Military – Page 86 – Public Intelligence Blog

Pierre Sprey and I have authored an analysis of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's statements this past Monday on the A-10. It follows:

Chuck Hagel's A-10 Legacy

By Winslow T. Wheeler & Pierre M. Sprey

When he spoke about next year's defense budget on February 24, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel addressed his decision to go along with the Air Force and retire all existing A-10 close air support aircraft. In that statement, he made the following assertions:

· “To fund these investments [the new long range bomber, the new tanker and the F-35], the Air Force will reduce the number of tactical air squadrons including the entire A-10 fleet. Retiring the A-10 fleet saves $3.5 billion over five years and accelerates the Air Force's long-standing modernization plan – which called for replacing the A-10s with the more capable F-35 in the early 2020s.”

· “The ‘Warthog' is a venerable platform, and this was a tough decision. But the A-10 is a 40-year-old single-purpose airplane originally designed to kill enemy tanks on a Cold War battlefield. It cannot survive or operate effectively where there are more advanced aircraft or air defenses. And as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, the advent of precision munitions means that many more types of aircraft can now provide effective close air support, from B-1 bombers to remotely piloted aircraft. And these aircraft can execute more than one mission.”

· “Moreover, the A-10's age is also making it much more difficult and costly to maintain. Significant savings are only possible through eliminating the entire fleet, because of the fixed cost of maintaining the support apparatus associated with the aircraft. Keeping a smaller number of A-10s would only delay the inevitable while forcing worse trade-offs elsewhere.”

Many of these statements are questionable; several are poorly informed; at least one of them is materially incorrect.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Chuck Hagel on the A-10 – Without a Clue or Without Scruples?”

2014/02/252014/02/25

Chuck Spinney: How the Secret World Destroys Reputations – The Banality of Evil

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” to describe her highly controversial thesis that “the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.” [source: Wikipedia]

Arendt argued that Adolf Eichmann's crimes resulted “not from a wicked or depraved character but from sheer ‘thoughtlessness': he was simply an ambitious bureaucrat who failed to reflect on the enormity of what he was doing. His role in the mass extermination of Jews epitomized ‘the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil' that had spread across Europe at the time. Arendt's refusal to recognize Eichmann as “inwardly” evil prompted fierce denunciations from both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals. Her argument, which has been criticized by many, came out of her coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 for the New Yorker.” [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica]

Whether or not you accept Arendt’s thesis in regard to the perpetration of the Holocaust, it is impossible to deny the thoughtless, faceless, bureaucratic banality implicit in the briefing slides below support her thesis. These official briefing slides, leaked from the Snowden Archive and analyzed by Glen Greenwald, clearly describe in antiseptic, logically-disconnected, powerpoint detail how the employees of NSA and its cohorts plan to use cyber operations as a covert means to coerce the American people, as well as foreigners, into accepting the totalitarian premises of the emerging American State.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: How the Secret World Destroys Reputations – The Banality of Evil”

2014/02/25

Mother Jones: Can’t Touch This – Best Overview of Pentagon Corruption and Idiocy at This Time and Place

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military

CAN”T TOUCH THIS

The wars are winding down. It's the age of austerity. But nobody messes with the Pentagon budget.

Until Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) rode to the rescue this week, Pentagon brass and their allies had been issuing dire warnings about the nation's military readiness: The armed services were being decimated, they said, by sequestration—the automatic budget cuts that were set to trim $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade. “It's one thing for the Pentagon to go on a diet. It's another for the Pentagon to wear a straitjacket while dieting,” grumbled Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The message got through: The House overwhelmingly approved the Ryan-Murray plan just two days after it was introduced.

But now, the Pentagon has once more gotten a reprieve from the budget ax: Under Murray and Ryan's congressional budget deal, the Pentagon will get an additional $32 billion, or 4.4 percent, in 2014, leaving its base budget at a higher level than in 2005 and 2006. (The Department of Defense expects its total 2014 budget, including supplemental war funding, to be more than $600 billion.)

Before the budget deal, some critics of defense spending had been ready to accept sequestration as the blunt, imperfect tool that might force the military to shed some of the bulk it acquired while fighting two of the longest and most expensive wars in our history. Even with the sequester in place, the Pentagon's base budget was set to remain well above pre-9/11 levels for the next decade, and the military would have taken a far smaller haircut than it did after Vietnam and the Cold War wound down.

MUST READ WITH MUST SEE GRAPHICS AND SPECIFICS

Phi Beta Iota: This is a dishonest budget that is not in the public interest. While the DoD budget has been dishonest since the Cold War was manufactured in the aftermath of WWII, we are now in an era where public intelligence with integrity is capable of exposing lies and blatant corruption at the highest levels. Neither the Secretary of Defense nor the service chiefs are being honest or professional in relation to real needs. Not only do we NEED a 450 ship Navy, a long-haul Air Force, and an air-mobile Army, but we need a Pentagon that can accomplish this AND cut 30% of the budget over 4 years. Absent intelligence with integrity, this will not happen.

2012 Robert Steele: Addressing the Seven Sins of Foreign Policy — Why Defense, Not State, Is the Linch Pin for Global Engagement

2012 Robert Steele: Reflections on the US Military — Redirection Essential — and a Prerequisite to Creating a 450-Ship Navy, a Long-Haul Air Force, and an Air-Liftable Army

2012 U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century: 450-Ship Navy, <24 Hours to Anywhere, Peace from the Sea — Full Text Online

2014/02/252014/02/25

Marcus Aurelius: Winners and Losers in DoD Budget

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military

The Winners and Losers of Next Year's Defense Budget

What was cut and what was spared in Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's budget-request preview.

By Sara Sorcher and Jordain Carney

National Journal, February 24, 2014

The blade hasn't fallen yet, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel raised the ax Monday when he offered a sneak peek of the Pentagon's planned budget for next year.

The Pentagon is asking Congress for $496 billion, $45 billion less than it originally expected. Tucked inside that budget trimming are a host of winners—programs and priorities that the department kept safe from cuts—and losers who will not be spared.

Nothing in Hagel's plan, however, is definite. Congress still controls the purse strings, and the Pentagon's fiscal 2015 request will undoubtedly be changed as members and defense lobbyists use their pull to protect their priorities—and try to shovel the spending pain to someone else.

But it could be harder to get off the chopping block than to stay off of it. Here's what got a head start Monday and what got left behind.

LOSERS:

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Winners and Losers in DoD Budget”

2014/02/252014/02/25

NIGHTWATCH: Pakistan-Saudi Arabia Military Pact — Implications for China, India, Iran, And All Others

Military, Peace Intelligence

Pakistan – Saudi Arabia: The initial features of a bilateral strategic security and defense agreement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been agreed upon, according to unconfirmed sources.

Under the agreement, Pakistan reportedly will provide all possible support to the Saudi army for defense of Saudi soil in any case of foreign aggression. Rumors in Pakistan report that two Pakistan Army divisions will be designated for deployment to Saudi Arabia on short notice.

As to arms sales, Saudi Arabia is interested in purchasing from Pakistan 50 JF-Thunder 17 and 20 other modern aircraft and 80 Al Khalid tanks – all built in Pakistan. Saudi Arabia also has expressed interest in purchasing light tactical weapons and missile technology.

Saudi Arabia reportedly will invest in Pakistan's defense industries and will use its influence to facilitate the sale of Pakistani defense products, tools, equipment and technical skills in the markets of the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia reportedly intends to seek technical assistance from China and Pakistan for establishing a modern aviation industry in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani aeronautical engineers, technicians and other staff will work jointly with Saudis and Chinese technicians and advisors.

Comment: No officials have confirmed the agreement, but the Pakistani defense media have been buzzing for weeks about it. If the reports of a strategic defense agreement are even partly accurate, then Iran now must represent a close second to India as the “enemy” in Pakistani strategic military planning. That might be good news for stability in South Asia, at least.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Pakistan-Saudi Arabia Military Pact — Implications for China, India, Iran, And All Others”

2014/02/242014/02/24

Daniel Ellsberg: US Culture of Secrecy & Security Overreach

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military

Q&A: Daniel Ellsberg on US surveillance

The famed American whistle-blower discusses US national security, and those who expose its overreach.

Sadie Luetmer

Al Jazeera, 24 February 2014

Huntingdon, United States – In 1971, US military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked thousands of pages of a top-secret study on the Vietnam War to the American press. The Pentagon Papers, as the leak would come to be called, revealed previously shrouded layers of deception on the part of the US executive branch regarding decades of military involvement in Indochina.

The famed whistle-blower has since remained active politically, and is a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks and other government challengers such as Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden. US Army Private Manning leaked classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, and was convicted in 2013 of violating the Espionage Act.

Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, released classified documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in 2013, and is currently residing in Russia.

Citing a wide array of historical and contemporary American intelligence programmes and policies, Ellsberg advocates critical consideration of the privacy needs of a free press and an active citizenry.

Nearing 83 years old, Ellsberg's political energy shows no sign of atrophy. He spoke to Al Jazeera after giving a speech at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.

Al Jazeera: For a lot of Americans it seems obvious that national security requires secrecy, but you have described some of the dangers of “secrecy culture”. Why is secrecy culture problematic?

Daniel Ellsberg: “Well I certainly don't take the point of view that no secrecy is justified, or that national security never required secrecy. For example, in the Second World War, the time and place of the Normandy invasion was a very well kept secret, and moreover secured by lies as well as secrecy. It's an interesting example, by the way – which people often bring up – because, of course, the necessary secrecy for that date and place expired rather rapidly in the course of June 1944. And yet, my guess is that there still are thousands of pages, perhaps more, tens or hundreds of thousands, that are still classified from that period. I could be wrong, by this time maybe it's all been declassified; but it could have all been declassified certainly by 1946-47, and was not until many years later, if ever.

“Most of the documentation still called classified by this country, and I'm talking now about billions and billions of pages, most of that has long ago lost any justification for being held secret from the American people. The need is generally measured more in weeks, months, or a year or two, and yet it remains classified indefinitely. Why?

“Really, if you want to know the answer to that, my best guess as someone who worked inside the system, is that they never know what part of that may become embarrassing at some point in the future. What prediction will turn out to look absurd? Not merely wrong, but discreditable. What action may appear as part of the programme that all in all is unconstitutional, or illegal? What policy will appear to have been not only unsuccessful, but undertaken for unjustifiable, self-interested motives? It's very hard to predict that, so simply keep it all secret, if possible, forever.”

Continue reading “Daniel Ellsberg: US Culture of Secrecy & Security Overreach”

2014/02/242014/02/24

Jim Fetzer: Saudi Role in 9/11 Theater Goes Very Public — Details That Cannot Be Denied?

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call

Suppressed Proof: Saudi Arabia Was Complicit in 9/11

“Since 15 of the 19 alleged suicide terrorist were from Saudi Arabia and none were from Iraq, would it not have made more sense to have invaded Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq?”

Veterans Today, 23 February 2014

It has now become clear that a major cover-up has been imposed on the Saudi connection to the Israeli/CIA “false flag” attack of 9/11, where the Saudis put up the patsies.

There were traitors inside the US Air Force at NORAD who assisted the Neo-Cons in the Department of Defense and the CIA in the execution of the atrocities of 9/11.

Its purpose was to drive the US into an otherwise entirely unprovoked and unjustified series of wars in the Middle East, which Prince Bandar may have even planned, whose principal beneficiaries would be Israel and Saudi Arabia. For the US, it has been an expensive (now over $4 trillion) proposition.

Continue reading “Jim Fetzer: Saudi Role in 9/11 Theater Goes Very Public — Details That Cannot Be Denied?”