2013: Britain Buying Hellfire Missiles

British AH Mk.1

In April 2013, the US DSCA forwarded Britain’s formal export request to replenish its Hellfire missile stocks, which had been drawn down by the fighting in Afghanistan and Libya.

Britain already uses Hellfire missiles on its WAH-64D Apache attack helicopters and MQ-9 Reaper UAVs. The exact missile types they picked for this request are interesting.

Rapid Fire May 21, 2013: Arctic Actors | South American Decision Delaying

• Why was Xi Jinping quick to chair China’s Central Military Commission (CMC)? Foreign Policy:

“Xi, then, has ultimately chosen to defend the Communist Party against internal political threats rather than prepare it to face external military threats. There is little doubt the Communist Party has been sharpening its identity in a post-communist world by defining itself against the West, fanning nationalist fervor, and promising a restoration of China’s ancient grandeur. Xi thus has little choice but to keep pumping enormous resources into a war machine if he is to justify his party’s continuing monopoly on power.”