Tag: perpetual war

VOTE BIDEN GET ‘CROOKED’: Hillary Auditions For SecDef In 5000-Word Pro-Biden Article Which Admits Massive Defense Jobs Cuts Plan

FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE, U.S. SENATOR, AND BENGHAZI BELITTLER HILLARY CLINTON HAS PENNED A 5000-WORD OPINION EDITORIAL FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE – A SCARCELY-READ YET IMPORTANT FOREIGN POLICY INDUSTRY PUBLICATION. THE ARTICLE CLEARLY AIMS TO ESTABLISH CLINTON AS A POTENTIAL BIDEN PICK FOR SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL CABINET POSITIONS IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.

The Trump campaign will surely see the audition by the very unpopular Hillary Clinton as a gift in the final days of the U.S. Presidential campaign. The idea of voting for Joe Biden and waking up with Hillary Clinton will send chills up the spine of even many Democrats, to whom both Clinton and Biden represent an old, tired, globalist worldview at odds with a “progressive” or even populist Democrat trajectory.

And Clinton appears to know this, too.

Her article contains a number of veiled mea culpas over globalism, though she repeatedly lumps the blame at Donald Trump’s door for many of the problems caused – in a national security sense – by his predecessors:

“For decades, policymakers have thought too narrowly about national security and failed to internalize—or fund—a broader approach that encompasses threats not just from intercontinental ballistic missiles and insurgencies but also from cyberattacks, viruses, carbon emissions, online propaganda, and shifting supply chains. There is no more poignant example than the current administration’s failure to grasp that a tourist carrying home a virus can be as dangerous as a terrorist planting a pathogen. President Barack Obama’s national security staff left a 69-page playbook for responding to pandemics, but President Donald Trump’s team ignored it, focusing instead on the threat of bioterrorism.”

The article even critiques U.S. reliance of China, a key part of Donald Trump’s platform in both 2016 and 2020. She writes:

“[T]he pandemic has underscored how much the United States relies on China and other countries for vital imports—not just lifesaving medical supplies but also raw materials such as rare-earth minerals and electronic equipment that powers everything from telecommunications to weapons systems.”

And while also appearing to lambast her own side’s heartlessness over job losses – she calls the left’s “learn to code” mantra “fanciful and condescending” – she also gives away that a Democratic plan for the “modernization” of the U.S. military would lead to massive job losses:

“No one should pretend that every defense job can be saved or replaced. Cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending over the next decade will inevitably inflict a painful toll on families and communities across the country.”

The admission will further serve as a boon to the Trump campaign seeking to bolster its support amongst military families after a fake news onslaught wherein The Atlantic magazine invented sources in order to drive a wedge between the President and his traditional base.

Keep reading

Secretive Tonopah Test Range Airport Had A Mysteriously Busy Week In September

The secretive Tonopah Test Range Airport, located in the northwestern reaches of the Nevada Test and Training Range, the sprawling amalgam of restricted airspace that makes up much of Southern Nevada, usually appears to be a very quiet place in daytime satellite images, but once in a while that calm is broken. This was the case during the week of September 19th. The highly secure installation hosted a number of uncommon aircraft throughout the week in what appeared to be some sort of large test or training event. 

Satellite imagery dated September 23rd, 2020 that The War Zone obtained from Planet Labs offers a peek into just how busy the remote installation was during this time period. What are usually empty ramps, aside from a couple ‘Janet’ 737 airliners that shuttle workers to and from the installation and Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport daily, became far more cluttered on that week. A number of uncommon visitors dotted the ramp, as well as a more common one—the base’s resident F-117 Nighthawks. The F-117s spent their formative, classified, years at Tonopah and were retired there in 2008, cocooned five to a hangar. Over the last decade, a handful of them have become remarkably active in the test and aggressor role. 

Keep reading

Defense to Outfit and Steer Military Dogs with Augmented Reality Goggles

U.S. military dogs might one day be equipped with augmented reality goggles that their human servicemember partners can remotely provide guiding commands through during dangerous rescue operations or explosive device hunts.

Seattle-based small business Command Sight produced a technological prototype that could enhance troops’ safety by enabling exactly that, and some say it could fundamentally transform how the U.S. military’s canines are deployed down the line. Having completed a phase I project developing the prototype via a Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, program steered by the Army Research Office, the company was selected for funding through phase II, to further refine the potential product. 

“The military working dog community is very excited about the potential of this technology,” ARO senior scientist Dr. Stephen Lee said in an announcement published Tuesday. “[It] really cuts new ground and opens up possibilities that we haven’t considered yet.”

When it comes to heeding instructions from the people that lead them, military working dogs generally follow hand signals, laser pointers, or walkie talkies and cameras strapped to their own bodies—all of which can lead to confusion for the animals or risk of unwanted exposure for humans. But the new prototype offers human handlers the ability to see from the dog’s point of view, and a means to give commands while staying completely out of sight. 

Keep reading

Years after they fought in Afghanistan, US troops watch as their children deploy to the same war

 Nineteen years ago on Wednesday, a generation of Americans deployed to Afghanistan to root out the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, believing that by fighting in the country more than 7,400 miles away, they would spare their children the need to do so too.

But as the U.S. war in Afghanistan begins its 20th year, some of those same service members have watched as their sons and daughters have deployed to continue the fight.

“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’” said Master Sgt. Trevor deBoer, who has deployed to Afghanistan three times with the 20th Special Forces Group since 2002.

Nearly two decades later, deBoer’s son, Spc. Payton Sluss, also served in Afghanistan — including at Forward Operating Base Fenty, north of the city of Jalalabad, where deBoer had served.

“My feet were walking the same land you were,” Sluss said to his father in a joint phone interview with Stars and Stripes.

The war, and Afghanistan itself, were very different when Sluss arrived in 2018. The U.S. had shifted its focus from eliminating 9/11 masterminds al-Qaida, who had been given safe haven by the ruling Taliban, to rebuilding the country and training Afghan forces. At the same time, the Taliban regained strength and launched an insurgency against the American-led coalition.

Keep reading