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USSF: The newest branch of the U.S. military, the United States Space Force, became a reality on Thursday with an announcement by Vice President Mike Pence to an audience at the Pentagon. U.S.S.F. becomes the sixth military branch of service, the first one created since the U.S. Army Air Corps became the Air Force shortly after World War II. “The time has come to establish the United States Space Force,” Pence announced, noting that during the last great war, America rose to meet substantial military challenges posed by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Part of meeting — and defeating —...

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...

The idea of humans controlling machines with their minds has spun off sci-fi blockbusters like “Pacific Rim” and entire subgenres of foreign film, but while today skyscraper-sized fighting robots exist only on the big screen, the Pentagon is building technology that could one day make them a reality. Today, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is selecting teams to develop a “neural interface” that would both allow troops to connect to military systems using their brainwaves and let those systems transmit back information directly to users’ brains. The Next-Generation Non-Surgical Neurotechnology, or N3, program aims to combine the speed and...

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...

An anonymous email came in over the transom this morning: Hi, Stacy. During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of...

A report from a top U.S. military watchdog has finally acknowledged that the UH-60A+ Black Hawks that the United States is supplying to the Afghan Air Force are less capable and harder to maintain than the Russian-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters they have now. The review raises concerns that this could limit Afghanistan’s ability to conduct operations across the country unless steps are taking to mitigate the loss of capability, something we at The War Zone have long warned could easily be the case. The Pentagon’s own Office of the Inspector General included these frank admissions in a routine, periodic update...

The Pentagon has quietly empowered the United States Cyber Command to take a far more aggressive approach to defending the nation against cyberattacks, a shift in strategy that could increase the risk of conflict with the foreign states that sponsor malicious hacking groups. The U.S. Cyber Command was created partly in response to a Russian hacking attack that long predated the 2016 election. In the fall of 2008, Russian intelligence agencies penetrated SIPRNet, the Pentagon’s secret internal network; that led to a rush to consolidate several cyberprograms into a command. The Chinese, meanwhile, were stealing weapons designs, including blueprints for...

A pair of Democratic senators on Wednesday introduced an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would stop President Trump from withdrawing U.S. forces from South Korea without the Pentagon’s input. The amendment “would help prevent the President from making a rash decision about troop reductions on the Korean Peninsula that negatively impacts our national security,” Sens. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.) said in a joint statement. Introduced for the Fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the provision would stop a withdraw “unless the U.S. Secretary of Defense certifies it is in our national security interest...

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 aims to fix a system whose weaknesses were exposed by the case of a Navy contractor who gunned down a dozen people at Washington's Navy Yard in 2013. He was able to maintain a security clearance despite concerns about his mental health and an arrest that investigators never reviewed. Problems had earlier surfaced with former National Security Agency contractor Edward...

<p>Remarks came after Assad told Russian broadcaster RT he would not hesitate to use force to retake the third of the country held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).</p> <p>The SDF, dominated by the militia of a self-proclaimed Kurdish autonomous administration, has air support from the US-led coalition against Daesh and backing from US and French special forces on the ground.</p>

On the morning of April 4, 2004, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan was an altar server at the Palm Sunday Mass at his military base in Iraq. By nightfall he was dead. Sheehan’s death led his mother, Cindy Sheehan, to question why the U.S. was involved in the war. The rationale behind the war, she said, kept changing. She founded Gold Star Families for Peace and, in August of 2005, famously staged a month-long protest encampment at then-President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch. This Friday, Sheehan will speak in the auditorium of St. John’s Episcopal Church, 321 W. Chestnut...

The Pentagon has ordered all stores on U.S. military bases worldwide to ban mobile phones and other telecommunications equipment made by the Chinese companies Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp. after senior U.S. intelligence officials warned the phones could be used to spy on Americans and U.S. service members. The products were removed from exchange service stores and exchange concessionaires worldwide following warnings from top U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers that Chinese mobile phones could track movements of the military. In a statement, the Pentagon said, “Huawei and ZTE devices may pose an unacceptable risk to the Department’s personnel,...

Full title: Researchers report that chemical weapons dumped at sea are corroding but have not yet released toxic contents KyleJuly 28, 2010DMZ Hawaii http://www.dmzhawaii.org/dmz-legacy-site-two/?p=7485  University of Hawai'i researchers have concluded a three year research project to determine whether chemical munitions dumped at sea off O'ahu pose a threat to the health of humans or the environment. Documents disclosed by the Army in 2007 reported that approximately 16,000 munitions containing 2,558 tons of chemical agents were dumped at three deep-water sites off Oahu.   The chemical agent included lewisite, mustard, cyanogen chloride and cyanide. According to the Honolulu Star Advertiser article: http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/99399389.html...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Defense has stopped accepting most deliveries of F-35 jets from Lockheed Martin Corp because of a dispute over who will cover costs for fixing a production error, three people familiar with the matter said. Lockheed confirmed on Wednesday that the Pentagon had halted deliveries of the jet over a contractual issue, but did not give further details. Last year, the Pentagon stopped accepting F-35s for 30 days after discovering corrosion where panels were fastened to the airframe, an issue that affected more than 200 of the stealthy jets. Once a fix had been...

The Pentagon said Thursday it is establishing a new “border security support cell” that will be manned 24 hours a day after President Trump ordered the military to help secure the southern border. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said Trump authorized the National Guard to “enhance its support” for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the border. “This is not business as usual,” White said. She said their efforts will include aviation, engineer, surveillance, communications, vehicle maintenance and logistics support. “They will support border patrol agents who are performing law enforcement duties,” White said.

As the feminist Kamikaze bears down on the U.S.S. Pentagon, spineless brass sip Mint Juleps on the bridge, adding up their pensions and hoping to abandon ship before the US military is catastrophically killed in the next war. Which it will be, if nothing changes, mark my words. Across the military, standards are dropping faster than a Greg Maddux sinker; as lackeys, perfumed princes, feather merchants and cultural Marxist, Obama holdouts do their best to make the US Military the Laughing Stock of the World. Standards are hitting new lows across the board in the military, in order to fuel...

A lot has been written about the Pentagon's plan to move its computing operations onto the cloud. The contract to do the work is said to be worth $1 billion in just the first year to the firm that wins the bid, and billions more after that. The contract is sole source - meaning one company would be responsible for designing and maintaining the contracted services for at least a decade and probably in virtual perpetuity - so it's no surprise rumors about the bid being rigged are flying around. There's a lot at stake for the winners and the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — It looks like President Donald Trump is getting the military parade he wants in Washington — though he may get no tanks for the effort.A Pentagon planning memo issued Thursday and released Friday says the parade being planned for Nov. 11, Veterans Day, will “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks — consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.” Big, heavy tanks could tear up District of Columbia streets.But the event will “include a heavy air component at the end of the parade,” meaning lots of airplane flyovers. Older aircraft will be included as available.

Secretary of Defense General James Mattis has done NOTHING to stop the PC insanity and lunatic social engineering polices that are destroying the combat power and fighting spirit of the US military. Physical standards are evaporating to accommodate women in the combat arms and Special Forces. Gay weddings at West Point, NCO's accused of committing 'microaggressions" when disciplining USAF cadets, communist army officers, social justice instructors at West Point, a male pregnancy SOP in the Army, transgender showers, Navy collisions on the high seas, a general fired for calling a woman, 'sweetheart,' no grenade and land nav requirements at army...