Category Archives: Military

IRGC a Terror Organization? Ah, Yeah

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Why would there need to be some consideration to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization? Anyone?

Begin with Hezbollah:

US State Department-designated terrorist group Hezbollah announced that Facebook and Twitter had terminated its main accounts. In a post on encrypted messenger, Telegram, Hezbollah opined that the shutdowns were “part of the propaganda campaign against the resistance due to the important role of the organization’s information apparatus in various arenas.” Hezbollah then began redirecting people to other Hezbollah accounts on social media. More here.

Strait of Hormuz Once Again at Center of U.S.-Iran Strife ... photo

*** The U.S. Navy stands ready to ensure freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s Central Command said on Thursday, after Iran warned it will block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has threatened in recent days to close the strait, a vital route for world oil supplies, if Washington tries to cut Tehran’s exports.

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Wednesday Iran would block any exports of crude for the Gulf in retaliation for hostile U.S. action.

“The U.S. and its partners provide, and promote security and stability in the region,” Central Command spokesman Navy Captain Bill Urban said in an email to Reuters.

Asked what would be the U.S. Naval Forces reaction if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, he said: “Together, we stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce wherever international law allows.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy (IRGCN) lacks a strong navy and instead focuses on an asymmetric warfare capability in the Gulf. It possesses many speed boats and portable anti-ship missile launchers and can lay naval mines. Full story.

*** Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Stock Photos and ...

The Trump administration is weighing whether to label a powerful arm of Iran’s military as a terrorist group, part of an effort to use every possible tool in the box to pressure Tehran.

Senior current and former officials familiar with the matter tell CNN the White House is considering designating Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, a debate that has senior Cabinet officials squaring off on both sides.
The designation decision, formally under the State Department’s purview, is taking on heightened importance as part of the White House’s increasingly aggressive strategy towards Iran. Officials have been debating it for several months and have yet to reach a consensus.
While some warn a designation could pose risks to US personnel and installations overseas, it would allow the White House to freeze IRGC assets, impose travel bans and levy criminal penalties on top of pre-existing economic sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.
“The United States is trying to change malign behavior of the Iranians and deter their aggression,” said Chris Costa, the executive director of the Spy Museum and a recently retired special adviser to Trump on counterterrorism. For that goal, “the special designation is a very important tool,” he said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in favor of the designation, sources familiar with his thinking say.
“There’s lots of things that are being discussed, things that will prove, we believe, very effective at the end goal-which is, at the end of the day, what matters, right?” Pompeo told CNN in a recent interview. “The end goal is to convince the Islamic Republic of Iran to be a normal country.” He declined to discuss specific plans for future sanctions and designations.
But labeling an official state military as a terror group, particularly a group with the reach and force of the IRGC, would be unprecedented and could expose US diplomatic and military officials to additional hazards, some warn.
The powerful military and security body is key to Iran’s influence in the Middle East, often linked to Iran’s support for terrorism. The organization controls wide swaths of the Iranian economy, including the energy sector.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has cautioned the administration that designating the IRGC could pose dangers to US forces, according to one source familiar with the matter. While the intelligence community doesn’t make policy decisions, its head, Coats, is the lowest common denominator who pools the analysis and assessments of all the agencies to advise policymakers.
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke publicly about the potential dangers of designating the IRGC.
“There are particular risks and complexities to designating an entire army, so to speak, of a country where that then puts in place certain requirements … that then triggers certain actions that we think are not appropriate and not necessarily in the best interests of our military,” Tillerson told reporters during a press briefing in October.

Turning Up the Heat

In March, Trump ousted Tillerson, who had advocated for staying within the Iran deal, replacing him with Pompeo, then his Central Intelligence Agency director.
In contrast to Tillerson, Pompeo has been a hardline voice on Tehran. According to sources familiar with the matter, the top US diplomat wants as many designations against Iran as possible to squeeze its economy. He has not been shy in speeches or social media posts about stopping Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from wreaking havoc in the Gulf.
Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, said talk of the possible terrorist designation was in keeping with an American tendency to use terrorism for political aims.
“The US a long history politicizing the term ‘terrorism’ for its own political ends, which undermines others fighting terrorism,” Miryousefi said. “To associate the term with the IRGC is categorically preposterous, especially considering their central role in fighting terrorism in the Middle East, including ISIS and al-Qaeda.”
The US will have to consider its allies in Europe if it takes the step of designating the IRGC.
Since Trump announced his intention to abandon the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal in May, his administration has imposed a swath of new sanctions, including one that will require all countries to eliminate Iranian oil imports by November. That move is particularly unpopular with European allies struggling to hold the deal together and keep a lid on Iranian nuclear development.
Trump administration officials leave next week for a second round of international trips to get partners on board with its broader strategy of increased sanctions and strictures on Iran. The National Security Council did not comment on that effort. Europeans say they remain unconvinced.
“The Americans haven’t explained how they want to reach their goals” with regards to Iran, said one European official. National security adviser John Bolton, meeting last month with European officials to talk about the US campaign against Iran, told them there would no exemptions from sanctions for European companies or entities that do business with Iran under UN sanctions, European officials said.
Brian Hook, the State Department’s director of policy planning, stressed that point in a Monday briefing, telling reporters that the US is “not looking” to issue waivers to European companies.

‘Unconditional surrender’

Bolton told Europeans that Washington was looking for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” harkening back to demands on Iran made by Pompeo during a speech in late May. The top US diplomat said at the time that the US wanted Iran to abandon its nuclear program, pull out of the Syrian war, and cut ties to terrorism.
Another senior State Department official said “we are looking at a range of avenues to increase pressure.”
Several other administration officials have suggested taking other steps to ramp up pressure on Iran before taking the dramatic step of designating the IRGC.
Successive administrations engaged in a similar debate on whether to designate the Taliban as a foreign terrorist organization, ultimately deciding such a move would hamper efforts to negotiate a political solution in Afghanistan.
According to one former senior intelligence official, the debate about Iran has resurfaced many times over the years, often based on a specific incident or piece of intelligence. The intelligence community will “tell [the administration] what might happen if you do this, what might happen if you don’t,” the official said. “If we declare them terrorists, and we put pressure on them, you do have a number of people who say, ‘what would that do to our forces in Iraq and Syria?’”
Iranian forces might retaliate and “ramp up anti American activities in Iraq,” the official said. Iran could also call American special forces terrorists or threaten embassies, potentially endangering the long-term US presence in Iraq and Syria.
The IRGC, in particular a special unit called the Quds Force, which is the equivalent of US Joint Special Operations Command, has also attempted to recruit “operatives around the world to undertake activity on behalf of Iran,” the official continued.
While the Quds Force has done humanitarian work and conducted military operations over the years, “its current focus remains proxy activities in the region” in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, for example, the official said.
The IRGC “provides weapons, training for regional proxies, regional forces … it focuses on terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis,” Costa, the former National Security Council counterterrorism adviser told CNN. “They’re a regional spoiler.”
Officials also suggested a designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, while dramatic, would be largely symbolic because it is already considered a terrorist entity under a 9/11-era executive order signed by President George W. Bush to block terrorist financing.
In October, Trump authorized sanctions aimed at the IRGC under that order, calling the Revolutionary Guard “the Iranian Supreme Leader’s corrupt personal terror force and militia.” He urged US allies to follow suit and impose sanctions against Iran to target its support for terrorism. With a special foreign terrorist designation, the administration could levy a wider and more severe set of sanctions.

‘Another 120,000 terrorists’

Former top CIA lawyer John Rizzo told CNN that a special designation would likely not change how the CIA targets the IRGC.
“The longstanding legal criterion for how US [intelligence] agencies target foreign based threats is if a nation or group engages in international terrorist activities threatening the US or its allies,” he wrote to CNN. “‎For many years, the Iranian government and its entities has fit that bill.”
Many former military and intelligence officials told CNN that US troops are already in significant amounts of danger in the regions where our forces collide with Iran’s military or its proxy forces. Calling them out as terrorists wouldn’t make a big difference, they argue.
“It’s a specious argument to suggest the US military is more vulnerable” if the US makes this call, said Costa.
Anthony Shaffer, a retired US Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who directed several major intelligence operations in the Middle East, told CNN,” My recommendation has always been that they should be a terrorist group,” Shaffer’s book “Dark Heart” describes his experience directly encountering the IRGC funding terrorist efforts in Eastern Afghanistan. “I don’t see how there’s any downside,” he continued.
But if the US takes this unique step, labeling the military branch a terrorist group, it runs the risk of making the IRGC a “hero in the eyes of probably most Iranians for ‘resistance’,” said James Durso, a former US Navy officer and staff member on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the move would likely be “symbolic” at this point, “if we designate the entire IRGC, that’s another 120,000 ‘terrorists’ we will have to track,” he said. “We will have normal relations with Iran someday, so let’s not make 120,000 more future enemies unless there’s a real benefit.”

Question China and They Were Uninvited to RIMPAC

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The U.S. Navy and allies are drilling in the Pacific Ocean as part of the massive Rim of the Pacific naval exercise. After years continuing to sail alongside China in RIMPAC, even as the peer competitor militarized man-made islands in the South China Sea, the U.S. decided enough is enough and rescinded the invitation. (Andrew Jarocki/Staff)

Twenty-six nations, 47 surface ships, five submarines, 18 national land forces, and more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel will participate in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise scheduled June 27 to Aug. 2, in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California. As the world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity designed to foster and sustain cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s interconnected oceans. RIMPAC 2018 is the 26th exercise in the series that began in 1971. The theme of RIMPAC 2018 is “Capable, Adaptive, Partners.” Participating nations and forces will exercise a wide range of capabilities and demonstrate the inherent flexibility of maritime forces. These capabilities range from disaster relief and maritime security operations to sea control and complex warfighting. The relevant, realistic training program includes amphibious operations, gunnery, missile, anti-submarine and air defense exercises, as well as counter-piracy operations, mine clearance operations, explosive ordnance disposal, and diving and salvage operations. This year’s exercise includes forces from Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. This is the first time Brazil, Israel, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are participating in RIMPAC. Additional firsts include New Zealand serving as sea combat commander and Chile serving as combined force maritime component commander. This is the first time a non-founding RIMPAC nation (Chile) will hold a component commander leadership position. This year will also feature live firing of a Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) from a U.S. Air Force aircraft, surface to ship missiles by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, and a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) from a launcher on the back of a Palletized Load System (PLS) by the U.S. Army. This marks the first time a land based unit will participate in the live fire event during RIMPAC. RIMPAC 18 will also include international band engagements and highlight fleet innovation during an Innovation Fair. Additionally, for the first time since RIMPAC 2002, U.S. 3rd Fleet’s Command Center will relocate from San Diego to Pearl Harbor to support command and control of all 3rd Fleet forces in 3rd Fleet’s area of responsibility to include forces operating forward in the Western Pacific. The Fleet Command Center will be established at a deployable joint command and control on Hospital Point for the first part of the exercise and then transition to USS Portland (LPD 27) for the remainder of the exercise. Hosted by Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, RIMPAC 2018 will be led by Commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet, Vice Adm. John D. Alexander, who will serve as combined task force (CTF) commander. Royal Canadian Navy Rear Adm. Bob Auchterlonie will serve as CTF deputy commander, and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Rear Adm. Hideyuki Oban as CTF vice commander. Fleet Marine Force will be led by U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Mark Hashimoto. Other key leaders of the multinational force will include Commodore Pablo Niemann of Armada de Chile, who will command the maritime component, and Air Commodore Craig Heap of the Royal Australian Air Force, who will command the air component. This robust constellation of allies and partners support sustained and favorable regional balances of power that safeguard security, prosperity and the free and open international order. RIMPAC 2018 contributes to the increased lethality, resiliency and agility needed by the joint and combined force to deter and defeat aggression by major powers across all domains and levels of conflict.

***

The location of the garrison, confirmed through satellite imagery here, can possibly support a brigade-sized intercontinental ballistic missile formation.

New Delhi: China has built a new garrison in its central Sichuan province for its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) which have the capacity to cover all of India, the Indian Ocean Region as well as large parts of continental America.

On 27 May, the 10th test of the Dongfeng-41 or DF-41 (East Wind-41) ICBM, with a reported range of 12,000-15,000 km, was conducted at the Taiyuan Space Launch Center in Shanxi province. China’s PLARF, or the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, formerly Second Artillery Corps (SAC), claimed it a success.

Vinayak Bhat/The Print

ThePrint has now identified a never-before revealed PLARF location, which may possibly be a DF-41 garrison, with the help of satellite imagery.

ThePrint had in April reported that PLARF had built a garrison in the southernmost Hainan province to store DF-31AG missile.

The location

This is the first time that the new Chinese garrison has been confirmed through satellite imagery (as of 7 May, 2018), although it has been covered by ground human intelligence before.

It is located 15 km east of Yibin town in Sichuan province, away from towns and cities but close to a highway to enable quick deployment. Construction is said to have begun three years ago.

The entire complex can possibly support a brigade-sized ballistic missile formation.

The ICBM is likely to be armed with 10 multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) warheads each with 150kT yield.

Vinayak Bhat/The Print

This new garrison is typically built around a sports track with a football field in it. It also has two basketball grounds and an obstacle course adjoining the sports track.

There are two large highbay garages in the centre of the complex along with two smaller highway garages to the north of the facility. The smaller highbay garages were probably built for warhead assembly.

There are two locations where dugouts are observed. These could possibly be underground DES igloos.

Vinayak Bhat/The Print

There are about 15 triple storied C-shaped barracks, possibly for troops’ living accommodations.

Three large multi-storey buildings connected with each other could be administrative offices. A meteorological station with possible satellite link is also seen to the west side of the complex.

All buildings except central administrative buildings and high-bay garages are provided with slanted box gable roofs.

Vinayak Bhat/The Print

The entire garrison with its support buildings has a very high-walled security with four entrances. The main entrance is heavily guarded with around 200m approach under visual observation with the help of a large convex mirror.

It has typical layout of eight garages with six of them being interconnected. There are 30 smaller buildings (15 on either side of highbay garages) with different dimensions which are difficult to assess.

In the latest satellite image, a large tractor trailer of 22m is seen plying on the highway 400 metre south of the complex, suggesting that DF-41 truck erector launcher (TEL) of similar size can easily manoeuvre in this area.

The vehicle

 The DF-41 vehicle has most advanced technologies incorporated for the smooth ride of the missile. It is an eight-axle, 16-wheeled TEL with possibly a six-axle drive.

The steering mechanism of DF-41 TEL is very uniquely purposed to provide high-speed turning stability and smallest possible turning radius to the behemoth.

Power steering has been provided on the three-front steer axles and the rear three drive axles are probably mechanically coordinated with hydraulic power. Thus making the DF-41 TEL very easily manoeuvrable.

As for the 27 May ICBM test from the Taiyuan Space Launch Centre, it was first reported by Washington Free Beacon quoting Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Christopher Logan who said, “The US was aware of recent flight tests and we continue to monitor weapons development in China.”

The well-known defence magazine IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly claimed that after the latest launch, DF-41 had moved closer to commissioning and deployment. Chinese experts claim that DF-41 is the most advanced ICBM in the world.

New Citizenship Applications for Asgardia

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For those that are as old as me may remember Ralph Cramden telling his wife Alice, to the moon. Well, that time is here. Except, Alice would be an Asgardian if she launched and landed on the moon. Send postcards when you can.

Space platform

Asgardia will be a fully fledged, independent nation inhabited on a low Earth orbit. It began with a satellite, Asgardia-1, that was launched in 2017, to be followed by an orbital satellite constellation launch in 2019-2020, and later by other satellite constellations and Space Arks, as well as by settlements on the Moon.

Who will be your leader? Well there is one already. And there is a Constitution.

There are already citizens. Asgardia Nation Citizens 203,865 Residents 218,396

Click here to see where they are from.

There is also an anthem for Asgardia.

FIRST IN HISTORY INAUGURATION OF THE HEAD OF THE FIRST SPACE NATION ASGARDIA

Asgardia’s first Head of Nation, Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, was inaugurated on the 25th of June at the Hofburg Palace with guests from over 40 countries from across the world.

In attendance were ambassadors of more than 10 countries, representatives of a number of major public organizations affiliated with UN structures, newly elected Asgardian Members of Parliament, astronauts, space industry managers, scientists, international lawyers, and media from all over the world.

Taking part in the ceremony was the Chairman of Parliament, Lembit Öpik, a former leader of the Welsh Assembly and Member of the British Parliament. The Head of the Supreme Court, Dr Yun Zhao, also took part—a well-known lawyer in the field of space law, a professor at Hong Kong University and a member of a number of arbitration courts.

After taking his oath of office, Dr Ashurbeyli announced that, within the next 25 years, Asgardia will have habitable space stations and stationary settlements on the Moon equipped with artificial gravity and protection from cosmic radiation which will effectively enable permanent human habitation in space. In the coming months, he also announced that Asgardia’s first Government administration will be formed, during which time a Cabinet of Ministers will be appointed, alongside the formation of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the National Audit Office and the Supreme Space Council.

Why Become an Asgardian

Shape the Future of Space LawLet your voice be heard! Join our discussion on a new legal platform for the exploration of space. Be part of the movement that will define the future of humanity’s off-planet expansion.

Connect with Forward – Thinking People

Our community is the perfect place to network and brainstorm with innovators, engineers, scientists, business people and investors. Asgardians can transform a dream into reality.

Protect Our Planet and Future Generations

Faced with threats such as sun storms and potentially dangerous asteroids, we need to prioritise our collective efforts to protect the Earth. Help us accelerate this process and find solutions.

 

Military Bases are Destination for Migrant Insurgency

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The United Sates is not dealing with this issue and frankly is not even managing it. When a Mexican presidential candidate calls for a mass exodus TO the United States, we know the mission to flood the United States is a well known doctrine in Mexico.

Oh and by the way, in case you missed former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, make sure you tell the pro-immigrant activists that Johnson admitted the Obama administration also detained children without parents or guardians, citing it was necessary at the time. He further admitted he expanded it even though it was controversial.

So, let’s dump on the military bases to deal with the volume shall we? Sigh Does that mean that all weapons and or live fire training and exercises will have to stop to keep from making the migrants fearful?

Camp Pendleton California Marine Base. | Places I've been ...

San Diego County could become a destination for tens of thousands of unauthorized immigrants to be housed indefinitely by the U.S. Government, under the zero-tolerance policy implemented by President Donald Trump.

According to a report published Friday afternoon by Time magazine, military leaders are drawing up plans to create a tent city at Camp Pendleton to detain as many as 47,000 illegal immigrants from Central America and other locations over the coming months.

The facility at Camp Pendleton would be one of multiple temporary detention centers designated to house immigrants making their way into the United States.

According to an internal memo obtained by Time magazine, the U.S. Navy has been directed to establish “temporary and austere” encampments on military installations in Alabama, Arizona, and California that each could host tens of thousands of detainees.

The document, prepared by an assistant secretary for approval by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, suggests construction could begin at one site within 60 days. The structures would be designed to last for six months to one year, Time magazine reported.

The memo has not yet been approved by Spencer or Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the report said.

The plans detailed in the internal document match the executive order Trump signed earlier this week in response to growing political pressure to halt the separation of parents and children crossing the southern border illegally.

The order does not end the Trump administration zero-tolerance program that aims to prosecute all illegal border crossings. Rather, it calls for families to be housed together in detention facilities instead of separated while parents go through both the criminal court system for illegal entry and then immigration proceedings after that.

The order says immigration courts should prioritize detained-family cases, but it will still likely take longer than the 20 days the government is currently allowed to hold children in detention, even if they are held with their families.

Officials at Camp Pendleton said they know nothing about a temporary immigrant-housing project.

“Camp Pendleton is unaware of any plan to house detainees on our base at this time,” Capt Luke Weaver said in a statement. “Contact DoD Office of the Secretary of Defense public affairs for information on this subject.”

The Time magazine report quoted a U.S. Navy spokesman saying it would be inappropriate to discuss internal deliberative planning documents.

The detainment plan estimates the Navy would spend more than $230 million to build and run a single facility serving 25,000 people for a six-month term.

According to a Government Accountability Office report published in April, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office requested $3.6 billion in 2018 funding to pay for immigrant housing — $1 billion more than the amount of funds requested the prior year.

The GAO report recommended several recommendations aimed at improving ICE’s cost estimates and making sure the budget documents are accurate.

The ICE budget for 2019 proposes a nearly 33 percent increase in the average daily count for unauthorized immigrants, from about 38,000 in 2017 to more than 51,000 this year.

Advocates who work with San Diego immigrant communities were stunned by the Time magazine report.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee San Diego office, said he had been hearing rumblings about new detention centers but never expected Camp Pendleton to be selected.

“I think it’s a mistake to suggest that housing families in austere temporary Navy bases is a solution to the humanitarian needs of people seeking asylum,” he said Friday. “The possibility that families will be held indefinitely is a clear violation of human rights standards.”

Elizabeth Lopez, an immigration attorney with the Southern California Immigration Project, worried about what this might mean for court hearings and what services the detention facilities would have.

“First off, I doubt the government is going to transport them to court, so they will have to build video conference rooms to be able to have hearings,” she said. “Secondly, it is going to be a nightmare to allow the attorneys on to Pendleton to visit our clients.”

Lopez also said she was concerned about the level of medical care migrants would receive while being detained.

Immigration attorney Ginger Jacobs said, “I am also concerned about the extremely high expense of these camps. It looks like it would take approximately $500 million to house people at Camp Pendleton for only a six month time period. That is an enormous waste of government resources. It would be far less expensive to allow the asylum-seekers to live in their own communities with GPS monitor ankle bracelets on, so ICE can keep track of their whereabouts.”

Peter K. Nunez, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California and board chair of a conservative think tank, said he favors erecting as many different detention spaces in as many different places as needed in order to enforce the law.

“There was a time back in the Clinton administration when they started using military facilities to detain people, so it’s not a new idea,” he said. “They have to be treated humanely, but that doesn’t mean they have to be put up in a five-star hotel.

“If they can create temporary detention facilities at Camp Pendleton or any other military base that are adequate to the housing needs, then certainly we can do that,” he said.

According to the Time report, a similar tent city would be established at the former Naval Weapons Station Concord, east of San Francisco. It too would be constructed to hold as many as 47,000 people.

Other facilities that are expected to house 25,000 immigrants would be established at abandoned airfields outside Mobile, Alabama. The memo also proposes studying the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona. as a possible site for an additional immigrant detention center.

The arrival and housing of tens of thousands of immigrants at Camp Pendleton would not be a first for the military base that buffers between San Diego and the Greater Los Angeles area.

In April 1975, after the fall of Saigon, the first of 50,000 or more refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos began arriving at Camp Pendleton for processing before they were resettled to other parts of Southern California and beyond.

The temporary quarters closed by November of the same year.

Hey China, the U.S. Should Include the Cost of Espionage in Trade Deficit

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Let’s begin here: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Chinese National Arrested for Conspiring to Illegally Export U.S. Origin Goods Used in Anti-Submarine Warfare to China

Defendant allegedly illegally exported devices used to detect and monitor sound underwater

BOSTON – A Chinese national was arrested today and charged in connection with violating export laws by conspiring with employees of an entity affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to illegally export U.S. origin goods to China, as well as making false statements to obtain a visa to enter the United States and to become a lawful permanent resident under the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program.

Shuren Qin, 41, a Chinese national residing in Wellesley, Mass., was charged in a criminal complaint with one count of visa fraud and one count of conspiring to commit violations of U.S. export regulations. Qin was arrested today and will appear in federal court in Boston on June 22, 2018.

According to charging documents, Qin was born in the People’s Republic of China and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2014. Qin operates several companies in China, which purport to import U.S. and European goods with applications in underwater or marine technologies into China.  It is alleged that Qin was in communication with and/or receiving taskings from entities affiliated with the PLA, including the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU), a Chinese military research institute, to obtain items used for anti-submarine warfare. (..)

LCS Mission Packages: The Basics - USNI News photo

Okay, how about this one?

The submarine contractor breach, recently reported by the Washington Post, reflects this intense focus on bridging any technological advantage the US may have. It involved attacks in January and February that nabbed important data, albeit from an unclassified network. When taken together, though, the information would have amounted to a valuable snapshot of US cutting edge underwater weapons development, plus details on a number of related digital and mechanical systems.

The attack fits into a known pattern of Chinese hacking initiatives. “China will continue to use cyberespionage and bolster cyberattack capabilities to support [its] national security priorities,” US director of national intelligence Daniel Coats wrote in a February threat report. “The [Intelligence Community] and private-sector security experts continue to identify ongoing cyberactivity from China…Most detected Chinese cyberoperations against US private industry are focused on cleared defense contractors or IT and communications firms.”

This week, analysts from Symantec also published research on a series of attacks in the same category from November 2017 to April from a hacking group dubbed Thrip. Though Symantec does not go so far as to identify Thrip as Chinese state-sponsored hackers, it reports “with high confidence” that Thrip attacks trace back to computers inside the country. The group, which Symantec has tracked since 2013, has evolved to hide in plain site by mostly using prefab malware to infiltrate networks and then manipulating administrative controls and other legitimate system tools to bore deeper without setting off alarms. All of these off-the-shelf hacking tools and techniques have made Thrip harder to identify and track—which is likely the idea—but Symantec started to notice patterns in their anomaly detection scanners that ultimately gave these attacks away, and led the researchers to a unique backdoor that implicated Thrip.

The researchers found evidence of intrusions at some southeast Asian telecom firms, a US geospatial imagery company, a couple of private satellite companies including one from the US, and a US defense contractor. The breaches were all deliberate and targeted, and in the case of the satellite firms the hackers moved all the way through to reach the control systems of actual orbiting satellites, where they could have impacted a satellite’s trajectory or disrupted data flow. More here from Wired.

As if that is not enough to begin charging China, how about this?

U.S. military pilots flying aircraft over the East China Sea have been targeted by blinding laser attacks more than 20 times over the last 10 months, U.S. officials told The Japan Times, after a number of similar attacks in East Africa that the Pentagon has said Chinese military personnel were behind.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the attacks in the waterway, where the Chinese military has bolstered its operations, were first reported last September. The incidents were believed to have come from a range of sources, “both ashore and from fishing vessels,” spokeswoman Maj. Cassandra Gesecki said.

Indo-Pacific Command said it would not go into specifics about the incidents, but media reports quoting unidentified U.S. officials said some of the fishing boats were Chinese-flagged vessels. Officials wouldn’t definitively confirm that Chinese personnel were behind all of the incidents.

Beijing operates a “maritime militia” of Chinese fishing boats, which it trains and subsidizes with sophisticated gear such as GPS equipment. Such vessels have played an important role in China asserting its various territorial claims in the East and South China Seas.

Chinese personnel at the country’s first overseas military base in Djibouti had been using lasers to interfere with U.S. military aircraft at a nearby American base, activity that has resulted in injuries to U.S. pilots and prompted the U.S. to launch a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing.

However, unlike the Djibouti incidents, where military-grade lasers had been employed in some cases, the East China Sea incidents involved smaller, commercial-grade laser pointers popularly known as “cat grade” lasers because pet owners have known to use to play with their animals. Even so, these types of lasers have been known to temporarily blind pilots and, in some cases, cause eye damage.

“In light of these recent incidents, units operating in the area are conducting an assessment of their laser eye protection equipment,” Gesecki said.

While Chinese fishing vessels have long operated in the East China Sea, the country’s military has embarked on a military modernization program heavily promoted by President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a shift in focus toward creating a more potent fighting force. This has included projects such as building a second aircraft carrier, integrating stealth fighters into the air force and fielding an array of advanced missiles that can strike air and sea targets from long distances.

In a demonstration of its continued push to refine its power-projection capabilities and push further into the Western Pacific Ocean, the Chinese military in April conducted drills in the Pacific with its sole operating aircraft carrier.

The East China Sea is home to a long-running dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu. Japanese defense chief Itsunori Onodera said in April that Chinese activity — including naval and coast guard patrols in the waters — “has expanded and accelerated” in recent years as it seeks to assert its territorial claims.

But the activity goes beyond military.

Beijing has also used its maritime militia to hassle Japanese fishermen and the Japan Coast Guard in a bid to better enforce its claims in the East China Sea, experts say.

If the Chinese military is not directly involved in the laser incidents, it could be directing — at some level — the maritime militia to target U.S. pilots.

Although the U.S. has not taking a position on the sovereignty of the Senkakus, it has repeatedly said that they fall under its treaty obligations to defend Japan’s territory if it is attacked.

In closing, remember:

On May 23, the US State Department announced that one embassy worker in Guangzhou experienced “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure” before being diagnosed with symptoms similar to those found in the diplomatic personnel that were in Cuba, including mild traumatic brain injury.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that at least two more Americans in Guangzhou have experienced similar phenomena and also fallen ill. One of those embassy workers told the Times that he and his wife had heard mysterious sounds and experienced strange headaches and sleeplessness while in their apartment.

After the evacuation of the first diplomatic employee from Guangzhou was announced, the State Department issued a health alert via the US Consulate in Guangzhou telling people that “if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attempt to locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds are not present.”

On June 5, the office of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the establishment of a task force meant to respond to these mysterious incidents, which some have called “sonic attacks.” More here.