Tag: perpetual war

Erik Prince Busted In Illegal Libya Gun-Running Scheme That Included “Assassination For Hire”

Erik Prince is the wealthy scandal-plagued mercenary who seems never go away from the headlines. The founder of the notorious Blackwater private security company has since been involved in shady schemes and arms dealing everywhere from China to UAE to Syria to Venezuela. He currently heads the Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group, providing ‘security services’ across the globe.

And now it’s been revealed that he’s deeply involved in the still-raging war in Libya. No less than the United Nations is alleging he’s overseeing a major arms dealing program in support of eastern Libya warlord Khalifa Haftar who has for years waged war to take over Tripoli. The findings are detailed in a confidential UN report.

“The confidential report to the Security Council, obtained by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and partly seen by Al Jazeera, said on Friday that Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries and weapons to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, who has fought to overthrow the UN-recognized Libyan government, in 2019,” according to the latest reporting.

While Prince has typically avoided legal consequences for the past scandals he’s been at center of, the UN findings could bring potential international travel restrictions or even sanctions by the world body. This scenario is likely given there is currently a strict UN arms embargo on the country (something however that’s repeatedly violated by governments like France and the UAE and others).

“The $80m operation included plans to form a hit squad to track and kill Libyan commanders opposed to Haftar – including some who were also European Union citizens,” The New York Times found in reviewing the UN report.

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Raytheon Awarded $49 Million DoD Contract Weeks After Former Board Member Lloyd Austin Confirmed as Defense Secretary

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stands to profit from a new Department of Defense contract with arms contractor Raytheon, even after he promised to divest from Raytheon holdings he acquired as a civilian.

A new $49 million contract was awarded to Raytheon last week, just weeks after the company’s former board member Lloyd Austin was confirmed as the new Secretary of Defense. The contract is for engines for VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft.

Austin joined the board of Raytheon Technologies in 2016, the same year he retired from the armed forces. As of 2020, his disclosed Raytheon stock and compensation holdings amount to more than $1.4 million, and it’s likely he’ll sell his Raytheon shares at an inflated price due to the latest contract while in office as Secretary of Defense.

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Weapons biz bankrolls experts pushing to extend Afghan War

Earlier this month, a study group established by Congress recommended that President Joe Biden extend the May 1 deadline for withdrawing troops from America’s longest war. It’s a strategy that many experts say runs the risk of abrogating the U.S.-Taliban agreement and potentially setting back the potential peace process in Afghanistan — or even dooming it to failure. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a striking similarity in the backgrounds of the individuals involved in these critical recommendations, which are likely to influence whether Biden maintains a “conditions based” U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan. Two of the group’s three co-chairs and nine of the group’s 12 plenary members, comprised of what the group refers to as “members,” have current or recent financial ties to major defense contractors, an industry that soaks up more than half of the $740 billion defense budget, and stands to gain from protracted U.S. military involvement overseas.

There was more diversity in views and financial interests among the 26 “senior advisers” that the group consulted. At least three of these advisers have warned publicly that the suggested troop withdrawal extension may pose significant risks. But the study group’s plenary is deeply intertwined with the military industrial base, with nearly $4 million the group’s co-chairs and plenary have received in compensation for their work on the boards of defense contractors.

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Queen of Chicken Hawks: Victoria Nuland Had A Hand in Every US Intervention in the Past 30 Years

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Victoria Nuland for Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the third-highest position at the State Department, is a dangerous sign. Nuland exemplifies the neoconservatives who have led American foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years, all while evading any shred of accountability.

As a top-level appointee, Nuland must still be confirmed by the Senate. And while pro-peace groups have waged a campaign to stop her confirmation, reflecting on her career in public service makes clear why she is incompetent, highly dangerous, and should not be confirmed.

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Robot Motherships To Launch Drone Swarms From Sea, Underwater, Air And Near-Space

Loitering munitions, otherwise known as kamikaze drones, differ from other weapons in being relatively slow but able to patrol an area for a prolonged period looking for targets before identifying, selecting and attacking them.

The LRUSV is much smaller than the flagship Sea Hunter unmanned experimental vessel and the Navy’s Overlord robot transport but shares many of their goals. Like them, the LRUSV is supposed to travel the sea lanes without direct human supervision, sailing safely with other vessels. Unlike them it will “collaboratively interact with other vessels as a cluster,” suggesting that numbers of LRUSV would be deployed together. Such a cluster could unleash a swarm of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of small drones to overwhelm a target. (And while they might not be able to sink a warship, knocking out radar and defensive systems would leave it an easy target for other weapons).

Raytheon previously developed low-cost swarming drones based on their proven Coyote under the U.S. Navy’s LOCUST program in 2015. The goal was for a swarm which would work together collaboratively as a unit – and which would collectively cost less than a single missile. By 2016, 30 of the 13-pound drones were flying together, but the swarm size is likely to have increased significantly since.

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