Tag: Supply Chains

Largest U.S. Drone Manufacturer Says It Will Need To Ration Batteries For Customers After Sanctions By China

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Largest U.S. Drone Manufacturer Says It Will Need To Ration Batteries For Customers After Sanctions By China

Bry said China sanctioned his company for selling drones to Taiwan—noting the Taiwanese National Fire Agency is its only customer in the country—but said Skydio was “proud to support critical infrastructure operators, first responders, and allied militaries.”
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The blog post sharply attacked the Chinese government, saying the sanctions show that the Chinese government “will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours.”
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Bry also accused the Chinese government of attempting to “eliminate the leading American drone company” and increase the “world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers.”

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According to the Financial Times, Skydio’s list of customers includes the Ukrainian military, and the company has sent over 1,000 of its drones to Ukraine to aid with gathering intelligence in its ongoing war with Russia and record instances of war crimes by the Russian military. Skydio’s X10 drone—which is affected by the battery rationing—is reportedly hard to jam, and Ukraine has sought to acquire thousands of them.

Related:

[04-10-2024] How American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine

The Silicon Valley company Skydio sent hundreds of its best drones to Ukraine to help fight the Russians. Things didn’t go well. 

Skydio’s drones flew off course and were lost, victims of Russia’s electronic warfare. The company has since gone back to the drawing board to build a new fleet.

Ansar Allah is kicking NATO’s butt!

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

by John Konrad (gCaptain) The Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest and most strategically vital waterways, has become so hazardous that even the German Navy is steering clear. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’s decision to redirect the frigate Baden-Württemberg and support vessel Frankfurt am Main around the Cape of Good Hope on their return from an Indo-Pacific deployment speaks volumes. The Red Sea is now deemed too perilous, underscoring just how ineffective current U.S. and EU naval protections are in this region.

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The broader question is even more stark: If NATO cannot send warships to face the Houthis, how will it possibly survive in a war against a larger adversary like China? 

Red Sea Is Now So Dangerous Even NATO Warships Are Avoiding It

America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.

“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.

Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.

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Though the new Columbia-class subs are primarily being built in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Virginia, the Navy is going to tremendous lengths to recruit talent across the country. Over the past year, a blitz of ads has appeared at various sports events — including major league baseball games, WNBA games and even atop a NASCAR hood — steering fans to buildsubmarines.com. The website connects job seekers with hiring defense contractors as part of a nearly $1 billion campaign. Some of that money will go toward helping restore the network of companies that can supply the more than three million parts that go into a Columbia sub. Like so much of the nation’s nuclear infrastructure, those supplier numbers have plummeted since the 1990s.

America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion.

Now this is grooming!

Recommended Reading:

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

This China Sanction Will Ground USAF’s F-35

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

When the trade war just started, Trump equated de-Sinicization with de-risking. However, the China’s latest sanction against US military companies will prove that after de-Sinicization, the only thing left for the US Air Force will be risk.

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Moving forward, we may observe further changes in the reliability of F-35s delivered after October 2020. However, as long as the Pentagon doesn’t replace the ejection seats with American-made ones, at least U.S. pilots should still be able to survive.

This China Sanction Will Ground USAF’s F-35

Previously:

America’s war machine needs Chinese magnets. So we’re going to make our own, and nobody knows how

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

The U.S. Army has started diversifying its supplier base for 155mm artillery shells, moving away from the bottleneck of a single source that has endangered the flow of fresh ammo, according to a top service official.

The service is racing toward a goal of shoring up all major single sources that provide parts or materials for 155mm munitions by the end of 2025.

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The Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to increase the capacity of 155mm munition production as it races to replenish stock sent to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, which began in early 2022, and to ensure the U.S. has what it might need should conflict erupt across multiple theaters at once. The Army planned to spend $3.1 billion in FY24 supplemental funding alone to ramp up production.

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Prior to the war in Ukraine, the U.S. could build about 14,400 of the artillery shells per month. But as Ukrainian forces burn through the ammunition for howitzers sent to the country, the U.S. recognized quickly that replenishment could not be done with the current infrastructure.

The service has set a target of producing 100,000 artillery shells per month, but Army officials have shared it has fallen slightly behind schedule. Even so, the Army is now producing 40,000 shells a month, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the Defense News Conference last month, adding that the plan is to reach 55,000 shells a month by the end of the year.

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The Army had been making 155mm shells at a single plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a privately operated facility nearby. All of the shells were transported to one place – Iowa Army Ammunition Plant – where they are packed with explosives.

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The Army is planning to design and construct a domestic TNT production facility, which will likely be at Radford, Bush has said in the past. Once a contract is awarded, the plan is to build it in 48 months. Currently, the U.S. relies entirely on TNT from allies.

The only place that made combustible cartridge cases – Armtec Defense Technologies – was in Coachella, California, well-known for its music festival, but also for being located along the San Andreas Fault with a high risk of large earthquakes. Day & Zimmerman will produce the cases at another location in Texarkana, Texas.

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“There [is] still the occasional single point, if you go down far enough, I’m not sure we can ever eliminate them entirely,” Bush said. “But we can build in more redundancy than we had before, which was, frankly, a very fragile setup where I could give you grid coordinates for like, four buildings in America, and if one of those, something happened tomorrow, we weren’t making anything … it definitely isn’t acceptable now, and we’re trying to get away from it.”

*SMH*

Banning Chinese Cars Is Dangerous And Self-Defeating

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Banning Chinese Cars Is Dangerous And Self-Defeating

Significantly, the administration is justifying the rule on national security grounds. As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, “Cars today have cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, and other technologies connected to the internet. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of U.S. citizens.”

Meanwhile:

Mozilla: Modern Cars Are A Privacy Shitshow

All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label — making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.

The U.S. Threatens a Drone War in the Taiwan Strait— Seriously?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The U.S. has long been preparing for a drone war with China in the Taiwan Strait, should conflict arise. The head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command even declared that the U.S. would turn the strait into an ‘unmanned hellscape.’ Yet, China’s new generation of military equipment has already surpassed the U.S. in both cost and quantity.

The U.S. Threatens a Drone War in the Taiwan Strait— Seriously?

Previously:

Countering China with Chinese UAVs backfires, US military faces drone shortage

US Wants To Create ‘Hellscape’ of Drones If China Attacks Taiwan

Leaked files expose covert US government plot to ‘destabilize Bangladesh’s politics’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Leaked docs reveal that prior to the toppling of Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina, the US govt-funded International Republican Institute trained an army of activists including rappers and “LGBTQI people,” even hosting “transgender dance performances,” to achieve a national “power shift.” Institute staff said the activists “would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.”

Leaked files expose covert US government plot to ‘destabilize Bangladesh’s politics’

Previously:

Atlantic Council’s Ali Riaz to lead commission on constitutional reforms for Bangladesh

What’s Behind Regime Change in Bangladesh

Bangladesh and Kenya document

Why is garlic considered a threat to US national security, while the Dongfeng missile is a bridge of friendship? 🤭

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Why is garlic considered a threat to US national security, while the Dongfeng missile is a bridge of friendship?

Today is the first day of the National Day holiday, and everyone is celebrating happily. However, the popularity of the Dongfeng intercontinental ballistic missile remains unabated, and today #洲际喷球# has once again topped the Weibo hot search list. 

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