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$KULR is making important contributions to the safety and effectiveness of vital battery technology for our armed forces
Report by Naval Surface Warfare Center Validates Efficacy of KULR’s Battery Safety Technology
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- KULR Technology Group, Inc. (OTCQB: KULR) (the “Company” or “KULR”), a leading developer of next-generation thermal management technologies, today highlights a report conducted by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division (NSWCCD) on the Company’s battery safety technology. The report confirms that KULR’s thermal management solutions can prevent cell-to-cell propagation. These findings mirror test results from other government and private test authorities such as NASA, which co-developed KULR’s core thermal technology.
The NSWCCD report, titled, “Emerging Energy Storage Technologies,” studied energy storage applications in consumer electronics, along with the safety concerns they pose. The newly public report, commissioned and released by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, states that:
“Incorporating a vaporizing heat sink from KULR could lead to significant mass savings and … was capable of preventing cell-to-cell propagations. … [battery] packs assembled and tested at NSWCCD with the KULR material (the Thermal Runaway Shield or “TRS”) were found to be highly effective at resisting cell-to-cell propagation when a trigger cell was externally heated to failure. Meanwhile, identical cells with identical configuration but no TRS underwent a complete cell-to-cell propagation under the same test conditions.”
Conditions such as extreme heat, bumping and jostling, short circuit, constant high-demand use, or physical damage can cause a single battery cell in a multi-cell pack to fail. When this happens, the fire and heat of that single failure often trigger failure in neighboring cells. This causes a dangerous chain reaction that causes high energy fires and explosions. According to the NSWCCD report, it is these types of runaway or propagation risks that KULR’s solutions are capable of preventing.
In addition to supporting the effectiveness of the KULR safety product(s) in lithium-ion battery packs, the report highlights storage alternatives to lithium-ion batteries such as solid state or lithium metal configurations.
The report states:
“The overall conclusion from the authors of this report is that LiB [lithium-ion batteries] are likely to maintain if not increase application in consumer electronics. For this reason, the safety of these devices may have to be engineered through secondary technologies…”
“This report is highly significant for two reasons,” said Michael Mo, CEO of KULR. “First, it shows that lithium-ion batteries will not be replaced anytime soon, which makes preventing cell-to-cell propagation fires the holy grail of battery safety. Second, the results again confirm that our design solution efficiently prevents battery packs from blowing up, which has major implications across various multi-billion-dollar market verticals.”
Bob Richard, president of Hazmat Safety Consulting, remarked, “There is a real need to improve lithium battery safety. Multiple government agencies are focused on technologies that can reduce the likelihood of battery fires in transport (e.g. aircraft cargo compartments), for energy storage, vehicle applications, and consumer electronics. The test results on KULR’s thermal management solution are quite remarkable and very encouraging.”
KULR recently announced research and design partnerships with a number of commercial partners, including Drako Motors, the super-EV; a separate Tier-1 automaker; a major power tool manufacturer; a large medical device manufacturer; a shipping container maker; and defense and aerospace agreements.
The KULR suite of thermal management and battery safety solutions have been deployed in space. In July 2020, a KULR thermal solution was part of the Mars Rover mission; another KULR product has been in use aboard the International Space Station since 2019.
About KULR Technology Group, Inc.
KULR Technology Group, Inc. (OTCQB: KULR) develops, manufactures and licenses next-generation carbon fiber thermal management technologies for batteries and electronic systems. Leveraging the company’s roots in developing breakthrough cooling solutions for NASA space missions and backed by a strong intellectual property portfolio, KULR enables leading aerospace, electronics, energy storage, 5G infrastructure, and electric vehicle manufacturers to make their products cooler, lighter and safer for the consumer. For more information, please visit www.kulrtechnology.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of offers to buy any securities of any entity. This release contains certain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements in this release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof. Our actual results may differ materially from those stated or implied in such forward-looking statements, due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business, which include the risk factors disclosed in our Form 10-K filed on May 14, 2020. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," and "would" or similar words. All forecasts are provided by management in this release are based on information available at this time and management expects that internal projections and expectations may change over time. In addition, the forecasts are entirely on management’s best estimate of our future financial performance given our current contracts, current backlog of opportunities and conversations with new and existing customers about our products and services. We assume no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Media Contact: Investor Relations:
Derek Newton KULR Technology Group, Inc.
Head, Media Relations Main: (888) 367-5559
Main: (786) 499-8998 ir@kulrtechnology.com
derek.newton@kulrtechnology.com
>>> Divide and rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the algorithmic strategy used in Computer Science, see Divide and conquer algorithm. For the novella by L. Sprague de Camp, see Divide and Rule (novella). For the collection of novellas by L. Sprague de Camp, see Divide and Rule (collection).
Not to be confused with divide and choose.
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This article possibly contains original research. (August 2007)
Tradition attributes the origin of the motto to Philip II of Macedon: Greek: d?a??e? ?a? ßas??e?e diaírei kài basíleue, in ancient Greek: «divide and rule»
Divide and rule (Latin: divide et impera), or divide and conquer, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy.[citation needed]
The use of this technique is meant to empower the sovereign to control subjects, populations, or factions of different interests, who collectively might be able to oppose his rule. Niccolò Machiavelli identifies a similar application to military strategy, advising in Book VI of The Art of War (1521)[1] (L'arte della guerra):[2] a Captain should endeavor with every art to divide the forces of the enemy. Machiavelli advises that this act should be achieved either by making him suspicious of his men in whom he trusted, or by giving him cause that he has to separate his forces, and, because of this, become weaker.
The maxim divide et impera has been attributed to Philip II of Macedon. It was utilised by the Roman ruler Julius Caesar and the French emperor Napoleon (together with the maxim divide ut regnes)
The strategy, but not the phrase, applies in many ancient cases: the example of Aulus Gabinius exists, parting the Jewish nation into five conventions, reported by Flavius Josephus in Book I, 169–170 of The Jewish War (De bello Judaico).[3] Strabo also reports in Geographica, 8.7.3[4] that the Achaean League was gradually dissolved under the Roman possession of the whole of Macedonia, owing to their not dealing with the several states in the same way, but wishing to preserve some and to destroy others.
The strategy of division and rule has been attributed to sovereigns, ranging from Louis XI of France to the House of Habsburg. Edward Coke denounces it in Chapter I of the Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England, reporting that when it was demanded by the Lords and Commons what might be a principal motive for them to have good success in Parliament, it was answered: "Eritis insuperabiles, si fueritis inseparabiles. Explosum est illud diverbium: Divide, & impera, cum radix & vertex imperii in obedientium consensu rata sunt." [You would be invincible if you were inseparable. This proverb, Divide and rule, has been rejected, since the root and the summit of authority are confirmed by the consent of the subjects.] In a minor variation, Sir Francis Bacon wrote the phrase "separa et impera" in a letter to James I of 15 February 1615. James Madison made this recommendation in a letter to Thomas Jefferson of 24 October 1787,[5] which summarized the thesis of The Federalist#10:[6] "Divide et impera, the reprobated axiom of tyranny, is under certain (some) qualifications, the only policy, by which a republic can be administered on just principles." In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch by Immanuel Kant (1795), Appendix one, Divide et impera is the third of three political maxims, the others being Fac et excusa (Act now, and make excuses later) and Si fecisti, nega (If you commit a crime, deny it).[7]
Elements of this technique involve:
creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign
aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign
fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers
encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political and military spending
Historically, this strategy was used in many different ways by empires seeking to expand their territories.
Immanuel Kant was an advocate of this tactic, noting that "the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils" so long as they possess an appropriate constitution which pits opposing factions against each other with a system of checks and balances.[8]
The concept is also mentioned as a strategy for market action in economics to get the most out of the players in a competitive market.
Contents
1 Foreign policy
2 Politics
3 Psychopathy in the workplace
4 Historical examples
4.1 Africa
4.2 Asia
4.2.1 Mongolian Empire
4.2.2 Indian subcontinent
4.2.3 Middle East
4.3 Europe
4.4 Mexico
4.5 USA
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
Foreign policy
Divide and rule can be used by states to weaken enemy military alliances. This usually happens when propaganda is disseminated within the enemy states in an attempt to raise doubts about the alliance. Once the alliance weakens or dissolves, a vacuum will allow the state to achieve military dominance.
Politics
In politics, the concept refers to a strategy that breaks up existing power structures, and especially prevents smaller power groups from linking up, causing rivalries and fomenting discord among the people to prevent a rebellion against the elites or the people implementing the strategy. The goal is either to pit the lower classes against themselves to prevent a revolution, or to provide a desired solution to the growing discord that strengthens the power of the elites.[9]
The principle "divide et impera" is cited as a common in politics by Traiano Boccalini in La bilancia politica.[10]
Psychopathy in the workplace
Main article: Psychopathy in the workplace
Clive R. Boddy found that "divide and conquer" was a common strategy by corporate psychopaths used as a smokescreen to help consolidate and advance their grip on power in the corporate hierarchy.[11]
Historical examples
Africa
During the period of Nigeria being under colonial rule from 1900 to 1960, different regions were frequently reclassified for administrative purposes. The resulting tensions between Nigerian ethnic groups such as the Igbo and Hausa made it easier for the colonial authorities to consolidate their power in the region.[citation needed][12]
Asia
Mongolian Empire
While the Mongols imported Central Asian Muslims to serve as administrators in China, the Mongols also sent Han Chinese and Khitans from China to serve as administrators over the Muslim population in Bukhara in Central Asia, using foreigners to curtail the power of the local peoples of both lands.[13]
Indian subcontinent
Some Indians historians, such as politician Shashi Tharoor, assert that the British Raj frequently used this tactic to consolidate their rule and prevent the emergence of the Indian independence movement.[14] A Times Literary Supplement review by British historian Jon Wilson suggests that although this was broadly the case a more nuanced approach might be closer to the facts.[15] In the same vein, Indian politician Markandey Katju wrote in The Nation:[16]
It was Emperor Akbar who laid the foundation on which the Indian nation is still standing, his policy being continued by Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues who gave India a secular constitution. Up to 1857, there were no communal problems in India; all communal riots and animosity began after 1857. No doubt even before 1857, there were differences between Hindus and Muslims, the Hindus going to temples and the Muslims going to mosques, but there was no animosity. In fact, the Hindus and Muslims used to help each other; Hindus used to participate in Eid celebrations, and Muslims in Holi and Diwali. The Muslim rulers like the Mughals, Nawab of Awadh and Murshidabad, Tipu Sultan, etc were totally secular; they organised Ramlilas, participated in Holi, Diwali, etc. Ghalib’s affectionate letters to his Hindu friends like Munshi Shiv Naraln Aram, Har Gopal Tofta, etc attest to the affection between Hindus and Muslims at that time. In 1857, the ‘Great Mutiny’ broke out in which the Hindus and Muslims jointly fought against the British. This shocked the British government so much that after suppressing the Mutiny, they decided to start the policy of divide and rule (see online “History in the Service of Imperialism” by B.N. Pande). All communal riots began after 1857, artificially engineered by the British authorities. The British collector would secretly call the Hindu Pandit, pay him money, and tell him to speak against Muslims, and similarly he would secretly call the Maulvi, pay him money, and tell him to speak against Hindus. This communal poison was injected into our body politic year after year and decade after decade.[16]
Middle East
Some analysts assert that the United States is practicing the strategy in the 21st-century Middle East through their supposed escalation of the Sunni–Shia conflict. British journalist Nafeez Ahmed cited a 2008 RAND Corporation study for the U.S Armed Forces which recommended "divide and rule" as a possible strategy against the Muslim world in "the Long War".[17] British historian Christopher Davidson argues that the current crisis in Yemen is being "egged on" by the United States government, and could be part of a wider covert strategy to "spur fragmentation in Iran allies and allow Israel to be surrounded by weak states”.[18]
Europe
Herodotus, (Histories, 5.3) claimed that the Thracians would be the strongest nation in the world if they were united.
Athenian historian Thucydides in his book History of the Peloponnesian War claimed that Alcibiades recommended to Persian statesman Tissaphernes, to weaken both Athens and Sparta for his own Persian's benefit. Alcibiades, suggested to Tissaphernes that 'The cheapest plan was to let the Hellenes wear each other out, at a small share of the expense and without risk to himself. [19]
Tacitus in Germania. chapter 33 writes "Long, I pray, may foreign nations persist in hating one another .... and fortune can bestow on us no better gift than discord among our foes."
The Romans invaded the Kingdom of Macedonia from the south and defeated King Perseus in the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC. Macedonia was then divided into four republics that were heavily restricted from relations with one another and other Hellenic states. A ruthless purge occurred, with allegedly anti-Roman citizens being denounced by their compatriots and forcibly deported in large numbers.[citation needed]
During the Gallic Wars, Ceasar was able to use a divide and conquer strategy to easily defeat the Gauls. By the time the Gauls united under Vercingetorix, it was already too late for them.[20][21]
In Revolutions of 1848, the governments which were being revolted against used this tactic to counter the rebels.[22][23]
The Salami strategy of Hungarian Communist leader, Mátyás Rákosi.[citation needed]
The colonial authorities in British Cyprus often stirred up the Turkish minority in order to neutralize agitation from the Greek majority.[24][25] This policy intentionally cultivated further animosity between the already divided Greek majority and the Turkish minority (which consists of 18% of the population) in the island that remains divided to this day after an invasion by Turkey to establish the state of North Cyprus (which is only diplomatically recognized by Turkey.[26]
Mexico
Chiapas conflict
USA
Harry G. Broadman opined in Forbes regarding President Donald Trump: "[a]s in his campaign, the President has been successfully—at least to date—pursuing a divide and conquer strategy domestically and internationally to try to achieve his goals. The result is an absence of a robust set of checks and balances to ensure that the best economic interests of the U.S. and the world will be served."[27]
See also
Control freak
Culture of fear
Defeat in detail
Destabilisation
Flying monkeys (psychology)
Identity politics
Marginalization
Playing one person against another
Smoke screen
Social undermining
Triangulation (psychology)
Wedge issue
References
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au Archived 25 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
"Dell'arte della guerra: testo - IntraText CT". intratext.com.
"Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book I, section 159". Perseus Project. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
"Strabo, Geography, Book 8, chapter 7, section 1". Perseus Project. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
"Constitutional Government: James Madison to Thomas Jefferson". Press-pubs.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
"The Federalist #10". constitution.org.
"Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace: Appendix I". Constitution.org. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
Kant: Political Writings, H.S. Reiss, 2013
Xypolia, Ilia (2016). "Divide et Impera: Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions of British Imperialism" (PDF). Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory. 44 (3): 221–231. doi:10.1080/03017605.2016.1199629. hdl:2164/9956. p. 221.
1 §136 and 2 §225
Boddy, C. R. Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational Destroyers (2011)
"HISTORY OF NIGERIA". historyworld.net.
Buell, Paul D. (1979). "Sino-Khitan Administration in Mongol Bukhara". Journal of Asian History. Harrassowitz Verlag. 13 (2): 137–8. JSTOR 41930343.
Shashi Tharoor - Inglorious Empire What the British Did to India
Wilson, Jon, 2016, India Conquered: Britain's Raj and the chaos of empire, cited in a review of Tharoor's work by Elizabeth Buettner in "Debt of Honour: why the European impact on India must be fully acknowledged", Times Literary Supplement, August 11, 2017, pages 13-14.
Markandey Katju. "The truth about Pakistan". The Nation. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
Pernin, Christopher G.; et al. (2008). "Unfolding the Future of the Long War" (PDF). US Army Training and Doctrine Command's Army Capability Integration Center – via RAND Arroyo.
"The Pentagon plan to 'divide and rule' the Muslim world". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 8.46.2
"France: The Roman conquest". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 6 April 2015. Because of chronic internal rivalries, Gallic resistance was easily broken, though Vercingetorix's Great Rebellion of 52 bce had notable successes.
"Julius Caesar: The first triumvirate and the conquest of Gaul". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 15 February 2015. Indeed, the Gallic cavalry was probably superior to the Roman, horseman for horseman. Rome's military superiority lay in its mastery of strategy, tactics, discipline, and military engineering. In Gaul, Rome also had the advantage of being able to deal separately with dozens of relatively small, independent, and uncooperative states. Caesar conquered these piecemeal, and the concerted attempt made by a number of them in 52 bce to shake off the Roman yoke came too late.
Edmund Maurice, C. (11 December 2019). "The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years".
Magocsi, Paul Robert (18 June 2010). A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples, Second Edition. ISBN 9781442698796.
Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin (2011). Imperial Endgame: Britain's Dirty Wars and the End of Empire. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-230-30038-5.
Jordan, Preston Lim (2018). The Evolution of British Counter-Insurgency during the Cyprus Revolt, 1955–1959. Springer. p. 58. ISBN 9783319916200.
"International Justice: The Case of Cyprus". Washington, D.C.: The HuffPost. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
We All Should Worry About Trump's 'Divide And Conquer' Trade Policy, forbes.com, 29 June 2018
<<<
>>> ‘Drone Swarm’ Invaded Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant Last September — Twice
Forbes
7-30-20
by David Hambling
Aerospace & Defense
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-swarm-invaded-palo-verde-nuclear-power-plant/#41e9f33943de
I'm a South London-based technology journalist, consultant and author
Documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act show how a number of small drones flew around a restricted area at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant on two successive nights last September. Security forces watched, but were apparently helpless to act as the drones carried out their incursions before disappearing into the night. Details of the event gives some clues as to just what they were doing, but who sent them remains a mystery.
Details of the events were obtained from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by Douglas D. Johnson on behalf of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The SCU’s main interest is in anomalous aerospace phenomena, what other people term UFOs. In this case though the flying objects were easily identifiable as drones, although their exact mission and origin are unknown. Johnson passed the information to The War Zone who give a detailed account.
Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant is the largest in the U.S., producing over three gigawatts, 35% of Arizona's total power capacity. It supplies electricity to Phoenix and Tucson, as well as San Diego and Los Angeles. It is a critical piece of strategic infrastructure; during the 2003 Iraq War, National Guard troops were deployed to Palo Verde to defend against a possible terrorist threat. In normal times, as with other nuclear installations, it is protected by armed security guards.
The armed guards, gates, fences and barriers were useless on the night of September 29th. According to the official report:
“Officer noticed several drones (5 or 6) flying over the site. The drones are circling the 3 unit site inside and outside the Protected Area. The drones have flashing red and white rights [sic] and are estimated to be 200 to 300 hundred [sic] feet above the site. It was reported the drones had spotlights on while approaching the site that they turned off when they entered the Security Owner Controlled Area. Drones were first noticed at 20:50 MST and are still over the site as of 21:47 MST. Security Posture was normal, which was changed to elevated when the drones were noticed.”
The drones departed at 22:30, eighty minutes after they were first spotted. The security officers estimated that they were over two feet in diameter. This indicates that they were not simply consumer drones like the popular DJI Phantom, which have a flight endurance of about half an hour and is about a foot across, but something larger and more capable. The Lockheed Martin Indago, a military-grade quadcopter recently sold to the Swiss Army, has a flight endurance of about seventy minutes and is more than two feet across. At several thousand dollars apiece minimum, these are far less expendable than consumer drones costing a few hundred. All of which suggests this was not just a prank.
The next night events were repeated:
“Four (4) drones were observed flying beginning at 20:51 MST and continuing through the time of this report (21:13 MST). As occurred last night, the drones are flying in, through, and around the owner-controlled area, the security owner-controlled area, and the protected area. Also, as last night, the drones are described as large with red and white flashing lights.”
Local police from Maricopa County were dispatched to find the drone operators, but with no success. The site is reportedly due to receive drone detection gear, but not counter-drone jammers or other defensive equipment that might stop such incursions.
Despite this incident, two months later the NRC decided not to require drone defenses at nuclear plants, asserting that small drones could not damage a reactor or steal nuclear material. It is highly likely that such sites are still vulnerable to drone overflights.
Are such drones a genuine threat to nuclear facilities? Many argue that because reactors are protected by two to three feet of concrete, able to withstand the impact of a small airliner – Sandia Laboratories actually carried out a full-scale test to prove this – small drones are nothing to fear. However, drones would probably not go for a brute-force approach, but would use their ability to strike pinpoint targets to hit control systems and failsafes. While this would be unlikely to cause a Chernobyl, it might well shut the plant down, taking out 35% of Arizona’s electricity at a stroke. The successful attack on the Abqaiq facility last year, in which about twenty garage-built drones knocked out a heavily-defended oil facility in Saudi Arabia, should be a wakeup call that such unmanned precision strikes are not just the preserve of state actors any more.
In this case though the drones were clearly not attacking. If it was simply to test the defenses, why send several drones rather than one? Why use big commercial drones rather than disposable consumer models? Why spend so long?
The most obvious answer is that the drones were gathering intelligence, using cameras or other surveying gear too large for a consumer quadcopter. Surveyors use drones fitted with LiDAR, light-based radar, to build accurate three-dimensional pictures of buildings and landscapes with an accuracy of a few centimeters. Others use drone-based photogrammetry, a technique which correlates a large number of two-dimensional images into a full three-dimensional one. Either process requires much longer than a straightforward flyover, which may explain why there were there for so long.
A fleet of several drones could have been sent to survey the entire site in one hit. However, after their success on the first night, the drone operators may have been tempted to go back again to cover any areas they might have missed or get more detail. This may have gathered all they needed, so there was no need for a third mission.
This suggests that the intruders, as well as establishing that Palo Verde lacks effective drone defenses, may now have highly detailed maps of the facility, showing the exact location of every valve, pipe, switch and control. Perhaps they simply aim to sell these on the dark web to anyone who will pay. Or perhaps they have something else in mind. Either way, it is an alarming demonstration of how easily drone intruders can now go anywhere anytime they wish.
<<<
>>> Putin says Russian Navy to get hypersonic nuclear strike weapons
Reuteres
6-26-20
by Andrew Osborn
https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN24R0D3
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday the Russian Navy would be armed with hypersonic nuclear strike weapons and underwater nuclear drones, which the defence ministry said were in their final phase of testing.
Putin, who says he does not want an arms race, has often spoken of a new generation of Russian nuclear weapons that he says are unequalled and can hit almost anywhere in the world. Some Western experts have questioned how advanced they are.
The weapons, some of which have yet to be deployed, include the Poseidon underwater nuclear drone, designed to be carried by submarines, and the Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile, which can be deployed on surface ships.
The combination of speed, manoeuvrability and altitude of hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at more than five times the speed of sound, makes them difficult to track and intercept.
Speaking in St Petersburg at an annual naval parade that showcases Russia’s best ships, nuclear submarines and naval aviation, Putin said the navy’s capabilities were growing and it would get 40 new vessels this year.
He did not specify when it would receive new hypersonic weapons, but suggested that day was drawing closer.
“The widespread deployment of advanced digital technologies that have no equals in the world, including hypersonic strike systems and underwater drones, will give the fleet unique advantages and increased combat capabilities,” Putin said.
In a separate statement released via Russian news agencies, the defence ministry said testing of the Belgorod, the first submarine capable of carrying the Poseidon drones, was underway and testing of the weapons systems was nearing completion.
“Work is being successfully completed to create modern weapons systems for the Navy,” it was cited as saying.
Putin last year threatened to deploy hypersonic missiles on ships and submarines that could lurk outside U.S. territorial waters if the United States moved to deploy intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe.
Washington has not deployed such missiles in Europe, but Moscow is worried it might.
<<<
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>>> China, Iran Are on the March
BY JAMES RICKARDS
MAY 6, 2020
https://dailyreckoning.com/china-iran-are-on-the-march/
China, Iran Are on the March
There is so much focus on the COVID-19 pandemic right now that Americans can’t be blamed if they’re not spending much time studying other developments.
That’s understandable, but inattention may be as dangerous as the virus itself. That’s because America’s adversaries are taking advantage of the situation by challenging U.S. interests in a set of geopolitical hot spots.
They believe we’re too distracted by the virus containment effort to mount a firm response.
At the same time, geopolitical confrontation is a classic way to rally a population against an outside threat, especially when they’re still hurting from the pandemic and the economic consequences. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books to get the people behind the government.
This appears to be the case with China and Iran right now.
China in particular is trying to divert attention away from its own cover-up of the pandemic, which allowed it to spin out of control. So it’s engaging in a global propaganda campaign to try to blame the U.S. for the spread of the virus.
Both China and Iran have lied about the damage caused by the virus in their own countries. China officially reported about 4,600 fatalities and Iran officially reported about 6,200. But reliable sources suggest that the actual count of fatalities may be at least 10 times greater in both countries.
This could put actual fatalities in China and Iran about equal to the U.S. (over 70,000 dead).
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been reeling economically, and there’s no reason to believe that China and Iran are feeling any less pain. Let’s first consider China…
Not surprisingly, China has tried to take advantage of the situation by acting aggressively in the South China Sea and threatening Taiwan.
The South China Sea is a large arm of the Pacific Ocean surrounded by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
All six countries have claims to exclusive economic zones that extend several hundred miles from their coastlines.
Parts of the sea are international waters governed by the Law of the Sea Convention and other treaties. All of the other nations around the South China Sea have rejected China’s claims. But they’ve been pushed back to fairly narrow boundaries close to their coastlines.
China has ignored all of those claims and treaties and insists that it is in control of the entire body of water including islands, reefs and underwater natural resources such as oil, natural gas, undersea minerals and fisheries.
China has also become even more aggressive by designating the South China Sea reefs as city-level administrative units to be administered by mainland China.
And China has pumped sand onto reefs to build artificial islands that have then been fortified with airstrips, harbors, troops and missiles.
China has said it will never seek hegemony, but that’s clearly not true. It most certainly seeks hegemony in the region.
And it’s willing to enforce it. Several encounters have happened lately where Chinese coast guard vessels have rammed and sunk fishing boats from Vietnam and the Philippines.
But China’s aggression in the South China Sea can also jeopardize U.S. naval vessels.
The U.S. operates “freedom of navigation” cruises with U.S. Navy ships to demonstrate that the U.S. also rejects China’s claims. It’s not difficult to envision an incident that could rapidly escalate into something serious.
It’s also fair to assume that a weakened U.S. Navy has emboldened Chinese actions recently.
The two aircraft carriers the Navy has in the western Pacific, the Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, were both taken out of action due to outbreaks of the coronavirus among their crews. That’s been a dramatic reduction in power projection in the region.
But neither side will back down, as neither wants to appear weak. This makes warfare a highly realistic scenario. It’s probably just a matter of time.
Meanwhile, Iran has harassed U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, launched new missiles and continued its support of terrorism in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.
These actions are more signs of weakness than strength, but they are dangerous nonetheless.
In the past 10 years, we’ve been through currency wars, trade wars and now pandemic.
Are shooting wars next? Pay attention to China, Iran and, yes, North Korea. They haven’t gone away either.
The world is a dangerous place — and the virus has only made it more dangerous.
Regards,
Jim Rickards
for The Daily Reckoning
<<<
>>> Attack of the drones: Boeing rolls out first ‘Loyal Wingman’ AI aircraft in Australia
GeekWire
BY ALAN BOYLE
May 4, 2020
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/attack-drones-boeing-rolls-first-loyal-wingman-ai-aircraft-australia/
Loyal Wingman
Boeing Australia has built the first of three Loyal Wingman aircraft, which will serve as the foundation for the Boeing Airpower Teaming System. The aircraft are designed to fly alongside existing platforms and use artificial intelligence to conduct teaming missions. (Boeing Photo)
A Boeing-led team has presented the Royal Australian Air Force with its first “Loyal Wingman” aircraft, an AI-equipped drone that’s designed to fly in coordination with crewed military airplanes.
It’s the first of three prototypes for Australia’s Loyal Wingman Advanced Development Program, and the first aircraft to be designed, engineered and manufactured in Australia in more than 50 years. In a news release, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said “Loyal Wingman will be pivotal to exploring the critical capabilities our Air Force needs to protect our nation and its allies into the future.”
The aircraft serves as the foundation for the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, or ATS, which is being developed for the global defense market. ATS uses artificial intelligence as a force multiplier, to complement and extend airborne missions flown by traditional combat aircraft.
Loyal Wingman drones are meant to provide fighter-like performance with the capacity to fly more than 2,000 nautical miles (2,300 statute miles). The prototype unveiled today will now begin ground testing, with taxi tests and flight tests due later this year.
<<<
>>> 30,000 US Soldiers Arrive In Europe Without Masks
ZeroHedge
by Tyler Durden
03/12/2020
Authored by Manlio Dinucci via VoltaireNet.org
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/30000-us-soldiers-arrive-europe-without-masks
The United States are demonstrating their power by organising the largest transfer of their troops in Europe on the occasion of the Defender Europe 20 exercises. This country, which only a few years ago sacrificed its soldiers without warning in its nuclear tests, is taking no precautions for its soldiers faced with the coronavirus epidemic.
The United States have raised the alert for the corona virus in Italy to level 3 - (« avoid non-essential travel »), and taken it to level 4 for Lombardy and Veneto (« do not travel »), the same level as for China. The airline companies American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have cancelled all their flights between New York and Milan. US citizens who are travelling to Germany, Poland and other European countries are at alert level 2, and must take « increased precautions ».
But there is a category of US citizens which is exempt from these standards : the 20,000 soldiers who have begun to arrive from the United States to the ports and airports of Europe for the Defender Europe 20 exercises, the greatest deployment of US troops in Europe in the last 25 years. With those who are already present, approximately 30,000 US soldiers will be participating in the exercises in April and May, alongside 7,000 others from the 17 member countries and partners of NATO, including Italy.
The first armoured unit arrived from the port of Savannah, USA at Bremerhaven in Germany. A total of 20,000 pieces of military equipment are arriving from the USA at six European ports (in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Latvia and Estonia). 13,000 others are provided by the stocks that were pre-positioned by the US Army Europe, mainly in Germany, Holland and Belgium.
These operations, explains the US Army Europe, « require the participation of tens of thousands of soldiers, military personnel and civilians from numerous nations ». At the same time, the majority of the contingent of 20,000 soldiers arrive from the USA, landing at seven European airports. Among this number are 6,000 from the National Guard of 15 States : including Arizona, Florida, Montana, New York and Virginia. At the start of the exercise in April – explains the US Army Europe – the 30,000 US soldiers « will deploy throughout the European region » in order to « protect Europe from any potential threat », with a clear reference to the « Russian menace ». General Tod Wolters – who commands US forces as well as the NATO forces in Europe, as Supreme Allied Commander - assures that the European Union, NATO and the United States European Command, have worked together to improve the infrastructures ». This will allow military convoys to move quickly along the 4,000 kilometres of transit routes.
Tens of thousands of soldiers will cross the frontiers to perform exercises in ten countries. In Poland, US soldiers will arrive in twelve training areas, equipped with approximately 2,500 vehicles. US paratroopers from the 173rd Brigade based in Venetia, and Italians from the Brigade Folgore based in Tuscany, will go to Latvia for a joint launching exercise.
Defender Europe 20 is being carried out in order to « increase the capacity of deploying a major combat force in Europe from the United States ». It is taking place according to times and procedures which make it practically impossible to submit tens of thousands of soldiers to the sanitary standards set up to deal with the coronavirus, and prevent their contact with local inhabitants during their rest periods. Furthermore, the US Army Europe Rock Band will be giving a series of free concerts in Germany, Poland and Latvia, which are sure to attract a large public.
The 30,000 US soldiers, who will « deploy throughout the European region », are thus exempt from the preventative standards set up to deal with the coronavirus crisis which, on the other hand, do apply to civilians. The assurance given by the US Army Europe suffices : « we have the coronavirus under surveillance » and « our forces are in good health ».
At the same time, no-one is considering the environmental impact of a military exercise of this scale. US Abrams tanks will be taking part – each of them weighs 70 tonnes, with armour-plating made of depleted uranium, and consumes 400 litres of fuel for 100 kilometres, producing heavy pollution in order to achieve maximum power.
In this situation, what is the reaction of the European Union and national authorities, and what is the WHO doing about it? They are covering their faces with masks, not only to cover their mouths and noses, but also their eyes.
<<<
>>> Some in Russia Think the Coronavirus Is a U.S. Biological Weapon
What is such a charge based on?
The National Interest
by Mark Episkopos
2-7-20
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/some-russia-think-coronavirus-us-biological-weapon-121731
As the Coronavirus outbreak continues to roil China with no end in sight, media outlets around the world have indulged in varying degrees of speculation concerning its origins. That speculation has taken a geopolitical turn in Russia, where an increasing number of political commentators have to come to believe that the virus is a U.S. bioweapon ultimately directed at Russia.
First, a disclaimer. The Kremlin—up to and including Russian president Vladimir Putin—itself has shown a remarkable degree of judiciousness since the Coronavirus outbreak, limiting its official statements to expressions of sympathy and offers of aid to the Chinese government.
Nevertheless, certain Russian media commentators don’t share the Kremlin’s sense of restraint. Zvezda, a news outlet funded by the Russian Defense Ministry, published an article late last month titled “Coronavirus: American biological warfare against Russia and China.” The author begins by establishing alleged intent: the virus dealt a blow to the Chinese economy, which weakens Beijing’s negotiating hand in the next round of trade talks to follow the recent signing of the phase one deal between Washington and Beijing.
Zvezda proceeds to the core argument, which centers around long-standing Russian suspicions over the presence of U.S. biological research laboratories across Eurasia: “As is well-known, the USA ratified the Geneva convention on Biological Weapons back in 1975. But the biological games across the ocean have never stopped, and not only in local territory. Right after the Soviet collapse, the presence of American bio-laboratories has so far been confirmed in Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan. Where else—only the State Department knows, though it insists that these are harmless groups tasked with developing medical devices. But if they are so harmless, then why did the Americans build them, not at home, but across the world?” The author further infers the supposedly malign intent of these laboratories by pointing out their ties to military-aligned agencies like the Military Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and by citing older accusations made by Georgian politician Igor Giorgadze that the U.S. bio-laboratory in Georgia has allegedly tested deadly bioweapons on Georgian citizens.
The popular, if not frequently eccentric, Russian politician and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) Vladimir Zhirinvoky told a Moscow radio station that the coronavirus is an experiment by the Pentagon and pharmaceutical companies to create localized pandemics that can devastate a select population without spilling over into other countries.
Perhaps the leading proponent of the U.S. laboratory theory is politician Igor Nekulin, who has been making the rounds on Russian television and news media to pose arguments similar to those raised in the aforementioned Zvezda article. Nikulin believes that Wuhan was chosen for the attack because the local presence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology offers the Pentagon and CIA a convenient cover story about bio-experiments gone awry. Also according to Nikulin, the supposedly Pentagon-funded U.S. laboratories in Eurasia have been collecting and treating genetic material from Russian and Chinese populations to allegedly create an “ethnically specific” virus that only targets certain peoples. Russian military expert Viktor Baranets agrees, adding that biological warfare has become a new weapon “in the American fight for global supremacy against its main adversaries.”
Speculation of this type has found a willing ear among some, though certainly not all, segments of the Russian media partly because the theme of western encirclement has been so central to Russian security concerns over the past several decades. Just as eastward NATO expansion has surrounded Russia with hostile military bases, the narrative goes, so too has Russia been surrounded with bio-warfare centers strewn across the former USSR.
<<<
>>> Russia: The Lost Opportunity
BY JAMES RICKARDS
JANUARY 28, 2020
https://dailyreckoning.com/russia-the-lost-opportunity/
Russia: The Lost Opportunity
The biggest story out of China right now is the coronavirus that I addressed in yesterday’s reckoning.
But while it’s important, the bigger story is the geopolitical dynamic between the U.S., China and Russia.
Today I’m going to address that dynamic and show you how Washington has squandered a major opportunity to turn it in America’s favor.
When future historians look back on the 2010s, they will be baffled by the lost opportunity for the U.S. to mend fences with Russia, develop economic relations and create a win-win relationship between the world’s greatest technology innovator and the world’s greatest natural resources provider.
It will seem a great loss for the world. Here’s the reality:
Russia, China and the U.S. are the only true superpowers and the only three countries that ultimately matter in geopolitics. That’s not a slight against any other power.
But all others are secondary powers (the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc.) or tertiary powers (Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.).
This means that the ideal posture for the U.S. is to ally with Russia (to marginalize China) or ally with China (to marginalize Russia), depending on overall geopolitical conditions.
The U.S. conducted this kind of triangulation successfully from the 1970s until the early 2000s.
One of the keys to U.S. foreign policy in the last 50 or 60 years has been to make sure that Russia and China never form an alliance. Keeping them separated was key.
In 1972, Nixon pivoted to China to put pressure on Russia. In 1991, the U.S. pivoted to Russia to put pressure on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Unfortunately, the U.S. has lost sight of this basic rule of international relations. It is now Russia and China that have formed a strong alliance, to the disadvantage of the United States.
China and Russia have forged stronger ties through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for example — a military and economic treaty — and the BRICS institutions. Part of it is an anti-dollar campaign.
One leg of the China-Russia relationship is their joint desire to see the U.S. dollar lose its status as the world’s dominant reserve currency. They chafe against the ways in which the U.S. uses the dollar as a financial weapon.
But ultimately, this two-against-one strategic alignment of China and Russia against the U.S. is a strategic blunder by the U.S.
Russia is the nation that the U.S. should have tried to court and should still be courting. That’s because China is the greatest geopolitical threat to the U.S. because of its economic and technological advances and its ambition to push the U.S. out of the Western Pacific sphere of influence.
Russia may be a threat to some of its neighbors, but it is far less of a threat to U.S. strategic interests.
Therefore, a logical balance of power in the world would be for the U.S. and Russia to find common ground in the containment of China and to jointly pursue the reduction of Chinese power.
Of course, that hasn’t happened. And we could be paying the price for years to come.
Regards,
Jim Rickards
for The Daily Reckoning
<<<
>>> How Reagan Beat the Neocons
New York Times
By John Patrick Diggins
June 11, 2004
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/opinion/how-reagan-beat-the-neocons.html
Almost everywhere in the press one reads that President Bush sounds an awful lot like Ronald Reagan. Commentators and politicians alike have drawn the comparison between Mr. Bush's ''muscular'' foreign policy and the Reagan doctrine. However macho and aggressive Mr. Bush's foreign policy may be, when it came to the Soviet Union, Mr. Reagan's was anything but.
In 1985, Mr. Reagan sent a long handwritten letter to Mikhail Gorbachev assuring him that he was prepared ''to cooperate in any reasonable way to facilitate such a withdrawal'' of the Soviets from Afghanistan. ''Neither of us,'' he added, ''wants to see offensive weapons, particularly weapons of mass destruction, deployed in space.'' Mr. Reagan eagerly sought to work with Mr. Gorbachev to rid the world of such weapons and to help the Soviet Union effect peaceful change in Eastern Europe.
This offer was far from the position taken by the neoconservative advisers who now serve under Mr. Bush. Twenty years ago in the Reagan White House, they saw no possibility for such change, and indeed many of them subscribed to the theory of ''totalitarianism'' as unchangeable and irreversible. Mr. Reagan was also informed that the Soviet Union was preparing for a possible pre-emptive attack on the United States. This alarmist position was taken by Team B, formed in response to the more prudently analytical position of the C.I.A. and then composed of several members of the present Bush administration. The team was headed by Richard Pipes, the Russian historian at Harvard, whose stance was summed up in the title of one of his articles: ''Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War.''
Not only did the neocons oppose Mr. Reagan's efforts at rapprochement, they also argued against engaging in personal diplomacy with Soviet leaders. Advisers like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, now steering our foreign policy, held that America must escalate to achieve ''nuclear dominance'' and that we could only deal from a ''strategy of strength.'' Mr. Reagan believed in a strong military, but to reassure the Soviet Union that America had no aggressive intentions, he reminded Leonid Brezhnev of just the opposite. From 1945 to 1949, the United States was the sole possessor of the atomic bomb, and yet, Mr. Reagan emphasized to Mr. Brezhnev, no threat was made to use the bomb to win concessions from the Soviet Union.
The Star Wars missile defense system advocated by Mr. Reagan is often regarded as the final nail in the coffin of communism, as a military system that the Soviets could not afford and only fear. The first assumption was right, the second dubious. Margaret Thatcher, who urged Mr. Reagan to regard Mr. Gorbachev as ''a man we can work with,'' also gave him more blunt advice on Star Wars: ''I'm a chemist; I know it won't work.'' Like Mrs. Thatcher, Soviet scientists regarded it as a fantasy, and thus they were hardly impressed with Mr. Reagan's offer to share it with them once it was perfected. (It still hasn't been, nearly two decades later.)
Those advisers in the Bush administration who regard themselves as Reaganites ought to remember that Mr. Reagan ceased heeding their advice. According to George Shultz's memoir, ''Turmoil and Triumph,'' Mr. Reagan would become uneasy when his hawkish advisers entered the Oval Office. In his own memoir, ''An American Life,'' Mr. Reagan ridiculed the ''macabre jargon'' of warheads, I.C.B.M.'s, kill ratios and ''throw weights,'' the payload capacity of long-range missiles. The president thought their figures sounded like ''baseball scores'' and dismissed his pesky advisers. Mr. Reagan rejected the neocons; George W. Bush stands by them no matter what.
The difference between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush's militant brain staff is that he believed in negotiation and they in escalation. They wanted to win the cold war; he sought to end it. To do so, it was necessary not to strike fear in the Soviet Union but to win the confidence of its leaders. Once the Soviet Union could count on Mr. Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev not only was free to embark on his domestic reforms, to convince his military to go along with budget cuts, to reassure his people that they no longer needed to worry about the old bogey of ''capitalist encirclement,'' but, most important, he was also ready to announce to the Soviet Union's satellite countries that henceforth they were on their own, that no longer would tanks of the Red Army be sent to put down uprisings. The cold war ended in an act of faith and trust, not fear and trembling.
But many neocons came to hate Mr. Reagan, saying he lost the cold war since he left office with communism still in place. Some even believed that the cold war would soon be resumed. Dick Cheney, as President George H. W. Bush's defense secretary, dismissed perestroika (''restructuring'') as a sham and glasnost (''opening'') as a ruse, he insisted that Mr. Gorbachev would be replaced by a belligerent militarist; and warned America to prepare for the re-emergence of an aggressive communist state.
Mr. Reagan gave us an enlightened foreign policy that achieved most of its diplomatic objectives peacefully and succeeded in firmly uniting our allies. Today those who claim to be Mr. Reagan's heirs give us ''shock and awe'' and a ''muscular'' foreign policy that has lost its way and undermined valued friendships throughout the world.
<<<
>>> F-35’s Gun That Can’t Shoot Straight Adds to Its Roster of Flaws
Bloomberg
By Anthony Capaccio
January 30, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-30/f-35-s-gun-that-can-t-shoot-straight-adds-to-its-roster-of-flaws
Annual Pentagon testing report also finds 873 software issues
It cites 13 ‘must-fix’ items before $22 billion upgrade phase
Add a gun that can’t shoot straight to the problems that dog Lockheed Martin Corp.’s $428 billion F-35 program, including more than 800 software flaws.
The 25mm gun on Air Force models of the Joint Strike Fighter has “unacceptable” accuracy in hitting ground targets and is mounted in housing that’s cracking, the Pentagon’s test office said in its latest assessment of the costliest U.S. weapons system.
The annual assessment by Robert Behler, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, doesn’t disclose any major new failings in the plane’s flying capabilities. But it flags a long list of issues that his office said should be resolved -- including 13 described as Category 1 “must-fix” items that affect safety or combat capability -- before the F-35’s upcoming $22 billion Block 4 phase.
The number of software deficiencies totaled 873 as of November, according to the report obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of its release as soon as Friday. That’s down from 917 in September 2018, when the jet entered the intense combat testing required before full production, including 15 Category 1 items. What was to be a year of testing has now been extended another year until at least October.
“Although the program office is working to fix deficiencies, new discoveries are still being made, resulting in only a minor decrease in the overall number” and leaving “many significant‘’ ones to address, the assessment said.
Cybersecurity ‘Vulnerabilities’
In addition, the test office said cybersecurity “vulnerabilities” that it identified in previous reports haven’t been resolved. The report also cites issues with reliability, aircraft availability and maintenance systems.
The assessment doesn’t deal with findings that are emerging in the current round of combat testing, which will include 64 exercises in a high-fidelity simulator designed to replicate the most challenging Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian air defenses.
Despite the incomplete testing and unresolved flaws, Congress continues to accelerate F-35 purchases, adding 11 to the Pentagon’s request in 2016 and in 2017, 20 in fiscal 2018, 15 last year and 20 this year. The F-35 continues to attract new international customers such as Poland and Singapore. Japan is the biggest foreign customer, followed by Australia and the U.K.
By late September, 490 F-35s had been delivered and will require extensive retrofitting. The testing office said those planes were equipped with six different versions of software, with another on the way by the time that about 1,000 planes will be in the hands of the U.S. and foreign militaries.
A spokesmen for the Pentagon’s F-35 program office had no immediate comment on the testing office’s report.
Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, said that “although we have not seen the report, the F-35 continues to mature and is the most lethal, survivable and connected fighter in the world.” He said “reliability continues to improve, with the global fleet averaging greater than 65% mission capable rates and operational units consistently performing near 75%.”
The Mattis Test
Still, the testing office said “no significant portion” of the U.S.’s F-35 fleet “was able to achieve and sustain” a September 2019 goal mandated by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: that the aircraft be capable 80% of the time needed to perform at least one type of combat mission. That target is known as the “Mission Capable” rate.
“However, individual units were able to achieve the 80% target for short periods during deployed operations,” the report said. All the aircraft models lagged “by a large margin” behind the more demanding goal of “Full Mission Capability.”
The Air Force’s F-35 model had the best rate at being fully mission capable, while the Navy’s fleet “suffered from a particularly poor” rate, the test office said. The Marine Corps version was “roughly midway” between the other two.
The Air Force and Navy versions are also continuing to have cracks in structural components, according to the report, saying, “The effect on F-35 service life and the need for additional inspection requirements are still being determined.”
Gun Woes
The three F-35 models are all equipped with 25mm guns. The Navy and Marine versions are mounted externally and have acceptable accuracy. But the Air Force model’s gun is mounted inside the plane, and the test office “considers the accuracy, as installed, unacceptable” due to “misalignments” in the gun’s mount that didn’t meet specifications.
The mounts are also cracking, forcing the Air Force to restrict the gun’s use. The program office has “made progress with changes to gun installation” to improve accuracy but they haven’t been tested yet, according to the report.
<<<
>>> Trump Administration Considers 14,000 More Troops for Mideast
Officials are discussing deployment that includes dozens more ships and other military hardware to counter threat from Iran
Wall Street Journal
By Gordon Lubold and Nancy A. Youssef
Updated Dec. 4, 2019
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-considers-14-000-more-troops-for-mideast-11575494228
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is considering a significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East to counter Iran, including dozens more ships, other military hardware and as many as 14,000 additional troops, U.S. officials said.
The deployment could double the number of U.S. military personnel who have been sent to the region since the start of a troop buildup in May. President Trump is expected to make a decision on the new deployments as soon as this month, those officials said.
Mr. Trump, facing an election next year, has long sought to exit foreign entanglements and avoid new conflicts. But on Iran—and partly at the behest of Israel—he is convinced of the need to counter the threat his aides say Tehran poses, the officials said. He also could approve a smaller U.S. deployment, the officials said.
There is growing fear among U.S. military and other administration officials that an attack on U.S. interests and forces could leave the U.S. with few options in the region, officials said. By sending additional military resources to the region, the administration would be presenting a more credible deterrent to Tehran, which has been blamed for a series of attacks, including one in September against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Iran has denied involvement.
The new U.S. deployment also would be designed as a deterrent against possible Iranian retaliation for mounting sanctions under the administration’s economic-pressure campaign. Some officials worry, however, that adding more military resources to the mix could provoke another attack or put the region on track for a dangerous and unpredictable conflict.
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Pentagon press secretary Alyssa Farah said in a Twitter post: “The U.S. is not considering sending 14,000 additional troops to the Middle East.”
The additional forces would join the roughly 14,000 U.S. service members sent to the region since May, when U.S. intelligence analysts identified a threat from Iran and the U.S. Central Command commander, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, requested additional ships, missile-defense platforms and troops.
Overall, there are between 60,000 and 80,000 U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan, depending on the number of ships in the region and the rotation of ground forces, defense officials said.
John Rood, the Pentagon’s senior policy official, hinted on Wednesday at an expanded deployment to counter Iran. Mr. Rood said no decision has been made on additional capabilities but that the situation is expected to remain fluid. “Deterrence is dynamic, our response is going to be dynamic,” he said.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) questioned the tentative deployment plans in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
“I look forward to hearing tomorrow in Senate Armed Services [Committee] why the Pentagon reportedly wants 14,000 MORE troops in the Middle East, after sending 14,000 already this year alone. Is the Pentagon preparing for a land war?” The committee will question Mr. Rood on Thursday.
Key uniformed military officers, including Gen. McKenzie of Central Command and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, have indicated support for additional deterrence, the U.S. officials said, as has White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien. National Security Council officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who has touted the need for the U.S. to counter China, in keeping with the latest U.S. National Defense Strategy, would like to address both needs, an official familiar with his deliberations said, sending a signal of deterrence to Iran while maintaining the ability to counter big powers.
The Pentagon has attempted to move to a more sustainable, long-term presence in the Middle East after more than 18 years of conflict, said Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon. The president “has said for years that he doesn’t want to fight new wars in the Middle East,” she said.
As part of Mr. Trump’s policy, he ordered last year the withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, ultimately agreeing to leave half of them to counter Islamic State fighters and back Kurdish allies, along with about 200 in southern Syria who work to counter Iran-backed forces.
This year, the Republican president again ordered a full U.S. withdrawal of the remaining 1,000 troops from Syria, then agreed again to leave about half of that number in place to help safeguard Kurdish-run oil fields.
With no public diplomatic process in place, U.S. officials are limited in ways they can pursue a reduction of tensions with Iran, so it is unclear when or how the U.S. would draw down forces, officials said.
The U.S. last ramped up its footprint in the region starting in 2013, when it tried to negotiate limits on Iran’s nuclear program that led to the 2015 agreement known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
For several months during that period, the U.S. military kept two aircraft-carrier strike groups in the Middle East. Gen. McKenzie was in charge of planning for the Joint Staff in 2013 and a key part of that ramp up.
The Trump administration last year withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal.
“What is the goal of this deterrence effort in Iran? Before it was to put pressure on Iran to enter an agreement on the nuclear program,” asked Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “What is the end point now?”Should Mr. Trump decide to deploy the additional forces, it would mark the latest phase of a buildup that began in May, when the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln traveled to the Mideast.
The increase being considered could enable the U.S. military to respond unilaterally to threats from Iran, Mr. Clark said. But moving an aircraft carrier through the narrow waters of the Strait of Hormuz could make it an attractive target for Iranian attacks.
On at least three occasions, the Pentagon announced new deployments of troops, warplanes and antimissile batteries to Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, citing possible Iranian threats.
The administration had been poised to make a formal decision to extend the recent deployments, which were considered piecemeal efforts, into longer-term deployments of forces.
Many of those deployment orders are due to expire in January, and officials said they were discussing a plan to make them permanent.
That, in turn, concerns officials and outside experts who believe the Pentagon must focus its resources on countering China, as mandated by the U.S. National Security Strategy and the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy. China, some say, is a much larger, if less immediate, problem.
“China is always a, quote, long-term problem, unquote,” said Elbridge Colby, who helped author the Pentagon’s defense strategy. “But it’s actually a now problem.”
Officials familiar with the Navy’s deployment situation have said the U.S. doesn’t have a sufficient number of aircraft carriers to simultaneously focus on threats from Russia, China and the Middle East, Of the 11 U.S. aircraft carriers, five are currently available to deploy. The remaining ships are in dock for repairs, undergoing crew training to redeploy or resting between assignments.
Two of those five—the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS John C. Stennis—have sailed recently through the Middle East. The USS Harry S. Truman is slated to arrive in the coming weeks.
The Pentagon under the Trump administration has tried to upgrade U.S. military preparedness—keeping troops and equipment in combat-ready condition. But the effort is still under way, and some officials said a significant deployment to the Middle East would tap resources already under pressure, including Patriot missile batteries and other missile-defense systems.
MILITARY BUILDUP
Over the spring and summer, a series of suspected Iranian attacks in the Mideast prompted a U.S. military buildup. Here’s how the events played out:
Attacks in the Gulf
Early May 2019: U.S. intelligence detected missiles being loaded onto commercial Iranian boats, which then were shadowed by the U.S. for two weeks.
May 12, 2019: Four commercial ships—two Saudi Arabian-registered oil tankers, a Norwegian-registered oil tanker and a UAE ship—were damaged in the Gulf of Oman by apparent magnetic mines. U.S. officials blamed Iran for the attack; Iran denied responsibility.
June 13, 2019: Two ships—a Bermuda tanker and a Japanese oil tanker—were damaged in the same area by the same method. Iran denied responsibility.
June 20, 2019: A U.S. Global Hawk drone, worth more than $100 million, was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran said the craft violated its airspace; the U.S. said it was in international air space.
Sept. 14, 2019: Cruise missiles and drones hit Saudi Arabian oil facilities in an attack blamed on Iran, which denied responsibility.
U.S. Military Responses
May 2019: U.S. announced that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group were being sent to the Mideast. President Trump later that month announced the deployment of 1,500 troops to the region.
July 2019: U.S. officials announced several hundred U.S. troops would be stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, marking a return of American forces to that base after 16 years.
September 2019: The Pentagon sent 200 troops to Saudi Arabia to support Patriot battery.
October 2019: The Pentagon announced that roughly 2,000 more troops would be going to Saudi Arabia.
<<<
>>> Yemen's Houthi rebels announce halt in attacks on Saudi Arabia
By Morgan Phillips
Fox News
9-20-19
https://www.foxnews.com/world/yemens-houthi-rebels-announce-a-pause-in-attacks-on-saudi-arabia
Yemen's Houthi rebels said Friday they are halting all drone and ballistic missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, six days after claiming responsibility for a strike that crippled a key oil facility in the kingdom.
The announcement could be the first step toward a wider ceasefire in Yemen, but its effect remained unclear, and there was no immediate response from the Saudi-led coalition.
The halt was proclaimed by Mahdi al Mashat, the head of the Houthis' supreme political council, which runs rebel-held areas in Yemen. He said the group was waiting for a "positive response" from Saudi Arabia. It was not clear what such a response would entail.
The Iran-backed Houthis claimed responsibility for the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities, briefly interrupting the production for five percent of the world's oil supplies. The U.S. and the Saudis have blamed Iran, which denies any responsibility and has said that any retaliatory strikes would result in "all-out war."
Yemen has been ravaged by conflict since late 2014 when Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, captured much of the country, including the capital, Sanaa. In 2015, a Saudi-led military coalition launched an air campaign against Houthi rebels. More than 70,000 civilians have died since 2016 and millions more live on the brink of famine, according to the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data Project (ACLED).
Alternatively, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah called Friday for Saudi Arabia to cease its influence in Yemen's civil war. In a televised speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to stop inciting war "because your houses are made of glass." Hezbollah and the Houthis are both backed by Iran.
"Continuing the war against Yemen with no solution is pointless. You are starting to pay the price," Nasrallah said. "One strike knocked out half the oil production, and another strike, you can imagine what it will do."
The Saudi-UAE-led coalition has carried out more than 18,000 raids on Houthi-held areas with logistical support from the U.S. The Houthis have significantly stepped up their attacks on Saudi targets in recent months.
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>>> U.S. to send additional troops to Saudi Arabia after attacks on oil facilities
President Trump said Iran is “practically broke” as he announced new sanctions against the country on Friday and approved the deployment of defense forces to Saudi Arabia.
Washington Post
By Karen DeYoung, Missy Ryan and Paul Sonne
September 20, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-announces-new-sanctions-on-irans-central-bank/2019/09/20/23643aae-dbb9-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html
President Trump has approved the deployment of additional U.S. troops and air defense assets to Saudi Arabia, in a muted military response to last week’s attack on Saudi oil facilities.
At a news conference late Friday following a White House meeting with Trump, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper emphasized that the deployments were defensive in nature, and in response to requests from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help protect “critical infrastructure” from further attacks by Iran.
Word of the deployments, coupled with an announcement of new economic sanctions, indicated that despite Trump’s initial “locked and loaded” response to the attacks — and the urging of some advisers — he does not plan U.S. military retaliation.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., said the “moderate deployment,” numbering in the hundreds, will be in addition to any forces and equipment the United States is asking allies to contribute.
Dunford said the military will determine the exact composition of the new forces, the second time in recent months that the United States has boosted troops in the region in response to Iranian actions. The Sept. 14 attack by drones and cruise missiles against two Saudi oil installations appeared to circumvent Saudi defenses, including six battalions of U.S. Patriot missile defense systems.
Esper said it was clear that the weapons used in the attack “were Iranian-produced and were not launched from Yemen,” as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels there initially asserted. “All indications are that Iran was responsible,” he said.
Iran has denied responsibility.
Asked whether further, offensive action was contemplated, Esper demurred, saying, “This is the first step we’re taking.” U.S. military officials, concerned that the situation has the potential to escalate, said they were seeking to ensure the response took a diplomatic path or at least paired any military actions with diplomacy.
Earlier in the day, Trump acknowledged that he had received conflicting advice on what to do.
“Going into Iran would be a very easy decision,” he said at the White House. “Most people thought I would go in [militarily] within two seconds” after the attack. But there is “plenty of time,” he said.
“I think I’m showing great restraint,” Trump said. “A lot of people respect it, some don’t. Some people say, ‘Oh, you should go in immediately,’ and other people are so thrilled at what I’m doing.”
The administration hopes to use next week’s U.N. General Assembly to seek support for an increase in global pressure in the wake of the attacks, especially by European allies who until now have appealed to Trump not to undercut their efforts to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which he withdrew the United States from last year.
At least one U.S. ally sounded relieved at Trump’s apparent restraint. Visiting Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, standing at the president’s side during their joint news conference, praised Trump’s “calibrated, very measured response.”
Their remarks came after the Trump administration announced a new round of sanctions against Iran, targeting its central bank and sovereign wealth fund. “We’ve now cut off all source of funds to Iran,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
Although the sanctions against the wealth fund are new — and potentially freeze tens of billions of dollars in Iranian national assets held or invested overseas — the central bank sanctions largely duplicate existing measures. In both cases, they prohibit U.S. and foreign entities and individuals using U.S. financial institutions from engaging in transactions with the Iranian institutions.
In a separate statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned Iran’s “act of aggression” and said that “attacking other nations and disrupting the global economy has a price.” But Pompeo, who visited Saudi Arabia and the UAE this week, indicated that the price, for now at least, will not include the use of armed force.
“The regime in Tehran must be held accountable through diplomatic isolation and economic pressure,” he said. “Our campaign of maximum pressure will continue to raise costs on the Islamic Republic of Iran until it reverses its destabilizing policies across the Middle East and around the world.”
In Tehran, the top military aide to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that any U.S. aggression against Iran would “throw the region into turmoil,” Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.
Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi said that “the Islamic Republic has turned into a major and invincible power in West Asia and if the Americans are planning any plots, Iran will not leave them unanswered.”
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who on Thursday told CNN that a U.S. attack would mean “all-out war,” said on Twitter that “Iran has no desire for war, but we will, and always have, defend our people and our nation.” Continuing on a theme he has raised for months, he charged that the “B-team” of administration hawks, Israel and Saudi Arabia “seem to wish to fight Iran to the last American.”
Zarif had long referred to John Bolton, the national security adviser Trump fired last week, as the head of the so called “B-team.” An advocate of regime change in Iran, Bolton clashed with Trump when the president began mulling a possible softening of sanctions as an incentive for the Iranians to negotiate with him.
Any thought of reduced sanctions, as well as a possible Trump meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations, disappeared with the strike in Saudi Arabia.
Land-launched cruise missiles and armed drones attacked state-owned Saudi Aramco facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, inflicting substantial damage. The Houthi rebels who claimed responsibility have been engaged in a four-year war with a Persian Gulf coalition led by the Saudis and have previously launched thousands of rockets, drones and artillery rounds into Saudi Arabia.
But the Saudis and the United States quickly blamed Iran, pointing to the sophistication of the operation, the manufacture of the weaponry and the arrival of the missiles from the north.
Many of Trump’s advisers and confidants urged a swift military retaliation. Others stressed Trump’s disinclination to become involved in yet another Middle East war, especially in the run-up to next year’s election, and the fact that the missiles had struck Saudi Arabia, not the United States.
Although Trump has long praised the Saudis as a staunch partner and a prolific buyer of American weaponry, they have grown increasingly unpopular with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, not least because of the brutal Yemen war that has left tens of thousands of civilians dead, many from indiscriminate Saudi airstrikes using U.S.-supplied missiles.
In one indication that the recent upheaval with Iran may spark movement toward a peace settlement for Yemen, the Houthis on Friday proposed to halt artillery and missile attacks into Saudi Arabia if the Saudi-led coalition responds in kind.
In a message to The Washington Post, Houthi spokesman Mohamed Abdelsalam said that under the new proposal, the group would stop attacks against Saudi Arabia if the kingdom ceased airstrikes and “all military activity”; opened the airport in the capital, Sanaa; allowed free movement of ships; began a prisoner exchange; and “opened the way for a complete political solution.”
It is unclear why the Houthis, whose ties with Iran have deepened over the course of the war as Tehran has provided military assistance, would choose to make such an offer now, but it could signal a concern among rebel leaders that the U.S.-Iranian standoff could turn against their interests.
The Saudi government believes the proposal indicates a desire to distance themselves from Iran, according to a senior Saudi official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment. The official said rebel leaders have privately communicated that they had “nothing to do” with the Sept. 14 attack, despite their initial claim of responsibility. Abdelsalam denied that assertion.
Likewise, diplomatic officials with knowledge of Yemen say that the Houthis in recent months have repeatedly voiced a willingness to back away from their attacks on Saudi Arabia and curtail ties with Tehran, which is widely believed to have provided them with advanced weaponry.
But diplomats also acknowledge that the Houthi movement is divided and that some factions favor a tighter relationship with Tehran. The claim of responsibility for the attack is seen as evidence of that faction’s power.
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>>> Saudi Arabia Says Oil Attacks ‘Unquestionably’ Sponsored by Iran
By Vivian Nereim and Anthony Dipaola
September 18, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-18/iran-says-it-s-not-looking-for-war-warns-u-s-against-action?srnd=premium
Drone wreckage said to be from the recent attack on the Aramco Abqaiq oil refinery, on Sept. 18.
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday said weekend attacks on its critical oil infrastructure were “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” but stopped short of saying the strikes were launched directly from or by the Islamic Republic.
Displaying parts of drones and missiles which were recovered from the attack sites at Abqaiq and Khurais, Saudi defense ministry spokesman Turki al-Maliki showed maps aimed at proving the strikes originated from the north and could not have been launched by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have claimed responsibility.
Drone wreckage on display at the news conference on Sept. 18.Source: APTV
Twenty-five pilotless aircraft and cruise missiles were used to attack the two sites, Maliki said. He told reporters gathered in Riyadh that the weapons were of Iranian origin but Saudi Arabia was still working to pinpoint the exact launch point. The range and accuracy of the weapons were beyond the capabilities of the Houthis, he added.
“Despite Iran’s effort to make it appear so,” the attack didn’t originate from Yemen, Maliki said. “Data analysis of the attack sites indicate weapons of Iranian origin.”
Iran has denied it was involved in the worst attack in Saudi Arabia’s history and President Hassan Rouhani said earlier Wednesday that his country did not want war.
Just before the press briefing, President Donald Trump said he had decided to tighten U.S. sanctions on Iran following the attacks, which had raised the risk that the key energy-exporting region could slide into a regional conflict. The sanctions announcement and Saudi Arabia’s reluctance to pinpoint Iran as the launch site of the attacks appeared to signal that the threat of major escalation was receding.
While Trump initially said the U.S. is “locked and loaded” to respond, he has since signaled that he isn’t eager for another Middle East conflict.
“I have just instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to substantially increase Sanctions on the country of Iran!” Trump said in a tweet, without giving further details.
Trump has been ramping up sanctions on the Islamic Republic since quitting the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, including severe restrictions on the ability of Tehran to sell oil.
Iran’s economy is already under severe pressure from existing sanctions, though analysts said there were still a number of potential targets for restrictions, including some in the construction sector, additional companies on the Tehran stock exchange and foundations controlled by the regime or Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But with the vast majority of Iran’s economy dependent on oil sales, additional sanctions may have little more than a marginal impact.
In comments made immediately after the Saudi briefing, Yemen’s Houthi military spokesman Yehya Saree said some of the drones used were new, with a range of up to 1,700 kilometers, and were launched from three different points inside Yemen. He said the drones fired long-range missiles and warned the United Arab Emirates that it could be also be targeted. The U.A.E. said weeks ago that it was drawing down its role in the Yemen war after four years.
Maliki showed surveillance video purporting to show drones moving in a north to south direction, however. He said Saudi Arabia was working to share the information with United Nations experts.
“We are working as I mentioned to determine the exact position of the launch point,” Maliki said. “Whether it’s been launched from Yemen, launched from somewhere else, those people they will be held accountable, and this is a decision at a political level in our country.”
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>>> Turkey to Switch On Russian Missile Systems in Less Than a Year
Bloomberg
By Ugur Yilmaz
September 15, 2019
https://investorshub.advfn.com/secure/post_new.aspx?board_id=22340
Russia has completed delivery of another advanced S-400 air-defense system to Turkey, which it plans to make operational by next April despite the threat of U.S. sanctions.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that the installation of the batteries continues after the latest shipment. The first S-400 arrived in July in the face of U.S. objections.
The time remaining before Turkey activates the systems could be the last window of opportunity for the NATO allies to defuse the standoff. After the delivery of the first battery, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged Turkey not to make the S-400s “operational” as President Donald Trump holds off on implementing new sanctions required by law.
In response to the purchase from Russia, the U.S. suspended Turkey’s ability to buy and help build the advanced F-35 warplane. American officials contend the Russian air-defense system is designed to shoot down North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft and can collect critical intelligence that could compromise stealth capabilities of the fifth-generation fighter.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said that the U.S. is considering sanctions on Turkey, without elaborating.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with Reuters this week that his personal bond with Trump could help overcome the crisis. Erdogan plans to address the issues surrounding S-400s and the F-35 program directly with Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this month.
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>>> The Battle of Teutoburg Forest -
September 11, 9 AD
(V Coins)
by Jesús Vico and Marisa Ollero.
The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, described as the Varian Disaster by Roman historians, took place in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, when an alliance of Germanic tribes ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions and their auxiliaries, led by Publius Quinctilius Varus. The alliance was led by Arminius, a Germanic officer of Varus's auxilia. Arminius had acquired Roman citizenship and had received a Roman military education, which enabled him to deceive the Roman commander methodically and anticipate the Roman army's tactical responses.
Despite several successful campaigns and raids by the Romans in the years after the battle, they never again attempted to conquer the Germanic territories east of the Rhine river. The victory of the Germanic tribes against Rome's legions in the Teutoburg Forest would have far-reaching effects on the subsequent history of both the ancient Germanic peoples and the Roman Empire. Contemporary and modern historians have generally regarded Arminius' victory over Varus as "Rome's greatest defeat", making it one of the rarest things in history, a truly decisive battle, and as "a turning-point in world history".
After his return from Rome, Arminius became a trusted advisor to Varus, but in secret he forged an alliance of Germanic tribes that had traditionally been enemies. These included the Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti, Bructeri, Chauci, Sicambri, and remaining elements of the Suebi, who had been defeated by Caesar in the Battle of Vosges. These five were some of the fifty Germanic tribes at the time. Using the collective outrage over Varus' tyrannous insolence and wanton cruelty to the conquered, Arminius was able to unite the disorganized tribes who had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman dominion, and maintain said alliance until the most opportune moment to strike.
Between 6 and 9 CE, the Romans were forced to move eight of eleven legions present in Germania east of the Rhine River to crush a rebellion in the Balkans, leaving Varus with only three legions to face the Germans. This represented the perfect opportunity for Arminius to defeat Varus.
While Varus was on his way from his summer camp west of the Weser River to winter headquarters near the Rhine, he heard reports of a local rebellion, reports which had been fabricated by Arminius.
Varus decided to quell this uprising immediately, expediting his response by taking a detour through territory that was unfamiliar to the Romans. Arminius, who accompanied him, directed him along a route that would facilitate an ambush. Another Cheruscan nobleman, Segestes, unwilling father-in-law to Arminius, warned Varus the night before the Roman forces departed, allegedly suggesting that Varus should apprehend Arminius, along with other Germanic leaders whom he identified as participants in the planned uprising. His warning, however, was dismissed as stemming from the personal feud between Segestes and Arminius. Arminius then left under the pretext of drumming up Germanic forces to support the Roman campaign. Once free from prying eyes, he immediately led his troops in a series of attacks on the surrounding Roman garrisons.
Roman casualties have been estimated at 15,000–20,000 dead, and many of the officers were said to have taken their own lives by falling on their swords in the approved manner. Tacitus wrote that many officers were sacrificed by the Germanic forces as part of their indigenous religious ceremonies, cooked in pots and their bones used for rituals. Others were ransomed, and some common soldiers appear to have been enslaved.
Upon hearing of the defeat, the Emperor Augustus, according to the Roman historian Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars, was so shaken that he stood butting his head against the walls of his palace, repeatedly shouting:
Quintili Vare, legiones redde! (Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!)
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>>> The Battle of Actium -
V-Coins
September 2, 31 BC
by Jesús Vico and Marisa Ollero.
The Battle of Actium was the decisive confrontation of the Final War of the Roman Republic, a naval engagement between Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra on 2 September 31 BC, on the Ionian Sea near the promontory of Actium, in the Roman province of Epirus Vetus in Greece. Octavian's fleet was commanded by Agrippa, while Antony's fleet was supported by the power of Queen Cleopatra of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Octavian's victory enabled him to consolidate his power over Rome and its dominions. He adopted the title of Princeps ("first citizen") and some years later was awarded the title of Augustus ("revered") by the Roman Senate. This became the name by which he was known in later times. As Augustus, he retained the trappings of a restored Republican leader, but historians generally view this consolidation of power and the adoption of these honorifics as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.
The alliance among Octavian, Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, commonly known as the Second Triumvirate, was renewed for a five-year term in 38 BC. However, the triumvirate broke down when Octavian saw Caesarion, the professed son of Julius Caesar and Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, as a major threat to his power. This occurred when Mark Antony, the other most influential member of the triumvirate, abandoned his wife, Octavian's sister Octavia Minor, and moved to Egypt to start a long-term romance with Cleopatra, becoming the de facto stepfather to Caesarion. Such an affair was doomed to become a political scandal. Antony was inevitably perceived by Octavian and the majority of the Roman Senate as the leader of a separatist movement that threatened to break the unity of the Roman Republic.
During 32 BC one-third of the Senate and both consuls allied with Antony. The consuls had determined to conceal the extent of Antony's demands. Gaius Sosius on 1 January made an elaborate speech in favor of Antony, and would have proposed the confirmation of his act had it not been vetoed by a tribune. Octavian was not present, but at the next meeting made a reply of such a nature that both consuls left Rome to join Antony; Antony, when he heard of it, after publicly divorcing Octavia, came at once to Ephesus with Cleopatra, where a vast fleet was gathered from all parts of the East, of which Cleopatra furnished a large proportion. After staying with his allies at Samos, Antony moved to Athens. His land forces, which had been in Armenia, came down to the coast of Asia and embarked under L. Canidius Crassus.
Octavian was not behind in his strategic preparations. Military operations began in 31 BC, when his general Agrippa captured Methone, a Greek town allied to Antony. However, by the publication of Antony's will, and by carefully letting it be known in Rome what preparations were going on at Samos and how entirely Antony was acting as the agent of Cleopatra, Octavian produced such a violent outburst of feeling that he easily obtained Antony's deposition from the consulship of 31 BC, for which Antony had been designated. In addition to the deposition, Octavian procured a vote for a proclamation of war against Cleopatra—well understood to mean against Antony, though he was not named. In doing this the Senate issued a war declaration and deprived Antony of any legal authority.
The two fleets met outside the Gulf of Actium (today Preveza) on the morning of 2 September 31 BC. Antony's fleet numbered 500, of which 230 were large war galleys with towers full of armed men. He led these through the straits towards the open sea. Octavian had about 250 warships. His fleet was waiting beyond the straits, led by the experienced admiral Agrippa, commanding from the left wing of the fleet, Lucius Arruntius the centre and Marcus Lurius the right. Titus Statilius Taurus commanded Octavian's armies, and he observed the battle from shore to the north of the straits. Antony and Gellius Publicola commanded the right wing of the Antonian fleet, while Marcus Octavius and Marcus Insteius commanded the center, with Cleopatra's squadron positioned behind them. Gaius Sosius launched the initial attack from the left wing of the fleet, while Antony's chief lieutenant Publius Canidius Crassus was in command of the triumvir's land forces.
Before the battle one of Antony's generals, Quintus Dellius, had defected to Octavian, bringing with him Antony's battle plans.
Shortly after midday, Antony was forced to extend his line from the protection of the shore and finally engage the enemy. Seeing this, Octavian's fleet put to sea. Antony had hoped to use his biggest ships to drive back Agrippa's wing on the north end of his line, but Octavian's entire fleet, aware of this strategy, stayed out of range. By about noon the fleets were in formation but Octavian refused to be drawn out, so Antony was forced to attack. The battle raged all afternoon without decisive result.
Cleopatra's fleet, in the rear, retreated to the open sea without engaging. A breeze sprang up in the right direction and the Egyptian ships were soon hurrying out of sight. Some historians argue that Antony would have been fighting with victory within reach if it were not for Cleopatra's retreat.
Antony, believing that it was mere panic and all was lost, followed the flying squadron. The contagion spread fast; everywhere sails were seen unfurling and towers and other heavy fighting gear going by the board. Some fought on, and it was not until long after nightfall, when many a ship was blazing from the firebrands thrown upon them, that the work was done. Making the best of the situation, Antony burned the ships he could no longer man while clustering the remainder tightly together. With many oarsmen dead or unfit to serve, the powerful, head-on ramming tactic for which the Octaries had been designed was now impossible. Antony transferred to a smaller vessel with his flag and managed to escape, taking a few ships with him as an escort to help break through Octavian's lines. Those left behind were captured or sunk.
A differing account of the battle is argued, postulating that Antony knew he was surrounded and had nowhere to run. To try to turn this to his advantage, he gathered his ships around him in a quasi-horseshoe formation, staying close to the shore for safety. Then, should Octavian's ships approach his, the sea would push them into the shore. Antony foresaw that he would not be able to defeat Octavian's forces, so he and Cleopatra stayed in the rear of the formation. Eventually Antony sent the ships on the northern part of the formation to attack. He had them move out to the north, spreading out Octavian's ships, which up until this point were tightly arranged. He sent Gaius Sosius down to the south to spread the remaining ships out to the south. This left a hole in the middle of Octavian's formation. Antony seized the opportunity and, with Cleopatra on her ship and him on a different ship, sped through the gap and escaped, abandoning his entire force.
With the end of the battle, Octavian exerted himself to save the crews of the burning vessels and had to spend the whole night on board. The next day, as much of the land army as had not escaped to their own lands, submitted, or were followed in their retreat to Macedonia and forced to surrender, Antony's camp was occupied, bringing an end to the war.
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Russia - nuclear-powered cruise missiles, nuclear-powered unmanned submarines and hypersonic ballistic missiles -
https://www.foxnews.com/world/putins-saber-rattling-state-of-the-union-speech-has-some-in-washington-concerned-of-renewed-nuclear-arms-race
>>> Russia nuclear missile explosion resulted in radioactive isotopes found in test samples after accident
8-26-19
Fox News
by Travis Fedschun
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russia-nuclear-missile-explosion-radioactive-isotopes-test-samples
Russia mysteriously cancels local evacuation order near site of deadly nuclear explosion
The Russian government is downplaying the deadly nuclear explosion suspected to be a failed missile test; Lucas Tomlinson reports.
Radioactive isotopes have been discovered by Russia's state weather agency in test samples more than two weeks after a mysterious and deadly explosion earlier this month at a naval weapons testing range in the northwestern part of the country, the agency disclosed Monday.
The Aug. 8 blast took place at a military shooting range in Nyonoksa, in the far northern Arkhangelsk region. Russia's Defense Ministry initially said the blast killed two people and injured six, but the state-controlled nuclear agency, Rosatom, later disclosed the explosion killed five of its workers and injured three others. Rosatom said the explosion occurred while engineers were testing "a nuclear isotope power source" for a rocket and were thrown into the sea by the explosion.
The mysterious explosion was followed by a brief rise in radiation levels in nearby Severodvinsk, a city of 183,000, but the authorities insisted the recorded levels didn't pose any danger to local residents. Russia's state weather agency, Rosgidromet, said earlier this month it believed radiation levels had risen up to 16 times after the accident.
RUSSIA NUCLEAR MISSILE EXPLOSION CAUSED 2 WORKERS TO DIE OF RADIATION SICKNESS, REPORT SAYS
On Monday, Rosgidromet said the brief rise in radiation levels in Severodvinsk was caused by a cloud of radioactive gases that drifted across the area in the wake of the blast.
The cloud of inert radioactive gases formed as a result of a decay of the isotopes, which were identified as Strontium-91, Barium-139, Barium-140, and Lanthanum-140, which have half-lives of 9.3 hours, 83 minutes, 12.8 days and 40 hours respectively, according to Reuters.
Russia's state weather agency, Rosgidromet, has said radiation levels had risen by four to 16 times in the nearby port city of Severodvinsk after the accident
The agency said its monitoring has found no trace of radiation in air or ground samples since Aug. 8.
The development came days after the Arkhangelsk regional administration disclosed Friday that 110 medical workers have undergone checks and that one doctor was found with a low amount of radioactive cesium-137 in his muscle tissue. It said the man's health isn't in danger and argued that he could have gotten the radioactive isotope through his food.
The statement came after Russian media reports claimed dozens of medical workers were exposed to radiation. The Moscow Times, an independent news outlet, first reported health workers who treated those injured in the blast were not informed about the potential radiation risk from handling the patients. Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported traces of cesium 137 were detected in the emergency room area an hour after the patients were brought in, forcing the area to be decontaminated.
"Doctors and nurses used soap solutions for decontamination. The medical staff had only face masks to protect themselves," a hospital employee told Novaya Gazeta on the condition of anonymity.
Speculation over advanced Russian cruise missile; Jennifer Griffin has the details.
RUSSIA RESUMES SHARING RADIATION DATA FOLLOWING MISSILE EXPLOSION, SAYS THEY'RE NOT OBLIGED TO DO SO
Russian officials' changing and contradictory accounts of the incident have drawn comparisons to Soviet attempts to cover up the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the world's worst nuclear disaster.
The Russian Defense Ministry at first denied any radiation leak in the incident even as authorities in nearby Severodvinsk reported a brief rise in radiation levels and advised residents to stay indoors and close the windows.
Shifting stories from officials in Moscow follow a deadly explosion at a remote military base. Gen. Jack Keane weighs in on the changing nature of the global nuclear arms race.
President Vladimir Putin has praised the victims, saying they were doing "very important work for the nation's security," but kept mum on what type of weapon they were testing. U.S. defense officials and outside observers believe it was a missile Russia calls the 9M730 Burevestnik. The NATO alliance has designated it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, which was first revealed by Putin in March 2018 along with other doomsday weapons.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday argued that a Chernobyl-style cover-up is undoable now due to fast and multi-sourced information. He also alleged certain unidentified forces could be interested in making false allegations about radioactive threats.
"The situations like the one in Chernobyl are impossible," he said.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization said last week that several Russian radiation monitoring stations went silent shortly after the explosion. Observers interpreted that as part of an effort to conceal the radiation data, which could help determine the technology that was being tested at the time of the explosion.
NORSAR, a Norwegian agency monitoring the nuclear test ban, said Friday its analysis found that there were two separate explosions in the Arkhangelsk region, the second blast coming about two hours after the first one. It reaffirmed that it hasn't registered any radiation increase.
The Arkhangelsk regional governor, Igor Orlov, rejected the report about the second explosion as "disinformation," according to the Interfax news agency.
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>>> Army Lets Slip That It's Conducting Secret Operation Around D.C.
Bloomberg
By Anthony Capaccio
July 22, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-22/army-lets-slip-that-it-s-conducting-secret-operation-around-d-c
Black Hawk copters working on ‘emerging classified’ mission
Service asks Congress for an extra $1.55 million for project
The Pentagon has revealed a few details about a secret Army mission that has Black Hawk helicopters flying missions over the Washington, D.C., area backed by active-duty and reserve soldiers.
The mysterious classified operation was disclosed when the Army asked Congress for approval to shift funds to provide an extra $1.55 million for aircraft maintenance, air crews and travel in support of an “emerging classified flight mission.”
It’s part of a $2.5 billion request this month to “reprogram” funds in the current fiscal year’s budget to programs considered high priorities. “Without additional funding, the Army will not be able to perform this classified mission,” the Defense Department said.
“Soldiers from assault helicopter company and aviation maintenance units will be supporting the mission with 10 UH-60s and maintenance capabilities for four months,” according to the document, referring to the Black Hawks. The money will also pay for a specialized “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility” at Davison Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just outside Washington.
Army spokesman Wayne Hall declined in an email to comment on some possibilities -- including whether the mission involved protecting the White House or other federal buildings and whether it’s making use of specialized commando units of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which includes the Army’s Delta unit and Navy’s Seal Team Six.
Hall said the operation began early in the fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, and “the duration of the mission is undetermined.”
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>>> Kim Jong-un Inspects New Submarine That Could Increase Range of Missiles
New York Times
By Choe Sang-Hun
July 22, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/world/asia/north-korea-kim-jong-un-submarine.html
SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, has inspected a newly built submarine, the state news media reported on Tuesday, a provocative move as the United States struggles to resume dialogue on ending the country’s nuclear and missile threats.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the country planned to deploy the new submarine soon in waters off its east coast.
The report included three photographs of Mr. Kim visiting a shipyard where the submarine was built. The photos showed part of the submarine, but the article revealed no technical details on the submarine. It also did not specify when Mr. Kim made the visit.
Along with its intercontinental ballistic missiles, North Korea’s submarine and submarine-launched ballistic missile programs pose one of the biggest military threats to the United States and its regional allies because they can extend the range of the North’s nuclear missiles. Submarine-launched missiles are also harder to detect in advance.
North Korea has been known to be building a new submarine in its naval base in Sinpo, on its east coast. It has also tested at least one submarine-launched ballistic missile, known as Pukguksong-1, and is believed to be developing a new and more powerful submarine-launched missile.
On his visit to the shipyard, Mr. Kim was accompanied by top officials responsible for the North’s nuclear, missile and other military procurement programs. Mr. Kim instructed them to strengthen the country’s naval power, including submarines, the North Korean news agency said.
Mr. Kim “expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the submarine was designed and built to be capable of fully implementing the military strategic intention of the party under various circumstances,” the news agency said.
North Korea revealed the news of its new submarine on the same day that John R. Bolton, the White House’s national security adviser, was to arrive in Seoul, the South Korean capital, to discuss North Korea and a festering trade dispute between South Korea and Japan, both American allies. Mr. Bolton met with Japanese officials in Tokyo on Monday.
President Trump and Mr. Kim met on the border that divides the two Koreas last month and agreed to resume staff-level talks between the two countries, months after the leaders’ second summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended with no agreement on ending the North’s nuclear program. But such lower-level talks have yet to take place.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said his administration had had very positive correspondence recently with North Korea, but that the two sides had yet to set a timetable to restart talks.
“We just have a very good relationship and probably they would like to meet, and we’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if a new round of talks had been scheduled with North Korea. “There was a little correspondence recently. We had very positive correspondence with North Korea.”
“When they’re ready, we’ll be ready,” he said.
But the subsequent appearance of the new submarine could complicate efforts to restart the talks, since it raises questions of whether North Korea’s submarine fleet can launch nuclear missiles, said Srinivasan Sitaraman, a North Korea expert at Clark University in Massachusetts.
“Pictures of Kim Jong-un posing next to a large submarine with a displacement capacity of over 2,000 tons and capable of launching nuclear missiles suggests that it would be nearly impossible” to account for the North’s nuclear capabilities, he said.
North Korea warned last week that if the United States pressed ahead with joint military exercises with South Korea planned for next month, it could jeopardize future nuclear talks and prompt it to resume nuclear and long-range missile testing, which were last conducted in late 2017.
North Korea said in 2016 that it had successfully tested the Pukguksong-1, its first submarine-launched ballistic missile. The two-stage, solid-fuel missile was designed to be carried on North Korea’s single Sinpo-class submarine. But that submarine only had one missile tube. That left outside military analysts to suspect that North Korea would try to build more such submarines or a new submarine with multiple tubes.
In recent months, South Korean military officials have said North Korea was building a modified version of the Sinpo-class submarine, which it has used for its Pukguksong-1 testing.
In a report posted last month on 38 North, a website dedicated to studying North Korea, Jack Liu and Peter Makowsky, experts on the North Korean military, said the North appeared to be building another Sinpo-class ballistic missile submarine. They based their report on analysis of satellite imagery of the Sinpo naval shipyard.
After its intercontinental ballistic missile test in November 2017, North Korea boasted of an ability to strike the continental United States with nuclear missiles. But the North has no large, stealthy and long-range submarine to carry and launch such long-range missiles.
Nor does it have submarines advanced enough to travel long distances without detection to attack distant targets across the Pacific. Even the new submarine that the North has been building, which has a diesel engine, will not be enough to make a round trip across the Pacific without surfacing and exposing itself for detection, South Korean defense officials said.
Nevertheless, North Korea’s growing submarine and submarine-launched missile programs have alarmed leaders of the region, as they demonstrate the advances the secretive country has made in its efforts to significantly enhance the range and stealth of its missiles.
The North’s submarine-launched Pukguksong-1 has a range of more than 900 miles, South Korean defense officials said. Photos carried in a state-run North Korean newspaper in 2017 indicated that North Korea was developing a new longer-range version known as a Pukguksong-3. A longer-range version of such a missile would give the North considerably more strategic leverage, military experts said.
Some analysts in South Korea said the Pukguksong-3 also appeared to be designed to carry a nuclear warhead.
Until now, North Korea has an outdated fleet of 70 submarines, most of them small vessels unfit for operations beyond coastal waters.
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>>> Artificial intelligence designs metamaterials used in the invisibility cloak
Phys Org
7-16-19
by Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-artificial-intelligence-metamaterials-invisibility-cloak.html
Schematic diagram of an artificial neural network that can design arbitrary photonic structures. Cross section of structures is mapped as two-dimensional cross-sectional bitmap so that artificial neural network can design structures of metasurface antenna which cannot be designed with structural parameters.
Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties not found in naturally occurring materials, and they are best known as materials for invisibility cloaks often featured in sci-fi novels or games. By precisely designing artificial atoms smaller than the wavelength of light, and by controlling the polarization and spin of light, researchers achieve new optical properties that are not found in nature. However, the current process requires much trial and error to find the right material. Such efforts are time-consuming and inefficient; artificial intelligence (AI) could provide a solution for this problem.
The research group of Prof. Junsuk Rho, Sunae So and Jungho Mun of Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH have developed a design with a higher degree of freedom that allows researchers to choose materials and design photonic structures arbitrarily by using deep learning. Their findings are published in several journals including Applied Materials and Interfaces, Nanophotonics, Microsystems & Nanoengineering, Optics Express, and Scientific Reports.
AI can be trained with a vast amount of data, and it can learn designs of various metamaterials and the correlation between photonic structures and their optical properties. Using this training process, it can provide a design method that makes a photonic structure with desired optical properties. Once trained, it can provide a desired design promptly and efficiently. This has already been researched at various institutions in the U.S. such as MIT, Stanford University and Georgia Institute of Technology. However, the previous studies require inputs of materials and structural parameters beforehand, and adjusting photonic structures afterwards.
Schematics of and artificial neural network that can design structural parameters and material simultaneously. When desired optical properties (electric/magnetic dipole spectrum) is inputted, each thickness and types of materials of the three-layer core-shell nanoparticle are provided as output.
Prof. Rho and his group taught an AI system to design arbitrary photonic structures and gave additional level of freedom of the design by categorizing types of materials and adding them as a design factor, which made it possible to design appropriate materials for relevant optical properties. Analysis of metamaterials obtained through this design method revealed that they had identical optical properties predicted by the artificial neural network.
The research team, who have published various research findings on the design of metamaterials and optics theory, used the programming language Python. Their design method is revolutionary in many ways. First of all, it significantly reduced the time needed to design photonic structures. It allows various designs of new metamaterials because scientists are no longer limited to conducting empirical designs to obtain results.
The resulting metamaterials can be utilized in display, security, and military technologies. In this regard, introduction of AI to the design method is expected to make important contributions to the technological development of metamaterials.
Lead researcher Prof. Junsuk Rho said, "Our research was successful in bringing a higher degree of freedom to design, but the new system still requires users to input certain problem settings at the beginning. It sometimes produced untenable designs, and therefore made it impossible to produce desired metamaterials. So I'd like to take our findings a step further by developing a complete design method of metamaterials using AI. Also, I'd like to make innovative and practical metamaterials by training AI with reviews of the design constructed in consideration of final products."
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Weaponized ticks - >>> House wants Pentagon IG to examine whether U.S. weaponized ticks
CBS
by Emily Tillett
7-16-19
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-wants-pentagon-ig-to-examine-whether-us-weaponized-ticks/ar-AAEpBgg?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout#page=2
It's typical for lawmakers to offer amendments to the sweeping National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the defense spending bill that is reauthorized every term, and this year has been no different. One of the more unusual amendments is one offered by New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith to order the Pentagon inspector general to conduct a review about whether the military experimented with making ticks into biological weapons.
The amendment, passed by the House last week by a voice vote, would require the Pentagon inspector general to examine "whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding its use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975."
"My amendment tasks the DOD inspector general to ask the hard questions and report back," Smith said on the House floor Friday. During the debate on his amendment, Smith said the investigation would explore the following questions:
What were the parameters of the program? Who ordered it? Was there ever any accidental release anywhere or at any time of any diseased ticks? Were any ticks released by design? Did the program contribute to the disease burden? Could any of this information help current-day researchers find a way to mitigate these diseases?
The theory, which sounds like something straight out of a science fiction novel, contends that bioweapon specialists packed ticks with pathogens that could cause severe disabilities, disease and death among potential enemies to the homeland. Smith said he was inspired to add the amendment to the annual defense bill by "a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons."
Those books, however, have been questioned by some experts who dismiss long-held conspiracy theories that the federal government aided the spread of tick-borne diseases, and federal agencies, including the CDC, may have participated in a cover-up of sorts to conceal findings about the spread of Lyme disease.
Smith has been a fierce advocate of raising awareness about Lyme disease and increasing prevention efforts. Smith, the co-chair of the House Lyme Disease Caucus, earlier this year introduced the "Ticks: Identify, Control, and Knockout Act'' (TICK Act), a bill to come up with a national strategy to fight Lyme disease. If passed, the measure would authorize an additional $180 million to boost funding for Lyme disease research, prevention and treatment programs.
The CDC currently spends about $11 million on Lyme disease research.
It remains to be seen whether Smith's tick amendment will make it into the final defense spending measure. Both the House and Senate have passed their own versions, and soon, representatives from both the House and Senate will meet in conference committee to reconcile the two bills.
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>>> Turkey takes first shipment of Russian S-400 air-defense system in defiance of U.S. and NATO warnings
The first components for the system arrived July 12 at Murted Air Base in Ankara, the Turkish Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Washington Post
By Kareem Fahim, Karen DeYoung, and Amie Ferris-Rotman
July 12, 2019
ISTANBUL — Turkey has begun taking delivery of Russia’s S-400 air-defense system, the Turkish Defense Ministry said Friday, completing a deal that has threatened its standing in NATO and is likely to trigger sanctions from the United States.
The first components for the system arrived Friday at Murted Air Base in Ankara, the Turkish capital, the ministry said in a statement. Turkish television stations broadcast footage of the delivery throughout the morning as Russian cargo planes arrived at the base and equipment was offloaded.
The purchase underscored President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing willingness to coordinate with Russia and risked a new crisis in relations between Turkey and the United States. Although U.S. law mandates sanctions against countries making a “significant” deal with the Russian defense industry, the Trump administration has given mixed signals about how exactly it might respond if Turkey went through with the purchase.
A basket of measures listed under legislation passed in 2017 — from which the administration is required to select at least five — includes economic sanctions, revocation of visas and prohibition of all Turkish procurement of U.S. defense equipment.
The State Department and Pentagon have also warned of dire additional repercussions, including canceling the delivery of at least 100 U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets purchased by Turkey, as well as ending participation of the Turkish defense industry in producing components for the aircraft.
The breach would not only strike a heavy blow to Turkish manufacturers, but could also affect negotiations with the United States over Syria.
President Trump has been publicly supportive of Erdogan and last month expressed sympathy for the Turkish leader’s decision to purchase the S-400s. Erdogan, after meeting Trump at the Group of 20 summit in June, said he did not believe the United States would sanction Turkey.
The legislation allows the president to delay the sanctions, provided he certifies to Congress every 180 days that Turkey is “substantially reducing” its dealings with Russia.
But any hesitancy on Trump’s part is likely to meet stiff bipartisan resistance and a possible legal challenge.
“The law is clear, and I believe he will be compelled to follow the law with respect to sanctions,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a BBC interview early Friday. Separate measures in Defense appropriations bills require cancellation of the F-35s.
In a brief statement Friday, acting defense secretary Mark Esper said, “We are aware of Turkey taking delivery of the S-400, our position regarding the F-35 has not changed and I will speak with my Turkish counterpart .?.?. this afternoon. So there will be more to follow.”
The White House also said it was aware of the delivery, and a senior administration official noted that Trump had said at the G-20 that the issue was “a problem, there’s no question about it.”
The delivery of the Russian system came two days after Ambassador David M. Satterfield, Washington’s incoming envoy to Turkey, arrived to take up his post in Ankara.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said three Russian planes arrived on Friday and that the “process will continue in the coming days,” according to a defense ministry statement. Turkey’s discussions with the United States over the possible purchase of the Patriot missile system, the U.S.-made equivalent of the S-400, were continuing, he added, calling the Patriot system a “long-range air and missile defense system that we need.”
The Turkish statement did not say which S-400 components had been delivered, or when or where the completed system would be ultimately deployed. Senate aides monitoring the administration’s reaction said it was not clear what components would trigger the sanctions.
In remarks to reporters after his June meeting with Erdogan, Trump largely echoed the Turkish leader’s talking points, saying Turkey “was not treated fairly” by the Obama administration, which “said no, no, no to Turkey when they wanted to purchase Patriots,” and Ankara had then turned to Russia for its air defense needs.
But Trump officials have emphasized that the current administration’s policy has been largely the same as Obama’s. The previous administration offered the sale but would not meet Turkey’s terms on price and demands that it be transferred system technology that would ultimately allow it to build its own air defense. Trump officials, who have been negotiating with Turkey for more than two years, have said they believed they improved the terms but essentially offered the same deal.
Turkish officials have said repeatedly that those terms were insufficient, the $3.5 billion price tag was too high and that the United States was becoming an unreliable partner. Russia, which has moved rapidly to expand its defense sales, especially in areas where it believes it is competitive with the United States, quickly jumped into the breach with an offer for quick delivery at two-thirds of the cost.
“This is the first time that Russia has installed military hardware of such sophistication in a NATO country,” said Marc Pierini, the former European Union ambassador to Turkey and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. “The history of the relationship between Russia and Turkey is rather agitated and often hostile. But the current honeymoon is characterized by opportunities gained on both sides. Russia is making a move against NATO, and Turkey is making a move to restore prestige.”
U.S. sanctions on Turkey were “pretty much guaranteed,” he said. “But this is not so much about the sanctions but about Turkey being excluded from the F-35 program. This will open up new opportunities for Russia as well — they’ll be able to sell their Sukhoi Su-57 equivalent. This will become a huge problem for NATO because the trust will be lost. But this is essentially what Russia is looking for — the erosion of that trust.”
A NATO official said Friday that while it was up to “allies to decide what military equipment they buy,” the alliance was “concerned about the potential consequences of Turkey’s decision to acquire the S-400 system. Interoperability of our armed forces is fundamental to NATO for the conduct of our operations and missions.”
U.S. officials have fretted that Turkey’s possession of the S-400 could give Russia access to secrets of the F-35’s stealth technology. Last month, the Pentagon said it would halt the training of Turkish pilots to fly the warplane and would not deliver several of the aircraft that had already been signed over to Turkey.
“Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air and missile defense system remains incompatible with the F-35 program. Turkey will not be permitted to have both systems,” Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said in a statement last week.
Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the first shipment of the components needed for the S-400 missile systems was delivered to Turkey on Friday, Russian media reported, citing a statement. The remaining elements will be delivered to Turkey later, the ministry statement said, “in strict accordance with the terms of the contract concluded with the Turkish side.”
Some in the Russian government praised Ankara’s decision to acquire the S-400 systems despite the pressure from the United States and NATO.
“They came under unprecedented pressure but nevertheless prioritized their national security,” senior Russian lawmaker Franz Klintsevich said of Turkish leaders, according to the Interfax news agency. “They acted absolutely correctly."
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>>> The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat
The Jetson prototype can pick up on a unique cardiac signature from 200 meters away, even through clothes.
MIT Technology Review
by David Hambling
Jun 27, 2019
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613891/the-pentagon-has-a-laser-that-can-identify-people-from-a-distanceby-their-heartbeat/
Everyone’s heart is different. Like the iris or fingerprint, our unique cardiac signature can be used as a way to tell us apart. Crucially, it can be done from a distance.
It’s that last point that has intrigued US Special Forces. Other long-range biometric techniques include gait analysis, which identifies someone by the way he or she walks. This method was supposedly used to identify an infamous ISIS terrorist before a drone strike. But gaits, like faces, are not necessarily distinctive. An individual’s cardiac signature is unique, though, and unlike faces or gait, it remains constant and cannot be altered or disguised.
Long-range detection
A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. “I don’t want to say you could do it from space,” says Steward Remaly, of the Pentagon’s Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office, “but longer ranges should be possible.”
Contact infrared sensors are often used to automatically record a patient’s pulse. They work by detecting the changes in reflection of infrared light caused by blood flow. By contrast, the new device, called Jetson, uses a technique known as laser vibrometry to detect the surface movement caused by the heartbeat. This works though typical clothing like a shirt and a jacket (though not thicker clothing such as a winter coat).
The most common way of carrying out remote biometric identification is by face recognition. But this needs good, frontal view of the face, which can be hard to obtain, especially from a drone. Face recognition may also be confused by beards, sunglasses, or headscarves.
Cardiac signatures are already used for security identification. The Canadian company Nymi has developed a wrist-worn pulse sensor as an alternative to fingerprint identification. The technology has been trialed by the Halifax building society in the UK.
Jetson extends this approach by adapting an off-the shelf device that is usually used to check vibration from a distance in structures such as wind turbines. For Jetson, a special gimbal was added so that an invisible, quarter-size laser spot could be kept on a target. It takes about 30 seconds to get a good return, so at present the device is only effective where the subject is sitting or standing.
Better than face recognition
Remaly’s team then developed algorithms capable of extracting a cardiac signature from the laser signals. He claims that Jetson can achieve over 95% accuracy under good conditions, and this might be further improved. In practice, it’s likely that Jetson would be used alongside facial recognition or other identification methods.
Wenyao Xu of the State University of New York at Buffalo has also developed a remote cardiac sensor, although it works only up to 20 meters away and uses radar. He believes the cardiac approach is far more robust than facial recognition. “Compared with face, cardiac biometrics are more stable and can reach more than 98% accuracy,” he says.
One glaring limitation is the need for a database of cardiac signatures, but even without this the system has its uses. For example, an insurgent seen in a group planting an IED could later be positively identified from a cardiac signature, even if the person’s name and face are unknown. Biometric data is also routinely collected by US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, so cardiac data could be added to that library.
In the longer run, this technology could find many more uses, its developers believe. For example, a doctor could scan for arrythmias and other conditions remotely, or hospitals could monitor the condition of patients without having to wire them up to machines.
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>>> Iran shoots down U.S. naval drone in Persian Gulf region, escalating tensions
Iran said June 20 it had shot down a U.S. surveillance drone that the Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed was inside Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. (Iran Press)
Washington Post
By Erin Cunningham and Dan Lamothe
June 20, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iran-shoots-down-us-naval-drone-in-persian-gulf-region-officials/2019/06/20/88f6dc52-9328-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.69ba0a2e6614
DUBAI — Iran shot down an airliner-size U.S. naval surveillance drone near the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian and U.S. officials said Thursday, adding to weeks of tensions in the Persian Gulf region amid growing concerns of a wider military confrontation.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that it targeted the drone — which it identified as an RQ-4 Global Hawk — inside Iranian airspace over the southern province of Hormozgan, next to the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. Central Command confirmed the incident Thursday but denied the aircraft was in Iranian airspace.
“U.S. Central Command can confirm that a U.S. Navy . . . aircraft was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile system while operating in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz,” a Centcom spokesman, Navy Capt. Bill Urban, said in a statement.
He said the drone, a RQ-4A Global Hawk, was shot down in the early hours of the morning Wednesday.
“Iranian reports that the aircraft was over Iran are false,” he said. “This was an unprovoked attack on a U.S. surveillance asset in international airspace.”
It marks the second time this month that the U.S. military has confirmed the shoot-down of a drone, following the June 6 loss of an MQ-9 Reaper drone that the Pentagon said was shot down by Houthi forces from Yemen that are allied with Iran.
But the downing of an RQ-4 is much more significant, considering its size and value. With a wingspan of 131 feet, each Global Hawk is worth more than $100 million, packed with sensors and able to fly at high altitudes of more than 55,000 feet to observe broad areas for periods that can stretch longer than a day.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the RQ-4 shot down by Iran was an older “demonstrator” model transferred from the Air Force to the Navy to carry out a mission known as Broad Area Maritime Surveillance. The Pentagon has since begun testing a newer cousin, the MQ-4C Triton.
Neither version carries weapons.
The drone was shot down just days before acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan is due to leave office. He is handing responsibility for the military to another acting official, Mark Esper, who does not have experience leading policy decisions at the Cabinet level. Esper, who now serves as army secretary, is due to take over on Monday.
The Revolutionary Guard’s chief commander, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, called the downing of the drone “a clear message to America.”
A U.S. official said the drone was targeted by an Iranian surface-to-air missile in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, the Associated Press reported. Nearly a quarter of the world’s oil passes through the waterway, which connects Middle East energy producers to markets around the globe.
“Our borders are Iran’s red line, and we will react strongly against any aggression,” Salami said Thursday in remarks carried by Iranian state television.
“Iran is not seeking war with any country, but we are fully prepared to defend Iran,” he said.
[Some Iranians fear hard-liners in U.S. and Tehran want to provoke war]
Iran’s Mashregh news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported that the drone was shot down by the Guards’ Sevom Khordad missile defense system.
The Guard said in an updated statement that the U.S. drone had “left a base in the southern Persian Gulf” and was heading toward Iran’s Chabahar port “in full secrecy, violating the rules of international aviation.”
“We warn of the consequences of such illegal and provocative measures,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, state TV reported.
The attacks come amid a simmering standoff between the United States and Iran in the Persian Gulf region following assaults on Japanese and Norwegian tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration has blamed Iran for the attacks, at least one of which was carried out using a limpet mine similar to those previously displayed at Iranian military parades.
Iran has denied involvement and called the accusation “unfair” and “a lie.”
The U.S. Central Command said that a modified Iranian SA-7 surface-to-air missile was fired at an MQ-9 reaper drone over the Gulf of Oman as it surveilled the attack on the Japanese tanker, Kokuka Courageous, on June 13.
Earlier this month, Houthi rebels shot down an MQ-9 over Yemen using an SA-6 surface-to-air missile, Centcom said, which it claimed “was enabled by Iranian assistance.”
Saudi Arabia said Thursday that Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired a rocket targeting a desalination plant in the kingdom overnight. The rocket caused no damage, the official Saudi Press Agency reported, quoting military spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki.
In December 2011, Iran captured an American stealth drone operated from a base in Afghanistan, purportedly after an Iranian cyberwarfare unit commandeered it and landed it near the city of Kashmar in northeastern Iran. Tehran claimed that the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel surveillance drone was detected inside Iranian airspace about 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials said operators lost control of the drone while it was flying on the Afghan side of the border with Iran.
Iran later claimed that it recovered data from the drone and reverse-engineered the aircraft to produce its own version.
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>>> Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Goes Neocon
The president's equivocating remarks over the defense secretary show that Bolton and Pompeo are indeed winning.
By ROBERT W. MERRY
October 15, 2018
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/general-mattis-vs-trumps-warhawks/
In covering President Donald Trump’s recent pregnant comments about Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, The Wall Street Journal tucked away in its story an observation that hints at the president’s foreign policy direction. In an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes, the president described Mattis as “sort of a Democrat if you want to know the truth” and suggested he wouldn’t be surprised if his military chief left his post soon. After calling him “a good guy” and saying the two “get along very well,” Trump added, “He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves…. That’s Washington.”
Actually that’s Trump. He demands total and utter loyalty from his people and gives none in return. In just his first 14 months as president, he hired three national security advisors, reflecting the unstable relationships he often has with his top aides. Following the 60 Minutes interview, Washington was of course abuzz with speculation about what all this might mean for Mattis’s fate and who might be the successor if Mattis were to quit or be fired. It was just the kind of fodder Washington loves—human drama revealing Trump’s legendary inconstancy amid prospective new turmoil in the capital.
But far more significant than Mattis’s future or Trump’s love of chaos was a sentence embedded in the Journal‘s report. After noting that recent polls indicated that Mattis enjoys strong support from the American people, reporter Nancy A. Youssef writes: “But his influence within the administration has waned in recent months, particularly following the arrival of John Bolton as national security adviser and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo as secretary of state.”
The significance here is that Bolton and Pompeo represent just about everything Trump ran against during his 2016 presidential campaign. He ran against the country’s foreign policy establishment and its rush to war in Iraq; its support of NATO’s provocative eastward expansion; its abiding hostility toward Russia; its destabilization of the Middle East through ill-conceived and ill-fated activities in Iraq, Libya, and Syria; its ongoing and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan; and its enthusiasm for regime change and nation-building around the world. Bolton and Pompeo represent precisely those kinds of policies and actions as well as the general foreign policy outlook that spawned them.
Trump gave every indication during the campaign that he would reverse those policies and avoid those kinds of actions. He even went so far, in his inimitable way, of accusing the Bush administration of lying to the American people in taking the country to war in Iraq, as opposed to making a reckless and stupid, though honest, mistake about that country’s weapons of mass destruction. He said it would be great to get along with Russia and criticized NATO’s aggressive eastward push. He said our aim in Syria should be to combat Islamist extremism, not depose Bashar al-Assad as its leader. In promulgating his America First approach, he specifically eschewed any interest in nation-building abroad.
The one area where he seemed to embrace America’s post-Cold War aggressiveness was in his attitude toward Iran. But even there he seemed less bellicose than many of his Republican opponents in the 2016 primaries, who said they would rip up the Iran nuclear deal on their first day in office. Trump, by contrast, said it was a bad deal but one he would seek to improve.
Still, generally speaking, anyone listening to Trump carefully before the election would have been justified in concluding that, if he meant what he said, he would reverse America’s post-Cold War foreign policy as practiced by George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Now we know he didn’t mean what he said, and the latest tiff over the fate of Mattis crystallizes that reality. It’s not that Mattis represents the kind of anti-establishment outlook that Trump projected during the campaign; in fact, he is a thoroughgoing product of that establishment. He said Iran was the main threat to stability in the Middle East. He supported sending arms to the Syrian rebels. He decried Russia’s intent to “break NATO apart.”
Thus any neutral observer, at the time of Mattis’s selection as defense secretary, might have concluded that he was more bent on an adventurous American foreign policy than his boss. But it turned out to be just the opposite. There are two reasons for this. First, Mattis is cautious by nature, and he seems to have taken Trump at his word that he didn’t want any more unnecessary American wars of choice. Hence he opposed the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal prior to Trump’s decision to pull America out of it. That action greatly increased the chances that America and Iran could find themselves on a path to war. Mattis also redeployed some military resources from the Middle East to other areas designed to check actions by Russia and China, which he considered greater threats to U.S. security.
And second, it turns out that Trump has no true convictions when it comes to world affairs. He brilliantly discerned the frustrations of many Americans over the foreign policy of the previous 16 years and hit just the right notes to leverage those frustrations during the campaign. But his actual foreign policy has manifested a lack of consistent and strong philosophy. Consider his approach to NATO. During the campaign he criticized the alliance’s eastward push and aggressive approach to Russia; then as president he accepted NATO’s inclusion of tiny Montenegro, a slap at the Russians; then later he suggested Montenegro’s NATO status could force the U.S. into a major conflagration if that small nation, which he described as aggressive, got itself into a conflict with a non-NATO neighbor. Such inconsistencies are not the actions of a man with strong convictions. They are hallmarks of someone who is winging it on the basis of little knowledge.
That seems to have presented a marvelous opportunity to Bolton and Pompeo, whose philosophy and convictions are stark and visible to all. Bolton has made clear his desire for America to bring about regime change in Iran and North Korea. He supported the Iraq war and has never wavered in the face of subsequent events. He has advocated a preemptive strike against North Korea. Pompeo harbors similar views. He favored withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and has waxed bellicose on both Iran and Russia.
Thus a conflict was probably inevitable between Mattis and these more recent administration arrivals. The New York Times speculates that Bolton likely undermined Mattis’s standing in Trump’s eyes. Writes the paper: “Mr. Bolton, an ideological conservative whose views on foreign policy are more hawkish than those of Mr. Mattis, appears to have deepened the president’s suspicions that his defense secretary’s view of the world is more like those of Democrats than his own.”
The paper didn’t clarify the basis of this speculation, but it makes sense. Bolton and Pompeo are gut fighters who go for the jugular. Trump is malleable, susceptible to obsequious manipulation. Mattis is an old-style military man with a play-it-straight mentality and a discomfort with guile. Thus it appears we may be seeing before our eyes the transformation of Trump the anti-establishment candidate into Trump the presidential neocon.
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>>> United Technologies nears deal to merge aerospace unit with Raytheon: source
Reuters
Greg Roumeliotis, Harry Brumpton
6-8-19
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utc-m-a-raytheon/united-technologies-nears-deal-to-merge-aerospace-unit-with-raytheon-source-idUSKCN1T90T0
(Reuters) - United Technologies Corp is nearing a deal to merge its aerospace business with U.S. defense contractor Raytheon Co and form a new company worth well over $100 billion, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday.
United Technologies and Raytheon are seeking to pool resources through what would be the biggest merger in the aerospace and defense sectors.
United Technologies provides primarily commercial plane makers with equipment such as electronics and communications equipment, whereas Raytheon is a vendor mainly to the U.S. government for equipment in military aircraft and missiles.
The deal would be structured as an all-stock merger of equals because United Technologies would separately spin off its Carrier air conditioning business and Otis elevator division, as it has previously announced it would do, the source said.
If the negotiations between United Technologies and Raytheon are completed successfully, a deal could be announced as early as Monday, the source added, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential.
United Technologies declined to comment, while Raytheon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
United Technologies has a market capitalization of $114 billion, but without Carrier and Otis, its value could be less than $60 billion, bringing it closer to Raytheon’s market capitalization of $52 billion.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the potential deal, stating that United Technologies Chief Executive Greg Hayes is expected to lead the newly created company, while Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy would be chairman.
Raytheon, maker of the Tomahawk and the Patriot missile systems, and other U.S. military contractors are expected to benefit from strong global demand for fighter jets and munitions as well as higher U.S. defense spending in fiscal 2020, a lot of it driven by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
However, Pentagon spending is projected to slow down after an initial boost under Trump. A deal with United Technologies would allow Raytheon to expand into commercial aviation, which does not rely on government spending like the defense sector.
Conversely, United Technologies could benefit from reducing its exposure to commercial aerospace clients amid concerns over the rise of protectionism in international trade. The International Air Transport Association, which represents about 290 carriers accounting for more than 80% of global air traffic, cited these concerns earlier this month, when it said that the industry is expected to post a $28 billion profit in 2019, down from a December forecast of $35.5 billion.
United Technologies has said it is on track to separate Carrier and Otis in the first half of 2020, leaving the company focused on its aerospace business through its $23 billion acquisition of Rockwell Collins, which was completed in 2018, and the Pratt & Whitney engines business.
CHINESE SCRUTINY
Chinese authorities scrutinized United Technologies’ Rockwell Collins acquisition heavily, given its footprint in that country’s market. This resulted in the deal closing in November 2018, as opposed to the third quarter of that year, which the companies initially targeted.
Trade tensions between the United States and China were blamed at least partly by analysts for that delay, and it is not clear whether the deteriorating relations between the world’s two largest economies could also weigh on the Raytheon deal.
United Technologies and Raytheon appear to have little overlap in their businesses, an argument the companies could make once U.S. antitrust regulators start scrutinizing their merger. However, major commercial aerospace companies, such as Boeing Co and Airbus SE, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense, have been known to use their significant purchasing power to seek concessions from their suppliers.
The deal with Raytheon could put pressure on General Electric Co, which also competes with United Technologies for commercial aerospace clients, to seek scale. It could also push other defense contractors, such as Lockheed Martin Corp, to explore expanding their commercial businesses.
Last year, military communication equipment providers Harris Corp and L3 Technologies Inc announced an all-stock merger that, once completed this summer, will create the sixth-largest U.S. defense contractor.
United Technologies was previously a bigger player in the defense sector. But in 2015, it agreed to sell Sikorsky, the maker of military helicopter Black Hawk, to Lockheed Martin for $9 billion.
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>>> China conducts first sea-based space rocket launch
AFP
6-5-19
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-conducts-first-sea-based-space-rocket-launch/ar-AACqueE#page=2
China launched a space rocket from sea for the first time on Wednesday, its space agency announced, the latest step in Beijing's push to become a major space power.
The Asian giant now spends more than Russia and Japan on its civil and military space programmes -- unveiling ambitious plans for missions to the moon and beyond in the coming decade.
A Long March 11 rocket was launched from a ship in the Yellow Sea just after midday, the China National Space Administration said in a statement.
"This is the first time that China has... (tested a) launch vehicle at sea," it added.
The rocket carried two experimental satellites and five commercial ones.
State broadcaster CCTV, in a post on the Twitter-like Weibo platform, hailed it as "a new launching mode for China to enter space quickly".
The test marks another win for Beijing's space programme.
Earlier this year, China became the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon.
It also unveiled ambitious plans to build a research base on the lunar surface, send a probe to Mars and build a space station in Earth orbit.
In 2003, China became only the third nation to have the capability of launching humans into space.
And with sea launches, China now has the ability to deploy satellites from a mobile platform.
Most recently, Russian-backed firm Sea Launch used a floating platform to launch dozens of rockets between 1999 and 2014.
According to Russian company Energia, the majority shareholder in Sea Launch, launching from sea has a number of advantages, such as the ability to send off rockets from a variety of locations on Earth, as well as reduced costs and risks.
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>>> Radware Ltd. develops, manufactures, and markets cyber security and application delivery solutions for applications in physical, virtual, cloud, and software defined data centers worldwide. The company offers DefensePro, a real-time network attack prevention device; AppWall, a Web application firewall; and DefenseFlow, a cyber-command and control application. It also provides Alteon D Line, an application delivery controller/load balancer for Web, cloud, and mobile based applications; and LinkProof NG, a multi-homing and enterprise gateway solution for connectivity of enterprise and cloud-based applications. In addition, the company offers Security Updates Subscription, which provides security updates to protect customers against the latest threats; ERT Active Attackers Feed that provides customers with information pertaining to attack sources recently involved in DDoS attacks; Alteon Global Elastic License that captures application lifecycle for large ADC deployments; APSolute Vision, a management and monitoring tool for company's application delivery and cyber security solutions; and MSSP Portal, a DDoS detection and mitigation service portal. Further, it provides Cloud DDoS Protection Service, which offers a range of enterprise-grade DDoS protection services in the cloud, as well as technical support, professional, managed, and training and certification services to its customers. The company sells its products primarily to independent distributors, including value added resellers, original equipment manufacturers, and system integrators. Radware Ltd. was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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>>> Fukushima Fallout: the Irradiated Sailors of the USS Ronald Reagan
American sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan were exposed to radiation from Fukushima. Many are sick. Some have died. Why can’t they get justice?
March 07th, 2018
By Linda Pentz Gunter
https://www.mintpressnews.com/fukushima-fallout-the-irradiated-sailors-of-the-uss-ronald-reagan/238590/
Coverage of the USS Ronald Reagan has been astoundingly limited, wrote Der Spiegel in a February 2015 story. Since then, nothing much has changed.
The German magazine was referring to the saga of the American Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier whose crew pitched in to help victims of the March 11, 2011 Tsunami and earthquake in Japan, then found themselves under the radioactive plume from the stricken coastal nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Since then, crew members in eye-popping numbers have come down with unexplained illnesses — more than 70 and still counting. Some have died. And many are suing.
The USS Reagan was part of Operation Tomodachi, a U.S. armed forces mission involving 24,000 U.S. service members, and numerous ships and aircraft bringing aid to the victims of the tsunami and earthquake.
On January 5, 2018, a federal judge in San Diego, CA, dismissed the latest version of a class action lawsuit brought by USS Reagan sailors and US Marines. This was just the latest milestone in a long and winding path to justice strewn with roadblocks and delays.
The original class-action lawsuit — Cooper et al v. Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc., was filed in San Diego, the home port of the USS Reagan, on December 21, 2012. A second class action suit — Bartel et al v. Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc. et al — was subsequently filed on August 18, 2017 and was the case dismissed in January.
The plaintiffs are represented by California attorneys Charles Bonner and Paul Garner, and by Edwards Kirby, the North Carolina firm led by former U.S. Senator, John Edwards.
Cooper now has 236 named plaintiffs and Bartel 157. But, wrote attorney Cate Edwards of Edwards Kirby and daughter of John Edwards, in an email;
We have about 34 additional plaintiffs who have contacted us since the filing of the Bartel complaint, and that number continues to grow on a weekly basis.” As a class action the suit also “encompasses additional, unnamed class members— up to 70,000 American servicemen and women who served in Operation Tomodachi and may have been exposed to the radiation from Fukushima,” Edwards wrote.
Sadly those numbers sometimes also decline. Nine of the plaintiffs have already died. It is unknown how many others who took part in Operation Tomodachi but did not join the suit, may also have died.
The Bartel plaintiffs are requesting an award of $5 billion to compensate them for injuries, losses and future expenses associated with their exposure to radiation, as a result of what they allege is TEPCO & GE’s negligence. The Cooper plaintiffs have asked for an award of $1 billion.
Bartel is an extension of Cooper, with different plaintiffs but virtually identical facts and claims. It had to be filed separately, explained Edwards, because at the time more sailors came forward, the Cooper suit was stuck in appeal. Eventually, Edwards said, the lawyers hope to consolidate the two suits “for litigation on the merits.”
But almost seven years after the Fukushima disaster, those merits are yet to be heard, with the case mired in legal wrangling and delays brought by the defendants — TEPCO, along with General Electric, EBASCO, Toshiba and Hitachi, the builders and suppliers of the Fukushima nuclear reactors.
One such delay occurred when TEPCO and the Japanese government tried to force the case to be heard in Japan. But on June 22, 2017, the attorneys won in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and ensured the case would be heard in the U.S.
The plaintiffs charge that TEPCO lied to the public and the U.S. Navy about the radiation levels at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant at the time the Japanese government was asking for help for victims of the earthquake and Tsunami. By doing so, TEPCO deliberately allowed those involved in Operation Tomodachi to sail into harm’s way and become exposed to the radiation spewing from the stricken reactors on the battered Japanese coast.
A floating pariah
Whether or not U.S. military commanders knew of the radiation risks once the readings were in, is moot legally. The plaintiffs are barred from suing the U.S. Navy because of the Feres Doctrine, dating from the 1950s, and which prohibits any member of the military from recovering damages from the government for injuries sustained during active military service.
The USS Ronald Reagan arrived off the Japan coast before dawn on March 12, 2011 with a crew of 4,500. It had been on its way to South Korea but returned to join Operation Tomodachi.
But what actually happened to the Reagan after that is still clouded in confusion, or possibly cover-up. After it got doused in the radioactive plume, then drew in radioactively contaminated water through its desalination system — which the crew used for drinking, cooking and bathing — it turned into a pariah ship, just two and a half months into its aid mission.
Floating at sea, the USS Reagan was turned away by Japan, South Korea and Guam. For two and a half months it was the radioactive MS St. Louis, not welcome in any port until Thailand finally took the ship into harbor.
There is no disagreement that the radioactive plume from Fukushima — which largely blew out to sea rather onto land — passed over the Reagan. Radiation meters on board confirmed this. But the levels of exposure are disputed, as is how close the ship came to shore and the melting Fukushima reactors and how often it strayed into — or stayed within — the plume.
Some versions have the radiation readings on board at 30 times“normal,” other 300 times. Official Navy reports say the ship stayed 100 nautical miles away from the Japan coast.
But some crew members dispute that, saying they were at times just two miles away from shore. In an interview with journalist Roger Witherspoon for his article in Truthout, Navy Quartermaster, Maurice Ennis described a “cat and mouse” game played by the ship to try to stay out of the plume.
How close the ship came to the Fukushima reactors specifically, as opposed to the Japanese shoreline, is also a matter of dispute. Until the plaintiffs’ lawyers can issue subpoenas, hopefully getting a look at the ship’s logs, it is an important question that remains unanswered.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Daniel Hair told Stars and Stripes that he was informed the Reagan came within “five to 10 miles off the coast from Fukushima.” Stars and Stripes also reported that “many sailors have disputed the Navy’s accounting, saying they were so close that they could see the plant.”
Ship’s personnel who flew missions to mainland Japan to aid the earthquake and Tsunami victims also risked exposure to the radiation from Fukushima. Their aircraft, like the ship’s decks, had to be decontaminated upon return. In fact, a total of 25 US ships involved in Operation Tomodachi were found to be contaminated with radiation.
In the June 22, 2017 opinion allowing the class action lawsuits to be heard in the U.S., Judge Jay S. Bybee observed of the anomaly about the ship’s location that:
TEPCO makes much of Plaintiffs’ allegations that the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was initially positioned “two miles off the coast,” while the Navy had been warned to stay at least “50 miles outside of the radius. . . of the [FNPP].” Appellant’s Opening Brief 7. The SAC [Second Amended Complaint of plaintiffs] alleges, however, that the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was situated so as to provide relief in the city of Sendai, which is located over fifty miles north of the FNPP. Thus, it is possible that the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was at once two miles off the coast and fifty miles away from the FNPP. Although other portions of the SAC suggest that the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was closer to the FNPP, where the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was situated is unclear from the record before us, and further factual development is necessary to resolve this issue.
No worse than flying or eating a banana
At first, any concerns about radiation exposure were dismissed by military brass. Sailors were told the exposures were no worse than flying or eating a banana, according to Naval officer Angel Torres, one of the plaintiffs.
What they didn’t disclose was the very significant difference between eating a banana — during which the body ingests but also excretes identical amounts of radioactive potassium-40 to maintain a healthy balance — and exposure to nuclear accident fallout. Fukushima was leaking cesium, tritium and strontium as well as radioactive iodine which attacks the thyroid. For example, cesium, can bind to muscle, or strontium to bone, irradiating the person from within. This is a very different effect than the brief visit cosmic radiation pays to the body when we fly in an airplane.
There was also, according to former Department of Energy official, Robert Alvarez, now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, a problem with the dose methodology.
Alvarez told Who.What.Why that “the only way to get an accurate internal and external dose on any individual is to take continual measurements throughout the time they are exposed. People must wear special monitoring equipment and undergo a regular regime of monitoring. This is especially important in trying to assess the health effects from a multiple meltdown situation with large explosions involving reactor cores, as occurred at Fukushima.”
Who.What.Why was created by long-time journalist, Russ Baker because, as he writes on the site, “the media gatekeepers, both ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative,’ will not allow the biggest, most disturbing revelations to see the light of day.”
That is precisely the fate that appears to have befallen the undeniably disturbing USS Reagan story.
It has been touched on hardly at all by the mainstream media in the US although Jake Tapper delivered a 7-minute piece about it in February 2014 on CNN. Local television news stations have carried reports when a sailor from their area joined the law suit but rarely covered the bigger picture. An article in the New York Times two days into the disaster, chose to downplay and dismiss radiation concerns.
Aside from the legal trade publication, Courthouse News, most of the consistent coverage in the US has come, unsurprisingly, from the independent media. These include Counterpunch, Thom Hartmann’s The Big Picture on RT (now off the air), Mother Jones and a second piece in Truthout in addition to the Witherspoon article, and the work of anti-nuclear activist reporters, Harvey Wasserman’s Free Press and Libbe HalLevy’s Nuclear Hotseat podcast.
Epidemic of illnesses among sailors too strange to be a coincidence
The delay in getting accurate information, then having to contend with disinformation and official downplaying of the severity of the exposures has cost many of the sailors dearly. Treatment by specialists has often had to come out of their own pockets. Many cannot afford it. Some have paid with their lives.
The sicknesses range from the leukemias and cancers most often associated with radiation exposures, to immune system diseases, headaches, difficulty concentrating, thyroid problems, bloody noses, rectal and gynecological bleeding, weakness in sides of the body accompanied by the shrinking of muscle mass, memory loss, testicular cancer, problems with vision, high-pitch ringing in the ears and anxiety.
Attorney Edwards sees the epidemic of illnesses among the Reagan crew as just too pronounced to be unconnected to Fukushima-related radiation exposure.
“Why are all these young, healthy, fit people getting cancer? Experiencing thyroid issues? It’s too strange to be a coincidence,” she told Courthouse News.
“That just doesn’t happen absent some external cause,” Edwards added. “All of these people experienced the same thing and were exposed to radiation at Fukushima. A lot of this is just common sense.”
Common sense, of course, does not usually prevail in such cases. There are far more powerful forces at work. And, as always, the burden of proof falls upon the victims, not the most likely perpetrator.
The case is dismissed but the lawyers aren’t quitting
In her January 5, 2018 ruling in San Diego, federal judge Janis Sammartino sided with the defendant’s request for dismissal, stating that the plaintiffs had failed to establish that TEPCO’s actions were directed at California — a technicality. The judge also wrote that the plaintiffs “have provided no information to support an assertion that Tepco knew its actions would cause harm likely to be suffered in California.”
However, lawyers in the case plan to press on. “The Bartel case was dismissed without prejudice, which means that we are able to refile those claims,” Edward said in her email. “We plan to refile those claims in the coming weeks, and are still working on determining the best course for doing so.”
She told Courthouse News, that the team intends to “continue to fight for the justice these sailors deserve. We will also be moving forward with the Cooper case in due course, and look forward to reaching the merits in that case.”
Meanwhile, the sailors in the lawsuit still struggle to get either justice or media attention. Official sources who could shed more light on what actually happened, aren’t talking, including the ship’s captain, Thom Burke, who has never spoken out.
Lead plaintiff, Lindsay Cooper, has been told by Veterans Administration officials that her symptoms are likely due to “stress” and has denied her claim for disability based on radiation exposure, claiming there is not enough proof. Yet Cooper suffers from continuous menstrual cycles, and a yo-yoing thyroid that results in massive weight gain and then weight loss every few months. Her gallbladder was removed because it ceased to function.
When another plaintiff, Master Chief Petty Office Leticia Morales, had her thyroid taken out, she learned her doctor had already removed thyroid glands from six other sailors on the Reagan.
As lawyer Garner put it: “These kids were first responders. They went in happily doing a humanitarian mission, and they came out cooked.”
Top Photo | U.S. Navy crew members mop up the flight deck to remove radioactive contamination from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76), March 23, 2011 in the Pacific Ocean off the Japanese coast after 10 days of rescue missions to transport supplies to survivors in an earthquake- and tsunami-devastated area.
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>>> Russian air force planes land in Venezuela carrying troops
Yahoo News
https://news.yahoo.com/russian-air-force-planes-land-venezuela-carrying-troops-030929936.html
March 24, 2019
CARACAS (Reuters) - Two Russian air force planes landed at Venezuela's main airport on Saturday carrying a Russian defense official and nearly 100 troops, according to media reports, amid strengthening ties between Caracas and Moscow.
A flight-tracking website showed that two planes left from a Russian military airport bound for Caracas on Friday, and another flight-tracking site showed that one plane left Caracas on Sunday.
That comes three months after the two nations held military exercises on Venezuelan soil that President Nicolas Maduro called a sign of strengthening relations, but which Washington criticized as Russian encroachment in the region.
Reporter Javier Mayorca wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the first plane carried Vasily Tonkoshkurov, chief of staff of the ground forces, adding the second was a cargo plane carrying 35 tonnes of material.
An Ilyushin IL-62 passenger jet and an Antonov AN-124 military cargo plane left for Caracas on Friday from Russian military airport Chkalovsky, stopping along the way in Syria, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
The cargo plane left Caracas on Sunday afternoon, according to Adsbexchange, another flight-tracking site.
The flights carried officials who arrived to "exchange consultations," wrote Russian government-owned news agency Sputnik, which quoted an unnamed source at the Russian embassy.
"Russia has various contracts that are in the process of being fulfilled, contracts of a technical military character," Sputnik quoted the source as saying.
A Reuters witness saw what appeared to be the passenger jet at the Maiquetia airport on Sunday.
Venezuela's Information Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Russia's Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry did not reply to messages seeking comment. The Kremlin spokesman also did not reply to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has levied crippling sanctions on the OPEC nation's oil industry in efforts to push Maduro from power and has called on Venezuelan military leaders to abandon him. Maduro has denounced the sanctions as U.S. interventionism and has won diplomatic backing from Russia and China.
In December, two Russian strategic bomber aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons landed in Venezuela in a show of support for Maduro's socialist government that infuriated Washington.
Maduro on Wednesday said Russia would send medicine "next week" to Venezuela, without describing how it would arrive, adding that Moscow in February had sent some 300 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
Venezuela in February had blocked a convoy carrying humanitarian aid for the crisis-stricken country that was coordinated with the team of opposition leader Juan Guaido, including supplies provided by the United States, from entering via the border with Colombia.
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>>> A big batch of B-52 bombers is flying into Europe amid heightened tensions with Russia
Ryan Pickrell
Mar. 15, 2019
https://www.businessinsider.com/a-big-batch-of-b-52-bombers-is-flying-into-europe-2019-3
A large Bomber Task Force reportedly consisting of up to six B-52 Stratofortress heavy long-range bombers are flying into Europe this week.
The rotation, which comes at a time of heightened tension with Russia, is focused on interoperability training, but there is a deterrent element as well.
This week, B-52 bombers also flew over the disputed South China Sea, where the US and China have repeatedly found themselves at odds.
US Air Force B-52 Stratofortress heavy long-range bombers are flying into Europe this week, US Air Forces Europe - Africa announced Thursday, at a time Russia is leveling threats against the US as a Cold War-era missiles ban collapses.
A Bomber Task Force consisting of bombers from the 2nd Bomb Wing out of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana are deploying to the US European Command area of operations.
While USAFE, citing operational security concerns, would not provide the number of bombers heading into this theater, Military.com reports that up to six B-52 bombers will arrive in the United Kingdom before the weekend. An unnamed source told the outlet that this marks the largest deployment of a bomber platform to the Europe since 2003, when EUCOM had 20 bombers at Royal Air Force Fairford station during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The deployment is focused on interoperability training with the British Royal Air Force, as well as other allies and partners in the region. At the same time, there is also a deterrence element to this deployment, USAFE told Business Insider.
'Training with joint partners, allied nations and other U.S. Air Force units contributes to our ready and postured forces and enables us to build enduring and strategic relationships necessary to confront a broad range of global challenges," USAFE said in a statement.
The US has routinely rotated bombers into Europe as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, an apparent response to Russia's annexation of the Crimea in 2014. That year, the US reportedly sent two B-2 Spirit bombers and three B-52s to Europe, planes that are capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
The current deployment comes at a time of increased tension between Washington and Moscow. The collapse of a Cold War-era arms control agreement — the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty — has ignited an arms race and led to threatening rhetoric from Russia.
Read More: In threatening state of the nation address, Putin threatens to target the US with new weapons if it puts missiles in Europe
This week, US Global Strike Command kicked off Global Lightning 2019, a battle staff exercise designed to assess joint operational readiness across all of USSTRATCOM's mission areas, which happens to be EUCOM this year. This exercise will reportedly also include a B-52 mission.
US Air Force B-52s are bombers with the ability to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons payloads. As America's longest-serving bomber, these aircraft have been flying for over six decades. They are expected to continue flying as the service continues to upgrade these aircraft to not only keep them in the fight, but make them deadlier than ever before.
Read More:US B-52 bombers are getting an upgrade that will let them drop smart bombs like never before
B-52s have also been active in the Pacific theater this month, flying through the contested South China Sea twice in ten days. These routine flights typically aggravate China, as they're intended to show the US doesn't recognize China's expansive claims; China has called the flights "provocative."
"U.S. aircraft regularly operate in the South China Sea in support of allies, partners, and a free and open Indo-Pacific. U.S. Pacific Air Forces bombers have flown from Guam for more than a decade as part of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's Continuous Bomber Presence operations," Pacific Air Forces told Business Insider in a statement.
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>>> Lockheed F-35 Dinged as Boeing's F-15X Wins in Air Force's Plan
Bloomberg
By Anthony Capaccio
March 18, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-18/lockheed-f-35-dinged-as-boeing-s-f-15x-wins-in-air-force-s-plan?srnd=premium
Five-year plan calls for 48 F-35s per year, down from 54
Northrop’s B-21 bomber would get $20 billion over five years
The U.S. Air Force outlined a five-year plan that showed the extent of the Pentagon’s push to bring back Boeing Co.’s F-15 fighter in an upgraded version, a $7.8 billion investment that would jump from eight of the planes next year to 18 each year through 2024.
While Lockheed Martin Corp.’s newer F-35 would get $37.5 billion over the five years, the more advanced plane would still take a hit. The service now plans to buy 48 F-35s each year from fiscal 2021 through 2023 instead of the 54 previously planned.
A week after President Donald Trump presented his proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins in October, the Air Force spelled out a longer-range five-year plan on Monday that’s sure to set off fierce congressional debate, including over the plan to buy 80 F-15X models and slow the trajectory of the F-35. That debate already has begun.
“As our nation’s only fifth-generation stealth fighter being built today, an investment in additional production and support for the F-35 fighter fleet is critical to ensuring the U.S. maintains air superiority,” five senators said in a letter last month.
The letter to Trump and Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan was signed by Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, Lisa Murkowski or Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Marco Rubio of Florida. The F-35 is built in Texas, and some will be based in Alaska.
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that Pentagon officials decided to buy the F-15X partly because it’s “slightly less expensive for procurement than the F-35, but it’s more than 50 percent cheaper to operate over time and it has twice as many hours in terms of how long it lasts.”
Among other major elements of the Air Force’s five-year plan sent to Congress:
Northrop Grumman Corp.’s new B-21 stealth bomber would get $20 billion over the next five years, with funding jumping from $3 billion in 2020 to $5 billion in 2023. Of the $5 billion, $2.3 billion would be for the first year of major procurement.
Boeing would get $19 billion through 2024 for purchase of 66 of its KC-46 tankers, fewer than the 75 previously planned through 2023. The new plan calls for 15 in 2021 but 12 each in 2022 and 2023, instead of the 15 previously planned each year.
The service plans to spend $12.4 billion through 2024 procuring space systems.
Research on the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared early-warning satellite would total $11.4 billion through 2024.
Lockheed’s F-22 fighter could see as much as $18 billion in spending for upgrades and support.
Air Force spending on setting up and running the new Space Force is budgeted at $363 million through 2024, averaging about $72 million annually.
Space investments for fiscal 2020 include $1.67 billion for space launch and ground service agreements pitting Elon Musk’s SpaceX against the United Launch Alliance that’s a joint venture between Lockheed and Boeing; $1.3 billion for Lockheed’s GPS-III satellites and Raytheon Co.’s OCX ground control station program; and $1 billion for satellite communications programs such as the family of “Beyond-Line-of-Sight” terminals.
The five-year plan calls for spending as much as $8.7 billion on precision-guided weapons made by Lockheed, Boeing and Raytheon. That includes $1.4 billion on the new Small Diameter Bomb-II that can attack both fixed and moving targets in bad weather, $2 billion for the GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition and $2.2 billion on the extended-range stealth Jassm missile used last year against Syrian military targets.
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>>> A Chinese Blackwater?
BuzzFeed News
by Aram Roston
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/betsy-devoss-brother-is-setting-up-a-private-army-for-china
Erik Prince — founder of the private military company Blackwater, financial backer of President Donald Trump, brother to the new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and frequent Breitbart radio guest of White House power broker Stephen Bannon — has been offering his military expertise to support Chinese government objectives and setting up two Blackwater-style training camps in China, according to sources and his own company statements.
The move could put him at odds with Trump, who has often taken a hard line against China, and could also risk violating US law, which prohibits the export of military services or equipment to China.
Former associates of the 47-year-old Prince told BuzzFeed News that the controversial businessman envisions using the bases to train and deploy an army of Chinese retired soldiers who can protect Chinese corporate and government strategic interests around the world, without having to involve the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
In December, Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is chairman, issued a press release that outlined plans to open “a forward operating base in China’s Yunnan province” and another in the troubled Xinjiang region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
“He’s been working very, very hard to get China to buy into a new Blackwater,” said one former associate. “He’s hell bent on reclaiming his position as the world’s preeminent private military provider.”
In an email to BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for Frontier Services Group provided a statement and strongly disputed that the company was going to become a new Blackwater, insisting that all of its security services were unarmed and therefore not regulated. “FSG's services do not involve armed personnel or training armed personnel.” The training at the Chinese bases would “help non-military personnel provide close protection security, without the use of arms.”
“Mr. Prince and Mr. Trump know each other and share mutual respect,” the statement added.
White House spokespersons did not respond to emails requesting comment for this story.
Frontier Services Group trades on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and its largest shareholder is an investment fund owned and controlled by the People’s Republic of China, CITIC. Until last year Frontier claimed to be merely a logistics and transportation company, steering clear of Prince’s specialty of providing private military capabilities for operations — though last March The Intercept news organization ran a story saying that Prince, sometimes using his role at Frontier, was pitching security and paramilitary services. In the story, Frontier denied the company was involved.
When Frontier later told its board it was shifting into security services — largely to assist China’s international development policy — the development disgusted two American executives at Prince's Hong Kong company.
Gregg Smith, the former CEO of Frontier, said he was ready to quit last March if Erik Prince was not removed from the company. Then, at a board meeting late that month, he said a company official made clear that Frontier would be providing security services in support of Chinese government objectives. “That was the final straw,” he told BuzzFeed News.
Retired US Admiral William Fallon, a Frontier board member, was at the same board meeting. He resigned too when he heard that the firm was providing security services. “That wasn’t what I signed up for,” he said in an interview.
President Donald Trump has talked tough about China. To be sure, he recently reaffirmed that the United States will formally recognize only mainland China and not Taiwan, a crucial point for Beijing. But Trump has installed a sharply anti-China critic as the head of his National Trade Council. Before winning the presidency, Trump called China an “enemy.” Trump adviser Stephen Bannon, who interviewed Prince on Breitbart frequently, predicted last year that the US will be at war with China “in the South China Sea in five to 10 years.” And even if no hot war breaks out, many experts believe Trump is gearing up for a trade war with the country that manufactures much of the world’s goods (including some Trump brand products.)
During the campaign, Prince donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory Committee, which supported both Trump’s election bid and the Republican Party. Jeremy Scahill, a journalist who has long covered Prince, recently wrote that the businessman is advising the Trump Administration.
Just four days before the election, Prince gave an interview to Breitbart radio, part of the media empire that Bannon used to run, in which Prince pushed an unfounded theory that the NYPD had been about to announce arrest warrants in the Clinton investigation but was blocked by the Justice Department, and that Hillary Clinton had been to a “sex island” with a convicted pedophile “at least six times.” Prince’s bizarre claims were prominently displayed on Breitbart’s website leading up to the election and were widely distributed on right wing websites.
Now, however, Prince’s new business foray could put him at odds with Trump.
Former executives said that Frontier’s “forward operating bases” will be training former People’s Liberation Army soldiers to work as discreet non-uniformed soldiers for hire.
The former associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Prince “is making Frontier Services a full-on private military company.”
As of the summer, this person continued, “the plan was to set up Blackwater-like training facilities specifically to train the Chinese.”
Another former ally of Prince said: “The idea is to train former PLA soldiers in the art of being private military contractor. That way the actual Red Army doesn’t have to go into these remote areas.”
Asked about Frontier’s claim that Prince was planning “unarmed” security projects, both sources dismissed it, and emphasized that was not their understanding. It is “ridiculous,” said one.
“Are they using sonic weapons,” joked the other. “Is it psychic powers?”
Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a private military company — Prince objects to the term “mercenary” — that did phenomenal business during the war on terror. The firm was frequently embroiled in scandal: Four of its employees were killed in Fallujah in 2004, leading to a Marine Corps onslaught on the city; several former employees pleaded guilty to arms violations in a lengthy investigation; and still others were convicted in a wild shooting spree in Baghdad in which 17 civilians were slaughtered.
Typically, Prince has been involved in ventures that he claims are in line with US foreign policy goals. He has reportedly helped the United Arab Emirates set up a military unit of former Colombian soldiers; pushed for an anti-piracy operation in the Puntland region of Somalia; and tried to sell a mercenary operation in Nigeria.
The current China plan appears to be different. China is widely understood to have interests that are adversarial to the US, and the two powers compete for world influence. And US law bans US citizens from exporting defense-related services or equipment to the country.
Frontier’s December press release said the Yunnan base would “allow FSG to be able to better serve companies in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.” The Uighur region, which would be home to the company’s second base, abuts Afghanistan.
According to the press release “these bases will provide training, communications, risk mitigation, risk assessments, information gathering, medevac and joint operations centers that coordinate security, logistics and aviation.”
The press release said the company was “expanding its security offerings” to include “training for personnel,” as well as “Personnel Protection” services, which is industry jargon for providing bodyguards. The December press release did not state that the security offerings would be unarmed.
Frontier’s expansion into China, its December press release said, was designed to help clients take advantage of China’s new development plan, “One Belt One Road,” a massive program that many experts believe aims to increase Chinese economic and political sway.
China expert Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute said US regulators would likely take a dim view of security operations in China’s Uighur areas. “It’s at odds with the American government view that we don’t want to help the Chinese oppress the Uighurs in Xinjiang.”
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>>> The Boeing Company (BA), together with its subsidiaries, designs, develops, manufactures, sales, services, and supports commercial jetliners, military aircraft, satellites, missile defense, human space flight, and launch systems and services worldwide. The company operates in four segments: Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space & Security; Global Services; and Boeing Capital. The Commercial Airplanes segment provides commercial jet aircraft for passenger and cargo requirements, and fleet support services, principally to the commercial airline industry. The Defense, Space & Security segment engages in the research, development, production, and modification of manned and unmanned military aircraft and weapons systems; strategic defense and intelligence systems, which include strategic missile and defense systems, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber and information solutions, and intelligence systems; and satellite systems, such as government and commercial satellites, and space exploration. The Global Services segment offers aviation services support, aircraft modifications, spare parts, training, maintenance documents, data analytics and information-based services, and technical advice to commercial and government customers. This segment also provides supply chain management and engineering support services; maintenance, modification, and upgrades for aircraft; and training systems and government services that include pilot and maintenance training. The Boeing Capital segment offers financing services and manages financing exposure for a portfolio of equipment under operating and finance leases, notes and other receivables, assets held for sale or re-lease, and investments. The company has a strategic partnership with Safran; and Embraer. The Boeing Company was founded in 1916 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. <<<
>>> Honeywell International Inc. (HON) operates as a diversified technology and manufacturing company worldwide. It operates through four segments: Aerospace; Home and Building Technologies; Performance Materials and Technologies; and Safety and Productivity Solutions. The Aerospace segment supplies products, software, and services for aircraft and vehicles that it sells to original equipment manufacturers and other customers in various markets, including air transport, regional, business and general aviation aircraft, airlines, aircraft operators, defense and space contractors, and automotive and truck manufacturers. The Home and Building Technologies segment provides products, software, solutions, and technologies that help homes owners, commercial building owners, and occupants. The Performance Materials and Technologies segment develops and manufactures advanced materials, process technologies, and automation solutions. The Safety and Productivity Solutions segment provides products, software, and connected solutions to customers that enhance productivity, workplace safety, and asset performance. Honeywell International Inc. was founded in 1920 and is headquartered in Morris Plains, New Jersey. <<<
>>> United Technologies Offers Air Cover Amid Slowdown Worries
Aerospace still has a comfortable runway, and that helps justify the conglomerate’s breakup plan.
By Brooke Sutherland
January 23, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-23/united-technologies-offers-air-cover-amid-slowdown-worries
United Technologies Corp.’s latest results suggest aerospace is still a safe place as worries mount about a slowdown in global growth.
The $96 billion conglomerate that’s planning on splitting itself into three reported a staggering 11 percent gain in revenue excluding the impact of M&A and currency swings for the final months of 2018. That was the first time quarterly organic growth stretched into the double digits since 2007, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. The increase was driven primarily by United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney unit, where sales of its new geared turbofan jet engine drove a 22 percent surge in organic growth. The Collins Aerospace Systems segment — recently dubbed as such following the November close of the company’s $30 billion takeover of Rockwell Collins Inc. — posted a 9 percent gain in revenue excluding the impact of that acquisition.
Blockbuster Quarter
All of United Technologies' businesses reported strong sales growth but the standouts were its aerospace divisions
United Technologies’ strong showing won’t mitigate concerns that the best growth is behind industrial companies. The company predicted global GDP growth would slow to 2.9 percent in 2019, compared with 3.2 percent in 2018, the latter of which was revised down from a 3.3 percent outlook this time last year. Its own blistering pace isn’t expected to last, either: United Technologies forecasts organic sales growth of 3 percent to 5 percent in 2019, compared with 8 percent for the full year in 2018. But that’s still a comfortable gain and likely veers toward conservatism as management plays it safe in an increasingly uncertain world. Contrast that with 3M Co.’s prediction of 2 percent to 4 percent organic sales growth in 2019, an outlook analysts already think is too optimistic.
What this suggests is that even though sales may have peaked, those companies with significant aerospace exposure still have room for positive surprises. Despite its more subdued economic forecast, United Technologies expects demand for air travel to remain strong, with revenue passenger miles climbing 6 percent in 2019, compared with 6.5 percent growth in 2018. This bodes well for Honeywell International Inc. and Boeing Co.’s results next week.
Ready for Takeoff
Aerospace and defense companies have underperformed the S&P 500 Industrial benchmark since the end of the third quarter, despite being better positioned for 2019
For United Technologies specifically, its latest results also reinforce the logic of its plan to separate out its Otis elevator and Carrier climate-control businesses to focus on its aerospace operations. In contrast to the ballooning sales at the Pratt & Whitney and Collins divisions, orders for new Otis equipment were flat organically in the fourth quarter relative to the prior year, while orders at Carrier were up 3 percent.
The breakup has been under scrutiny as investors grumble about the 18-month to two-year timeline United Technologies has laid out for executing a split, and question the wisdom of spinning out two major companies in what may end up being a softening economy. These are fair questions. It will help that the company laid out a more specific breakup schedule as part of its earnings presentation on Wednesday. United Technologies said it would be operationally ready to carve out the Otis and Carrier units by the end of 2019. After that, its timing would be dictated by the obtainment of tax rulings. United Technologies also spelled out its free-cash-flow outlook in laborious detail. This should ease concerns about its weaker-than-expected cash-flow forecast for the Rockwell Collins business upon the deal’s closing. The shortfall was more a reflection of integration costs and higher interest expenses than any meaningful deterioration in the business.
At the end of the day, United Technologies’ conglomerate structure hasn’t made sense for a while and its businesses’ contrasting growth and margin profiles have long muddied up its earnings picture. This recent quarter is giving investors a sneak peak at what an aerospace-focused United Technologies would look like, and there’s good reason to like what they’re seeing.
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>>> U.S. warns Iran against satellite launches it says could advance missile technology
Washington Post
By Carol Morello
1-3-19
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-warns-iran-not-to-launch-satellites-into-space/2019/01/03/c4bba67c-0f6c-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.98923f23ddf2
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States “will not stand by and watch the Iranian regime’s destructive policies place international stability and security at risk.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iran on Thursday to scuttle its plans for satellite launches that the United States says involve technology that could be used in intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.
Pompeo stopped short of saying how the United States might react if Iran goes ahead with its announced intention to test three Space Launch Vehicles (SLVs), but his warning suggested that the move could lead to new sanctions.
“The United States will not stand by and watch the Iranian regime’s destructive policies place international stability and security at risk,” Pompeo said in a statement. “We advise the regime to reconsider these provocative launches and cease all activities related to ballistic missiles in order to avoid deeper economic and diplomatic isolation.”
At the end of November, Iranian media reported that the deputy defense minister, Qassem Taqizadeh, said Iran would launch three satellites into space “on various orbits” within a few months. More recently, Iranian news outlets have said the satellites are for telecommunications and suggested a launch is imminent.
Pompeo said the Space Launch Vehicles “incorporate technology that is virtually identical to that used in ballistic missiles.” He said launching them would violate the U.N. Security Council resolution on the 2015 nuclear deal, which “calls upon” Iran to not test ballistic missiles, language that is softer than an outright ban.
Pompeo’s invocation of the Security Council resolution that enshrined the nuclear deal with Iran was somewhat awkward, because President Trump withdrew from the agreement in May. Then in early November, the United States reimposed sanctions that had been lifted under the deal. Iran repeatedly has said the United States is now in violation of the Security Council resolution it voted for, while the International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring compliance has consistently found Iran has been meeting its commitments.
European countries, Russia and China were all part of the negotiations and continue to support the agreement, but they have expressed concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile testing. The United States, Britain, France and Germany, all of which were parties to the agreement, condemned Iran’s decision in 2017 to launch a rocket that it said could deliver a satellite into space.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Pompeo’s warning is a signal that more coercive diplomacy will be used to pressure Iran, accompanied by efforts to win the support of Britain, France and Germany. He said it could prod the European Union to impose sanctions against Iranian companies and individuals involved in ballistic missile testing.
Taleblu said Iran’s interest in Space Launch Vehicles disguises its quest to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“Tehran has a tendency to hedge, and as evidenced by its nuclear program, doesn’t mind making marginal advances as long as it remains on the path towards its ultimate goal,” he said.
Though Iran has not yet perfected a functional ICBM, Taleblu said, the satellite launch suggests “that is a path it’s going to go down.”
Pompeo said Iran has launched numerous ballistic missiles since the Security Council resolution was adopted three years ago, most recently in early December.
“The United States has continuously cautioned that ballistic missile and SLV launches by the Iranian regime have a destabilizing effect on the region and beyond,” he said. “France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and many nations from around the world have also expressed deep concern.”
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>>> China lunar rover successfully touches down on far side of the moon, state media announces
By Matt Rivers, Helen Regan and Steven Jiang
CNN
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-lunar-rover-successfully-touches-down-on-far-side-of-the-moon-state-media-announces/ar-BBRJR9o?li=BBnbfcL&OCID=ansmsnnews11
In an historic first, China has successfully landed a rover on the far side of the moon, Chinese state media announced Thursday, a huge milestone for the nation as it attempts to position itself as a leading space power.
China's National Space Administration (CNSA) landed the Chang'e 4 lunar probe at 10:26 am Beijing time on Thursday, in the South Pole-Aitken Basin which is an impact crater, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
It made its final descent from a landing orbit 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) above the moon's surface.
State media reported the rover transmitted back the world's first close range image of the far side of the moon. No other details were immediately available.
The far side of the moon is the hemisphere that never faces earth, due to the moon's rotation. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the "dark side of the moon," even though it receives just as much sunlight as its earth-facing side.
The success of the mission represents a landmark in human space exploration. The area where the probe has landed faces away from earth, meaning it is free from radio frequencies. As a result, it is not possible for a lunar rover to communicate directly with ground control. To overcome this hurdle, China launched a dedicated satellite orbiting the moon earlier this year that will be able to relay information from the rover to earth.
The lunar mission, named Chang'e 4, lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province on December 8, entering the moon's orbit four days later, according to Chinese state media.
It is hoped the lander will conduct a number of tasks, including conducting the first lunar low-frequency radio astronomy experiment, observe whether plants will grow in the low-gravity environment, and explore whether there is water or other resources at the poles.
Another function of the mission is to study the interaction between solar winds and the moon surface using a new rover.
"Since the far side of the moon is shielded from electromagnetic interference from the Earth, it's an ideal place to research the space environment and solar bursts, and the probe can 'listen' to the deeper reaches of the cosmos," said Tongjie Liu, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center for the China National Space Administration.
The Chang'e 4 rover is 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and about 1 meter (3.3 feet) wide and tall, with two foldable solar panels and six wheels.
"China is anxious to get into the record books with its space achievements," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College and an expert on China's space program.
"It is highly likely that with the success of Chang'e -- and the concurrent success of the human spaceflight Shenzhou program -- the two programs will eventually be combined toward a Chinese human spaceflight program to the Moon," she added. "Odds of the next voice transmission from the Moon being in Mandarin are high."
Thursday's official televised announcement that the probe had landed came approximately an hour after state media outlets China Daily and China Global Television Network (CGTN) deleted posts on social media proclaiming the mission a success, sparking widespread confusion as to whether the probe had in fact had made touchdown.
China's National Space Administration (CNSA) landed the Chang'e 4 lunar probe at 10:26 am Beijing time on Thursday, in the South Pole-Aitken Basin which is an impact crater, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
No explanation was given as to why the earlier tweets were deleted. On social media, observers speculated as to the cause of the apparent backtracking, with many wondering if the mission had experienced a temporary upset, or whether it was a simple case of state media jumping the gun ahead of the official announcement.
China's last lunar rover -- named Yutu, or Jade Rabbit -- ceased operation in August 2016 after 972 days of service on the moon's surface as part of the Chang'e 3 mission. China was only the third nation to carry out a lunar landing, after the United States and Russia.
The overall design of the new rover is inherited from Jade Rabbit, according to the chief designer of China's lunar probe program.
"We worked hard to improve its reliability, conducting thousands of experiments to ensure its long-term operation, especially taking into consideration rocks, ravines and frictions on the Moon," Wu Weiren told state broadcaster CCTV in August.
Beijing plans to launch its first Mars probe around 2020 to carry out orbital and rover exploration, followed by a mission that would include collection of surface samples from the Red Planet.
China is also aiming to have a fully operational permanent space station by 2022, as the future of the International Space Station remains in doubt due to uncertain funding and complicated politics.
In comparison, despite its recent success in sending a robotic lander to Mars, the US space agency NASA has faced years of budgetary constraints.
Although the Chinese government has long stressed its "peaceful motives" in space exploration, Washington increasingly views China -- along with Russia -- as a potential threat, accusing Beijing of working to bring new weapons into space and prompting President Donald Trump to announce the establishment of a US Space Force by 2020.
The US Congress has barred NASA from working with China due to national security concerns.
"A high percentage of space technology is (civilian-military) dual use," Johnson-Freese said. "The US sees pretty much everything China does in space -- including things the US has done in space -- as threatening."
She suggested that combining military preparedness with diplomatic efforts would best deter perceived threats in space from all sides but added that "unfortunately, the US has not shown interest in diplomatic leadership regarding space security."
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>>> Yale - A Great Nursery of Spooks
By GODFREY HODGSON
AUG. 16, 1987
The New York Times Archives
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/16/books/yale-a-great-nursery-of-spooks.html
CLOAK & GOWN Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. By Robin W. Winks. Illustrated. 607 pp. New York: William Morrow & Company. $22.95.
IT was a Yale man, Henry L. Stimson, who is supposed to have closed down the State Department's counterespionage Black Chamber in 1929 with the words, ''Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.'' The remark, as Robin W. Winks points out, is probably apocryphal. Indeed, it is possible that it was put into Stimson's mouth by another Yale man, McGeorge Bundy, the co-author of Mr. Stimson's ''On Active Service in Peace and War.''
The fact is, though, that Yale University has been a great nursery of spooks. A statue of Nathan Hale with a British noose about his neck, only regretting that he has but one life to give for his country, stands in front of the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. Appropriately, it is a copy of the one that stands on Yale's Old Campus in New Haven, for Hale was a member of the Yale class of 1773. In more recent years, Yale has had, as Mr. Winks shows, a curiously persistent connection with the business of intelligence gathering. No other American university, it appears, has sent so many of its graduates into the profession.
To a remarkable extent, the ethos first of the World War II Office of Strategic Services, and then of its offspring, the C.I.A., was influenced by Yale men, and therefore presumably by Yale. Think - naming names almost at random - of James Jesus Angleton, C. Tracy Barnes, Richard Bissell, William Bundy, Cord Meyer Jr. and Sherman Kent.
Sometime in the 1970's Mr. Winks, who teaches history at Yale, found himself in an argument with a colleague about the ethics of cooperating with intelligence agencies. His antagonist claimed that academics had never done so in the past. Nonsense, thought Mr. Winks, and in that instant what was originally conceived of as an article, and eventually evolved into ''Cloak & Gown,'' was born. As he worked, Mr. Winks narrowed his target to a study of Yale and intelligence.
For those of us who did not go to Yale, there is something faintly self-important, even comic, about such an enterprise. My own first reaction was that this would be a book with a nostalgic, Edwardian flavor, and to be sure there is about Mr. Winks the faint aroma of the Oldest Member. He does go on a bit, as they say. To make the rather obvious point, for example, that someone other than Sherman Kent might have emerged as the most influential historian in the O.S.S., but didn't, Mr. Winks lists, in his ''Notes'' section, three pages of alternative names.
There is a slight suspicion that he is too fond of the sound of his own voice. And for a man who lays such stress on the scholar's dedication to accuracy, there are a truly startling number of uncorrected printers' errors. I assume, that is, that they are errors by anonymous printers or copy editors. For surely the master of Yale's Berkeley College - a man who is forthright in his high opinion of scholarship in general, and Yale's in particular - must be incapable of misspelling the name of Gordon Seagrave, the American doctor who spent his life in northern Burma; of giving the first name of the distinguished editor of The Washington Post as both Albert and Alfred Friendly; or of giving Mr. Stimson's middle initial as both L. and B. Facts are free, we journalists say, but middle initials are sacred.
Mr. Winks's book, in fact, could have done with some checking as well as some pruning. For all that, it is a delight. It has the flavor of one of those British dining clubs used by John Buchan as a device to introduce his tales of strange goings-on around the fringes of empire. You recall the scene. The port goes round. The company is convivial and knowledgeable. The fire blazes merrily in the grate, and old Winks has the floor. ''Yale never had anything to do with intelligence?'' he snorts. ''A likely tale. Why, the crew coach was a recruiter for the agency. Old Skip Walz! Bet you didn't know that!''
If Mr. Winks's manner does occasionally invite such irreverent parody, it is lightly offered. For ''Cloak & Gown'' is not only an entertaining contribution to the secret history of the 1940's and 50's, it is also an important one.
The book begins with a chapter about Yale's involvement with intelligence as a whole that documents how deeply American higher education was affected by World War II. It was not just that, as Mr. Winks estimates, 42 members of the class of '43 went into the O.S.S., or that altogether at least 60 of the 397 Yale graduates who lost their lives in the war did so in the secret service. More insidious changes were at work. It was then that the F.B.I. first gained access to confidential files, and that so-called enemy alien faculty were put under surveillance, indeed made to turn in their shortwave radios. Worse still, from the point of view of academic freedom, university programs, like those of Yale's Institute of International Studies, or of the Institute of Human Relations' cross-cultural survey, were converted to the purposes of wartime intelligence. The line between asking anthropologists about the cultures of the Pacific theater and using them as covers might be blurred, but it was a dangerous one that many American (and some other) universities crossed.
In his second chapter, on research and analysis in the O.S.S., Mr. Winks makes the point that the whole tradition of area studies was influenced by the requirements of the intelligence community. He quotes McGeorge Bundy that ''the area study programs developed in American universities in the years after the war were manned, directed, or stimulated by graduates of the OSS.'' THE body of the book is provided by biographical chapters about a quartet of Yale men who became intelligence agents, and a very diverse bunch they are. In the summer of 1942, the O.S.S. found itself desperately short of printed materials from inside Nazi-controlled Europe. To remedy this shortage, Yale's Sterling Memorial Library was used as a front. The head of the O.S.S., William Donovan, called his friend Wallace Notestein, a historian of 17th-century Britain, who in turn tapped a young instructor, Joseph Toy Curtiss, to run the project.
The original idea was that Curtiss would work in Switzerland, incidentally providing cover for Allen Dulles, who later became the Director of Central Intelligence. When Switzerland was cut off by the Nazi invasion of southern France, Curtiss went instead to Istanbul, where he operated as an O.S.S. agent under cover of Robert College - an early precedent for the unhappy practice of using American educational institutions overseas as covers for espionage.
The man who recruited Curtiss for this role, Donald Downes (Yale '26), was to become one of the most controversial figures in the history of the O.S.S. He was the classic secret agent of fiction: patriotic, idealistic, romantically fascinated by complexity and by the intrigue of the bazaar and the backstairs in such haunts of fantasy as Istanbul, Macedonia and Beirut. He recruited teams of agents with names like Donald's Ducks and the Twelve Apostles. He was brave and resourceful, but somehow too many of his operations went wrong, and he took the blame, justly or unjustly, for the worst single disaster the O.S.S. suffered in the entire war - Operation Banana, in which an O.S.S. team was infiltrated into Andalusia, then abandoned, and 18 men, it was assumed, died.
After the war Mr. Downes became a tragic figure, a big fat man with a red beard, trying with indifferent success to fulfill himself as a writer, and convinced -with some justification, Mr. Winks believes - that he was being secretly hounded by the F.B.I.
Norman Holmes Pearson, the apostle of American studies at Yale, had a more gentlemanly war working within the X-2, or counterintelligence, branch of the O.S.S. with the top-secret code-breakers in England. It must have been pleasant dining at Quaglino's, which his British colleagues couldn't afford, and the contacts with British writers and academics were rewarding. After the war, Pearson was able to help his colleague, Sir John Masterman, bust the British secrecy rules by publishing his classic account, ''The Double-Cross System.''
The longest and perhaps the least satisfactory section in the book struggles against infinite regress in the wilderness of mirrors inhabited by the legendary head of C.I.A. counterintelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton. Mr. Winks draws a careful and sympathetic portrait of that subtle and paranoid man. He does not resolve the all-important question of whether Mr. Angleton's conviction that the C.I.A. was penetrated by a deep-burrowing Soviet mole was a delusion or not. Indeed, he does not try to resolve it. Instead, he analyzes the alternative theses and leaves readers to make what they will of the evidence.
Solving puzzles is not what Mr. Winks is about. His purpose is to take his scholarly machete to the jungle of myth about the club-land heroes of the O.S.S. and the C.I.A. What is left after his clearing operations is a picture quite different both from the left's nightmare of Establishment manipulation and from the right's nightmare of liberal treason. Instead, Mr. Winks suggests, these spies were the champions of a ''sentimental imperialism,'' missionaries dedicated to improving the world. He implies that there have been worse causes, and no doubt that is true.
Yet after the C.I.A.'s Phoenix program in Vietnam and the Church committee investigations of the agency in the mid-1970's, after Iran and Irangate, the noble ambition of spreading the American ideal of democracy to the world has the nostalgic fragrance of pressed flowers. The best and the brightest of the clandestine imperialists from Yale begin to look like American Bengal Lancers - brave and romantic, yet as obsolete as cavalry in a world of populism and publicity, of nationalism and technology, of Nixon, networks and North.
PARANOIA FINDS ROMANCE
Robin W. Winks, the master of Yale University's Berkeley College and the Randolph W. Townsend Jr. Professor of History there, is not now, and never was, a spy. ''That is what I always tell the students who ask, but of course what they always say is well, you wouldn't admit it if you were,'' he said in a recent telephone interview from his home in New Haven. ''There is a certain paranoia coupled with a kind of romance that goes with this notion, of course,'' he added.
Mr. Winks, who is 56 years old, gained this curious reputation long before he started his latest book, ''Cloak & Gown,'' which investigates the intimate relationship between Yale and American intelligence agencies.
''I think possibly one of the reasons students get the notion that I must have worked with intelligence is that I've been to lots of remote places,'' he said. ''But I just happen to enjoy getting to remote places'' - among them Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.
In addition to being a frequent traveler, Mr. Winks is a prolific writer (he is the author of seven books and the editor of nine others), a collector of old maps, an outdoorsman and a veteran of the Foreign Service. He is also an avid reader of detective and spy fiction. He has written two books on the genre, but he refuses to say if has written any thrillers himself.
These various pursuits, Mr. Winks said, ''all relate to one central interest - the study of how people perceive themselves and what it is that they take pride in.''
As a historian specializing in the British empire, he sees himself more as a detective than as a spy. ''In effect, what the historian is doing is seeking out evidence and interrogating that evidence and assessing that evidence, very much in the manner of the figure in detective fiction,'' he said. ''Cloak & Dagger'' emerged out of a desire to combine his interests in history and detective fiction: ''I wanted to write something factual, something that would help me to see to what extent the fiction had any basis in reality.''
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SPDR Kensho New Economies Composite ETF (KOMP)
>>> Top 10 Holdings (12.52% of Total Assets)Get Quotes for Top Holdings
Name Symbol % Assets
Elbit Systems Ltd ESLT 1.77%
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc KTOS 1.57%
Raytheon Co RTN 1.25%
Apple Inc AAPL 1.23%
Lockheed Martin Corp LMT 1.17%
3D Systems Corp DDD 1.14%
Teledyne Technologies Inc TDY 1.12%
Tesla Inc TSLA 1.11%
Bruker Corp BRKR 1.08%
Garmin Ltd GRMN 1.08%
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>>> SPDR Kensho Final Frontiers ETF (XKFF)
Top 10 Holdings (47.78% of Total Assets)
Name Symbol % Assets
Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc AJRD 5.72%
Heico Corp HEI 5.33%
Teledyne Technologies Inc TDY 5.07%
CACI International Inc Class A CACI 5.06%
Boeing Co BA 4.71%
United Technologies Corp UTX 4.67%
Harris Corp HRS 4.59%
Lockheed Martin Corp LMT 4.39%
Mercury Systems Inc MRCY 4.19%
Ball Corp BLL 4.05%
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>>> Magal Security Systems Ltd. (MAGS) develops, manufactures, markets, and sells perimeter intrusion detection sensors, physical barriers, video analytics and video management systems, and cyber security products and systems worldwide. It operates through three segments: Perimeter Products, Turnkey Projects, and Video and Cyber Security. The company offers perimeter security products that enable customers to monitor, limit, and control access by unauthorized personnel to specific regions or areas. Its perimeter security systems include fence mounted detection systems; detection grids, gates, and fences to protect water passages, VIP residences, and other outdoor applications; buried sensors; hybrid perimeter intrusion detection and intelligent lighting systems; electrical field disturbance sensors; and microwave sensors. The company also provides integrated intelligent video management solutions for security surveillance and business intelligence applications; and cyber-security products for monitoring, securing, and the active management of wired, wireless, and fiber optic communication networks, as well as turnkey solutions. In addition, it offers RoboGuard, a platform that runs on a rail along the perimeter of protected sites; and life safety/duress alarm products to protect personnel in prisons. Further, the company provides MTC-1500I, a dual technology outdoor surveillance system; Fortis4G, a fourth generation command and control system; StarNet 2, a security management system; and Network Manager, a middleware package. Its products are used to protect national borders, military bases, power plants, airports, sea ports, postal facilities, prisons, banks, retail operations, hospitals, municipal security, sporting events, and industrial locations from terrorism, theft, and other security threats. The company sells its products through system integrators and distribution channels. Magal Security Systems Ltd. was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Yehud, Israel. <<<
>>> Allison Transmission Holdings, Inc., (ALSN) together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and sells commercial and defense fully-automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, and medium- and heavy-tactical U.S. defense vehicles worldwide. It offers 13 transmission product lines with approximately 100 product models for various applications, including distribution, refuse, construction, fire, and emergency on-highway trucks; school, transit, and hybrid-transit buses; motor homes; energy, mining, and construction off-highway vehicles and equipment; and wheeled and tracked defense vehicles. The company markets its transmissions under Allison Transmission brand name; and remanufactured transmissions under ReTran brand name. It also sells branded replacement parts, support equipment, and other products necessary to service the installed base of vehicles utilizing its transmissions, as well as defense kits, engineering services, and extended transmission coverage services to various original equipment manufacturers, distributors, and the U.S. government. The company serves customers through an independent network of approximately 1,400 independent distributor and dealer locations. The company was formerly known as Clutch Holdings, Inc. Allison Transmission Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1915 and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. <<<
>>> AeroVironment gets $3.2M defense deal for unmanned aircraft systems
By I-Chun Chen
L.A. Biz
Nov 6, 2018
https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2018/11/06/aerovironment-gets-3-2m-defense-deal-for-unmanned.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo
AeroVironment Inc. has received a $3.2 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to provide RQ-20B Puma AE II small unmanned aircraft systems.
Monrovia, California-based AeroVironment (Nasdaq: AVAV) said it received the firm-fixed-price contract on Sept. 14 to provide the drone systems, as well as training and support to an allied nation in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) area.
The company said it expects delivery by March 30.
“The vast, diverse landscape of the INDOPACOM area of operation demands small unmanned aircraft systems that can support ground, riverine and maritime operations effectively,” Kirk Flittie, vice president and general manager of AeroVironment’s unmanned aircraft systems business unit, said in a statement. “The combat-proven Puma has demonstrated its unique effectiveness in a wide range of operating environments, from mountains to deserts, from the Arctic to Antarctica, on land and on the open ocean, delivering actionable intelligence to help customers proceed with certainty.”
AeroVironment said its family of small drones comprise the majority of all unmanned aircraft in the U.S. DoD inventory and its international customers include more than 45 allied governments.
“This contract is a good example of the additional procurement potential among our international customers,” said Flittie.
The AeroVironment Puma is designed for land-based and maritime operations. The company said the all-environment Puma, with its Mantis i45 sensor suite, is capable of landing in water or on the ground, giving the operator extended flight time and a level of imaging capability previously unavailable in the small UAS class.
AeroVironment’s small unmanned aircraft systems include the RQ-11B Raven, RQ-12 Wasp and RQ-20A/B Puma. They operate with a common ground control system and provide increased capability to the warfighter that can give ground commanders the option of selecting the appropriate aircraft based on the type of mission to be performed. This increased capability has the potential to provide significant force protection and force multiplication benefits to small tactical units and security personnel, AeroVironment said.
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>>> Nearly all new U.S. weapons systems have ‘critical’ cybersecurity problems, auditors say
The Pentagon plans to spend some $1.6 trillion developing new systems.
Washington Post
By Aaron Gregg
October 10, 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/10/nearly-all-new-us-weapons-systems-have-critical-cyber-security-problems-auditors-say/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4e6bcc9c63d2
Almost all of the U.S. military’s newly developed weapons systems suffer from “mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities,” a review of government security audits conducted from 2012 to 2017 found, suggesting that military agencies have rushed to computerize new weapons systems without prioritizing cybersecurity.
The findings were released Tuesday in a report from the Government Accountability Office. The report drew on years of security audits conducted by skilled “testers,” essentially friendly hackers employed to probe Pentagon networks for holes, replicating the process of a hack to find security weaknesses.
Although the report did not identify specific military programs, its authors describe easily exploitable cybersecurity vulnerabilities that often arose from carelessness or negligence on the part of those using the systems.
“From 2012 to 2017, DOD testers routinely found mission critical cyber vulnerabilities in nearly all weapons systems that were under development,” GAO researchers wrote. “Using relatively simple tools and techniques, testers were able to take control of these systems and largely operate undetected.”
[White House report points to severe shortcomings in U.S. military supply chain]
Among the report’s findings, security testers reported that they were able to covertly take control of an unspecified weapons system, view its operators’ computer screens and manipulate the system itself. In one case, a test team flashed pop-up messages in front of the computer screen used to operate a weapons system, instructing users to insert quarters before continuing. In other cases, testers found that they could copy or delete troves of data.
The vulnerabilities were in many cases caused by poor attention to basic cybersecurity practices, such as leaving default passwords in place. In one case, a test team was able to guess an administrator’s password in nine seconds, the report states.
The agency warned that the problems described in the report probably represent a “fraction” of the total vulnerabilities affecting Defense Department systems, which are too extensive to evaluate in full.
The report is the latest in a long list of such admonishments that date back decades. The GAO warned in 1996 that hackers had taken control of entire defense systems, and in 2004 it warned that the Pentagon’s focus on connecting systems together through the Internet would create new opportunities for hackers.
[Pentagon moves closer to ‘swarming drones’ capability with new systems test]
Still, the report released Tuesday drew attention to a newer trend that has security experts worried. As more physical objects are controlled and operated through the Internet, the possibility that hackers could hurt people or sabotage equipment — as opposed to simply stealing information — may be poised to increase.
As the Pentagon plans to spend some $1.6 trillion developing new systems, as calculated by the GAO, it has jumped at the chance to connect weapons systems together. That connectivity has allowed the Pentagon to achieve military capabilities once thought impossible, GAO researchers wrote in Tuesday’s report, but has also left more military systems open to attack.
In a letter addressed to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), GAO researchers said the Pentagon’s increasing reliance on software to manage certain critical functions like powering a weapon on or off, maintaining a pilot’s oxygen levels, guiding a missile to its target, or simply flying an aircraft makes it vulnerable to manipulation from state-sponsored hackers.
“Cyber attacks can target any weapon subsystem that is dependent on software, potentially leading to an inability to complete military missions or even loss of life,” GAO researchers wrote.
[Pentagon walks back plan to withhold cash from defense contractors after pressure from lawmakers]
While the report noted that the Pentagon is improving in its adherence to cybersecurity standards, it also noted instances in which program officials failed to correct vulnerabilities identified in previous audits. In one case, only 1 out of 20 cyber-vulnerabilities identified in a previous assessment were found to have been corrected, a problem that officials reportedly attributed to error on the part of contractors.
The report comes as the Pentagon is reevaluating its relationship with defense contractors, considering whether to more closely consider security assessments when it buys major weapons systems.
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Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Raytheon Technologies Corp | RTX | 7.13% |
Lockheed Martin Corp | LMT | 6.91% |
Boeing Co | BA | 6.62% |
Honeywell International Inc | HON | 5.32% |
General Dynamics Corp | GD | 5.29% |
Northrop Grumman Corp | NOC | 4.92% |
L3Harris Technologies Inc | LHX | 4.86% |
Textron Inc | TXT | 4.55% |
TransDigm Group Inc | TDG | 4.14% |
Axon Enterprise Inc | AXON | 3.97% |
Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Raytheon Technologies Corp | RTX | 19.71% |
Boeing Co | BA | 18.63% |
Lockheed Martin Corp | LMT | 5.55% |
Teledyne Technologies Inc | TDY | 5.01% |
L3Harris Technologies Inc | LHX | 4.83% |
General Dynamics Corp | GD | 4.73% |
Northrop Grumman Corp | NOC | 4.51% |
TransDigm Group Inc | TDG | 4.47% |
Textron Inc | TXT | 4.26% |
Howmet Aerospace Inc | HWM | 3.51% |
Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc Shs A | SPCE | 4.94% |
Axon Enterprise Inc | AXON | 4.23% |
Maxar Technologies Inc | MAXR | 4.17% |
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc | KTOS | 4.10% |
Hexcel Corp | HXL | 3.80% |
Textron Inc | TXT | 3.79% |
Mercury Systems Inc | MRCY | 3.73% |
Teledyne Technologies Inc | TDY | 3.72% |
General Dynamics Corp | GD | 3.71% |
TransDigm Group Inc | TDG | 3.69% |
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