Tag: military industrial complex

The US Space Force plans to start patrolling the area around the Moon

This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn’t get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant—the US military plans to extend its space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit, all the way to the Moon.

“Until now, the United States space mission extended 22,000 miles above Earth,” a narrator says in the video. “That was then, this is now. The Air Force Research Laboratory is extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times, taking our reach to the far side of the Moon into cislunar space.”

The US military had previously talked about extending its operational domain, but now it is taking action. It plans to launch a satellite, likely equipped with a powerful telescope, into cislunar space. According to the video, the satellite will be called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System or, you guessed it, CHPS. The research laboratory plans to issue a “request for prototype proposals” for the CHPS satellite on March 21 and announce the contract award in July. The CHPS program will be managed by Michael Lopez, from the lab’s Space Vehicles Directorate. (Alas, we were rooting for Erik Estrada).

This effort will include the participation of several military organizations, and it can be a little confusing to keep track of. Essentially, though, the Air Force lab will oversee the development of the satellite. The US Space Force will then procure this capability for use by the US Space Command, which is responsible for military operations in outer space. Effectively, this satellite is the beginning of an extension of operations by US Space Command from geostationary space to beyond the Moon.

“It’s the first step for them to be able to know what’s going on in cislunar space and then identify any potential threats to US activities,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation.

Weeden said he does not think the CHPS satellite will include capabilities to respond to any threats but will serve primarily to provide situational awareness.

So why is US Space Command interested in expanding its theater of operations to include the Moon? The primary reason cited in the video is managing increasing space traffic in the lunar environment, including several NASA-sponsored commercial missions, the space agency’s Artemis program, and those of other nations. It’s going to get crowded out there. A recent report by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Fly Me to the Moon, examines the dozens of missions planned to the Moon over the next decade.

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How the West Was Won: Counterinsurgency, PSYOPS and the Military Origins of the Internet

If insurgency is defined as an organised political struggle by a hostile minority, attempting to seize power through revolutionary means, then counterinsurgency is the military doctrine historically used against non-state actors, which sets out to infiltrate and eradicate those movements.

Unlike conventional soldiers, insurgents are considered dangerous, not because of their physical presence on the battlefield, but because of their ideology.

As David Galula, a French commander who was an expert in counterinsurgency warfare during the Algerian War, emphasised:

“In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be an active minority for the cause, a neutral majority, and an active minority against the cause. The technique of power consists in relying on the favourable minority in order to rally the neutral majority and to neutralise or eliminate the hostile minority.”

Over time, however, the intelligence state lost touch with reality, as the focus of its counterinsurgency programs shifted from foreign to domestic populations, from national security risks to ordinary citizens, particularly in the wake of 9/11 when the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, began mapping out the Internet.

Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, we now know that the NSA were collecting 200 billion pieces of data every month, including the cell phone records, emails, Web searches and live chats of more than 200 million ordinary Americans. This was extracted from the world’s largest Internet companies via a lesser-known data mining program called Prism.

There’s another name for this, and its total information awareness; the highest attainment of a paranoid state seeking absolute control over its population. What ceases to be worth the candle is that people’s right to privacy is enshrined under the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

Few understand how lockdowns are ripples on these troubled waters. Decades of counterinsurgency waged against one subset of society, branded insurgents for their Marxist ideals has, over time, shifted to anyone holding anti-establishment views. The predictive policing of track and trace and the theory of asymptomatic transmission are the unwelcome repercussions of the intelligence state seeking total information awareness over its citizens.

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Tears for Ukraine, Sanctions for Russia, Yawns for Yemen, Arms for Saudis: The West’s Grotesque Double Standard

“We’re brutally bombed every day. So why doesn’t the Western world care like it does about Ukraine?!!… Is it because we don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes like Ukrainians?”  Ahmed Tamri, a Yemeni father of four, asked with furrowed brows about the outpouring of international support and media coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lack of such a reaction to the war in Yemen.

Over the weekend, a member of Tamri’s family was killed and nine relatives injured when their family home was targeted in a Saudi-led Coalition airstrike in the remote al-Saqf area in Hajjah Governorate. Tamri claims that al-Saqf has been subjected to a brutal Saudi bombing campaign for the past seven years – more so, he says, than all of Ukraine has endured since it was invaded by Russia.

Despite the horrific bombing campaign against Yemeni civilians, Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations and war crimes have garnered nowhere near the level of coverage and sympathy that the mainstream Western media has rightfully given to Ukraine. “They shed tears for the Ukrainians, and ignore our tragedies… What hypocrisy and racism!” Tamri told MintPress News.

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As Ukrainians Get Killed and Displaced, Weapons Companies Reaping Record Profits Off Their Suffering

In only the first week of fighting, investors have already posted $69 billion in stock gains on the 33 major defense and aerospace stocks in the largest Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) of its kind, the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (ITA), says an Investor’s Business Daily analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence and MarketSmith.

As Investors.com reports, Northrop Grumman (NOC) already pulled 9% past analysts’ 12-month price target on the stock. Shares are up a powerful 18% since the war began, putting $10.9 billion into investors’ portfolios. It’s a similar story with Lockheed Martin (LMT). Following a 27% run-up just this year, and 16% since the war, shares blasted past analysts’ price target by some 7%.

This is by design and the model has been in place for decades.

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Biden Approves $350 Million in Military Assistance for Ukraine

U.S. President Joe Biden has approved $350 million for military aid to Ukraine as Ukrainian forces battle against a Russian invasion.

Biden instructed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to release the aid to Ukraine.

Biden in a memorandum published late Feb. 25 cited the Foreign Assistance Act in telling Blinken to drawdown weapons and related assistance.

Blinken said Saturday that he was acting on the instructions.

“Today, as Ukraine fights with courage and pride against Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault, I have authorized, pursuant to a delegation by the president, an unprecedented third presidential drawdown of up to $350 million for immediate support to Ukraine’s defense,” Blinken said in a statement.

The new chunk brings the total security assistance the United States has committed in the past year to Ukraine to over $1 billion.

The fresh package will include “lethal defensive assistance,” Blinken said, which will help Ukrainian forces deal with the Russian invasion.

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Weather Modification Has Quite a War-ish Background

Are there specific instances we can find of weather manipulation being used by militaries against their opponents? To begin our discussion, let us first look back to 1946 when the first man-made snowstorm took place.

The beginning of weather modification

Shortly after the end of World War II, a duo of men set to the skies. One was pilot Curtis Talbot, and with him was Dr. Vincent J. Schaefer. The two men set out to 14,000 feet with just one goal in mind: they were going to make history.

Upon reaching their desired altitude, the men proceeded to release three pounds of dry ice into the air. What happened next would leave both of the men dumbfounded. As Dr. Schaefer said of the moment, there were “long streamers of snow falling from the base of the cloud through which we had just passed. I shouted to Curt to swing around, and as we did so, we passed through a mass of glistening snow crystals! Needless to say, we were quite excited.”

The men had just created snow. 

The ramifications of this were huge, but there was something even more important to consider here: the timing was impeccable as well.

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