Tag: military industrial complex

Military Whistleblowers Are Warning that the Inspector General of the Military’s Health Agency is ‘Falsely’ Claiming Non-Disclosure Agreements are Required to Start Investigations

Military whistleblowers are revealing that the Defense Health Agency (DHA) Office of the Inspector General (IG) is falsely claiming Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) are necessary to begin investigating the complaints of service members. What could the IG be attempting to hide from the public about their investigative processes and more? Where is the transparency?

Ted Macie, a retired Navy Medical Service Corps officer and military whistleblower reached out to The Gateway Pundit, revealing that prior to his retirement last year, he submitted a complaint to the Department of Defense (DOD) IG for whistleblower retaliation after being investigated for a viral post on X concerning heart issues among active-duty military pilots. Interestingly, he said, the information was already disclosed to the proper channels.

After being deprived of computer access by his command for the 10 months leading up to his retirement, the investigation found no evidence of any wrongdoing. For this reason, Macie submitted a complaint to the DHA IG on May 31, 2024.

In emails reviewed by this author and shared on X, it was confirmed that beginning on June 3, 2024, Macie shared a series of back-and-forth emails with Deidre Tracy, an investigator for DHA IG.

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Sports and Militarism Shouldn’t Mix

I’m a sports fan. And last weekend I caught the epic clash between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, once again won by the Chiefs and the magical Patrick Mahomes. Yet seemingly no big NFL game is complete without a military flyover, in this instance by a B-2 nuclear stealth bomber. There’s nothing like mixing potential nuclear Armageddon with football — it’s uniquely American.

It put me to mind of this article that I wrote in 2018 for TomDispatch. We just can’t seem to be able to play ball nowadays without the event turning into a celebration of the U.S. military and its most deadly weaponry. There’s a place for everything, and the place for combat jets, military camouflage and the like is not at sporting events. Sports is supposed to bring us together in a thrilling celebration of competition that isn’t deadly. When the game ends, after all, opponents shake hands, even hug; they walk away together, knowing there’ll always be another game. Another chance at victory. Life, even in defeat, goes on.

War, to state the obvious, isn’t like that — at all. Make sports not war, America.

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Weird! Lockheed Martin Boasted Of Remote Blackhawk Helicopter Technology Three Months Before Tragic DC Aerial Disaster

The internet is buzzing with rumors and speculation following the tragic airplane and helicopter crash in Washington D.C. Wednesday.

An American Airlines passenger jet and Army Black Hawk helicopter collided around 9 p.m. Eastern near Reagan National Airport, causing both aircraft to fall into the Potomac River where 67 people died according to officials.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a video went viral showing top U.S. military contractor Lockheed Martin advertising technology that allows Black Hawk helicopters to be flown autonomously.

During the October 2024 Association of the United States Army National Convention, the “Black Hawk of the future” was advertised by Sikorsky Vice President Richard Benton.

Stephanie Hill, the president of Rotary and Mission Systems boasted the technology would allow the military to “fly this optimally piloted autonomous Black Hawk in Connecticut from three hundred miles away right here in Washington D.C.”

With the push of a button on an iPad, Hill commanded the helicopter to take off and simulate “tested logistic operations.”

The Lockheed video said its “MATRIX flight autonomy system” will deliver the future of flight.

According to the U.S. Army, the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the American Airlines flight was engaged in a training flight carrying three soldiers from “Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, out of Davison Army Airfield, Fort Belvoir.”

Is it possible the new autonomous tech was being tested during the flight or that the aircraft was somehow hacked?

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Thermonuclear Crack: The Death Wish of the ‘Elites’

Isn’t it high time we “augment” our nuclear force “posture”? Shouldn’t we fight to achieve peace through nuclear “strength” and “deterrence”? Isn’t it smart to “refurbish, rebuild, and modernize” the nuclear triad? What a great “investment” that is! And a “job-creator” too!

These are some of the buzz words thrown about by the nuclear “elites” in America. They want to sell us on new ICBMs (the Sentinel), a new stealth bomber (the B-21 Raider), and new nuclear SLBMs (on Columbia-class submarines). All this thermonuclear stupidity is projected to cost roughly $2 trillion over the next 30 years. Quite the “investment,” right?

What the “experts” don’t talk about is the genocidal and exterminatory nature of these thermonuclear bombs and missiles. They don’t talk about the destruction of most life forms on our planet due to thermonuclear winter. They don’t talk about the enormous and rapidly mushrooming cost of these weapons. (For example, the B-21 has already climbed from $550 million per plane to $750 million; much like a missile, Sentinel costs have rocketed upward even more rapidly.) And they sure as hell don’t talk about the immorality of mass murder.

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Trump To Sign Order Creating A New ‘Iron Dome’ U.S. Missile Defense System

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order today to create an ‘Iron Dome’ style defense system in the United States, DailyMail.com has learned.

It would be an American version of the famed Israeli missile defense system. 

Incoming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hinted the order was coming when he walked into the Pentagon on Monday, his first day on the new job. 

‘Today, there are more executive orders coming that we fully support, on removing DEI inside the Pentagon, reinstating troops who were pushed out because of COVID mandates, Iron Dome for America,’ he told reporters. ‘This is happening quickly.’

Trump had vowed to build such a system upon his return to the White House.

‘We will replenish our military and build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that no enemy can strike our homeland,’ he said this summer at the Republican National Convention.

‘Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system,’ he noted. ‘Why should other countries have this, and we don’t?’

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US Army’s Next-Gen Hybrid Tactical Vehicle To Replace Humvee Tested In Germany

The US Army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, recently tested General Motors Defense’s Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), built on the chassis of a Chevrolet Colorado truck, in the snowy Bavarian mountains of Germany. 

GM Defense’s mobility solutions team designed the ISV with commercial off-the-shelf parts. ISV is based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck platform, using a 2.8L Duramax turbo-diesel engine with an advanced 12-module battery pack. 

“The testing occurred during the annual Combined Resolve 25-1 exercise, where the Army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, maneuvered the vehicle across various operational scenarios, demonstrating its adaptability and effectiveness in challenging terrains,” Interesting Engineering wrote in a note, adding, “The trial emphasized ISV’s capabilities in advanced reconnaissance missions, which are crucial for troops to collect and transmit vital battlefield intelligence, especially in adverse conditions.” 

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State Department Reports Record Foreign Arms Sales in 2024

The State Department reports that US arms deals sold over $300 billion in weapons to foreign countries last year. The record-high sales include over $20 billion in arms paid for with US aid. 

The State Department’s statement on 2024 arms sales explained that “the total value of transferred defense articles and services and security cooperation activities conducted under the Foreign Military Sales system was $117.9 billion.” 

Compared to 2023, the State Department says last year’s totals represented an increase of  45.7%, adding, “This is the highest ever annual total of sales and assistance provided to our allies and partners.” According to the statement, $21 billion in the FMS was paid for with US aid. 

In addition to the FMS, US arms deals brokered $200 billion in other transactions. “The total authorized value for privately contracted Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) authorizations for FY2024 was $200.8 billion,” the statement explained. “This represents a 27.5% increase, up from $157.5 billion in FY2023.”

Combined, the FMS and DCS sales total over $318 billion. 

Most of the weapon sales went to US allies and partners in Europe, the Middle East or East Asia. In Europe, NATO countries continued to buy weapons at a rapid pace as they transferred older systems to Ukraine for the proxy war against Russia. China is the focus of American arm sales in East Asia as Washington prepares to fight a war with Beijing over Taiwan. 

In the Middle East, Israel bought, often with US aid, billions in weapons from American arms deals. Tel Aviv is conducting what multiple international human rights organizations have identified as a genocide in Gaza. During the Biden administration, the State Department was flooded with hundreds of reports that American weapons were being used to kill civilians in Gaza. 

The State Department asserted that the US arms transfers occurred in “accordance with the U.S. Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, and weighs political, social, human rights, civilian protection, economic, military, nonproliferation, technology security, and end use factors.”

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DEI At USAFA Re-Designated To “Dignity Respect And Leadership”

If you haven’t seen–the new administration is calling DEI “illegal discrimination.” Pretty sweeping actions outlined in the Executive Orders of the last two days.

Hearty thanks to all BCCd on this email whose hard work to eliminate discrimination of this type have made this day a reality! Unity and not divisiveness is in our future!

I have linked in the specific OPM memo here for reference if you haven’t seen.

Click to access OPM%20Memo%20Initial%20Guidance%20Regarding%20DEIA%20Executive%20Orders.pdf

Here is another related Executive Order (embedded in Professor Turley’s article) that is all about “ENDING ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION AND RESTORING MERIT-BASED OPPORTUNITY“.

Some of our STARRS affiliated lawyers have opined that this order may prohibit Service Academies from discriminating in their admissions processes.

STARRS will be working hard with the White House and especially DOD on any follow orders that may be necessary to ensure clarity–as outlined in the Executive Order on DEI (below) which says in part: “monitor and track agency and department progress and identify potential areas for additional Presidential or legislative action.”

Finally, here is that Executive Order that specifically addresses DEI.

Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing – The White House

All this said and these Executive Orders released–resistance is already showing its subversive head.

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Leaked documents expose deep ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary.

The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership between the two companies. 

These revelations are the product of an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in collaboration with The Guardian. It is based in part on documents obtained by Drop Site News, which has published its own story. The investigation shows how the Israeli army deepened its reliance on civilian tech giants after October 7, and comes amid growing protests by cloud company employees who fear that the technology they developed has helped Israel commit war crimes.

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The American Cult of Bombing

Back in August of 2014, I wrote a piece for TomDispatch on the American cult of bombing. The Air Force’s new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, was still on the drawing board a decade ago. The Air Force wanted 100 of them at a projected cost of $55 billion to acquire them.

The projected cost of the B-21, you won’t be surprised to learn, has now climbed to roughly $750 million per plane, or $75 billion to acquire 100 of them. Of course, the total program cost will easily exceed $200 billion over 30 years, the Air Force admitted in 2022. (I’m old enough to remember when the entire Pentagon budget was less than $200 billion a year.)

By the way, the Air Force is now talking about buying 200 B-21s, which I think is my old service’s latest ploy to prevent cuts to the initial ask of 100. Cheaper by the hundreds!

America’s belief in the efficacy of bombing is truly incredible. We could end poverty in America and house all the homeless for $200 billion over 30 years, but surely we need bombers more than that.

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