Tag: defense contractors

DARPA picks Northrop Grumman to develop ‘lunar raiload’ concept

Railroads could open the moon to serious and sustained economic development, as they did in the American West in the late 19th century.

That’s apparently the hope of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is supporting the development of a “lunar railroad” concept proposed by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman.

“The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface, contributing to a space economy for the United States and international partners,” Northrop Grumman representatives wrote in a press statement on Tuesday (March 19).

Keep reading

Ukraine war is changing the global arms trade

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war has driven new arms purchasing in Europe in dramatic fashion, with US manufacturers being the main beneficiaries, according to a new study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

From 2019 to 2023, the worldwide trade in weapons declined by 3.3% overall from the 2014-18 figures, but the amount of arms imported by European countries in that period doubled compared with the previous five years.

At 55%, the lion’s share of arms sales to European countries came from the United States. This was up 20 percentage points from the previous period.

US’s global dominance

Mainly thanks to sales to European countries, the United States increased its overall weapons exports by 17%. Stateside producers delivered arms to 107 countries, more than in any other period studied by SIPRI or any other exporting nation.

“The USA has increased its global role as an arms supplier — an important aspect of its foreign policy — exporting more arms to more countries than it has ever done in the past,” said Mathew George, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme. “This comes at a time when the USA’s economic and geopolitical dominance is being challenged by emerging powers.”

Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is the European country where weapons imports have most dramatically increased. From 2019 to 2023, Ukraine went from being a minimal importer and a site of domestic production to being the No. 4 weapons buyer in the world, after India, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Imports increased 6,600% compared with the previous period.

Keep reading

Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza

While the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”

Keep reading

Biden wants to put the US on permanent war footing

The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.

The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.

When the Cold War ended, the national security budget shrank. Then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and deputy William Perry convened industry leaders to encourage their consolidation in a meeting that later became known as the “Last Supper.” Arms makers were to join forces or go out of business. So they ended up downsizing from over 50 prime contractors to just five. And while contractors needed to pare down their industrial capacity, unchecked consolidation created the monopolistic defense sector we have now — one that depends heavily on government contracts and enjoys significant freedom to set prices.

In the decades since, contractors have leveraged their growing economic power to pave inroads on Capitol Hill. They have solidified their economic influence to stave off the political potential for future national security cuts, regardless of their performance or the geopolitical environment.

Growing the military industrial base over the course of a generation would only further empower arms makers in our economy, deepening the ditch the United States has dug itself into for decades by continually increasing national security spending — and by doling about half of it out to contractors. The U.S. spends more on national security than the next 10 countries combined, outpacing China alone by over 30%.

Ironically, the administration acknowledges in the strategy that “America’s economic security and national security are mutually reinforcing,” stating that “the nation’s military strength depends in part on our overall economic strength.” The strategy further states that optimizing the nation’s defense needs typically requires tradeoffs between “cost, speed, and scale.” It doesn’t mention quality of industrial output — arguably the biggest tradeoff the U.S. government has made in military procurement.

Keep reading

Big US investors prop up the nuclear weapons industry

Nuclear weapons aren’t just a threat to human survival, they’re a multi-billion-dollar business supported by some of the biggest institutional investors in the U.S. according to new data released today by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and PAX, the largest peace organization in the Netherlands.

For the third year in a row, globally, the number of investors in nuclear weapons producers has fallen but the overall amount invested in these companies has increased, largely thanks to some of the biggest investment banks and funds in the U.S.

“As for the U.S., while there is, like past years, indeed a dominance, and total financing from U.S.-based institutions has increased, the total number of U.S. investors has dropped for the third year in a row (similar to our global findings), and we hope to see this number will continue to fall in the coming years,” Alejandar Munoz, the report’s primary author, told Responsible Statecraft.

In 2023, the top 10 share and bondholders of nuclear weapons producing companies are all American firms. The firms — Vanguard, Capital Group, State Street, BlackRock, Wellington Management, Fidelity Investments, Newport Group, Geode Capital Holdings, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley — held $327 billion in investments in nuclear weapons producing companies in 2023, an $18 billion increase from 2022.

These companies are also profiting from the enormous government contracts they receive for developing and modernizing nuclear weapons.

“All nuclear-armed states are currently modernizing their nuclear weapon systems,” says the annual “Don’t Bank on the Bomb” report from PAX and ICAN. “In 2022, the nine nuclear-armed states together spent $82.9 billion on their nuclear weapons arsenals, an increase of $2.5 billion compared to the previous year, and with the United States spending more than all other nuclear powers combined.”

American weapons companies are some of the biggest recipients of contracts for nuclear weapons. Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics are “the biggest nuclear weapons profiteers,” according to the report. Combined, the two American weapons manufacturers have outstanding nuclear weapons related contracts with a combined potential value of at least $44.9 billion.

Those enormous government contracts for nuclear weapons, alongside contracts for conventional weapons, have helped make nuclear weapons producers an attractive investment for American investment banks and funds.

“Altogether, 287 financial institutions were identified for having substantial financing or investment relations with 24 companies involved in nuclear weapon production,” says the report. “$477 billion was held in bonds and shares, and $343 billion was provided in loans and underwriting.”

The report notes that while the total amount invested in nuclear weapons has increased, the number of investors has fallen and trends toward firms in countries with nuclear weapons.

Keep reading

US Army spent billions on a new helicopter that now will never fly

The U.S. Army is ending its latest effort to build a new armed scout helicopter, known as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, an abrupt change of direction that marks one of the department’s most significant program cancellations of the last decade.

The service had already spent at least $2 billion on the program and had requested another $5 billion for the next five years, according to budget documents.

The helicopter program arrived in 2018 with lofty expectations. Army leaders hoped it would serve as a model for new acquisition approaches for its most complex and most expensive weapon systems. Prototypes from Bell Textron and Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky were expected to fly later this year. And, perhaps most importantly, the aircraft was slated to provide a long-needed armed scout solution after decades of starts and stops.

But Thursday, the Army’s top acquisition officials described a new vision and major aviation overhaul. In addition to ending FARA, the Army plans to get rid of its entire Shadow and Raven unmanned aircraft fleets, said Doug Bush, the service’s acquisition chief.

It will also stop fielding its new replacement for UH-60 Lima-model Black Hawk utility helicopter — the Victor-model — to the Army National Guard and instead field UH-60 Mike-models, the latest variant used in the active force, Bush said.

Finally, the service will delay procurement of its next-generation helicopter engine, which was set to be used in all UH-60s, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters as well as to power FARA.

Keep reading

World War Grift – Who’s Driving the Global ‘Defense’ Racket

War is a bad thing. Most people will agree. Often a war is perpetrated for an ostensibly good cause. It is seen as an unfortunate side effect that regular people are killed, maimed, scarred and diminished – whilst the ‘baddies’ somehow remain at large. Well then, if war is bad, and often ineffective, why does it continue?

In this article we will delve into the private corporations who insidiously overlap with their governmental and media counterparts to promote, fund and facilitate endless conflicts. We will also assess the case for acts of war and explore the theory that war is often perpetrated for financial profit rather than any moral cause.

Cui Bono?

‘Cui Bono’ is a fancy Latin phrase, that you might hear from Sherlock Holmes during an investigation. It means, ‘Who benefits?’. It is often used in political discourse as a knife to cut through the tangled webs of intrigue and speculation around events and get to the heart of the matter. Here we are discussing a global business, arms manufacturing and sales. It is a worldwide industry and has myriad influences. When it is presented in sound-bites by the corporate-owned media, we are seeing a glimpse, only a small portion of the picture. It is usually designed to make the reader or viewer think a certain thing – as we will discuss later. Yet when we take a wide-lens view the picture becomes cloudy with many different angles. We ask cui bono? – who benefits from violent conflict, in particular those hot conflicts of today: Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, Saudi Arabia/Yemen and so on?

It is an easy implication to lay at the door of the arms industry. More violence is more profit. Even mere instability in a country can lead to a ramping up of arms purchases by the military of a state. The massive price tags for weapons, the long lead-time of research and development coupled with the bottomless pockets of government budgets make for a fertile landscape for exploitation. It is not only the private military corporations who benefit, but the politicians and nation states too. The politicians get huge kickbacks from lobbyists, too much money to maintain that moral compass they may have once had. They also have a useful ‘casus belli’ – a ‘case for war’ which is a sure fire vote winner. Remember that Margaret Thatcher was set to lose her seat as leader of the UK until a miraculous military victory over Argentina in 1982 galvanised massive public support and a massive electoral victory. War for votes is nothing new. Yet these days, selling war is an uphill battle. I believe, perhaps naively, that most people don’t like suffering and violence. The Anglophonic destruction of Iraq through two wars ended up an unpopular decision, similarly the US’ failed conquest in Vietnam is viewed regretfully in hindsight. So we are left pondering, why must suffering the curse of armed warfare continue?

Before we delve too deep into the long grass, let us set our sights on our targets. We know the names of countries, sometimes politicians, but who are the arms dealers, the manufacturers of death who lurk in the shadows and create shiny new weapons of mass destruction?

Keep reading

RAYTHEON IS BUILDING TWO ULTRA-HIGH POWER DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS FOR THE U.S. NAVY AND AIR FORCE

Defense contractor Raytheon has been tasked with designing, building, and testing a pair of directed energy weapons for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force. Unlike cutting-edge laser systems that use the power of light to down airborne threats, the new weapons will use ultra-powerful microwave emitters to fry the electronics of attacking drones, missiles, and other electronically guided ordinance.

According to RTX Corporation, which owns Raytheon, the two prototypes are expected to be delivered in 2024 and 2026, respectively.

DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS INCREASINGLY VALUABLE IN ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE

Traditional munitions like bullets use kinetic force to damage or destroy attacking vehicles and personnel. Unfortunately, the cost of more accurate systems like guided missiles is often prohibitively disproportionate when compared to the cost of the attacking vehicle.

For example, the Israeli Iron Dome system that uses missiles can cost as much as $100,000 per shot to bring down a drone or mortar that costs a mere fraction of that amount. Further complicating the issue is the fact that adversaries are increasingly using drones to mount attacks, including the October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel.

To counter what officials have termed asymmetrical threats, the Israeli government has installed a battery of laser cannons known as Iron Beam. According to an April 2022 tweet by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, Iron Beam can down incoming mortar and drones at the cost of only $3.50 per shot.

Keep reading

Drastic Increase In Army Coyote Drone Interceptor Purchase Plans

The U.S. Army plans to substantially increase its arsenal of Coyote counter-drone interceptors, as well as associated launchers and radars, in the next five years or so. The service says it wants to buy 6,000 jet-powered Block 2 variants, which carry an explosive warhead to destroy their target, and 700 more Block 3 versions that utilize an unspecified “non-kinetic” payload.

The Army disclosed the details about its Coyote-related purchase plans for Fiscal Years 2025 through 2029 in a contracting notice about an expected sole-source contract to manufacturer Raytheon released earlier this week. In addition to the Block 2 and Block 3 interceptors, the service is looking to acquire 252 fixed launchers, 52 mobile launchers, 118 fixed Ku-band radars, and 33 mobile radars. Under the deal, Raytheon would also provide support for the maintenance and repair of at least 15 Coyote systems both in the United States and unspecified forward-deployed locations around the world.

Keep reading

A DEFENSE-LINKED CONTRACTOR TOOK OVER A SUCCESSFUL CDC ANTI-OVERDOSE INITIATIVE. IT IMPLODED IN A DAY.

A GROUNDBREAKING Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative to support harm-reduction groups across the country fell apart this month after the program came under the control of a federal contractor that has done no public health work for the government.

The National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance Center, or TA Center, was founded in 2019 as a coalition of harm-reduction groups partnered with the CDC to offer training, funding, and guidance to those working to reduce overdose deaths. Its success rested on the deep experience and the trust community members had for the three main partner organizations, which included the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD; the National Harm Reduction Coalition, or NHRC; the University of Washington’s Supporting Harm Reduction Programs; and a handful of other groups.

This month, the TA Center ceased functioning as it had for more than three years: Instead of a partnership, the project would be administered as a federal contract. And the CDC gave the sole-source contract to the Florida-based firm H2 PCI, a relatively new federal contractor with close links to the defense industry and the murky world of military special operations.

H2 PCI entered negotiations with the primary partners in the center to make them subcontractors but did not send proposed subcontracts to the groups until early November. Rushed by deadlines, those talks broke down in late November, according to Laura Guzman, executive director of NHRC.

As the H2 PCI contract went into effect on December 1, the primary partner organizations that had made the TA Center a success parted ways with the project, Guzman told The Intercept.

“From the beginning, it was clear that they had zero experience in the public health field and absolutely zero experience in harm reduction,” Guzman said. “It would be really challenging to work with a contractor who has zero understanding of our world.”

Advocates fear the takeover could wash away the years of painstaking work of building up the TA Center and sever its vital connection to on-the-ground harm reduction providers, making it harder for them to serve the people who rely on them for clean needles, naloxone, and other services, according to Maya Doe-Simkins, a veteran harm reductionist who has worked closely with the program.

Keep reading