Tag: defense contractors

Top U.S. defense firm General Dynamics is planning to open weapons plant in Ukraine – an investment that implies taxpayers will continue to dole out dollars to support war that has no end in sight

Top defense firm General Dynamics, a major contractor for the U.S. military, is planning to open a new weapons factory in western Ukraine, DailyMail.com can reveal.

It means that U.S. taxpayers look set to bankroll Ukraine’s weapons supplies via lucrative Pentagon contracts for years to come with no end in sight to the nearly two-year war.

Three sources familiar with the Virginia-based firm’s plans said the company will ramp up domestic production of arms supplies amid concerns about Kyiv‘s flagging counteroffensive to boot out Russia‘s armed forces from its occupied territories.

A proposal was drawn up last month and sent to Ukraine’s government to set up the manufacturing facility in the west of the country, which has been largely unscathed from Vladmir Putin‘s brutal invasion, within the next six months.

The revelations would also appear to cast doubt on recent German media reports that the U.S. and Germany are working on a secret plan to force Ukraine to the negotiating table and end the war.

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Global Censorship Strategy: US And UK Military Contractors Conspiracy

Newly leaked documents have revealed a secretive initiative by U.S. and UK military contractors to establish a global censorship framework in 2018, according to a new report by journalists behind the Twitter Files.

ublic has published a report by Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag, and Matt Taibbi claiming that a whistleblower has surfaced with documents suggesting that U.S. and UK military contractors, including prominent defense researchers and cybersecurity experts, orchestrated a comprehensive plan for global censorship. These documents, rivaling the significance of the Twitter Files and Facebook Files, which both Taibbi and Shellenberger contributed to, depict the formation of an “anti-disinformation” group named the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL). Allegedly a “volunteer project” by data scientists and defense veterans at its outset, CTIL’s tactics were seemingly integrated into projects of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The CTIL documents fill gaps left by previous disclosures, painting a detailed portrait of the so-called “Censorship Industrial Complex.” This network, comprising over 100 government agencies and NGOs, has been instrumental in pushing for censorship on social media platforms and spreading targeted propaganda. The documents include detailed accounts of digital censorship programs, military and intelligence community involvement, partnerships with civil society organizations and media, and the deployment of covert techniques like sock puppet accounts.

The whistleblower’s revelations highlight the pivotal role of CTIL in the creation and expansion of the Censorship Industrial Complex. Spearheaded by Sara-Jayne “SJ” Terp, a former UK defense researcher, and others, CTIL developed a comprehensive censorship framework in 2019. This framework was later adopted by various governmental and non-governmental organizations, including DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

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The Mad Propaganda Push To Normalize War-Profiteering In Ukraine

There’s been an astonishingly brazen propaganda push to normalize war profiteering in Ukraine as Kyiv coordinates with the arms industry and western governments to convert the war-ravaged nation into a major domestic weapons manufacturer, thereby turning Ukrainians into proxies of the military industrial complex as well as the Pentagon.

At an event in Kyiv which hosted 250 “defense” industry corporations from 30 different countries on Friday, President Zelensky gave a speech urging war profiteers to open factories in Ukraine to cut out the middleman of securing and delivering so many weapons from abroad. This is an investment that the arms industry would ostensibly have plenty of time to set up, given that western officials are now going out of their way to communicate to the public that this war will stretch on for many more years to come.

Zelensky’s speech twice made use of the phrase “defense-industrial complex”, and used the phrase “arsenal of the free world” no fewer than three times.

“Ukraine is developing a special economic regime for the defense-industrial complex,” Zelensky said. “To give all the opportunities to realize their potential to every company that works for the sake of defense — in Ukraine and with Ukraine or that wants to come to Ukraine.”

“Right now, the most powerful military-industrial complexes are being determined, as are their priorities and the global standard of defense. All of this is being determined in Ukraine,” Zelensky tweeted with photos from the event.

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Busted! Adam Schiff Funneled Millions To Defense Contractors After Taking Donations

While Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) campaigns for a Senate seat on a platform of earmarks for local causes, the 12-term Congressman has been busted steering millions in taxpayer dollars to for-profit defense contractors, many of whom have been political donors to his campaigns.

According to an investigation by Politico, Schiff “has offered an incomplete and potentially misleading account of his record on earmarks.”

A POLITICO review of congressional earmarks and political contributions found that in addition to the money for homelessness and drug treatment, Schiff also steered millions to for-profit companies and raised tens of thousands for his House reelection campaigns from corporate executives and people connected to them. The review was mostly limited to publicly available data from the brief three-year window when corporate earmarks were disclosed.

In two particularly egregious cases, Schiff channeled millions in funding to Smiths Detection and Phasebridge, Inc., two defense companies within his district – with $6 million steered to Smiths Detection and $3 million to Phasebridge. Both moves would have been barred under reforms adopted in 2010. This financial maneuvering coincided with Schiff receiving $8,500 in contributions from PMA Group PAC and two family members of Paul Magliocchetti, founder and owner of the lobbying firm retained by both defense companies.

In 2011, Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison for making illegal campaign contributions.

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America’s top 5 weapons contractors made $196B in 2022

American weapons makers continue to dominate the global arms industry, with four U.S.-based companies in the world’s top five military contractors, according to a new Defense News ranking of the top 100 defense firms.

In 2022, America’s top five weapons contractors made $196 billion in military-related revenue, according to Defense News. Lockheed Martin dominated all other defense-focused companies, with total military revenue of roughly $63 billion last year. RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, was a distant second, earning roughly $40 billion in revenue in 2022.

The same five American “prime” contractors have long dominated lists of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Boeing and General Dynamics have remained in the top seven of the Defense News ranking since it began in 2000.

Notably, several Chinese firms have expanded their military operations in recent years as tensions have risen between the U.S. and China. Four Chinese companies are now in the top 20, including one — the Aviation Industry Corporation of China — that became the world’s fourth largest military contractor last year. 

The top 5 for 2022 are as follows: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Aviation Industry Corporation, and Boeing.

The U.S., for its part, had 10 companies in the top 20. Italy, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom each had at least one of the world’s 20 biggest military firms last year.

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Lockheed Martin Predicts Strong Profits as Global Instability Rises

Lockheed Martin believes global instability is driving demand and sees an increase in annual profits. Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine has caused an increase in arms spending among NATO members, boosting weapons makers’ stock prices. 

On Tuesday, Lockheed raised its annual profit and sales outlook on strong demand for military equipment. After making the announcement, the company’s stock price increased by one percent. Reuters reports, “[Lockheed] expects full-year net sales to be between $66.25 billion and $66.75 billion, up from its earlier forecast of $65 billion to $66 billion.”

The billions in profit are driven by sales of big-ticket systems like the F-35. However, Lockheed has struggled to produce F-35s that can perform its promised abilities. In May, the government found the planes’ engines have a serious problem dealing with heat. “The F-35’s engine lacks the ability to properly manage the heat generated by the aircraft’s systems,” POGO reported. “That increases the engine’s wear, and auditors now estimate the extra maintenance will add $38 billion to the program’s life-cycle costs.”

The arms maker has additionally experienced a boost in demand for smaller systems, like the Javelin anti-tank missile. The White House has shipped thousands of Javelin systems to Kiev since Joe Biden took office. 

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US projected to spend $117B on nuke command and control in next decade

Operating, upgrading and maintaining the systems the U.S. Department of Defense relies upon to monitor, ready and launch devastating nuclear weapons is expected to cost $117 billion over the coming decade, according to independent analysis of federal spending plans.

The price tag for nuclear command, control and communications, or NC3, in 2023-2032 marks a $23 billion increase in costs compared to a 10-year estimate made in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report published July 14. The office updates projections every other year at the direction of lawmakers.

The CBO attributed the increase to a ramping up of nuclear modernization — including the replacement of the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center and E-6B Take Charge and Move Out aircraft — as well as certain items appearing in budgets for the first time.

Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and RTX, until recently known as Raytheon Technologies, in April announced they would collaborate on the so-called TACAMO, which provides airborne coordination for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

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Defense Contractor Funded Think Tanks Dominate Ukraine Debate

Think tanks in the United States are a go–to resource for media outlets seeking expert opinions on pressing public policy issues. But think tanks often have entrenched stances; a growing body of research has shown that their funders can influence their analysis and commentary. This influence can include censorship — both self-censorship and more direct censoring of work unfavorable to a funder — and outright pay–for–research agreements with funders. The result is an environment where the interests of the most generous funders can dominate think tank policy debates.

One such debate concerns the appropriate level of U.S. military involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since Vladimir Putin’s illegal and disastrous decision to launch a full–scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has approved approximately $48.7 billion in military spending.1 Despite the very real risk that escalations could lead to direct U.S. military involvement in the war, few think tanks have critically scrutinized this record setting amount of U.S. military assistance.

Within the context of public debate about U.S. military involvement in the Ukraine war, this brief investigates Department of Defense (DoD) and DoD contractor funding of think tanks, those organizations advocacy efforts for policies that would benefit those funders, and the media’s predominant reliance on think tanks funded by the defense sector. The analysis finds that the vast majority of media mentions of think tanks in articles about U.S. arms and the Ukraine war are from think tanks whose funders profit from U.S. military spending, arms sales and, in many cases, directly from U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war. These think tanks also regularly offer support for public policy solutions that would financially benefit their funders without disclosing these apparent conflicts of interest. While this brief did not seek to establish a direct causality between think–tank policy recommendations and their arms industry funding in the case of the Ukraine war, we find a clear correlation between the two. We also found that media outlets disproportionately rely on commentary from defense sector funded think tanks.

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Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry

On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were — or at least should have been — stunning, even by the standards of a department that’s used to getting what it wants when it wants it.

The new Pentagon budget would come in at $842 billion. That’s the highest level requested since World War II, except for the peak moment of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when the United States had nearly 200,000 troops deployed in those two countries.

$1 Trillion for the Pentagon?

It’s important to note that the $842 billion proposed price tag for the Pentagon next year will only be the beginning of what taxpayers will be asked to shell out in the name of “defense.” If you add in nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy and small amounts of military spending spread across other agencies, you’re already at a total military budget of $886 billion. And if last year is any guide, Congress will add tens of billions of dollars extra to that sum, while yet more billions will go for emergency aid to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s brutal invasion. In short, we’re talking about possible total spending of well over $950 billion on war and preparations for more of it — within striking distance, in other words, of the $1 trillion mark that hawkish officials and pundits could only dream about a few short years ago.

The ultimate driver of that enormous spending spree is a seldom-commented-upon strategy of global military overreach, including 750 U.S. military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, 170,000 troops stationed overseas, and counterterror operations in at least 85 — no, that is not a typo — countries (a count offered by Brown University’s Costs of War Project). Worse yet, the Biden administration only seems to be preparing for more of the same. Its National Defense Strategy, released late last year, manages to find the potential for conflict virtually everywhere on the planet and calls for preparations to win a war with Russia and/or China, fight Iran and North Korea, and continue to wage a global war on terror, which, in recent times, has been redubbed “countering violent extremism.” Think of such a strategic view of the world as the exact opposite of the “diplomacy first” approach touted by President Joe Biden and his team during his early months in office. Worse yet, it’s more likely to serve as a recipe for conflict than a blueprint for peace and security.

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