Tag: Ammunition

China’s neighbors are buying US weapons Washington isn’t delivering

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

China’s neighbors are buying US weapons Washington isn’t delivering

Even though the United States views these weapons sales as integral to deterring China from attacking Taiwan, some of the deals were publicly announced as far back as 2017.

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The reasons – government delays, supply chain issues and production requirements – are numerous, and the problem won’t be easy to fix, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Defense News.

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The U.S. government has approved the sale of 10 weapons systems Taiwan has yet to receive – some of which are not slated for delivery until the end of the decade.

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The United States has flooded billions of dollars in weapons into Ukraine, including items that are part of Taiwan’s backlog, such as Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and High Mobile Artillery Rocket Systems.

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For example, several Middle Eastern and eastern European countries are ahead of Taiwan in Lockheed Martin’s F-16 production queue. In 2019, the State Department approved an $8 billion Taiwan sale for 66 F-16s, but Taipei does not expect to receive the aircraft until 2026.

“Saudi Arabia is still ahead of Taiwan on the priority list in some cases,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told Defense News ahead of a July meeting with Taiwan’s Washington envoy. “We need to take a look at that.”

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The United States may secretly transfer a number of weapons to Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

The United States may secretly transfer a number of weapons to Ukraine

The US authorities may not publicly announce the transfer of certain types of weapons to Ukraine as part of military assistance. About it writes Politico.

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The new military aid package for Kyiv, announced last week, includes Excalibur guided artillery shells, according to two Politico sources. At the same time, they are not mentioned in the Pentagon’s official statement on weapons supplied to Ukraine.

Politico also read the official notice to Congress in connection with the allocation of another aid package to Ukraine, which, according to the newspaper, notes that the weapons supplied by Washington to Kyiv “are not limited” to those listed.

“From Canada With Love” Message on a Rocket

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A new low for some Canadians.

Did it occur to any of these hateful individuals that some, perhaps all, of these missiles they’ve signed espousing their venomous mind set will kill civilians? If that thought did enter their addled minds (unable to think clearly; confused) did they still pay to have the missiles signed anyway knowing they would hit the ethnic Russian citizenry?

“From Canada With Love” Message on a Rocket

Related:

‘Sign my Rocket’ – the underground crowdfunding industry behind Ukrainian Nazi armed groups

China’s Growing Military Might

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Brian Berletic

What many in the West at first dismissed as a tantrum thrown by Beijing over the unauthorized visit of US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan appears instead to be a carefully thought-out strategy designed to incrementally reassert Chinese sovereignty over the island territory. Beijing’s ability to do this is underwritten by the nation’s growing military might.

China’s Growing Military Might

Oliver Boyd: From Our Taxes, Windfall Profits for “Defense” Industry. What Ukraine is mainly about

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 8/14/22

Yes, it would be simpler and less messy all around if we just transferred the money directly from our bank accounts to Raytheon, Lockheed and the rest of them.

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Should Ukraine simply sign over sovereignty to Russia? Well, Ukraine already signed over sovereignty, but to the USA, in 2014. The current war serves Washington interests, not Ukrainian.

Oliver Boyd: From Our Taxes, Windfall Profits for “Defense” Industry. What Ukraine is mainly about

Previously:

Russian Ops in Ukraine – Russian Advances, Ukraine Shelling Nuclear Power Plant

Ukraine claims 60 dead, 100 wounded, in blasts on Crimea as satellite images show destroyed Russian aircraft

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment
Kerch Strait Bridge, Crimea.

by Clara Weiss, WSWS, Aug 13 2022

Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs, claimed on Thursday that 60 pilots and technicians had been killed and 100 people wounded in a series of explosions at a Russian Saki air base on the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula on Tuesday. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the air base has housed the Russian 43rd Independent Naval Assault Air Squadron.

Ukraine claims 60 dead, 100 wounded, in blasts on Crimea as satellite images show destroyed Russian aircraft

Related:

Does Ukraine Have A Stash Of Domestically Developed Ballistic Missiles?

Video via Made in Ukraine

Pentagon acknowledges sending anti-radar missiles to Ukraine; they are already in use

Colin Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy, said at a press briefing that the US had sent “a number” of the missiles without specifying how many the US has provided or when they were sent. Kahl did not explicitly say what type of anti-radiation missile was sent.

A defense official told CNN the type of missile sent was the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).

US nuclear blackmail in Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

August 6, 2022, was the 77th anniversary of the first atomic attack. In 1945, between 100 and 200,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima. The second bomb was dropped three days later on Nagasaki, the perpetrators were also American. Nobody has used later a nuclear weapon. While the whole world is remembering, the US are exploiting the threat of a nuclear catastrophe for military and political purposes in Ukraine

US nuclear blackmail in Ukraine

New York Times columnist: Deeper mistrust between Biden and Zelenskyy than people know

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Thomas Friedman wrote Monday in a column for the New York Times that there was a deeper mistrust between the White House and Volodymyr Zelenskyy than what has been reported.

New York Times columnist: Deeper mistrust between Biden and Zelenskyy than people know

Related:

Why Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Is Utterly Reckless

The timing could not be worse. Dear reader: The Ukraine war is not over. And privately, U.S. officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine’s leadership than they are letting on. There is deep mistrust between the White House and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky — considerably more than has been reported.

And there is funny business going on in Kyiv. On July 17, Zelensky fired his country’s prosecutor general and the leader of its domestic intelligence agency — the most significant shake-up in his government since the Russian invasion in February. It would be the equivalent of Biden firing Merrick Garland and Bill Burns on the same day. But I have still not seen any reporting that convincingly explains what that was all about. It is as if we don’t want to look too closely under the hood in Kyiv for fear of what corruption or antics we might see, when we have invested so much there. (More on the dangers of that another day.)