Data-mining company Palantir is poised to turbocharge its sales to the U.S. military under President Donald Trump, amid signs that his administration plans to loosen the hold of traditional defense contractors and tap Palantir executives for key government positions.
Tag: military operations
Israeli Strikes Demonstrates Limits of Western Military Might
Brian Berletic, November 05 2024
Israel’s most recent missile strikes on Iran reveal the limits to conventional Western military power in the Middle East, reflecting wider limits globally.
Israeli Strikes Demonstrates Limits of Western Military Might (archived)
V-22 Osprey: ‘Close Shave’ For U.S. Marines, Japanese Troops As Tiltrotor ‘Tilts’ Uncontrollably; Tokyo Grounds Entire Fleet
The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) has grounded its fleet of Osprey tiltrotor aircraft after one of its V-22 Ospreys sustained damage during a failed takeoff attempt as part of the ongoing “Keen Sword 25” joint exercise with the United States.
Related:
Military officials: ‘Widowmaker’ Osprey will fly with a faulty clutch
US Missile Agency Scales Back Guam Defence Plans + More
US Missile Agency Scales Back Guam Defence Plans
The project is designed to create “360 degree” protection for the U.S. Pacific territory from missile and air attacks of all kinds, the agency said. Plans include integrating Raytheon’s SM-6, SM-3 Block IIA, Lockheed Martin’s THAAD, and the Patriot PAC-3, which uses components from both companies, over about 10 years.
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Pentagon To Spend $1.2B To Maintain Red Sea Operation
Oct 3, 2024 (Bloomberg) –The Pentagon will spend about $1.2 billion to maintain ships deployed as part of operations in the Red Sea and to replenish stocks of missiles fired to repel attacks by Iran and its proxies, according to new budget documents.
Previously:
US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7
US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7
Sole US Navy Oiler – USNS Big Horn – in the Middle East Damaged | September 23, 2024
by John Konrad – gCaptain has received multiple reports that the US Navy oiler USNS Big Horn ran aground yesterday and partially flooded off the coast of Oman, leaving the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group without its primary fuel source.
US Navy Oiler Runs Aground, Forcing Carrier Strike Group to Scramble for Fuel
Related:
Oiler USNS Big Horn Damaged off the Coast Of Oman, No Fuel Leak Detected
The US Navy Needs Tankers: A Crisis In Capability
US sending more troops to Middle East as violence rises in the region
Video: How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself?
How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself?
As China rises, Asia rises with it. The Southeast Asian state of the Philippines stood to rise alongside the rest of the region until relatively recently as the United States successfully convinces the Philippines to do otherwise.
How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself? (archived)
Related:
PH’s PressONE is funded by several US front organizations:
The Philippine Fact-Checker Incubator was established with the financial backing of Facebook, in collaboration with VERA Files and Rappler. The incubated organizations include ABS-CBN News & Current Affairs, Manila Broadcasting Company, MindaNews, Philstar.com, PressONE.ph, and Probe Productions. They are accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network. – PFCI, Poytner.
Poynter Institute has been funded by the Gates Foundation, the Koch Network, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Omidyar Network, and Open Society Foundations. Other sponsors are CNN, the Scripps Howard Foundations, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, TEGNA Foundation, etc..
The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Concentration Camps
The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Security Zones
A plan that is gaining currency in the government and military envisions creating geographical “islands” or “bubbles” where Palestinians who are unconnected to Hamas can live in temporary shelter while the Israeli military mops up remaining insurgents.
Other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party are backing another, security-focused plan that seeks to slice up Gaza with two corridors running across its width and a fortified perimeter that would allow Israel’s military to mount raids when it deems them necessary.
The ideas come from informal groups of retired army and intelligence officers, think tanks, academics and politicians, as well as internal discussions inside the military. While Israel’s political leadership has said almost nothing about how the Gaza Strip will look and be governed after the heaviest fighting ends, these groups have been working on detailed plans that offer a glimpse of how Israel is thinking about what it calls the Day After.
The plans—whether or not they get adopted in full—reveal hard realities about the aftermath that rarely get voiced. Among them, that Palestinian civilians could be confined indefinitely to smaller areas of the Gaza Strip while fighting continues outside, and that Israel’s army could be forced to remain deeply involved in the enclave for years until Hamas is marginalized.
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According to people familiar with the effort, it aims to work with local Palestinians who are unaffiliated with Hamas to set up isolated zones in northern Gaza. Palestinians in areas where Israel believes Hamas no longer holds sway would distribute aid and take on civic duties. Eventually, a coalition of U.S. and Arab states would manage the process, these people said.
Ziv, who oversaw Israel’s exit from Gaza in 2005, proposes that Palestinians who are ready to denounce Hamas could register to live in fenced-off geographic islands located next to their neighborhoods and guarded by the Israeli military. This would entitle them to reconstruction of their homes.
The process would be gradual, and in the longer term, Ziv envisages bringing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority back to Gaza as a political solution, with the whole process taking roughly five years as the military fights Hamas insurgents. Under his plan, Hamas could be part of Gaza’s administration, if it frees all the hostages held there and disarms, becoming purely a political movement.
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Northern Gaza, under the plan, would remain without reconstruction, and Palestinians there wouldn’t be allowed back to their homes until Hamas’s miles-long tunnel network was destroyed. Like the bubbles plan, it promotes the notion of de-escalation zones where aid can be delivered by the Israeli military or by international forces, but stops short of articulating an idea for governance.
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Another plan published by the Washington-based Wilson Center* also advocates a coalition-style approach to the conflict but refrains from calling for Israel to consider the adoption of a Palestinian state. It says the U.S. should establish an international police force to manage security in Gaza and over time hand the job to a yet-to-be-defined Palestinian administration.
Robert Silverman**, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq who is a co-author, said his team discussed the plan with Israeli officials for months, even changing parts of the proposal to make it more agreeable to Israel’s war objectives and political dynamics, but it stalled with the prime minister’s office.
“He believes we finish the war first and then plan the postwar,” Silverman said of Netanyahu. “All the people who have done this before say that’s a huge mistake.”
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Another document, drafted by Israeli academics, that has made its way to the prime minister’s desk draws on historical precedents in rebuilding the war zones in Germany and Japan after World War II, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. It considers how to tackle Hamas’s Islamist doctrine by learning from the defeat of ideologies such as Nazism and that of Islamic State.
Related:
The Strategic Hamlet Program (SHP; Vietnamese: Ấp Chiến lược) was a plan by the government of South Vietnam in conjunction with the US government and ARPA during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency by pacifying the countryside and reducing the influence of the communists among the rural population through the creation of concentration camps.
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The Strategic Hamlet Program was unsuccessful, failing to stop the insurgency or gain support for the government from rural Vietnamese, it alienated many and helped contribute to the growth in influence of the Viet Cong. After President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a coup in November 1963, the program was cancelled. Peasants moved back into their old homes or sought refuge from the war in the cities. The failure of the Strategic Hamlet and other counterinsurgency and pacification programs were causes that led the United States to decide to intervene in South Vietnam with air strikes and ground troops.
The *Wilson Center plan isn’t much better. 👇🏻
Related:
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