Tag: military industrial complex

“Fit, Not Fat”: Hegseth Vows Course Correction As Report Finds Two-Thirds Of Reserve Troops Are Overweight

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed his dismay on April 25 after a new report found that more than two-thirds of U.S. military reserve personnel are overweight.

Washington-based think tank American Security Project (ASP) published a white paper this week that found that nearly 68 percent of reserve troops are overweight or obese.

In 2018, when the Department of Defense last surveyed obesity rates in the reserve military components, it found that around 65 percent of reserve troops were considered overweight or obese.

“The number of young adults interested in military service remains sufficient to maintain current force strength. However, as overweight and obesity disqualify thousands of applicants each year, services are incentivized to violate body composition enlistment standards to meet recruitment goals,” the new ASP report reads.

Hegseth took to social media platform X on Friday to call the report’s findings “completely unacceptable.”

“This is what happens when standards are IGNORED — and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here,” the defense secretary said. “We will be FIT, not FAT.”

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F-47 6th Generation Fighter Future Force Size Questions Emerge

The U.S. Air Force is firmly of the view that its new F-47 6th generation stealth fighters are key to “how we win” in future fights, according to the service’s top general in charge of force structure planning. Though the Air Force previously said it would buy 200 of the next-generation combat jets, how many of the aircraft the service now plans to acquire is an open question as its vision of the core air superiority mission set continues to evolve.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel talked about the F-47 and how it factors into his service’s current work on a new over-arching force design during a virtual talk that the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) hosted today. Kunkel is currently the director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures at the Pentagon.

Kunkel described the announcement in March that Boeing’s F-47 had won the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat jet competition as “a fantastic day for the Air Force” that has “assured air superiority for generations to come.” The Air Force had put the NGAD combat jet program on hold for a deep review last year, which ultimately concluded that the service needed to acquire the aircraft to be best positioned to achieve air superiority in future high-end fights.

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Navy Scraps Biden-Era ‘Climate Action’ Plan, Returns Focus To Warfighting

The U.S. Navy officially scrapped a Biden-era “climate action” plan for the force on Tuesday, signifying the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus the military towards warfighting.

“Today, I’m focusing on the warfighters first, and I’m rescinding the Biden administration’s climate action program. Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced in a video message.

Released in May 2022, the Climate Action 2030 program contained a series of actions and goals the Department of the Navy (DON) has taken or planned to undertake to tackle what Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro characterized as the “urgency of the climate crisis.” In the document’s opening foreword, Del Toro claimed the Navy and Marine Corps “are in the crosshairs of the climate crisis,” and that “[c]limate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges.”

The action plan identified two “performance goals,” one of which included the DON’s stated aim of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions and draw[ing] greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to stabilize ecosystems, and achieve, as an enterprise, [President Biden’s] commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, as well as other targets.”

In order to achieve these objectives and comply with a 2021 climate-related executive order by Biden, the DON laid out a series of targets for the branch to work towards in the years ahead. This included commitments to “[a]cquiring 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027” and “[a]chieving a 50 percent reduction in emissions from buildings by 2032.”

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U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Sentenced to 7 Years for Leaking Top-Secret Military Documents to Communist China

25-year-old former Army intelligence analyst Korbein Schultz was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison for conspiring to hand over America’s most closely guarded military secrets to a hostile foreign power: Communist China.

The disgraced soldier from Wills Point, Texas, pleaded guilty in August 2024 to transmitting sensitive defense intelligence, unlawfully exporting classified material, and accepting bribes — all in the service of a foreign adversary.

“This defendant swore an oath to defend the United States — instead, he betrayed it for a payout and put America’s military and service members at risk,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi in a statement.

She continued, “The Justice Department remains vigilant against China’s efforts to target our military and will ensure that those who leak military secrets spend years behind bars.”

From May 2022 until his arrest in March 2024, Schultz conspired with an individual from Hong Kong, whom he believed to be affiliated with the Chinese government — referred to in court filings as Conspirator A.

That individual masqueraded as a geopolitical analyst on a freelance website but quickly turned the relationship into an espionage pipeline.

For just $42,000, Schultz sold out American troops, revealing tactical and technical data, training documents, and sensitive material relating to U.S. missile defense and aerial combat capabilities.

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Nine US military planes deliver bunker-busting bombs to Israel: Report

Nine US military transport aircraft loaded with bunker-busting bombs landed at an Israeli airbase near Tel Aviv in the past 24 hours, Israel’s public broadcaster said Thursday, Anadolu reports.

“Nine US transport planes carrying bunker-busting bombs and other defensive weapons landed at Nevatim Airbase near Tel Aviv, in central Israel,” the Israeli broadcasting authority KAN reported.

It added that the move comes “in anticipation of a possible joint US-Israeli strike, should nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran fail.”​​​​​​​

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Close the US Military Bases in Asia

President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the U.S. military bases in Asia are too costly for the U.S. to bear.  As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the U.S. troops. 

Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the U.S. service members to the U.S.  

Trump implies that the U.S. is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea.  Yet these countries do not need the U.S. to defend themselves. 

They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense.  Far more importantly, diplomacy can ensure the peace in northeast Asia far more effectively and far less expensively than U.S. troops.      

The U.S. acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China.  Let’s have a look.  During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan?  If you answered zero, you are correct.  China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.

You might quibble.  What about the two attempts in 1274 and 1281, roughly 750 years ago? It’s true that when the Mongols temporarily ruled China between 1271 and 1368, they twice sent expeditionary fleets to invade Japan, and both times were defeated by a combination of typhoons (known in Japanese lore as the Kamikaze winds) and by Japanese coastal defenses.  

Japan, on the other hand, made several attempts to attack or conquer China. 

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Military Finds Physical Reality Shatters DEI-Fueled Theories About The Sexes

Ten years have passed since the Department of Defense initiated a social experiment with women in the military. Pentagon officials promised that female trainees headed for previously all-male combat arms units would have to meet the exact same standards as men. Has the experiment played out as promised?

We are about to find out. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s March 30 memorandum calls for a 60-day review to achieve high, uncompromised standards in combat arms units such as the infantry, special operations, and other occupations with extraordinary physical demands. 

Thanks to a series of executive orders that President Donald Trump has issued since January, Hegseth’s six-month implementation period should proceed without equivocation or distractions related to percentage-based diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quotas. Wrote Hegseth, “[I]t is essential to identify which positions require heightened entry-level and sustained physical fitness.”

An honest review of contemporary policies regarding women in the military should reflect sound priorities unrelated to DEI. Career opportunities are important, but if there is a conflict, the needs of the military must come first.

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Canada’s PM vows to boost military spending to protect against ‘America’s threats to our sovereignty’

Mark Carney has vowed to ramp up military spending by £17billion to guard against ‘America’s threats to our very sovereignty’ if he wins next week’s Canadian general election.

The Prime Minister said his nation needed to ‘prepare’ for the coming years after US President Donald Trump made a series of threats to annex Canada.

Carney, who became Prime Minister last month following the resignation of Justin Trudeau, looks set to win a majority amid a war of words with the US, according to the latest polls.

His Liberal Party have enjoyed a significant uptick in support since Trump vowed to make Canada the 51st American state and imposed tariffs.

Unlike other leaders of major nations, Carney has pushed back on Trump’s thetoric, blaming the 47th President for a breakdown in US-Canada relations.

Releasing the Liberal Party manifesto, the Prime Minister’s tough stance on defending Canadian autonomy appeared to continue.

‘In this crisis we have to prepare for America’s threats to our very sovereignty,’ he said in a speech in Ontario.

‘They want our land, our resources, they want our water, they want our country. 

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South Korea to launch fourth military spy satellite this week

South Korea plans to launch its fourth military reconnaissance satellite from a U.S. space base this week, the Ministry of National Defense said Monday, as the country seeks to better monitor North Korean threats with independent surveillance capabilities.
 
The military plans to launch the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 8:48 p.m. on Monday, according to the ministry.
 
The launch will be part of South Korea’s plan to deploy five satellites by the end of this year to enhance surveillance of North Korean military activities and help reduce its reliance on U.S. satellite imagery.

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China’s Defense Budget Is Bigger than You Think

During the Cold War, the United States never trusted its adversaries’ claims about their capabilities. Instead, it always sought to verify them through intelligence analysis. Today, China’s impressive and aggressive military expansion, allegedly achieved on a shoestring budget, should raise eyebrows, even from typically credulous consumers of official CCP reports. Specifically, China reported at the National People’s Congress (NPC) earlier this month that its defense budget included total expenditures of only $245 billion.

Historically, these reports are intentionally vague and conveniently oversimplified. This year’s announcement is no different. It’s hard to know what the real numbers are. Still, it’s even harder to believe China’s officially reported military budget of $245 billion, which would equate to an implausibly low 1.5 percent of GDP.

The U.S. Defense Department’s 2024 China Military Power Report estimated that China’s 2024 military budget was publicly understated by at least 40–90 percent. The DOD has not yet released its 2025 China Military Power Report, but we can infer from perennial experience that the same is true again this year; China’s real military expenditure, accounting for all (or at least some) “off-budget spending,” probably amounts to between $330 and $450 billion. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) has estimated the real Chinese defense budget is as high as $700 billion—and that was last year.

The CCP has expanded its military budget by at least 7.2 percent for two consecutive years. However, that figure itself also comes from official CCP reports and should be regarded with skepticism.

Consider the People’s Liberation Army’s substantial gains in hypersonic missile technology, stealth fighters, and ballistic missile submarines, as well as its exponential increase in nuclear weapons production. Most—if not all—of these involve close relationships between state-run and private enterprise, making military-industrial investments all the harder to ascertain. After all, this sort of fusionism often assumes subtle forms (such as talent and logistics pooling between public and private sectors).

More obvious examples of this include Chinese companies providing the PLA with drones, AI companies (like Baidu) possibly working with CCP defense corporations in shared laboratories, and Chinese shipping companies participating in “cross-sea transport drills” that would be executed in an invasion of Taiwan.

The Defense Department warns that the PRC “has mobilized vast resources for…espionage activities” and to “acquire dual-use military grade-equipment,” and that it has “substantially reorganized its defense-industrial sector to improve weapon system research, development, acquisition, testing, evaluation, and production.” To what extent China’s development, testing, and production is obscured by its civil-military fusion, and what percentage of China’s GDP is dedicated to military spending, our own spy agencies will have to reveal.

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