Tag: pentagon

Pentagon Admits It Has No Evidence Iran Was Behind Drone Attack That Killed 3 US Troops in Jordan

The Pentagon on Monday said Iran “bears responsibility” for the drone attack in northeastern Jordan that killed three US troops but admitted it has no evidence that Iran was directly involved.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the responsibility fell on Iran due to its support for Iraqi Shia militias the US believes carried out the attack.

“In terms of attribution for the attack, we know this is an [Iran]-backed militia. It has the footprints of Kataib Hezbollah, but [we’re] not making a final assessment,” Singh said at a press conference. “Iran continues to arm and equip these groups to launch these attacks, and we will certainly hold them responsible.”

When asked if the US knew Iran and Iranian leaders were “actually behind this attack, as in planned, coordinated, or directed it,” Singh admitted the US had nothing to show that.

“We know that Iran certainly plays a role with these groups, they arm and equip and fund these groups. I don’t have more to share on — terms of an intelligence assessment on if leaders in Iran were directing this attack,” she said.

Singh was again asked about the claim that Iran was behind the attack and said the US just knows that “Iran funds these groups” and had nothing more to add. Later in the press conference, she said Iran “bears responsibility” for the killing of three American soldiers.

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What are they trying to tell us? Internal Pentagon report warns America is unequipped to defend itself from an ALIEN invasion

US officials do not have the capabilities to defend America against a hypothetical alien invasion, internal Pentagon watchdogs have determined.

A newly declassified document found the Department of Defense (DoD) lacks comprehensive or coordinated effort to track and analyze UFOs – which have been rebranded Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) in recent years.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) made the eerie conclusion that this blindspot in the DoD’s defensive capabilities ‘poses a threat to military forces and national security.’

To address the issues identified in this report, the OIG has made 11 recommendations, including the enforcement of protection policies and the development of new tools in the event of an extraterrestrial attack.

‘DoD efforts to identify and understand UAP has been irregular because of competing priorities, lack of substantive progress, and inconclusive findings,’ reads ‘Evaluation of the DoD’s Actions Regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena‘, previously issued August 2023.

‘However, military pilots have continued to report UAP incidents despite the sporadic efforts of the DoD to identify, report, and analyze the events’

The 2023 report was a collection of evaluations on whether the Pentagon, military branches, defense agencies and counterintelligence organizations conducted actions ‘to detect, report, collect, analyze, and identify UAP.’

‘The DoD has not issued a comprehensive UAP response plan that identifies roles, responsibilities, requirements, and coordination procedures for detecting, reporting, collecting, analyzing, and identifying UAP incidents,’ OIG concluded.

The agency conducted the work for the evaluation from May 2021 through June 2023 and interviewed Presidential and DoD policies, directives and guidance.

Those individuals are tasked with establishing requirements for intelligence gathering, counterintelligence, force protection, and civil liberty protections for 

‘As a result, the DoD response to UAP incidents is uncoordinated and concentrated within each Military Department.’

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Department of Defense Inks $235.8 Million Contract for Anthrax Vaccines

Biopharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) signed a massive $235.8 million contract with the Department of Defense to supply the U.S. military with its BioThrax anthrax vaccine.

Yahoo Finance reported the Biothrax anthrax vaccine is expected to be used by all branches of the U.S. military.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the FDA approved Emergent BioSolution’s Cyfendus anthrax vaccine for adults 18-65 in July of last year.

Just months later after its approval, Emergent BioSolutions announced that the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) “exercised an option valued on an existing deal to procure additional doses of its recently approved anthrax vaccine Cyfendus (AV7909).”

Emergent BioSolutions EBS signed an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) procurement contract for a maximum value of up to $235.8 million with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to supply its anthrax vaccine BioThrax.

The vaccine is intended for use by all branches of the United States military as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for anthrax disease.

The procurement contract consists of a five-year base agreement ending on Sep 30, 2028, with an option to extend the contract for an additional five years to Sep 30, 2033.

Before the end of the initial five-year base period, the DoD should place a minimum guaranteed purchase order for $20.1 million worth of the vaccine product. For the following years, the annual order size should be at least $20 million for a total value of up to $235.8 million.

In recent months, the Federal governmet and state officials have been preparing for a possible anthrax outbreak.

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Fears Pentagon was ‘building killer robots in the basement’ sparked stricter AI rules, DoD official claims

Fears the Pentagon has been ‘building killer robots in the basement’ may have led to stricter AI rules that mandated all systems must be approved before deployment.

The Department of Defense (DoD) recently updated its AI rules among ‘a lot of confusion about’ how it plans to use self-decision-making machines on the battlefield, according to the deputy assistant defense secretary.

Michael Horowitz explained at an event this month that the ‘directive does not prohibit the development of any systems,’ but will ‘make clear what is and isn’t allowed’ and uphold a ‘commitment to responsible behavior,’ as it develops lethal autonomous systems.

While the Pentagon believes the changes should ease the public’s minds, some have said they are not ‘convinced’ by the efforts.

News of the update to the Pentagon’s 2012 ‘Autonomy in Weapon Systems,’ has sparked a debate online with many people saying ‘If the Pentagon says they’re not doing it, they’re doing it.’

Dailymail.com has reached out to the DoD for comment. 

The DoD has been aggressively pushing to modernize its arsenal with autonomous drones, tanks, and other weapons that select and attack a target without human intervention.

Mark Brakel, director of the advocacy organization Future of Life Institute (FLI), told DailyMail.com: ‘These weapons carry a massive risk of unintended escalation.’

He explained that AI-powered weapons could misinterpret something, like a ray of sunlight, and perceive it as a threat, thus attacking foreign powers without cause.

Brakel said the result could be devastating because ‘without meaningful human control, AI-powered weapons are like the Norwegian rocket incident [a near nuclear armageddon] on steroids and they could increase the risk of accidents in hotspots such as the Taiwan Strait.’

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Lloyd Austin’s Deputy Ran The Pentagon From The Beach, Didn’t Cancel Vacation

Amid growing pressure on the Biden administration in the wake of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin going MIA for nearly four days as he was in the ICU of Walter Reed hospital but without telling anyone at the White House (as basic long-standing national security protocol would require), new details have been unearthed which reveal the situation to have been far worse (and comical) than previously known.

Not only was there no one officially at the helm of the Department of Defense at a moment Iran-backed militias targeted US bases in the Iraq-Syria region, but Austin’s #2 was “running the Pentagon” from the beach, apparently.

Austin and his staffers have tried to paint a picture that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks was basically running things. But while Hicks is said to have been tasked with “some duties” during Austin’s absence – it remains that she was on vacation and didn’t so much as know that her boss was out of commission.

According to fresh details in The Wall Street Journal, Hicks was literally on a beach in Puerto Rico—and what’s worse is that she stayed on vacation even as Austin was laid up:

On the evening of Monday, Jan. 1, Austin experienced severe abdominal pain and was rushed via ambulance to Walter Reed, where he was put in the intensive care unit, the Pentagon said. Once there, doctors identified a urinary tract infection and abdominal fluid collections in Austin, and he remained in the ICU for several days. 

On the day Austin returned to the hospital, Kelly Magsamen, his chief of staff, was sick with the flu, and her deputy was out, U.S. officials said, a factor that contributed to the delayed communications.

The following day, Jan. 2, Hicks, who was on a beach in Puerto Rico with her family, was informed by the Pentagon that she needed to assume some of Austin’s duties. The request was a surprise since Hicks had planned her vacation well in advance and normally, if she was to assume the defense chief’s duties, she should be in Washington to perform them.

The comedy of errors was compounded from there. It would be hard to make this up…

The communications team which routinely travels with her, even while on leave, prepared for an elevated role while at the hotel, which required her to stick close to her communications suite, forgoing walks on the beach. She began to make some routine operational and management decisions in Austin’s stead, and was “fully authorized and ready to support the president on other military matters, should the need have arisen,” a Pentagon official said. 

So Hicks, who found herself in charge (somewhat unknowingly perhaps) of the world’s most powerful military, and at a moment the US is engaged in several hotspots from Ukraine to Syria to the Red Sea, decided that she must sacrifice walks on the sandy beaches.

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Pentagon’s ‘Extremism In Our Ranks’ Propaganda Debunked By Their Own Study

Recall 2021… when the Biden FBI deployed counterterrorism resources against concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings, and Gen. Mark Milley told Congress that he wanted “to understand White rage” one month after an enraged father was dragged out of a Loudon County, Virginia school board meeting after his daughter was raped by a transgender boy in the girl’s bathroom – which the school board then covered up.

Remember that?

And instead of addressing the concerns of millions of angry parents who had woken up to a nationwide phenomenon of mentally ill schoolteachers, critical race theory / DEI indoctrination, and transgender boys crushing the dreams of female athletes, the Biden administration turned the whole thing into a ‘white rage’ problem caused by extremist Trump supporters.

In December of 2021, the Pentagon furthered the ‘white rage’ narrative, warning that ‘extremism’ within the ranks was on the rise, which would require ‘detailed new rules’ to prohibit service members from engaging in ‘certain activities.’

The new policy lays out in detail the banned activities, which range from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising or rallying on behalf of an extremist group or “liking” or reposting extremist views on social media. The rules also specify that commanders must determine two things in order for someone to be held accountable: that the action was an extremist activity, as defined in the rules, and that the service member “actively participated” in that prohibited activity.

Previous policies banned extremist activities but didn’t go into such great detail, and also did not specify the two step process to determine someone accountable. -AP

Turns out that was total bullshit…

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Biden Complains About Provision That Bans Pentagon From Contracting With Censorship Groups, “Fact-Checkers”

There are few things as jarring as a sitting US administration evoking the First Amendment (constitutional free speech protections) – while the purpose to all intents and purposes seems to be to actually undermine them.

In such cases, the hypocrisy doesn’t simply whisper. Here, it screams. And there have been many such instances over the years.

This is a new example: the Biden administration late last week approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the upcoming year.

One – for an “authoritative democracy,” provisions was that the US Defense Department would not be allowed to contractually work with certain groups, such as by now-infamous NewsGuard, and the free-speech-trampling Global Disinformation Index (GDI) – effectively out there working hard to silence opposition-leaning press in the US.

But then, as soon as the 2024 NDAA was signed by Biden late last week, the somewhat erratic president – or whoever is… advising him – pushed a different story to the public.

“While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the NDAA, I note that certain provisions of the Act raise concerns,” reads a subsequent statement, signed by Biden.

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Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian “Falls Apart” As Spain, Italy, France Reject Request  

Australia is the latest country to reject a request from the United States to send warships to the Red Sea under the command of the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect commercial vessels along the critical maritime trade route from Iran-backed Houthi. 

Defense Minister Richard Marles told Sky News that Australia’s military would not send a “ship or a plane” to the Red Sea but would triple the number of troops for the US-led maritime force. 

“We need to be really clear around our strategic focus and our strategic focus is our region,” Marles said.

The Pentagon’s formation of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a new task force to protect shipping from Houthi drone and missile attacks in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, requires increased warship patrols by the US and allies. This will create a security umbrella over commercial vessels to defend from attacks. 

Reuters said about twenty countries have signed up for the Pentagon’s new operation. However, several countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, and France, have rejected the Pentagon’s request to participate in the operation. 

Spain’s Defence Ministry said it would only participate in NATO-led missions or European-coordinated operations – not ones commanded by the Pentagon: 

“We will not participate unilaterally in the Red Sea operation.” 

Italy’s Defence Ministry voiced similar concerns, indicating it would send naval frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea but only respond to requests by Italian shipowners. 

“Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea has practically Collapsed as France, Spain, and Italy have all announced their Withdrawal from the US Command Structure for the Operation, with the Three Nations stating they will only conduct further Maritime Operations under the Command of NATO and/or the European Union and not the United States,” X account OSINTdefender wrote. 

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AS U.S.-FUNDED WARS RAGE IN ISRAEL AND UKRAINE, PENTAGON WATCHDOG WARNS OF MILITARY FAILURES

AS CALLS GROW in Congress to condition aid to Israel and halt funding to Ukraine altogether, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon’s operations. 

In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department’s single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general’s findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. 

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Diminutive and mysterious, the Pentagon’s X-37B set to launch again

It’s an itty-bitty spaceplane, not quite 30 feet long and under 10 feet tall, with a pair of stubby wings and a rounded, bulldog-like nose. But despite its diminutive size — it looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle — the Pentagon’s most mysterious spacecraft, known as the X-37B, has built an outsize reputation.

Is it a secretive Pentagon weapon? Is it stealthy? Does it sneak up to satellites? What exactly does it do in space? And why is it up there for so long?

The Pentagon won’t say. And the veil of secrecy over the X-37B continues ahead of its launch Sunday at 8:14 p.m. Eastern on its seventh mission. But this time there are some clues that at least something is different.

The drone, which flies without anyone on board, is to be launched for the first time on SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy, which is more powerful than the rockets that have launched it in the past. That’s led to speculation that the mission will be in a much higher orbit, which appears to be the case according to recent documents. SpaceX won the $130 million contract for the launch in 2018.

Still, what it might do in that higher orbit remains unknown.

The mission has “a wide range of test and experimentation objectives,” is the Pentagon’s official statement. “These tests include operating the reusable spaceplane in new orbital regimes, experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies.”

The reference about “space domain awareness” could mean that it will be keeping an eye on other satellites, potentially watching for threats. Having a better sense of what is going on in the vastness of space — where adversaries’ spacecraft are and what they are doing — has become a key mission of the U.S. Space Force. “Our space systems are threatened by a variety of growing antisatellite capabilities, and the joint force is threatened by increasingly sophisticated adversary space-based systems intended to target the joint force,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief of space operations, said in a statement to Congress earlier this year.

At least one part of the mission is known. The vehicle will “expose plant seeds to the harsh radiation environment of long-duration spaceflight” in an experiment for NASA. In the past, the Pentagon has also used the X-37B to test some of its cutting edge technologies, including a small solar panel designed to transform solar energy into microwaves, a technology that one day could allow energy harnessed in space to be beamed back to Earth.

The Boeing built X-37B has also been used to deploy small satellites, but what those did was also a mystery.

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