Tag: perpetual war

Space Force general says US satellites are attacked on daily basis

A Space Force general said American satellites are attacked by adversaries every day in ways that flirt with “acts of war,” and the US will lose a space arms race if it doesn’t take action.

China and Russia regularly strike US satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber attacks, Gen. David Thompson told The Washington Post in an op-ed published Tuesday.

“The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” said Gen. Thompson, Vice Chief of Space Operations in the new military branch.

“We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

Thompson disclosed a 2019 incident when a Russian satellite flew so close to a US “national security satellite” that authorities believed it could be an offensive. But the spacecraft backed away and tested a projectile, according to the op-ed.

“It maneuvered close, it maneuvered dangerously, it maneuvered threateningly so that they were coming close enough that there was a concern of collision,” he reportedly said. “So clearly, the Russians were sending us a message.”

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Four times as many troops and vets have died by suicide as in combat, study finds

The suicide rate among active-duty troops and veterans has outpaced the also-rising rate in the general population in recent years, but with so many risk factors inherent to military life, it’s difficult to pin down why.

There’s no one reason for it, according to a study released Monday by the Costs of War Project, and the way the Defense Department and VA track suicides might mean even their growing numbers are incomplete.

“The report notes that the increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population ― an alarming shift, as suicide rates among service members have historically been lower than suicide rates among the general population,” according to a news release.

Per researchers’ estimates, 30,177 Global War on Terror veterans have died by suicide, compared to 7,057 who have died while deployed in support of the Global War on Terror.

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Nearly 3/4 of the World’s Dictators Receive US Weapons and Military Assistance

The US supports nearly 75% of the world’s dictators, autocracies, monarchies, military regimes, etc., with weapons, military training and money. Please remember this the next time someone tells you the US should do X or Y because such and such a nation is bad…

Comparing Freedom House’s list of Not Free nations* to FY 2020 US overseas weapons sales, military training and financial assistance**, we find that of the 57 nations considered undemocratic, 42 receive weapons, training and/or money for their military and security services. This means 74% of the non-democratic nations of the world are supported militarily by the US. Interestingly, the remaining 15 nations are nearly all sanctioned. The world’s countries can be divided into two parts: those who buy/receive weapons from the US and those sanctioned. It seems like it’s a pretty simple arrangement.

74% is a slight increase from four years ago when Rich Whitney at Truthout utilized the Freedom House list and compared it to FY 2015 military assistance data. It is likely no surprise to anyone that US support for non-democratic governments increased under President Trump, but, to be fair, it was a minor increase. The hypocrisy and dissonance between stated US support for democracy, liberty and freedom, and how the US government conducts itself exists whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House.

The list of nations is below. I have listed occupied territories with the nations that are occupying them; so, Gaza and West Bank are under Israel, Western Sahara is under Morocco, Tibet is under China, and Donbas and Crimea are under Russia. Also, please note, this list only includes nations not considered democracies. Nations that are listed as partly free or free by Freedom House, but are clear and gross violators of human rights, and that are recipients of US weapons, military training and military assistance funding, like Columbia, Honduras, India, Pakistan, Philippines, and Ukraine are not included.

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Efforts To Groom Us For War With China Are Getting More Forceful

If you thought western mass media have been brazenly pushy with their anti-China propaganda, wait til you see The Hill’s appalling new opinion piece titled “America must prepare for war with China over Taiwan“.

“China’s massive investment in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may show China is preparing to fundamentally change the status quo and preparing for possible war with the United States over Taiwan,” the piece begins. “To deter China, the United States must rapidly build up its forces in the Pacific, continue to strengthen military alliances in the region to ensure access to bases in time of conflict, and accelerate deliveries of purchased military equipment to Taiwan.”

The article goes on to narrate about Taiwan’s importance on the global chessboard and why we should all expect a full-scale invasion by Beijing quite soon, casually discusses a direct military conflict between two nuclear-armed nations like it’s no big deal, and calls on the Biden administration to “articulate to the American people why Taiwan’s defense is critical to the United States.”

Then at the very bottom of the article you get to the part that really matters: the information about the author.

“David Sauer is a retired senior CIA officer who served as chief of station and deputy chief of station in multiple overseas command positions in East Asia and South Asia.”

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Despite Pledge, Biden Leaves Tap Open, Approving Billions in Arms Deals to Saudi Arabia

“The war in Yemen must end,” declared President Joe Biden in his first major foreign policy speech; “and to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive [Saudi] operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.”

Yet studying sales records from the Department of Defense (DoD), MintPress can reveal that less than one year into his presidency, the Biden administration has already approved 20 separate weapons contracts, worth just shy of $1.2 billion, to Saudi Arabia alone. This includes a $100 million shipment of Black Hawk helicopters, support for Apache gunships, and a $78 million deal to buy 36 cruise missiles. A new and controversial $650 million deal announced earlier this month has yet to be finalized but will likely soon follow, boosting sales up to levels equal with the earlier years of the Trump presidency.

The Saudi-led Coalition is once again pummelling Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. Images appear to show U.S.-made aircraft attacking ground targets. This is hardly surprising: American arms sales to Saudi Arabia have long been a point of contention. But this MintPress investigation will reveal the extent to which private American companies are profiting off the infliction of suffering on the Yemeni people.

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Pentagon officials ‘remain baffled by Chinese hypersonic missile technology’ after Beijing tested weapon that could deploy a nuke while travelling at five times the speed of sound

A hypersonic weapon test carried out by China in July featured a missile fired at five times the speed of sound – a technological feat which no other country has demonstrated, according to US intelligence.  

The hypersonic glide vehicle – a spacecraft with the ability to carry a nuclear warhead – fired a missile mid-flight over the South China Sea, catching Pentagon scientists unawares.

Experts at Darpa – the Pentagon’s advanced research agency – are apparently still baffled at how China was able to defy the constraints of physics to fire a weapon from the vehicle travelling at hypersonic speed, the Financial Times reports.

Analysts are also attempting to piece together the purpose of the missile, which was fired with no obvious target before landing into the sea. 

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The Secret Arms Race in Space Revealed

There’s an ongoing ‘arms race’ in space as Russia, China and the United States develop satellites that can counter one another.

While space-to-space weapons have been in development for decades, most famously with the Soviets’ Almaz space stations, Russia and China have recently showcased their capabilities in targeting US satellites.

On Monday, Russia launched a missile into space and destroyed one of its own satellites in a “show of force,” according to AFP.

“It demonstrates that Russia is now developing new weapons systems that can shoot down satellites,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

This threat of satellite warfare – in addition to China’s hypersonic missile program – prompted then-President Trump to establish the U.S. Space Force as a branch of the Armed Forces in 2019.

“Both Russia and China have developed ‘space stalker’ satellites that can be manipulated to physically interfere with others, according to Brian Chow, an independent space policy analyst who spent 25 years at the Rand Corp think tank,” reported AFP. “With robotic arms, ‘they can just stalk the opponent satellite and move it somewhere else, or bend an antenna’ to render it useless, said Chow.”

These techniques were developed partially in response to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which forbade countries from placing “nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit.”

Last year, the US military said that two Russian satellites were “stalking” a US spy satellite in high orbit.

More recently, in August, China tested the limits of the treaty by launching a a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile which reportedly flew in low-orbit space before cruising down to its target.

The test caught the US military by surprise.

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Australian War Propaganda Keeps Getting Crazier

60 Minutes Australia has churned out yet another fearmongering war propaganda piece on China, this one so ham-fisted in its call to beef up military spending that it goes so far as to run a brazen advertisement for an actual Australian weapons manufacturer disguised as news reporting.

This round of psychological conformity-making features Australian former major general Jim “The Butcher of Fallujah” Molan saying that in three to ten years a war will be fought against China over Taiwan and that Australians are going to have to fight in that war to prevent a future Chinese invasion of the land down under. He argues Australia will need to greatly increase its military spending in order to accomplish this, because it can’t be certain the United States will protect it from Chinese aggression.

“Australia is monstrously vulnerable at the moment; we have this naive faith that American military power is infinite, and it’s not,” says Molan, who is a contributor to government/arms industry-funded think tanks Lowy Institute and Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

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US Coverup Of Syria Massacre Shows The Danger Of The Assange Precedent

The New York Times has published a very solid investigative report on a US military coverup of a 2019 massacre in Baghuz, Syria which killed scores of civilians. This would be the second investigative report on civilian-slaughtering US airstrikes by The New York Times in a matter of weeks, and if I were a more conspiracy-minded person I’d say the paper of record appears to have been infiltrated by journalists.

The report contains many significant revelations, including that the US military has been grossly undercounting the numbers of civilians killed in its airstrikes and lying about it to Congress, that special ops forces in Syria have been consistently ordering airstrikes which kill noncombatants with no accountability by exploiting loopholes to get around rules meant to protect civilians, that units which call in such airstrikes are allowed to do their own assessments grading whether the strikes were justified, that the US war machine attempted to obstruct scrutiny of the massacre “at nearly every step” of the way, and that the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations only investigates such incidents when there is “potential for high media attention, concern with outcry from local community/government, concern sensitive images may get out.”

“But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike,” The New York Times reports. “The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.”

Journalist Aaron Maté has called the incident “one of the US military’s worst massacres and cover-up scandals since My Lai in Vietnam.”

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“Revolution In Warfare” – Israel Unveils New Scorpius Electronic Warfare System

Israel has recognized that the modern battlefield will not be entirely fought on air, sea, and space. To better prepare for new domains of warfare, Israel has developed a revolutionary weapon for electromagnetic warfare. 

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the country’s top aerospace and aviation manufacturer, has developed the Scorpius family of systems that scans a sphere of the operating environment for targets and deploys a narrowly focused beam to interfere with multiple threats across the electromagnetic spectrum. The high-tech weapon is categorized under “soft protection” because it doesn’t cause physical harm. Instead, it disrupts the operation of electromagnetic systems, such as radar, electronic sensors, navigation, and data communications.

Gideon Fustick, Marketing VP EW Group at IAI, told Forbes, “We call it [Scorpius family of systems] ‘soft protection.’ It’s an offensive weapon that doesn’t send out missiles. It’s not a hard-kill system,” adding that “it is very effective in engaging and disabling enemy systems.” 

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