Tag: military industrial complex

Drastic Increase In Army Coyote Drone Interceptor Purchase Plans

The U.S. Army plans to substantially increase its arsenal of Coyote counter-drone interceptors, as well as associated launchers and radars, in the next five years or so. The service says it wants to buy 6,000 jet-powered Block 2 variants, which carry an explosive warhead to destroy their target, and 700 more Block 3 versions that utilize an unspecified “non-kinetic” payload.

The Army disclosed the details about its Coyote-related purchase plans for Fiscal Years 2025 through 2029 in a contracting notice about an expected sole-source contract to manufacturer Raytheon released earlier this week. In addition to the Block 2 and Block 3 interceptors, the service is looking to acquire 252 fixed launchers, 52 mobile launchers, 118 fixed Ku-band radars, and 33 mobile radars. Under the deal, Raytheon would also provide support for the maintenance and repair of at least 15 Coyote systems both in the United States and unspecified forward-deployed locations around the world.

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Here Is What Each Of The Navy’s Ship-Launched Missiles Actually Costs

Many of America’s warships set sail absolutely packed with missiles. A single Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser has 122 Mark 41 vertical launch system (VLS) cells, each of which can handle one of a wide array of individual missiles, or four Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSMs). Even America’s carriers are bristling with missile-based point defenses. While the capabilities the Navy’s array of ship-launched missiles provides are fairly well known, at least conceptually, the staggering cost of each of these weapons is not. Now, just as we did with air-launched weapons and decoy flares, we aim to change that. 

The War Zone has collected the latest unit costs of these weapons to give readers a sense of just how much it is spending to arm its fleet. It should be stressed that these are the prices for just the individual weapons and the figures do not factor in any future spending on support services, modifications, upgrades, or past spending on the weapons’ development. 

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“Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place where a dizzying array of musical artists congregated to create much of the music that provided the soundtrack to those turbulent times. Members of bands like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, the Turtles, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Steppenwolf, Captain Beefheart, CSN, Three Dog Night, Alice Cooper, the Doors, and Love with Arthur Lee, along with such singer/songwriters as Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Judi Sill and David Blue, lived together and jammed together in the bucolic community nestled in the Hollywood Hills.
 
But there was a dark side to that scene as well.
 
Many didn’t make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would care to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians, and intelligence personnel – the same sort of people who just happened to give birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all of the canyon’s colorful characters – rock stars, hippies, murderers, and politicos – happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.
 
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is the very strange, but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a hippie utopia.”

Inside the battle to water down the UFO bill that will disclose confidential ‘non-human intelligence’ data to the public set be signed by President Biden

Joe Biden is set to sign into law eye-popping legislation citing ‘technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence’ this month – with top lawmakers pushing for a giant leap in UFO disclosure.

But UFO activists say the legislation has already been ‘gutted’, and blame congress members funded by big defense companies for watering down the bill.

Behind closed doors in the halls of Congress, a tooth-and-nail fight has been raging over disclosure of what the government knows about UFOs.

On one side are whistleblowers and former top intelligence officials, who claim knowledge of a secret program that has allegedly retrieved crashed flying saucers – and who have convinced top lawmakers to back them, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Senate intelligence committee ranking member Marco Rubio, and Senate armed services committee member Mike Rounds.

On the other is the $112 billion defense company Lockheed Martin, and two powerful House Republicans to whom it donates thousands of dollars: House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner, and House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers.

The fight began in July this year, when Schumer introduced a groundbreaking bill that would mandate a panel of experts with presidential-level authority to sift through government UFO records with the aim of disclosing them to the public.

It also gave the government the power to seize any ‘technologies of unknown origin’ or even ‘biological evidence of non-human intelligence’ held by private companies.

The apparent references to alien bodies and tech were shocking, in a piece of legislation put forward by senators as senior as Schumer and Rounds.

And proponents of the amendment point to its fierce opposition by senior House Republicans as a sign that they touched a nerve.

Sources close to the bill’s drafting said lawmakers decided to put forward the legislation after classified briefings by whistleblowers who allegedly worked on crashed UFOs recovered by the US government and handed to defense contractors, in secret programs not disclosed to Congress.

Schumer and Rounds said their bill was modeled on the 1992 law that led to the disclosure of records about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Sources told DailyMail.com the legislation was drafted with input from former officials who worked on the Pentagon’s programs investigating ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’ (UAP).

These include Jay Stratton, who headed the Defense Department’s UAP Task Force from 2018 to 2021, his former chief scientist Travis Taylor, and program predecessor Luis Elizondo. 

The most involved with the drafting was David Grusch, a senior intelligence official who later became an Air Force liaison to the Task Force, and has claimed to Congress that the US has recovered multiple crashed UFOs.

The bill passed in a Senate vote, but key parts were stripped out by top lawmakers in the House before it was officially added as an amendment to the annual defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed its final vote on Thursday. 

Ohio representative and UFO skeptic Mike Turner told News Nation Schumer’s original 64-page bill was ‘poorly drafted’ and complained that ‘no one has even raised it’ with him.

In an interview on podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Grusch called out Turner and Rogers for ‘blocking’ the bill.

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Pentagon Seeks EMP Weapon To Eliminate Drone Swarms

Faced with the reality that drones are reshaping the modern battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza, the Pentagon has been tasked with finding a budget-friendly solution to eliminate these “flying IEDs.” While missiles are too expensive, and laser beams are a distant dream, the next best cost-effective weapon US military officials are eyeing up could be electromagnetic pulse weapons to counter drone swarms.

According to the System for Award Management (SAM.gov) website, the US Air Force has published a contract opportunity for private industry titled “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Defense Against Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).” 

The service outlined the drone-killing features of the new EMP weapon it is seeking:

“The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RI) is conducting market research to seek information from industry on the landscape of research and development (R&D) for available Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) solutions towards countering multiple Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). EMP solutions could be ground and/or aerial based that provide effective mitigation against Department of Defense (DoD) UAS groups 1, 2, and smaller group 3 aircraft.” 

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GOVERNMENT-FUNDED STUDY EXPLORES WARP DRIVES AS MEANS OF FASTER-THAN-LIGHT COMMUNICATION THROUGH “HYPERWAVES”

Exploring faster-than-light (FTL) communication, a concept rooted in science fiction has intrigued scientists and engineers for years. The proverbial little brother to FTL travel, where a spacecraft is sent at warp to a distant location, FTL communication may be a promising first step, and one theorist is shifting focus to “Hyperwaves,” a method of sending messages across vast distances faster than the speed of light.

The recent paper, partially funded by the British government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Ministry of Defence, uploaded to arXiv, “Hyperwave: Hyper-Fast Communication within General Relativity,” by Dr. Lorenzo Pieri, offers a novel approach to this challenge. It suggests using “hypertubes” – structures that can manage the distribution and configuration of negative energy – to accelerate and decelerate warp bubbles, facilitating FTL communication. 

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The Navy Bought “Global” Surveillance Data Through Adtech Company Owned by Military Contractor

A section of the Navy bought access to a tool that gave the Pentagon “global” surveillance data via an adtech company that is owned by a U.S. military contractor, according to a Navy contract obtained by 404 Media. Beyond its global scale, the document does not explicitly say what specific sort of data was included in the sale. But previous reporting from the Wall Street Journal has shown that the marketing agency and government contractor responsible are part of a supply chain of location data harvested from devices, funneled through the advertising industry, onto contractors, which then ends with U.S. government clients.

The news provides one of the clearest examples yet of how the online advertising industry is not just fertile ground for surveillance, with myriad companies harvesting sensitive data from peoples’ phones and computers and selling that information ultimately to law enforcement, but also one that is actively being exploited by military agencies.

Specifically, the document points to a product called “the Sierra Nevada nContext Vanir software tool.” The contract covers a number of different areas, including support and training, both remotely and at the contractor’s facility; two months of access to the tool for “evaluation and assessment;” and “intelligence and analytical support.” The Navy paid $174,941.37 for access to the data, according to the contract.

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US-Made Munitions Used In Israel’s White Phosphorous Attacks On Lebanon

The Israeli army used US-manufactured white phosphorous shells in a brutal attack on south Lebanon in October, the Washington Post reported Monday, citing an analysis of shell fragments found in the southern Lebanese village of Al-Dhahira. 

A Washington Post journalist came across the remnants of three 155-millimeter artillery shells near the border. Production codes found on the shells indicate that they were made by ammunition depots in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1989 and 1992.

Residents told the journalist that the shells in question “incinerated at least four homes.” Nine people were injured in the white phosphorous attack, which reportedly took place on October 16, including three who were hospitalized. 

Photos and videos verified by Amnesty International show the white phosphorus falling on Al-Dhahira on October 16.  “Israeli forces continued to shell the town with white phosphorus munitions for hours,” trapping residents in their homes until 7:00 AM the next day, locals told the Washington Post, adding that they now refer to that evening as the “black night.”

Israel has used white phosphorous on southern Lebanon over 60 times since the war began in October, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). “The Israeli army fired artillery shells containing white phosphorus, an incendiary weapon, in military operations along Lebanon’s southern border between 10 and 16 October 2023,” Amnesty International said on October 31st, adding that the October 16 attack must be immediately investigated as a war crime.

Israel claimed its use of the banned munitions was in line with international law, given that they used them to create “smokescreens” and not for targeting, according to an army statement.

 However, the October 16 white phosphorous attack took place at night, when “smoke would have little practical use … and [when] there were no Israeli troops on the Lebanese side of the border to mask with smokescreens,” Washington Post said. 

“Residents speculated that the phosphorus was meant to displace them from the village and to clear the way for future Israeli military activity in the area,” it added. 

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Collaborative Combat Aircraft Cost, Capability Concerns Emerge In Congress

Members of Congress want the U.S. Air Force, as well as the U.S. Navy, to better explain how they plan to keep down the costs of their future Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones, or CCAs. Legislators also want more information about the expected capabilities of those uncrewed aircraft and how they will slot into both services’ larger tactical aviation plans. The War Zone just recently published a deep dive about how the Air Force looks to be leaning toward CCA designs with less range and higher performance than previously expected, and that are at the top end of previously stated estimated price ranges.

Congressional concerns about the two separate, but heavily interconnected CCA programs are contained in a new draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2024. This bill, details about which were released yesterday, is a compromise that members of the House and Senate have been negotiating the specifics of for weeks.

“The conferees agree that CCAs, procured affordably with reasonably defined capability requirements, fielded in sufficient capacity, based on thoroughly considered analysis and successfully demonstrated concepts of operations and employment beforehand, have the potential to significantly increase the lethality of existing tactical fighter aircraft,” according to a report accompanying the new draft NDAA.

“Unfortunately, neither the Secretary of the Air Force nor the Secretary of the Navy has sufficiently explained to the congressional defense committees: (1) How the Departments can acquire the vehicles affordably in sufficient numbers to execute the concept of operations; or (2) How the program is being defined to apply to challenges in the near-, mid-, and long-terms, particularly as it relates to unpiloted CCA capabilities that may be used in either an attritable or expendable mission taskings,” the report adds.

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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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