Category: Military

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Richard Wright: Technology Not A Substitute for Brains

Corruption, Government, Military
Richard Wright

My experience with GCHQ was that they were able to conduct better processing and anaysis than NSA at consideribly less cost. I remember one particularly difficult puzzle that I was trying to work out using the latest contactor designed programs (vapor ware) and getting nowhere. An analyst (and friend) at GCHQ managed to solve the puzzle using the back of an envelope and a stub pencil (which I accused him of stealing from his boss). Another GCHQ associate explained to me that when you don't have the money for a lot of bells and whistles you have to actually think your way through problems. GCHQ serves as an example that effective Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) does not have to depend on a massive budget and expensive computer systems. As John Boyd pointed out its the brain that wins battles.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Go Online, Beat a Puzzle and Become a British Spy

By

New York Times, December 2, 2011

LONDON — Psst! Wanna be a spy?

EXTRACT:

But judging by the response to the spy agency’s puzzle, the government faces an uphill struggle, partly because in the community of hackers, government itself is uncool, if not the enemy. One hacker going by the name Ady who entered a comment on the BBC’s Web site urged the agency to “stick to employing upper-class twits from Oxford and Cambridge.” Hackers, called “hobbyists” in the post, know that “governments are not really the sort of people you want to get involved with,” Ady said.

See Also:

1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (Full Text Online for Google Translate))

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

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Chuck Spinney: UXO Waste of War Decades Later

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Military, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney

For every square meter of land along the Western front from the Channel coast to the Swiss border it is estimated that a ton of explosives fell during WW1 (the “Iron Harvest“)

Belgian UXO (unexploded ordnance) experts estimate there are 450 million pieces of UXO in Belgium alone. At Verdun in France the estimate is that 12 million pieces of UXO remain.

Belgium – 450 million pieces

Verdun 12 million pieces

Verdun II

Belgian EOD

French UXB info

630 French UXO personnel have been killed since WWII working on this stuff. Currently in France the UXO specialists recover about 900 tons per year, with 30 tons of that being chemical munitions (mustard gas shells, phosgene shells, etc.), and they estimate there's enough work there to keep them busy for another 900 years.

French UXO specialist deaths

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: UXO Waste of War Decades Later”

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DefDog: New $300 million intelligence campus

Corruption, Government, Military
DefDog

Here is a quick $300 million that could be saved…..and reduce the workforce by the 3000 people they were going to move….

Military planning $300 million intelligence campus in Bethesda

The Pentagon plans to set up a $300 million hub in Bethesda for the federal government’s intelligence-gathering agencies on a 40-acre site vacated in September by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Military Construction (MILCON) has been out of control since the Iraq War was declared by Dick Cheney and company.   For a “community” (more like a goat fest) that provides “at best” 4% of what the President needs, this is a no-brainer–it should be shut down.

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Marcus Aurelius: Col Paul Yingling, Departing

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius

I've never met COL Yingling, but he is somewhat famous (infamous?) within the Army.  He has survived his earlier article, provided second below, and even gotten promoted, apparently recently.  So now he's sitting in a somewhat idyllic spot, specifically Garmisch, a couple of years short of qualifying to retire as a colonel.  He's again frustrated and, as he explains first below, is punching out in a few months to teach social studies.  I don't know where he's going to teach, but, having served as a high school teacher, I'm not sure it's going to be the attractive situation seems to be expecting.  I wonder how he'd feel after some experience teaching in places like Washington, DC or Baltimore and dealing with genuinely irrational parents.

Phi Beta Iota:  Another Marine Corps Colonel, Walter J. Breede III, USNA 1968, made the same choice.  When you have integrity to the nth degree, you cannot live with the cognitive dissonance that comes with drinking the kool-aid.  Below in complete full text online are both Col Yingling's new article, and his original article on “The Failure of Generalship.”  Click on his photo for access to his biography and other publications.

Washington Post, December 4, 2011
Pg. B2

Why I'm Leaving The Military For A Social Studies Classroom

Army Col. Paul Yingling says he would rather teach kids than advise generals

I'm a colonel in the U.S. Army, and next summer I will retire to teach high school social studies. My friends think I'm crazy, and they may have a point.

Colonel is the last rank before general's stars, and it comes with significant perks. My pay is triple the national average teacher's teacher salary. Military budgets have doubled over the past last decade, while school districts have slashed funding, increased class sizes, cut programs and laid off teachers. The social status accorded to the military is wonderful, while teachers are routinely pilloried by politicians and pundits for student outcomes that are often driven by events and conditions far beyond the schoolhouse door.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Col Paul Yingling, Departing”

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David Swanson: 70 Years of Lies About Pearl Harbor

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Officers Call
David Swanson

70 Years of Lying About Pearl Harbor

By davidswanson

WarIsACrime.org, 04 December 2011

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in targeting of submarines as it had been doing. Of course, Germany's declaration of war, which followed Pearl Harbor and the immediate U.S. declaration of war on Japan, helped as well, but it was Pearl Harbor that radically converted the American people from opposition to support for war.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried lying to the American people about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and — just 11 days before the “unexpected” attack — he had secretly ordered the creation of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.

Continue reading “David Swanson: 70 Years of Lies About Pearl Harbor”

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Thomas Briggs: No, China Does Not Have 3,000 Nuclear Weapons (Nor Does CIA Have Clandestine Assets Anywhere Relevant)

02 China, 10 Security, Academia, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence
Thomas Leo Briggs

Here is another posting related to this topic to balance the earlier piece from the Washington Post.

No, China Does Not Have 3,000 Nuclear Weapons

A study from Georgetown University incorrectly suggests that China has 3,000 nuclear weapons.The estimate is off by an order of magnitude.

By Hans M. Kristensen

EXTRACT:

According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, China has produced an estimated 2 tons of plutonium for weapons. Some has been consumed in nuclear tests, leaving roughly 1.8 tons. The estimate is consistent with what the U.S. government has stated and theoretically enough for 450-600 warheads.

Total production of HEU is thought to have been approximately 20 tons. Some has been spent in nuclear tests and research reactor fuel, leaving a stockpile of some 16 tons. That’s theoretically enough for roughly 640-1,060 warheads.

Another critical material is Tritium, which is used in thermonuclear weapons. China probably only produces enough Tritium at its High-Flux Engineering Test Reactor (HFETR) in Jiajiang to maintain an arsenal of about 300 weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2009 that China likely has produced enough weapon-grade fissile material to meet its needs for the immediate future. In other words, no vast warhead expansion is in sight.

Read more, several excellent images.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota:  We are reminded of how the British government sacrificed its intelligence and integrity in copying from a university paper to inflate the Iraq WMD threat, and we continue to believe that the “restricted” papers the students were given are both grounds for an investigation of their professor, and grounds for an Inspector General if not a Department of Justice inquiry into illegal PSYOP funding influence from the Pentagon to Georgetown University.  It merits positive comment that neither the CIA's “all source” Directorate of Intelligence nor the CIA's Open Source Center are capable of this level of work–the students, and their professor–have done a great deal of good.  They simply cannot combine — as the CIA and DIA cannot combine — open sources in all languages; deep analytic tradecraft; and rigorous personal integrity….nor does the CIA have any clandestine assets in China relevant to this particular inquiry, nor does the US Intelligence Community have leadership capable of focusing all-source collection and requisite (non-existent) processing on this vital question.  On the one hand, the Pentagon is correct to say that the US intelligence community stinks on all questions Chinese; on the other, the Pentagon and the White House are telling impeachable lies to Congress and the public on all matters relating to the Chinese threat and the Pentagon budget.  Our personal speculative estimate of China's nuclear capability is closer to 30 operable weapons, to which we add that the US has never actually tested any of its nuclear weapons–we literally do not know if they will work as advertised.

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John Robb: War with Iran Very, Very Close

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence
John Robb

WAR with IRAN? It's closer than you think….

Israel's hawks are VERY close to manufacturing a full scale war with Iran.  On Monday the 28th of November, it used special operations forces (referred to below as the “Hand of God”) to blow up a portion of an Iranian Nuclear facility near Isfahan (confirmed by satellite imagery).   This follows on the heels of another explosion at Tehran facility that killed an Iranian general.

What's even more worrisome is that Israeli hawks are actively claiming responsibility for this sabotage (from the Times of London):

  • Dan Meridor. the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: “There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.”
  • Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel's former director of national security, told Israel's army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. “There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it's the hand of God”
  • A former Israeli intelligence official cited at least two other explosions [that we haven't heard about] that have “successfully neutralised” Iranian bases associated with the Shahab-3, the medium-range missile that could be adapted to carry a nuclear warhead. “This is something everyone in the West wanted to see happen,” he added.

Ok, let's put this into perspective:

  1. These claims are blood in the water.  Israel's hawks see Iran as an existential threat to Israel.  They WANT a war with Iran.  This is an attempt to make that war happen.
  2. The US, from President Obama on down, are incapable of reigning Israel in.  Israeli hawks are now operating open loop (without restraint).
  3. Iran's anger at these attacks, demonstrated by an attack on the UK embassy in Tehran, is just the start.  Who knows what they will do next?  Iran's hawks are likely frothing at the mouth too.

What does this mean?  A war with Iran would:

  • Cause an immediate energy shock.  Oil prices shooting through $200 + a barrel.  Lost production from Iran, Iraq, and most of the monarchies.  A potential loss of  6-10 m barrels a day?
  • Global depression deepens.  Prices over $150 cause immediate recessions.  Higher than that, who knows?  Usually, a slow down in economic activity reduces demand, however with peak oil (we hit the max the world could produce a couple of years ago) and lost production from the Middle East, that price could remain high even in the face of a deep, deep economic depression.
  • Networked Resilient Communities.  Nobody is going to save you.  You need to prepare by building or moving to a resilient community that produces most of the energy and food it needs to survive.