Samizdat – 14.12.2022
The Budget Committee of the German parliament approved the contract with the United States on the purchase of F-35 fighter jets worth 10 billion euros ($10.6 billion), a British news agency reported on Wednesday, citing sources in the committee.
According to the news agency, the committee green-lighted the purchase using money from a 100 billion euro ($106 billion) special defense fund established by the German government shorty after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February.
First eight fighter jets are expected to be delivered by the US to Germany in 2026, the report said, adding that the new planes could replace old Tornado jets.
In July, Washington also approved a possible $8.4 billion sale of 35 F-35 jets to Germany including missiles and equipment.
By Drago Bosnic | December 14, 2022
On December 9, the Associated Press reported that President Vladimir Putin stated Russia could adopt a US-style concept of “preemptive strikes”, stressing that Moscow is in possession of advanced weapons to conduct such operations.
“We are just thinking about it. They weren’t shy to openly talk about it during the past years,” Putin said at an EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The statement clearly applies to the United States and its foreign policy framework, including the so-called “preemptive strikes” concept. The program, called PGS (Prompt Global Strike), is a US attempt to develop a capability that enables it to attack enemy strategic targets with precision-guided weapons anywhere in the world within just one hour.
“Speaking about a disarming strike, maybe it’s worth thinking about adopting the ideas developed by our US counterparts, their ideas of ensuring their security,” Putin added, noting that such strikes are intended to knock out command facilities. Putin also stated that Russia is already in possession of hypersonic weapons suitable for carrying out such operations, while the US still hasn’t deployed its own equivalents. The Russian president also added that Moscow has long-range cruise missiles that surpass US analogs, most likely referring to the state-of-the-art scramjet-powered “Zircon” hypersonic cruise missile. Putin noted that Russia’s long-range weapons would certainly be conventional PGMs (precision-guided munitions), while the US never ruled out the possibility of the first use of thermonuclear weapons.
“If the potential adversary believes that it can use the theory of a preemptive strike and we don’t, it makes us think about the threats posed by such ideas in other countries’ defensive posture,” the Russian president said. The political West’s massive mainstream propaganda machine cherry-picked Vladimir Putin’s statements in order to misrepresent them as supposed “saber-rattling” while ignoring the pure logic behind his words. As per usual, Putin pointed out the glaringly obvious hypocrisy of the US political establishment, which quite clearly thinks it’s “indispensable” and “unique” in the sense that Americans are the only ones who have the right to attack others with impunity while they watch helplessly or simply turn a blind eye to the blatant US aggression against the world.
With Russia having actual conventional military capabilities to implement such a “preemptive strike” foreign policy framework almost instantly (unlike the US), Putin warned that if everyone behaved the way America does, the world would certainly become an extremely dangerous place. To make his point even stronger, it could be argued that Moscow would certainly have more reasons to implement such policies than the US itself. Unlike America, which has dozens of vassals and satellite states, Russia doesn’t exert such “soft power” influence over other countries, including its neighbors. On the contrary, the political West even tried to stage coups against Moscow’s close partners such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, forcing Russia to come to both countries’ rescue in recent months and years.
Needless to say, never again would the Eurasian giant tolerate the instalment of hostile puppet regimes so close to its borders. Russia’s leadership is well aware of the mistakes it made by ever trusting any promises given by the political West. After the 2014 NATO-backed coup which brought Neo-Nazis to power in Kiev, Moscow decided to never again allow such occurrences from happening in its geopolitical backyard. In this regard, Putin’s remarks are twofold. First, as previously mentioned, they expose the sheer hypocrisy of the political West, and second, they show that it would certainly come in handy for Russia to use its overwhelming “hard power” to prevent the establishment of anti-Russian regimes so close to its borders. Had Moscow deployed its version of PGS against the Neo-Nazi junta back in 2014, it wouldn’t even have the current problem in Ukraine.
However, the political West keeps insisting that Putin’s remarks are a “clear sign that Russia is planning to use nuclear weapons”, although he specifically stated that Moscow’s potential PGS-style program would include only conventional weapons. For months, the troubled Biden administration has been parroting the accusations that Russia is supposedly planning to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The US has been spinning the narrative on virtually every statement by Putin, claiming alleged “nuclear saber-rattling”. The premise is usually based on Russia’s official strategic military doctrine that gives Moscow the right to use thermonuclear weapons in response to a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) or a large-scale conventional attack.
In reality, Putin never mentioned anything about the Eurasian giant’s thermonuclear deterrence. The statements were clearly his critique of the US PGS concept, which Russia has been warning about for years, especially as the weapons used within the framework of such a program would be effectively indiscernible from regular ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). Precisely this could lead to uncontrollable escalation, as other superpowers would not be able to confirm if the weapon in question is conventional or nuclear-armed. For instance, US PGS missiles spotted by Russian and/or Chinese early warning systems might prompt both (Eur)Asian giants to respond with nuclear-tipped weapons, leading to a world-ending conflict.
Russia’s response to the PGS program could be instantaneous if the Kremlin ever decides to proceed with it. With the Mach 12-capable “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missile carried by modified MiG-31K/I interceptors and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers, the Mach 28-capable “Avangard” HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle) deployed on various ICBMs and the Mach 9-capable scramjet-powered “Zircon” hypersonic cruise missile deployed on naval (both submarines and surface ships) and (soon) on land platforms, Russia is the only country on the planet with the capability to immediately implement its own PGS-style program. And yet, the Eurasian giant still refrains from going ahead with such plans, although its justification for this would hold much better than that of the US.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
RT | December 13, 2022
British Royal Marines conducted high-risk operations in Ukraine in April, Lieutenant General Robert Magowan wrote in the force’s official journal. Before Magowan’s admission, Russia’s claims that NATO troops were active in Ukraine had been dismissed by Western analysts and media.
Members of 45 Commando Group of the Royal Marines left Ukraine in January after evacuating the British embassy in Kiev to Poland. However, some 300 members of the elite unit were sent back into the country in April to reestablish the British mission in Kiev, before going on to conduct “other discreet operations,” Magowan wrote in the force’s magazine, according to a report by The Times on Tuesday.
These operations took place “in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk,” Magowan, who formerly served as commandant general of the Royal Marines and is now deputy chief of Defense Staff at the Ministry of Defense, stated.
While Magowan did not elaborate on what kind of missions the commandos carried out, his statement marks the first time that the UK has admitted its troops conducted special operations in Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense refused to confirm earlier accounts of British special forces training Ukrainian troops in Kiev in April.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the conflict in Ukraine as one between Russia and the “entire Western military machine,” and claimed in September that there are entire military units in Ukraine “under the de-facto command of Western advisers.”
Putin’s words were rejected by Western media outlets. “There is no evidence of NATO ground forces participating in Ukraine,” Edward Arnold of the Royal United Services Institute think tank told the BBC at the time. “Nor of NATO commanders directing Ukrainian units on the battlefield. There is also a very low likelihood of this happening in the future as Nato seeks to mitigate escalation risks.”
Magowan’s admission proves Arnold incorrect, but the UK is not the only NATO country to acknowledge the presence of its forces in Ukraine. An unnamed Pentagon official told reporters in October that an unspecified number of US troops were inspecting American arms shipments somewhere within Ukraine.
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 13.12.2022
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is the most expensive weapon in history, with a per unit price between $78 and $95 million, and a lifetime operations and sustainment cost of a whopping $1.3 trillion. Yet years after its introduction, the plane has continued to plague operators with a host of problems.
With its overall $1.7 trillion price tag roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of Australia, or more than twenty times Russia’s annual defense budget, one might expect US weapons giant Lockheed Martin to show a little humility when it comes to requesting more cash to fix issues affecting the F-35.
But it seems that’s too much to ask. Last week, US media reported that cost overruns for upgrades to the jet’s sophisticated cockpit computers had reached $680 million, nearly matching the $712 million the Pentagon originally planned to spend on upgrading them (for a total cost of $1.3 billion). Adding insult to injury, the F-35 Joint Program Office announced that the upgrades wouldn’t be completed by the agreed-upon completion deadline of July 2023, with the timeframe pushed back to the end of 2023.
Separately this month, the US Congressional Research Service revealed that the Pentagon wants an unspecified amount of cash for upgrades to the plane’s engines, promising that the new ones will reduce annual sustainment costs, which jumped from $79 million in 2016 to $315 million in 2020, and are projected to reach over $ 1billion by 2028.
Fortunately for Lockheed, cost overruns aren’t a problem. Actually, they’re baked into the agreements on the planes’ acquisition signed by the United States and its allies, with the company enjoying “cost-plus,” “undefinitized” contracts which make any unexpected costs the buyer’s problem (i.e. governments and their taxpayers). Some of Washington’s allies have caught on to the scheme. Last week, one angry Australian defense expert demanded that Canberra get a refund for its existing F-35s and stop buying new ones after calculating that the plane’s “killer” price tag, range limitations, and reliance on a hackable data communications link based thousands of kilometers away in the US makes it a bad buy for the Land Down Under.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) issues yearly updates on the F-35’s projected costs, as well as outstanding problems associated with the plane. In its 2022 report, the GAO calculated that seven years after its introduction, the plane still has four major “Category 1” deficiencies, and 822 lesser “Category 2” problems.
Here are some of the issues the jet has faced over the years:
10. Cabin Overpressurization
The 2022 GAO report outlined “cabin overpressurization” as one of these outstanding Category 1 deficiencies. The watchdog did not elaborate on the scale, nature and causes of the problem. However, an overpressurized cabin can be a big deal, causing ear popping, temporary hearing loss, headaches, sinus pain, and, if it’s severe enough, ruptured eardrums, permanent hearing loss, and loss of consciousness. It goes without saying that for the pilot of an $80 million aircraft flying through the skies at speeds up to 2,000 km an hour, an overpressurized cabin can be problematic.
9. Night Vision Problems
“Issues” with the F-35’s night vision camera are another “critical deficiency” highlighted in the GAO’s 2022 report. The document did not offer details, but earlier reports on the matter pointed to a range of potential problems – from failing to operate when there is no Moon, to annoying horizontal lines, or striations, in the night vision display. Other issues, including a disorienting “green glow,” have also been reported, with the latter feeding video from a built-in camera onto the headgear display, obscuring the pilot’s vision during night flight. Last year, the Pentagon announced that fixes to these issues would involve upgrading the planes’ $400,000-a-piece integrated night vision helmets. However, not all branches of the US military have approved the acquisition of the new equipment.
8. Lightning Strikes
Given its name, the F-35 Lightning II has an ironic propensity to suffer from problems related to stormy weather, with the Marine Corps expressing concerns as far back as 2018 that “as a composite type aircraft,” the plane “does not provide inherent passive lightning protection.” A 2012 Pentagon report concluded that the planes’ operation is unsafe within 40 km of a thunderstorm amid fears that lightning could damage or destroy the aircraft if it struck their fuel tank inerting system. The Air Force announced earlier this year that it will fix lightning danger-related issues by 2025.
7. Software Bugs
Software bugs with the aircraft’s onboard computer and its 8 million+ lines of code are a persistently-reported problem for the F-35, with the issue apparently getting so bad that the Pentagon called in software experts from top American universities last year for advice on how to resolve the persisting issues. A $14 billion software upgrade promises to fix a range of issues, from weapons functionality and communications to navigation, cybersecurity and targeting, but the Pentagon has already called the patch “immature, deficient and insufficiently tested.”
6. Radar Headaches
In 2016, the Pentagon confirmed that the F-35 had a problem involving the shutdown of its radar system once every four hours. After shutdown, it would reportedly take “a few minutes” for the radar to “regain picture” – a not-insignificant issue for a warplane, where “a few minutes” can be the difference between flying over your target or finding yourself a hundred or more kilometers away.
5. Corrosion
F-35 jets feature an advanced radar-absorbent skin, designed to improve stealth capabilities against cutting-edge enemy radar. However, photos of Navy F-35s published earlier this year showed that the planes’ skin appears to be suffering from severe corrosion thanks to its use of an iron ball paint designed to scramble radio waves. It’s not clear if and how Lockheed plans to address the problem, but as with almost every other problem involving the aircraft, a fix probably won’t be easy, or cheap.
4. Breakneck Action
One of the most serious problems with the F-35 has been its faulty ejection seats. In 2015, low-speed ejection tests revealed that the aircraft’s ejection seat systems were snapping crash test dummies’ necks. In 2016, the Pentagon responded by beginning testing of a reinforced helmet designed to keep pilots’ precious necks safe. A year later, the Air Force reported that tinkering with the planes’ ejection seat systems had alleviated the danger, allowing the military to lift pilot weight requirements.
3. Trackability
One of the F-35’s biggest selling points is its stealthiness – the ability to fly into and out of enemy territory undetected, fire its munitions, and leave before ever being engaged by enemy missiles. However, even before substantial quantities of the aircraft were built, a flurry of reports indicated that Russian, Chinese, and Iranian designers had developed radars capable of detecting the jets at long ranges. Of course, only time, and radar and air defenses’ interactions with F-35 in real-life environments, will determine the true significance of the aircraft’s trackability.
2. Lockheed’s Nary a Care Culture
Over seven years after its introduction, the F-35 has not yet received approval from the Pentagon for full-rate production. That’s because the US military has not completed the jet’s certification. To date, Lockheed has yet to make good on its requirement to provide the Pentagon with detailed data for the Joint Simulation Environment – a virtual training domain designed to test the F-35’s hypothetical performance against top Chinese and Russian aircraft. The company promises to provide the military with data from 64 JSE tests by the summer of 2023.
Despite the lack of certification, the Pentagon has already taken delivery of hundreds of F-35s, and expects to receive about one-third of its 2,470-plane F-35 fleet before full-rate production is granted, with all the problems that come with it –including issues upgrading and fixing problems with jets already built and bought.
1. Single-Engine Design
Arguably the F-35’s biggest problem, and a flaw that no amount of tinkering will be able to fix, is its single-engine, ‘one size fits all’ design. Lockheed’s decision to use a single, Pratt & Whitney F135 afterburning turbofan means that, if the plane suffers a major malfunction at sea, or damage to its engine while engaged in combat against an enemy plane or ground-based air defenses, it would become nearly impossible for it to limp safely back to base. Japan’s Air Force had cause to ponder this issue in 2019, when one of its F-35A jets was lost at sea after its pilot suffered spacial disorientation.
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 13.12.2022
US arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman recently unveiled its new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider. Having not even flown yet and still facing an extensive critical design review, it won’t enter service any time in the immediate future.
The B-21 Raider is estimated to cost around 753 million US dollars per aircraft – a significant sum for an aircraft experts seem to believe will have less-than-significant capabilities.
Despite the dramatic ceremony surrounding its unveiling and claims that it serves “as part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China,” according to one NPR article, even its advocates across the West seem to lack confidence the new stealth aircraft could evade the integrated air defenses of nations like Russia and China.
The B-21 Raider is ultimately an illustration of how despite the US outspending its rivals, it does not possess any real advantage on, or in this case, above the battlefield.
Western Analysts on the B-21 Raider’s Capabilities
The National Interest in an article titled, “Stealth vs. Missiles: Who Wins When Russia’s S-400 Takes On America’s New B-21 Raider?,” attempts to make a case for the massive amount of money invested in the new aircraft.
It claims:
A new generation of stealth technology is being pursued with a sense of urgency, in light of rapid global modernization of new Russian and Chinese-built air defense technologies; advances in computer processing, digital networking technology and targeting systems now enable air defenses to detect even stealth aircraft with much greater effectiveness.
Russian built S-300 and S-400 air defense weapons, believed by many to be among the best in the world, are able to use digital technology to network “nodes” to one another to pass tracking and targeting data across wide swaths of terrain. New air defenses also use advanced command and control technology to detect aircraft across a much wider spectrum of frequencies than previous systems could.
This technical trend has ignited global debates about whether stealth technology itself could become obsolete. “Not so fast,” says a recent Mitchell Institute essay – “The Imperative for Stealth,” which makes a lengthy case for a continued need for advanced stealth platforms.
The Mitchell Institute, unsurprisingly, is funded by a large consortium of Western arms manufacturers including corporations like Lockheed Martin deeply invested in selling stealth platforms to the Pentagon, calling into question the veracity of their conclusions regarding the topic.
The National Interest article lays out the argument the institute makes for the B-21 Raider, claiming:
Given the increased threat envelope created by cutting edge air defenses, and the acknowledgement that stealth aircraft are indeed much more vulnerable than when they first emerged, Air Force developers are increasingly viewing stealth capacity as something which includes a variety of key parameters.
This includes not only stealth configuration, IR suppression and radar-evading materials but also other important elements such as electronic warfare “jamming” defenses, operating during adverse weather conditions to lower the acoustic signature and conducting attacks in tandem with other less-stealthy aircraft likely to command attention from enemy air defense systems.
The article concludes by claiming the US Air Force prefers to refer to stealth capabilities as merely “one arrow in the quiver of approaches needed to defeat modern air defenses.”
In reality, while stealth capabilities may be useful if they can be practically and economically integrated into an aircraft’s design, it is obvious even according to Western analysts that it is not worth the 700+ million US dollar price tag that comes with the B-21 Raider.
Conventional aircraft firing long-range precision standoff munitions well outside the range of enemy air defense systems and enemy aircraft are just as capable of safely carrying out strikes, perhaps more so, than stealth aircraft flying into well-defended airspaces. In fact, Western analysts seem to imply that is precisely how the B-21 Raider will be employed.
It is worth noting nations like Israel and the US who possess stealth aircraft like the F-35 or the US’ F-22, when operating in conflict zones like Syria, still prefer to carry out standoff strikes versus risking their stealth aircraft by flying into contested airspace.
Articles like Breaking Defense’s “Israel Shifts To Standoff Weapons In Syria As Russian Threats Increase,” admit that despite possessing stealth capabilities, standoff strikes are preferred to minimize the risk of expensive aircraft being detected and possibly destroyed by advanced Russian air defense systems.
If that is the case regarding F-35 and F-22 aircraft, it most likely will be the case for the B-21 Raider, even more so considering the astronomical price tag attached.
B-21 Raider, an Example of Why Outspending Doesn’t Equate to Outperforming
A November 2022 article published by the US government and arms industry-funded think tank, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) titled, “It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia,” attempts to convince readers the US and its allies will ultimately prevail in their proxy conflict in Ukraine against Russia by merely by outspending Moscow.
The article claims:
How can Russia possibly hope to win an arms race when the combined GDP of the West is $40 trillion, and its defense spending amounting to 2% of GDP totals well in excess of $1 trillion when the disproportionate US defense contribution is considered?
Basic logic, however, suggests what is most important is “how” money is spent rather than “how much.”
The B-21 Raider is a perfect example of this crucial point. For the price of a single B-21 Raider Russia could build a fleet of aircraft as well as large quantities of precision-guided long-range weapons needed to launch multiple salvos against enemy targets in well-defended airspace. Conventional aircraft firing conventional munitions at standoff distances will be safe from enemy air defenses without the need for expensive stealth capabilities. And while some of the munitions fired in these salvos will inevitably be intercepted by enemy air defenses, many more will find their targets.
For wars of attrition, which seem to be the type of conflict the US faces in Ukraine and likely will face elsewhere as it shifts from targeting impoverished, poorly defended developing nations to waging proxy war on peer and near-peer competitors, quantity is proving to have a quality in and of itself.
This is a fact that has not been lost on Western analysts. A report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) titled, “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022,” would admit:
Warfighting demands large initial stockpiles and significant slack capacity. Evidently, no country in NATO, other than the US, has sufficient initial weapons stocks for warfighting or the industrial capacity to sustain largescale operations. This must be rectified if deterrence is to be credible and is equally a problem for the RAF and Royal Navy.
Meanwhile the Financial Times in its article, “Military briefing: Ukraine war exposes ‘hard reality’ of west’s weapons capacity,” would admit:
After sending more than $40bn of military support to Ukraine, mostly from existing stocks, Nato members’ defence ministries are discovering that dormant weapons production lines cannot be switched on overnight. Increasing capacity requires investment, which in turn depends on securing long-term production contracts.
The article also claims:
There are two main reasons why western nations are struggling to source fresh military supplies, defence officials and corporate executives said. The first is structural. Since the end of the cold war, these countries have reaped a peace dividend by slashing military spending, downsizing defence industries and moving to lean, “just-in-time” production and low inventories of equipment such as munitions. That is because combating insurgents and terrorists did not require the same kind of heavy weaponry needed in high-intensity land conflicts.
The second factor is bureaucratic. Governments say they are committed to bigger defence budgets. Yet, amid so much economic uncertainty, they have been slow to write the multiyear procurement contracts that defence groups need to accelerate production.
Clearly, the B-21 Raider program does not fit into the reality emerging from the fighting in Ukraine.
In essence, despite the gargantuan sums the West has invested in defense, it has invested – admittedly – very poorly. Instead of investing in production lines and the vast quantities of weapons and munitions produced by them required to fight large-scale conflicts, the US and its allies have sunk billions if not trillions into weapons programs like the F-35 and the B-21 which do not perform their tasks any better than their much cheaper and more numerous Russian and Chinese counterparts.
Western analysts admit that even if they could convince defense contractors – who are prioritizing profits over purpose – to ramp up production and meet the requirements demanded by the US proxy war in Ukraine, it could take years to do so.
Thus, between the B-21 Raider and events unfolding in Ukraine, it is clear that Russia and China do not need to outspend the US and its allies, instead they need to simply outsmart them in terms of how they spend on defense. It is a process both Russia and China have a headstart on and also a process both enjoy structural advantages in maintaining.
By Lucas Leiroz | December 13, 2022
There is no doubt among military experts that NATO is currently at war with Russia – just using Kiev as a proxy. However, the possibility of something even worse – a direct full-scale war – limits American participation in the current conflict. Internally, Washington’s political scenario is divided between parliamentarian warmongers, interested in taking assistance to Kiev to the ultimate consequences, and experienced, cautious military, interested in keeping the country’s internal stocks ready for any need.
According to a recent Foreign Policy article, US lawmakers are pressuring Pentagon’s officials to send more weapons to Ukraine. The objective would be to allocate the largest possible amount of combat equipment in Kiev, allowing the local forces to continue to face the Russians and possibly “win the war” – since, according to the narrative of the American media, Russia would be frightened and weakened, which obviously does not correspond to the reality of the battlefield.
Pentagon agents, however, act more rationally, avoiding strategic mistakes that could bring problems for national security. Unlike congressmen, whose reasons for supporting Kiev are based on ideological alignment or economic interest, the American military thinking is based on calculations and solid data, so it seems irrational to send Kiev military aid at a level that threatens the US’s defense capability.
The dialogue between the Pentagon and the US Congress for the production, purchase or allocation of weapons and ammunition works through the Department of Defense’s periodic reports on its war plans. These reports are called operational plans (or OPLANs). In theory, the Pentagon has an OPLAN for every situation considered a risk to American security, which includes relations with enemy countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea. After considering the evaluation of its experts, the Pentagon prepares a list of equipment considered necessary to face such countries, submitting the reports to the Congress for approval. If approved, the Pentagon purchases such weapons from private companies affiliated with the “military industrial complex” and eventually allocates them to overseas bases.
In principle, military assistance to Kiev was supposed to be restricted to an exclusive OPLAN for the Ukrainian conflict, but congressmen want to change that. For politicians, who do not think strategically, this is a “mistake” and more weapons to Kiev are needed. Congressmen consider it appropriate to invest all available resources in Ukraine, as Kiev is the state that is currently actually fighting Russia. For them, betting on sending weapons on a large scale is the right attitude, even if the stock reserved for other OPLANs is running out – which is already happening.
As a response to the stock supply crisis, parliamentarians suggest thinking about measures to speed up production and replenishing. According to them, the problem is not the transfer of weapons to Ukraine, but the fact that there is difficulty in filling stocks quickly, as they are dwindling with assistance to Kiev.
However, this narrative does not seem consistent with reality. As previously reported, the American military industry is entering a vicious cycle, where there is no modernization of its arsenal, only a race by military companies to replace weapons which are wasted by the systematic transfer to Ukraine. In this sense, expanding aid and violating the stocks of other OPLANs would only worsen this critical scenario.
In its decisions, the government oscillates between supporting realism and warmongering. For example, a new aid package was recently announced, valued at 275 million dollars – one of the smallest since February. Warmongers criticize this attitude and say that it is time to increase assistance as much as possible, taking advantage of the opportunities of the supposed “Ukrainian counteroffensive” and “imminent victory”. Apparently, many politicians in the US believe the lies created by the American media itself and actually plan strategies based on these fallacies.
Experts, however, know that this rhetoric is unsubstantiated. Ukraine is suffering significant losses day after day. The great victory of Russian forces in Bakhmut makes this absolutely clear. There is no chance of victory for Kiev and, given the defeat in this proxy conflict, the most rational thing to do would be to reduce support and encourage peace negotiations, while replenishing internal stocks for an eventual situation of direct war.
In fact, the case illustrates the US internal scenario well: the dispute between those who want to prepare for a future war with Russia and those who want to do it now, through Ukraine. To solve this problem, the most appropriate thing would be to avoid any possibility of war, taking the simple attitude of interrupting support for Kiev and talking to Russia about a policy of non-expansion of NATO in Eurasia.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 12, 2022
The U.S. military is having a tough time meeting recruiting targets, possibly because young people are figuring out that they don’t want to come back from some stupid foreign war without legs or arms or with some brain injury or, even worse, dead. To encourage young people to join up and be all that they can be, public-school officials across the country are forcing high-school freshmen to take Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) class, where students are “encouraged” to later join the military.
An article about the controversy in yesterday’s New York Times points out that the JROTC program is funded by the U.S. military and is designed to produce “leadership skills, discipline and civic values — and open students’ eyes to the idea of a military career.”
The JROTC students are required to wear uniforms and are taught the importance of obeying orders. At Pershing High School in Detroit, several students asked to drop the class. They were told that the class was mandatory. The article states: “A review of J.R.O.T.C. enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed that dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75 percent of students in a single grade into the classes, including schools in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Ala.”
Why would public-school officials act as tools for the military? According to the article, “The military subsidizes instructors’ salaries while requiring schools to maintain a certain level of enrollment in order to keep the program. In states that have allowed J.R.O.T.C. to be used as an alternative graduation credit, some schools appear to have saved money by using the course as an alternative to hiring more teachers in subjects such as physical education or wellness.”
Oh, and guess which students they are mainly targeting as potential future cannon fodder. According to the Times’s article, “A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households.”
Julio Mejia, a Fort Mayers, Florida, parent whose daughter tried to get out of the JROTC class, pointedly observed, “The only word I can think of is ‘indoctrination.’” The Times points out, “But critics have long contended that the program’s militaristic discipline emphasizes obedience over independence and critical thinking.” Jesús Palafox, a former student, calls the process “brainwashing.”
Not so, claims Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, a Pentagon spokesman and herself a former JROTC student. “It’s really about teaching kids about service, teaching them teamwork.” It sounds more like she might be a perfect example of the program’s success at indoctrination and brainwashing.
While parents can see how JROTC creates mindsets of conformity, blind obedience, and regimentation, unfortunately they are not able to see that that’s precisely what public (i.e., government) schooling itself does. In fact, public schooling could easily be described as “army-lite,” which is why the JROTC program fits perfectly within the public (i.e., government) schooling system.
Just as students are being forced into JROTC, young people are forced into the state’s educational maw, where they are indoctrinated and brainwashed into becoming “good little citizens,” ones who are inculcated with mindsets of regimentation, obedience to orders, and deference to authority, all of which, they are taught, constitutes “patriotism.” As with the JROTC classes, public-school students have any ability to engage in critical thinking smashed out of them, and they are taught instead to memorize and regurgitate.
In fact, one cannot help but wonder if the reason that so many parents can easily see the downside of JROTC but not the downside of public (i.e., government) schooling is because they themselves are products of the public-school system and its very successful system of indoctrination and brainwashing. After all, what better success story than indoctrinated and brainwashed people who have no idea they’ve been indoctrinated and brainwashed and recoil at any suggestion that they are victims of indoctrination and brainwashing?
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 11, 2022
Poor and freezing Britons will no doubt be cheered by the BBC’s report that Britain is to build a new stealth fighter jet. How cozy to know the skies above are being protected while you and your children are huddled under dank blankets with ice on the inside of windows.
It’s surreal what people are being insulted with these days. The term “stealth jet” is well-named. The stealth of robbing people with a ridiculous boondoggle.
Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, announced the “good news” while visiting an RAF base as if it was an early Christmas gift to the nation.
The state-owned BBC was on hand like a helpful elf to lend some gloss to the news.
“The prime minister says the joint venture aims to create thousands of UK jobs and strengthen security ties,” chirruped the Beeb, adding, “It is hoped the new Tempest jet will carry the latest weapons.”
Why would any sane person “hope” for the “latest weapons”?
The new fighter jet is planned to phase out the existing Typhoon plane by the mid-2030s. The latter seems perfectly adequate at killing people, so why the need for improvement?
The newer killing machine will cost tens of billions of pounds to develop with private arms maker British Aerospace taking a lead role. British workers squeezed for more taxes can look forward to filling the coffers of already rich corporate capitalists and their investors. HoHoHo in reverse!
It is not explained why the existing Typhoon must be phased out or why more of them are simply not produced if there is an onerous need to “keep Britain secure”.
And if it is all about “creating thousands of jobs” then why doesn’t Premier Sunak invest tens of billions into building hospitals and schools? Now we would be talking about real social security, as opposed to fantasies, and that is why such talk must be eviscerated by the BBC.
The news of the fighter jet delivery – which the BBC gushes to tell us will have “artificial intelligence” on board (I mean, WTF!) – comes as British charities warn of a crisis in “fuel poverty” among Britons. Up to 7 million people (nearly one-tenth of the population) cannot afford to heat their homes this winter. Desperate parents are having to choose between feeding their children and heating houses.
This is also while workers across Britain are taking strike action every day this month to combat record levels of poverty and inflation. Teachers, nurses, rail and postal workers are all taking to the streets to condemn a crisis in living costs. And in sinister response to the rising protests, the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak is preparing “emergency legislation” that will criminalize industrial strikes while readying plans to have armed forces take over running essential public services like ambulance vehicles and power generation. If that sounds like creeping fascism it’s because it is.
Image and reality in Britain – as in many other Western states – are increasingly coming apart at the seams.
Sunak (42) became the “young and dashing” prime minister at the end of October. He is the first British premier of Indian heritage and photo ops were aplenty when he lit Diwali lights in Downing Streets to celebrate the Hindu festival for peace and goodwill. Oh, how diverse and liberal Britain is! This is the usual superficial and inane liberalism of Western states.
Sunak is a multimillionaire whose Indian wife doesn’t pay taxes in Britain for her family’s global business empire.
How exactly lighting Diwali lights fit with a new fighter jet armed with the latest weapons is not explained by Sunak or the BBC.
“The security of the United Kingdom, both today and for future generations, will always be of paramount importance to this government,” intoned Sunak as if he is the most patriotic Santa. “That’s why we need to stay at the cutting edge of advancements in defence technology – outpacing and out-manoeuvring those who seek to do us harm.”
Here is where Sunak sheds the Santa Claus image and takes up the role of telling spooky stories to frighten the public.
Who are those villains who “seek to do us harm”? Well of course there is Russia and Vladimir Putin’s “regime” whom Sunak tried to sound all gung-ho and tough against while at the G20 summit in Indonesia last month. Perhaps if Britain didn’t arm a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine and didn’t blow up Russian gas pipelines then international relations would be a bit more harmonious and Britons would not be freezing in their homes from extortionate fuel bills.
Britain’s new Tempest fighter jet will be built in a joint venture with Italian company Leonardo and Japan’s Mitsubishi.
“The international partnership we have announced today with Italy and Japan aims to do just that, underlining that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions are indivisible,” said Sunak.
“The next-generation of combat aircraft we design will protect us and our allies around the world by harnessing the strength of our world-beating defence industry – creating jobs while saving lives.”
Here we go again: creating jobs and saving lives… while striving to start wars.
The significance of Japan’s involvement is the geopolitical marker given to China as a target.
Sunak has read the script from the British establishment that relations with China must be aggravated. Hence last week he declared that a “golden era” of presumed friendly business relations between Britain and China was over. (The arrogance of Britain to presume any such thing!)
Sunak, the BBC, and British media generally are infiltrating the public mind with notions of hostility towards China in the same process of gaslighting against Russia.
So while British families are hungry and cold they are being extorted for more money to make British fat cats even fatter because building a new fighter jet is going to “keep us safe from those who want to do us harm”.
When image and reality are so divergent then perhaps the only thing that fills the void is total social collapse and popular rebellion. There is no longer any middle ground to meet on.
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 8, 2022
When the Pentagon used NATO to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine, it had to know that one of the great benefits to such an invasion would be that it would enrich U.S. weapons manufacturers, who, of course, are an important, integral, and loyal part of America’s national-security state form of governmental structure.
And sure enough, those weapons manufacturers now have a lot to be grateful for. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal,
The world’s biggest arms makers are scaling up production of rocket launchers, tanks and ammunition as the industry shifts to meet what executives expect to be sustained demand triggered by the war in Ukraine.
The Pentagon has committed more than $17 billion in weapons and services to Ukraine, most of it drawn from existing stocks. It has also awarded about $3.4 billion in new contracts to replenish domestic and allies’ stocks.
The Pentagon knew that when it was forced to exit Afghanistan, where it had used a massive amount of weaponry for some twenty years to wreak death and destruction on that impoverished Third World country, its loyal army of arms manufacturers might begin to suffer. The crisis that the Pentagon has ginned up in Ukraine has clearly helped to alleviate that suffering.
But the Russian invasion of Ukraine had another beneficiary — the Pentagon itself. That’s because before Americans had a real opportunity to focus on the Pentagon’s 20-year deadly and destructive debacle in Afghanistan, everyone began focusing exclusively on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, the entire Afghanistan misadventure has been relegated to a memory black hole.
But we really still need to do some serious soul-searching, examination, and analysis of the Afghanistan debacle. We cannot let the Pentagon use the crisis that it has ginned up in Ukraine as a way to shift our attention away from what happened in Afghanistan. It would be a grave mistake to just “move on” from Afghanistan and permit the Pentagon to focus our attention exclusively on the evil Russians and their invasion of Ukraine.
It is important to focus on the Constitution, the document that President Biden and the Democrats and even some Republicans have suddenly discovered and begun revering. It requires a congressional declaration of war before a president can legally wage war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against Afghanistan. That made the Pentagon’s war against Afghanistan an illegal one under our form of constitutional government.
Equally important, if President George W. Bush had sought a declaration of war from Congress, it is a virtual certainty that he would not have been able to secure it. That’s because Bush would not have been able to provide any evidence whatsoever of Taliban complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Without any evidence of such complicity, it is difficult to imagine Congress issuing a declaration of war against Afghanistan, especially knowing that such a war would inevitably wreak massive death and destruction on that impoverished Third World country.
Bush claimed that his invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified under the principle of “self-defense.” But that claim necessarily depended on showing that the Taliban regime was involved in the 9/11 attacks. No such evidence existed, and Bush knew it. Thus, if he had gone to Congress and sought a declaration of war based on “self-defense,” he would have gone there empty-handed insofar as evidence is concerned.
In fact, if Bush really believed that the Taliban regime had attacked the United States, he would never have gone to the United Nations seeking its approval to defend itself by invading Afghanistan. No president would do that.
What about the “harboring” charge? Bush claimed that his invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified because Afghanistan was “harboring” Osama bin Laden. Bush’s claim is without validity. To warrant a “harboring” charge, Bush would have to provide evidence that the Taliban regime had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and was knowingly conspiring with bin Laden to provide him a base to plan the attacks. Bush knew that he had no evidence to support such a charge.
What Bush actually meant by his “harboring” charge was that the Taliban was refusing to comply with Bush’s unconditional extradition demand for bin Laden. But under international law, the Taliban regime had every right to refuse Bush’s extradition demand. That’s because there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States. When there is no extradition treaty between two nations, neither one is required to comply with an extradition demand from the other.
What about the claim that the 9/11 attacks were an “act of war” and, therefore, the United States had the legitimate authority to invade Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan?
It was a bogus justification for invading Afghanistan. Under U.S. law, terrorism is a criminal offense, not an act of war. That’s why terrorism prosecutions are brought in U.S. District Courts. No nation has the legitimate authority to invade another nation to kill or capture a suspected criminal who is residing in that country.
One of the most notorious terrorists was a CIA man named Jose Posada Carriles. He is widely considered to be one of the people who brought down a Cuban airline with a bomb over Venezuelan skies. He later safely ensconced himself in the United States.
When Venezuela demanded Posada’s extradition, U.S. officials protected him by refusing to comply, notwithstanding the fact that there was an extradition treaty between Venezuela and the United States.
Would interventionists who supported the deadly and destructive invasion of Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden have supported a similar deadly and destructive Venezuelan invasion of the United States to kill or capture Posada? I think not.
Using NATO to gin up the crisis in Ukraine is bad enough. While U.S. arms manufacturers are clearly a beneficiary of that crisis, so is the Pentagon because it has caused people to forget what the Pentagon did to the people of Afghanistan and to just “move” on to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We must not let that happen, especially given the massive death and destruction that the Pentagon wreaked in its immoral and illegal war against an impoverished Third World country.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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