Tag: military industrial complex

Boeing, Money Printing, & The Military-Industrial Complex

Boeing’s commercial jets struggle, but its military machines thrive, all fueled by endless fiat money…

Not-so-mysteriously, none of the problems now associated with Boeing passenger planes seem to be affecting the weapons of annihilation they produce for the Military-Industrial Complex’s borderless global war machine, which is fueled by infinite fiat money.

Myriad problems with Boeing passenger jets have put the company into the news just about every day for months, but the company makes much more than just planes for commercial passenger airlines. Boeing is also a major aerospace contractor that produces fighter jets, attack helicopters, predator drones, missiles, and even the president’s airplane, Air Force One. 

To be fair, Boeing’s record as of late beyond commercial jets is far from perfect — its Starliner, a crewed craft designed to bring astronauts to the ISS, was plagued with issues on the way to the space station that are now being investigated by its astronauts. And Boeing’s main rival in the space industry, SpaceX, has had its own problems with similar craft.

But when was the last time you heard about an Apache helicopter breaking down on its way to deliver a payload of highly-combustible “democracy” to a country unfortunate enough to be on the ever-expanding list of nation-states roped into unnecessary wars waged by the US or one of its global proxies?

Somehow, the systemic quality control issues at Boeing appear much more likely to get a handful of hapless air travelers injured than to cause problems with a military operation that has the “righteous” cause of protecting the petrodollar hegemon. The printing of fiat money fuels both phenomena in different ways.

Boeing’s corner-cutting and quality control issues are just one symptom of living in a fiat money system. As the dollar is debased, the incentive and ability to create solid, long-lasting products is degraded in kind. Manufacturing costs rocket upward as supplies, materials, logistics, storage, maintenance, insurance, wage demands, and every other production factor all increase, leading to a degradation in quality across the process as the irresistible temptation intensifies to prioritize minimizing costs over producing reliable, well-made, quality goods such as safe airplanes. 

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US approves potential military sale worth almost $2.8bn to Saudi Arabia

The United States has approved a potential major sale of $2.8 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, as Washington continues to serve as one of the key arms suppliers to the kingdom.

In a statement, the US State Department’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency announced yesterday the major potential sale that “will improve the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s capability to deter current and future threats by providing sustainment and training support of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s existing platforms and aircraft fleets.”

Stating that the sale would also support the US’s national security objectives and foreign policy goals in the region, the agency highlighted that the military equipment in question covers system logistics and sustainment support. It added that it has already delivered the required certification notifying US Congress of the potential sale, worth $2.8 billion.

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Ukraine’s Acoustic Drone Detection Network Eyed By U.S. As Low-Cost Air Defense Option

The U.S. should integrate a low-cost acoustic network to detect aerial threats developed by Ukraine into its own air defense systems, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command said Wednesday morning. Consisting of thousands of acoustic sensors across Ukraine, this system helps detect and track incoming Russian kamikaze drones, alert traditional air defenses in advance, and also dispatch ad hoc drone hunting teams to shoot them down.

“Their use of acoustic sensors has proliferated across the country to the point now where they’re almost positively identifying drones in the distance because of this acoustic and the fireteams attached to that acoustic, low-cost capability that they’ve developed and proliferated,” Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Gainey said during a discussion at the Hudson Institute. As a result, Ukraine has a “low-cost defeat” system. The U.S., he added, should “find a way” of integrating “that type of low-cost capability into our system. We should be able to find ways to work together and augment some of our capability with some of that lower-cost capability.”

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DOD Funds Research on Fake Meat Rations to Improve Soldiers’ ‘Military Readiness’

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has partnered with the BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) to produce lab-grown foods intended to feed the nation’s military. The public-private partnership, which is largely DOD funded, released a project call in May 2024 looking for proposals in a number of focus areas, including “sustainable food production.”1

Under this category, the Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) project includes a call for innovations in food production that “could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilizing one carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein.”2

Ultimately, the partnership sets up military members as lab rats who will be fed synthetically grown, ultraprocessed junk foods in lieu of a healthy, whole-food-based diet.

DOD Plans to Feed Soldiers Fake Meat

The biotech industry is rolling out a “tsunami of fake foods”3 that are being positioned as environmentally friendly and health-promoting alternatives to real foods like meat and dairy. Lab-grown meat may one day represent 80% or more of the “meat” consumed worldwide,4 a dramatic departure from the way humans have eaten for centuries.

The DOD describes BioMADE as “a nonprofit created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC).” In 2020, it awarded the outfit $87 million in funding for a new Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII):5

“Through a close relationship with DOD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products.

Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g., feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.”

However, the DOD also funds innovation grants, each of which has a $2-million limit up to a total budget of $500 million — funding that earmarked at least in part for BioMADE’s development of lab-grown fake meat products.6 In fact, in March 2023, BioMADE announced that its federal funds budget ceiling had increased from an initial $87.5 million to over $500 million.7

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) condemned the idea. Ethan Lane, NCBA vice president of government affairs, said in a press release:8

“It is outrageous that the Department of Defense is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to feed our heroes like lab rats … American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultraprocessed, lab-grown protein that is cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor.

This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone that has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”

Former U.S. Special Forces member Martin Bailey further told the Daily Mail:9

“I think the government should focus on letting the military protect our nation from enemies, foreign and domestic, sometimes, but you know, that’s what the military is there for. They’re not there to be experimental lab rats … why doesn’t the government feed experimental meat product that, you don’t even know what it is, why don’t they feed that to, let’s say, homeless people?

Well, there’s a reason they don’t, because that would be completely unethical. So why is it ethical to stick it down the throat of our military service members?”

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The EU’s Planned Transformation Into A Military Union Is A Federalist Power Play

Newly reappointed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen just announced that “it is now time to build a veritable union of defense”, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said represents a marked change in priorities that’ll intersect with NATO’s interests. The EU’s planned transformation into a military union is being sold to the public as a response to the protracted Ukrainian Conflict, but it’s really a federalist power play that’s designed to forever entrench German hegemony over the bloc.

That country has sought to federalize the EU for years already, and despite some notable successes in getting member states to surrender significant parts of their sovereignty to Brussels, it’s thus far failed to yield the expected results. This plan might also become more difficult to implement as two new groups have emerged in the European Parliament since the latest elections: the AfD-led “Europe of Sovereign Nations” and the Hungarian-led “Patriots for Europe”, both of which are fiercely against federalization.

The only possible way to push through this agenda in the face of such growing opposition is to double down on anti-Russian fearmongering in the hopes that member states’ ruling liberal–globalist elites will agree to federalize under the pretext of defending against a supposedly impending invasion. It’s not directly stated, but the subtext is that NATO’s American leader couldn’t be relied upon to defend its allies in that event despite repeatedly reaffirming its commitment to Article 5’s mutual defense obligations.

The abovementioned fears can’t be voiced aloud since the prior expression of such concerns was earlier smeared by the Mainstream Media as so-called “Russian propaganda”, but they might become more strongly implied as the US’ upcoming presidential elections approach. Trump’s reported plan for NATO, which readers can learn more about in detail here, calls for coercing members into raising their defense spending and assuming more responsibility for their immediate security interests vis-à-vis Russia.

The preceding hyperlinked analysis argues that it’s already being partially implemented by the Biden Administration as proven by Germany’s “Fortress Europe” concept, which amounts to it becoming the continent’s military powerhouse with full US support so as to facilitate America’s “Pivot (back) to Asia”. Late January’s “military Schengen”, last month’s “EU defense line”, and this month’s agreement to assume partial responsibility for Poland’s border security are the most significant developments thus far.

The next step is to consolidate Germany’s military-strategic gains over the past half-year through von der Leyen’s call for a military union, which would see German-controlled Brussels organizing the bloc’s military-industrial needs across its 27 members, thus moving them closer to de facto federalization. Upon surrendering sovereignty over military policymaking, which some of them have proudly protected up until now, every other aspect of federalization would quickly fall into place shortly afterwards.

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“Vast DEI Bureaucracy” Hurting U.S. Armed Forces; ASU Study Finds

A new Arizona State University study suggests that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in the United States military are ineffective.

The study done by the university’s Center for American Institutions argued that there is a emphasis on training new soldiers about social issues like “unconscious bias” and “intersectionality” in a way the center says runs contrary to typical American ideals. The study examined DEI plan’s in different sector of the military, including DEI office staffing and education at academies like West Point.

“The massive DEI bureaucracy, its training and its pseudo-scientific assessments are at best distractions that absorb valuable time and resources,” the executive summary states. “At worst they communicate the opposite of the military ethos: e.g. that individual demographic differences come before team and mission.”

Donald Critchlow, director of the center, wrote in the introduction it was focused on looking at the influence of Critical Race Theory in the United States Armed Forces training.

“The Commission on Civic Education in the Military began as a project to review civic education in the military. Our research team did not expect to find Critical Race Theory so embedded and pervasive. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are found throughout the U.S. Armed Forces and our service academies,” Critchlow wrote. “This year long study documents just how pervasive these training programs are in our Armed Forces and Service Academies and that DEI extends well beyond just formal training programs in the military and service academies.”

“The Founders of our nation understood and feared a politicized military. History had shown them that a politicized army easily became the tool of tyranny. The Armed Forces of the United States has proudly upheld this long tradition of separating mission from politics,” he continued.

In terms of recommendations, the study suggests that DEI offices be completely scrapped, but said it may be politically unlikely for the time being.

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U.S. ‘Defense’ Firms Control the U.S. Government.

The United States is safer from a foreign invasion than any other country, not because it spends half of all of the world’s military expenditures, but because it is separated by over 3,000 miles of ocean away from Europe and from Asia, and because its only two bordering countries are entirely friendly nations, Mexico and Canada — so, there’s no way, short of an invasion from thousands of miles away, that America can be militarily attacked. 

The thing that nations are especially concerned about in national-defense matters is avoiding a blitz attack, which is an attack from a location so near to the nation’s central command — near to its Government — so as to be able to behead the Government too fast for the Government to be able to identify that attack and release its retaliatory forces against its enemy. 

This is what the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was all about: JFK needed to prevent placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba only 1,131 miles away from DC, which would have enabled the Soviet Union to blitz-attack America within less than 30 minutes. That’s why JFK threatened to Khrushchev that if they tried that, then America would invade and take over Cuba.

Nowadays the situation is in the reverse direction: Russia’s central command (The Kremlin in Moscow) is only 317 miles away from Ukraine, and on 17 December 2021 Russia formally demanded both America and its NATO to promise that Ukraine won’t be added to NATO and will never host U.S. military; and — entirely unlike what Khrushchev did in 1962 — the U.S. and its NATO responded on 7 January 2022 with a resounding and contemptuous no. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

What is this actually all about? Empirical studies have shown unequivocally that the U.S. Government is controlled by and represents not its public but only its thousand billionaires plus the politically most active of its centi-millionaires. Each of these individuals is catastrophically wealthy and so can buy enough politicians so that even just the billionaires alone actually do donate more than half of all of the money that funds U.S. political campaigns — the ads, the ‘news’-stories in their ‘news’-media, their think tanks and universities, etc. — in order to drown-out whatever few politicians who simply refuse to be controlled by them.

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Israel to Ukraine to Bulgaria: Which countries receive US military aid?

The United States is poised to restart the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel that were held up earlier this year after a pause on their export following the brutal offensive in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, officials told multiple media organisations on Wednesday.

In early May, Biden had paused a single shipment of bombs after Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah on May 6 and the Israeli military began “targeted” ground operations one day later. Since then, United Nations agencies estimate that about a million Palestinians – many of whom have already been displaced multiple times from other areas of Gaza – have been forced to flee from Rafah.

Throughout Israel’s military campaign on Gaza, the US has not only allowed weapons sales to Israel. It has also provided large amounts of other military aid – both financially and, it is believed, through supportive military operations.

In April, US Congress approved a major round of military aid to both Israel and Ukraine. A total of $95bn included $60bn (63 percent) for Ukraine, $26.4bn (28 percent) for Israel and $8.1bn (9 percent) for the Asia Pacific region relating to a possible threat from China.

The US is the world’s biggest provider of military aid. So, what exactly is military aid and which countries benefit the most?

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Northrop Grumman XRQ-73 SHEPARD Demonstrator Breaks Cover

The SHEPARD vehicle, recently designated the XRQ-73, represents a significant step forward in the evolution of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), leveraging hybrid electric propulsion technologies to enhance performance and operational capabilities.

On Jul. 10, 2024, Northrop Grumman unveiled the design and construction of the Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion Aircraft Demonstration (SHEPARD) vehicle. This uncrewed air system, developed for DARPA, has been officially designated as the XRQ-73 X-plane.

The aircraft in the image released by Northrop Grumman features a sleek, stealthy flying wing design. It has a low-profile fuselage with sharp, angular edges to enhance aerodynamic efficiency and stealth capabilities. The wings are broad and tapered with clipped wingtips, and there are two prominent air inlets located on the upper surface of the fuselage. Between these inlets is a fairing, likely housing critical systems or payloads.

The overall design suggests a focus on minimizing radar and visual signatures, emphasizing its role as an advanced, unmanned aircraft for surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

In fact, the XRQ-73 SHEPARD, built in collaboration with Scaled Composites (a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman), is part of DARPA’s “X-prime” program. It utilizes hybrid electric architecture and advanced component technologies to rapidly develop a new mission-specific aircraft design with unique propulsion architecture and power capabilities for the Department of Defense.

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Problem Plagued Sentinel ICBM Program Will Press Ahead Despite Nearly Doubling In Cost

The U.S. Air Force is pushing ahead with its struggling Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program despite a new projected price tag of nearly $141 billion, close to twice the original estimate, and now years of expected delays. The Pentagon says it has assessed that there are no lower-cost, but similarly capable alternatives to Sentinel, which is expected to replace the existing Minuteman III ICBM as one of the three legs of America’s nuclear deterrent triad.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense announced the results of an official review of the Sentinel program today. By law, per what is commonly referred to as the Nunn-McCurdy Amendment, defense programs that see certain levels of extreme cost growth must be canceled unless various criteria are met. Sentinel’s rising price point triggered a breach of the Nunn-McCurdy statute in January. The Air Force also sacked the top officer in charge of the program last month, but said this was “not directly related to the Nunn-McCurdy review,” according to Defense One.

The Air Force currently has some 400 LGM-30G Minuteman IIIs deployed in silos spread across five states.

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