What Are Black Hornet Nano Drones and Why is US Sending Them to Ukraine?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.07.2023
American officials have announced another military aid package for Ukraine, this time including a batch of tiny Black Hornet reconnaissance drones. What exactly are Black Hornets? Who makes them? And why are they so expensive? Sputnik explores.
US officials have spent nearly a week touting a new $400 million weapons package for Kiev to assist in NATO’s ongoing proxy war against Russia, with the weapons, taken directly from the Pentagon’s own stocks, including NASAMS, Stinger and Patriot air defense missiles, Stryker armored vehicles, TOW and Javelin anti-tank missiles, howitzer ammo, HIMARS rockets and 28 million rounds of small arms ammunition.
On Monday, anonymous officials revealed to media that the arms package will also include Black Hornet Nanos, a pricy, sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicle about the size of a small bird.
What are Black Hornet Drones Used For?
Black Hornet Nanos are a micro UAV weighing in at just 17-18 grams. They can be carried around by troops and deployed to provide hi-res images and video of the surrounding environment using three separate onboard cameras. The drones resemble a tiny helicopter, are about 100 mm long and 25 mm wide, with their main rotor blade’s diameter measuring in at about 120 mm.
Who Makes Black Hornet Drones?
Black Hornets were developed by Norwegian nano drone helicopter startup Prox Dynamics in the early 2010s, and are now manufactured by FLIR Unmanned Aerial Systems, another Norwegian company, which bought out Prox Dynamics in 2016 for $134 million. FLIR specializes in surveillance and automated systems, equipment for armored vehicles, traffic detection systems, and firefighting cameras.
What is the Black Hornet’s Range and How Fast Do They Fly?
Black Hornets have a flight time of up to 25 minutes, are equipped with a digital data-link effective to ranges up to 1.6 km, and have a top speed of 21 km per hour.
How Much do Black Hornets Cost, and Why are They So Expensive?
Black Hornet drones had an estimated price tag of about $195,000. That figure is based on a 2013 contract by the UK’s Defense Ministry on the purchase of 160 Black Hornet sets (320 micro copters total) for the equivalent of $31 million. For 195k, you get a remote control, handheld touch screen, rechargeable battery pack, and a two-in-a-set pack of mini drones stored in a special portable, wearable bump resistant container.
Where Have Black Hornets Been Deployed?
Over 14,000 Black Hornets have been produced since their debut in 2011, with the drones purchased en masse by the Norwegian and NATO militaries, as well as by Algeria, Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and South Africa for military and police use.
The systems’ first combat deployment was reported in 2013, with the systems used by British troops during NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan. The US began using modified versions of the base drone equipped with night vision and improved navigation in 2015, reporting their deployment with Marine Corps Special Operations units; the US Army followed up with a $140 million contract for its Soldier Borne Sensor (SBS) program.
The US is not the first country to equip Ukraine with Black Hornets. In August 2022, the UK and Norway jointly purchased 850 Black Hornet Nanos, promising to deploy them by November of that year. Earlier this month, the Norwegian Defense Ministry announced that FLIR would supply another 1,000 Black Hornets, plus spare parts, and would train Ukrainian operators and instructors to fly them (a process which reportedly takes as little as 20 minutes).
Are Black Hornets the Smallest Military Drones in the World?
Black Hornets are touted as the smallest military drones in the world. UK Defense Media hinted back in late 2015 that the military was considering experiments using even smaller UAVs weighing as little as 5 grams, but additional information on these plans has yet to materialize.
Last year, a Chinese company known as Huaqing Innovation unveiled the Fengniao (lit. ‘Hummingbird’) drone at a defense expo in Abu Dhabi, with the UAV measuring in at 17 cm and weighing 35 grams, and capable of transmitting snapshots or real-time footage at distances of more than 2 km. It has a reported flight time of about 25 minutes, and is powered by replaceable batteries, rather than a battery pack. The Fengniao can reportedly be used in combination with up to 15 other drones of the same type to form a swarm, and controlled by a smart phone app. Huaqing Innovation has not revealed the drone’s likely price tag.
For the more budget-conscious buyers, there are commercially available helicopter-style drones fitted with cameras (which have already been used en masse in Ukraine), such as the Eachine E110 RC, which features a 720 pm HD camera with 90 degree rotatable lens.
These drones can be yours for as little as $95, meaning, in theory, that one can buy over 1,000 of the mass-market drones for the price of a single Black Hornet. But there are many tradeoffs, including a flight time of just 15 minutes, a 20 km per hour flight speed, and crucially, a transmission distance of just 50-120 meters. Eachines are equipped with automatic hover and stare modes, and user-selectable waypoint controls, and an automatic return feature. The drones are also substantially larger than Black Hornets, with a nose to tail length of about 30 cm and a similar rotor span. However, as the saying goes, in some circumstances quantity has a quality all its own.
What Weapons Can Be Used to Counter Black Hornet Drones?
Black Hornets’ tiny size and quiet operation make them basically impossible to destroy using conventional missile defenses, although small arms (or an aptly thrown bag of groceries) might just be able to do the job at close range.
Alternatively, they can be targeted by specially-designed countermeasures, such as the RLK-MTs Valdai, a special-purpose radar designed by Russian missile maker Almaz-Antey to detect, suppress and neutralize small drones with extremely low radar cross sections at close-in ranges of 2 km or less. The RLK-MTs’s detection systems include an X-band radar module, thermal imagers and cameras, and a radio signal source-finder module. But these systems are heavy. Heavy enough that they have to be mounted on a truck.
Alternatively, there are military-grade anti-UAV systems such as the PARS-S Stepashka, a 9.6 kg Russian anti-drone gun with the ability to hijack enemy drones and force them to land or return to their launch sites. These weapons have an effective range between 500 and 1,500 meters.
And if that doesn’t work, there’s the Stupor rifle, which uses electromagnetic pulses to suppress drones’ control channels and similarly force them down.
The West threw Ukrainians into a meat grinder thinking “courage” would prevail
By Ahmed Adel | July 25, 2023
The West knew that Kiev did not have enough weapons for a successful counteroffensive but hoped that the “courage and resourcefulness” of Ukrainian soldiers’ would compensate for this deficit, reported The Wall Street Journal. Obviously, those hopes did not materialise as one cannot win a battle based on “courage and resourcefulness.”
“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t,” reported the newspaper.
“Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum,” added the Wall Street Journal.
According to the newspaper, the offensive risks a stalemate. It will cost Ukraine lives and equipment without significant progress. The publication also notes that there are not enough reserves in Europe to provide Kiev with everything necessary.
Moreover, according to Western diplomats, European leaders are unlikely to opt for a significant increase in aid to Ukraine if they feel a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the US, which in turn is preparing for the presidential election.
The Ukrainian offensive began on June 4 and has experienced catastrophy. But since the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022, Ukraine has lost 457 warplanes, 243 helicopters, 5,236 unmanned aerial vehicles, 426 air defence missile systems, 10,868 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,139 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 5,585 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 11,860 special military motor vehicles.
This catastrophic loss of military equipment demonstrates the complete failure of the Ukrainian offensive and is why more questions are being raised in Western countries about why support is still being provided when it is evidently making no difference in Ukraine’s fortunes.
In fact, it begs the question as to why the counteroffensive was ever launched to begin with.
As renowned political scientist Max Abrahms highlighted in a tweet, the White House boasted in May that “Ukraine has everything necessary for a counteroffensive.” This is a far cry from the recent revelation that the West believed that the “courage and resourcefulness” of Ukrainian soldiers’ would compensate for the lack of weapons.
For British military expert Jack Watling, Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia has been impeded by Western delivery delays and bureaucracy. The senior researcher on land warfare at the Royal Institute of United Services argues, “A bureaucratic, peacetime approach to training and stockpiling among Zelenskiy’s allies is posing a threat to European security.”
According to the author, Kiev has clearly communicated to Western capitals about what it needs to succeed on the battlefield, requesting artillery, engineering capacity, protected means of mobility, anti-aircraft defence systems and personnel training. Watling points out that Kiev did receive enough artillery and protected mobility assets but had a harder time obtaining other items on the list.
Western countries did not approve deliveries of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine until January 2023, making the situation difficult for Ukrainian forces: “Months of delays gave Russian forces time to build their defences, significantly complicating the task for the Ukrainians,” added Watling.
Effectively, it was a well-known fact, despite the public bravado, that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was going to fail. It questions why Ukrainians are being so easily sent into the Russian meat grinder to die or be maimed. This is difficult to reconcile since Ukrainians are literally being dragged off the street and sent to the front line.
Notably, more prominent voices in the West, such as Douglas MacKinnon, a former adviser for policy and communications at the Pentagon, and British Foreign Secretary Ben Wallace, are beginning to speak out against Zelensky’s entitled and spoiled behaviour. Although this has not deterred weapons transfers to Ukraine, it does suggest that patience could run out, especially as the US elections will take place in November 2024. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is also eyeing November 2024 for the UK’s General Election.
Particularly in the case of the US, the Republicans will likely use all the wasted billions of dollars and failure in Ukraine as a major election discussion point. With more and more revelations emerging that the Ukrainian counteroffensive never stood a chance of success, with foolish beliefs of “courage and resourcefulness” leading to tens of thousands of casualties, criticisms against the ruling governments in the West will only mount.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Stacey Plaskett: allowing RFK Jr. to speak will make the Biden administration “hesitant” about stopping “misinformation”
She then complains that people are accusing her of censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 24, 2023
Some politicians seem either unwilling or unable to pick a lane: are they pro, or against censorship?
In other words, they’re dedicated to trying to eat their cake and have it, too. Take Democrat Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, who on one hand wants to silence people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK), and on the other, complains when faced with criticism of advancing censorship.
The way Plaskett rationalizes the first of her efforts is that allowing people like RFK to speak freely is not only “insidious” in nature, and not only equals “desensitizing Americans” (to what?) but brings about a host of serious, and it seems, powerful problems, that would afflict such institutions like the US administration, and (major) social platforms.
Free speech, according to Plaskett – who was commenting on RFK’s testimony in Congress, i.e., giving him an opportunity to speak there – would make the White House and social media “hesitant” to combat misinformation. You would think the First Amendment would be what gives the administration the most pause.
But then Plaskett doesn’t want to be seen as a champion of censorship. And this behavior might, or might not, prompt her supporters to stop and think what, then, it is that she is championing (other than the Biden administration). And, it becomes increasingly clear that all these roads lead to the 2024 presidential election.
The concern about Republicans “elevating” RFK – pejoratively dubbed an “anti-vaxxer” by outlets like MSNBC – is “far more insidious” than simply criticizing Biden, suggests Plaskett. That’s because of the fear the current administration might get stripped of the tools of censorship, stubbornly yet less and less convincingly promoted as noble and just fight against “untruths and misinformation.”
And if anybody was wondering if Democrats would drop the tactic of claiming that any election that doesn’t go their way must be the work of ingenious foreign masterminds – they will not.
Judging by Plaskett, the current apparently “steely will” to stop disinformation (and the Twitter Files tell us how it’s done) might turn into “hesitancy.”
And, of all times – “during the height of the 2024 presidential elections.”
And just like that, seamlessly Plaskett and MSNBC managed to link the issue of giving the likes of RFK a voice in Congress, with “Russian, Iranian, and Chinese” trolls that the congresswoman is certain will swarm the internet, as they “try to suppress the American voters.”
Are we Slipping Toward Dictatorship?
By John S Leake | The Kennedy Beacon | July 24, 2023
History teaches us that dictatorial power is rarely if ever achieved all at once. The aspiring dictator invariably begins with censorship. By controlling the flow of information to the public, he shapes public perceptions in his favor, and against his critics.
Facts, worldviews, and opinions that challenge his own are expunged from the marketplace of ideas. Individuals who communicate to the public about these facts and opinions are silenced, segregated, and ostracized.
Through this process of elimination, the aspiring dictator hones his craft and eventually becomes a complete dictator.
Enter the current Biden Administration. In a recent interview with Aaron Kheriaty, MD—a psychiatrist and medical ethics expert who is a plaintiff in Missouri v. Biden—Kheriaty told me about the censorship program that the White House and an array of federal agencies have erected in recent years. He and his co-plaintiffs knew that some such program was operational, but they were still shocked by the discovery of its size and scope. As Kheriaty described it, the program is a Leviathan—a vast and systematic apparatus for exerting pressure on social media companies to censor any opinion or content that displeases the government. There’s a name for such an apparatus—namely, DICTATORSHIP.
In other words, a program of widespread censorship is the creation and work of a dictator. By way of censorship, the fledgling dictator not only silences his critics, but also prevents his dictatorial powers, privileges, and activities from being detected and reported. Thus, censorship is the means by which an aspiring dictator becomes a complete dictator.
Missouri v. Biden shows us that the Biden Administration, its lackeys in Congress, and its electoral organ, the DNC, have not yet erected a full dictatorship. Nevertheless, their conduct reveals that they aspire to do so and have already done much to achieve their ambition. They therefore treat with withering contempt anyone who threatens their ambition.
We saw a shocking expression of this at the House Judiciary Committee (Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government) hearing that was held on Thursday, July 20, 2023. While the Committee’s chair, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and his fellow Republican members welcomed the testimony of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Committee’s minority (Democrat) members did everything in their power to censor the hearing.
The mind reels in trying to comprehend this strange and paradoxical reality, so I will restate it. Last week, a hearing was held to “examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans, the Missouri v. Biden case, and Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech.” Instead of listening to the witness and considering his testimony, the Committee’s minority members tried to censor him.
Ranking Member of the minority, Stacey Plassket—a non-voting delegate to the House from the United States Virgin Islands’ (USVI)—began by asserting that presidential candidate RFK, Jr.’s speech is not protected by the First Amendment:
Many of my Republican colleagues across the dais will rush to cover that they have Mr. Kennedy here because they want to protect his free speech. This is not the kind of free speech that I know of.
Free speech is not an absolute. The Supreme Court has stated that. And others’ free speech that is allowed—hateful, abusive rhetoric—does not need to be promoted in the halls of the people’s house.
These folks have a plan. They want to give expression to the most vile sorts of speech here in this committee room because it prepares the ground for their own conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
And they apparently don’t care how many people are hurt or die as a consequence of their actions.… Because nothing, nothing is more important to them than power.
Plaskett’s assertions are an expression of the same strategy deployed by every dictator in history—namely, to dehumanize a dissident by characterizing his opinions as vile and dangerous. By the dictator’s logic, the dissident is not free to express his opinions because they pose a threat to the body politic. While such assertions are couched in the benevolent sounding language of protecting the citizenry, the true threat the dissident poses is not to the citizenry, but to the dictator’s power.
Assuming the role of Grand Inquisitor at the hearing was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). She began by motioning the Committee to move into executive session, thereby closing the hearing to the public. She made this motion on the grounds that RFK, Jr.’s remarks about COVID-19 at a recent press event are harmful to the public.
Readers who are interested in the reality of these remarks—as distinct from the mainstream media’s blitz of mendacious propaganda about them—may consider reading my Substack post about it. In a nutshell, RFK, Jr. mentioned the vast medical literature about genetic variations in the ACE-2 receptor that cause some ethnic groups, especially Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, to be less susceptible to severe COVID-19 illness than other ethnic groups.
Following the Committee’s rejection of Rep. Wasserman Schultz’s motion, she characterized RFK, Jr.’s recent remarks as perpetuating a longstanding anti-Semitic trope that Jews are responsible for infectious disease outbreaks. She then claimed (with perfect humbug) that she wanted to give the witness “a chance to correct his statements and repair some of the harm that he’s helped cause” to the Jewish people.
Her idea of “giving the witness a chance” was making grossly distorted representations of what he has purportedly said in the past, and then interrupting him every time he tried to set the record straight. Such methods of interrogation have been employed by every dictator’s kangaroo court in history.
Readers of this Substack may recall that Schultz is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. On July 28, 2016, leaked emails showed that she and other DNC staff had taken actions to favor Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries. The leaked e-mails indicate that she did this in exchange for funds for paying off the DNC’s remaining debt from the 2012 presidential campaign. After eliminating Sanders from the 2016 race, Schultz is now (in her capacity as member of the House) hard at work to eliminate Kennedy from the 2024 race.
Schultz’s conduct is another expression of the dictator’s spirit—that is, the conviction that the ends justify means. It doesn’t matter that she once resigned her chair at an institution governing the electoral process after her corrupt, duplicitous, and unfair conduct was exposed. Her party and its supporters are still giving her license to abuse and censor RFK, Jr., and to mislead the public about statements he has made about public policy.
To learn more about Missouri v. Biden, please see my interview with plaintiff Aaron Kheriaty, MD.
John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty on Censorship
John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty on the origin of the citizenry needs to be protected from itself.
John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty on the way to correct false ideas.
Full Interview
The Kennedy Beacon Podcast EP1: John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty, MD
Australia to Buy 20 C-130J Aircraft From US for Almost $10Bln
Sputnik – 24.07.2023
Australia will buy 20 new C-130J Hercules aircraft from the United States for $9.8 billion, with first deliveries expected in late 2027, the Australian Defense Ministry said on Monday.
The first aircraft is expected to be delivered beginning in late 2027, according to the statement.
“The Albanese Government will purchase 20 new C-130J Hercules aircraft for the Royal Australian Air Force for $9.8 billion. This will provide the Air Force with state of the art C-130 Hercules to meet the air transport needs of the future,” the ministry said in a statement.
The new acquisitions will replace and expand the 12 Hercules aircraft currently in service, the ministry added. The aircraft are used by the Australian military to transport personnel, equipment and humanitarian supplies, as well as for search and rescue operation, disaster relief and medical evacuation missions, the statement said.
The C-130J Hercules are designed by US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
Ukraine and the pitfalls of foreign aid
By Paul Robinson | Canadian Dimension | July 24, 2023
Few people came out of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan looking good. A rare exception was John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Sopko was the Cassandra of the American war effort, repeatedly revealing unwelcome truths only to be equally repeatedly ignored. In charge of auditing the vast sums of money that the US government spent on economic aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan, SIGAR’s office issued regular reports detailing waste, incompetence, and corruption on a scale that boggles the mind. Among other things, SIGAR published stories of how the US spent $6 million airlifting nine Italian goats to Afghanistan; spent $486 million buying aircraft for the Afghan airforce which were so dangerous to fly that they were never used and were turned into $32,000 of scrap metal; and spent $150 million building luxury villas to lodge staff of its economic development office. All this was just the tip of a very large iceberg.
The basic lesson of SIGAR’s many reports was that throwing vast sums of money into poor countries doesn’t promote economic development. Instead, it encourages corruption and inefficient economic practices. Formal institutions (laws, governments) depend upon informal ones, such as local customs and social structures, that foreigners do not understand, leading to misguided policies and misdirection of funds. Efforts to impose Western formal institutions on top of these very different informal ones, and then flooding the country with Western advisors and money, ends up being counterproductive. None of this, of course, is particularly revelatory. Critics of foreign aid programs have been saying much the same for years. Still, it is an important message.
Although the United States has left Afghanistan, Sopko is continuing his work. Last week, he published a letter written in response to a request from various US Senators. In this, he discussed how lessons from rebuilding Afghanistan could be applied to Ukraine. All wars come to an end. When that in Ukraine does so, there will no doubt be huge pressure on Western governments to flood that country with development assistance. SIGAR’s letter provides a dose of caution that is well worth listening to.
SIGAR notes that “many of the challenges US agencies faced in Afghanistan—coordinating efforts, dealing with corruption, and effectively monitoring and evaluating projects and programs—will be the same as the ones they will face in Ukraine.” He identifies seven particular lessons. These are:
- “The US government struggled to develop a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve in Afghanistan and imposed unrealistic timelines that led to wasteful and counterproductive programs.”
- “Lack of effective coordination—both within the US government and across the international coalition—was a major obstacle to success in Afghanistan and resulted in a disjointed patchwork of ineffective efforts, rather than a united and coherent approach.”
- “Though viewed as our greatest strength, the level of financial assistance in Afghanistan was often our greatest weakness.”
- “Corruption was an existential threat to the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan.”
- “Building and reforming the Afghan security forces was hindered by their corruption, predation, and chronic dependency on the United States.”
- “Tracking equipment provided to Afghan security forces proved challenging well before the government collapsed.” And:
- “Monitoring and evaluation efforts in Afghanistan were weak and often measured simple inputs and outputs rather than actual program effectiveness.”
Sopko makes a number of important points under these headings. One that is, “In Afghanistan, the US government spent too much money, too quickly, in a country that was unable to absorb it.” Yet estimates of how much money will be required to rebuild Ukraine far surpass what was spent in Afghanistan. The US (and by implication other Western states also) must take care not to provide more than Ukraine is able to effectively absorb or more than the donor states are able to effectively monitor. More is not necessarily better.
SIGAR also notes that “Under pressure to produce results quickly, agencies bypassed Afghan institutions and government channels when they encountered corruption, rather than slog through efforts at reform. When aid did flow through Afghan budgets and institutions, the United States prioritized the survival and short-term stability of the Afghan government over following through on anti-corruption efforts.” This is a problem that is likely to be repeated in Ukraine, where corruption is “likely to be a significant obstacle to the country’s recovery” given the country’s status as “the most corrupt country in Europe.”
Strangely, SIGAR misses a key fact, which is that this point and the previous one are connected—corruption feeds off excessive foreign aid. So does poor governance more generally. It is no coincidence that so-called “rentier” states (states that derive their income not from taxes on citizens but from what economists call “rents,” such as revenues from natural resource production or from foreign aid) tend to be corrupt, undemocratic, and generally unresponsive to citizens’ needs. When your revenues come from your citizens, you have to pay attention to what they want. When they don’t, you can afford to ignore them. A post-war Ukrainian government that is dependent on foreign assistance, maintains a huge military and security apparatus that is beyond its means, and has few sources of finance of its own, will have few incentives to listen to its own people or to act in an honest way.
A final point made by SIGAR is that in Afghanistan US agencies “often failed to measure programs and projects against the ultimate outcomes and impacts they sought to achieve. Instead, how much money was spent, and how quickly, became the measure of success, regardless of the actual result. This poured money into a fragile environment with no concept of whether projects achieved their intended goal, or even necessarily where all the money was going.” This is a perpetual problem in aid and development projects. Post-war, Western governments will no doubt feel a strong need to be seen to be “doing something” to help Ukraine. They will therefore be likely to throw money at the problem, publicizing their “success” in terms of funds expended and projects begun, but ignoring the actual outcomes.
SIGAR sees part of the solution as lying in better monitoring and evaluation. The problem with this is that there are generally few incentives to carry out such monitoring, because if one does there is a high possibility that one will come to the conclusion that one’s aid is failing, a conclusion that one cannot politically admit. In addition, the recipient of the aid is very possibly aware of this, and thus lacks incentives to use the aid appropriately. Confident that the donor is politically committed to supporting him come what may, he is free to act as irresponsibly as he wishes.
Simply put, giving money away in large quantities tends to produce perverse incentives that cause people to behave in ways that engender negative results. This isn’t a problem that can be fixed by better monitoring, anti-corruption efforts, and the like. It’s inherent in aid itself. If there is a weakness in Sopko’s reporting, it is that, as an auditor, it’s not his job to say whether aid should be given, just to point out whether it is being used effectively. Consequently, his reports end up consisting of lists of how things could be done better without ever challenging whether they should be done in the first place.
Still, they are vital reading for anybody who wants to think about how to reconstruct war-torn societies. What is clear is that if Western states want to produce better results in Ukraine than they did in Afghanistan, they will have to think a lot more intelligently about what sorts of aid they give and how they deliver it. But it’s not as if they weren’t previously aware of the problems mentioned above. SIGAR warned them repeatedly. Nobody listened. One must wonder if they are listening now.
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.
Kiev regime kills Russian journalist with illegal US-supplied weapons

By Lucas Leiroz | July 24, 2023
Cluster munitions have already begun to generate civilian casualties in the Ukrainian conflict. Russian journalists were attacked with illegal US-supplied weapons, resulting in the injury of three people and the death of RIA Novosti’s war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev. Once again, the Kiev regime shows its terrorist nature, also having NATO’s co-participation in the crimes, as the alliance is responsible for supplying the weapons used in the murder of Russian civilians.
The attack took place in the Zaporozhye region. A civilian vehicle with journalists inside was hit by cluster bombs, injuring all the reporters, and killing Zhuravlev. According to information given by spokespersons for the “Rossiya Segodnya” group, the media crew was near the village of Pyatikhatki when it came under fire from Ukrainian forces. It is believed that they were in that area precisely to report the use of cluster munitions in some nearby residential zones.
Considering that it was not a military convoy, but just a civilian vehicle with journalists, the attack was illegal, contrary to basic rules of international humanitarian law. For this reason, Russian authorities have already commented on the case, classifying it as terrorism. It is well known that Ukrainian soldiers deliberately target and kill Russian media professionals, both on the ground war correspondents and commentators outside the combat zone – as previously seen in the cases of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. In this sense, Zhuravlev’s murder represents a continuation of the Ukrainian regime’s terrorist and anti-humanitarian practice of attacking the Russian press.
On social media, pro-Ukrainian militants reacted to the case by supporting the attack and “justifying” it with the allegation that Zhuravlev was a “military” or even a “war criminal”. To support this narrative, Ukrainian neo-Nazi activists spread photos of the journalist holding weapons and wearing military uniforms in the conflict zone. However, they omitted the fact that these photos are not recent.
Before becoming a war correspondent, Zhuravlev actually fought on the battlefield, having joined the Donbass militias in 2014, in the early months of the conflict. After completing his voluntary military service, Zhuravlev became an ordinary civilian journalist. He worked on the battlefield as a mere employee of Russian media agencies, not as a soldier, which makes the Ukrainian attack absolutely illegal.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the attack was against a civilian car, with other media professionals inside. These other reporters, unlike Zhuravlev, did not have any military background. So, the tale spread by propagandists is not only false but also baseless, being easily refuted with a simple analysis of the case.
However, the most important point of this topic is the use of cluster munitions. As predicted by several experts, journalists and Russian officials, Kiev’s forces are actually using these weapons to kill civilians, deliberately targeting people that have no military involvement. There was a strong pressure for the US not to approve the delivery of these bombs to Kiev as their use could affect civilians as a side effect. However, what is happening now is even more serious. These weapons are not accidentally killing civilians, but are being purposefully used by the regime’s forces to target non-military Russian citizens.
Furthermore, Russia sees the US as co-responsible for the crime. Since the US is the supplier of the weapons with which Kiev murders Russian civilians, then Washington is to blame for the attacks as well as the neo-Nazi regime. The Russian understanding on the subject should be shared by the entire international society, especially by organizations that defend international law and human rights. But unfortunately, biased opinions in favor of the West continue to be imposed on states and organizations, making it impossible to sanction countries that sponsor the war.
So, in the absence of diplomatic and legal alternatives to prevent the West from continuing to supply weapons that are used to kill civilians, Russia can only try to resolve the situation through military means. In this sense, severe responses from Moscow are expected in the near future, possibly intensifying attacks on Ukrainian command centers and weapons depots where cluster munitions are being stored.
Although Russian forces have repeatedly withheld retaliation to avoid escalating the conflict, the latest moves show that Moscow is no longer willing to tolerate violations of redlines. The cruise missile attacks on the ports of Odessa in response to the killing of civilians in Crimea made it clear that Moscow is ready to retaliate for crimes committed against its citizens.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Indisputable – Covid ‘cures’ caused the excess deaths

By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | July 21, 2023
‘Virologists have been exploiting us and screaming fire where there was none’: Dr Denis Rancourt giving his testimony to the National Citizens’ Inquiry in Ottawa, Canada.
This citizen-led, citizen-funded inquiry into Canada’s Covid-19 response, by definition cannot be commissioned or conducted impartially by the government whose responses and actions are the subject of the investigation. It has already held hearings in Vancouver, Ottawa and Quebec City at which scientific, medical, and legal experts have testified under oath, along with journalists and Canadian citizens who have pertinent testimony to offer. On May 17 Dr Rancourt, a scientist with a PhD in physics who has held key research positions in France and the Netherlands prior to becoming a physics professor and lead scientist at the University of Ottawa 23 years ago, gave his evidence.
For the last three years, with a team of statisticians and scientific researchers, he has been conducting a vast number of studies on all-cause mortality. These have focused on North America but have included other Western nations, resulting in more than 30 scientific reports. His findings appear conclusive, and establish that there was no particularly virulent pathogen on the planet in 2020; that excess deaths that year were entirely caused by the measures imposed against a fictitious threat, and then from 2021 onwards, by the vaccines.
He further concludes that none of the various ‘pandemics’ announced by the US and Canada since the Second World War was reflected in excess all-cause mortality. In other words, they too were fiction.
Importantly, at the inquiry hearings Dr Rancourt explained his focus on all-cause mortality data. It is because it contains no bias. It is a simple counting of deaths per age group, by sex, state, city and as a function of time. It enables one to spot and correlate events such as heatwaves, earthquakes, wars, economic depressions; anything that perturbs the population sufficiently to cause mortality. Its ‘power’ is that it provides a clear, unmanipulated picture of a given population.
During a 97-minute testimony he provided detailed evidence to show how he arrived at three core conclusions:
1. ‘If governments had done nothing out of the ordinary, if they had not announced a pandemic, not responded to a presumed new pathogen, done nothing more than what is usually done when there is high seasonal mortality in the winter, there would have been no excess mortality. There was the usual ecology of pathogens which we live with and are always present. People get ill, they recover, some die, but there was no pandemic that caused excess mortality beyond the historic trend, and that would have remained the case if we had just left things alone.’
2. The measures that governments applied were many different forms of assault, all of which contributed to excess mortality.
3. The Covid-19 vaccination campaign has caused huge excess mortality in clearly visible peaks which are seen directly associated with the roll-out of various vaccine doses to different age groups and in different jurisdictions, and likewise with the administration of boosters. The excess mortality occurs immediately following vaccination and lasts a few days, then the curve of mortality declines exponentially over a period of about two months. Dr Rancourt emphasises that it is not possible to have such an unusual pattern without it being causally connected to the injections.
Explaining why there was no pandemic of a viral respiratory disease, Rancourt shows that when one integrates the all-cause mortality in the ‘Covid’ period there were huge variations from area to area, which defies the hypothesis of viral spread.
The US excess mortality in this period was five times higher than that of neighbouring Canada proportionately to its population, which is epidemiologically impossible. These differences were also visible between US states, which means one has to look at social factors to explain the phenomenon. The excess deaths occurred mainly in the Southern states, which have a high incidence of seasonal bacterial pneumonia, and these infections went inadequately treated because during the ‘Covid’ period all Western nations cut antibiotic prescriptions by at least 50 per cent. Another strong population correlation factor was the number of people with disabilities. The US has a large number of registered disabled, and people who rely on outside support for everyday needs cannot function in a society in lockdown. It also has high numbers of poor people, and with the closure of churches, schools and community facilities, these populations were utterly stripped of their usual mechanisms of survival.
Excess mortality in 2020 in Europe was equally inconsistent with the notion of viral spread. Immediately after the pandemic was announced Lombardy in Italy became a hotspot, where hospitals put two people at a time on mechanical ventilators. But Italy’s crisis did not flow into Switzerland, nor did Spain’s high death toll cross the border into Portugal, and Alsace’s peak in Eastern France did not affect neighbouring Germany. This constitutes counter-evidence of a viral respiratory disease. Furthermore, although the lethality of ‘Covid’ was said to be exponential with age, mortality data shows no correlation with age.
Dr Mike Yeadon, who understands the biological effects of fear, told James Delingpole in their recent discussion: ‘Two mg of diazepam, a cup of tea and a biscuit, arm around the shoulder and give them an oxygen mask. I think most people would have gone home, but instead they admitted and murdered them.’
As the fraud began with the seeding of an idea of a pandemic, solid, irrefutable data is key in dismantling the illusion. This Dr Rancourt provided.
He completed his testimony with a plea to scientists and physicians to go back and look at the data of who is dying, and where and when, and what it correlates to. He believes there has to be a reset of thinking to recognise that virologists have been exploiting us and shouting fire where there was really nothing present. Clinicians and emergency staff have donned ‘Covid glasses’, he believes, making them see things as dangerous which at any other time would appear perfectly normal.
He postulates that the way to reset thinking is to use hard data that cannot be disputed, and that is all-cause mortality data. Unless this central data issue is addressed, he fears pandemics will be declared without basis, and populations will be assaulted at will.
FDA Approves New Anthrax Vaccine for Adults Despite Lack of Publicly Available Information on Testing, Ingredients
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 21, 2023
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved an anthrax vaccine for adults ages 18-65, according to Emergent BioSolutions, the vaccine’s maker.
The vaccine, Cyfendus, is approved for use after suspected or confirmed exposure to Bacillus anthracis, also known as anthrax, but must be administered together with other antibacterial drugs, Reuters reported.
Emergent said it had been delivering Cyfendus to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 2019, under pre-emergency use authorization status.
The efficacy of Cyfendus for post-exposure prophylaxis was tested only on animals.
Dr. Meryl Nass, bioterrorism and anthrax expert, told The Defender she is skeptical about whether the vaccine offers any new substantive health benefit.
“Given the history of the company’s many failures, and the lack of proper safety or efficacy testing of prior anthrax vaccines, one can only expect problems,” Nass said.
“The fact that there is no label available, there is no information on how it was tested, what placebo was used, et cetera — that all adds to the consternation and concern people should have about the value of this product,” Nass added.
Emergent said the drug has been in development for 20 years in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Paul Williams, senior vice president at Emergent, said anthrax “remains a high-priority national security threat.”
Cyfendus is comprised of Emergent’s anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA), marketed as Biothrax, plus an additional adjuvant, the name of which the company did not disclose.
Cyfendus is administered in two doses over 14 days to elicit an immune response that the company said: “can be especially important in response to a large-scale public health emergency involving anthrax.”
Nass said that during the 2001 anthrax scare, where politicians and media organizations across the country received anthrax in the mail, five people died — but “everyone who got antibiotics early did not come down with anthrax and none of them died.”
“So,” Nass said, “antibiotics worked.” Nass emphasized that after exposure to anthrax, one needs treatment immediately — not over the longer period of time it takes for a vaccine to work.
“The fact that it’s required to be given with antibiotics,” Nass said, “which is what you should have when exposed to anthrax, raises the question: What additional benefit are you gonna get from this vaccine? I don’t know.”
Emergent’s stock shares gained 16.2% in pre-market trading after it announced the FDA approval.
Benchmark analyst Robert Wasserman said the approval provides “greater assurance” the company will reach its projected 2023 earnings of $260-$280 million, Bloomberg Law reported.
The price spike comes on the heels of “a difficult few years,” financially for the company, FiercePharma reported.
The company, founded in 1998 as government contractor BioPort to distribute and produce the anthrax vaccine for the U.S. military, reached its financial zenith early in the pandemic after earning lucrative contracts to produce Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
But a congressional report in 2021 revealed the company hid likely contamination problems at the plant from FDA inspectors and eventually had to destroy 400 million vaccine doses — which led its share price to fall from $133 to $7.
History of the anthrax vaccine
The anthrax vaccine was developed and in limited use in the military since 1970.
Biothrax has been produced by Emergent since 2002. Prior to Thursday’s announcement, it was the only anthrax vaccine licensed for humans in the U.S.
Nass explained that in 1997, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) made the vaccine compulsory as part of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) for all 2.5 million military service members — including active duty and reserve personnel and civilian contractors.
The DOD implemented the mass vaccination program in 1998.
Reports of adverse reactions and dissent on the part of service members led to congressional hearings and in early 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform recommended halting the mandatory program, although it was not officially halted.
As of 2000, more than 500,000 service members had received at least one dose of the vaccine, which was designed to be administered in six doses.
The plant where the government produced the anthrax vaccine faced a series of regulatory issues and was closed in 1997, according to Nass.
BioPort acquired it from the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute in 1998 and rebuilt it, but was not FDA-authorized to produce the vaccine. So for a period, the vaccines were unavailable.
Then, starting on Sept. 18, 2001 — a week after the 9/11 attacks — when Americans were in a state of fear or heightened concern, media outlets began reporting that a sophisticated, weaponized and fatal form of anthrax had been sent via mail to numerous news outlets and American politicians.
New letters continued to appear over the next six weeks and the media and the government implied they were somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks.
Later, the media and figures such as John McCain linked the anthrax to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 2008, the FBI accused U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins of being responsible for the attacks, although Ivins took his own life before he could be prosecuted and the FBI’s claims are widely doubted.
ProPublica, McClatchy and PBS Frontline, which did their own investigation, questioned the FBI’s evidence.
The Government Office of Accountability (GAO) and the National Academies of Science both also found that the FBI lacked data to back its claims.
But the hype created by the anthrax letters primed the American public to support draconian legislation such as the Patriot Act, Dr. Joseph Mercola argued.
It also became the primary justification for continuing to produce the vaccine and administer it to service people, Pam Long wrote in The Defender.
In 2002, shortly after the FDA approved BioPort’s new vaccine plant, the GAO issued a report to Congress on the AVIP.
The report enumerated a significant number of adverse reactions to the vaccine — more than double the rate reported by the manufacturer — along with the mass exodus of military pilots and other valuable military personnel who refused the mandate.
It also noted that anthrax adverse reactions were very similar to Gulf War syndrome symptoms and that many veterans reported the vaccine as the cause of this illness, which they also reported in congressional hearings, according to Nass.
From 2000 to 2018, the military anthrax mandate was challenged several times in court for lacking FDA approval and licensure, and for lacking proven potency against fatal inhalation of anthrax.
During this time, the DOD restricted the anthrax vaccine to a smaller group of “at-risk troops” and halted and resumed the program several times.
Prior to 2001, the DOD concluded that biological agents such as anthrax were not a threat for mass casualties due to the limited number of countries with the expertise and sophistication required to weaponize and disseminate anthrax.
According to an investigation by investigative journalist Whitney Webb, the 2001 anthrax attacks also rescued Emergent Biosolutions, then BioPort, from certain financial ruin.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

