Tag: military industrial complex

Pentagon Awards $328.5 Million Lockheed Martin Contract to Boost Taiwan’s Air Force

The Pentagon on Dec. 31 announced that Lockheed Martin had been awarded a contract to sell military equipment to Taiwan, as the island remains on high alert amid repeated military drills by Beijing.

In a news release, the Pentagon said it was issuing the $328.5 million ceiling contract to “meet the urgent operational need of the Taiwan Air Force.”

“This contract provides for the procurement and delivery of fifty-five Infrared Search and Track Legion Enhanced Sensor pods, processors, pod containers, and processor containers,” the Pentagon stated.

Foreign military sales worth $157.3 million are obligated at the time of the award. The work, which will be conducted in Orlando, Florida, is expected to be completed by June 30, 2031, the Pentagon stated.

The United States transitioned from officially recognizing Taiwan to maintaining formal diplomatic ties with China after adopting the U.S.-P.R.C. Joint Communique in 1979, essentially recognizing the People’s Republic of China—the Chinese communist regime—as the “sole legal government of China,” according to the State Department.

Even though the United States has upheld unofficial ties with Taiwan since 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act of that same year requires the Pentagon to supply Taiwan with “defensive capability” as a means of allowing the island to defend itself.

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US To Fund $8.6 Billion Boeing Contract for Israeli F-15 Fighter Jets

The US Department of War announced on Monday that Boeing has been awarded a contract worth up to $8.6 billion to sell Israel new F-15 fighter jets as part of a deal funded by US military aid.

The Israeli Defense Ministry announced the initial deal in November 2024 and said it would be funded by US aid that was included in a massive foreign assistance bill President Biden signed into law earlier that year. At the time, the F-15 deal was valued at $5.2 billion and included 25 new F-15s.

The updated contract with Boeing has a ceiling of up to $8.6 billion since it includes an option to purchase an additional 25 F-15s. The Pentagon said in its announcement that the work on the fighter jets will be “performed at St. Louis, Missouri, and is expected to be complete by December 31, 2035.”

The US has continued to provide Israel with massive amounts of weapons despite its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which, according to several studies, has likely killed more than 100,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of women and children. US military aid and direct military intervention have also supported Israel’s wars in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and the occupation of the West Bank.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, in the two years following the October 7 attack, the US government spent at least $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel and another $9.65 billion to $12.07 billion on US military operations in the region in support of Israel.

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US Improperly Tracked Over Half of US Military Aid for Israel

As Israel conducted a brutal onslaught in Gaza over the past two years, the Department of War did not adequately monitor most of the arms sent to Tel Aviv. 

“Before October 2023, the DoD conducted enhanced end‑use monitoring (EEUM) of defense articles the US Government provided to Israel,” a report released by the Pentagon’s Inspector General explained. “However, after October 2023, the DoD only partially complied with the requirements for conducting EEUM of defense articles provided to Israel.”

Prior to the Hamas attack in southern Israel, about 70% of weapons sent to Israel were properly monitored by the Department of War. After Israel began its genocidal military campaign, oversight dropped to 44% according to the IG. The report audited $13.4 billion in security assistance that Washington gave to Tel Aviv from October 2023 to April 2024. 

The IG warned that the lack of oversight meant the Pentagon could “not ensure accountability of sensitive US defense articles provided to Israel.

After the October 7, 2023, attack, the US rushed additional military aid to Israel. The arms fueled Israel’s onslaught in Gaza that has likely killed over 100,000 Palestinians and destroyed most of the Strip. 

The Department of War has also failed to properly track billions of dollars in weapons the US sent to Ukraine. Weapons from Ukraine turned up in the hands of African militants and European criminals. 

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China’s Military AI and Biotechnology Directed at the United States

Soldiers in a brigade attached to the 83rd Group Army of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army conduct virtual reality exercises. Photo: Screenshot from China Central Television

According to a congressional report, the People’s Liberation Army continues to exploit military-civil fusion to integrate commercial and academic research into military systems. Military-Civil Fusion is China’s national strategy to merge civilian technology, research institutions, and industry with the defense sector in order to build a world-class military.

The strategy aligns commercial innovation with military requirements across fields ranging from artificial intelligence to semiconductors, pooling state and private resources to accelerate military development. Chinese authorities describe military-civil fusion as a core component of comprehensive national power and a central driver of long-term military modernization.

Through state laboratories, funding programs, conferences, and industrial parks, China has ensured sustained private-sector participation in this effort. As a result, it has made significant advances in artificial intelligence and large language models that underpin many emerging PLA technologies. AI reasoning systems support cyber operations, command decision-making, and influence campaigns, while also enabling autonomous and unmanned platforms, drone swarms, and loyal wingman UAVs.

These capabilities increasingly intersect with developments in quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications, which China has identified as priorities for national security and future warfare.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described quantum technologies as drivers of industrial transformation, and Beijing is investing in post-quantum cryptography, military applications of quantum sensing, and ground- and space-based infrastructure for a global quantum communications network with both civilian and military uses.

Quantum communications support nuclear command, control, and communications by enabling hardened and interception-resistant links, while quantum sensing has potential applications in anti-submarine warfare by enabling detection methods that do not rely on active sonar.

Semiconductor self-sufficiency remains a parallel strategic objective. In 2024, firms including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and Huawei Technologies received substantial local government funding to accelerate chip indigenization. Although China continues to lag the West in the most advanced GPUs, it is pursuing alternative pathways through nontraditional microchip technologies, including photonic components developed by state research institutes.

Domestic chip production underpins military resilience by enabling continued weapons manufacturing under sanctions and securing supply chains for missiles, drones, and radar systems. Alternative chip architectures support AI processing and reduce reliance on advanced Western GPUs, sustaining production capacity during conflict.

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Trump’s big, bad battleship will fail

President Trump announced on December 22 that the Navy would build a new Trump-class of “battleships.” The new ships will dwarf existing surface combatant ships. The first of these planned ships, the expected USS Defiant, would be more than three times the size of an existing Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

Predictably, a major selling point for the new ships is that they will be packed full of all the latest technology. These massive new battleships will be armed with the most sophisticated guns and missiles, to include hypersonics and eventually nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The ships will also be festooned with lasers and will incorporate the latest AI technology.

If you think you have heard this story before, you would be right. This will be the fourth time this century that the national security establishment has attempted to build a new surface combatant ship for the Navy. For those of you who may not be keeping score, the previous three attempts have been horrendous failures.

Just to refresh everyone’s memory, the Navy already attempted to build a modern version of the battleship in the early 2000’s. That was the Zumwalt-class destroyer program. Navy leaders wanted to build 32 such ships that would be armed with a futuristic gun system to support Marine amphibious assaults. The gun could never be built in a cost effective way so it was cancelled. That left the ship without a clear mission and the entire program was stopped after only three ships had been built. Each of those ships still don’t have a clear mission and now exist as $8 billion anchors around the Navy’s neck.

Less than a month before the president announced this latest shipbuilding program, the Secretary of the Navy cancelled the Constellation-class frigate program after Navy leaders sunk nearly $9 billion into it and before a single hull had been commissioned. That announcement was shocking because the Constellation frigates were intended to be a low risk replacement for the earlier, failed Littoral Combat Ship program.

The Littoral Combat Ships were supposed to be the Navy’s workhorse ships that would hunt mines and submarines, fight other surface ships, and provide security for the rest of the fleet. They were originally to employ a complicated modular design that would see each ship have mission systems swapped out in port to give them the specialized capabilities for their next deployment. The scheme failed spectacularly when modules didn’t work and cost soared. The ships also proved to be quite fractious and suffered several embarrassing mechanical breakdowns. Several Littoral Combat Ships had to be rescued at sea and towed back to port.

The Littoral Combat Ship program was expected to help the Navy increase the size of the fleet because each ship was supposed to cost a mere $220 million when the program began in 2002. By the time Navy officials gave up on the program 15 years later, the cost of each hull had grown to over $600 million.

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Trump-Class Battleship Announced as U.S. Seeks to Compete With China’s Naval Expansion

“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” President Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference announcing plans for the new Trump-class battleship. He referenced historic ships such as the Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Alabama, noting that while they were formidable in their era, the new vessels would surpass them by a wide margin.

The ships, the first battleships built since 1944, will serve as the centerpiece of what Trump describes as a revitalized U.S. Navy and a future “Golden Fleet.” Speaking alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, Trump said the idea originated during his first term, when he asked, “Why aren’t we doing battleships like we used to?”

Trump said the Navy will initially build two large surface combatants, with a long-term goal of expanding the class to 20 to 25 ships. The lead vessel will be the USS Defiant, which he said could be delivered in roughly two and a half years, though longer-term Navy planning places construction in the early 2030s.

According to Navy officials, the Trump class would be the largest U.S. surface combatant built since World War II, displacing roughly 30,000 to more than 35,000 tons, far larger than existing destroyers.

The ships are intended to function as heavily armed offensive platforms, capable of operating independently, alongside carrier strike groups, or as the command-and-control hub of a surface action group. Navy descriptions emphasize long-range strike, fleet coordination, air and missile defense, surface warfare, and anti-submarine operations.

The Trump class is expected to use proven combat systems already deployed on Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, including the SPY-6 radar and large vertical launch missile magazines. Planned armaments include hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike weapons, with design margins for future systems such as directed-energy weapons, rail guns, and nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missiles. Navy leaders have described the ships as delivering unmatched firepower and creating a new layer of deterrence at sea.

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WMDs for a MIC in Need

In the closing days of 2025, the White House turned an opioid crisis into a national security drama. Standing in the Oval Office during a Mexican Border Defense Medal ceremony on December 15, President Donald Trump declared that he would sign an executive order to classify fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” calling the announcement “historic.” Treating a synthetic painkiller like a nuclear bomb says more about Washington’s mindset than about the drug. Though drug overdose deaths declined in 2024, 80,391 people still died and 54,743 of those deaths were from opioids. Those numbers mark a public‑health emergency. Rather than tackle fentanyl abuse as a medical or social problem, the administration reframed it as an existential threat requiring military tools. Labeling a narcotic a WMD creates a pretext for war and sidesteps due process. This move grows out of a political culture that uses fear of invisible enemies—terrorists, microbes, drugs—to justify extraordinary power.

Past and present administrations have blurred the line between law enforcement and warfare. Since September 2025 the United States has launched more than twenty strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific suspected of carrying narcotics, killing over eighty people. Experts note that little proof has been made public that the vessels contained drugs or that blowing them out of the water was necessary. Yet the assaults continued, and on December 10 the U.S. Navy seized a sanctioned Venezuelan oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, sending oil prices higher. Trump boasted it was the largest tanker ever seized and said, when asked about the cargo, “We keep it, I guess.” Caracas denounced the action as “blatant theft.” The administration justified the operation as part of its anti‑drug campaign, but the target was not an unmarked speedboat; it was a carrier of crude oil, the sanctioned state’s main revenue source. Calling fentanyl a WMD makes such seizures look like acts of defense and blurs war and policing.

For students of recent history, this conflation of domestic threats with existential danger is hauntingly familiar. After September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and his advisers claimed Iraq was developing anthrax, nerve gas and nuclear weapons. Vice President Dick Cheney insisted there was “no doubt” Saddam Hussein possessed WMD and was amassing them for use against America and its allies. Those arguments resonated with a populace still traumatized by the attacks. Fear allowed hawks to portray preemptive war as the only way to prevent a “mushroom cloud,” and in March 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. Investigations later found no factual basis for the claims that Iraq possessed WMD or collaborated with al‑Qaida. The smoking gun was a phantom, but by the time the truth emerged, Baghdad had been captured and the region destabilized for a generation.

One of the most tragic figures in that saga was Secretary of State Colin Powell. On February 5, 2003, he sat before the United Nations Security Council holding a glass vial he said could contain anthrax. He described Iraq’s alleged weapons labs and insisted the case was based on “solid intelligence.” The performance helped clinch support for war. Years later it became clear the intelligence was false and cherry‑picked, and no WMD were found. Powell later admitted the presentation was wrong and had blotted his record. Using a decorated officer’s credibility to sell a war built on falsehoods shows how propaganda can override reason.

The consequences of the Iraq War were catastrophic. The Defense Department records 4,418 U.S. service members dead in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including 3,481 killed in hostile action. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that the post‑9/11 wars have cost the United States around $8 trillion and killed more than 900,000 people. About $2.1 trillion of that went to the Iraq/Syria theater. These figures exclude indirect deaths and future costs for veterans’ care. Millions of Iraqis were killed, injured or displaced, fueling sectarian violence and extremism. The war enriched defense contractors and expanded the military‑industrial complex while leaving ordinary people to pay the bill.

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Hypersonics, AI, Space Weapons, & Directed Energy: Lawmakers Release Defense Bill As Expiring Obamacare Subsidies Marinate On Back-Burner

With Congress in its second-to-last week in session for this year, lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee released the final bill text of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Sunday night, which allocates a topline of roughly $8 billion over the $892.6 billion the Department of Defense had requested, and what the House version of the NDAA provided which stuck to the Pentagon’s request. 

The NDAA is the annual law passed by Congress that sets the budget, policies, and legal authorities for the U.S. military and national defense programs. It shapes everything from troop pay to weapons development and foreign military aid.

“This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a Sunday statement. 

The $8B increase is a ‘compromise‘ – as the Senate tried to jack the budget up by $32 billion over the department’s request. According to Breaking Defense, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, noted that appropriators would have the last word on the final budget, but was optimistic that the $8 bullion figure was in the ballpark.

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U.S. Helicopters Used to Kill Civilians in Philippines, Locals Say

Black Hawk and ATAK helicopters swooped overhead and began firing into the mountains on an early February afternoon. Farmers tilling crops and tending their water buffalo ran for cover, taking shelter as the helicopters strafed the area. In a nearby town square, onlookers recorded with their phones, gasping as explosions ripped across the horizon. A Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter later made rounds in the area, witnesses said, as soldiers sequestered farmers in shelters. They were kept from their farms for weeks as their harvest wilted and died.

It’s a scene that has become a monthly occurrence in the rural Philippines, beginning in early 2023 and continuing today. The military said it was pursuing rebels from the communist New People’s Army (NPA), a designated terrorist group active since 1969, when Jose Maria Sison founded the New People’s Army—a Maoist group waging an armed rebellion primarily based in rural areas. The military and NPA have been in conflict ever since, despite several rounds of failed peace talks, most recently in 2023.

But since 2023, the Philippine military has started using advanced attack helicopters and fighter jets supplied wholly, or in part, by the United States, in a rapid escalation of counterinsurgency operations that have tormented rural communities and led to numerous potential international humanitarian law violations that could trigger policies preventing U.S. military aid, according to dozens of witnesses and experts who spoke to Drop Site News.

Washington says it is arming its ally to defend against Chinese aggression, but the U.S.-manufactured helicopters have so far been used solely on domestic targets.

The NPA’s numbers have dwindled: the military says it has about 1,500 members, although the NPA claims to have far more. The counterinsurgency continues to act as a cover for military and government officials to quash local resistance to infrastructure projects, according to scores of allegations by local and international human rights groups.

Filipino state officials are frequently accused of “red-tagging,” or falsely labeling activists and political opponents as communist rebels. Several “red-tagged” activists have been killed in suspicious circumstances and with no investigations into their deaths, such as Zara Alvarez, a legal worker who was shot dead in a crowded public square in 2020. Others have been kidnapped, such as youth activists Jolina Castro and Jhed Tamano, who disappeared in 2023 before resurfacing and accusing the military of forcing them to falsely surrender as communist rebels.

In March, an FA-50 jet crashed in the country’s southern mountains on an apparent counterinsurgency mission, killing both pilots. Days earlier, Black Hawk helicopters strafed Indigenous communities in the central island of Mindoro, according to the Manila-based human rights group Karapatan.

Karapatan has recorded at least 22 aerial bombings in the rural Philippines since February 2, 2023. That’s when the then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Manila and announced a milestone agreement for U.S. troops to use four additional military bases in the Philippines, strategically facing the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

On the same day, the Philippine military used helicopters purchased in U.S.-sanctioned arms transfers to launch airstrikes against insurgents in remote areas of northern Luzon, adjacent to three of the bases set to be used by the U.S. military, sending farmers in the rural municipality of Baggao fleeing from their fields.

The farmers ran to the town square of Birao, where they sheltered for several days. They were forbidden from accessing their farms for more than one month, causing them to lose an entire harvest. Each family was given about $85 as compensation by the regional social welfare bureau. “It wasn’t enough,” said Rosario Anban, a farmer. “We couldn’t get to our crops because we were scared.”

The military used white phosphorus during its aerial operations in Baggao, according to rights groups, although it was seemingly far from civilian areas. The next month, the military dropped white phosphorus about a football field’s distance away from Gawaan Elementary School, according to multiple Gawaan residents who spoke to Drop Site.

The mostly Indigenous residents of Gawaan, a remote mountain town accessible only by a dirt motorcycle path, were not used to conflict. They rely on farming, loading vegetables onto jeepneys and selling them at market. In recent years, they have protested a planned dam project that would inundate the nearby Saltan River, flooding part of the valley where they live and farm.

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Global Military Industrial Complex Has Never Had It So Good, New Report Finds

The global war business scored record revenues in 2024 amid multiple protracted proxy conflicts across the world, according to a new industry analysis released on Monday.

The top 100 arms manufacturers in the world raked in $679 billion in revenue in 2024, up 5.9% from the year prior, according to a new Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) study. The figure marks the highest ever revenue for manufacturers recorded by SIPRI as the group credits major conflicts for supplying the large appetite for arms around the world.

“The rise in the total arms revenues of the Top 100 in 2024 was mostly due to overall increases in the arms revenues of companies based in Europe and the United States,” SIPRI said in their report. “There were year-on-year increases in all the geographical areas covered by the ranking apart from Asia and Oceania, which saw a slight decrease, largely as a result of a notable drop in the total arms revenues of Chinese companies.”

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