The report, published Wednesday, examined Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data sourced from FlightRadar24 for aircraft models historically linked to Russian private military contractors or the Ministry of Defense, filtering for flights touching Mali, Burkina Faso or Niger.

Burkina Faso received the most flights of the three countries, at 56, followed by 38 to Mali, while Niger recorded only six, the report found. C4ADS attributed Burkina Faso’s volume in part to its position as a transit point between Mali and Niger, and to the intensity of attacks by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara during the period.

The busiest single operator was Flight Unit 224, a Russian Ministry of Defense-owned airline sanctioned by the United States in May 2023. The Russian Special Flight Squadron, which transports senior officials, conducted 14 flights, while Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations carried out 12. Despite the ministry’s ostensibly humanitarian mandate, prior media reporting linked it to military cargo transport to Mali, Syria and Iran.

C4ADS also flagged several private carriers it said remain unsanctioned by the U.S., EU or U.K. despite documented links to Russian military logistics, including Kyrgyzstan-registered Sapsan Airlines.

On routing, C4ADS said state-owned aircraft such as Flight Unit 224’s RA-82030 typically refueled at Russia’s Khmeimim air base in Syria and at Libyan sites including Al-Khadim before continuing to the Sahel. Private carriers more often transited commercial hubs in the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Türkiye.

Defense News published an investigation in April on a shadowy fleet of Russian military-affiliated cargo aircraft making more than a hundred flights to Algeria over the preceding year. Flight-tracking data, interviews and satellite imagery suggested the network was being used both to deliver fighter jets to the Algerian air force and as a logistics system for onward flights into the Sahel and West Africa.

C4ADS said its findings were preliminary and intended to identify avenues for further inquiry rather than draw firm conclusions, citing limitations including inconsistent ADS-B coverage and the possibility that operators manipulate transponder data to conceal destinations. The organization pointed to a growing number of flights through Togo and Algeria before or after Sahel stops as a subject warranting additional scrutiny.

EU member states have authorized Operation Atalanta, the union’s counter-piracy naval mission off the Horn of Africa, to begin conducting flag-verification boardings of vessels suspected of belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet in the western Indian Ocean. The decision, announced this week by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, extends to Atalanta a power already exercised by the EU’s Mediterranean mission, Operation Irini.

Kallas made the announcement alongside news that Irini forces had boarded the sanctioned oil tanker MV South Star on July 20, acting on suspicion that the vessel was sailing under a false flag. “Every illicit voyage helps sustain Russia’s war machine. We are matching our sanctions with action at sea,” Kallas said, adding that the Atalanta authorization “further tightens the net.”

The move considerably widens the EU’s geographic reach against the shadow fleet, a loosely defined network of tankers with opaque ownership structures that Moscow uses to sell oil above the Western-imposed price cap. While Irini patrols the Mediterranean, Atalanta operates across the Somali Basin, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba and waters around Oman, and was launched as the EU’s first-ever naval mission in 2008 to combat piracy.

It is separate from the EU mission ASPIDES, which is designed to protect shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by the Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels.

The corridor where the mission operates is a critical transit route for tankers carrying Russian crude toward buyers in Asia. Brussels has already sanctioned more than 600 vessels suspected of belonging to the network.

Generally, ships on the high seas cannot simply be stopped and boarded by any third country. However, Article 110 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permits warships to stop and inspect a vessel only where there is reasonable suspicion it is stateless or flying a flag to which it is not entitled. This falls short of a blanket authority to stop any sanctioned or Russia-linked ship, but flying false flags has been a frequent practice on Russian shadow fleet vessels.

The council decision, the operational plan and the rules of engagement that would spell out exactly how far Atalanta’s new powers extend have so far not been made public.

The approach has already produced results elsewhere. Irini’s flag checks contributed to pressure that culminated in a Cameroon purge of 39 vessels from its shipping registry after investigators uncovered fraudulent paperwork and fake registry websites used to disguise shadow fleet tankers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously denounced such interceptions as “piracy,” underscoring how the expanded mandate is likely to further sharpen tensions between Brussels and Moscow over enforcement at sea.

The leaders in Paris and Berlin had formed a “nuclear steering group” in March to coordinate the countries’ closer integration in atomic strategic matters. It is part of a major French doctrinal shift billed as “forward deterrence,” in which France promises to extend its nuclear umbrella to other countries in Europe.

Germany was among the first to sign up for the new scheme four months ago. A total of nine countries spanning from Norway to Greece have joined the initiative so far.

Speaking to the press alongside French president Emmanuel Macron on Jul. 17, German chancellor Friedrich Merz officially confirmed reports that Germany would be participating in upcoming French nuclear exercises with its own conventional forces.

The exercise has been identified as the French “Poker” maneuver, which is set to take place in September, Politico reported.

Additionally, Macron said that for the first time ever, a French nuclear-capable Rafale jet had been temporarily hosted at a German air base − specifically at Nörvenich near Cologne, where the Franco-German Defence and Security Council met on Jul. 17.

A day earlier, French Rafales had been refuelled while airborne alongside German Eurofighters in a symbolic kickoff to the two countries’ nuclear strategic cooperation.

The meeting at Nörvenich was the first major high-level defense meeting since the collapse of the joint Future Combat Air System, or FCAS, project that has caused a strain in relations and bad blood between French and German defense contractors.

Nonetheless, the attitude the leaders presented to the press was forward-looking and cooperative.

“We are charting a new, shared course in deterrence,” Merz said, though he also emphasized that he did not want it to be seen as competition to NATO nuclear sharing, but rather as a supplement to it.

“This complements our commitment to NATO’s nuclear sharing and deterrence arrangements, which we continue to uphold,” Merz said.

Under NATO’s current, U.S.-led nuclear sharing arrangement, Germany hosts American nuclear bombs on its soil and operates dual-capable aircraft able to deliver the weapons to their targets if the U.S. president authorizes their use. Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey similarly host U.S. nuclear bombs.

While sovereignty over the weapons and all decision-making related to the use of the bombs will remain in Paris under the new doctrine, conventional tasks may be taken on by Germany and other allies under the forward deterrence scheme. It may also see French fighter jets operating out of other European countries’ air bases.

Macron said he saw Germany as playing a “vanguard role” in European deterrence.

France is the only European Union country with its own nuclear arsenal following the U.K.’s departure from the bloc in 2020. Alongside announcing the new forward deterrence strategy in March, Macron also announced that his country would increase its nuclear stockpile, contributing to a larger trend of unraveling longtime effective Cold War-era arms control arrangements and nuclear restraint.

The steering group will continue to work out details for how Germany will fit into the picture of French nuclear deterrence going forward, including determining avenues for collaboration and what forces could be used.

From the French side, inviting Germany into the fold would entail “explaining some aspects of how we operate, sharing certain closely held practices, offering joint exercises, developing joint initiatives and partnerships and fostering greater … trust among our teams, experts and military personnel,” Macron said in Nörvenich.

The senior official’s statement comes after more than a month of unusual public warnings by several Eastern European countries that Russia was planning some form of a provocation or hybrid attack, with government officials citing numerous pieces of intelligence that pointed them to this conclusion.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have been among the countries raising the alarm, some citing U.S. intelligence that had been shared with them.

The latest information, first shared by Poland’s defense minister on Monday, outlines a concrete threat vector for what was previously a more general warning of Russian malicious intent.

The threat appears to be taken seriously by the Eastern European capitals, and the Polish government prioritized the topic for discussion in Tuesday’s security committee meeting. Following the meeting, Kosiniak-Kamysz reiterated the specific warning.

In addition to drone incursions, he also said GPS jamming and various acts of sabotage may be on the table.

The countries surrounding the Baltic Sea have been affected by Russian GPS interference since the early days of the war, sometimes leading to airport closures and navigation problems. Sabotage, too, has featured, including the disabling of a rail line in eastern Poland last year.

Government officials also noted cyber warfare as a possible avenue for Russian actions against NATO countries.

In late June, Latvian intelligence first told Fox News they had detected Russian preparations for a hybrid attack that would fall short of the threshold for open war. The attack might include “missiles, drones or other actions designed to send a signal: stop supporting Ukraine, or you will have your own problems,” Fox News Digital quoted Latvian intelligence as saying.

A week later, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had been receiving warnings about a Russian test of NATO resolve and possible attack on Polish soil from allied intelligence agencies for weeks, adding in a press conference that “the coming months may truly be critical.” Polish publication Onet had previously reported from a source close to Polish president Karol Nawrocki that the U.S. had shared concrete warnings of hostile Russian actions with the government in Warsaw.

Last week, Latvian and Lithuanian leaders warned specifically of “limited kinetic operations” targeting critical infrastructure.

The Kremlin’s press spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed this as “scare stories” that same week.

Some officials have warned that Russia may also be inclined to stage a false flag attack on its own territory to give it a pretense to escalate the war in Ukraine or expand it to include strikes on NATO countries. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski warned of such a scenario in late June, saying at the time that “I expect a false flag attack on Russian territory, to which Putin ‘will respond.’”

“The Russians are planning something again; we have credible information,” Sikorski told the press several weeks later, on July 9.

Similar public messaging − including the selective sharing of high-level intelligence by Western capitals − preceded the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the time, the Biden administration took the unprecedented step of declassifying and sharing with the public a large number of previously secret intelligence signals that pointed toward Russia preparing for a wholesale invasion of its western neighbor. Some officials and analysts have suggested the open sharing of information delayed the start of the invasion by several weeks.

Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said on July 9 that he hoped the current sharing of public warnings would similarly deter Russia from following through on its plans.

However, no primary intelligence beyond the verbal statements made by high-level figures has been publicly shared so far by the Western countries now raising the alarm.

Russia has previously found ways to redirect Ukrainian drones that were launched by Kyiv to fall on NATO territory rather than reaching their intended targets of Russian military facilities, industry and oil storage facilities. The Baltic States and Finland have had several instances of misguided Ukrainian-launched drones striking their territories, including an oil storage facility in Latvia − an incident that led to two high-level resignations there, including of the prime minister.

Those cases have been publicly attributed to Russian electronic warfare and defensive signal jamming redirecting drones already in flight. Russia launching captured drones at the West would be a marked escalation from that precedent.

The deal with German prime contractor TKMS comes just weeks after Berlin scrapped its troubled, heavily delayed F126 frigate program, pivoting instead to a smaller, off-the-shelf design to fulfill urgent NATO anti-submarine warfare requirements.

Under the agreement, Saab will provide composite superstructures and integrate its 9LV combat management and fire control systems onto four vessels.

The sensor package includes the long-range Sea Giraffe 4A Fixed Face and the lightweight Sea Giraffe 1X radars.

Saab stated that deliveries to TKMS will take place between 2029 and 2032, aligning with Berlin’s aggressive timeline to get the first ship in the water by the end of the decade.

The Bundestag’s budget committee greenlit the roughly €6.3 billion ($7.2 billion) procurement of the four TKMS-built warships on July 8, which includes an option for four additional hulls.

Saab CEO Micael Johansson noted the deliveries would “significantly enhance” the German fleet’s anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-surface warfare capabilities.

While the 4,000-ton MEKO A-200 DEU represents a more mature, commercially available design than its canceled 10,000-ton predecessor, the accelerated timeline and complex multinational systems integration pose unique challenges of their own.

The figure is less a single procurement contract than a financing and coordination structure meant to knit together a scattered set of national and bilateral missile programs that have been building since 2024.

The announcement leans heavily on the idea of pooling, not building, new technology. British officials described the initiative as a mechanism to “share expertise, technology advances and deepen industrial collaboration to rapidly advance NATO capabilities,” rather than a specification for a single new weapon.

The breadth of range requirements involved − everything from 300 kilometers to systems eventually exceeding 2,000 kilometers − spans engineering problems likely too disparate to be solved by a single missile design.

Instead, the $50 billion appears to aggregate work already underway. The British contribution to the sum is £3 billion ($4 billion), according to a press release by the prime minister’s office, which was split across a bilateral project with Germany and trilateral work with Italy and France on the Stratus missile.

The U.K.-Germany Trinity House program targets the development of stealth and hypersonic weapons beyond 2,000 kilometers for entry into service in the 2030s. The Stratus effort, meanwhile, recently secured a fresh £1.4 billion ($1.9 billion) U.K. commitment over four years toward a Storm Shadow successor.

In the same announcement, London also said it is joining the U.S. and Australia in the Precision Strike Missile program, which is designed to replace the American ATACMS missile.

Separately, a day earlier, NATO said six of its members − Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom − had launched a “multinational Ground-Based Precision Strike Capabilities High Visibility Project to explore the multinational development of novel deep precision strike capabilities, including new launchers and missiles” under the auspices of the alliance. The relation to the U.K. announcement was not immediately clear.

The U.K. government did not specify which “around a dozen European partners” it had in mind for its $50-billion deep-strike scheme.

The new British announcement also sits against the broader backdrop of ELSA, the European Long-Range Strike Approach that France, Germany, Italy and Poland launched in July 2024, later joined by Sweden and the U.K. Analysts have described ELSA as a multi-pillar framework rather than a unified acquisition drive, and the new $50 billion commitment could be intended to inject momentum into an initiative that had struggled to gain real traction over its first two years.

The European scramble for deep-strike capabilities comes as the war in Ukraine has shown the devastating impact of these weapons on military supply lines far from the frontline. It has been instilled with further urgency by the partial U.S. withdrawal of troops from Germany, which has left Berlin scrambling to replace those capabilities domestically. Such capabilities had not been a key element in military planning across the continent until recently.

“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving ‘em enough,” Trump said at a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in Ankara.

“It’s a defensive weapon, which I like better than an offensive weapon,” Trump said.

The U.S. president’s comments were quickly picked up by Russian state media, which keeps a keen eye on all news coming out of the NATO summit in Ankara.

Initial reporting was factual and brief, relaying the American president’s decision verbatim. State-aligned media had previously panned the idea as reckless and amplified Western skeptical voices calling the move a risk to U.S. national security over concerns the technology could fall into Russian hands.

Russia’s foreign ministry has criticized the Trump administration for continuing to back Ukraine, with Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that Washington was giving up its role as an “honest broker” and shifting back toward more decisively supporting Kyiv.

Reporting by the FT from late June indicated that this was causing disillusionment with Trump amongst Putin’s close associates.

Wednesday’s announcement comes just days after Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov dropped Russia’s longstanding euphemism of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Instead, speaking to Russian media on Sunday, it had become a “real war” due to the involvement of Western nations, Peskov said.

While Trump was unambiguous in Ankara about the licensing offer, some specifics would remain to be worked out with the U.S. contractors involved. It was unclear, for example, which type of interceptor missile – the simpler PAC-2 or the more capable PAC-3 – Trump intends to allow Ukraine to build.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly pleaded for the U.S.-made interceptors — the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal that can shoot down ballistic projectiles, whose high velocity and steep flight path make them difficult to stop.

He was expected to raise the issue with Trump during their meeting.

Trump said pressure could be applied to companies to produce Patriot missiles. “We have great power over the companies, those companies that make the Patriot,” he said.

“We haven’t informed the company of that yet, but that’ll work out all right. I’m sure they will be thrilled,” he said.

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the interceptor missiles that go in the Patriot system.

Russia fired ballistic missiles at Kyiv again overnight, officials said on Wednesday, a third attack on the Ukrainian capital in less than a week exploiting Ukraine’s critical shortage of U.S.-made air-defense interceptors.

While Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted 139 of the 169 drones during the overnight strikes on the country, they were again unable to down any of the five ballistic missiles used by Russia, air force data showed.

Trump said both sides in the war would like to see it end, but Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have both been “difficult.”

“We’ve settled a lot of wars, and this one is the one that I thought maybe would be the easiest, but Putin is a difficult character, and this guy’s a difficult character,” Trump said, referring to Zelenskyy, who was sitting next to him.

Zelenskyy said he wanted to discuss “some very important details” with Trump.

“I’m sure you will do everything to stop this war,” he told Trump.

Moscow has stepped up its air war on Ukraine in recent months as its ground advances have largely stalled and Ukrainian attacks on its military logistics and oil industry triggered widespread fuel shortages.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy launched a ballistic missile from a submarine off its coast on Monday, which subsequently flew southeast over the Pacific for about 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles), according to a map released by the Taiwan National Security Council, before splashing down near the island nations of Nauru and Tuvalu.

Both archipelago countries are part of the South Pacific Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which was established by the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1986 and prohibits the stationing and testing of nuclear weapons on islands or in waters of the South Pacific, as well as threatening the countries in the region with the use of these weapons.

China, as well as Russia, the U.S., U.K., and France, have signed onto protocols committing them to the treaty.

A missile test doesn’t technically violate the text of the treaty, so long as the missile is not nuclear-tipped. In the case of the Chinese test, the rocket was carrying a dummy warhead for testing purposes. However, southern Pacific nations were quick to accuse China of violating the spirit of the zone, which goes beyond the core legal definition.

New Zealand’s foreign minister said the test “goes against the object and intent of that treaty,” referring to Rarotonga. Australia publicly raised similar concerns.

“We have seen a growing trend of nuclear weapons-armed states exerting pressure on nuclear weapons free zones for their geostrategic interests,” said Olamide Samuel, a network and engagement specialist at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network. “We’ve seen it with the U.S. pressuring the U.K. over Diego Garcia, the island in the Indian Ocean; with Russia pushing Kazakhstan to allow missile testing; and now with China conducting a missile test in the South Pacific.”

China has called the test routine. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated that “the launch activity was conducted safely, systematically, and professionally throughout,” and urged other countries not to “over-interpret it.” Beijing had given several hours of early notice to key governments in the region.

Tensions have been high over the spirit of Rarotonga since 2021, with China having repeatedly called out the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal between Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. as violating the treaty, to which Australia is a party. Under the AUKUS deal, Australia will receive up to eight nuclear submarines along with highly-enriched uranium for their onboard reactors.

“China has been quite public in voicing its support for nuclear weapons free zones, most recently indicating support for Southeast Asia’s. And then they turn around and do this,” said Samuel.

China’s action, combined with pressures from the U.S., Australia and other regional players, may lead to a “slow spiral” and a “race to the bare minimum” of what the treaty demands, he said, rather than furthering more aspirational, peace-oriented goals.

Aside from the South Pacific NWFZ, similar structures exist across Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Central Asia, plus Mongolia. Antarctica, outer space and the ocean floor are similarly off-limits for the stationing of nukes, as agreed by the international community.

China last fired a ballistic missile into the Pacific in September 2024. The U.S. conducted a comparable ballistic missile test in March of this year, though its missile splashed down in a part of the Pacific Ocean not covered by any nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties.

The memorandum of understanding, announced at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum in Ankara, was backed by both the U.S. and German governments and is described by the companies as a step toward a joint venture that would create a European “centre of excellence” for manufacturing, integrating and distributing ATACMS to NATO and allied forces.

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger called Unterlüß’s selection a way to strengthen “the industrial base in Germany for modern defense systems,” while Lockheed Martin’s European chief, Dennis Goege, framed the deal as pairing “proven U.S. technology with European manufacturing strength.”

Unterlüß, a 125-year-old Rheinmetall site employing roughly 4,000 people, has been expanding rapidly: a new artillery-ammunition plant opened last year, and a rocket-motor factory now nearing completion is slated to begin producing motors and guided-missile components as early as 2027. That timeline tracks with earlier statements from Papperger, who in May said full missile production would start in 2027 and scale up through 2028 and 2029 to meet what Rheinmetall estimates is annual European and Ukrainian demand of 600 to 800 ATACMS units.

The move addresses a real bottleneck. Lockheed Martin has been winding down ATACMS output at its Camden, Arkansas, plant as it prioritizes the newer Precision Strike Missile, which is set to eventually replace ATACMS in the U.S. arsenal − even as European and Ukrainian demand for the older missile remains high.

Once implemented, the site in Germany will be the first non-American location to produce ATACMS missiles. Lockheed says it will keep running the Arkansas line until the transition to European production is complete.

The Rheinmetall-Lockheed partnership has been building for over a year: the two firms first signed a missile-cooperation MOU in 2024, expanded it in April 2025 to cover a broader “Center of Competence” for missiles and guided weapons, and by last August were already discussing ATACMS and Hellfire specifically for Unterlüß. Whether Tuesday’s MOU translates into an approved joint venture still depends on U.S. government sign-off, since ATACMS technology transfer requires Washington’s consent.

The June 30 announcement comes as part of a £15 billion ($20 billion) defense funding boost announced by outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. It is a continuation and concretization of the U.K.’s recent push to expand the country’s atomic arsenal. The money will fund the Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines and SSN-AUKUS attack boats, along with a new sovereign warhead named Astraea, according to the announcement.

The nuclear spending is a significant portion of a broader £298 billion ($398 billion) four-year spending profile meant to lift U.K. defense spending to 2.7 percent of GDP en route to NATO’s 3.5 percent target by 2035.

The figures continue an upward trend in nuclear spending that has persisted for several years. The Ministry of Defence’s Defence Nuclear Enterprise already consumed 18% of the defense budget, £10.9 billion ($14.6 billion), in 2024-25, and the Public Accounts Committee had projected that share would keep climbing to a full fifth of all military spending. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has separately calculated that Britain became the world’s third-largest nuclear spender in 2025, at $12.6 billion.

The high spending associated with the nuclear program has caused criticism by some domestic advocacy groups who argue the money could be put to better use elsewhere. The government argues the nuclear bombs are essential to ensure Britain’s sovereignty, and that London plays a “unique role as the only European power to pledge our nuclear deterrent to defend our NATO allies.”

Central to the current package is Astraea, the warhead designated A21/Mk7 that the Atomic Weapons Establishment has been developing since 2020 to replace the aging Holbrook design carried on Trident II D5 missiles.

Officials and independent analysts say the replacement is less a matter of choice than necessity: Because Britain’s warheads must remain flight-certified against the American Mk4/Mk4A aeroshell shared with the U.S. Navy, the U.K. cannot simply refurbish Holbrook indefinitely once Washington moves to its own next-generation W93 warhead.

Astraea is being developed “in parallel” with the W93 and will share its Mk7 re-entry body, according to the government. The new British warhead’s estimated yield will reportedly fall somewhere between 90 and 455 kilotons, according to an analysis of publicly available information by the Nuclear Information Service, a U.K.-based nonprofit research organization. It will very likely mean a marked rise from Holbrook’s estimated 80 to 100 kilotons.

This week’s announcement also reaffirms Britain’s June 2025 decision to buy 12 F-35A jets and rejoin NATO’s Dual Capable Aircraft nuclear-sharing mission for the first time since the Cold War, a move that will see American B61-12 bombs likely based on U.K. soil, to be delivered by British aircraft if the U.S. president authorizes a strike. Similar arrangements exist with the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey.

Britain’s nuclear modernization joins a growing chorus of signals that the world may be entering a new era of nuclear re-armament after several decades of reduction, stagnation and public opposition to nuclear bombs following the Cold War’s excesses.

Aside from London’s program, France has announced intentions to increase the size of its arsenal and extend its nuclear umbrella to other European countries, potentially deploying French nuclear bombers there, too.

China has also been engaged in a significant expansion of its arsenal, sending alarm bells ringing in Washington.

And between Russia and the U.S., who collectively hold 86% of the world’s nuclear weapons, the last remaining strategic arms reduction treaty expired in February.