The planned engagement approaches as the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, the U.S. and Israel have been bombing Iran, and China worries the West with its ongoing military buildup.

Mihkelson shed light on his team’s plan for the upcoming trip during a briefing with DefenseScoop and other participants in the country’s Defence Study Programme last week.

“We’re not asking for anything. We are showing through our own commitments and actions, and what is our understanding on what should be done together as allies — and why it is important our alliance and Europe remain as good allies for us when it comes to how to balance China and China’s growth,” he said.

Mihkelson has served in the Riigikogu (the official name for the Parliament of Estonia) for more than two decades. Prior to that, he worked in multiple capacities as a journalist, including as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow. 

At last week’s briefing, he provided an overview of his nation’s current political and industrial landscape, particularly in the context of national security. 

Estonia is known globally for its efficient operation of digital government services. Mihkelson said this legacy is in many ways linked to the nation’s history of being occupied by the Soviet Union for 50 years, before gaining independence in the early 1990s. Now, according to the MP, Estonia has the highest number of technology startup “unicorns,” with a valuation of $1 billion or more, per capita in the world. 

Regarding his upcoming trip to Washington, which will mark his fifth in this capacity, Mihkelson said his team aims to meet with a range of U.S. government leaders — including members of the new Trump administration, lawmakers and officials serving at the State and Defense Departments.

“In the Pentagon, it’s critically important — especially for our Defence Ministry right now — to understand, kind of, what is [senior leaders’] way of thinking? What is [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy] Elbridge Colby thinking currently about the force posture in Europe or in Asia? And when I asked Americans in the south of Estonia, ‘What if somebody could ask you is it worth it to be here? Can you train enough? Is it really, like, important for you to be here as a soldier?’ The answer was ‘Absolutely, yeah,’” he told DefenseScoop. “This is why we have to be constantly in communication with Washington as well, to make sure that they at least get some sort of feedback directly from us, about what is important for us as a really committed ally.”

Officials in his delegation are also looking to meet with “think tankers” from the Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, and other organizations that prioritize shared research interests with Estonians.

Noting that his team previously had “quite a difficulty” meeting with the National Security Council and other White House elements of the former Biden administration, Mihkelson said he’s keen to engage with “smart people who understand the strategic reality in its complexity” now serving under President Donald Trump. 

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah — who recently met with the chairman in Estonia — are among the lawmakers he’s looking to connect with again while in Washington.

Regarding topics on the docket for discussion with his American counterparts, Mihkelson pointed to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and what he referred to as expanding efforts by Russia and China to divide the U.S. and its allies. 

“[China is] strongly united against, first and foremost, the United States,” he said, adding that Beijing seeks to undermine the U.S. internally and globally “as a leader of the free world.”

This preview of the trip was held shortly before Trump ordered the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran.

But on the conflict that continues to evolve in the Middle East, Mihkelson said last week that he was “more than sure that the status quo is broken” after Israeli airstrikes destroyed what he called “quite significant amounts” of Iranian military assets.

“This might end up with very dramatic change, not only in the Middle East, but that will affect all of us,” he noted.

Beyond “close allies in America” and around Europe, Mihkelson and other members of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee are also set for trips to meet with some of their security partners in the Pacific region, including New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the Philippines.  

“It’s just to really understand better what’s happening in that part of the world, which is very much directly connected to our security when it comes to progression in Taiwan, of course. And it’s also to explain, how do we see what should be done together as partners and with our allies to make sure that Russia and China will not succeed in destroying the world,” Mihkelson told DefenseScoop.

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This massive, in-the-works fortification will include a combination of surveillance assets, multilayer sensors, countermeasure platforms, and uncrewed systems that can take out hostile enemy drones across the roughly 183-mile border, which also marks a major boundary shared between Russia and the NATO alliance.

Members of Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board briefed DefenseScoop and others participating in the country’s Defence Study Programme on their unfolding drone wall development aims during a tour of multiple locations Tuesday. The officials were granted anonymity to speak freely about the effort.

“In 2027, there should be a so-called drone wall on the borderline. It consists of different equipment that can detect these low-flying objects. And then, if we know where the drone is, we can use it and take it out,” a border patrol officer told DefenseScoop.

While police and border agents are behind the launch of this new technology-driven security system, they’ll work closely with their counterparts in the Estonian Defence Forces regarding the detections and mitigation actions they’ll take in response to incidents. 

Estonia’s Defense League also recently established a new dedicated drone warfare unit.

In many ways, the envisioned drone wall was inspired by Estonia’s allies in Ukraine, who — although outnumbered — have successfully countered a variety of Russian advances with a mix of weapons, electronic warfare and drones since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

“The new thing is drones. Our aim is that every car on patrol must have a drone with them, and every police officer or border guard officer has to have the capability to operate the drone — because we see the drone as flying binoculars. For us, it just expands the range of the patrol very much,” a second border patrol officer said.

“Right now, we have the small drones. But in the future, we’ll also have the specialized unit, which has bigger drones, and this fixed-wing drone, which looks like a small plane. They have special training — and if we need to see something further away, we call them, and they come and make the video,” he added.

A Chinese-made DJI drone was on display during the tour. Despite security concerns amplified by the U.S., the officials said that specific product has performed repeatedly well for their missions. The systems are also hosted on a network that doesn’t interfere with Estonia’s more sensitive and exquisite capabilities. 

The officials also showed off recently acquired equipment that can completely knock out enemy or criminal drones. 

“It can jam the signal from the operator to the drone and also jam the GPS. So it’s quite powerful, and our Fast Response Unit, who is also stationed in this building, has made some training with it, and it really works on the drone. The drone comes down,” a border patrol officer said. 

“I had the training just to see if it really works. So maybe the drone was approximately 200 or 300 meters away. And yeah, it worked — because there were lots of us, and everyone wanted to practice,” another officer told DefenseScoop.

The team said they haven’t taken out any Russian unmanned aerial systems near the border to date, noting they’re in need of new systems that enable drone detection and tracking. 

“We have little or no cases this year. But, we have found people who were lost in the forest actually,” using drones and other surveillance assets, a border patrol officer noted. 

The new drone wall is estimated to cost the nation up to €20 million, once completed. 

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Pevkur hosted a small group of journalists at the Embassy of Estonia in Washington while he was in town for a two-day visit with his American counterparts and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Topics discussed included a massive ongoing military drill with participation from 16,000 Estonian and allied forces, and the latest on Russia’s hybrid warfare activities in Europe against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, among others.

“Can you say that we have prevented attacks [from Russia] in Europe? Well, I’m not going to be very specific, but I can say that, yes, the European services together have prevented different types of hybrid attacks. But unfortunately, we’re not going into more details,” Pevkur told DefenseScoop.

Estonia shares an 183-mile border — and a complex history — with Russia. Since regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Baltic nation has been intentional about applying digital technology to build a transparent and efficient government.

On the heels of invading Ukraine and initiating the full-scale war in early 2022, Russia started conducting so-called “hybrid” warfare activities involving drones, cyber intrusions and other assets against Estonia and nearby NATO members.

Pevkur said that “luckily,” Estonia has not experienced “direct hybrid attacks in recent weeks or months.” However, he noted that nations also lack a clear definition for every type of assault that could constitute hybrid warfare, which introduces challenges when identifying the threats.   

“We see [hybrid attacks as] basically everything below the Article Five threshold [that would trigger a collective self-defense response from NATO]. So when we take the attack on [Leonid Volkov, a close associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in Lithuania], or assassination attempts, or the attack on [Estonia’s Interior Minister, Lauri Läänemets’] car, or attacks on journalists — we put them altogether — and the main indicator is that all these attacks, whatever they are, were they orchestrated by the Russian services or not? And now the question is, can we also prove that?” Pevkur explained.

“So this is why we cannot point the finger at the moment to the attacks associated with the [sabotage of Baltic Sea submarine infrastructure]. We cannot say clearly that they are hybrid attacks,” he told DefenseScoop.

As the defense minister suggested, in recent months, a large fleet of so-called ghost or shadow vessels allegedly commanded by Russia are being deployed — often without flags — around the Baltic Sea to circumvent Western sanctions and illegally export oil, among other operations. One such tanker detained by authorities late last year was suspected of disrupting a subsea power cable that connects Finland and Estonia.

“There are close to around 500 ships in the world which we can identify as a shadow fleet crew or shadow fleet vessels,” Pevkur said. “We know all of them.”

He pointed to the Kiwala —  a vessel originally sailing under the flag of Djibouti, with a Chinese captain and on the sanctions list in multiple countries — that the Estonian navy intercepted in April. The military held it up for inspections until dozens of “deficiencies” were resolved.

“They are one-layer tankers. They pose a huge environmental risk. And the Baltic Sea and Finnish Gulf are very shallow, so when something happens, the ocean can maybe handle this somewhere in the Atlantic — but the Baltic Sea cannot. And the environmental impact will be huge,” Pevkur said.

“So this is why, yes, we are monitoring every ship, every vessel which enters into the Baltic Sea, and we check all of them. The monitoring system is in place. We share the information with our allies, and if necessary, we will act — as we did with the Kiwala,” he told DefenseScoop.

Estonia’s leadership recently pledged to invest more than 5% of the nation’s GDP for defense spending annually, and alongside America has been encouraging NATO allies to do the same.

“Over half of that money will go directly into the capabilities — so new vessels, the renovation of the old vessels, air defense systems” or other platforms, Pevkur said.

He noted that his team wanted to schedule a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while in Washington, but that wasn’t doable because the Pentagon chief is currently traveling with President Donald Trump in the Middle East.

“Hopefully we will meet on the third of June in Brussels” during EU Week, Pevkur said. “For me, of course, it’s important to be in contact with Pete.”

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Their meetings come after President Donald Trump temporarily froze hundreds of millions in American security assistance and ended intel exchanges with Ukraine for more than a week in early March, which caused a major disruption to Kyiv’s defensive battlefield operations. During a briefing with reporters at the German Marshall Fund think tank on Thursday, the Ukrainian delegation shed new light on the frontline impacts of that intel pause and the messages they aimed to articulate to their U.S. counterparts.

“When the weapons supplies were stopped — and the intel-sharing, which was much worse — that was a disaster. Even though it was not a complete shutdown of sharing, it was something that we felt that we couldn’t [fully] replace with anything else that the Europeans have,” said Oleksandra “Sasha” Ustinova, chair of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Special Commission on Arms Control. 

For more than a decade, U.S. spy agencies and contractors have supplied sophisticated surveillance imagery and intelligence to Ukraine that’s proven instrumental in anticipating and responding to Russian attacks.

Oleksandr Zavitnevych, chair of the Parliament’s Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence, (through his interpreter) explained that the Trump-ordered intelligence halt lasted between one and two weeks. He said that combat operations continued during that time and Ukraine’s military was still able to obtain some useful information from other international partners, including the U.K. and France. 

However, Zavitnevych told reporters that his message to leaders at 11 meetings in Washington this week was clear: “Please, while we make those [negotiation] efforts and work on those issues — please don’t shut down intelligence-sharing.”

“We think that would be a disaster if that happens again,” Ustinova also said.

The current state of play with Europe marked another key item the group sought to call attention to this week, she confirmed, noting that many countries in that region continue to step up significantly to support Ukraine in the fight. 

“Everybody’s willing to pay more. The biggest fear they have right now is that the United States might shut down, basically their third-party transfer, so that they cannot buy [weapons and assets] and give it to us. We’re totally dependent on all the missiles, especially missiles for the Patriots — you’re the only ones who do that,” Ustinova said, referring to a high-tech air defense system.

At the roundtable, the officials also emphasized that since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, Ukraine’s production facilities have steadily operated under continuous air strikes and wartime threats. However, the nation’s production output has grown considerably for some in-demand items over that time period.

“Speaking of the newest technologies — like the drones, which became a true weapon, like a military and delivery device. This new type of weapon essentially emerged in 2022. And last year, Ukraine produced over a million such units. [Now, we’ll procure and produce] over 3 million such drones,” Zavitnevych said.

He told DefenseScoop that when the U.S. intel and weapons hold went into effect last month, Ukraine’s government launched a country-wide campaign called “make a drone in your home.”

“In fact, many people did assemble them from some kits at home. But then an additional step was once they shipped them to some facility, then others would have to test their quality assurance. The idea of this was not so much to actually get a great output of those drones, homemade drones — but rather to get people interested and involved in defense. This was an element of national resistance,” Zavitnevych said.

When the German Marshall Fund’s head of strategic democracy initiatives Josh Rudolph likened those DIY drones to improvised Molotov cocktail weapons used in World War II, Zavitnevych said it’s “exactly the same thing.” 

Drones and other uncrewed systems have been a central weapon in the Russia-Ukraine war, with recent reports that they are now killing more people and enabling more damage than any traditional weapons on that contemporary battlefield. Currently, Ukraine’s drone arsenal includes systems that can carry payloads ranging between 1 to 100 kilograms, or more than 200 pounds of explosives, according to Zavitnevych.

“I don’t believe any country in the world has the capability to have one person in charge of such a big number of drones that would destroy a whole division. But I will tell you honestly, this is a thing of the future, which will come quite soon,” he told DefenseScoop.

Today’s battles have led him to believe that future warriors won’t necessarily have to be in elite physical condition. Instead, he said they’ll more likely be “a man or woman controlling drones and the platforms that are deployed.”

“It is the weapon of the future. It’s important to point out, it is cheap — and I mean not inexpensive, but cheap,” Zavitnevych said. 

He noted that a first–person drone priced around $600 U.S. dollars could carry two-kilogram payloads that can “easily demolish two to three floors of this building.”

“Whereas a projectile of caliber 155 will cost several thousand euros. To shoot that projectile, you need a cannon that costs tens of millions of dollars and a factory that costs $100 million that manufactures those projectiles. But with an FPV [drone], you and me can do [an operation] together in two or three days,” Zavitnevych said.

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Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who is dual-hatted as the Eucom chief and Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO, gave lawmakers an update on the war and the current battlefield situation Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“The scale of this conflict is just awe-inspiring. Thousands of tanks destroyed on both sides,” Cavoli said.

At the start of the full-scale war in February 2022, Russia had about 13,000 tanks on active status and in storage, according to Cavoli.

“They’re starting to approach near the end of … the useful tanks in storage. So, depending on how much more they lose, that will really determine how quickly they can regenerate,” he told lawmakers.

“Russian ground forces in Ukraine have lost an estimated 3,000 tanks, 9,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 artillery systems, and over 400 air defense systems in the past year,” Cavoli said in a written statement to the committee.

However, Moscow is on pace to replace those losses, he added, noting that it has expanded its industrial production, opened new manufacturing facilities, and converted commercial production lines for military purposes.

“As a result, the Russian defense industrial base is expected to roll out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 200 Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles this year. (Comparatively, the United States only produces about 135 tanks per year and no longer produces new Bradley Fighting Vehicles.) Additionally, we anticipate Russia to produce 250,000 artillery shells per month, which puts it on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the United States and Europe combined,” Cavoli wrote.

Cavoli did not provide comparative figures for Ukraine’s equipment losses and weapons production.

Moscow’s production capability for some items, such as artillery shells and cruise missiles, has expanded “tremendously,” and it’s building one-way attack drones “in prodigious numbers,” he told senators, noting that Russian ground forces are integrating reconnaissance and kamikaze drones into their offensive operations on the battlefield.

Ukraine has used a variety of weapons — including unmanned aerial systems, artillery and Javelin missiles, among others — to destroy Russian tanks and other equipment.

Cavoli noted that both sides in the conflict are also conducting long-range attacks, with the Russians deploying cruise missiles and glide bombs and the Ukrainians relying mainly on one-way attack drones.

Ukraine is also using “some indigenously produced cruise missile systems — one in particular that I’ve got in mind that we can talk about in closed session,” Cavoli told SASC members.

The U.S. has provided large quantities of UAS — including kamikaze drones such as Switchblades and the Phoenix Ghost family of systems — to Kyiv since the war began to help it counter Russia’s invasion.

However, Ukraine’s defense industry has ramped up and is producing many of its own munitions.

“I would say they’re the world leaders in one-attack drone technology,” Cavoli told lawmakers.

President Donald Trump, noting the heavy losses on both sides of the conflict, has been pressuring Ukraine to reach a peace deal with Russia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is learning lessons from the war.

Cavoli mentioned the Army’s transforming-in-contact initiative — which is focused on modernizing the force with UAS, counter-UAS and electronic warfare — as an example of how the Defense Department is shaking things up based on what officials are seeing in Europe.

“Our use of drones has changed deeply across the joint force. Before this conflict, in the U.S. Army, for example, we had very few [UAS], but large drones associated with large units. Now we’re proliferating smaller drones to smaller units and having a larger number of drones in lower and lower hands. Fundamental change in the way where we’re doing business,” he said.

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“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out around each other in synchronicity and in control. That’s what we call dogfighting in space,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Tuesday during the annual McAleese Defense Programs Conference. “They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

A Space Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the series of demonstrations occurred last year and featured three Chinese Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two experimental space objects known as the Shijian-6 05A/B. The rendezvous proximity operations tests were observed in low-Earth orbit via commercially available data, they added.

The demonstrations serve as yet another example of adversary advancements in space-based capabilities over the last few years. Co-orbital satellites could maneuver close to U.S. space systems in an attempt to disrupt or even directly hit them — raising further concerns about their potential use for military operations.

“Unfortunately, our current adversaries are willing to go against international norms of behavior … and they’re willing to do it in very unsafe and unprofessional manners,” Guetlein said. 

Along with maneuverable space vehicles, China has worked to develop anti-satellite missiles and other non-kinetic weapons that can attack U.S. platforms on-orbit. Russia has demonstrated similar counterspace capabilities, such as its 2021 test of an ASAT weapon that destroyed another Russian satellite. Moscow is also reportedly developing a nuclear space weapon that could create a massive energy wave and destroy multiple sats.

At the same time, the Space Force is monitoring cyber operations against U.S. space assets almost daily. Adversaries are also using their own satellites to shadow American on-orbit systems in a “cat-and-mouse game,” Guetlein said.

Guetlein’s comments come as the Space Force begins discussing its efforts to develop counterspace capabilities more publicly. The service recently added “space control” — that is, the ability to disrupt, degrade or destroy adversary systems via both kinetic and non-kinetic effects — to its list of “core functions.” Space control ops could include orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare and other counterspace efforts.

And while the Space Force may be actively pursuing both offensive and defensive capabilities, Guetlein warned that Washington is at risk of losing its edge over Beijing and Moscow.

“There used to be a capability gap between us and our near peers, mainly driven by the technological advancement of the United States,” he said. “That capability gap has significantly narrowed, and we’ve got to change the way we’re looking at space, where that capability gap may reverse to not be in our favor anymore.”

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Signed by military leaders from both nations on Jan. 22, the new U.S.-Algeria Defense Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding paves the way for closer bilateral collaboration between troops. Some predict it also holds potential to curtail Russia’s influence in northern Africa. 

“This is a first-of-its-kind agreement between the U.S. and Algeria, and a major shift in Algerian foreign policy,” a U.S. defense official said on the condition of anonymity.

Generally for the Pentagon, MOUs refer to legally non-binding arrangements that describe the intentions, roles and responsibilities of the entities that opt to be involved. 

The commander of U.S. Africa Command, Marine Corps Gen. Michael Langley, signed the new MOU during his third official visit to Algeria alongside the country’s minister delegate to the minister of national defense and chief of staff to the National People’s Army, Gen. Saïd Chanegriha.

On Wednesday, a military spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the agreement “states the intention of both parties to explore potential opportunities for cooperation in areas that include maritime search and rescue,  counterterrorism, military training, and military healthcare initiatives.”

Without providing further details on those possibilities, they confirmed that a Joint Military Commission is poised to connect “annually to identify, guide, and review discrete opportunities and proposals for military cooperation.”  

“The first JMC will occur in 2025, with dates to be determined,” the spokesperson said. 

In a separate conversation, a U.S. defense official said that — with the deal officially set — Africom’s Office of Security Cooperation will begin puzzling out next steps and engage with their Algerian counterparts to begin planning future events for personnel to collaborate and jointly participate in.

“Both militaries commit to meeting on a regular basis and to find ways for us to assist one another,” the U.S. defense official said.

At this point, it’s “still to be determined” whether the new U.S.-Algeria pledge will result in expanded data-sharing and technology exchanges between the two militaries, they noted.

The MOU initiates a process to identify areas where the troops can more closely cooperate. 

It also instructs both sides to start meeting on “everything from foreign military sales, exercises, military trainings, etc.,” the official said, noting that “it does not confirm those things will happen — but it does get the ball rolling.”

While the Algerian military “lightly participated in or observed exercises, and attended conferences” on the sidelines over the last couple of years, in the U.S. defense official’s view, the new MOU signals that Algiers is now “opening the door wide open for more engagement and cooperation” with Africom.

According to the official, the agreement had “been in the works for sometime, but slow processes and lack of desire to see it happen on the Algerian side delayed it.” 

However, “the November timeframe is when it got kicked into high gear,” they noted, which was also around the same time Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. 

“Some are calling this part of the ‘Trump effect’ on foreign policy. Not until very recently Algerians kept us at arms length — now it’s completely different,” the official told DefenseScoop.

Leaders from the U.S. and Algeria have interacted since the late 1700s, though permanent diplomatic relations weren’t shaped until after Algeria emerged from subsequent French rule in the early 1960s. Relations between the nations were severed amid the Arab-Israeli conflicts between 1967 and 1974, but they’ve been relatively re-engaged in the recent past. 

Algeria is the largest country on the African continent. A small portion of the nation is located in the conflict-ridden Sahel region, where many people face severe challenges around political instability, violence and food insecurity.

Martin Pimentel, a research associate for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Middle East Program, noted that in the modern era both governments have a “transactional orientation” and view enhanced cooperation as an element that can mutually serve their near-term demands.

“The Trump administration needs partners to reduce U.S. troop presence abroad. The United States and Algeria share important interests reducing instability in the Sahel, and that makes them natural partners as President Trump seeks to draw down the U.S. military presence in the region,” Pimentel said in an interview on Wednesday.

The two nations are already partnering up on stabilization and counterterrorism efforts, which are ongoing and will likely grow under the new MOU.

“The big question is whether security cooperation can spill over into other domains,” Pimentel said. “With more technical cooperation, intelligence sharing and training, we might see this spilling over into a narrow rapprochement between Algeria and Morocco over security cooperation in the Sahel.”

He explained how Algeria used to be close to the Soviet Union, and to this day it continues to rely on a lot of Russian military equipment. But, he noted, Algiers has also been “recalibrating” its relationships with Washington and Moscow for decades.

“It’s been interested in growing its U.S. relationship for a long time, partly so it’s not over-reliant on Russia, and partly to get things it wants from the United States. Cooperation has been especially strong in stabilization operations, security sector reform, and combatting transnational crime,” Pimentel told DefenseScoop.

“This new agreement continues that pattern of cooperation, but it also comes at a unique moment for U.S.-Algerian relations. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Algeria seized on European efforts to diversify their energy supply chains. Russia has also been slow producing and supplying defense systems to Algeria, and Algeria is concerned about the Wagner Group’s destabilizing presence in Mali. The United States sees a real opportunity in this moment to reduce Russian influence in Algeria,” he said.

In a separate conversation, a U.S. defense official also pointed to how Russia’s losses in Syria have caused Algeria to only be able to depend on Libya in regards to port control on the entire Mediterranean Sea.

“Algeria was ‘a hope’ for Russia — but due to the amount of instability that Russia has brought to the Sahel, they and many Arab nations see Russia as a destabilizer,” the official said.

The signing of this new MOU also follows the U.S. military’s recent withdrawal of all its troops and assets that were previously deployed in Niger.

“Our presence fluctuates pending what is going on around the world, and administration to administration. This agreement shows a shift of Arab countries looking to the U.S. for partnership and stability,” the U.S. defense official said.

In response to DefenseScoop’s questions on Wednesday about what sparked this new commitment, the military spokesperson said the MOU is a result of negotiations between the Defense Department and the Algerian Ministry of National Defense that were held over a period of more than two years.

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The engagement marked the 56th U.S.-Republic of Korea Security Consultative Meeting. 

Shortly after that SCM, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and ROK Minister of National Defense Kim Yong-Hyun briefed reporters on plans to co-modernize their weapons arsenals and promote regional security endeavors in and around the Indo-Pacific.

“Moving forward, we’ll build on our momentum. And we’ll expand the scope and scale of our cooperation. We’ll use our strategic advantages and innovation in our defense industrial bases to bring cutting-edge tech to our warfighters,” Austin said.

In the meeting, the defense chiefs agreed to launch a new Regional Cooperation Framework covering a range of deliberate focus areas, including maritime security, multilateral exercises, capacity building, technical and defense industrial cooperation and information-sharing.

“Sec. Austin and I pledge to strengthen cooperation in science and technology and defense industry, based on the defense vision of the alliance. We plan to establish a vice minister-level Defense Science and Technology Executive Committee within this year to explore the application of cutting-edge science and technology in the defense sector,” Kim said through his interpreter.

Kim also confirmed that that new committee — the DSTEC — will puzzle out ways for South Korea to link with the AUKUS alliance on certain Pillar 2 projects to collaboratively accelerate emerging and disruptive military capabilities. The committee is envisioned to guide defense innovation and adoption of next-gen assets associated particularly with autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.

“We acknowledge the significance of securing supply chain resilience and modernizing alliance capabilities, and pledged to engage in active cooperation in the defense industry sector,” Kim noted — pointing specifically to maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) activities and efforts designed to revamp weapons systems and make them more interoperable.

The SCM participants also deliberated on plans to upgrade their shared early warning systems and missile defense capabilities, to ultimately deter and respond to advanced and novel missile threats from North Korea.

Notably, this meeting unfolded against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war that’s now at an extremely high risk of expanding to include involvement from that nation, also referred to as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK.

“We’re closely tracking the unprecedented level of direct military cooperation between Russia and the DPRK. In our meeting today, we shared our deep concerns about the deployment of DPRK troops to Russia. We also discussed how we’re going to work together with our allies and partners to respond to this dangerous and destabilizing escalation. The evidence now suggests that North Korea has sent around 10,000 soldiers to train in eastern Russia. Some of these DPRK troops have already moved closer to Ukraine,” Austin told reporters. 

“We’re seeing them outfitted with Russian uniforms and provided with Russian equipment. And I am increasingly concerned that the Kremlin plans to use these North Korean soldiers to support Russia’s combat operations in Russia’s Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine,” the secretary said. 

Kim noted that he views that deployment as North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un’s “attempt to maintain his dictatorship.”

The dictator “didn’t hesitate to sell out his young people and troops as cannon-fodder mercenaries. I believe such activities [are] a war crime that is not only anti-humanitarian, but also anti-peaceful,” the South Korean defense minister said.

He expressed belief that it’s still possible for the U.S., South Korea and other partners to overcome this escalation. But Kim also warned that North Korea would likely move to garner higher-tech weapons from Russia as a trade for its troops. 

“There’s a high chance that they would, in exchange for their deployment, North Korea is very likely to ask for technology transfers in diverse areas — including the technologies relating to tactical nuclear weapons, technologies relating to their advancement of [intercontinental ballistic missiles], regarding reconnaissance satellite, and those regarding [ballistic missile submarines] as well,” Kim said. 

In response to a question regarding how he gauges possible threats of North Korea interfering with the upcoming U.S. presidential election, Kim told reporters he doesn’t currently view that as a major concern. 

“However, I believe there is a high chance that they would want to exaggerate their existence [and alleged nuclear prowess] around the season of the U.S. presidential election — before and after the election,” the South Korean defense minister said. 

On Thursday, Austin and Kim are set to join U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and ROK Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae-yul for a “2+2” foreign and defense ministers meeting.

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In on-stage briefings and sideline conversations with DefenseScoop at the NATO summit last week, senior officials from multiple nations in the alliance discussed recent moves — including a blatant call-out and new measures in the Washington Summit Declaration — to accelerate plans that will help them collectively prepare for and defend against hybrid warfare tactics from Russia, China and elsewhere.

“These threats are present, real and increasingly tangible,” a British government official told DefenseScoop. 

Hybrid warfare involves a mix of conventional and unconventional methods that state and non-state actors use to destabilize and sow doubt in the minds of target populations. 

The scale and intensity of these covert and overt activities — like spreading disinformation, sending groups of migrants to storm borders, jamming GPS signals, economic pressure and more — have been rapidly expanding for NATO allies, particularly since the Russia-Ukraine war began in February 2022.

“This war started before from a hybrid war,” a spokesperson for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told DefenseScoop in an interview during the Washington Summit.

Security experts have studied how Russia conducted hybrid operations against Ukraine leading up to its full-scale invasion.

Beyond those activities, the Polish government official pointed to a “huge network” of munitions factories explosions in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and other locations, which they said suggests that Moscow “prepared for the invasion from those actions to destroy munitions.”

At the NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022, alliance leaders formally adopted a refreshed Strategic Concept, which included the alliance’s aims back then to more strategically confront and counter emerging hybrid threats.

“Since we put out the Strategic Concept, we’ve been working to turn it into real plans, real programs that demonstrate that NATO is capable and effective in dealing with exactly these kinds of challenges. That’s going to be carried forward at this summit,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last week at the summit in Washington.

Blinken continued: “But I can tell you from the meetings that we’ve had to prepare for this summit, every ally is acutely aware of this, every ally is acutely focused on this, the fact that we’ve seen attacks in recent months — arson attacks, sabotage attacks, attempted assassinations, misinformation, disinformation, cyber threats. This is not — these are not one-offs. This is part of a deliberate strategy by Russia to try to undermine our security and undermine the cohesion of the alliance. It’s not going to work because we see it and we’re acting on it.”

Not long after those remarks, NATO heads of state and government formally adopted their 2024 consensus document, known as the Washington Summit Declaration.

In it, they explicitly “reiterate that hybrid operations against allies could reach the level of an armed attack and could lead the North Atlantic Council to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.”

Article 5 calls for all members of the alliance to consider an armed attack on any NATO member as an attack against all members, and to provide assistance to the country being threatened.

Taking it even further, the allies also specifically spotlight recent coercive and divisive tactics against the alliance led by parties associated with Russia and the People’s Republic of China.

“The PRC continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security. We have seen sustained malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation, stemming from the PRC. We call on the PRC to uphold its commitment to act responsibly in cyberspace,” they wrote.

Regarding China, NATO committed to “boosting” capabilities that promote members’ shared awareness and resilience.

“Russia has also intensified its aggressive hybrid actions against allies, including through proxies, in a campaign across the Euro-Atlantic area. These include sabotage, acts of violence, provocations at allied borders, instrumentalisation of irregular migration, malicious cyber activities, electronic interference, disinformation campaigns and malign political influence, as well as economic coercion,” officials stated in their Washington pledge. “These actions constitute a threat to allied security. We have decided on further measures to counter Russian hybrid threats or actions individually and collectively, and will continue to coordinate closely.”

Although they did not elaborate on these agreed upon “measures,” the allies promised to more deeply support their “partners most exposed to Russian destabilization.” 

Regarding these inclusions, the British government official told DefenseScoop that, in their view, “it is only right that a future-ready NATO alliance evolves and commits to defending against emerging threats alongside conventional ones.”

During a briefing with reporters at the Washington summit, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis also said he’s pleased that the provisions regarding hybrid activities were laid out in the new communiqué. 

“My country is one of those who are being under threat by those so-called hybrid threats. In some cases, I challenged the notion itself that it’s called ‘hybrid threat,’ because it’s more than that. When Russia is involved in direct kinetic attacks, we should find another name to call it. I would prefer to use it a ‘terrorist attack,’ or ‘state-sponsored terrorist attack,’ but when we say that there will be an answer — and we do not shy away from even Article 5 when it comes to the attacks against NATO countries when they could be considered of a hybrid nature — I think that’s a very strong message that is being sent to Moscow,” Landsbergis said.

The spokesperson for Poland’s Foreign Ministry told DefenseScoop that their nation has also been experiencing “a rainbow of hybrid threats.”

“From the Polish point of view we are, all the time, under pressure of hybrid war — all the time,” the senior official said. “First of all, we have constant pressure on our border.”

“Before the war we had mostly children and women migrants, now most of them are old men, and 19% of them are not with Belarusian but with Russian visas. And Polish Secret Service [agents recently obtained] movies, which show how [these individuals] are trained on how to escape, how to pass by the wall, and — this is important — how to attack police, soldiers and members of the guard,” the spokesperson noted. 

“And we had some wounded soldiers” recently, they added. “There was a Polish soldier who was killed on the border. And during this event, he received an attack from a knife under the bullet-proof vest — like the movies instruct them.”

The Polish Secret Service has also stopped “sabotage groups” in their territory who often seek to disrupt logistics and other transports of materials to the Ukrainian border, according to the official.

“And all the time, Poland is under cyber attack,” the spokesperson also told DefenseScoop. 

Speaking on a panel about NATO’s technology modernization priorities, Microsoft’s general manager for national security and emerging technology Robert Blair explained how nation-state and other actors looking to harm the alliance are currently extremely active in cyberspace.

“And we don’t see that threat vector going down anytime soon. Just in terms of cyber attacks, we are facing roughly 345 million cyber attacks [for] Microsoft and our users every day,” Blair said. “And these attacks are not just prolific, they’re becoming more advanced.”

In his view, “the main reason that the Ukrainian government was able to sustain its control of its services to its people, is that it digitized its economy, it digitized its government and digitized the services to its people — so that when the Russians combined cyber and kinetic attacks and what we’re calling a new sort of hybrid warfare, they’re able to move those services outside of areas of harm into areas where they could continue.” 

“So, this is the time for NATO to take a look at these threat vectors. This is the time for NATO to digitize,” Blair said.

However, while these and other summit participants praised the alliance’s strategic focus on countering hybrid threats as they continue to escalate, some experts have since warned that NATO’s language in the Washington pledge doesn’t go far enough. 

“These sections of the communiqué convey the high level of concern within NATO around these critical issues, but they also lack specificity. For example, NATO should lead efforts across the alliance to change national legal frameworks to recognize state-supported cyber attacks. One hopes that sections 12-14 of the communiqué will be further developed in the coming year, not least because indirect political warfare is just as popular in Beijing as it is in Moscow,” Michael John Williams, a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, wrote in a review after the summit.

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“We have to make sure that we don’t get anchored in the initial lessons from Russia-Ukraine. This has been an evolving conflict,” Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, said Wednesday at the AI expo hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project.

Despite Russia’s perceived prowess in the digital domain as one of the most sophisticated cyber actors in the world, and the ongoing conflagration being dubbed by many outside observers as the first real and large-scale cyber war, these types of capabilities played a small role in the early days of the fighting.

Experts attribute this to multiple factors such as the defensive work Ukraine did ahead of the invasion to prep its networks against attacks — for which the U.S. military played a large role — and Russia’s overall poor military planning. Many stated that Russia assumed it would be able to march into Ukraine and take over the country with little resistance, prompting little to no integrated military planning, which has partially led to the war’s protracted nature.

As the conflict has dragged on, the U.S. must be paying attention to how Russia is using its digital capabilities.

“We now need to watch how the conflict has continued to evolve. Areas that I think we need to really understand is how Russia has evolved in using their cyber forces. I think it’s one we’re watching closely and in many ways want to ensure that we take away the right lessons of how they’ve applied their cyber forces as it’s evolved,” Haugh said. “I think what we will increasingly see is an understanding of how cyber has participated and given them increasing intelligence insights.”

Haugh told a House subcommittee panel last month that one of the other areas he’s watching closely is how Moscow is using its cyber forces from an intelligence aspect versus cyber effects. As Cybercom continues to monitor this, officials will work to inform their colleagues at U.S. European Command as well.

The conflict overall has prompted the U.S. to reevaluate some preconceived notions about cyber in hostilities, which have made their way into the Department of Defense’s updated cyber strategy that was released in September 2023.

“Cyber has an important role to play in conflict, it’s just not the role that I think we expected it to play at the outset of Russia-Ukraine. But we do expect cyber to play a significant role in a conflict, but it would not be a cyber by itself,” Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, told reporters last year. “One of the things that we have learned here is that the kinetic conflict is different than what we expected cyber to do on its own.”

The other main takeaway was that cyber must be integrated from the start, something Russia failed to do.

The 2023 DOD cyber strategy “draws on lessons learned from Russia’s 2022 further invasion of Ukraine, which has prompted a global reconsideration of the role of cyber in conventional conflict. These events reaffirmed that war-time cyberspace operations are best understood as a complement to conventional missions rather than as a decisive standalone capability,” Ashley Manning, acting assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, wrote in congressional testimony in April.

“Russia’s cyber operations in the war in Ukraine are largely consistent with the strategic miscalculations we have observed with Russia’s kinetic forces. The Department does not consider this to be proof of the weakness of Russia’s cyber arsenal or a failure of cyber as a tool in warfare. Rather, we assess that it is a reflection of the challenges of integrating multi-domain operations and Ukraine’s resilience, which has been reinforced by strong support from the international community and private sector partners,” she added.

The U.S. military has sought to improve cyber planning and integration into operations over the last seven years. Traditionally, it had been bolted onto plans at the end, not integrated from the start. Around 2017, Cybercom created what are called Cyber Operations-Integrated Planning Elements, a cadre of experts from Cybercom that are embedded within the staff sections of each combatant command to provide insights into how cyber capabilities can be incorporated into their battle plans.

Haugh explained at Cybercom’s legal conference in April that those teams have grown over time, with the smallest having 35 cyber experts and others having upwards of 50.

“That allows us to integrate every single day with every combatant command across the globe and with U.S. Cyber Command being invested in their outcomes and being able to deliver cyber as part of how they campaign and how they think about integrated deterrence,” he said.

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