Author Archives: Denise Simon

Israel Seeing Future with Bigger Weapons

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Israel Requests US Bunker-Busting Bombs with Increased Power The visit of US Vice President to Israel is crucial for the future US defense aid to Israel.

IDF: On Monday, Joe Biden will land at Ben Gurion Airport, for his last visit as Vice President of the United States. Ostensibly, this is one of the more boring visits: current Democratic administration is in his last year, and Biden himself had decided not to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, as many vice presidents have done before him.  

Still, the visit arouses huge interest, especially in the Israeli defense establishment. The reason: the discussions with the United States regarding a new framework agreement for defense aid entered the final straight, and Biden might bring about some news on the matter, or at least a hint. Anyway, shortly after Biden’s visit, the defense minister will visit Washington, after which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will also visit the United States. Therefore, the aid agreement is expected to be signed by the end of March, at the latest. Israel is counting on the American administration to be generous towards Israel’s defense needs at this time, in order to win the support of the Jewish vote (and mostly the Jewish donors) prior to the presidential elections.  

Aid or “Compensation”?  

To understand how the coming month will be crucial in terms of the Israeli defense ministry, we need to understand the context: the US elections will be held in November 2016, whereas the previous defense aid agreement between Israel and the United States will expire in 2017. The 10-years-long agreement set the extent of the defense aid back in 2007. According to the soon to be expired agreement, Israel received each year $ 3.1 billion. This is a huge sum, which constitutes more than 20 percent of Israel’s defense budget. Under the terms of the aid, the Ministry of Defense has received permission to convert half a billion dollars each year into NIS, to use the money for local acquisitions. The remainder is used as the primary budget source, to finance IDF equipment of central combat platforms such as fighter jets and helicopters.  

Beyond the generous annual aid, Israel receives additional aid from the United States for special projects. For example, the US has funded the equipping of seven of the nine Iron Dome batteries. In addition, the US DoD had collaborated with the Israeli defense establishments in the development and funding of other major missile defense projects – “Arrow 3” and “David’s Sling”.  

It was recently reported that the Americans will also deliver funds for projects that will assist the fight against underground tunnels built by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, the IDF and the US military has an agreement in which Israel could use American military equipment, kept in storages in Israel, in emergencies. To top that, the US Army also operates an innovative and classified radar system in the Har-keren mountaintop in the Negev region. Israelis are not allowed to see it firsthand (the closed US area on Israeli soil generates considerable resentment in the defense establishments).  

Harming the Israeli national honor or not, the new aid agreement on the agenda is also considered as compensation for the nuclear deal with Iran in summer 2015. The truth is that the compensation is not for the nuclear deal, but for the massive arms sales of American companies in the Persian Gulf.  

Not many are aware, but the entire region is in an intense arms race, as Iran plans to spend no less than $ 20 billion of its funds, which were frozen during the economic sanctions, in order to finance the procurement of advanced weapons systems, primarily from Russia. Iran’s neighboring countries fear its massive procurement and its transformation to a nuclear power, sooner or later (no leader in the Persian Gulf believes that the agreement will prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb). For this reason, they also acquire weapons, mainly from France and the United States (including many squadrons of modern fighter aircraft, made by the two countries).  

This massive equipping is a great celebration for the US defense companies, but these weapons may one day be directed against Israel. Because the United States is committed to maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge (under a law passed years ago in Congress) – Israel is expected to receive increased aid, to allegedly ensure this advantage.  

Aid Talks  

Sources very involved in the defense and diplomatic relations between Israel and the United States, are confident that Israel had already missed an excellent opportunity to boost the “compensation”. It was near the time the agreement with Iran was signed. “Before signing the agreement, the American government was willing to give Israel almost everything it had wanted, to “silence” the criticism of the agreement. But because the Prime Minister has decided to fight Obama, the Americans have taught him a lesson and did not promise any compensation,” said a source close the subject.  

Now, as mentioned, Israel hopes that the Democrats’ electoral considerations prevail over the US administration’s hostility towards the current Israeli government. But what Israel really wants and what would be the extent of the new aid? Talks over the subject between Israeli and American teams began last fall, as part of negotiations between the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Pentagon. During those conversations, Head of the IDF Planning Directorate, Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, presented the IDF’s needs to his US colleagues.  

During the past few weeks, the aid negotiations was intensified and the reins were passed to PM Netanyahu’s hands, who deals with the issue closely.

The person who coordinates for the subject is the acting Head of the National Security Council, Ya’akov Nagel, who works regularly with the head of the US National Security Council, Dr. Susan Rice. Originally, Nagel started in the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (MAFAT) in IMOD, and is currently a candidate for Heading MAFAT. Other major candidates mentioned, were Brig. Gen. (Res.) Dr. Danny Gold, who is considered as the father of “Iron Dome”; Maj. Gen.

(Res.) Ami Shafran; and Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Eytan Eshel and Brig. Gen. (Res.) Shmuel Yachin. The four of them served as Heads of the IDF’s R&D department.  

Meanwhile, a new Head of the National Security Council was appointed this week, instead of Yossi Cohen, who has been appointed as Head of Mossad in early January: Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Avriel Bar-Yosef, originally a Navy officer, received the prestigious appointment.  

Back to the US aid: the two main questions on the agenda are concerning the sum of the annual aid, in the decade between 2017 and 2027, and the quality of weapons that Israel will receive. Israel expects a significant boost in the annual aid, as part of “compensation” for the nuclear deal. Sums of even

4 and 5 billion dollars were heard. The second question, which depends on the actual sum of the defense aid, is what weapons systems Israel could purchase with that money.  

Israel is already planning on at least two squadrons of the future F-35 fighter (the first aircraft of this model will land on Israeli soil this December), but in the Air Force they fantasize about no less than four squadrons by the end of the next decade. In addition, they desire an additional F-15 squadron, a modern array of transport helicopters and refueling aircraft, as well as an aircraft which is half helicopter and half fighter, the V-22.  

In addition to aircraft, Israel-US talks involve advanced air-to-ground missiles and much-needed weapons, should it turn out that Iran has been fooling the world and continues to strive for a nuclear bomb. These weapons include, mainly, bunker-busting bombs, more advanced and heavier than the “Lite” version of bunker-busting bombs that the air force received five years ago.  

Some of the systems discussed between Israel and the United States are highly classified. In many cases, it is expected that the Americans would agree to include such systems in the weapons arsenal supplied to Israel, only if they know that Israeli defense industries are already developing similar systems in parallel.  

Not all interests of Israel and the US are overlapping, but from Israel’s perspective, the aid agreement shall determine Israel’s military power for many decades. Thus, this month will bring about crucial decisions, and all negotiation tricks will come into play, by both sides.

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The curious relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia and why

IRGC Forms Base Near Saudi Border

LONDON [MENL] — Iran has established a military base in Iraq near the border with Saudi Arabia.

An Iraqi military source said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was operating a base in Naqib, along the Saudi border. The unidentified source said IRGC was storing weapons as well as training Hizbullah.

“They want to create a foothold for IRGC’s Quds Force along the Saudi border,” the source said.

The source, identified as an Iraq Army colonel, told the Saudi-owned A-Sharq Al Awsat that IRGC was working with its Shi’ite proxy, Abbas Brigade. The brigade was said to have expelled the residents of Naqib, also off-limits to the Iraq Army.

“They also want to secure a safe land route to transport IRGC fighters and weapons into Syria and Lebanon,” the Iraqi officer said.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia came under mortar attack from alleged Iranian-sponsored militias in southern Iraq. As a result, Saudi Arabia has bolstered its military presence along the Iraqi border.

Other Iraqi sources confirmed that IRGC held large areas of southern Iraq, particularly around Basra. They said Teheran was controlling much of the south through such proxies as Hizbullah-Iraq and Shi’ite militias funded by the Quds Force.

“When armed militias seized control of the town [Naqib], Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs were expelled under the pretext that they want to protect Karbala from Islamic State of Iraq and Levant fighters,” the Iraqi colonel said.

China’s Exploding Military Footprint

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This Map Visualizes China’s Growing Military Capabilities In The South China Sea

This Map Visualizes China's Growing Military Capabilities In The South China Sea

This awesome interactive map shows China’s emerging area denial and anti-access military capabilities in the South China Sea. It is useful in visually tracking China’s progress towards creating an overlapping field of control over a vast majority of the area.

The map, which you can access here, is built by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Great work Tyler:One of China’s highly developed islands in the northern part of the South China Sea, Woody Island, has been equipped with surface-to-air missiles and fighter aircraft. These moves have come just as many defense analysts have predicted for years and are likely an indication of things to come for China’s other island outposts throughout the South China Sea.

There is also evidence that China is installing a high-frequency long-range radar array on Cuarteron Reef, one of their handful of manmade islands in the south-central part of the South China Sea. This radar type is known to be used for detecting aircraft and ships at extreme ranges far over-the-horizon and can theoretically detect some stealthy aircraft under certain circumstances. It is just one of many other sensors popping up on this island and others, although the existence of such a capability provides even more evidence that China is actively seeking an aggressive anti-access, area denial strategy over the South China Sea.

China might be installing HF radar that can detect stealth aircraft in S. China Sea

This all comes as China’s largest island building project out of their manmade island initiative, Fiery Cross Reef, officially activated its 9,000-foot runway early last month. The runway is capable of supporting even China’s heaviest bomber and transport aircraft.

With any luck CSIS will keep updating this fabulous visual resource as China expands its military capabilities to its other islands that remain under construction in the South China Sea. Undoubtedly, the threat rings you see today will blossom and multiply, creating a massive overlapping area of control backed up by anti-ship and anti-air missiles, as well as fighter and maritime surveillance and attack aircraft.

Going back to 2015: (So much for that Obama Asia Pivot)

WSJ:

Analysts say the imminent end to China’s island-building work could signal a willingness to seek compromise with Washington and rival claimants in the South China Sea, even as it demonstrates Beijing’s ability to unilaterally dictate terms in the long-standing dispute.

“This is a step toward halting land reclamation, which the U.S. has demanded, and at the same time, China can tell its people that it has accomplished what it wanted to do,” said Huang Jing, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

“China unilaterally started the land reclamation and now China is unilaterally stopping it,” Mr. Huang said. “China is showing that—as a major power—it can control escalation, that it has the initiative, and that it can do what it sees fit for its interests.”

Beijing lays claim to almost the entire South China Sea, a stretch of resource-rich waters that carries more than half the world’s trade. Its claims overlap with those of Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines—several of whom have criticized China’s rapid and extensive construction program in the Spratlys as the latest in a series of aggressive Chinese efforts to assert territorial rights.

 

Hillary’s Email Pals Included the WH and SCOTUS Judges

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Sheesh…..now what about the 30,000 emails about ah yoga and wedding plans…yeah, yoga sure Hillary. What about the emails from the White House to Hillary…ah all this transparency is well infectious eh?

Ever wonder why a Secretary of State needed to email, confer and be email pals with selected Supreme Court justices?

Hillary’s email account an open secret in Washington long before scandal broke

WashingtonTimes: Hundreds of people — from White House officials and titans of the mainstream media to senators, Supreme Court justices and many of her top colleagues at the State Department — could have known about Hillary Clinton’s secret email account, if only they’d cared to look closely enough.

Listed on some of the more than 28,000 messages Mrs. Clinton released so far are several White House chiefs of staff and a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, much of the rest of official Washington, and a number of people who had oversight of the State Department’s key operations and open-records obligations. President Obama was also on a series of messages, though the government is withholding those.

But just how widely disseminated Mrs. Clinton’s address was became clear in a single 2011 message from Anne-Marie Slaughter, who appeared to include Mrs. Clinton on a message alongside Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, reporters Jeffrey Toobin, David Brooks, Fred Hiatt and Evan Thomas, CIA Director David H. Petraeus, top Obama aide Benjamin Rhodes and former White House counsel Gregory Craig.

 
Computer specialists said they would have had to know what they were looking for to spot Mrs. Clinton’s address, but it was there for anyone who did look — raising questions about how her unique arrangement remained secret for so long. It came to the public’s attention when news broke in March 2015 in The New York Times — after it was uncovered by a congressional investigation into the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.

The State Department has since acknowledged that it did not search Mrs. Clinton’s messages in response to open-records requests filed under federal law, and federal District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is prodding the department about how the situation got so out of hand.

“We’re talking about a Cabinet-level official who was accommodated by the government for reasons unknown to the public. And I think that’s a fair statement — for reasons unknown to the public,” the judge said at a hearing last week, where he decided to approve conservative legal group Judicial Watch’s request for discovery to pry loose more details about who approved the odd email setup and how it ducked the rules.
“All the public can do is speculate,” Judge Sullivan told the government lawyers who have been fighting to drag out the release of the messages Mrs. Clinton has turned over, and to prevent her from having to relinquish thousands of others. “You want me to say it’s done, but I can’t do that right now.”

The final batch of messages the State Department has in its custody — 2,000 of them — is due to be released Monday.

The facts have changed dramatically since the emails were first revealed and Mrs. Clinton insisted that she set up her unique arrangement out of “convenience” for herself and insisted no classified material was sent on the account.

Already, 1,782 messages have been deemed to contain classified material, and 22 of those messages contain “secret” information. Another 22 messages contain “top secret” material so sensitive that the government won’t even release any part of them, meaning they will remain completely hidden from the public.

Mrs. Clinton’s arrangement set off public policy and security debates. Analysts said her server was likely unprotected against any moderately sophisticated attack.

Although details remain sketchy as to what protection Mrs. Clinton used, analysts said having one person maintaining her server is no way to protect sensitive information from a hack. Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is no evidence that Mrs. Clinton was having her server tested by independent specialists — a major oversight.

“You cannot secure your server with one guy working part time,” Mr. Soghoian said.

That one person, Bryan Pagliano, who reportedly worked for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department and on the side as her server technician, asserted his Fifth Amendment right against incriminating himself in testimony to Congress last year.

Even if the server itself wasn’t compromised, Mr. Soghoian said, Mrs. Clinton was sending email over the broader Internet, where an enterprising opponent could have intercepted messages. If she had been using a State.gov account to email others within the government, that wouldn’t have been possible, he said.

There is no evidence that Mrs. Clinton was hacked, but analysts said that’s of little comfort. Even if the FBI doesn’t find evidence, it is not conclusive.

“Clinton’s use of unencrypted email left her vulnerable to nation states. There’s no amount of investigation the FBI can do to prove that didn’t happen,” Mr. Soghoian said.

Bob Gourley, co-founder of cybersecurity consultancy Cognitio, said the government has to assume Mrs. Clinton’s server was compromised, and he said it begs the question of why she declined to use a State.gov account and instead set up her own off-site server.

“All indications are this was not just a matter of convenience,” he said. “There’s no reason why she should have used her own server and go to all the trouble to do that unless she wanted to hide something.”

That something, Mr. Gourley believes, is the negotiating she did on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, founded by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. She helped lead the foundation as soon as she stepped down from the secretary’s job.

The security analyst said he suspects details of those negotiations are part of the 30,000 messages Mrs. Clinton indicated she sent during her time in office but that she declined to turn back to the State Department. The former secretary said those messages were personal business, such as scheduling yoga classes or arranging her daughter Chelsea’s wedding.

Judicial Watch is trying to get Mrs. Clinton to turn over those messages to the State Department, and that’s the case pending before Judge Sullivan.

“The big story on Monday is, wow, now we have reviewed about half of Mrs. Clinton’s reported records. Where’s the other half?” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That’s what our discovery is about. Where’s the other half, and how can we find out so they can be retrieved and reviewed and released to the public?”

Mrs. Clinton says the Obama administration is overclassifying her messages. She says she would like all of the messages she returned to the government released, including presumably the 22 the government deems so “top secret” that they can’t be shared even in part.

She and her campaign have questioned the political motivations or conclusions of the inspectors general who have pushed for classification, to Judge Sullivan, whose order of discovery could force her aides to answer tough questions and could eventually lead to her having to return the rest of her emails.

Mr. Fitton said the questions Judicial Watch will ask during discovery include how the government supported her email server, why the folks who handled Freedom of Information Act open-records requests weren’t made aware of it, who else used it, what security precautions were taken and who approved it.

A Washington Times analysis of the more than 28,000 messages that have been released show dozens of State Department employees, from the lowest to the highest levels, were aware that Mrs. Clinton was using her unique arrangement to conduct government business.

The extensive awareness within the department struck Judge Sullivan.

“How on earth can the court conclude that there’s not, at a minimum, a reasonable suspicion of bad faith regarding the State Department’s response to this FOIA request?” he said at a hearing last week.

Mrs. Clinton’s successor, current Secretary of State John F. Kerry, was one of those who emailed with Mrs. Clinton on her secret account during his time in the Senate. He was one of a handful of senators The Times found who were pen pals with Mrs. Clinton.

Last week, Mr. Kerry tried to explain how he missed Mrs. Clinton’s behavior and told Congress he simply mailed the address he was given.

“I didn’t think about it. I didn’t know if she had an account, or what the department gave her at that point in time, or what she was operating with. I had no knowledge,” he told Rep. Darrell E. Issa, a California Republican who prodded him on the matter.

Stories about odd email practices have continued to dog Mr. Obama’s tenure. His former administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson, used a secret agency email address to conduct government business, but the EPA says those messages were searched in open-records requests.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter used a private address to conduct some government business in the first months after taking office. He said the practice was wrong and apologized for it.

Mr. Gourley, the cybersecurity specialist, said Mrs. Clinton’s practice went beyond that. He compared it to a phone, saying everyone has a home phone or personal cellphone, and even top government officials occasionally use it for official business. But in Mrs. Clinton’s case, she rejected an official government email account and used only her secret account.

“Those kinds of rules were just totally flouted by Clinton,” he said.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Then, Now and Hillary

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Wonder if Hillary or Anne Patterson received and read the full Great Britain document on the investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood? The scrubbed UK investigation report is here.

Misguided diplomacy at the White House and the U.S. State department is mission objectives and investment over terror facts and names, of this there is no dispute.

 

Hillary Emails: State Discussed ‘Cooperating,’ ‘Increased Investment’ With Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Government

TEL AVIV – 1,500 pages of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails provide insight into the level of support the U.S. was considering in 2012 for Egypt’s newly elected Muslim Brotherhood government.

Breitbart: On August 30, 2012, Robert D. Hormats, the under-secretary of state for economic affairs, wrote to Clinton’s then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan to update him on a meeting he held with .

Shater was later sentenced to life imprisonment and then to death for multiple alleged crimes, including inciting violence and financial improprieties.

The email reveals Hormats and other U.S. diplomats discussed  methods of cooperation with Shater, including an increase in American direct foreign investment.

Hormats wrote:

Anne Patterson, Bill Taylor, and I met with Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater. He discussed broad principles of economic development based on 100 large infrastructure projects (over a billion dollars each) as part of Morsi’s Nadah (Renaissance Plan) Plan; ways of cooperating with the US to obtain support for these projects and for SMEs; and his hope for an IMF agreement and increased foreign direct investment from the US, the West, and the Arab world. He also noted that it was a priority for the GOE to build a true democratic system based on human rights and the rule of law.

Patterson, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt at the time, was known for her repeated engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood. Taylor was the U.S. Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions; that is, the U.S. envoy to the new leadership that emerged in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.

Hormats’ meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood were not secret. But the emails reveal the scope of his discussions with the group about possible future investment.

In September 2012, the New York Timesreported that Hormats had led a delegation of businesses to Egypt to discuss possible private investment.

That same month, the State Department published a document that received little news media attention. It revealed that in August and September 2012, “Hormats visited Egypt to negotiate possible bilateral debt relief,”but the document did not provide further details.

After the toppling of Egypt’s longtime president Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi served as president from June 30, 2012 to July 3, 2013, when he was removed from office amidst widespread protests and a military coup. After Mubarak was removed from office, the Obama administration pledged $1 billion in assistance to bolster Egypt’s transition to democracy.

Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta each visited Cairo and met with Morsi during his tenure as president.

The meeting that Hormats describes in the email took place while the U.S. was negotiating an aid package to help relieve Egypt’s debt crisis amid concerns from U.S. lawmakers about funding the Muslim Brotherhood.

The email was sent a week and a half before protesters besieged the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on September 11, 2012, the same day the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi came under attack.

Following the attacks, Obama stated of Morsi’s government, “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy.”

***

Back in November of 2015, Senator Cruz was leading a charge in the Senate to list the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror organization. The Muslim Brotherhood is part of several proven terror organizations. Going back to 2014, Saudi Arabia joined the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in withdrawing its ambassadors from Qatar, which it sees as an important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

in 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror organization and the results were conclusive they were, however due to internal pressure from Islamists all over Europe and especially the UK, Cameron pulled the report.

 

A Plane Titled Arsenal

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Here’s what we know about the Pentagon’s new, secret warplane

BusinessInsider: There’s increasing chatter about a secret, potentially costly, Defense Department weapons program with an interesting moniker: the “Arsenal Plane.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter mentioned the project earlier this month while describing the work of the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), a clandestine workshop established within the Pentagon in 2012 to develop the next generation of bleeding-edge weapons, ostensibly to counter China and Russia.

The new warplane effort “takes one of our oldest aircraft platform and turns it into a flying launch pad for all sorts of different conventional payloads,” Carter said during a Feb. 2 speech previewing the department’s then-pending fiscal 2017 budget request.

“In practice, the arsenal plane will function as a very large airborne magazine, networked to fifth generation aircraft that act as forward sensor and targeting nodes, essentially combining different systems already in our inventory to create holy new capabilities,” he said, referring to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The Pentagon chief mentioned the project again on Thursday when he testified before the House Appropriations Defense subpanel and ticked off a handful of technologies SCO is working on, including the Air Force’s budget-busting Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) program and “swarming 3-D printed micro-drones.”

But what’s known about the Arsenal Plane beyond that? Defense leaders aren’t giving up any specifics.

The concept is being developed “in partnership with DARPA. We will be supporting, and the idea is to look for additional ways to arm a particular aircraft so that it might be able to do different types of missions. More munitions and different types of munitions,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said during a Feb. 12 Air Force Association event.

But when asked what kind of legacy aircraft might be retrofitted to essentially turn it into an airborne aircraft carrier, James punted: “I think all of this is still being discussed. It’s still a program in development. Those decisions haven’t been reached yet.”

Air Force

The concept was originally introduced in the 1980s, when the military considered turning one of its existing bombers, or a commercial plane like the Boeing 747, into a launcher capable of carrying anywhere from 50 to 70 missiles. The idea was scrapped due to the envisioned platform’s lack of connectivity and precision weapons and the large platform’s inherent vulnerability to enemy attack aircraft.

However, the idea is getting a second-look in the wake of China’s aggressive behavior in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the South China Sea where Beijing is reclaiming land in the disputed Spratly Islands and turning them into manmade outposts for some of it most advanced military hardware.

The Arsenal Plane is also “a response to the limits of the F-35,” according to Richard Aboulafia, Vice President of Analysis at the Teal Group. For all its traits, the plane “doesn’t hold a whole lot of ordnance.”

Indeed, an F-35 maxes out at around 18,000 pounds of ordnance, and that when munitions are loaded on the plane’s wings – a move that would compromise its stealth technology (and therefore the whole point of the aircraft itself).

That limited amount of weaponry could prove deadly in a dogfight.

“Obviously, in Asia, you’ve got the problem with Chinese numbers,” Aboulafia said, referring to China’s years-long push to modernize and expand all aspects of its military.

Ideally, the new aircraft would be loaded for bear with precision guided missiles so that a squadron of F-35s that might encounter a number of hostile jets could rely on the larger plane for assistance, or cue in targeting information to help it fight or bug out

Aboulafia said the concept is “worth investigating” because one of China’s highest military priorities has been to develop long range, heavy combat fighters — along the lines of its J-20 jet — that are stealthy and capable of taking out tankers or AWACS, an airborne early warning aircraft, which packs little to no firepower.

He said modern technology has largely solved the connectivity and precision issue from the ‘80s, but the size and vulnerability problem remains.

“These things … become missile magnets in a time of war,” he said.

The Pentagon may be moving forward, regardless. Inside Defense, a trade publication, speculates that the department’s 2017 budget request for $198 million in funding for advanced component development for an “Alternative Strike” program is actually for the Arsenal Plane.

The spending request is under the SCO umbrella and states the “project will demonstrate the feasibility and utility of launching existing/modified weapons from existing launch platforms,” the publication notes.

Provided the Air Force’s LRSB effort — expected to start replacing the service’s aging B-52 and B-1 bomber fleets in the 2020s – comes online according to plan, the Pentagon would have no shortage of platforms it could retrofit into a flying fortress instead of shipping off to the boneyard.

The new effort will no doubt be swarmed with questions about affordability, especially after a think-tank report released earlier this month warned of a coming “bow wave” in bills to the Air Force budget in the 2020s as the service looks to modernize.

But Aboulafia noted those costs are driven mostly by the F-35, the LRSB and the service’s new tanker programs.

“What might make this more affordable is an off-the-shelf platform … its cash footprint might be smaller,” he predicted.

This story was originally published by  The Fiscal Times.