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Posts Tagged ‘Pentagon’

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Pentagon Chief: If Ukraine Is Defeated, NATO Will Be At War With Russia

Posted by M. C. on March 1, 2024

This is the single most important, dangerous and highly revealing statement from a top defense official in the West in a long time…

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pentagon-chief-if-ukraine-defeated-war-nato-will-be-war-russia

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

This is the single most important, dangerous and highly revealing statement from a top defense official in the West in a long time… It also demonstrates the precarious urgency of the moment and the huge stakes going into the November US election. The world truly stands on the precipice of a nuclear nightmare with the following fresh assertion of Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said before Congress on Thursday: 

“If Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” Austin stated.

What’s more is that this came the very day that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned things could easily spiral toward nuclear war in the scenario that NATO sends troops to Ukraine. Watch:

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says if Ukraine falls he really believes NATO will be in a fight with Russia pic.twitter.com/lmOimGsSAH — Sputnik (@SputnikInt) February 29, 2024

According to the fuller context of the Pentagon chief’s statements, he emphasized that more Washington funding is crucial for Ukraine in order to prevent a situation where “one country can redraw its neighbors’ boundaries and illegitimately take over its sovereign territory.”

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Welfare for the Rich

Posted by M. C. on February 15, 2024

What we do get for the overall well-over-a-trillion in yearly military spending is…a hollowed-out military that doesn’t even have enough ammunition to defend the United States!

So both the Bell-Textron with the 360 Invictus and Sikorsky with its Raider X were funded and developed these past five years with more than two billion dollars and…suddenly…the Pentagon said, “never mind.”

by Daniel McAdams

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/welfare-for-the-rich

(This article first appeared as an exclusive update to RPI subscribers. Subscribe for free here.)

Why does the US military budget keep skyrocketing? The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2024 passed in December came in at a whopping $841.1 billion, and that’s just part of the total amount that will be spent on military-related issues this year. Just this weekend, for example, the Senate cleared the way for a nearly $100 billion in additional spending to boost the military capabilities of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan!

What do we get for all that spending? A military that can do whatever it takes to defend the United States? A military whose mere formidable existence acts as a deterrent to any would-be invaders of our geographically unique country surrounded by a massive moat? We shouldn’t be naive! 

What we do get for the overall well-over-a-trillion in yearly military spending is…a hollowed-out military that doesn’t even have enough ammunition to defend the United States!

We get a military that is so unattractive to young people that they have had to make radical reforms in desperate attempt to recover from the recruiting death-spiral – including, in the US Navy at least, abandoning the requirement to have any educational credential at all, including a high school diploma or GED. Prospective US Navy personnel need only score 50 or above out of 99 on the notoriously rudimentary ASVAB test (that means with a score of 50% – which in the real world is a failing grade – you’re in!).

But surely for all those billions we are getting weapons that are absolutely crushing it on the battlefield? Not exactly. As we have seen for two years on the Ukraine battlefield of the US proxy war against Russia, each new “wonder weapon” sent by the Pentagon – starting with Javelins and continuing through HIMARS, Bradley fighting vehicles, M1A1 Abrams tanks, and even the new Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (which are so new the Pentagon itself doesn’t yet have them in its arsenal) – is quickly defeated by Russian counter-measures. 

Even the rabidly pro-war and anti-Russia Washington Post – the Pravda of our regime – is admitting that Ukraine is headed for defeat. The Pentagon – and NATO – has sent all they had into Ukraine to fight Russia and still it is losing. 

How could it be that we spend orders of magnitude more on the military than a country like Russia and still are being bettered on the battlefield? It is not that our servicemembers are sub-par or that the US is incapable of technical and industrial innovation. 

The problem is very different. It has to do with a deeply broken system that serves not US security, but special interests.

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Biden Has Started Another US War

Posted by M. C. on January 22, 2024

Caitlin Johnstone

This bizarre refusal to just call a war a war also appeared in a recent press conference with Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, who acted shocked and aghast that reporters would even ask if repeatedly bombing a country would qualify as being at war with them.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/140915473

The Washington Post has an article out titled “As Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for sustained campaign,” with “sustained campaign” being empire-speak for a new American war. 

“The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen after 10 days of strikes failed to halt the group’s attacks on maritime commerce, stoking concern among some officials that an open-ended operation could derail the war-ravaged country’s fragile peace and pull Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict,” the Post reports.

The Post acknowledges that “sustained military campaign” means “war” in the ninth paragraph of the article, saying the anonymous US officials cited in the report “don’t expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.” Which is about as reassuring as a pyromaniac saying he doesn’t expect he’ll be burning down any more houses like all those other houses he’s burned down.

This bizarre refusal to just call a war a war also appeared in a recent press conference with Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, who acted shocked and aghast that reporters would even ask if repeatedly bombing a country would qualify as being at war with them.

“Is it now fair to say that the U.S. is at war in Yemen?” Singh was asked by a Reuters reporter on Thursday.

“No, we don’t seek war,” Singh replied. “We don’t think that we are at war. We don’t want to see a regional war. The Houthis are the ones that continue to launch cruise missiles, antiship missiles at innocent mariners, at commercial vessels that are just transiting an area that sees, you know, 10 to 15 percent of world’s commerce.”

In a follow-up several questions later, Singh was asked by a reporter from Politico, “You said that we are not at war with the Houthis, but if — you know, this tit-for-tat bombing — we’ve bombed them five times now. So if this isn’t war, can you just explain this a little — a little bit more to us? If this isn’t war, what is war?”

“Sure, Lara, sure, great question, I just wasn’t expecting it phrased exactly that way,” Singh replied with a laugh and a smirk. “Look, we are — we do not seek war. We are — we do not — we are not at war with the Houthis. In terms of a definition, I think that would be more of a clear declaration from the United States. But again, what we are doing and the actions that we are taking are defensive in nature.”

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Troubling Questions in Strange Case of Pentagon Chief Missing in Action

Posted by M. C. on January 15, 2024

The absence of Austin would have no doubt exacerbated the alarm within an already trigger-happy U.S. military machine. Combined with those concerns is the lack of confidence in Biden’s cognitive health as Commander-in-Chief.

Given this ferment of conflict, it seems incredible that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was effectively missing in action for several weeks without his nominal superior, Joe Biden, knowing of his whereabouts. Biden’s other title is Commander-in-Chief. In the supposed civilian command structure of the United States military, Austin is second to Biden. Among their supposed responsibilities is the command of U.S. nuclear forces.

The United States is recklessly provoking armed confrontation in these geopolitical cauldrons – all of them involving the danger of nuclear weapons – and yet the highest civilian commander at the Pentagon goes missing in action for several days over secretive surgery.

Apparently Biden is not part of the Pentagram’s equation.

Troubling Questions in Strange Case of Pentagon Chief Missing in Action

It seems utterly bizarre that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin – the second-highest ranking civilian military commander in the United States – was absent from duty for several weeks without President Joe Biden or Congress knowing about it.

A charitable view would be to call the scandal a “comedy of errors”. More appropriately, however, are urgent concerns about the implications for global peace and security. The U.S. resembles a juggernaut out of control careening along a precipice.

This inexplicable prolonged gap in U.S. military command and control at the apex of the Pentagon goes from bizarre to deeply worrying considering the rapidly deteriorating security conditions in the Middle East. And especially because the deterioration is largely caused by the United States and its accomplices in their blatant contempt for international law.

This week, the United States and its British ally carried out over 100 cruise missile strikes against Yemen, purportedly in retaliation for Yemen’s blocking of commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Yemenis claim that their actions to interdict shipping are legally entitled by their support for Palestinians suffering 90 days of genocidal aggression from Israel backed by the U.S.

Indeed, the Middle East powder-keg situation is set for an escalation towards an all-out region-wide war given the weeks of tensions caused by the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza by Israel. American bases in Iraq and Syria have come under fire in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli assassinations of senior Palestinian and other Arab militant leaders. There is growing fear that the violence will spiral into an open armed confrontation between the United States and Iran.

Given this ferment of conflict, it seems incredible that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was effectively missing in action for several weeks without his nominal superior, Joe Biden, knowing of his whereabouts. Biden’s other title is Commander-in-Chief. In the supposed civilian command structure of the United States military, Austin is second to Biden. Among their supposed responsibilities is the command of U.S. nuclear forces.

Austin underwent surgery on December 22 for prostate cancer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. A subsequent urinary tract infection then caused Austin to be hospitalized again on January 1 for several more days. It is not clear if he was always conscious during this period or under sedation.

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Why They Hated Kennedy, and Why They Killed Him

Posted by M. C. on December 21, 2023

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Equally important, the Cold War brought ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess flowing into the coffers of the “defense” industry, along with the ever-increasing power and influence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA within the overall federal structure.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough, one that threatened not only the ever-increasing power, money, and influence of the national-security branch, but also its very existence. Kennedy came to realize that the Cold War was just one great big racket — and a highly dangerous one at that.

Why They Hated Kennedy, and Why They Killed Him

While the decision to eliminate President Kennedy undoubtedly took place after his resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was without a doubt solidified when Kennedy ambushed his enemies within the U.S. national-security establishment with his Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963. With his Peace Speech, JFK was upsetting the Cold War apple cart that the Pentagon and the CIA were convinced would last forever. 

What was so significant about that speech?

After the end of World War II, the U.S. government was converted from its founding system of a limited-government republic to a governmental structure called a national-security state. The justification for this radical change, which was accomplished without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, was that the United States now faced an enemy that was said to be even more threatening than Nazi Germany. That new enemy was “godless communism” as well as a supposed international communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world — a conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia — yes, that Russia!

With the conversion to a national-security state, the U.S. government acquired many of the same totalitarian powers that were being wielded by the totalitarian communist states, such as the Soviet Union and Red China — powers that had been prohibited when the government was a limited-government republic. Such powers included state-sponsored assassinations, torture, kidnapping, indefinite detention, and coups.

Equally important, the Cold War brought ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess flowing into the coffers of the “defense” industry, along with the ever-increasing power and influence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA within the overall federal structure. Over time, the national-security branch of the federal government would become the most powerful branch, the one to which the other three would inevitably defer. 

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough, one that threatened not only the ever-increasing power, money, and influence of the national-security branch, but also its very existence. Kennedy came to realize that the Cold War was just one great big racket — and a highly dangerous one at that.

That danger was manifested during the Cuban Missile Crisis. U.S. officials and their loyalists in the mainstream press have always maintained that the crisis was brought on by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Not so! It was brought on by the Pentagon and the CIA. It was those two entities that brought the world to within an inch of all-out nuclear war. 

The Soviets and the Cubans knew that the Pentagon and the CIA wanted to invade Cuba and effect a regime-change operation there, one that would oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power and replace him with another pro-U.S. dictator, similar to Fulgencio Batista, the corrupt pro-U.S. brute that ruled Cuba before the revolutionaries ousted him in 1959.

That was why the Soviets installed those nuclear missiles in Cuba — to deter U.S. officials from attacking or, if deterrence failed, to enable Soviet and Cuban forces to defend themselves from a U.S. attack.

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The Pentagon’s Rush To Deploy AI-Enabled Weapons Is Going To Kill Us All

Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2023

While experts warn about the risk of human extinction, the Department of Defense plows full speed ahead…

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Friday, Dec 08, 2023 – 09:00 PM

Authored by Michael T. Klare via The Nation,

Jenkins was at the UN that day to unveil a “Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy,” a US-inspired call for voluntary restraints on the development and deployment of AI-enabled autonomous weapons. The declaration avows, among other things, that “States should ensure that the safety, security, and effectiveness of military AI capabilities are subject to appropriate and rigorous testing,” and that “States should implement appropriate safeguards to mitigate risks of failures in military AI capabilities, such as the ability to… deactivat[e] deployed systems, when such systems demonstrate unintended behavior.”

None of this, however, constitutes a legally binding obligation of states that sign the declaration; rather, it simply entails a promise to abide by a set of best practices, with no requirement to demonstrate compliance with those measures or risk of punishment if found to be in non-compliance.

Getting that warm and fuzzy feeling yet?

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/pentagons-rush-deploy-ai-enabled-weapons-going-kill-us-all

The recent boardroom drama over the leadership of OpenAI—the San Francisco–based tech startup behind the immensely popular ChatGPT computer program—has been described as a corporate power struggle, an ego-driven personality clash, and a strategic dispute over the release of more capable ChatGPT variants. It was all that and more, but at heart represented an unusually bitter fight between those company officials who favor unrestricted research on advanced forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and those who, fearing the potentially catastrophic outcomes of such endeavors, sought to slow the pace of AI development.

At approximately the same time as this epochal battle was getting under way, a similar struggle was unfolding at the United Nations in New York and government offices in Washington, D.C., over the development of autonomous weapons systems—drone ships, planes, and tanks operated by AI rather than humans. In this contest, a broad coalition of diplomats and human rights activists have sought to impose a legally binding ban on such devices—called “killer robots” by opponents—while officials at the Departments of State and Defense have argued for their rapid development.

At issue in both sets of disputes are competing views over the trustworthiness of advanced forms of AI, especially the “large language models” used in “generative AI” systems like ChatGPT. (Programs like these are called “generative” because they can create human-quality text or images based on a statistical analysis of data culled from the Internet). Those who favor the development and application of advanced AI—whether in the private sector or the military—claim that such systems can be developed safely; those who caution against such action, say it cannot, at least not without substantial safeguards.

Without going into the specifics of the OpenAI drama—which ended, for the time being, on November 21 with the appointment of new board members and the return of AI whiz Sam Altman as chief executive after being fired five days earlier—it is evident that the crisis was triggered by concerns among members of the original board of directors that Altman and his staff were veering too far in the direction of rapid AI development, despite pledges to exercise greater caution.

As Altman and many of his colleagues see things, humans technicians are on the verge of creating “general AI” or “superintelligence”—AI programs so powerful they can duplicate all aspects of human cognition and program themselves, making human programming unnecessary. Such systems, it is claimed, will be able to cure most human diseases and perform other beneficial miracles—but also, detractors warn, will eliminate most human jobs and may, eventually, choose to eliminate humans altogether.

“In terms of both potential upsides and downsides, superintelligence will be more powerful than other technologies humanity has had to contend with in the past,” Altman and his top lieutenants wrote in May. “We can have a dramatically more prosperous future; but we have to manage risk to get there.”

For Altman, as for many others in the AI field, that risk has an “existential” dimension, entailing the possible collapse of human civilization—and, at the extreme, human extinction. “I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,” he told a Senate hearing on May 16. Altman also signed an open letter released by the Center for AI Safety on May 30 warning of the possible “risk of extinction from AI.” Mitigating that risk, the letter avowed, “should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

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Pentagon fails sixth audit in a row

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2023

Can any government agency pass an audit?

But you had better pass yours!

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit/

Connor Echols

On Wednesday, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord revealed that the Department of Defense had failed its sixth audit in a row, with no significant improvements over the last year.

“We are working hard to address audit findings as well as recommendations from the Government Accountability Office,” McCord said in a statement. “The Components are making good progress resulting in meaningful benefits, but we must do more.”

In a repeat of last year’s audit, just one in four of the Pentagon’s auditing units received a clean bill of financial health, though auditors made some progress in accounting for the agency’s $3.8 billion in assets. McCord said that a clean audit likely remains years away, according to Reuters.

The Pentagon remains the only federal agency to have never passed an audit. Its failure to make significant progress has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who called for an independent audit of the department.

“The recent failure of the Pentagon’s 6TH audit couldn’t make it clearer that we need accountability & transparency,” Paul posted on X. “No institution is above scrutiny, especially the DoD [with] the largest budget of ANY [federal] agency.”

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Did Anyone Ask You About War in the Middle East?

Posted by M. C. on November 15, 2023

Our policymakers seem to have made up their minds without consulting the people or their representatives.

https://archive.is/EKpyl

Peter Van Buren

Did anyone ask you—or at least Congress—if it was O.K. to go to war again in the Middle East? After literal decades of fighting in that troubled part of the world, it looks like the U.S. is, without discussion, never mind vigorous debate, already at war in various sub-theaters of someone else’s conflict. See if anything that’s going on seems like war to you.

The U.S. is flying drones over Gaza. The Pentagon says the unmanned aerial vehicle flights began after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and are being conducted “in support of hostage recovery efforts.” The drone missions are also providing “advice and assistance” to Israel. A total of seven different aircraft are flying across the region, four of them per day, passing information to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The U.S. is also supplying precision-guided munitions, fighter aircraft, and air defense capabilities, such as interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome counter-drone systems, to the IDF.

U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) are in Israel. Officials anonymously told the New York Times several dozen special operators are on the ground working with the FBI, the State Department, and other U.S. government hostage recovery specialists. A senior Pentagon official told the “Forever Wars” blog that SOF are preparing for “contingencies,” which may include the active retrieval of hostages from Hamas. The U.S. previously said it has sent military advisers to help Israel. Christopher Maier, an assistant secretary of defense, indicated other soldiers have also been deployed. “We’re actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things,” Maier said.

Two American veteran-run organizations, the Special Operations Association of America (SOAA) and Save Our Allies, sent roughly two dozen volunteers, all former special operators, into Israel and Egypt to support evacuations. Each volunteer was chosen based on them having experience working with Egyptians or Israelis.

The volunteers arrange for local nationals to provide food and medical supplies to trapped Americans, and they have interfaced with the Egyptian military personnel who ultimately have to approve Americans’ departure. The special operations volunteers also coordinate directly with the IDF to ensure Americans are not targeted. They call their work “shepherding” and forswear a kinetic role. SOAA staff are also in Tel Aviv helping to coordinate evacuations. The volunteers’ actions, particularly working with the Egyptian and Israeli forces, come very close to off-limits traditional governmental roles, though the groups deny that.

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Pentagon Says US Is Flying Drones Over Gaza to Look for Hostages

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2023

US special operations forces are also on the ground in Israel

So are the hostages standing in an open field waving signs? The US can’t tell a Reuters reporter from a terrorist from a helicopter let alone high flying drone.

That is how stupid the government and media think we are.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/all-lies-how-the-us-military-covered-up-gunning-down-two-journalists-in-iraq

antiwar.com

by Dave DeCamp

The Pentagon has acknowledged that the US is flying drones over Gaza to help Israel locate hostages, demonstrating deep US involvement in the war.

“In support of hostage recovery efforts, the US is conducting unarmed UAV flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Friday.

The New York Times reported that the flights started days after October 7, and they are being conducted by MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are capable of carrying powerful missiles. At least six MQ-9s are involved in the operations, which the Times says suggests the US is taking a more “active role” in the war than previously known.

The US has also deployed special operations forces to Israel in the wake of the October 7 attack. US officials said the American commandos are in Israel to help locate hostages and insist they are not assigned to combat roles.

Besides the drone flights and special operations, the US has also shipped new weapons to Israel and deployed significant firepower to the region, including two aircraft carrier strike groups. President Biden is looking for an additional $14 billion to spend on the Gaza onslaught, which is on top of the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military aid.

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America’s Military Can’t Repair Its Own $1.7 Trillion Jet

Posted by M. C. on October 16, 2023

Only about half of the U.S.’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets is operational at any time due to difficulties with repairs, which must go through contractors.

When something breaks on the F-35, it takes the Pentagon an average of 141 days to repair it. That’s a long time for a jet to be grounded, but it’s actually an improvement from the last time the GAO conducted the survey in 2017. Back then it took the DoD 172 days to fix a piece of the jet.

Not an anomaly. The pentagram has conned most of NATO into buying into this nightmare. The new Ford class aircraft carrier is in the same situation. The Marine’s tilt rotor aircraft is called the “widow maker”.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3w5ay/america-cant-repair-its-own-dollar17-trillion-jet

by Matthew Gault

Like Apple’s new iPhone, America’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is expensive and hard to repair without intervention from the original manufacturer. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a bipartisan watchdog group in D.C., F-35s are only available for missions about half the time. A whole lot of these expensive jets are sitting in storage because they’re waiting on repair parts.

The F-35 is a troubled aircraft that’s been on the GAO’s radar for years. Its new report on the jet, “DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy,” drilled down into why the aircraft spent so much time on the tarmac and not in the skies. “The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals,” the GAO said. “The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired.”

Right now, the care and upkeep of F-35s has been contracted out to third parties. If something breaks on an F-35, it’s usually fixed by a defense contractor and not military engineers. This is part of why the jet is so expensive. “DOD has estimated overall costs for the program at more than $1.7 trillion over its life cycle, with the majority of the costs, about $1.3 trillion, associated with sustaining the aircraft,” the GAO said.

The goal has long been for the Pentagon to take over routine maintenance of the aircraft, but it’s not going well. When something breaks on the F-35, it takes the Pentagon an average of 141 days to repair it. That’s a long time for a jet to be grounded, but it’s actually an improvement from the last time the GAO conducted the survey in 2017. Back then it took the DoD 172 days to fix a piece of the jet. The goal is to get that number down to 60. “Program officials anticipated having greater repair material starting in the second half of 2023, helping to steadily improve repair times,” the GAO said. “These officials also told us that they were still years away from achieving the program’s goal.”

Other indicators have gotten worse, not better. In 2019, there was a backlog of 4,300 parts waiting on repair. In 2023, that number is up to 10,000, but the GAO did say that some of this is due to an increased number of F-35s overall. The problem of waiting on repair parts has gotten so bad, however, that the DoD is simply buying new parts instead of waiting to repair old ones. 

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