Tag: perpetual war

Why the military-industrial complex went woke

Have you ever wondered what NATO’s position on diversity is?

This week, the world’s most powerful military alliance tweeted, ‘Diversity is our strength’. The tweet featured a video of employees of various ethnic backgrounds, including both men and women, telling viewers to ‘respect our needs’ and ‘embrace our differences’. NATO encouraged Twitter users to share the tweet – which was in honour of ‘#ZeroDiscriminationDay’ – ‘to join us in celebrating the differences that make us stronger’. The organisation which bombed Iraq and Libya back to the dark ages is diverse. How nice.

It’s not just NATO that has leapt on the woke bandwagon. Former CIA boss John Brennan – the ‘principal coordinator’ of a US anti-terror ‘kill list’, who also oversaw American drone strikes – revealed his white guilt this week. ‘I’m increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days with what I see other white males say’, he told MSNBC.

The US Army is in on the fun, too. It has its own ‘Equity and Inclusion Agency’, which launched ‘Project Inclusion’ last year. This operation included ‘listening sessions with soldiers and civilians worldwide to converse on race, diversity, equity and inclusion’. General James C McConville, chief of staff of the US Army, said on the army’s website that it ‘must continue to put People First by fostering a culture of trust that accepts the experiences and backgrounds of every soldier and civilian’. I wonder what the citizens of the many countries the US has attacked in recent years would have to say about that.

The military is signed up to the environmentalist agenda, too. Both the US and British armies are pursuing ‘Net Zero’ emissions targets. The army needs to be ‘on the right side of the environmental argument, especially in the eyes of that next generation of recruits that increasingly make career decisions based on a prospective employer’s environmental credentials’, according to senior British general Sir Mark Carleton Smith. The military, with its gas-guzzling tanks and fighter jets, is a significant emitter of CO2. So apparently, in order to attract recruits for the next foreign war, we need eco-friendly death machines.

Keep reading

Pentagon Announces $125 Million in Military Aid for Ukraine

On Monday, the Pentagon announced a $125 million military aid package for Ukraine. The $125 million package includes two armed Mark VI patrol boats, giving Ukraine a total of eight such vessels provided by the US.

The Pentagon said the package also includes “capabilities to enhance the lethality, command and control, and situational awareness of Ukraine’s forces.” This means additional counter-artillery radars, other tactical equipment, continued support for satellite systems, and some medical equipment.

This package is the first part of the $275 million approved by Congress for Ukraine in the 2021 fiscal year. As per the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, the additional $150 million is contingent on Ukraine reforming its military. The Pentagon said it will work with the State Department to certify “that Ukraine has made sufficient progress on key defense reforms this year.”

Since the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine that sparked the war in the eastern Donbas region, the US has provided Kyiv with $2 billion in military aid. Despite the controversy around President Trump and aid to Ukraine, he took a step the Obama administration was not willing to take and sent Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kyiv.

Last week, President Biden released a statement on the seventh anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and said the US would “never” accept Russian sovereignty over the peninsula. He said the US “will stand with Ukraine against Russia’s aggressive acts.”

Keep reading

The Navy Plans To Launch Swarms Of Aerial Drones From Unmanned Submarines And Ships

The U.S. Navy has handed a contract to Raytheon for versions of its Coyote small unmanned aerial vehicle configured as loitering munitions, also known as “suicide drones.” The service says that it specifically wants them to support the development of unmanned surface and underwater vehicles as platforms to launch drone swarms, which could offer a slate of game-changing capabilities.

The Pentagon announced the deal, valued at up to almost $33 million if all the options were to be exercised, in its daily contracting notice on Feb. 26, 2021. The announcement said that the contract, which the Office of Naval Research (ONR) awarded to Raytheon, was for “Coyote Block 3 (CB3) Autonomous Strike” drones to support work on “Autonomous Swarm/Strike – Loitering Munitions.”

This is “a rapid capability effort to achieve operational launch capability from unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and an unmanned underwater vessel (UUV). The intended concept of operations (CONOP) and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) are to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and precision strike capability from maritime platforms,” the contracting notice added. “Additionally, the High Volume Long Range Precision Strike (HVLRPS) from USVs and Fires (HVLRPF) from UUVs demonstrations will leverage prior efforts including the Innovative Naval Prototype (INP) and progress on the Mobile Precision Attack Vehicle (MoPAV).”

Keep reading