Tag: perpetual war

Senators Press Pentagon To Give Ukraine Advanced Drones

A group of bipartisan senators is urging the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with advanced MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that would give Kyiv longer-range capability.

The Biden administration has been hesitant to send the drones due to the risk of escalation with Russia and concerns that the sensitive technology in the drones could end up in the wrong hands.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Biden administration has decided not to provide the drones, although other reporting disputed that claim and said a final decision hadn’t been made.

In a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, 16 senators expressed “concern” over the reports that said the administration has declined to send the MQ-1C. The senators asked the administration to give “careful reconsideration” to the Ukrainian request.

The letter was led by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and was signed by many members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK).

The senators said the MQ-1C and other long-range capabilities would provide “Ukraine additional lethality needed to eject Russian forces and regain occupied territory.”

Providing MQ-1Cs would be a major escalation in US military aid to Kyiv as the drones can be armed with powerful hellfire missiles and can fly for up to 30 hours. The drones would give Ukraine the capability to strike targets inside Russian territory.

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CIA Seeking To Recruit Russians “Disgusted” By Putin’s War

The Central Intelligence Agency is seeking to tap Russians as potential spies who are “disgusted” with Putin’s war in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, as part of a new push to bolster its ranks of Russian assets.

The CIA’s deputy director of intelligence David Marlowe, who has been in the post since June 2021, said in a rare speech at George Mason University’s Hayden Center that the CIA is “looking around the world” for Russian who are unhappy with the invasion of Ukraine. It was Marlowe’s first public appearance while at post as deputy director. 

This is “because we’re open for business,” he underscored. The attempt to gain dependable assets is said to include military officers and even oligarchs who are angry at being impacted by Russia’s extreme economic and political isolation on the world stage. 

Offering his assessment on how the war is going for the Russians, Marlowe described, “Putin was at his best moment the day before he invaded.” Speaking of the potential for the Russian leader to put pressure on neighboring Ukraine and NATO before the decision to invade, Marlowe added: “He squandered every single bit of that.”

At that point before the February 24 incursion, President Putin had “all the power that he is ever going to have,” according to the CIA #2 official. 

Some international publications dubbed Marlowe’s speech, which happened last week but was first revealed on Tuesday, a “recruitment pitch”.

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Pentagon fails to pass new financial audit, unable to account for over $2 trillion in assets

The US Department of Defense has, for the fifth straight year, failed to pass a financial audit, with only seven out of the Pentagon’s 27 military agencies receiving a passing grade.

“We failed to get an ‘A’,” Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer, told reporters last week, announcing the results of the Pentagon’s fifth-ever financial audit.

“I would not say that we flunked,” he added, despite his office acknowledging that the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets.

With this failure, the Pentagon has kept its spot as the only US government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit. It also highlights the US war department’s persistent lack of internal financial control, its poor budget estimations and rampant overspending.

A clear example of this is the F-35 program, which has gone over its original budget by $165 billion to build a plane tasked to perform many different tasks, none of which it does well.

The Pentagon is slated to buy more than 2,400 F-35s for the Air Force, Marines, and Navy. The estimated lifetime cost for procuring and operating these planes – $1.7 trillion – would make it the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons project ever.

A 2021 Pentagon assessment of the F-35 found 800 unresolved defects in the plane.

There is also the current plan to expand Washington’s ship production, as part of the Pentagon’s obsession with preparing for a potential war with China.

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Biden Admin. Sending Ukraine Another $400M

Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announces the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance valued at up to $400 million to meet Ukraine’s critical security and defense needs. This authorization is the Biden Administration’s twenty-sixth drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021.

Capabilities in this package include:

•    Additional munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);

•    150 heavy machine guns with thermal imagery sights to counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS);

•    Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);

•    200 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;

•    10,000 120mm mortar rounds;

•    High-speed Anti-radiation missiles (HARMs);

•    150 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs);

•    Over 100 light tactical vehicles;

•    Over 20,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;

•    Over 200 generators;

•    Spare parts for 105mm Howitzers and other equipment.

With Russia’s unrelenting and brutal missile and UAS attacks on Ukrainian critical energy infrastructure, additional air defense capabilities remain an urgent priority. The additional munitions for NASAMS and heavy machine guns will help Ukraine counter these urgent threats.

In total, the United States has committed more than $19.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration. Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $21.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine and more than $19 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24.

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Killing By Drone: Hunting Enemies In Urban Combat

A new drone from Israel’s Elbit Systems called Lanius combines a number of technologies that put it at the forefront of how drones are transforming war.

At the same time, reports about the drone may raise questions about how this technology may make war more controversial as “robots” play a larger role in it.

The more armies and defense companies invest in new technology that enables combat to take place remotely — without soldiers interacting with civilians, for instance — the more it seems like “robot wars.”

Elbit Systems has said that Lanius is “part of the Legion-X robotic and autonomous combat solution.” Elbit is one of Israel’s three largest defense companies and is at the forefront of defense technology.

Its website says the drone “is a highly maneuverable and versatile drone-based loitering munition designed for short-range operation in the urban environment.”

The drone can scout and map buildings, flying around small corridors and through doorways. This means it can help a user find “points of interest for possible threats, detecting, classifying and syncing to Elbit Systems’ Legion-X solutions. Lanius can carry lethal or non-lethal payloads, capable of performing a broad spectrum of mission profiles for special forces, military, law enforcement, and HLS.”

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The US military is operating in more countries than we think

U.S. military forces have been engaged in unauthorized hostilities in many more countries than the Pentagon has disclosed to Congress, let alone the public, according to a major new report released late last week by New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Libya. If you asked the average American where the United States has been at war in the past two decades, you would likely get this short list,” according to the report, Secret War: How the U.S. Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage War Under the Radar. “But this list is wrong – off by at least 17 countries in which the United States has engaged in armed conflict through ground forces, proxy forces, or air strikes.”

“This proliferation of secret war is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is undemocratic and dangerous,” the report’s author, Katherine Yon Ebright, wrote in the introduction. “The conduct of undisclosed hostilities in unreported countries contravenes our constitutional design. It invites military escalation that is unforeseeable to the public, to Congress, and even to the diplomats charged with managing U.S. foreign relations.” 

The 39-page report focuses on so-called “security cooperation” programs authorized by Congress pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against certain terrorist groups. One such program, known as Section 127e, authorized the Defense Department to “provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating authorized ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”

According to the report, that “support” has been broadly — or, more accurately, too broadly — interpreted by the Pentagon. In practice, it has enabled the U.S. military to “develop and control proxy forces that fight on behalf of and sometimes alongside U.S. forces” and to use armed force to defend its local partners against adversaries (in what the Pentagon calls “collective self-defense”) regardless of whether those adversaries pose any threat to U.S. territory or persons, and, in some cases, whether or not the adversaries have been officially designated as legitimate targets under the 2001 AUMF. 

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Why the US & Israel are preventing aid from reaching one of the poorest countries in the Middle East

Despite the recent signing of a historic maritime border agreement, tensions continue to remain high, with both Israel and the United States attempting to force Lebanon into compliance with their regional agenda.

Although Israeli and Lebanese leaders signed letters of intent earlier this month ending their long-standing maritime border dispute and averting a major escalation in their ongoing conflict, the two sides still remain technically at war. Beirut refuses to recognise the Israeli state, maintaining the stance that first the Palestine issue must be resolved, as Israel maintains control over the Shebaa Farms area which Lebanon claims to be its territory.

Last week, drone strikes were reported to have killed up to 25 people after targeting a fuel aid convoy that had just passed the Al-Qaim crossing into Syria from Iraq. There are conflicting reports on who actually carried out the attack, with both Israel and the United States accused of having been behind it. The US military instantly distanced themselves from the incident, by denying they had carried out any strikes, whilst the Israeli government refused to comment and is now widely assumed to be culpable. According to Iraqi authorities, the fuel trucks, numbering 22 according to Iranian state-media, were approved for heading out of the country and seemed to be part of Iran’s new agreement with Lebanon to provide free fuel.

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Massive explosion hits Russian Gazprom gas pipeline amid suspicions of sabotage linked to Putin’s war on Ukraine

An enormous explosion has hit one of Russia’s major gas pipelines, sending flames and smoke billowing into the sky above and prompting fears it was a retribution attack for Vladimir Putin’s continued invasion of Ukraine. 

The fireball was visible for miles in every direction after hitting about 14 miles east of St Petersburg, the nation’s second largest city and Putin’s hometown.

One source said: ‘Everything is automatic there, and such explosions by themselves, without external influence, are impossible.’

The blast is believed to have hit the main gas pipeline belonging to Gazprom Transgaz SPB, and could have potentially impacted up to one million people. 

Ambulances and emergency vehicles were rushing to the scene this afternoon. Eyewitnesses reported intensive care vehicles also drove to the site of the explosion.  

It’s understood investigators and forensic specialists were also at the site of the explosion as they rush to determine the cause. 

However, the major blast did not hit close to residential areas, and there are no initial reports of casualties coming out of Russia. 

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Ukraine has policy of executing POWs – Russia

A “barbarous killing of Russian prisoners of war” is just the latest in a series of war crimes committed by Ukrainian troops, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday. The statement came after videos surfaced online purportedly showing Russian servicemen who were executed after they surrendered.

“This is a widespread practice of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that is actively supported by the Kiev regime and outright ignored by its Western backers,” the ministry stressed. It also blasted the actions of the Ukrainian soldiers as a “deliberate and methodical murder.” 

“No one will be able to portray it as a ‘tragic exception’ amid the Kiev regime’s alleged total compliance with the norms regulating the rights of POWs,” the statement reads.

The footage allegedly shows a group of soldiers dressed in Russian uniforms surrendering to troops in uniforms with Ukrainian insignia. It also depicts the captured servicemen lying on the ground, presumably dead.

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Associated Press Issues Correction After Publishing False Report that Could’ve Started WW3

The Associated Press has issued an official correction for its not-so-inconsequential bit of reporting Tuesday that could have easily set off a chain of events leading to a WWIII scenario.

“The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity” …and we the know rest which unleashed a day of incessant warmongering based on the allegation that Russia attacked a NATO member. The incredibly embarrassing correction further states, “Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.”

And the next time this happens will it be too late for a “correction”?

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