Tag: military industrial complex

Whatever They Decide These UFOs Are, The Answer Will Be More US Militarism

US war planes have shot down three unidentified objects in North American airspace over the last three days, which is entirely without precedent.

On Sunday an octagon-shaped object was reportedly shot down over Lake Huron near the Canadian border after first being detected some 1,300 miles away over Montana on Saturday night. On Saturday a cylindrical object was reportedly shot down over Canada’s Yukon territory by an American F-22, and on Friday an object “about the size of a small car” was reportedly shot down after being detected over Alaska.

Unlike the Chinese balloon that was shot down earlier this month which the US claims was an instrument of espionage, as of this writing there’s still no solid consensus as to what these last three objects were or where they came from. While all three were found at high altitude like the balloon, the Pentagon is refusing to classify them as such, with the head of US Northern Command General Glen VanHerck going as far as to say it hadn’t yet been determined how these objects are even staying aloft.

“I’m not going to categorize them as balloons. We’re calling them objects for a reason,” VanHerck told the press on Sunday. “I’m not able to categorize how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they’re — they’re able to stay aloft.”

VanHerck also made headlines for saying he couldn’t rule out extraterrestrial origin for the objects.

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US Pentagon is developing a new ‘weapon of mass destruction’: Thousands of drones will work together to destroy enemy defenses – but experts fear humans will lose control of the ‘swarms’

The US Pentagon is planning a new ‘weapon of mass destruction’ that involves thousands of drones that strike by air, land and water to destroy enemy defenses – but experts fear humans could lose control of the ‘swarms.’

The top-secret project, dubbed AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms), would represent automated warfare on an unprecedented scale.

AMASS is still in the planning stages, but DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has been collecting bids from suppliers for the $78 million contract.

Small drones would be equipped with weapons and tools for navigation and communication, along with abilities ranging from radar jamming to launching lethal attacks.

While the technology would change how the US goes to war, experts in the industry raise concerns.

Zachary Kallenborn, a policy fellow at George Mason University in Virginia, said: ‘As the swarm grows in size, it’ll become virtually impossible for humans to manage the decisions.’

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Distract, Divide and Conquer: The Painful Truth About the State of Our Union

Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.

These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.

Foreign interests are buying up our farmland and holding our national debt. As of 2021, foreign persons and entities owned 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, 47% of which was forestland, 29% in cropland, and 22% in pastureland. Foreign land holdings have increased by an average of 2.2 million acres per year since 2015. Foreign countries also own $7.4 trillion worth of U.S. national debt, with Japan and China ranked as our two largest foreign holders of our debt.

Corporate and governmental censorship have created digital dictators. While the “Twitter files” revealed the lengths to which the FBI has gone to monitor and censor social media content, the government has been colluding with the tech sector for some time now in order to silence its critics and target “dangerous” speech in the name of fighting so-called disinformation. The threat of being labelled “disinformation” is being used to undermine anyone who asks questions, challenges the status quo, and engages in critical thinking.

Middle- and lower-income Americans are barely keeping up. Rising costs of housing, food, gas and other necessities are presenting nearly insurmountable hurdles towards financial independence for the majority of households who are scrambling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, mounting layoffs in the tens of thousands are adding to the fiscal pain.

The government is attempting to weaponize mental health care. Increasingly, in communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, even if they pose no danger to others. While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), the specter of mental health round-ups begins to sound less far-fetched.

The military’s global occupation is spreading our resources thin and endangering us at home. America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin. In 2022 alone, the U.S. approved more than $50 billion in aid for Ukraine, half of which went towards military spending, with more on the way. The U.S. also maintains some 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.

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By Shooting Down Balloon, the Expensive, Useless F-22 Fighter Finally Won a Dogfight

When it officially entered military service in 2005, the U.S. Air Force hailed the F-22 Raptor as an “exponential leap in warfighting capabilities.”

American taxpayers ultimately paid $67 billion to buy 187 of the planes, which had been in development since 1986 “to project air dominance, rapidly and at great distances” with technical capabilities that “cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft.”

On Saturday, the F-22 scored its first-ever victory against an airborne adversary when it shot down…a balloon.

There may not be a better metaphor for the costly grandiosity of the American military than the use of a multi-million-dollar fighter jet to dispatch an unarmed, unmaneuverable opponent. But the fact that the F-22 had never won a dogfight before its decisive victory over what may or may not have been a Chinese spy balloon is a nice illustration of why the United States has the world’s most expensive military by a massive margin.

In short, it’s because the Pentagon buys lots of expensive toys that have no use.

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Revealed: U.S Secret Military Deployment on British Cyprus

The US Air Force has had a base on British territory on Cyprus for nearly half a century, but its size is kept secret from the public on both sides of the Atlantic. Declassified now reveals the increasing US military presence on the Mediterranean island.

  • US Air Force is expanding its deployment on RAF’s Cyprus base to 129 airmen
  • New 147-room installation is being built by US military across 1.5 acres of British base to house its personnel at cost of $27m
  • US spy force, 1st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, is permanently deployed at the British base 
  • UK Ministry of Defence refuses to disclose number of US military personnel on the British territory—or if American bombing missions are flown from it
  • Pentagon claims it only has one airman on Cyprus—and ignores Declassified’s request for clarification
  • Top secret GCHQ document notes: “Cyprus hosts a wide range of UK and US intelligence facilities”
  • Cypriot working on the UK base area tells Declassified: “There is a big US presence, I don’t know how that works or why”

The US military is planning to deploy at least 129 airmen to British territory on Cyprus by next year, Declassified can reveal.

The number of US troops on the UK’s so-called Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs), which comprise 3% of Cyprus’s landmass, has long been secret.

“We do not propose to release the numbers of US personnel participating in current or future operational activities [on British Cyprus]”, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) recently told parliament.

The US Department of Defense (DoD), meanwhile, claims it only has 14 personnel deployed in Cyprus, including nine Marines and just one airman. The department did not respond to Declassified’s request for more information and comment.

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The US Is Making Billions Being Warlords in Yemen

One of Biden’s promises during his presidential campaign was to immediately move to end all support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen. In February 2021, Biden stood at a podium at the State Department and proclaimed that the war in Yemen must end. Biden underlined the humanitarian crisis as the key reason the United States withdrew support. An investigation (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office found that the United States is training the Saudi-led coalition, and the US has troops on the ground in Yemen. Biden confirmed that the United States has troops in Yemen in a letter to Congress in June last year. Biden lied to the American people when he claimed that the United States was withdrawing US support for the war in Yemen in 2021.

On the contrary, the United States is making billions of dollars from the war in Yemen as 200k have been killed from direct violence. Between 2015 and 2021, the United States sent 54.2 billion dollars in weapons and services to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to data acquired from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. In addition, the Department of Defense provided 644 million dollars for military training to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, almost entirely through the Foreign Military Sales program. The DoD uses acquisition and cross-servicing agreements to bill nations for logistical support and items ranging from flying hours, fuel, and bombs. Saudi Arabia paid the United States 157 million dollars in flying hours, and the UAE paid 104 million for flying hours since the GCC-led invention in Yemen’s civil war in 2015. The United States billed Saudi Arabia and the UAE for 319 million dollars in acquisitions and cross-servicing agreements for logistical support.

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US To Increase Artillery Ammunition Production By 500% For Ukraine

The Pentagon is planning to boost its production of artillery ammunition by 500% over the next two years as the US is depleting its military stockpiles by sending millions of shells to Ukraine, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the US has pledged to send Ukraine over one million 155mm artillery shells. Before the US Army began efforts to increase production, it produced 14,400 155mm shells a month, but under the new plans, the number could reach over 90,000 each month.

According to the Times, an Army report said the plan will involve expanding factories and bringing in new producers in an effort described as “the most aggressive modernization effort in nearly 40 years” of the US military-industrial complex.

The unguided 155mm shells that are fired out of Howitzers include parts produced by several arms manufacturers, including steel bodies made by General Dynamics and explosives mixed by BAE Systems. American Ordnance pours the explosives into the bodies, and several other contractors produce the fuzes that are screwed into the shells.

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Northrop Grumman expects strong 2023 revenue as weapon demand surges

U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp NOC.N on Thursday forecast full-year sales above Wall Street estimates, as it benefits from strong demand for weapons from countries ramping up their defense spend.

The United States and its allies have been buying more arms and ammunitions and supporting Ukraine with billions of dollar in military aid after Russia invaded the country last year.

During the quarter, Northrop rolled out its new B-21 “Raider” jet, the first of a new fleet of long-range stealth nuclear bombers for the United States Air Force.

“We’re raising our sales outlook for 2023 and expect to deliver strong multi-year cash flow growth,” Northrop Grumman Chief Executive Kathy Warden said.

The Falls Church, Virginia-based company expects 2023 sales between $38 billion and $38.4 billion, ahead of the average analyst estimate of $37.86 billion, and an adjusted profit of $21.85 to $22.45 per share, compared with estimates of $22.30, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Meanwhile, rivals General Dynamics CorpGD.N and Lockheed Martin CorpLMT.N forecast their annual profit below estimates, as the industry grapples with labor and supply shortages.

Northrop, which produces the fuselage for the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, posted sales of about $10.03 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31, ahead of analysts’ average estimate of $9.66 billion.

Sales in its space systems unit, which makes satellites and payloads, jumped 23% to $3.28 billion, helped by higher investments towards space exploration projects.

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Let the Weapons Flow and the Body Count Grow

Two articles I read Monday are typical of polarized, indeed antithetical, views on the Russia-Ukraine War.

At the British Guardian, Simon Tisdall says this is Europe’s moment to step up and support Ukraine in a righteous war against Putin. He concludes, with passion:

Zelenskiy is right. Risk-averse Nato has been too slow and too cautious from the start. To outpace tyranny, Europe must fight – and fight to win. Our common future depends on it.

Putin, the tyrant, must be stopped in Ukraine, or Poland and Germany could be next. Fighting to win means that Ukraine must be given not only hundreds of Leopard 2 tanks but also combat jets. The combination of tanks, jets, and related ancillary equipment will enable Ukraine to drive Russian forces out of the country in a quasi-Blitzkrieg operation. Victory to the West!Why not talks instead of tanks?

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Harvard’s Kennedy School: Key Part Of The Military-Industrial Complex

Harvard’s Kennedy School’s denial of a fellowship to Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, because of his criticism of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza is only the latest example of the corporate role played by Harvard’s most prestigious think tank on public policy.  Roth, who has spent the last three decades at HRW defending human rights around the world, was offered a senior fellowship at the School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.  It was quickly withdrawn.

The school’s dean, Douglas Elmendorf, blocked the appointment following pressure from donors and supporters of Israel and its apartheid policies.  Hundreds of Harvard affiliates have now called on Elmendorf to resign as Dean.  The critics of Elmendorf include former Harvard president Lawrence Summers.

As America’s leading human rights defender, Roth has criticized numerous governments that violated human rights, including Israel’s.  No one has been more aggressive in this area than Kenneth Roth, who has challenged all those who have abused their power and authority.  No one has ever suggested that Roth’s criticisms of Israel were based on racial or religious animus.

In view of the fact that there are so few defenders of human rights and that the new Israeli government is poised to further suppress the human rights of its minority Palestinian population as well as those Palestinians in the occupied territory, the Harvard decision becomes more shocking.  The fact that Roth’s parents were refugees from Hitler’s Germany, and that the Roth family lost members in the Holocaust makes Harvard’s decision even more ironic and unconscionable.  From both the standpoint of human rights and academic freedom, Harvard and its Kennedy School mark themselves as failures.

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