supercomputing capacity. The world's next fastest system, China's Tianhe-2, which has a peak performance of 54.9 petaflops, uses Intel Xeon processors.TaihuLight, which is installed at China's National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, uses ShenWei CPUs developed by Jiangnan Computing Research Lab in Wuxi. The operating system is a Linux-based Chinese system called Sunway Raise.

The TaihuLight is "very impressive," said Jack Dongarra, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and one of the academic leaders of the Top500 supercomputing list, in a report about the new system.

TaihuLight is running "sizeable applications," which include advanced manufacturing, earth systems modeling, life science and big data applications, said Dongarra. This "shows that the system is capable of running real applications and [is] not just a stunt machine," Dongarra said.

It has been long known that China was developing a 100-plus petaflop system, and it was believed that China would turn to U.S. chip technology to reach this performance level. But just over a year ago, in a surprising move, the U.S. banned Intel from supplying Xeon chips to four of China's top supercomputing research centers.

The U.S. initiated this ban because China, it claimed, was using its Tianhe-2 system for nuclear explosive testing activities. The U.S. stopped live nuclear testing in 1992 and now relies on computer simulations. Critics in China suspected the U.S. was acting to slow that nation's supercomputing development efforts.

Four months after the Intel ban, in July 2015, the White House issued an executive order creating a "national strategic computing initiative" with the goal of maintaining an "economic leadership position" in high-performance computing research.

The U.S. order seemed late. China has been steadily building its supercomputing capacity, which included efforts to develop its own microprocessors. It produced a relatively small supercomputer in 2011 that relied on homegrown processors, but its big systems continued to rely on U.S. processors.

There has been nothing secretive about China's intentions. Researchers and analysts have been warning all along that U.S. exascale (an exascale is 1,000 petaflops) development, supercomputing's next big milestone, was lagging.

It's not just China that is racing ahead. Japan and Russia have their own development efforts. Europe is building supercomputers using ARM processors, and, similar to China, wants to decrease its dependency on U.S.-made chips.

China's government last week said it plans to build anexascale system by 2020. The U.S. has targeted 2023.

China now has more supercomputers in the Top500 list than the U.S., said Dongarra. "China has 167 systems on the June 2016 Top500 list compared to 165 systems in the U.S," he said, in an email. Ten years ago, China had 10 systems on the list.

Of all the supercomputers represented on the global list, the sum of the China supercomputers performance (211 petaflops) has exceeded the performance of the supercomputers in the U.S., (173 petaflops) represented on this list. The list doesn't represent the universe of all supercomputers in the U.S. None of the supercomputers used by intelligence agencies, for instance, are represented on this list.

"This is the first time the U.S. has lost the lead," said Dongarra, in the total number of systems on the Top500 list.

China's work is also winning global peer recognition. It's work on TaihuLight has resulted in three submissions selected as finalists for supercomputing's prestigious Gordon Bell Award, named for a pioneer in high-performance computing.

The fastest U.S. supercomputer, number 3 on the Top500 list, is the Titan, a Cray supercomputer at U.S. Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory with a theoretical peak of about 27 petaflops.

Whether the U.S. chip ban accelerated China's resolve to develop its own microprocessor technology is a question certain to get debate. But what is clear is China's longstanding goal to end reliance on U.S. technology

"The Chinese were already determined over time to move to an indigenous processor," said Steve Conway, a high performance computing analyst at IDC. "I think the ban accelerates that -- it increases that determination," he said.

HPC has become increasingly important in the economy. Once primarily the domain of big science research, national security and high-end manufacturing such as airplane design, HPC's virtualization and big data analysis capabilities have made it critical in almost every industry. Manufacturers of all sizes, increasingly, are using supercomputers to design products virtually instead of building prototypes. Supercomputer are also used in applications such as fraud detection and big data analysis.

HPC has is now "so strategic that you really don't want to rely on foreign sources for it," said Conway.

Russian President Vladimir Putin to Visit Xi Jinping in Beijing This Week

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Beijing on Saturday at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Chinese state media has confirmed.

The two leaders are expected to ink a $6.2 billion high-speed rail deal as well as discuss extended military cooperation. Up to 30 trade agreements could also be signed, reportsthe South China Morning Post.

Tanzania and China Kick Off the University of Dar es Salaam’s New Library Project

Amid reports of serious campus infrastructure challenges, the University of Dar es Salaam is getting a major new library facility with funding and building support from China.

Funding and Construction Assistance from China

W

riting for the Tanzania Daily News at AllAfrica.com, Sylivester Domasa reports that the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) is “undergoing mega-infrastructural transformations that include construction of [a] state-of-the-art modern library to accommodate more than 800,000 books to be more globally competitive.”

The building, designed to double as a public library and resource center, is to host up to 6,000 people, along with a conference room for up to 2,100 and a Confucius Institute center accommodating up to 500.

The Confucius Institute programs, found in many parts of the world and frequently in university settings, are centers of Chinese language training and cultural promotion, compared by some to Spain’s Instituto Cervantes and Germany’s Goethe-Institut.

The project in Tanzania is being financed, in fact, by China with a grant of some US$40 million.

The ground-breaking program for the project was attended by University Chancellor and former President Jakaya Kikwets, The current President, John Magufuli, said that the university is intent on maintaining a reputation as a leading institution of higher learning.

“I understand all the challenges and problems faced by both students and the university,” Magufuli said at the cornerstone ceremony. “I have been here and you voted me to become your president so I can address these challenges.”

Even so, Professor Joyce Ndalichako, Minister for Education, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, has emphasized the commitment of the Tanzanian government to “support the construction of the library,” calling it a “top priority.”While the university is the country’s oldest, with some 20,000 students, the 1960s-era campus, Domaza writes, has serious challenges in its infrastructure: “Water and sewerage systems do not work…any longer,” he writes, “while roads and dormitories are in pathetic condition.”

Professor Rwekaza Mukandala, the university’s Vice-Chancellor, has said that while nearly 600 of the university’s lecturers need additional government support to help with their research, building the library will “help improve academic quality” at the school.

China’s Ambassador to Tanzania, Dr. Lu Youquing, reiterated his country’s continuing support for Tanzania at the ceremony, referring to the two countries’ relations of more than 50 years.

He announced that a Chinese firm, Jiansi Jiangdu Constructon Group Ltd., will work along with “the government and the university administration” to insure that the project is completed on time.

U.S. Official: Russia Could Defeat NATO in Less Than 3 Days

U.S. Official: Russia Could Defeat NATO in Less Than 3 Days

​Alliance forces would be outnumbered and outgunned.​

Could Russia really take down NATO in just a couple of days? A Department of Defense official has backed the Rand Corporation think tank's claim that the Russian military could defeat NATO forces in the Baltics in just 60 hours. The statement is the latest in a string of warnings that the Atlantic Alliance is too weak to mount a defense of its member nations.

The New Tech Triangle: China, US, Israel

I remember all too well when my first book, Silicon Dragon, was released. It was ahead of its time in predicting that China would get ahead in tech innovation and rival the U.S. for leadership. That was a message that Silicon Valley wished would just go away.

North Korean hackers steal blueprints for US fighter jets

North Korean hackers stole tens of thousands of documents related to the defense industry — including U.S. fighter jet designs — as part of a much broader cyberattack on South Korea, officials in Seoul said on Monday.

Over 40,000 documents were stolen in breaches of two conglomerates that began in 2014 and were discovered in February, officials said, according to multiple sources.

The stolen documents included wing blueprints for an F-15 jet fighter taken from Korean Air Lines, a contract manufacturer for the South Korean military.

Spokesmen from both Korean Air Lines and the Defense Ministry said that none of the stolen documents were classified, according to Reuters.

But the attack appears to be part of a much larger campaign by North Korea that was disrupted when the theft was discovered, officials said.

“North Korea turns out to have been preparing for a long time to try to launch a countrywide cyberattack,” the Korean National Police Agency said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The police say the attack originated at an IP address in Pyongyang that was used in a 2013 cyberattack on South Korea that disabled the computer systems of banks and broadcast companies.

Amid rising tensions between the two nations, there have been a series of unconfirmed reports this year that South Korean government agencies have been infected by malware planted by North Korea.

North Korea has steadfastly denied any involvement in cyberattacks on its neighbor to the south, but experts warn that North Korea is developing significant military and clandestine cyber capabilities.

The country is not seen as a top cyber power yet, but U.S. lawmakers warn that its burgeoning capabilities could be turned on the United States.

The U.S. has blamed North Korea for the cyberattack on Sony, which coincided with the release of a film portraying a fictional assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Last January, the White House authorized a slate of economic sanctions against the country.

In February, President Obama signed legislation mandating sanctions on anyone involved in Pyongyang’s growing cyber arsenal and resurgent nuclear program.

“This is the first time we’ve ever had mandatory sanctions on cyberattacks,” Sen. Cory Gardner(R-Colo.), who backed the legislation, told The Hill in February. “It’s long overdue.”