Tag: military industrial complex

Israel’s Military Is Part of the U.S. War Machine

The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week — as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children — top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and abroad. So, they went public with muted misgivings and calls for a “humanitarian pause.” But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that he would have none of it.

Such minor tactical discord does little to chip away at the solid bedrock alliance between the two countries, which are most of the way through a 10-year deal that guarantees $38 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. And now, as the carnage in Gaza continues, Washington is rushing to provide extra military assistance worth $14 billion.

Days ago, In These Times reported that the Biden administration is seeking congressional permission “to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons — like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition — to Israel without notifying Congress.” And so, “the Israeli government would be able to purchase up to $3.5 billion in military articles and services in complete secrecy.”

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America’s War Economy and the Urgent Call for Peace in the Middle East

On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry Belafonte, and Palestinian-American Edward Said. Rare public opponents of the drive to war at the time, they wrote with level-headed clarity:

“We foresee that a military response would not end the terror. Rather, it would spark a cycle of escalating violence, the loss of innocent lives, and new acts of terrorism… Our best chance for preventing such devastating acts of terror is to act decisively and cooperatively as part of a community of nations within the framework of international law… and work for justice at home and abroad.”

Twenty-three years and more than two wars later, this statement reads as a tragic footnote to America’s Global War on Terror that left an entire region of the planet immiserated. It contributed to the direct and indirect deaths of close to 4.5 million people, while costing Americans almost $9 trillion and counting.

The situation is certainly different today. Still, over the last few weeks, those prophetic words, now 22 years old, have been haunting me, as the U.S. war machine kicks into ever higher gear following the horrific Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and the brutal intensification of the decades-long Israeli siege of civilians in Gaza. Sadly, the words and actions of our nation’s leaders have revealed a staggering, even willful, historical amnesia about the disastrous repercussions of America’s twenty-first-century war-mongering.

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The Pentagon wants a new powerful nuclear bomb. Please don’t give it to them

Just days after China announced that it would double its nuclear arsenal to more than 1,000 warheads by 2030, Pentagon officials revealed plans Tuesday for a new nuclear gravity bomb that would be 24 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. By Thursday, President Vladimir Putin had signed a bill withdrawing Russia from its inclusion in a global nuclear test ban — which was followed this week by a test launch from one of its submarines of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. That means, by default, the U.S. is also no longer part of the treaty, meaning we could once more begin dropping bombs in the New Mexico desert, à la “Oppenheimer,” though (thankfully) no such plans have been announced. 

What (and I say this with all due respect) in the actual f**k is going on here? Is the world teetering off the edge? The hows are easier to explain than the whys when it comes to all this madness, so let’s start there. 

The plans for a new nuke were rolled out almost exactly a year after the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review was published, which advocated for a bigger US nuclear flex to compete with the stockpile they estimated China would have built by 2030. As it turns out, that Chinese stockpile is getting much bigger, much faster than we thought — with “more than 500 operational nuclear warheads” as of May.

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Secret Skunk Works Spy Drone Delivered To Air Force

We have explored the possibilities related to the existence of a high-altitude, long-endurance stealth drone, the so-called ‘RQ-180,’ and how it’s likely poised to eclipse the crewed U-2S Dragon Lady and uncrewed RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance platforms and become one of the most important military aircraft of a generation. Now, there are intriguing indications that a complementary platform or perhaps even a successor to the RQ-180 is not only being developed by Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works, but that this even more advanced spy drone has already been delivered.

These potential revelations come from the latest episode of the Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast, hosted by editor-in-chief Vago Muradian, joined by regular guest J.J. Gertler, director of The Defense Concepts Organization and senior analyst at the Teal Group. For the time being, we have no kind of confirmation about these statements, but they are certainly highly interesting, considering what we do know about related programs and emerging requirements.

Speaking about the mysterious new spy drone from the Skunk Works, Muradian explains this is a “much more capable reconnaissance aircraft” than the RQ-180 and that “there are articles that have already been delivered,” although no indication of how many or at what stage the program is at.

Muradian adds that “there have been challenges with that program [and] some speculation that it had been canceled.” He continues: “My understanding is that the program was re-scoped because it is that ambitious a capability that [it] required a little bit of re-scoping in order to be able to get to the next block of aircraft.”

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The AnthraX Chronicles: Part 1: Spills of the Fort Detrick Kind

The mainstream media has purposely turned a blind eye to suspicious biological research institutions in this country, such as the infamous US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick. USAMRIID—pronounced you-SAM-rid – is the medical and biodefense research organization that replaced the base’s former biowarfare lab that was in operation from 1943 to 1969. Fort Detrick was used to store the  CIA’s arsenal of biological poisons, including smallpox, tuberculosis, and anthrax, as well as a number of organic toxins, including snake venom and paralytic shellfish poison. Not only is Fort Detrick a biowarfare facility, but the CIA also used the base for their MK-Ultra mind control program. Arguably, too few Americans have heard of the base, despite its freakish history.

Yet early on in the pandemic, Fort Detrick was actually trending in China; Chinese state media suggested that the COVID-19 coronavirus was made and leaked from a US military installation. One title read In China, 25 Million People Have Called For An Investigation Into Fort Detrick For Causing The Lab Leak That Started The Worldwide Coronavirus Outbreak.  In 2021, a Chinese convoy of 25 million signed a petition, urging Tedros of the World Health Organization to launch a probe. Following the petition, a group of Filipino scholars also launched a similar online petition to break the wall of silence around the suspicious lab.

According to the publication Global Times, reports emerged from many other countries such as Italy, Spain, France, and the US, indicating the presence of COVID-19 even earlier than the first reported case in Wuhan, “which demands an inquiry and verification from WHO experts as soon as possible.”

“Fort Detrick is too dangerous a mystery to remain shrouded in secrecy,” said political commentator Herman Laurel. “It is important for all the peoples of the world to join in the petition to know the truth about Fort Detrick at this time and end the delusions the US is creating. However, the United States put a positive spin on Fort Detrick, saying that the army base is conducting “beneficial research.” A CNN “exclusive” further demonstrated the US was paving the way for the US intelligence agency to frame the Wuhan lab.

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U.S. QUIETLY EXPANDS SECRET MILITARY BASE IN ISRAEL

TWO MONTHS BEFORE Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel. 

On October 7, however, when thousands of Hamas rockets were launched, Site 512 saw nothing — because it is focused on Iran, more than 700 miles away.

The U.S. Army is quietly moving ahead with construction at Site 512, a classified base perched atop Mt. Har Qeren in the Negev, to include what government records describe as a “life support facility”: military speak for barracks-like structures for personnel.

Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing. 

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Jet-Powered JDAM Aims To Turn Bombs Into Cruise Missiles

For the second time in as many weeks, Boeing has made an announcement related, at least in part, to the ongoing development of a powered derivative of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) precision-guided bomb family. The company is pitching the Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition (PJDAM) as a flexible and lower-cost cruise missile that can be used to attack targets on land and ones at sea. It could help countries, including the United States, readily boost their stockpiles of stand-off munitions.

Boeing announced earlier today that it had signed a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Australia’s Ferra Engineering regarding the continued production of pop-out wing kits for the unpowered JDAM Extended Range (JDAM-ER) series. The company said that this deal would also include an “intent to explore applications” for the PJDAM. As currently designed, the PJDAM uses the same wing kit as the JDAM-ER.

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War As An ‘Investment’: The Bizarre Business-Speak Of Mass Killing

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”

To Gordon Gekko’s infamous “greed is good” speech we must now add “war is good.” That war is “right.” That it “works” – at least for America, allegedly.

War as an “investment” truly symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of conventional discourse in the U.S. political mainstream.

Instead of war being a calamity, a catastrophe, a realm of death and destruction, dare I say even a mortal sin of grievous evil, we’re told that instead it’s an investment that’s paying dividends, especially in that growth stock known as Ukraine.

Even body counts and truck counts from the Vietnam War era are being brought back to show what a great “investment” the Ukraine War has been for the U.S.

In her latest, Caitlin Johnstone cites war-lover Max Boot for his advocacy of the Russia-Ukraine War as a continuing investment opportunity for the U.S., including the use of body and truck counts as a measure of progress:

“Russia has lost an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 170,000 to 180,000 have been injured,” [Max] Boot writes [in a Washington Post op-ed]. “Russia has also lost an estimated 2,329 tanks, 2,817 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,868 trucks and jeeps, 354 armored personnel carriers, 538 self-propelled artillery vehicles, 310 towed artillery pieces, 92 fixed-wing aircraft and 106 helicopters.”

CNN has recently made a similar argument…

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Air Force Successfully Tested Secret New Stealth Missile With Mock Nuke, Reports Reveal

America’s nuclear weapons are aging and the Pentagon plans to spend more than $600 billion to keep the potentially world-ending weapons in fighting shape. One of these massive investments paid off in 2022 when the Air Force successfully tested a new secret stealth missile armed with a dummy version of a novel nuclear warhead, government reports have revealed.

As first reported by Air & Space Forces Magazine, the Air Force conducted nine successful tests of the classified Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile in 2022. One of those tests used a mock version of the new W80-4 nuclear warhead. Many details of the missile are classified and what precious little we’ve just learned comes from the Pentagon’s Selected Acquisition Reports for 2022, an National Nuclear Security Administration report on nukes, and a report from Sandia National Labs.

Altogether, the three reports paint a picture of a military spending billions to upgrade decades-old technology to keep America’s nuclear weapons viable. Both the LRSO and  W80-4 nuclear warheads are replacements for aging weapons systems. The LRSO is a replacement for the AGM-86, an air-to-ground missile first produced in 1980. Raytheon is building the missile and details about it are scarce, but the Air Force is pitching it as a stealthy and long range upgrade to the older missile.

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