Enter the Tempest

Justin Bronk

The new £2 billion Tempest programme aims to both keep the UK in the combat aircraft business and secure for it a place in the next major European fighter project. Initial mock-ups unveiled with the announcement give some clues about design priorities, but funding the project long term may be challenging

When Bankers Need to be More Creative than Hackers: Cybercrime and Money Laundering

Anton Moiseienko and Olivier Kraft

The rise of cyber-dependent crime highlights the challenges facing the anti-money laundering framework in a digital era. This should be viewed as a wake-up call as well as an opportunity to update and improve the antiquated regime.

RUSI Newsbrief Vol. 38, No. 5

This issue of Newsbrief includes articles on UK defence spending, state capability to deploy a credible chemical weapons threat, the Nord Stream II gas pipeline, and public opinion in Central Europe on cooperation, identiy, and defence.

NATO Spending: The Great Convergence

Malcolm Chalmers

NATO’s latest data reveals important new trends in patterns of defence spending across the Alliance that have occurred since Russia’s 2014 intervention in Ukraine.

Defence and Electoral Credibility: Challenges for the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet

Josh Arnold-Forster

The potential political acceptance of tax rises to fund the NHS is beginning to influence the debate on defence spending. Will this provide the impetus to defeat those political leaders who want to abet the decline in British military power?

The Other Europe? How Central Europe Views the Continent’s Security Concerns and Aspirations

Jonathan Eyal

The results of public opinion surveys in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary indicate that perceptions among these Central European countries towards European cooperation and collective identity are complex. Countries in the region cannot all be painted with the same brush.

Editor's Note: RUSI Journal, April/May 2018

Emma De Angelis

Editor Dr Emma De Angelis introduces the April/May 2018 edition of the RUSI Journal.

A Commentary on H C Colles’s ‘The Red Cross in the War.’

Tom Plant

A Commentary on H C Colles’s ‘The Red Cross in the War.’

Book Review: Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo-American Alliance: The Special Relationship on the Rocks

Frank Ledwidge

Frank Ledwidge reviews Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo-American Alliance: The Special Relationship on the Rocks, by Andrew Mumford

Why is there no Joint European Remotely Piloted Aircraft System Project under the Common Security and Defence Policy?

Christian Küsters

The European Common Security and Defence Policy cannot function with a strong European defence industrial base.

The Red Cross in the War

H. C. Colles

This 1916 article explains the role of the Red Cross.

A Fourth F-35 Variant?

Andrew Hartland

With an inherently high thrust-to-weight ratio and modified digital flight control system, an F-35 variant could operate off the Queen Elizabeth class carriers with fewer penalties to the baseline F-35A design than the current F-35B and hence fewer performance trade-offs

The Rise of the Chemical Weapon State: From Salisbury to Syria

Ryan Henrici

The recent execution of chemical attacks by Moscow, Damascus and Pyongyang for diverse purposes may not only suggest that the prohibitive power of international conventions is now fading away, but also signals the emergence of a new class of states who can deploy a credible chemical threat.

Counter-UAS – a ‘Wicked’ Problem?

Adam Coffey

Finding, striking, jamming, blocking, sustaining, and generally being disruptive, are all now realistic outputs from UAS. Given these multiple potential and proven uses for UAS even by non-state actors, the military conversation has very much moved on to how to counter them.

Positional Warfare A Paradigm for Understanding Twenty-First-Century Conflict

Siddarth Kaushal

Contemporary war is not characterised by radical change, but to a return to the eighteenth-century paradigm of positional warfare.