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The Pentagon announced Friday it would send $200 million in nonlethal military aid to Ukraine -- a move likely to anger Moscow. The American military hardware being shipped to Ukraine includes “secure communications, military mobility, night vision, and military medical treatment." Secretary of Defense James Mattis is also asking that Congress sign a waiver that would allow the U.S. to sell weapons to countries that also purchase arms from Russia. The idea is to make sure U.S. sanctions don’t push allies into the arms of Russia. “Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of...

WASHINGTON After 18 months of Donald Trump's "America First" presidency, European leaders meeting with him next week fear the United States may change its traditional course and begin to bring American troops home from the continent. It comes as nations, especially in Eastern Europe, are lobbying the United States to increase the number of troops on the continent as they worry about combating an increasingly aggressive Russia. Trump has talked about bringing U.S. troops home from around the globe since he was on the campaign trail espousing a strategy he dubbed "America First” but he has yet to act. "They...

The Navy is investigating the latest in an alarming string of incidents that left pilots disoriented and shaken. On June 28, a young U.S. Navy officer flying in a two-seater electronic warfare jet in the skies over Washington State suddenly felt a tightness in his chest and tingling in his extremities. He instantly recognized his symptoms as signs of hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. The jet, an EA-18G Growler from a training squadron out of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, diverted to a local airport, and made an “uneventful” landing, according to Navy spokesman Cmdr. Scot Cregan. The crew member, an...

Amazon originally started out many years ago selling books online. But owner Jeff Bezos has aggressively led it to now selling everything online, making Bezos one of the richest men in world history. Bezos's corporate empire includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), a leading pioneer of cloud computing services. Cloud computing enables anyone in an organization worldwide to access the organization’s documents and data online. That enables the organization’s employees to collaborate and communicate online, from anywhere in the world. America’s Defense Department is now trying to catch up to the world’s leading multinational companies to adopt cloud computing for America’s...

The Pentagon is analyzing the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany, amid growing tensions between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to people familiar with the work. The effort follows Trump’s expression of interest in removing the troops, made during a meeting earlier this year with White House and military aides, U.S. officials said. Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the U.S. presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying...

The Trump administration may place up to 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on military bases starting as early as next month, according to a new Pentagon memo. The notification, sent to lawmakers on Wednesday and first reported by The Washington Post, says the Defense Department received a request for assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “HHS has requested DOD determine its capabilities to provide up to 20,000 temporary beds for unaccompanied children at DOD installations,” the document states. If the Pentagon finds that it can provide such lodging, “the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requests the...

The change for a new world order creating a mirror image effect on the people, and one organization to decide who gets in and who doesn’t. How can the Pentagon take on another task investigating people, when they can’t find over $9 trillion lost/misplaced/don’t know where it went funds. Who will be losing jobs in the changeover? WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department is poised to take over background investigations for the federal government, using increased automation and high-tech analysis to tighten controls and tackle an enormous backlog of workers waiting for security clearances, according to U.S. officials. The change...

The U.S. Army recently put word out that it wanted submachine guns for conventional forces, and gun-makers were quick to respond. Ten companies are currently vying to supply troops outside the special operations forces realm with subguns for the modern battlefield. Officials said they wanted a weapon with full/semi-automatic selectable variant and a Picatinny rail, among other features, and organizations from Sig Sauer, Inc. to Colt answered the call. “For the first time in a long time, the Army is looking at a subgun for conventional forces,” Todd South of Military Times reported Wednesday. “Special operations forces have carried these...

Yesterday brought stunning news of yet another security lapse by our Navy. As reported by The Washington Post, Chinese hackers in the first two months of this year penetrated the computers of an unnamed defense contractor, “stealing massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare” from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island. NUWC (“new-ick”), as it’s called by sailors, handles sensitive and classified projects for the Navy’s submarine force, which just happens to be one of the few areas where the U.S. Navy still holds important advantages over its Chinese rival. As China’s rapidly expanding...

Public records show Stefan Halper, the foreign policy expert “outed,” as an FBI informant that spied on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was paid a large sum in 2016 for work he did for the Obama administration. The Department of Defense paid Halper $282,295 on September 27, 2016 — just months before the 2016 presidential election — for work titled, “INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY,” says USASPENDING.gov, a website that tracks spending data for the U.S. government. This sum was one of two payments made to Halper for the job; the second, worth $129,280, was made on July 26, 2017. The...

The U.S. Department of Defense has more than 3,000 datacenters and countless applications. The DOD smartly want to consolidate to save money. In March, the DOD put out a request for a proposal about a compute cloud infrastructure. Business Insider reports that Amazon is currently a shoe-in for the $10-billion contract. One reason is because Amazon has already signed a $600M contract with the CIA to run a more secure datacenter in Washington, D.C. Bryan Crabtree wrote an article talking about why it is a mistake for the U.S. military to choose Amazon. Many don't realize there is already a...

Direct Link to Bloomberg Article: New Lockheed Missile First Use

Offutt Airbase, Nebraska (CNN)If the unthinkable happens and a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea or Russia happens, President Donald Trump will rely on a secure underground facility at a base in the middle of the United States to carry out his orders. And four-star Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the commander of US Strategic Command, would be at the center of it all. "Our strategic responses are always ready to respond and everybody should know that," Hyten told CNN in an interview inside the highly secured 'Battle Deck' where he would oversee a nuclear response if the...

For the first time, the Defense Department will begin moving classified data and applications to Amazon Web Services’ Secret Region—the same cloud environment developed for the CIA and intelligence community several years ago. The Defense Department’s sole-source decision—a contract awarded without a full and open competition—was protested by Microsoft, which itself offers a variety of cloud services to the federal government.

Presidential Memorandum on the Delegation of Certain Functions and Authorities under Section 1238 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 Issued on: February 5, 2018 MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SUBJECT: Delegation of Certain Functions and Authorities under Section 1238 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby delegate...

The Pentagon was forced last year to rescind interim security clearances granted under the Obama administration to at least 165 contractors linked to various crimes, including felony convictions for pedophilia and foreign government affiliations, revealed a report issued by the Director of the Defense Security Service (DSS). According to the report, DOD contractors preserved their ability to access sensitive government information despite prior criminal records and other illicit past activity that the Pentagon’s vetting process failed to detect. “Of those 165 cases, 151 people had pre-existing issues that they did not disclose and were not discovered during initial checks; the...

PARIS -- U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis made a remarkable admission last week while introducing the new National Defense Strategy. "We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we're engaged in today," Mattis said, "but great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security." Using the term "competition" instead of "war" implies an economic component, since there are currently no direct military competitions between the U.S. and either Russia or China. Governments almost never frame military conflict in economic terms, presumably since the idea of spilling blood for any reason other than...

1. If your boss tells you to update your Gamma Globulin, Yellow Fever, Malaria, Dysentery, Tetanus and other fun immunizations- You might be deploying to a Sh!t Hole.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed Sunday military service members overseas will be able to watch NFL playoff games after the American Forces Network resumed broadcasting, despite the government shutdown. "Update: @DeptofDefense has informed us that AFN has been restored in most places. Glad our brave men and women can watch the game today," Sanders tweeted.

Two army captains exchanged vows at West Point in what is believed to be the first active-duty, same-sex marriage at the esteemed United States Military Academy. The couple, which will now go by the last name Franchino-Hall, enjoyed their first dance as married men to 'La Vie En Rose' by Edith Piaf.