Tag: military industrial complex

Lockheed Fast-Tracks Secretive AIM-260 Missile As Pentagon Pushes To Expand Production

Lockheed Martin has signed a framework agreement with the Pentagon to accelerate production and delivery of the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, bringing a closely guarded air-to-air weapons program further into public view. The announcement Thursday sets the foundation for a multiyear procurement contract, which remains subject to congressional approval.

The company says the missile offers greater range and effectiveness than existing air-to-air weapons and is compatible with aircraft including the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. It did not disclose a production target, delivery schedule, contract value or precise performance specifications. The announcement establishes a commitment to expand production, not a publicly measurable timetable for doing so.

Reuters reported that the program is intended to address increasingly capable Chinese long-range air threats, including those associated with the J-20 fighter. Although the weapon has spent years under tight secrecy, Thursday was not its first public appearance: images emerged in May. The production push also comes amid broader pressure on American and allied missile inventories following the Iran conflict.

That context makes two separate questions important: what the missile can do, and how many can actually reach operational units. A performance advantage has limited practical value if manufacturers cannot supply enough weapons, replace expended stocks or support additional customers.

Australia is already preparing to become one of those customers.

Canberra announced on August 6 that it would invest almost A$736 million to acquire the AIM-260 through the U.S. government’s foreign military sales system. The planned integration sequence starts with Australia’s F/A-18F Super Hornets, followed by its F-35A fighters and EA-18G Growlers. Australia’s government says it will become the first country outside the United States to operate the weapon.

The Australian announcement describes the acquisition as a way to extend engagement range and improve interoperability with American forces. It does not specify a missile quantity or delivery date, although Marles has said the weapon will not be available before 2033, and a December 2025 U.S. approval covered up to 450 missiles in a package valued at about $3.16 billion.

Lockheed’s industrial expansion extends beyond the AIM-260.

In a separate announcement Thursday, the company said GM Defense had delivered an initial batch of housing components for the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor just 22 days after the companies signed a formal contract. That agreement was signed August 6, with the first components delivered August 28. These were components for a different missile program, not completed interceptors or AIM-260 deliveries.

Lockheed says it is investing between $8 billion and $9 billion to expand munitions production across more than 20 American sites. Planned construction and expansion would increase its munitions production and warehousing space by almost 50%, according to the company. The GM partnership uses commercial casting and machining capabilities to supplement the defense supply chain.

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Don’t Look Away

After spending millions of dollars redecorating the White House and transforming D.C. monuments, President Trump approved, on September 15, 2026, an additional 2.8 billion dollar sale of heavy bombs to Israel, including 40,000 one-ton bombs, 20,000 of the 2,000 lb. bombs, and 20,000 bunker-busting penetrator warheads. Israel has used these bombs to destroy homes, families and crucial infrastructure in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

This latest U.S. weapons package will replenish Israel’s stockpile of bombs that human rights groups have condemned after documenting their use over the past two and a half years to kill, maim, bereave, and forcibly displace Palestinians. Survivors whose homes have been reduced to rubble now live in makeshift shelters, including flimsy tents, while Israel continues to restrict deliveries of supplies that could protect Gazans from harsh weather, disease, rodent and insect infestations, and other hardships of displacement.

In June of 2026, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimated that 170,000 households in Gaza, equivalent to nearly one million people, were living in tents. “Another 5,000 households sleep outdoors,” they reported, “while 52,000 households live in overcrowded shelters.” As Gazans enter the rainy and cold months of winter, they still lack emergency shelter items. They need plastic sheeting, plywood, and rope. Genocidal war and siege drive the crisis they face as the Israelis continue destroying Gazan homes and shelters and imposing restrictions which block desperately needed relief.

Over the past two years, members of the Global Solidarity for Peace in Palestine coalition have held weekly online meetings with Palestinians living in the West Bank. They update our coordinating committee about their experiences amidst ongoing, U.S. provisioned Israeli genocide against Palestinians. They speak with anguish about people in the West Bank and Gaza enduring persecution, travel restrictions, hunger, inadequate medical care, land theft, contamination, and an alarming rise in pogrom-style attacks by illegal settlers who are often assisted by Israeli military and police forces.

Our Palestinian coalition members living in the West Bank long to extend a helping hand to people trapped in Gaza. They recently raised the dilemma of Gazan children who have already lost years of education. Many live in wretched tent encampments, lack adequate food and medicine, and struggle with psycho-social traumas because of having lost their loved ones.

A Palestinian NGO, PYALARA, (Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights) suggested that our coalition could assist with practical measures to assist Gazan children who are eager to learn but who lack basic school supplies. The children are bereft of paper, pencils, pens, books, desks, and bookbags.

Recently, for UN News, an interviewer spoke with Julia Dicon, the Director of Education for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Association). Dicon described what education means for Palestine refugee children and why sustained support is critical. She expressed deep respect for the many ways that Palestinians maintain capacities to educate their children, even in these dire times.

The interviewer asked her to tell a story about Palestinian young people who represent courage in the face of unspeakable adversity as they continue efforts to learn and teach.

Dicon talked about two Gazan sisters, 17-year-old Tala Mousa and her 15-year-old sister, Farah Mousa, who were recently named winners of the 2026 Middle East Earth Prize. The young women regularly looked at rubble surrounding their home which Israel had bombed. Unlike President Trump who is undertaking expensive and unnecessary renovations, they longed to rebuild homes which Israelis decimated, using U.S. manufactured bombs.  Fala and Farah puzzled over how they and their neighbors could begin creating the indispensable equipment to reconstruct housing: bricks. Together, using their scientific knowledge, they developed a practical way to transform rubble into reusable blocks for garden beds, pavement, and partitions.

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Rep. Meeks puts hold on Trump’s reported $2.8B weapons sale to Israel

The ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday that he was putting a hold on the Trump administration’s plan to sell 40,000 one-ton bombs to Israel for a reported price of $2.8 billion.

Meeks posted a statement to X that while he is firmly committed to Israel’s security and its ability to defend itself, he is concerned about the risk to civilian lives, citing Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

“I therefore will not clear this sale at this time. The decision does not diminish Congressional support for Israel’s legitimate defense needs; it reflects Congress’s responsibility to ensure that U.S.-funded weapons are used lawfully, responsibly, and with meaningful safeguards for human life,” said Meeks. 

His decision to go public with his opposition, which typically occurs behind the scenes in an attempt to find a compromise, according to The Hill, is based on frustration with both the Trump administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

The weapons package, first reported by the Washington Post, includes 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s. It also includes 20,000 I2000 Penetrator warheads, the Post reported. 

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The Compliance Layer: DEI, Readiness, And The Military’s Personnel Problem

The latest Pentagon outrage is aimed at the smallest part of the story. In late August 2026, The Washington Post reported that conservative military veterans with large online followings had received civilian roles the department would not clearly describe, near Anthony Tata’s Personnel and Readiness shop. The names included retired Col. Rob Maness, retired Col. Kurt Schlichter, and retired Col. Thomas Anderson, known online as “Cynical Publius.” They say the work involved reviewing senior service colleges — curriculum, interviews with commandants and faculty — not running a messaging shop.

The Pentagon still has not published the documents that would settle it.

Fine. Ask those questions. But do not pretend this is when politics first entered the building. The better question is whether the military had already been politicized before a few outside veterans received government email accounts.

The issue is not whether influencers now orbit the Pentagon; it is why influence only becomes scandalous when it challenges the last decade’s abysmal record, personnel doctrine, and culture-war assumptions.

The real power is not who gets a Pentagon email address. It is who writes the rules governing who may serve, what counts as fit, what officers are taught, what commanders may question, and who gets retained or removed.

They are not under fire for the policy argument. They are under fire for the name. The charge attaches to the name so no one has to answer the policy. It is still not the same as using government machinery to rewrite accessions, medical rules, fitness scoring, or careers.

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Pentagon reveals secret space weapons are already in orbit — but won’t say what they do

The U.S. has weapons orbiting Earth that can be used to defend American forces from attacks in space, the Air Force secretary revealed this week in a rare public acknowledgment of capabilities the Pentagon has largely kept secret.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday that the Space Force now has “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” but declined to say what the weapons are, how they work or when they were deployed.

The carefully worded disclosure marks a shift in how openly the U.S. military talks about weapons in orbit as China and Russia develop their own capabilities to disrupt, disable or destroy satellites.

“Is there any question in the room, by anybody, about whether or not the Chinese or Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?” Meink told reporters after his remarks at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland — right outside of Washington, D.C.

“For over a decade, we’ve been talking about the fact, and we have expressed concern, that the Chinese and Russians were developing weapons for space,” he continued. “We need to focus on making sure we can protect ourselves operating in that environment.”

Exactly what the U.S. has put into orbit remains a mystery.

The U.S. has previously discussed placing weapons in space, including plans to deploy space-based interceptors capable of destroying incoming missiles as part of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system.

But Meink’s disclosure goes a step further: The Space Force already has weapons in orbit for “space control,” a mission aimed at protecting U.S. access to space and, if necessary, denying an adversary the ability to use it.

The Pentagon has historically revealed little about the weapons developed for that mission, with publicly known U.S. counter-space capabilities largely based on the ground.

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Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm Over Trump’s Planned ‘Largest Transfer Of Ordinance In Modern History’

After the US was essentially forced to conduct a major and rapid draw down of forces from the Gulf and Mideast region in the wake of Iran’s ‘unexpectedly’ large retaliation for Operation Epic Fury, it seems all that Washington is left to do is arm regional allies to the teeth and wish them the best.

Early this month the US approved two potential Saudi defense packages valued at a whopping $5.75 billion. The forthcoming deals will reportedly focus on transferring extended-range precision bombs and bolstering Abrams tanks in the kingdom.

Ironically this comes at a moment that Saudi-backed coalition forces in Yemen – with all its military tech – are getting rolled back by Ansar Allah fighters in sandals.

Naturally, next on the list comes Israel.

On Tuesday, over a week since the planned Saudi sale was reported, The Washington Post reveals the following:

President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to sell to Israel a munitions package worth $2.8 billion, which will include tens of thousands of highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, according to a U.S. official familiar with the sale.

The planned sale, which has been informally communicated to relevant congressional committees who weigh in on large arms sales, includes 20,000 MK 84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.

WaPo calls the package “the largest” planned sale of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel in years.

Just prior to initial reporting of this dropping at around midday Tuesday, Tucker Carlson revealed on X: “According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.”

Carlson put it in perspective in the following commentary:

How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing. Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs.

The former Fox host further warned this portends Israel could soon go even more ‘gloves off’ and unleash further hell on Gaza and Lebanon, or possibly even Iran – at a moment the US seems to be trying to find an exit from the hot phase of the conflict.

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Ukraine Allegedly Spends $190 Million Daily on War

They are just making up numbers at this point. Ukraine’s parliamentary Budget Committee chair Roksolana Pidlasa now says that one day of war costs Ukraine $190 million, up from $140 million per day in 2024. They present these figures as if somebody can open a spreadsheet in Kyiv and calculate what this catastrophe costs down to the dollar. The $190 million is essentially a budgetary accounting figure. It does not remotely represent the TRUE cost of this war.

Even Pidlasa admits the number excludes weapons supplied in kind by Ukraine’s foreign partners. That alone should tell you how meaningless it is to call $190 million the “cost” of one day of war. Over the first eight months of 2026, Ukraine reportedly spent nearly $42 billion on national security and defense while raising only about $39 billion from its own revenues and domestic government bonds. The state can no longer finance even the portion of this war that it previously funded itself. Yet the weapons arriving from Europe and elsewhere can sit outside that headline calculation.

Do the elementary arithmetic and $190 million every day becomes roughly $69.4 billion annually. But even THAT is not the cost of the war. The IMF says Ukraine’s fiscal deficit excluding budget support grants is running around 21% of GDP in 2026 and is financeable only because of enormous external donor support. The European Union agreed to a €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-2027, with €45 billion scheduled for 2026 alone, including €28.3 billion for defense procurement and €16.7 billion for budget support. The IMF now calculates Ukraine’s financing gap at $140.3 billion over 2026-2029. We are no longer discussing a nation capable of independently financing the government and the war simultaneously. We are discussing a state being financially sustained from abroad.

Then there is the destruction nobody can accurately price while the bombs are still falling. The World Bank, European Commission, United Nations, and Ukrainian government estimated in February that reconstruction and recovery would require nearly $588 BILLION over the coming decade. That was based on damage measured only through December 31, 2025. Direct physical damage had already surpassed $195 billion. Transport reconstruction needs exceeded $96 billion, energy approached $91 billion, housing nearly $90 billion, commerce and industry exceeded $63 billion, and agriculture surpassed $55 billion. Fourteen percent of Ukraine’s housing stock had already been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than three million households.

And those numbers were obsolete the moment they were published because THE WAR NEVER STOPPED. You cannot continuously destroy a nation’s productive capacity and pretend that yesterday’s reconstruction estimate represents tomorrow’s bill.

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US To Sell Black Hawk Helicopters to Argentina, Despite Renewed Tensions With the UK Over the Falkland Islands

Argentina is arming itself, and the US is helping it.

We have been reporting here on TGP about the renewed designs by Argentina over the oil-rich Falkland Islands – situated off its coast, but currently a British possession.

Argentina and the UK fought over the territories back in 1982, with the Europeans coming out on top.

But since then, a lot has changed, including the fact that the British can’t rely on automatic support from the US, after their Globalist leaders’ refusal to aid in the military operations against Iran.

And today (11), it arises that the US will sell Black Hawk military helicopters to Argentina for the very first first time.

The Telegraph reported:

“The State Department said the proposed $140m (£103m) deal – which would give Buenos Aires four UH-60L helicopters – would improve Argentina’s ability ‘to meet current and future threats’.”

“The move follows Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments about the Falklands, with the US president suggesting he would not help Britain fight an invasion of the islands by Argentina.

Last week, The Telegraph reported that the US could also oppose Britain’s claim to sovereignty over the islands to encourage Andy Burnham to spend more on defense.”

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WHO’S LEAKING AMERICA’S MILITARY SECRETS? Top Pentagon Officials Forced to Take Polygraphs After Classified Weapons Stockpile Information Reaches Media

Some of America’s highest-ranking military officials were subjected to polygraph examinations during a sweeping Pentagon investigation into the leaking of highly classified information about the nation’s weapons stockpiles.

President Donald Trump was reportedly furious after sensitive details concerning America’s supply of sophisticated weapons appeared in media reports.

According to leftist CBS News, several dozen officials were questioned earlier this summer, including officials assigned to U.S. Central Command and other combatant commands.

The scale of the polygraph operation was described as extraordinarily rare.

Although high-ranking military and civilian officials with access to top-secret information routinely undergo periodic polygraph examinations, sources told CBS that the large number of officials summoned at once indicated that investigators were conducting a targeted leak probe.

The questioning reportedly covered a range of national-security matters, including whether officials had provided sensitive military information to members of the media.

Two sources claimed that none of the officials failed the questions specifically designed to identify the leaker.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine was reportedly not among those polygraphed.

The New York Times first reported the broader hunt, saying investigators put roughly 50 members of the Joint Staff through polygraphs in August after a wave of stories about depleted stocks of long-range missiles, Patriot interceptors, and other finite munitions as the United States fights Iran.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told CBS Friday night the Department “does not comment on internal personnel or investigative matters but takes all leaks of classified national security information extremely seriously and investigates accordingly.”

“Securing classified information is critical to ensuring the security of the United States and of our troops deployed around the world,” Parnell said.

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Donald Trump Just Asked SCOTUS To End the Trans Military Circus Once and For All

Joe Biden let the Pentagon run gender experiments on the military for four years.

Now a pair of Obama and Clinton judges think they outrank the Commander in Chief.

And Donald Trump just asked the Supreme Court to end the transgender military circus once and for all.

The Judges Who Think They Command the Military

Two Democrat-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit – one picked by Obama, one by Clinton – ruled in June that Pete Hegseth can’t discharge the transgender troops currently serving under an injunction.

That ruling declared the Hegseth policy was likely driven by “hostility” rather than military necessity.

The Trump-appointed dissenter on that same panel said it plainly: the Constitution assigns authority over military service to Congress and the Commander in Chief – not to federal judges.

The Trump-appointed judge was right.

Solicitor General John Sauer called the majority ruling “gravely erroneous” and filed a petition for certiorari on August 28.

He argued the policy doesn’t discriminate against transgender people – it disqualifies individuals with gender dysphoria, a medical condition that affects deployability and readiness.

The government isn’t required to build a perfect case when it comes to military standards. It only has to show a reasonable connection to readiness – and that bar is obvious.

Why SCOTUS Already Answered This Once

This isn’t new territory for the justices.

In May 2025, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority already paused a separate injunction – a Washington state judge’s order blocking the broader ban across the entire military.

That ruling cleared the way for the Pentagon to implement the policy and begin separating trans-identifying service members who hadn’t voluntarily left.

The D.C. Circuit’s June 2026 ruling in Talbott v. United States reopened a hole the Supreme Court had already sealed – protecting a group of individual plaintiffs from discharge while their case heads toward a January 2027 trial.

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