Tag: perpetual war

Democrats Set to Reject President Trump’s $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Request

Most Democrats were already opposed to an increase and are set to reject the requested $1.5 trillion defense budget, Bloomberg reported Sunday.

Now, after their party won majorities in the U.S. House and Senate during the midterm elections, Democrats are “signaling they will block any efforts to push it forward,” the outlet continued:

At the same time, Republican lawmakers returning to the lame-duck session before the new Congress is seated in January may not be able to muster the support or political will to ram through the massive defense spending package, especially amid the Pentagon’s unpopular war against Iran that cost many of them their jobs.

“We must push for the development of a more realistic and sustainable approach to our national security — one that does not require a defense budget in excess of $1 trillion or one paid for with draconian cuts to critical domestic programs,” Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement after the election.

President Trump said in January the 2027 military budget should be bumped to $1.5 trillion, Breitbart News reported.

He explained the proposed increase would support what he called the “Dream Military” that would ensure America stayed safe and secure:

He linked the feasibility of the higher budget figure to revenue generated from tariffs, claiming that “tremendous numbers” from tariff income had made the larger figure viable. “Because of Tariffs, and the tremendous Income that they bring, amounts being generated, that would have been unthinkable in the past … we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number,” Trump wrote. He added that this approach would also allow for “pay[ing] down Debt” and providing a “substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country.”

Trump later said there was an interest in increasing defense spending, adding that states should handle more of the domestic spending, according to Breitbart News.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal,” he noted.

“We are delivering on President Trump’s commitment to expand American military dominance for decades to come. Previous administrations underinvested in our military while our enemies grew stronger and more dangerous, so we are now changing the game,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said upon release of the president’s fiscal year 2027 budget. “This budget builds this arsenal without compromising readiness that will ensure we remain the world’s premier fighting force, we protect the homeland, and we create peace through strength now and into the future.”

A CNN exit poll suggested Tuesday that a majority of midterm voters said the Iran War and high gas prices factored into their vote, and President Trump acknowledged Wednesday that the conflict with Iran cost Republicans votes in the midterm elections.

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US Forces Leave A Major Airfield In Somalia After More Than A Decade

The U.S. military pulled all of its troops from a major air base in Somalia last month, after using the Baledogle Military Airfield for more than a decade as part of its counterterrorism mission in the country.

Troops left the airfield, located only a few dozen miles from the capital of Mogadishu, but will remain in the country. Horn Observer first reported the exit, citing multiple people familiar with the base. A military official familiar with the matter confirmed to Task & Purpose that the troops left the base for other parts of Somalia. The official said that U.S. forces might return to Baledogle in the future.

A spokesperson for U.S. Africa Command did not confirm reports of troops leaving, but said in a statement that the “U.S. military is an agile, mobile force. U.S. Africa Command repositions its forces to optimize for counterterror operations. In the interest of maintaining operational security, we do not discuss details of ongoing operations.”

It is not clear how many troops were assigned to the airfield before they were relocated, although the United States has kept dozens there in the past, supporting operations around the region.

The airfield is roughly 60 miles southwest of Mogadishu and has been a focal point of the ongoing Somali civil war.

In 2009, the militant group al-Shabaab captured Baledogle, using it as a training ground for its fighters for three years before African Union forces pushed them out. U.S. troops began operating at Baledogle in 2012, expanding their presence in the following years. Alongside counterterrorism missions, American troops trained Somali commandos.

On Sept. 30, 2019, al-Shabaab forces attacked the airfield using a combination of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and small arms. American and Somali troops at the base engaged the militants for an hour, eventually driving them back.

Despite some major shifts in U.S. operations on the African continent – including wrapping up combat missions against Islamic State militants in Nigeria and moving MQ-9 drones from Africa to Latin America – the military has continued its ongoing campaign against militants in Somalia. In October, American forces launched four separate airstrikes on al-Shabaab fighters in the country, per AFRICOM. Those are part of the expanded strike campaign since the start of the second Trump administration. Earlier this year the U.S. began a multi-million dollar upgrade project on an air base in Kenya that the American military uses for operations in the Horn of Africa.

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Pentagon’s ‘Iron Gate’ Operation: Washington Moves To Choke Off Iran’s Overland Military Trade

Despite the Iran war being very obviously deeply unpopular with the American public, Washington is seeking to tighten the noose on Tehran, particularly on the economic front.

This weekend saw the Pentagon unveil details of a new initiative called “Task Force Iron Gate” – which will seek to target Iranian alternative trade routes amid the US naval mission to blockade its main ports via the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf waters.

The effort seeks to strangle Iran’s overland military and technology supply networks, including by better monitoring the Caspian Sea region.

“The establishment of Task Force Iron Gate reinforces the success of our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea,” said CENTCOM chief Adm. Bradley Cooper.

“Strengthening CENTCOM’s collaboration with U.S. interagency partners will further constrain Iran’s ability to finance terrorism, rebuild weapons factories, and replenish their military,” the top commander added.

Michael Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant defense secretary for the Middle East, has further described that the operation will seek to comprehensively “cut the regime off from its ability to fight and ability to fund itself.”

An appointed task force will focus its sole efforts on finding out where “weapons systems are coming in, how they could potentially be cut off” and how “Iran is transporting its energy”.

CENTCOM said it will be be run by 20 civilian and military personnel, presumably with significant coordination from the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The task force will be based in Tampa, Florida – which is home to both CENTCOM headquarters and US Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

But disrupting overland trade will be easier said than done, given Iran shares borders with no less than seven countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan Turkey, and Turkmenistan.

A Revolutionary ‌Guards spokesman ‌was quoted as saying on Sunday that Washington’s aims are impossible.

“The Iron ‌Gate plan is merely a wordplay, the Americans cannot achieve their objectives of imposing severe economic pressure to cause economic collapse in Iran through this approach,” spokesman Hossein Mohebbi told the semi-official Fars news agency.

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Something Big Is Coming…

The British state is openly preparing the public for multi-day blackouts while lining up the BBC to broadcast pre-scripted government messages once the lights, water, and internet fail.

A so called “Black Sky” contingency now sits on the books: roughly 100 BBC staff would man a hardened radio studio stocked with its own fuel, food, and water for at least three days, pumping out official instructions over FM if the grid collapses.

This arrives weeks after the government launched an official “Be Ready” campaign ordering every household to stockpile three days of bottled water (three liters per person per day for drinking alone), non-perishable food, cash, a torch, and a wind-up or battery FM radio.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the public that unexpected events “seem to becoming more common” and that people should keep “those supplies in the house to get you through those moments.”

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has gone further, stating that “we do live in a more dangerous and turbulent world” and warning that adversaries could be ready to attack by 2030, giving Britain “a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win.”

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Democrats, Please Take Note: Peace Is Good Politics

Voters across the United States were loud and clear on Tuesday in their historic drubbing of Trumpism. The election was a decisive rejection of Trump’s war on Iran and its staggering costs at home. While savoring their victory and the historic opportunity to restore America’s constitutional order, the Democrats should take the anti-war message of the election to heart, because they suffered the same verdict two years ago, when voters rejected the Biden administration’s wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Last week Israeli voters rejected Netanyahu’s reckless wars, and European voters are also rejecting parties that prolong the Ukraine War. The message of voters is the same everywhere: diplomacy is safer, more effective, and trillions of dollars cheaper than war.

On election night Trump conceded to Fox News, “I think a part of it was Iran.” The next day Vice President JD Vance was far blunter, posting on X: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night… everyone knows why we lost.” In the AP Voter Poll, about 60 percent of voters said the decision to use military force against Iran was wrong, and about 90 percent called the cost of living a crucial or major factor in their vote.

The war and the cost of living were of course utterly intertwined. Gasoline prices, around $2.80 per gallon before the war began on February 28, had risen by about 55 percent by mid-May and reached a monthly average of $4.43 in September. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed from below 4 percent before the war to above 5 percent in the autumn, and the Pentagon sought more than $200 billion in supplemental war funding. Every family with a mortgage, a car loan or a credit card balance suffered from the war.

Voters everywhere are sending the same message: peace through diplomacy.

The first duty of the new Congress is to restore its constitutional authority over war and its power of the purse to ensure that US forces are not sent back into combat in Iran or anywhere else on the whim of a president and the behest of domestic or foreign lobbies. Trump must of course refrain from restarting the war, which was never remotely necessary or justified. Remember that on February 28, the day the US and Israel launched the war, Oman’s foreign minister, who was mediating the U.S.-Iran talks, had said that a deal was within reach.

The Democrats should not imagine that the anti-war lesson applies only to Republicans. Kamala Harris lost in 2024 because voters held the Biden administration responsible for the costs of its own wars. The energy shock that followed the escalation of the Ukraine war in 2022 drove up inflation, and gasoline topped $5 per gallon for the first time in June 2022. Biden twice rejected negotiations that could have ended the conflict: in December 2021, when his administration refused to negotiate on NATO enlargement in response to Russia’s draft security treaty, and in April 2022, when the Istanbul talks were abandoned at the behest of the US and UK.

The Gaza genocide also cost the Democrats directly. Among Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but not for Harris in 2024, 29 percent named ending Israel’s violence in Gaza as the main factor in their decision, the most frequently cited issue. The party’s voters have moved far ahead of its leaders. A New York Times/Siena poll in May 2026 found that roughly three-quarters of Democratic voters oppose US military and economic assistance to Israel.

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U.S. Strikes Iran’s Air Defenses as Tehran Seeks Russian Weapons

U.S. forces struck Iranian air defense systems early on Nov. 7, hours after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it had shot down another American drone over Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump told reporters Saturday that the strikes were “minor” and that U.S. forces knocked out an Iranian anti-aircraft device “in about 15 minutes, maybe five.” Washington has not confirmed the loss of any drone.

Trump also said talks through mediators were continuing. “We are talking to Iran. We have been,” he said.

According to Iranian state media, Iran is doing well in the war. However, no outside source has confirmed the IRGC’s claims of drone shootdowns and tanker damage. The IRGC said it shot down MQ-1 drones over Qeshm on Nov. 4 and Nov. 6, counting them as its 15th and 16th of the war. It also claimed to have downed an MQ-9 Reaper over the Strait on Nov. 4. As of that date, it put its combined total at 68 MQ-1 and MQ-9 drones since the war began.

The IRGC also said naval mines destroyed four tankers on Nov. 4 along a route it had declared prohibited, that it had seized two vessels, and that two more tankers struck mines on Nov. 6. CBS News reported “no confirmation of any of these incidents from maritime officials.” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which says U.S. forces cleared the main shipping lanes of mines, has called earlier IRGC mine claims “FALSE”.

On Nov. 5, the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) center, which reports attacks on commercial shipping, said a tanker had been hit by two unidentified projectiles about 50 nautical miles north of Madinat ash Shamal, Qatar.

The United States is enforcing a naval blockade of Iranian ports and oil terminals with more than 10,000 personnel. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said on Oct. 30 that Iran had exported no oil since the blockade was reimposed in mid-July and that IRGC naval forces were absent from the Strait. “I didn’t see the IRGC out there, at all,” he said. “Iran’s navy is all at the bottom of the sea.”

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Underwater drones are changing naval warfare around the globe

Underwater drones are rapidly emerging as a new frontier in naval warfare, with militaries deploying robotic submarines to conduct surveillance, hunt underwater mines and potentially attack enemy vessels.

American underwater drones have already operated during the Iran War, while countries across Europe and the Pacific are developing increasingly sophisticated unmanned submarines capable of carrying weapons. France became the latest country to embrace the technology Tuesday, awarding shipbuilder Naval Group a contract to develop a large autonomous combat submarine with sea trials scheduled for 2028, according to the French Defense Innovation Agency.

Naval Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The growing military importance of underwater drones became apparent in September when Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps captured an American-built Anduril Dive-LD near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

The autonomous submarine had malfunctioned more than a day before Iranian forces recovered it while surveying regional waters in support of American military operations, U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins told DefenseScoop.

Photographs showing the American-made Anduril Dive-LD submarine drone recovered by Iranian forces near the Strait of Hormuz were posted on X by the open-source intelligence account OSINTdefender on Sept. 8.

Anduril did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The captured drone was an older model that carried no classified sonar or radar equipment, Hawkins said. Nevertheless, its recovery provided a rare glimpse into the American military’s use of underwater robots during the conflict, according to DefenseScoop.

The Anduril Dive-LD measures approximately 19 feet long, can operate autonomously for up to 10 days and is designed to reach depths of 6,000 meters, according to Anduril.

The submarine can conduct seabed mapping and mine warfare while carrying interchangeable sensors and other mission equipment, according to Anduril.

The company defended the loss, explaining that the platform was designed for dangerous missions where losing equipment was an accepted risk. The drone had already accumulated thousands of operational hours during months of CENTCOM missions, an Anduril spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Underwater drones have also become part of American efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz after Iranian forces deployed naval mines throughout the strategic waterway.

The U.S. military announced in April that underwater drones would join mine-clearance operations intended to establish safe shipping corridors through the strait, according to CENTCOM.

The Pentagon has also invested in substantially larger autonomous submarines, including Boeing’s Orca, an unmanned diesel-electric vessel designed for extended missions without a human crew. The Navy accepted its first Orca test vehicle in December 2023, according to Naval Sea Systems Command.

Across the Pacific, Australia has committed approximately 1.7 billion Australian dollars, or $1.19 billion USD, to acquiring a fleet of Anduril Ghost Shark underwater drones capable of conducting surveillance, reconnaissance and strike operations, according to the Australian Defense Ministry.

Australian officials announced additional progress in October, revealing specialized payloads for unmanned underwater vehicles designed to transport supplies, deploy naval mines and launch aerial drones, according to the Australian Defense Ministry.

Britain has already demonstrated the potential for underwater drones to launch conventional submarine weapons.

The Royal Navy successfully fired an inert American Mk48 heavyweight torpedo from its 12-meter-long unmanned submarine Excalibur during September trials off Scotland, according to the Royal Navy.

Ukraine has gone further, claiming to have used explosive underwater drones to attack a Russian Kilo-class submarine inside the port of Novorossiysk in December 2025. The operation involved a domestically developed system called Sub Sea Baby, according to the Security Service of Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials claimed the explosion disabled the submarine, although Moscow denied the reported damage, Reuters reported.

China is developing increasingly sophisticated underwater systems, including autonomous drones capable of locating submerged explosives and operating in areas with extremely poor visibility, according to China Military Online.

Turkey has developed its own autonomous underwater mine-hunting platform, the STM NETA 300, capable of identifying submerged threats at depths of up to 300 meters, according to defense manufacturer STM.

The rapid proliferation of underwater drones could fundamentally alter naval combat by allowing militaries to patrol contested waters and deploy weapons without risking human crews. However, the American drone captured by Iran also demonstrates that increasingly widespread autonomous systems can fall into enemy hands when missions go wrong.

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Zelensky’s Nazi-style ‘torture chambers’ rake in billions – MP

The Kiev regime is making around $7 billion a year from a network of secret detention and torture facilities, where civilians and mobilized men are reportedly held for ransom, Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky has claimed.

The lawmaker, detained on treason charges since November 2023, made the allegation on Telegram on Friday following a scandal over a suspected torture site operated by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-linked Azov formation near Kiev.

Citing figures from a joint briefing by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and National Police, Dubinsky claimed that more than 1,000 such facilities operate across Ukraine, each holding 30 to 40 people. With an estimated 40,000 detainees and an alleged average ransom of $15,000, he calculated that the network could generate $600 million a month, or $7.2 billion annually, assuming the same number of people paid for release each month.

“$7.2 billion a year – that’s the math behind the profits of [Vladimir] Zelensky’s torture chambers and concentration camps. Just like the Nazis, whose concentration camps were also designed to generate profits,” he wrote.

The MP has spent nearly three years in pretrial detention following his arrest in November 2023 on suspicion of treason and cooperation with Russian military intelligence. He denies the accusations, claiming he is being persecuted for criticizing Zelensky’s government.

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Ex-CIA Officer Says The Agency Delivered The Same Iran Verdict Three Times Before The War

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou says the agency produced three separate national intelligence estimates before the Iran war began, and each one found that Tehran had no nuclear weapons program. He made the claim on the Nov. 6 “Intelligence Community Roundtable” edition of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Judging Freedom, alongside Larry Johnson.

Napolitano asked what the CIA had told the president “about the practical consequences of his plan with Netanyahu to win the war in six days.” Kiriakou answered that “we know a little bit from leaks,” then said: “the CIA had published three separate national intelligence estimates and all three times concluded that the Iranians did not have a nuclear weapons program. It just simply didn’t exist.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress in March 2025 that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon,” and Trump answered that he didn’t “care what she said.”

Kiriakou said the agency’s analysts were just as consistent on what a war would cost. “The CIA was pretty consistent that this was a bad idea from the very beginning,” he said, arguing that the analysis held “the Iranians were far tougher than we as policymakers believed.” In his telling, a look at the map was enough: Iran is “the size as the whole of Western Europe,” ringed by mountains on three sides, with “92 million people, all of whom will go to their deaths to protect their homeland.” Conquering it, he said, would have taken “one million ground troops.”

He also pointed to a leak from “less than three weeks ago.” A CIA “red cell” team, the kind of group meant to “think outside the box,” had concluded that “it was Israel that could break up and fall apart and cease to exist because of all of this, not Iran,” Kiriakou said. The person who leaked it, he said, was a CIA contractor who passed it to his girlfriend, who put it in her blog. That matches the case of Ian Brinksman, the contractor the FBI arrested last month, as we reported. His case is ongoing, and Kiriakou’s account of what the red cell concluded rests on the leaked reporting, not on a document we have seen.

The segment was part of a broader hour in which Johnson and Kiriakou argued that Trump’s Iran policy cost Republicans in Tuesday’s midterms. Both are known critics of the war, and the claims above are theirs.

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