MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘General Dynamics’

US-Saudi Arms ‘Megadeal’ Collapses Over Russia, China Links

Posted by M. C. on September 16, 2023

RTX, one of the largest weapons firms in the US, is currently being sued alongside Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics for “aiding and abetting war crimes and extrajudicial killings” by selling weapons to the Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the victims of two coalition bombings in Yemen — one for a wedding in 2015 and another for a funeral in 2016.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), in October 2015, the Al-Sanabani family was readying to celebrate a relative’s wedding when a coalition jet bombed the area, killing 43 Yemenis, including 13 women and 16 children. A year later, coalition jets dropped a US-manufactured GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb on a crowded funeral, killing over 100.

The lawsuit alleges that western-manufactured bombs have killed over 25,000 civilians since the beginning of the NATO-backed war nearly eight years ago.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-saudi-arms-megadeal-collapses-over-russia-china-links

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Friday, Sep 15, 2023 – 07:40 PM

Via The Cradle, 

US weapons maker RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, scrubbed a multibillion deal with Saudi firm Scopa Defense earlier this year over “concerns” that the latter was pursuing business with sanctioned Russian and Chinese companies, according to people familiar with the deal that spoke with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

In 2022, RTX and Scopa signed a memorandum of understanding to build a factory in the kingdom for air defense systems to protect Riyadh from airstrikes. The plan reportedly called for installing radars and multiple air defense systems with an investment of $25 billion in the kingdom and $17 worth of sales.

Image source: Breaking Defense

The owner of Scopa, Mohamed Alajlan, told the WSJ that his company has no deals with sanctioned Russian companies and that any deals with Chinese firms “are limited to securing raw materials such as copper or rubber for use in producing ammunition and armored vehicles.”

“We don’t work with any companies that have international sanctions,” Alajlan told the WSJ, adding that the decision by RTX to scrub the deal was “rushed, illogical, and even irrational.”

Alajlan, who also chairs the Saudi-Chinese Business Council, is the heir of a prominent Saudi family that for decades has imported Chinese textiles to the kingdom.

According to the WSJ, the “unease” over Scopa’s alleged ties to sanctioned Russian and Chinese companies “was a deciding factor for an advisory board of retired US military officers to resign from the Saudi company.” Furthermore, the daily claims Scopa fired its chief executive “who had raised the sanctions concerns with his company’s owner and US officials.”

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Foxes watching the hen house? DC insiders oversee Biden defense plans – Responsible Statecraft

Posted by M. C. on January 26, 2023

After years at the trough, these govt. contractors are now empowered to judge how billions are spent on a key national security strategy.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/25/contractors-and-weapons-firms-to-oversee-national-defense-strategy/

Written by
Eli Clifton

Earlier this month, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees named eight commissioners who will review President Joe Biden’s National Defense Strategy and provide recommendations for its implementation.

But the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which is tasked with “examin[ing] the assumptions, objectives, defense investments, force posture and structure, operational concepts, and military risks of the NDS,” according to the Armed Services Committees, is largely comprised of individuals with financial ties to the weapons industry and U.S. government contractors, raising questions about whether the commission will take a critical eye to contractors who receive $400 billion of the $858 billion FY2023 defense budget.

The potential conflicts of interest start at the very top of the eight-person commission. The chair of the commission, former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), sits on the board of Iridium Communications, a satellite communications firm that was awarded a seven-year $738.5 million contract with the Department of Defense in 2019.

“Iridium and its Board members follow Iridium’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and all rules and regulations applicable to dealings with the U.S. government,” Iridium spokesman Jordan Hassin told Responsible Statecraft.

A January 11 press release announcing the commission’s roster cited Harman’s current board memberships at the Department of Homeland Security and NASA but made no mention of her Iridium board membership, which paid her $180,000 in total compensation in 2021. Harman held 50,352 shares in Iridium, now worth approximately $3 million, in March 2022, according to the company’s disclosures.

“The members of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy each hold long records of ethical public service and national security leadership,” a Senate Armed Services Committee spokesperson told Responsible Statecraft. “The commissioners have committed to adhering to all government ethics policies to prevent any potential conflicts of interest. Congress will provide responsible oversight throughout the Commission’s work.”

That oversight will be complicated, judging by the financial ties to government and defense contractors held by six of the eight commission members.

“Lets face it, the National Defense Strategy and the Commission on the National Defense Strategy are flipsides of the same coin,” Mark Thompson, national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told Responsible Statecraft. “Both are heavily infected by Pentagon spending and Pentagon contractors.”

“These folks have a vested interest in spending more,” said Thompson. “In Washington’s national security community, the way you get credibility is to work at think tanks funded by defense contractors or serving on boards of defense contractors.”

Indeed, Thompson’s characterization of who has “credibility” appears to be reflected in appointments to the Commission.

Commission member John “Jack” Keane serves on the board of IronNet, a firm that describes itself as providing “Collective Defense powered with network detection and response (NDR), we empower national security agencies to gain better visibility into the threat landscape across the private sector with anonymized data, while benefiting from the insight and vigilance of a private/public community of peers.” The firm’s 2022 second quarter report made clear that IronNet is dependent on government contracts.

“Our business depends, in part, on sales to government organizations, and significant changes in the contracting or fiscal policies of such government organizations could have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations,” the report said.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Representatives are Too Invested in Defense Contractors

Posted by M. C. on August 12, 2022

After Raytheon and L3Harris, the rest of the top ten defense companies donating campaign cash were Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, General Atomics, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Boeing, and Leidos. These companies lined members’ campaign coffers with millions of dollars in PAC funding.

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2022/08/representatives-are-too-invested-in-defense-contractors

BY DYLAN HEDTLER-GAUDETTE & NATHAN SIEGEL

As Congress considers two monumentally important pieces of legislative business — the annual defense policy bill and a historic reform to congressional ethics rules — it is worth taking some time to consider just how deep the potential for corruption goes in both these areas and how they intersect with one another. In other words, congressional corruption and ethical failings are inextricably linked to the military-industrial-congressional complex — the unhealthy intersection between Congress and the defense sector. This situation calls for serious reforms, and Congress is the only stakeholder that can make that happen.

A Cozy Relationship

There are few examples that better highlight the ethical dysfunction in Congress than the excessively cozy relationship between policymakers and the defense industry. Each year, including this one, members of the House and Senate armed services committees and the House and Senate appropriations committees craft the policy and allocate the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that fund the Pentagon. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is the primary vehicle for defense policy. The accompanying appropriations bill allocates the money to operationalize the policy laid out in the NDAA. To put this in perspective, consider that the defense budget now clocks in at more than $800 billion and the Pentagon allocated $420 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2020 — over half the total defense budget and a contract dollar amount larger than every other federal agency combined.

In light of the scale and scope of defense spending, reasonable observers could be forgiven for assuming there might be some prudential rules in place to prevent corruption when it comes to Congress’s work regarding the defense industry. Unfortunately, there are virtually no such rules. In fact, the current framework around congressional conflicts of interest and campaign finance regarding industry relationships is so permissive as to all but guarantee the perversion of the policymaking process in this area.

There are few, if any, rules in place that restrict or prohibit members of Congress who sit on committees that oversee and legislate defense policy from holding direct personal financial stakes in defense companies, including through the ownership of stock. This means there is nothing stopping members of the House and Senate armed services committees (as well as each chamber’s respective defense subcommittee of the appropriations committee) from directly tying their own personal financial interests to the financial interests of defense contractors, all while passing laws that would steer billions of tax dollars to those very same companies. Again, these contracts total hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Pentagon Took Money for Covid-19 Relief and Bought… More Weapons – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on October 3, 2020

The military says that the “health” of the defense industry is crucial to national security. But the CARES Act money was specifically allocated to protect the health of the people of this country – not the companies that build weapons.

Burn pits, agent orange and sacking a carrier captain for putting the health of his crew over government PR should tell you what the pentagram thinks of soldiers health.

https://original.antiwar.com/?p=2012341064

by Phyllis Bennis

As the pandemic continues to claim lives across the country, new information keeps coming out about how the Trump administration has made it harder for Americans to protect themselves.

We now know, for example, that early in the pandemic the U.S. Postal Service had planned to deliver five face masks to every US household. It could have made mask-wearing a lot more common a lot earlier – and maybe saved a lot of lives. But the White House scrapped the idea.

Now we also know that the Trump administration took $1 billion in stimulus funds that were supposed to go towards making masks and other protective equipment for the pandemic – and gave most of it to weapons manufacturers.

Those funds were part of $10.6 billion in CARES Act money allocated to the Pentagon – a staggering sum, especially since the bloated military budget already claims 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar available to Congress.

The Pentagon’s CARES money was supposed to help military employees and military families survive the pandemic.

The $1 billion in question was granted under a special law that lets the Pentagon require companies to manufacture urgently needed goods in case of a national emergency. This time, it was to make sure companies producing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), like N-95 masks, ventilators, and more, were making all they could.

But most of that money didn’t go to making PPE at all. Trump’s defense department gave it to corporations that make jet engines, drone flight controllers, and dress uniforms for the military. Two-thirds of it was distributed in big contracts worth more than $5 million each.

The military says that the “health” of the defense industry is crucial to national security. But the CARES Act money was specifically allocated to protect the health of the people of this country – not the companies that build weapons.

This comes at a moment when US military spending is already near all-time highs – and when military contractors are doing better than lots of other companies.

“Major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman,” the Washington Post reports, “have remained financially healthy despite some pandemic-related disruption, and have continued to pay stock dividends to investors.”

Indeed, the CEOs of those companies rank among the highest paid corporate executives in the country. Last year General Dynamics’s CEO raked in $18 million, Northrup Grumman’s made $20 million, and Lockheed-Martin’s pulled in a whopping $31 million.

Still, many of those same military corporations paid out of the $1 billion Pentagon slush fund also applied for – and received – funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program that Congress designated specifically to prevent COVID-related layoffs. These extra Pentagon grants came on top of that, except without any requirements to protect jobs. Those companies could take the money and still fire as many employees as they want.

An additional $1 billion would have made a huge difference in the fight against COVID-19. My colleagues created a federal budget calculator. It shows that $1 billion could have funded nearly 28 million COVID-19 tests or purchased over 294 million N-95 respirator masks.

What makes us safer in the pandemic – access to more testing and a lot more face masks, or helping military corporations and their CEOs make a killing on our tax money?

Add that to the canceled Postal Service plan to distribute hundreds of millions more masks, and the record keeps getting more appalling. Make no mistake: The Trump administration’s heartlessness and militarism are costing lives.

Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She’s the author of Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Reprinted with permission from OtherWords.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Mattis: One More General for the ‘Self Licking Ice Cream Cone’ | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on January 8, 2019

…just three years after he left the military—he was worth upwards of $10 million. In addition to his retirement pay, which was close to $15,000 a month at the time, he received $242,000 as a board member, plus as much as $1.2 million in stock options in General Dynamics, the Pentagon’s fourth largest contractor. 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/mattis-one-more-general-for-the-self-licking-ice-cream-cone/

By KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS

Before he became lionized as the “only adult in the room” capable of standing up to President Trump, General James Mattis was quite like any other brass scoping out a lucrative second career in the defense industry. And as with other military giants parlaying their four stars into a cushy boardroom chair or executive suite, he pushed and defended a sub-par product while on both sides of the revolving door. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that contract turned out to be an expensive fraud and a potential health hazard to the troops.

According to a recent report by the Project on Government Oversight, 25 generals, nine admirals, 43 lieutenant generals, and 23 vice admirals retired to become lobbyists, board members, executives, or consultants for the defense industry between 2008 and 2018. They are part of a much larger group of 380 high-ranking government officials and congressional staff who shifted into the industry in that time.

Back to Mattis. In 2012, while he was head of Central Command, the Marine General pressed the Army to procure and deploy blood testing equipment from a Silicon Valley company called Theranos. He communicated that he was having success with this effort directly to Theranos’s chief executive officer. Even though an Army health unit tried to terminate the contract due to it’s not meeting requirements, according to POGO, Mattis kept the pressure up. Luckily, it was never used on the battlefield. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Bombing Yemeni School Children for Profit – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2018

https://original.antiwar.com/mbenjamin/2018/09/11/bombing-yemeni-school-children-for-profit/

by 

As if the horrific Saudi bombing of a Yemeni school bus that killed 44 children on August 9, 2018 wasn’t bad enough, CNN reported that the bomb used in the attack was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, one of the major U.S. defense contractors. Nima Elbagir, reporting for CNN’s Situation Room, showed a map of Yemen pinpointing several other attacks where large numbers of civilians have been killed by bombs from not only Lockheed Martin, but also General Dynamics and Raytheon. It was a rare moment when a mainstream US media outlet made the connection between US weapons and the devastation they wreak.

The footage of the Yemen attack is heartbreaking, showing bloodied and screaming children (the ‘fortunate’ survivors) still wearing their blue backpacks. A global outcry for the Saudis to stop bombing civilians and for the US to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia arose immediately. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »