INTERNACIONAL
Russia exposes NATO weapons gap as top commander warns ‘the math is not in favor of the West’
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Days after NATO allies committed tens of billions of dollars to new air and missile defenses, the alliance’s top transformation commander warned that the West must fundamentally redesign its weapons and industrial base to withstand attacks at the scale now being demonstrated in Ukraine and the Middle East.
«Today, the math is not in favor of the West,» Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s supreme allied commander for transformation, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview following the alliance’s summit in Ankara, Turkey, in early July.
A U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile is launched during a live-fire exercise at the Chiupeng missile base in Pingtung County on Aug. 20, 2024, Adm. Pierre Vandier ( )
The summit produced commitments to acquire 900 Patriot missiles and invest more than $40 billion in counter-drone capabilities throughout five years.
But Vandier argued that simply buying more of the West’s existing weapons will not solve the underlying problem.
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Russia’s nightly barrages against Ukraine have exposed an air-defense model designed for smaller numbers of incoming threats. The U.S.-Iran conflict has simultaneously intensified demand for the high-end interceptors needed to defeat ballistic missiles, including Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) that cannot quickly be replaced.
«There is no way to produce 50,000 Patriots a year,» Vandier said. «We don’t have the supply chain, and it’s not worth doing that given the cost of the weapon.»
Instead, Vandier said NATO needs a layered mix of defenses: cheaper weapons that can be mass-produced to counter waves of drones, while preserving advanced interceptors for ballistic missiles and other sophisticated threats.
A U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile is launched during a live-fire exercise at the Chiupeng missile base in Pingtung County Aug. 20, 2024. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)
THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT AMERICAN WEAPONS SYSTEMS NATO IS EAGER TO HAVE
«You need to have attritable, low-cost, mass-produced weapons to just kill the low-cost weapons that are coming by big waves,» Vandier said. «And then you need still the exquisite, complex weapons to kill the most complex weapons, as ballistic missiles.»
Trump announced at the summit that the United States would grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot interceptors, potentially allowing Kyiv to build more of the weapons it urgently needs to defend against Russian ballistic missiles.
But asked whether the announcement changed his assessment that Patriots alone could not protect Europe throughout the next five years, Vandier pointed to a deeper obstacle: Western weapons were designed around an industrial base that no longer exists.
UKRAINE’S BATTLEFIELD IS TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE OF NATO
«The design needs to change,» Vandier said. «We are at a moment where some stuff will be redesigned under pressure to be mass-produced.»
NATO also is attempting to transform against a threat that is changing in real time. Asked about a recent Russian live-fire exercise on Lake Peipus, between Estonia and Russia, which Estonia’s defense minister assessed was likely practice against Ukrainian-style naval drones, Vandier said Russia has demonstrated an ability to absorb battlefield lessons and adjust «on a weekly basis.»
«War — if you do not adapt, you die,» Vandier said. «All your brain is about how you outmatch, outpace, outrun the enemy. And so Russia is not that bad at that.»
«For NATO now, it’s a question of speed of adaptation,» Vandier said. «It’s a mind game.»
Ukraine’s defense industry, meanwhile, is increasingly setting the pace for the larger Western manufacturers that once supplied most of its weapons, Vandier said. Ukrainian companies have been able to develop, field and modify systems quickly in response to changes on the battlefield.
President Donald Trump said the United States would send more Patriot missiles to Ukraine during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on July 14, 2025. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
«The very agile and fast-evolving industrial base in Ukraine is now giving the pace to the European and Western industry,» Vandier said.
But the technological competition is not confined to drones and air defenses. Vandier warned that the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has reopened a broader race over long-range missiles in Europe, as Russia and NATO allies seek weapons capable of holding targets farther behind enemy lines at risk.
The 1987 treaty prohibited the United States and Russia from possessing ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The first Trump administration withdrew from the agreement in 2019 after accusing Moscow of violating it, an allegation Russia denied.
Rescuers conduct search and rescue operations at a multi-storey residential building damaged in a massive Russian missile and drone attack in the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 2, 2026. Russian forces launched a large-scale attack on the city using strike drones and various types of missiles. Private homes, apartment buildings, an emergency medical substation, and a hotel building were damaged (Kyrylo Chubotin/Ukrinform)
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Vandier said the disappearance of those limits has produced a period of «complete strategic instability,» with both sides under pressure to develop new capabilities to preserve deterrence.
«The Pandora’s box is open again,» Vandier said, «and we’ll try to close it down one day.»
nato, ukraine, conflicts defense, russia, the european union
INTERNACIONAL
New audio undercuts Dems who defended Biden, slammed Hur after classified docs report revealed memory loss
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After special counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation and the subsequent report into former President Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents, Democrats rushed to defend the 46th president from his characterization that Biden was an «elderly man with a poor memory.»
The left-wing’s narrative surrounding Biden’s mental cognition — especially as he was running for re-election against President Donald Trump — is now crumbling after audio tapes from the investigation were revealed Monday night.
Prominent Democrats lined up to defend Biden when the initial report was released in 2024, many using the same line that Hur’s report was «gratuitous.» Then-Vice President Kamala Harris was chief among the chorus of defenders, saying that the report was «inaccurate and inappropriate.»
«The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts,» she told reporters at an event in Washington at the time. She also said the report was «clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.» Months later, Biden dropped out of the presidential race and was replaced on the ticket by his No. 2 without a primary election to decide his replacement.
President Joe Biden pauses as he concludes his address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his Democratic presidential re-election bid. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)
BIDEN’S HUR INTERVIEW TAPES COULD NOW GO PUBLIC AFTER HIS ATTORNEYS WAVE WHITE FLAG
«What everyone will soon realize is that this is a Republican special counsel who completely went out of his way to editorialize, to include material in his report that is unnecessary and irrelevant to what he was tasked with doing,» Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., piled on in comments to ABC at the time.
Hur’s appointment was nonpartisan.
In 2023, Hur was investigating Biden for retaining classified information. At the center of the investigation were audio tapes of Biden from interviews with his «Promise Me, Dad» memoir ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, from 2016 and 2017.
Hur’s report concluded that Biden did, in fact, retain classified documents, but that prosecuting him might not lead to a conviction, because he could be viewed «as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.»
«Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023,» the report said.
Former special counsel Robert Hur returns from a short break to resume his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 12, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Hur investigated President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and published a final report with contentious conclusions about Biden’s memory. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
BIDEN’S FIGHT TO KEEP HUR INTERVIEW TAPES UNDER WRAPS SUFFERS FRESH COURT BLOW
After a prolonged legal battle during which Biden sought to keep the audio tapes private, a nonprofit called the Oversight Project obtained them via public records requests. The damning tapes reveal Biden’s inability to remember basic names and dates.
In one instance, on April 24, 2017, Biden struggled to recall the names of two economic advisers.
«I’ll think of his name,» said Biden, who at the time was a private citizen and former vice president. «I should write the names down because I keep forgetting them.»
There was then a long pause before Zwonitzer prompted Biden by saying Alan Krueger’s name.
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the American Federation of Teachers’ 88th National Convention on July 25, 2024, in Houston, Texas. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
BIDEN SCORES TEMPORARY COURT VICTORY AS TRUMP-APPOINTED JUDGE DELAYS RELEASE OF HUR INVESTIGATION MATERIALS
In another instance, when trying to recall a memorial he attended for a fallen service member, Biden forgot the date of the service and name of the deceased.
«I think I went to that memorial service in Wilmington. It says [REDACTED] December the 4th, but I don’t — I know what this means. Memorial service — [REDACTED] gets names really f—ed up,» said Biden.
«So it says memorial service for [REDACTED]. I don’t think her name was [REDACTED]. Or I forget [REDACTED].»
The interviews were marked by consistent lapses in memory.
But in 2024, that didn’t stop Democrats from accusing Hur of being a partisan activist who intentionally tried to tarnish Biden and his chances in a rematch against Trump.
Andrew Weissman, a former general counsel to the FBI, cried foul on MSNBC.
«That is not the role of the Department of Justice … to talk about your memory today — irrelevant, it is gratuitous,» he reportedly said. «And it is also exactly what you’re not supposed to do, which is putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions.»
Andrew Weissman, the top prosecutor from the Russia investigation, confessed he has a «man crush» on the judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial. (MSNBC)
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Biden’s general counsel, said at the time that the report was «gratuitous.»
«When you are the first special counsel in history not to indict anybody, there is pressure to criticize and to make, you know, statements that maybe in otherwise you wouldn’t make,» Sams reportedly said.
«I think this issue of age is already out there, and when November comes, it’s going to be a choice between two people,» said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told POLITICO. «I was with a congressional leadership about two weeks ago, and no one walked out of that meeting, saying, ‘Oh, my God, it was like he wasn’t in charge.’»
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who at the time had just spent a day traveling with Biden, insisted that he was, «at the very top of his game, all the way through it, both in private and in person.»
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) listens as U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the Fed’s «Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress,» on Capitol Hill on March 3, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
Later in 2024, Biden was yanked from the top of the presidential ticket after an embarrassing debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump, which showcased his apparent mental decline.
Harris, serving as vice president at the time, was then coronated as the party’s presidential nominee despite never winning a primary. When she ran in 2020, Harris never made it to the primaries, dropping out on December 3, 2019, months before the first elections took place.
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A Biden spokesperson ducked the former president’s memory in a statement to CBS.
«President Biden’s conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way,» TJ Ducklo told the outlet. «Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution.»
«It’s wrong, and while President Biden disagrees with today’s decision, he also respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy.»
joe biden, politics, kamala harris, white house, biden pushed out
INTERNACIONAL
“La vida no es un juego”, autoridades de El Salvador intensificarán la seguridad vial en las fiestas agostinas
Durante las Fiestas Agostinas de 2025, El Salvador registró 358 accidentes de tránsito, con un saldo de 215 personas lesionadas y 19 fallecidas entre el 1 y el 6 de agosto. De acuerdo con datos oficiales, este periodo representa uno de los picos más altos de movilidad y turismo en el país, lo que incrementa los riesgos en las carreteras y exige una respuesta integral de las autoridades.
La meta para la actual temporada es clara: reducir los accidentes y proteger la vida de los salvadoreños. La estrategia fue expuesta por el viceministro de Transporte, Nelson Reyes, durante una entrevista en el espacio de Diálogo 21, donde describió el despliegue de un plan coordinado entre el Viceministerio, el Ministerio de Obras Públicas (MOP), Fovial y el sistema de Protección Civil.
“El inicio de las vacaciones agostinas representa uno de los periodos de mayor movilidad vehicular, y eso pone una presión tanto al flujo vehicular como a la capacidad de las diferentes zonas turísticas”, explicó Reyes en el programa.
Según el viceministro, el plan incluye controles viales reforzados, asistencia en carretera y campañas de concientización. Para la temporada, se desplegarán más de quince mil elementos, incluyendo gestores, inspectores, agentes de la Policía Nacional Civil y personal del Ejército en los principales puntos turísticos del país. El objetivo es garantizar la fluidez vehicular y disuadir conductas de riesgo.
“La presencia de estos elementos disuade de que las personas cometan infracciones, disuade de que las personas estén realizando actos que los pueden llevar a tener un accidente”, señaló Reyes.
Además, se suman operativos especiales como controles antidoping en terminales de transporte colectivo, revisiones técnicas y la exigencia de desinstalación de equipos de audio no autorizados en autobuses, para ofrecer mayor seguridad a los usuarios. Las autoridades también han puesto en marcha el servicio gratuito de grúas del MOPT.
Durante la entrevista el funcionario enfatizó que la principal causa de siniestros en vacaciones está relacionada con conductas prevenibles por parte de los conductores. “Ir utilizando el celular sigue siendo el enemigo público número uno de la seguridad vial. Ir a excesiva velocidad es la segunda causa de muertes. El no respetar las señales, no respetar los peatones, la gran mayoría de casos se pueden prevenir”, afirmó el funcionario.
El plan de prevención se apoya en una campaña nacional bajo el lema “La vida no es un juego”, lanzada para sensibilizar sobre los riesgos de manejar de forma irresponsable. La iniciativa incluye actividades pedagógicas para niños, como simuladores y licencia infantil, con el fin de fomentar una cultura de respeto a la normativa desde edades tempranas.
«Solo me tomé una» es una excusa que puede tener consecuencias fatales. Mira cómo la irresponsabilidad de beber y conducir puede llevar a un desastre. La seguridad vial es responsabilidad de todos.
Por lo que, el titular abogó que el enfoque principal durante las Fiestas Agostinas será la prevención, aunque las autoridades no descartan sanciones estrictas cuando se detecten infracciones graves. Reyes precisó que las conductas más vigiladas serán la conducción temeraria, el uso del celular, el exceso de velocidad y el consumo de alcohol al volante.
“El objetivo real es reducir los índices de siniestralidad y para eso también está la prevención”, sostuvo el viceministro. Parte de los recursos provenientes de multas se destinan a insumos de seguridad vial, como extintores, conos, cascos y guantes para motociclistas, que se entregarán a conductores sorprendidos sin estos elementos durante los controles.
Además, el funcionario instó a la población a verificar la vigencia de la licencia y la tarjeta de circulación antes de viajar, ya que son requisitos para acceder a servicios de auxilio vial.
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