Who Needs to be Fired or Jailed at the Pentagon?

Chinese Hypersonic Missile To Specifically Check US, Indian Threats

Is there an Inspector General on the case? Where is the DIA or the FBI?

Hypersonics refers to a range of emerging technologies that can propel missiles at greater than five times the speed of sound and potentially evade current defenses. Pentagon officials have said the United States and China are locked in an arms race to develop the most potent hypersonic weapons. “In this case the American technology is superior—we can’t do certain things without foreign technology,” a Chinese scientist whose lab conducts testing for hypersonic vehicles told the Post. “There isn’t the same technical foundation.” Using Chinese government procurement databases and other contract documents, The Post identified almost 50 U.S. firms whose products were sold through intermediaries since 2019 to Chinese military groups that work on missile technology. The Post reviewed procurement documents related to seven other sales since 2020 of Ansys technology to Chinese groups that are either on the export blacklist or have known missile links,including through three other Chinese intermediaries that had no apparent link to Pera Global. These groups include the National University of Defense Technology, which is on the Entity List, and the China Air to Air Missile Research Institute in Luoyang, which develops long-range, high-precision missiles. More here.

FB: Research groups for China’s hypersonics and missile program are buying specialized American technology produced by firms funded by the Pentagon, according to a Washington Post investigation released Monday.

The Post found over 300 sales since 2019 of advanced software products from nearly 50 U.S. firms to research groups involved in China’s missile development program. Many of the firms that developed these products received millions of dollars in grants from the Department of Defense. The companies are finding their way around U.S. export bans by selling to private Chinese middleman distributors.

“It’s very disturbing, because the bottom line is that technology that can be used for military hypersonics was funded by U.S. taxpayers, through the U.S. government, and ended up in China,” University of Colorado Center for National Security Initiatives director Iain Boyd, who conducts experimental research on hypersonics, told the Post.

The report reveals the U.S. government’s struggle to keep American military innovations out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The acquired commercial software—the results of decades of research—will save the Chinese military time and resources as it strives to outpace the United States in a race to create the most effective hypersonic weapons.

The Defense Department has strict export controls designed to prevent products that threaten national security from reaching China.

“U.S. export controls require a license for the export of any type of software, hardware, or technology to China if there is knowledge that it would be used to develop a missile or other item used for weapons of mass destruction,” Kevin Wolf, a former senior official at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, told the Post. “And that license would generally be denied.”

American firms are skirting these safeguards by blindly selling advanced software to private Chinese firms. Some of those firms openly advertise their relationships with Chinese weapon and military groups, the Post found.

“What we’ve always told companies is you cannot self-blind,” Matthew Borman, the Commerce Department’s deputy assistant secretary for export administration, told the Post. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m selling it to a distributor, I don’t know what they’re going to do with it.’ Especially if it’s a party where it’s readily ascertainable that they are a supplier to the Chinese military.”

The Post found that two of the U.S. firms—Arizona-based Zona Technology and California-headquartered Metacomp Technologies—sold software to the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, which played a key role in designing China’s 2021 hypersonic missile test. Both companies are also beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s Small Business Innovation Research grant program, which incentivizes development of American defense technology.

Procedures for Continuity in Government due to Nuclear Armageddon

It remains unclear whether President Biden revealed information that may have been part of a classified White House briefing when he spoke of nuclear Armageddon at a fundraising event in New York several days ago. However, to even mention the words should spin up lots of meetings at the Pentagon and the National Security Council, much less discussions with other world leaders. Even more meaningful would be to be having rehearsals and conversations with all associated American military across the world to ensure readiness and procedures. Instead, we have a White House and president that is traveling talking about mid-term elections, abortion law, climate change and eating ice cream.

But read on….

Site R - Raven Rock Command Center Raven Rock

The following essay is an adapted excerpt from William Doyle’s new book, Titan of the Senate: Orrin Hatch and the Once and Future Golden Age of Bipartisanship, published by Center Street Books.

Newsweek: Suddenly, in the wake of Russian threats to use tactical nuclear weapons, the world faces the possibility of a nuclear war that President Biden has alarmingly but accurately said threatens Armageddon. Tensions have not been this high since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is worth remembering that when we talk about nuclear war, we are talking about the violent deaths of millions—perhaps billions—of people, and possibly the end of most life on the planet. President Dwight Eisenhower once said that if a nuclear war happens, “there just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the street.”

Experts have long feared that a single nuclear detonation, even a small one, would instantly trigger an irreversible chain reaction leading to the widespread firing of nuclear weapons. As Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev put it in 1978, “The first time one of those things is fired in anger, everything is lost. The warring nations would never be able to put things back together.”

The precise choreography of launching nuclear weapons is veiled in secrecy, but speculative glimpses can be obtained through open-source accounts and interviews with nuclear experts. If an American president learns of an imminent nuclear attack, he or she would turn to the nearby military officer who carries a bulging briefcase nicknamed the “nuclear football,” the most powerful instrument of mass murder that humankind has ever created. It contains the codes and communications equipment that would enable the president to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons from submarines, land-based missile silos, cruise missiles, aircraft and other platforms.

In a nuclear crisis, the president can be flown by helicopter to the “backup Pentagon,” known as Raven Rock, or Site R, a small-city-size complex carved deep inside a mountain near Blue Ridge Summit on the Pennsylvania-Maryland state line and about seven miles north of the presidential retreat at Camp David.

Raven Rock is believed to serve as a fully equipped alternative to the Pentagon “war room,” or National Military Command Center, and it is believed to have been used by Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Author James Bamford described Raven Rock as “a secret world of five buildings, each three-stories tall, computer-filled caverns, and a subterranean water reservoir,” all underground and accessible by a helipad and a giant tunnel. According to author Garrett Graff, the site has “power stations, underground water reservoirs, a small chapel, clusters of three-story buildings set within vast caverns, and enough beds to accommodate two thousand high-ranking officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council.” Graff added, “You can add to that list police and fire departments, a cafeteria, and everything else you would find in a normal small city.”

Through the football and other available communications tools, the president would be linked by voice and video to the Department of Defense’s National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, known as the “war room,” and to Strategic Command headquarters, or STRATCOM, at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha, Nebraska, which commands the nation’s arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons. If the secretary of defense, national security adviser, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could be reached, they and other high military officials would be patched into the call, but the decision to launch nuclear weapons would be the president’s alone, presumably in consultation with one or more of top military leaders. According to the late Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman missile launch control officer and nuclear weapons historian at Princeton University, if missiles were confirmed to be on their way toward the United States, the president could have “as little as six minutes” to decide on a course of action, including ordering the launch of hundreds of long-range strategic nuclear warheads that are immediately available to fire.

If the president decides to order a nuclear launch, he and his military aide would quickly review the options listed in a briefing book inside the football. The American version of the football is not believed to contain a “red button” or to consist primarily of elaborate computer-style gear—unlike Russian president Vladimir Putin‘s nuclear football, the Cheget, which is believed to consist mainly of a high-tech laptop device—but communications equipment and simplified charts illustrating the various options and targets to select from the latest U.S. nuclear war plan.

The military aide would reach into the football and produce a small object resembling a credit card, nicknamed the “Biscuit,” upon which is written the “Gold Code,” a sequence of alphanumeric symbols that the president would read aloud to authenticate his identity as commander-in-chief. This would be the final step to launch nuclear weapons, making the Biscuit the most dangerous object on the planet. But at least two American presidents have apparently managed to lose track of theirs. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Gold Codes were kept on a Biscuit card that the chief executive usually carried on his own person rather than inside the football, Jimmy Carter is believed to have misplaced his Biscuit when his suit was sent to the dry cleaners. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s copy was sealed away for five days by the FBI after George Washington University Hospital emergency room staff cut off Reagan’s thousand-dollar business suit and put the card in a medical bag in the wake of his attempted assassination.

President Bill Clinton kept his Biscuit and his credit cards wrapped up with a rubber band, but, incredibly, he managed to lose it for a substantial length of time, according to a top military official. “The codes were actually missing for months,” wrote General Hugh Shelton, Clinton’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001. “That’s a big deal—a gargantuan deal.”

Within three or four minutes of the president’s order, missiles would shoot out of their silos in the American Midwest, then about 10 minutes later the submarines would start firing missiles out of their tubes one at a time every 15 seconds. The ICBMs would fly high above the earth’s atmosphere and travel at speeds of 14,000 mph, descending on targets in, for example, Russia, China, or North Korea, in about 25 minutes. The submarine-launched missiles, fired from waters closer to their aim points, could have flight times of as little as 12 minutes. None of the missiles could be recalled. Given the poor performance of the Russian military in Ukraine, there is every reason to expect that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s missiles could misfire, malfunction, fly off course and strike unintended targets.

Not that it would matter much. If even a portion of the alert U.S. and Russian strategic missile forces is fired, large parts of the earth would plunge quickly into hell. Untold millions of people would be smashed, blasted, crushed, vaporized, and burned to death. The initial blasts would create radiation-filled shock waves of outward pressure that would topple skyscrapers, shred people with flying glass and debris, and hurl them across cities. Electromagnetic pulses from air bursts would decapitate the nervous systems of the world’s economy by blowing out fiber-optic lines, power grids, cell phones and electrical circuits, banking systems, and air traffic control networks.

The fireballs would transform into mushroom clouds of condensed water and debris that would rise high into the stratosphere, expand to 50-mile diameters, and shower the earth with radioactive fallout for decades to come. By the end of the first day, hospitals would be overwhelmed, mass fires would rage, and cities and suburbs would be consumed with riots, chaos, and attempted mass migrations. Nations would be in full-scale collapse, and hundreds of millions of people would be dead inside of a week.

This is what we are talking about when we talk about nuclear war.

And this is why total nuclear disarmament must be the most urgent priority of every government on Earth.

William Doyle is a New York Times bestselling, award-winning author and TV producer. His books include An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (Doubleday, 2002); Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story (co-authored with former U.S. Navy SEAL Dick Couch, HarperCollins, 2014); PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy (HarperCollins, 2015) Let the Children Play (co-authored with Pasi Sahlberg, Oxford University Press, 2019) and many others.

Biden lied about Afghanistan, Proof from General Frank McKenzie

We can never forget the tragic deaths of our war fighters in Kabul and prayer for those Gold Star families daily.

 

In spite of the lies, the consequences of this failed operation is worse than we can imagine and while Biden lied, this White House and the Pentagon continue to be passive on the whole deadly scandal.

Source: Authorities in Herat found a 10-ton cache of weapons marked with Chinese, Russian, and Persian (Pajhwak Afghan News) September 14, 2007 (RFE/RL) — U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte says Washington has complained to Beijing about Chinese weapons shipments to Iran that appear to be turning up in the hands of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Negroponte confirmed the U.S. concerns over China’s weapons deals with Tehran after a 10-ton weapons cache was discovered in the western Afghan province of Herat.

The cache found in Ghurian district, near the border with Iran, included artillery shells, land mines, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers with Chinese, Russian, and Persian markings on them.

Britain’s Foreign Office has also confirmed that it has complained to Beijing about Chinese-made HN-5 antiaircraft missiles confiscated from Taliban fighters who were captured or killed by British Royal Marines in Helmand Province. Beijing has said that it would investigate allegations that the weapons were forwarded to the Taliban through Iran.

When asked in Kabul on September 11 about the Taliban’s use of sophisticated new Chinese weapons, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte also suggested that Iran has been a transit point for Chinese arms deliveries to the Taliban.

“A subject that I have discussed with the Chinese in the past is the fact of their weapons sales to the country of Iran and our concern,” Negroponte said. “We have tried to discourage the Chinese from signing any new weapons contracts with Iran. We are concerned by reports — which we consider to be reliable — of explosively formed projectiles and other kinds of military equipment coming from Iran across the border and coming into the hands of the Taliban.”

“I have no doubt that Iran has been involved in channeling money and arms to various elements in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, for the last few years… There are Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns who are being funded by Iran.” — Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid

In June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Washington had no evidence proving a direct role by the Iranian government in smuggling weapons to the Taliban. But Gates said Washington suspects Tehran is involved.

“I haven’t seen any intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say, given the quantities we are seeing, it is difficult to believe that it is associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it is taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government,” Gates said.

***

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to properly vet and screen Afghan evacuees coming into the U.S. and may have allowed multiple national security and public safety threats into the U.S., according to a new report by the department’s office of inspector general.

The report by the DHS Office of Inspector General found that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “did not always have critical data to properly screen, vet, or inspect the evacuees.”

“We determined some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. Government databases, such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. We also determined CBP admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States,” the report says.

“As a result, DHS may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities,” the report continued.

FBI ‘ACTIVELY’ INVESTIGATING AFGHAN EVACUEES IN US FLAGGED AS SUSPECTED TERRORISTS, SECURITY THREATS: WRAY

***

Just some more important details:

US military equipment, including armoured vehicles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have reportedly been spotted in Iran following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, several social media accounts have reported.

Kian Sharifi, a BBC journalist focused on Iranian politics and social media, tweeted on Wednesday several photographs of Humvees and other military vehicles on a highway connecting the central city of Semnan to the city of Garmsar, southeast of the capital Tehran.

Sharifi said the photos came from an Iranian Telegram channel, which speculated the vehicles were either sold by the Taliban to Iran, or were taken from Afghan soldiers fleeing the country after the group took over most of the country, including the capital, Kabul, last month.

According to the Russian outlet Sputnik’s Persian language service, Iran allegedly bought armoured US-supplied ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and helicopters belonging to the Afghan army. source in 2021

***

Taliban delivers US military vehicles to Iran | Arab News source and photographer

In addition to the weapons and military equipment these special forces brought with them to Iran, they have an intimate knowledge of the U.S. military and its tactics in the region, know-how that is highly sought after by Iran’s terrorist proxy groups and other jihadi militants.

“These commandos are trained, highly trained, on how we do signals intelligence, how we do human intelligence, how we operate,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), a combat veteran, said in the report. “We know that the Taliban are hunting them down. They are seeking to force them through coercion to hand over that information so that they can use it and they can understand how we operate.”

Beyond Iran, Russia and China are also looking to recruit these forces for their inside knowledge about American military tactics. source

***

Was it really just $7 billion left behind?

The fall of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan gave Taliban fighters access to more than $7 billion worth of American military equipment, according to data in a report submitted this week to U.S. lawmakers and confirmed by the Pentagon.

The findings, first reported by CNN, shed light on the extent to which Washington sought to build, support and maintain the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) as a counterbalance to the Taliban and terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan.

The report also details the bounty of weaponry and equipment awaiting Taliban officials once the last U.S. troops left Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 30, 2021, nearly two decades after the first U.S. forces arrived. source

Hat tip to at Least One Whistleblower

Primer:

According to Bloomberg News, the Biden administration is also reallocating $860 million in funding for COVID-19 relief to cover pandemic costs relating to illegal immigrant children.

In a letter reviewed by the news outlet, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra told members of Congress that his department would move funding to ensure illegal immigrant children’s safety, in addition to the staff taking care of them at shelters. Additionally, last year to General Accounting Office performed a comprehensive audit and the result(s) stinks when it comes to the Department of Defense.

source

In part:

The Department of Defense has provided U.S. Customs and Border Protection with personnel and other support for at least 2 decades. DOD evaluates requests for assistance against 6 criteria, including cost and how providing support would affect military readiness.

We looked at 4 such requests for assistance that DOD approved. We found that DOD used unreliable cost estimates and didn’t fully evaluate the effects of the requests on military readiness. Also, DOD didn’t track all costs or give Congress timely information on the full costs it incurred for homeland security support, as it was mandated to do. Our 7 recommendations address these issues. The full report is found here. 

***

As you read on….just wonder if any personnel in the National Guard sends a weekly or monthly report to the Pentagon….and…has anyone asked in there is an FBI task force at the border doing FBI stuff?

Hat tip to PM: In an exclusive sit-down interview, an active member of the National Guard has gone on record against Joe Biden sharing “America is probably the weakest it’s ever been.” From harrowing stories of finding mutilated bodies at the border, to the cartel shooting at our service members, the border has gotten so bad that this National Guardsman was willing to risk his career to speak out.


“We’re very vulnerable,” he said on condition of anonymity. “It’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens.”

When asked if he felt his life was being put at risk by the current administration’s policies at the border, he said “absolutely. You never know who is crossing. You never know who is going to cross. Under Trump, it seemed like it was a lot more controlled. The border flowed a lot easier. The numbers spoke for themselves, and now it’s kind of like, you know, everybody is allowed to come in.”

 


He explained how the cartels use extreme measures to “intimidate and scare” border agents.
“Here in the valley,” he said, “you’re going to see a lot of drug flow and a lot of violence from the cartel to try to cover that up. They push large groups of migrants across.”
“They shoot at us quite often,” he said of the cartels. He detailed how the cartels would leave bodies around “to show us like, ‘hey, this is what we’re doing.'”
In one instance, he said that National Guardsmen found the body of a man whose head had been dipped in acid by the cartel.


Of that instance, he said “Border Patrol let us know that there was a body somewhere in the area, and some of the guys went looking for it, and sure enough they ended up finding it on our side of the river, which tells us that the cartel crossed him over and left it there for us to find and went back.”
He said this was a “scare tactic” from the cartels, and that “morale wise… it puts everybody more on an edge.”
“The way I see it,” he continued, “America is probably at its weakest, as weak as it’s ever been in a long time right now. We’re very vulnerable, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens. And for the administration to realize, ‘hey, maybe we do need to do something here,’ versus under Trump, he didn’t take those chances.”
Despite this, he said, it is the children abandoned at the border that haunt him.
“Probably for me being shot at, and the dead bodies, that doesn’t really hold much weight, but when I see the kids—I think that’s what has mentally been draining me.”
The Guardsman spoke about meeting an 11-year-old girl, whose mother sent her alone to America, equipping her with a box of condoms.
“When I found her, she had three condoms left in a box of like 15. Pretty much the coyotes did what they wanted with her and she was only 11,” the Guardsmen shared.
He now believes “it’s only a matter of time before a Guardsman loses his life to the cartel.”

Modern Day Nuremberg Required for Russian War Crimes

Russia war crimes did not begin with the invasion of Ukraine, those with short memories should be reminded that all the same tactics were used in Syria and went unpunished. Shameful, but read on.

***

As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, top Biden administration officials are working behind the scenes with the Ukrainian government and European allies to document a tsunami of war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces. But the sheer volume of the documented war crime cases could be too overwhelming for Ukraine’s justice system as well as for the International Criminal Court (ICC), raising questions of how many cases will be brought to trial and how many accused Russian war criminals could ultimately face justice.

An aerial view of crosses, floral tributes, and photographs of the victims of the battles for Irpin and Bucha that mark the graves in a cemetery in Irpin, Ukraine, on May 16.

An aerial view of crosses, floral tributes, and photographs of the victims of the battles for Irpin and Bucha that mark the graves in a cemetery in Irpin, Ukraine, on May 16. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

“This is a Nuremberg moment in terms of just the sheer scale of the breach of the rules-based international order that has been perpetrated by Russia in this invasion,” said Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice. “Even the most well-resourced prosecutorial office would have a hard time grappling with the sheer scale of the criminality that’s been on display.”

The United States joined a slew of other Western countries and international institutions in devoting resources to help Ukraine document and collect evidence on as many alleged war crimes as possible, from Russian soldiers torturing, raping, and executing Ukrainian civilians to Russian armored units and air forces indiscriminately shelling civilian targets. Keep reading here.

Weapons experts from France are helping their Ukrainian counterparts collect evidence of possible Russian war crimes in the northern region of Chernihiv, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said on Friday.

The French Gendarmerie’s experts, including specialists in drone modelling, ballistics and weapons of mass destruction, have been collecting evidence at sites of destruction from Russian shelling.

They replaced group of gendarmerie forensic experts who arrived in mid-April to help establish what happened in Bucha, near Kyiv, where the killing of many civilians provoked a global outcry.

“It will soon be two months since (French experts) have been with us ‘on the ground’,” Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova wrote on her Facebook account.

“They work in the Chernihiv region and conduct research at sites destroyed by shelling,” she wrote. “These war crimes must be punished, and we are ready to do together everything to do
so.”

The Chernihiv region has been shelled frequently since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. Ukraine is also investigating potential war crimes by Russian soldiers in Chernihiv during their occupation in March.

Russia denies targeting civilians and has rejected allegations of war crimes in what it calls a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine.

Kyiv and its allies say Russia invaded its neighbor without provocation. source

***

Ukraine has identified several thousand suspected war crimes in the eastern Donbas region where Russian forces are pressing their offensive, Kyiv’s chief prosecutor said Tuesday.

“Of course we started a few thousand cases about what we see in Donbas,” prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova told a news conference in The Hague as she met international counterparts.

“If we speak about war crimes, it’s about possible transfer of people, we started several cases about possible transfer of children, adult people to different parts of the Russian Federation,” she said.

“Then, of course, we can speak about torturing people, killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.”

Ukrainian authorities did not have access to Russian-held areas of Donbas, but they were interviewing evacuees and prisoners of war, Venediktova told the press conference at the headquarters of EU judicial agency Eurojust.

In total, Ukraine had identified 15,000 war crimes cases across the country since Russia’s invasion on February 24, she added.

Ukraine had identified 600 suspects for the “anchor” crime of aggression, including “high level of top military, politicians and propaganda agents of Russian Federation,” the prosecutor general said.

Nearly 80 suspects had been identified for alleged war crimes that had actually taken place on Ukrainian soil, she added. source