A former head of NATO’s Military Committee has slammed the US move against the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) as “extremely dangerous” for Europe. This comes after Washington had suspended its obligations under the agreement that ended the arms race between the East and West back in the 1980s.

Former head of the NATO Military Committee and retired Air Force general Harald Kujat has sharply criticised the US for terminating the INF Treaty calling the move “a betrayal of the security of the European allies" in an interview with the Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.

According to the retired commander, the withdrawal from the treaty that ended the nuclear arms race back in 1987 means that the US is saying goodbye to responsibilities to its European allies. This move could be extremely dangerous for Europe, Kujat stated.

Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas. That warhead, the W76-2, is designed to be fitted to a submarine-launched Trident missile, a weapon with a range of more than 7,500 miles. By September, an undisclosed number of warheads will be delivered to the Navy for deployment.

A number of Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers were hospitalized on Tuesday after the jihadist rebels of Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham fired chemical substances towards their garrison in southeast Idlib.

According to the Arab language version of Sputnik News, Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham fired chemical substances towards the Syrian Arab Army’s positions in the Sham Al-Hafa region.

A new bipartisan resolution making its way through the Senate is aimed at blocking Saudi Arabia from having any path toward the creation of nuclear weapons, placing severe restrictions on Saudi activities if they accept a US civilian nuclear cooperation deal.

If the Saudis accept US nuclear cooperation, the resolution would forbid them from any uranium enrichment, and from any attempted reprocessing of plutonium produced in their reactors. These are the two primary ways nuclear arms could be produced.

The Trump Administration is reportedly in the process of making exactly such a cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia, with Energy Secretary Rick Perry in quiet talks on sharing US civilian nuclear technology with them.

Congressional anger at the Saudis for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi has fueled a lot of resolutions on US-Saudi relations, trying to place additional limits on Saudi access to US technology, to prevent abuses in the future.

Russia issued a mirror-like response to the US decision to suspend the INF Treaty in order to officially exit it in 6 months later. However, Moscow assured that it would not deploy weapons violating the historic accord even if developed them until such US-made weapons appear in Europe and other regions.

The alliance has no plans to deploy new ground-based systems with nuclear weapons in Europe, even following the termination of the INF Treaty, NATO's Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller said in an interview with the German news outlet Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the bloc was getting prepared for a potential cessation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, but it didn't want a new arms race and did not plan to deploy new ground-based missiles in Europe.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is speaking at a press conference in Brussels during the first day of the meeting between the defence ministers of the NATO member states.

The event comes after earlier in February, the United States said it was suspending its obligations under the INF Treaty starting from 2 February and would begin the withdrawal process, which would be completed within six months unless Moscow remedied its alleged violations of the bilateral arms control deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin later announced that Moscow was also suspending its obligations under the treaty in response to the US move.

Perhaps out of humiliation over the ongoing spectacular tragicomedy that is Brexit, and in desperate need of a distraction from her domestic political troubles, Theresa May has taken a page out of the the US neocon playbook, and has decided to send Britain’s new aircraft carrier to China’s backyard in what The Times has dubbed "a show of strength" - just in case Beijing is unclear how to respond to this hilarious development - because apparently the UK believes it is a US stunt-double when it comes to sending Beijing messages about its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.

Tehran has brushed off US calls to pull its forces out of Middle East countries, saying that it is the ‘enemy’ Washington who should go back home. It comes as Iran marks 40 years since the Islamic Revolution.
As the US’ own forces start to withdraw from Syria, Washington is increasingly worried that Tehran is getting too entrenched in the war-torn country. The US has repeatedly lambasted Iran for its presence in Syria, where Tehran maintains ‘military advisers.’

On Monday, the deputy head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired back at Washington: “The enemy cannot ask us to leave the region. They must leave the region.”

“We will help any Muslim anywhere in the world,” Brigadier General Hossein Salami added.

It’s not the first time that Iran has rejected US demands to curb its ‘influence.’ Last week, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, warned: “Whether they want to or not, the Americans must leave Syria.”

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen launched a targeting operation in the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, Saudi state TV reported on Saturday.

The operation targeted a location for storing and preparing drones and launch vehicles in Sanaa.

The coalition added that the operation conformed to international law and that measures were taken to protect civilians.

During a Wednesday night interview with FOX Business host Trish Regan, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made several statements that raised eyebrows, such as claiming that Cuba had invaded Venezuela and “taken control” of the Venezuela’s “security apparatus” and that U.S. sanctions illegally imposed on Venezuela “aren’t aimed at the Venezuelan people.”

However, the most surprising claim Pompeo made in the interview was that Hezbollah and Iran were “active” in Venezuela, presenting a national security “risk for America.”

After accusing China, Cuba and Russia of interfering with U.S. efforts to install U.S.-funded opposition figure Juan Guaidó and oust current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Pompeo made the following assertion:

The United States has sued Lockheed Martin Corp, Lockheed Martin Services Inc, and Mission Support Alliance LLC, as well as a Lockheed executive for alleged false claims and kickbacks on a multibillion-dollar contract to clean up a nuclear site, the Justice Department said on Friday.

The complaint alleges Lockheed paid more than $1 million to Mission Support Alliance executives in order to win a $232 million subcontract for providing management and technology support at the Hanford, Washington site from 2010 through the middle of 2016 at inflated rates.

It also says the defendants lied about the amount of profit included in Lockheed's billing rates.

A Lockheed Martin spokeswoman denied the allegations, saying the company "rejects the suggestion that the corporation or its executives engaged in any wrongdoing. Lockheed Martin will defend this matter vigorously."

A $500-million project to develop an American electromagnetic railgun, in the makings for over a decade, should be used as a failed “case study” on how not to develop new weapons systems, a top US admiral has said.
“I would say that railgun is kind of the case study that would say 'This is how innovation maybe shouldn't happen,'” the chief of naval operations, Adm. John Richardson, told the Atlantic Council. “It's been around, I think, for about 15 years, maybe 20. So ‘rapid’ doesn't come to mind when you’re talking about timeframes like that.”

The futuristic weapon has been in development since 2005 and already cost the US taxpayer a whopping $500 million – and is not expected to enter service in the foreseeable future, if ever, the admiral admitted. Originally the Pentagon envisioned installing the completed weapon on Zumwalt-class destroyers by the mid-2020s.

Having started on Monday, the US Army continues its war drills across the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area through Saturday with the goal of enhancing Army Special Forces skills by "operating in urban environments", Army Special Operations Command said in a statement.

“The local terrain and training facilities in Los Angeles provide the Army with unique locations and simulates urban environments the service members may encounter when deployed overseas,” the Army told CBS.

Downtown Los Angeles residents were shocked Monday night when a fleet of Boeing A/MH-6M Little Bird and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters swooped in around them.

This is not the first time residents of a major metropolitan area across the US have experienced a military exercise. For instance, in 2015, Texas residents prepared for Jade Helm 15, an army training exercise which took place in multiple states.

Russia has again slammed the United States for being in breach of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) after the US announced last Friday that it's suspending all obligations under the treaty in 180 days, during which time Moscow till has a chance to return to compliance. But this week in an apparent continuing tit-for-tat blame game, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) summoned the US military attaché in Moscow to issue its own ultimatum.

The MoD reportedly told the US diplomatic representative that the US is in breach, and that it could return to compliance through elimination of its cruise missile launchpads and attack drones — the latter which the Russians said fit the definition of a “land-based cruise missile” under a different form, in accord with the Reagan-era deal.

The message was delivered on Wednesday via a treaty-related memo, the contents of which were first reported by RT as follows:

RUSSIA, the United States and France have test-launched nuclear-capable missiles within hours of one another as fears rise of a return to a Cold War-era arms race amid the abandonment of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The United States plans to begin deploying modified nuclear weapons in Europe in the first half of 2020, said Anatoly Sidorov, UNTSC chief of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

“The US intentions are to further exacerbate the international situation is demonstrated by its advanced aviation nuclear weapons mass production program, approved at the end of 2018,” Sidorov told a news conference.

He added that “the deployment of these weapons at Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian and Turkish air bases, where about 200 previous generation unmanned aerial bombs are stored, is expected to begin in the first half of 2020.”

The head of Pentagon policy John Rood said that because the US has been in full compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty it has no plans to create or deploy an intermediate range missile system.

The Undersecretary of Defense for Policy made his statement after Russia indicated on Tuesday that it will also abandon the INF after the US withdrawal, with plans to develop two new land-based missile launch systems by 2021 to counter US developments in its missile capabilities.

“We don’t have an intermediate range system or something like that that we would, that we’re talking about deploying at this time. We’re going to look at our options in this regard,” Rood said, cited by the Hill.

Those who have not had a chance to experience all the "beauty" of the arms race of the 1960s and the 1970s are incredibly "lucky" today, as they can now understand what it feels like to live within a 4-10 minute flight of a cruise missile to Moscow.

The hand-over ceremony on Wednesday in Merignac, in southwestern France, where the planes are built, was attended by Qatar Defence Minister Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah and Dassault Aviation chief Eric Trappier.

Qatar ordered 24 of the fighters in 2015, adding 12 more last year. It also has an option to buy 36 more.

The twin-engine fighter has been in service with the French Air Force since 2004. France has also sold Mirage F1, Alpha Jets and Mirage 2000 fighters to Qatar.

After failing to sell the Rafale abroad for several years, France finally won a contract from Egypt in 2015 for 24 jets, followed by the sale to Qatar.

In September 2016, India also agreed to buy 36 of the fighters.

Qatar has upped its defence spending after being diplomatically isolated by its Gulf neighbours.

Russia is set to build a new range of land-based cruise and hypersonic missiles after Washington tore up a 1987 nuclear treaty.

Vladimir Putin has ordered a ground-launched version of the Kalibr cruise missile to be built by 2020, adapting a weapon currently launched from warships and submarines.

Moscow will also ask its rocket scientists to develop a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile, amid growing fears of a new arms race with the United States.

For more than 30 years, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has been one of the cornerstones of the international security system. This ended on February 2, 2019 when the US officially suspended its participation in the Treaty. Washington said that it will fully terminate the treaty in 6 months if Russia does not comply with its ultimatum – the “verifiable” destruction of what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described as “INF-violating missiles, their launchers and associated equipment”. US President Donald Trump said in an official statement that the US “will move forward with developing” its “own military response options” and will work with NATO members and other allies “to deny Russia any military advantage from its unlawful conduct.” By this statement, Trump in fact announced that the US is restoring production and deployment of INF-banned weapons.

The placement of US missile shield launchers in Japan violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

"As for the INF Treaty and the Kuril Islands, there is a certain link here, since the placement of the US global missile shield launchers on Japan’s soil is among the problems that exist in our relationship with our Japanese neighbors in the sphere of security," Lavrov said in his speech at the Russian-Tajik Slavic University.

As we previewed below, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the US will withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty immediately, prompting threats of a Russian "response" from Moscow.

According to RT, Pompeo said the US could return to compliance with the treaty if Moscow meets Washington's demands within the next 180 days. To convince the US to back down, Washington has insisted that Russia cease development of a new cruise missile. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it's in violation of the treaty.

The withdrawal, which has been expected for months, will formally take place on Saturday.

The US’ seeming unwillingness to turn a sympathetic ear to Russia's reasoning with regard to the 1987 INF Treaty could be not connected with Moscow's alleged violations of the pact, scholars told Sputnik, commenting on the Russian Ministry of Defence's presentation of the 9M729 missile, which was snubbed by NATO officials.

The primary motivation behind Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is that China is not a participant of the pact, says Rajeswari Pillai, senior fellow? and head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative? Observer Research Foundation.

Speaking to Sputnik, Pillai pointed out that both Russia and the US have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty. However, "the real problem with the INF is not so much about the violations by Russia and the US, but that China is outside the treaty", he suggested.

Israel’s Prime Minister said on Sunday that the General Election campaign would not stop his government from bombing the Gaza Strip or Iran, Anadolu has reported. The election is due to be held in April.

“If calm is not maintained in Gaza, Israel will not hesitate to move against it even during the election period,” Benjamin Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting. “I [also] have a message to the tyrants in Tehran: Israel will continue moving overtly to protect its future.”

The Israeli occupation authorities continue to fear any Palestinian retaliation for the Israel Defence Forces’ ongoing aggression and killing of unarmed demonstrators taking part in the Great March of Return protests along the nominal border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

The meetings in Beijing during January 30-31 between Washington, Russia, China, France and the UK apparently failed to preserve the commitment to prohibit intermediate range nuclear weapons. Washington stuck to its determination to withdraw from the historic agreement of Reagan and Gorbachev to destroy all land-based intermediate range nuclear missiles. This US withdrawal from a nuclear weapons reduction agreement follows the George W. Bush/Cheney regime’s withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Indeed, since the Clinton regime, every US president has produced worsening trust between the two major nuclear powers.

No good can come of this as Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the Beijing meeting.

Following the US' move to suspend its obligations under INF treaty, the Russian Defence Ministry on Saturday said that Washington started preparations for the production of medium- and short-range missiles prohibited under the INF deal two years before accusing Moscow of violating the accord.

The Russian Defence Ministry has released satellite images of Raytheon Corporation’s plant, saying the facility has been prepared for the production of missiles prohibited under the INF deal.

The picture, dated back to 3 December 2018, shows the factory measuring 4150×2300 metres. According to the ministry of defence, the complex contains three acting production units and one that is still under construction, as well as a test area, electric station, and semi-underground storage facilities.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has effectively collapsed following the US announcing Friday that it's suspending all obligations under the treaty. Predictably Moscow's response has been swift, with President Vladimir Putin saying in a meeting with his foreign and defense ministers that Russia will now pursue missile development previously banned under its terms.

Putin said "ours will be a mirror response" in a tit-for-tat move that the Russian president ultimately blames on Washington's years-long "systematic" undermining of the agreement.

“Our US partners say that they are ceasing their participation in the treaty, and we are doing the same,” the Russian president said. “They say that they are doing research and testing [on new weapons] and we will do the same thing.”

The collapse of the INF Treaty, conceded by the Kremlin on Saturday, is the result of decades-long “strategic destabilization of the nuclear balance” by the US, which wants a new international order, and perhaps a fresh arms race.
On Friday, Washington said it was suspending its participation in the 1987 agreement for 180 days, for alleged non-compliance by the other signatory, Moscow. The next morning, Vladimir Putin, flanked by two senior ministers, bemoaned that Russia “could not save” the milestone Cold War arms restriction agreement, despite generous offers to up its transparency.

According to Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann, a geopolitics analyst from Paris 8 University, this is the exact outcome Washington wanted, which already decided “beforehand to get out of the treaty” regardless of concessions.

In a desperate attempt to cover its tracks, the propaganda network linked to Britain’s security services, the Integrity Initiative (II), has wiped its website and locked its Twitter account “pending an investigation into the theft of data.”

The decision was taken shortly after the Anonymous hacking group released new II documents targeting Russia as supposedly the greatest threat to world peace, based on claims that it is the country most likely to use nuclear weapons.

The documents reveal yet more of the disinformation campaign used to justify NATO preparations for war with Russia, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Minutes from a joint workshop of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS), which runs the II, and the US government-funded Center for Naval Analyses discuss what would happen if the “West” intervened to “push back” a Russian advance in the case of a localized conflict.

The world’s approximately 23,300 nuclear weapons are stored at an estimated 111 locations in 14 countries, according to an overview produced by FAS and NRDC.

Nearly half of the weapons are operationally deployed with delivery systems capable of launching on short notice.

The overview is published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and includes the July 2009 START memorandum of understanding data. A previous version was included in the annual report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials published last month.

This is not the first time President Trump has torn up an international agreement.

But his decision to withdraw from the long-standing Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia is a milestone – and a disturbing one. After all, this is the treaty that helped bring the Cold War to a close.

It was signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to ban a dangerous new generation of intermediate and short-range weapons with a range of between 300 and 3,400 miles.

Launched from trucks on either side of the Iron Curtain, these weapons were hard for the enemy to find and destroy. More to the point, they introduced the terrifying idea of 'small' and more frequent nuclear conflicts.

The statement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said Washington was suspending its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and would withdraw from it in six months was no sensation. He only conveyed a decision that had been made a long time ago, Head of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said on Friday.

US suspends INF Treaty obligations — Pompeo
"Unfortunately, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement didn't stir up any sensation. The US confirmed its intention to put the final nail into the coffin of another important arms control pillar," Kosachev told reporters. "We can only say that Pompeo voiced that decision, which had been made a long time ago, before putting forward an ultimatum to Russia, so no action whatsoever by Moscow could have influenced that."

Moscow reserves the right to take measures to respond to Washington’s suspension of its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) from February 2, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

Yemen's warring factions began preparations for a fresh escalation of fighting raging over the control of the strategic Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, ignoring efforts aimed at cessation of hostilities.

The calls for an escalation in fighting between the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and Yemeni government forces added angers to the agreement reached under the auspices of the United Nations in Sweden in December last year.

Senior leaders of the Houthi group based in Sanaa vowed to intensify military battles against the Saudi-led coalition and its local allies just in case the implementation of Sweden agreement failed.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of the Houthi highest revolutionary committee, said in a statement posted in Twitter that capturing the strategic port city of Hodeidah will not be easy for the Saudi-backed government forces.

The meetings in Beijing during January 30-31 between Washington, Russia, China, France and the UK apparently failed to preserve the commitment to prohibit intermediate range nuclear weapons. Washington stuck to its determination to withdraw from the historic agreement of Reagan and Gorbachev to destroy all land-based intermediate range nuclear missiles. This US withdrawal from a nuclear weapons reduction agreement follows the George W. Bush/Cheney regime’s withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Indeed, since the Clinton regime, every US president has produced worsening trust between the two major nuclear powers.

No good can come of this as Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the Beijing meeting.

Update: As we previewed below, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the US will withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty immediately, prompting threats of a Russian "response" from Moscow.

According to RT, Pompeo said the US could return to compliance with the treaty if Moscow meets Washington's demands within the next 180 days. To convince the US to back down, Washington has insisted that Russia cease development of a new cruise missile. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it's in violation of the treaty.

The world first got wind of Russia's massive, 20-ton stealth drone fighter last summer when Russian defense industry sources told TASS, a Russian state-owned media outlet:

According to the defense official, the sixth generation jet program “has not yet taken full shape, its main features are already known.”

“First of all, it should be unmanned and capable of performing any combat task in an autonomous regime. In this sense, the stealth drone will become the prototype of the sixth generation fighter jet,’ the source said, adding that the drone will be able to “take off, fulfill its objectives and return to the airfield.”

“However, it will not receive the function of decision-making regarding the use of weapons – this will be decided by a human,” he said.

Well, as LiveJournal now reports, new images of the first prototype of the unmanned recon-strike drone - nicknamed "Hunter" - have been taken at the airdrome of the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant.

U.S. intelligence officials confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Tuesday, that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons in violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement, and furthermore had no strategic plans to do so.

This report from the US intelligence community indicate that Israel’s Netanyahu and his American cohort, Donald Trump, have deliberately misinformed the world regarding Iranian nuclear capability. The state of Israel, which is estimated to have in excess of more than 400 undeclared nuclear warheads must be compared to Iran which is not a nuclear weapon state. Who, therefore, is the threat to world peace?

On 4 December, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave Russia two months to "return to compliance" with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty or Washington would leave the accord on February 2.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated Friday that Russia's military capabilities guarantee the country's security irrespective of the US moves on the INF Treaty.

"I think this [US withdrawing from the INF] is an inevitable prospect, and there will be no deviations from the path stated by President Trump and his national security assistant John Bolton when he was in Moscow. This game is played, the Americans will eventually reject the contract", he added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that the United States' decision to produce a low-yield nuclear warhead will only make a nuclear war more likely.

The US National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) confirmed Monday that it had started to produce a new low-yield nuclear warhead following President Donald Trump’s order last year to equip the Pentagon with tactical weapons that could be used in more realistic combat scenarios.

The new warhead was one of the three key changes introduced in the Trump administration's so-called Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The other changes included development of a new sea-launched cruise missile and increased plutonium pit production over the next decade.

During a joint press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Mohamed Ali al-Hakim in Moscow, Lavrov said Wednesday that Russia had already warned about the potential risks of weapons upon the unveiling of the NPR.

Representatives of five major nuclear powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States or "nuclear five" met in Beijing on Wednesday.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the meeting that the level of potential conflict in the world has reached a dangerous point.

"The situation in the sphere of international security has not stabilized and even continued to deteriorate. The level of conflict potential has reached a very dangerous point", Ryabkov said.

Given that China's President Xi Jinping started the year by obliquely warning the US to stay out of Taiwan's business, perhaps it's not surprising that Senators are starting to join US military commanders in warning Americans not to underestimate the threat posed by China's unprecedented military buildup in the Pacific.

In the latest - and perhaps the most stark - warning to date, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma - who recently took over as the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - warned during a hearing about the challenges posed by China and Russia on Tuesday that people need to better understand the threats both countries pose to the international world order that America helped create, according to the Military Times.

Russia, China and several other nations are developing powerful high-altitude nuclear bombs that can produce super-electromagnetic pulse (EMP) waves capable of knocking out critical electronic infrastructure, according to several declassified 2017 reports from the now-defunct Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack (see below).

"Foreign adversaries may aptly consider nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military," reads the report, which notes how foreign actors could use EMP attacks virtually anywhere in the world.

The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear conflict.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in an email it had started manufacturing the weapon at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, as ordered by Donald Trump’s nuclear posture review (NPR) last year.

The NNSA said the first of the new warheads had come off the production line and that it was on schedule to deliver the first batch – an unspecified number referred to as “initial operational capability” – before the end of September, according to the email, first sent in response to an enquiry from Exchange Monitor, which covers the nuclear weapons complex.

Representatives of five major nuclear powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States or "nuclear five" met in Beijing on Wednesday.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the meeting that the level of potential conflict in the world has reached a dangerous point.

"The situation in the sphere of international security has not stabilized and even continued to deteriorate. The level of conflict potential has reached a very dangerous point", Ryabkov said.

According to Ryabkov, Russia is witnessing a decline in strategic stability in the world against the background of some states' attempts to shatter the architecture of non-proliferation regimes and arms control.

With the US poised to begin its withdrawal from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty on February 2, there’s been an uptick in media focus on arms control and the nuclear weapons, even as the US public remains largely disengaged.

The INF treaty, signed by the US and Soviet Union in 1987, led to the elimination of nuclear and non-nuclear ground-launched ballistic and cruises missiles with a range of roughly 310 to 3,410 miles (500 to 5,500 km). Since 2013, however, the US has accused Russia of violating the treaty at least 30 times, pointing to Russia’s SSC-8 ground-launched cruise missile as posing “significant risks to Euro-Atlantic security.” Meanwhile, Russia denies violating the INF.

In December, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued an ultimatum: the US would “suspend [treaty] obligations” in 60 days if Russian compliance could not be verified.

The Washington Post broke the story [1] on Wednesday, January 23, that satellite images suggested Saudi Arabia had constructed its first-known ballistic missile factory. Paul Sonne, reporting for The Washington Post, notes: “If operational, the suspected factory at a missile base in al-Watah, southwest of Riyadh, would allow Saudi Arabia to manufacture its own ballistic missiles.”

The report adds:

“The ballistic missile manufacturing complex — which satellite images suggest broke ground in 2013 when King Salman was defense minister — highlights the nation’s intention to make its own advanced missiles after years of seeking to purchase them abroad.”

A meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels ended Friday failing to agree on the continued dispute surrounding the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, leaving the matter unresolved. US officials indicate they’ll withdraw from INF in the next two weeks.

The entire issue surrounding the INF is a claimed Russian violation based on a new missile system and US speculation about the missile’s hypothetical maximum range. NATO backed the US claims of a violation, and there’s really been no progress since.

Russia has offered some access to the missiles, including putting one on display publicly in Moscow for foreign military attaches and foreign journalists to review. The US insisted that this wouldn’t be enough.

The US says they will ditch the treaty if Russia doesn’t end the violation, and at this point that’s only doable by totally disarming their short-range ballistic missiles in the next week, something they clearly won’t do.

On January 17, IRmep filed a 59-page brief (PDF HTML) in a lawsuit demanding release of a series of secret presidential letters promising not to force Israel to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) or publicly discuss Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

I do not for one second doubt that Americans are feeling more stressed and suffering more health-degrading symptoms as a result than they were prior to Trump’s election. But Pacific Standard and its “growing body of research” ignore the most obvious and significant culprit behind this phenomenon which is tearing people’s health to shreds: the mass media which has been deliberately fanning the flames of Trump panic.

The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia’s natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.

Chinese military forces have deployed multiple units armed with anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles that can destroy scores of American satellites, according to a Pentagon intelligence report.

The new report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, known as NASIC, revealed that People's Liberation Army units have begun training with the satellite-killing missiles.

The report warns that China, along with Russia, has developed an array of space arms designed to challenge U.S. space superiority. The report was made public last month.

The report for first time reveals that Chinese military units already are conducting training for space attacks with anti-satellites missiles. Russia also is developing a new anti-satellite missile the report said.

Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari said that it was time that the United Nations Security Council took action to stop constant Israeli attacks on Syrian territory, adding that Damascus might exercise its right to self-defence and respond to the Israeli attack on Damascus Airport with a symmetric strike on Tel Aviv Airport.

"Isn't it is the right time for this council to take the necessary measures to stop the repeated Israeli aggression against the territories of my country or should we attract the attention of the war makers in this council be exercising our legitimate right for self-defence and respond to the Israeli aggression against the Damascus International Airport by launching an aggression against Tel Aviv Airport?" Jaafari said speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president wrote. He later expanded on that sentiment in a video message, posted on Twitter. “Our boys, our young men and women, are coming home now,” Trump noted. “We won.”

But a recent attack on U.S. forces in Syria, carried out by a suicide bomber which ISIS claimed was operating on its behalf, has led to an outpouring of criticism of Trump’s precipitous decision. “ISIS has claimed credit for killing American troops in Syria today,” Senator Marco Rubio tweeted in the aftermath of the attack. “If true, it is a tragic reminder that ISIS not been defeated and is transforming into a dangerous insurgency. This is no time to retreat from the fight against ISIS. Will only embolden & strengthen them.”

Second ad for Gantz includes 'kill counter' related to 2014 Gaza War.

Running for parliament in the upcoming April vote, former Israeli Army Chief Benny Gantz has steered heavily into his military history, and large numbers of people killed and damage done in the 2014 Gaza War.

One of his videos focuses on aerial footage of a destroyed Gaza neighborhood, bragging that “parts of Gaza were returned to the stone ages,” and bragging the devastation led to “3-5 years of quiet.”

A second video for Gantz shows Palestinians attending funerals with a “kill-counter” prominently displayed, going up to 1,364, the number Israel reports to have killed in 2014. The video concludes “only the strong win.”

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has constructed a new, underground facility (UGF) about 31 miles from the India-China border, and 37 miles from the Indian Army’s forward posts at Demchok in Ladakh.

According to The Print, satellite imagery identified a deeply buried hardened target (DBHT) under construction outside the town of Ngari, also known as Shiquanhe in Mandarin.

Construction started in December 2016, about six months before the 2017 China–India border standoff near the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction in the east.

The Print, specified that special personnel are being used instead of locals, to maintain secrecy and security of the project.

The UGF appears to have four large tunnel entrances and three small ones; all have hardened entrances with reinforced concrete. Judging by the images, the openings would soon be covered with other material to withstand a direct military strike.

Trump's new missile defense plan will be a bonanza for political patronage in Washington, and a huge fail for peace...

President Donald Trump’s plan to escalate efforts in Ballistic Missile Defense (BDM), including the introduction of space-based weapons, should not be viewed in isolation.

President Donald Trump took to a Pentagon podium on Thursday to paint a picture of a gathering storm — a not-too-distant storm of long-range, defense-evading enemy missiles.

“All over, foreign adversaries, competitors, and rogue regimes are steadily enhancing their missile arsenals…Their arsenals are getting bigger and stronger,” Trump said. “They’re increasing their lethal strike capabilities, and they’re focused on developing long-range missiles that could reach targets within the United States.”

Welcome to US direct investment in the military-industrial complex.

President Donald Trump has approved direct federal investment in suppliers of American bomb parts and chemicals, part of as much as $250 million in direct investments by the Pentagon, reports The Military Times.

The government funding for those suppliers, under the Defense Production Act, is meant to lift a sub sector of the defense-industrial base that the Pentagon deems weak. It’s also a significant step in broader plans within the administration to remedy fragile markets and foreign dependencies among the military’s suppliers, according to the Times.

“There will be many more of these to come to address gaps and vulnerabilities in the defense-industrial base,” Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Industrial Policy, said. “This is exactly what we should be doing and an example of how the administration is more attentive to the issue.”

On January 14th 1994 in Moscow the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, and the US signed the tripartite declaration for the liquidation of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Under the treaty 176 intercontinental missiles and 1500 nuclear warheads on the territory of Ukraine had to be liquidated.

One might ask what has Donbass got to do with this?

The 2019 Missile Defense Review advocates destabilizing policies that the United States should reject and concentrate instead on negotiating strategic stability with Russia and China, the Arms Control Association (ACA) said in a new paper.

"[T]he United States should pursue wide-ranging dialogues with Russia and China on strategic stability, including the impact of missile defense, and forswear particularly destabilizing steps, such as pursuing space-based interceptors," the ACA said in the paper that was published on Thursday.

The Trump administration should also scrap the testing of SM-3 Block IIA interceptors against intercontinental ballistic missiles, the paper, "Trump’s Dangerous Missile Defense Buildup," said.

The new US missile defense strategy is a boondoggle for the military-industrial complex, which will drive the US into more debt and can bring misery upon multiple nations by fueling an arms race, ex-US Congressman Ron Paul said.
Plans to weaponize space with a new layer of sensors unveiled by Trump as part of his administration's Missile Defense Review is an unnecessary and hard-to-implement project that is sure to enrich the military-industrial lobby, Paul told RT.

"The biggest issue here is someone is going to make a lot of money on it. It reminds me of Star Wars. They've never really developed it, but people got excited about it," Paul said, drawing parallels between President Donald Trump's new endeavor and former President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative program.

In what looks to be a highly ambitious and even more highly cost-prohibitive scheme, President Trump has announced his intention to greatly expand US missile defense systems, with a major focus on putting them in space.

During his announcement Thursday at the Pentagon, Trump set out his goals, saying that he wants “to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States – anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”

The Pentagon has had space-based interceptors on its wish list for some time, but between that and drones with lasers on them, they were far short of the sort of total, planet-wide coverage that President Trump is talking about.

A space-centric missile defense system must inevitably draw comparisons to the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly called Star Wars, of the 1980s, a controversial and hugely expensive program that also sought space-based interceptors.

The US is demanding that other countries reduce their research into arms development, but is continuing the development of their own weapons of mass destruction, she said.

Thursday's presidential visit to the Pentagon for the long awaited Missile Defense Review — the first such congressionally mandated assessment of the state of the nation's defense systems since 2010 — gave Trump yet another chance to chastise NATO allies on his as yet unmet demand that they "step up" defense spending. He also hinted that he plans to stick by his recent deeply controversial decision to pull out of the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.

“We are committed to establishing a missile defense program that can shield every city in the United States and we will never negotiate away our right to do this,” President Trump said.

Releasing secret presidential letters that promise not to officially recognize Israel’s nuclear weapons program or pressure Israel to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons would harm US national security. So claimed John P. Fitzpatrick, Senior Director of the Information Security Management Directorate at the National Security Council in a December 18, 2018 affidavit submitted to DC federal court.

The affidavit supports a motion by the National Archives and Records Administration to dismiss a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking two of four letters signed by incoming US presidents – under intense pressure by Israel’s government – to maintain a Nixon-era policy of "strategic ambiguity" towards Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

Near the United Nations Glass Palace in New York, there is a metallic sculpture entitled “Evil Defeated by Good”, representing Saint George transfixing a dragon with his lance. It was donated by the USSR in 1990 to celebrate the INF Treaty concluded with the USA in 1987, which banned land-based short- and mid-range nuclear missiles (a reach of between 500 and 5,000 km). Symbolically, the body of the dragon is in fact made with pieces of US Pershing-2 ballistic missiles (originally based in West Germany) and Soviet SS-20 missiles (originally based in the USSR).

But the nuclear dragon, which in the sculpture is shown as dying, is now being reborn. Thanks to Italy and other countries of the European Union, which, at the United Nations General Assembly, voted against the resolution presented by Russia on the “Preservation and Implementation of the INF Treaty”, rejected by 46 to 43 with 78 abstentions.

While the corporate media doubled down on the prospect of Trump’s wall emergency, the neocon infection inside the floundering Trump administration spread. John Bolton appointed one of his buddies from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) to a key post.

Richard Goldberg is an ideal selection for a neocon-ized National Security Council, a forum created in 1947 as then President Truman went about building the national security state. The NSC drives US foreign policy—and with Bolton stomping around the White House unbound, that foreign policy is primarily about Israel and its enemies, although emphasis is shifting ominously toward confrontation with China and Russia.

The United States Navy is likely to hit a goal set in 2013 to prepare the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter for combat by February 2019, according to a new report.

Snafus with the potential to derail the F-35 program have not happened in recent months, Military.com reported Friday. The Navy's Joint Strike Fighter Fleet Integration Office is "confident," therefore, that it will meet program milestones "as planned," spokeswoman Lt. Lauren Chatmas said in a Friday statement to military.com.

An F-35C Lightning II carrier variant joint strike fighter assigned to the Salty Dogs of Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 launches off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69).

US Navy: F-35C ‘at Risk’ of Missing Another Key Schedule Milestone

What do US forces in Syria do when the Commander-in-Chief orders a "full" and "immediate" draw down of troops from the country? They conduct a rare surface-to-surface missile test with their "rebel" partners on the ground of course.

An exclusive report from Middle East news site Al Masdar finds the following based on a video of the missile test uploaded to opposition social media on June 3rd, though it's unknown precisely when the test was carried out:

The U.S.-backed rebel forces carried out a rare missile test in the Al-Tanf region of southeastern Homs province recently.

U.S.-backed "Revolutionary Commandos" reportedly conducted this missile test in the Al-Tanf Zone that is located along the Iraqi border.

Beijing has released a video showing its cutting-edge ‘Sky Hawk’ UAV in flight for the very first time. The experimental ‘invisible’ military drone is designed to up China’s game in combat and recon missions.
In a video released by the state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday, the drone can be seen lifting off from an airstrip and landing in an undisclosed location. The broadcast also contained animated footage of the aircraft maneuvering in the air and undergoing maintenance on the ground.

A video featuring China's flying saucer-like stealth drone the Sky Hawk was shown for the first time on CCTV on Sat, with experts saying the technologies mastered by Chinese developers will allow the drone fly faster, farther and escape detection. https://t.co/AeTSjn7vHA pic.twitter.com/KQoi9gDKWt

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 6, 2019

NUMEC was launched and managed by Zalman Shapiro, a nuclear chemist credited with solving engineering issues for naval nuclear propulsion in the 1950s. His partner, David Luzer Lowenthal was a smuggler with murky ties to Israeli intelligence and industrialist. Luzer organized the emergence of NUMEC from a complicated merger and acquired facilities for NUMEC in a defunct steel mill in the middle of Apollo, Pennsylvania. The Zionist Organization of America, originally chartered to "do any and all things that may be necessary" to support Israel, supplied three of NUMEC’s executives. Zalman Shapiro, Pittsburgh region president of ZOA, Morton Chatkin and Ivan J. Novick who became ZOA’s national president.

In the coming clash between President Trump’s $750 billion defense budget and House Democrats’ desire to cut Pentagon spending, especially on nuclear weapons, there will be tremendous fiscal pressure to shortchange the almost $30 billion annual cost to modernize America’s strategic deterrent. The ideological cover for such penny-wise, pound-foolish cuts is the so-called Global Zero movement to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

But in reality, the global-zero idealists practice a dangerous double standard: They push the US to unilaterally cut its nuclear arsenal even as they ignore or excuse nuclear buildups by Russia, China, North Korea, and (under the table) Iran. Even if they were consistent, their pursue of zero nuclear weapons would still make no sense when none of the nine existing nuclear powers has any interest in completely disarming.

Russia is deploying long-range, precision cruise missiles to the western Atlantic that American defense officials say will allow Moscow to target Washington and other East Coast cities with conventional or nuclear attacks.

Moscow is adding Kalibr land attack cruise missiles to both warships and missile submarines that Moscow plans to use in Atlantic patrols near the United States, sorties that were once routine during the Cold War.

A 39-year-old Russian citizen has been arrested in Saipan for attempting to export military-grade equipment, such as night-vision rifle scopes and ammunition primers, to Russia without obtaining a proper permit.
Dmitrii Makarenko was arrested by an FBI agent on Saturday, December 29 in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The Russian national was taken into custody on an indictment filed in the Southern District of Florida Court back in June 2017.

The indictment alleges that Makarenko, reportedly a resident of the Russian Far East city of Vladivostok, and his 'co-conspirator' Vladimir Nevidomy, a resident of Florida, acted in concert to transfer military-grade equipment to Russia between April and November 2013.

Overall, Makarenko has been indicted on eight counts and is facing 45 years behind bars if found guilty.

On Friday China unveiled video from a successful test of its most powerful non-nuclear weapon, dubbed the "Mother of All Bombs" in reference to a weapon previously used by US forces in Afghanistan. The official Xinhua news agency published details of the weapon for the first time while calling it the "Chinese version of the 'Mother of all Bombs'".

It is reportedly 5-6 meters long and its massive weight means the delivery vehicle, in this case China's H-6K long range nuclear capable bomber, can only carry one at a time.

While China has denied that it is a thermobaric bomb — an explosive that uses oxygen in the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion — its incredible size mimics the 22,000-pound GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb that US forces dropped in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province targeting a jihadist hideout tunnel complex in April of 2017.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement preemptively warning Iran against following through on a plan to launch rockets into space, saying that they are required to cease all nuclear-related activities and that the US will not allow them to put international security at risk.

Pompeo further accused Iran of being in defiant of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, saying that Iran must not launch any rockets into space as a result.

Iranian officials dismissed these allegations, saying that no UN resolution prohibits them from sending vehicles into space. This is not the first time this has been a subject of dispute between the US and Iran on the UNSC 2231.

TsNIITochMash, the Russian industrial design bureau tasked with designing and manufacturing new weapons for the modernization of Russian Armed Forces, has just leaked out new schematics of its next-generation air droppable artillery piece, slated for testing by the Airborne Forces and the Naval Infantry later this year.

The image of the new "Lotus," a self-propelled, tracked artillery system, appeared in the design bureau's 2019 corporate calendar, was leaked on social media via the bureau's Instagram account, and was first reported by Sputnik.

Washington’s hegemonic aims, under Republicans and undemocratic Dems, represent the greatest threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

Hours before the New Year's ball dropped in Times Square, US Strategic Command published - then swiftly deleted - a seemingly insensitive tweet making light of the US's violently interventionist foreign policy just weeks after President Trump ordered one of the biggest troop drawdowns in recent memory.

In a play on the annual ball-dropping ritual, StratCom tweeted that "if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger" than the New Year's ball.

A video of B-2 bombers dropping two 30,000-pound conventional weapons during a test run accompanied the video, according to the Associated Press.

Washington’s hegemonic aims represent the greatest threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

At his annual marathon Q & A news conference last week, Vladimir Putin warned about possible nuclear war, a growing threat because of Washington’s reckless geopolitical agenda, including withdrawal from the Iran (JCPOA) nuclear deal and INF Treaty, as well as its reluctance to negotiate extending New Start (April 2010) on reducing and limiting strategic weapons, expiring in February 2021 if not renewed.

Based on bad advice from regime hardliners, Trump falsely called New Start a bad deal favoring Russia. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s even-handed, shifting things to less war and more peace globally.

Last October, John Bolton called for withdrawing from New Start. He convinced Trump to abandon the JCPOA and INF Treaty. He advocates greater US toughness against all sovereign independent countries.

Russia will provide a tit-for-tat response in case of placement of US missiles banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel, published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

"Unfortunately, our European colleagues, whose independence we wish to be reflected in their actions, are not very ready for it and follow the US even when it goes directly against their interests," Lavrov said. "An example: voting against the Russian resolution in support of maintaining the INF treaty."

"We have heard the largest amount of concerns over the US’ unilateral exit from this Treaty in Europe," the minister noted. "However, the entire EU has voted against our offer, that is, basically, in favor of the INF Treaty ceasing to exist and in favor of the recurring threat of placement of US missiles in Europe banned under this Treaty".

Although the glider, able to carry megaton-class nuclear weapon, was presented along with SARMAT missile system tests, super-fast drone torpedoes, cruise missiles with nuclear power plants, the air missile system "Kinzhal" as well as laser and hyper-sonic weapons as one of the newest additions to the Russian arms complex in March, the newspaper claims it to be proof of sabre-rattling by the great powers in the wake of US President Donald Trump announcing his country's withdrawal from the 1987 INF Treaty in October.

What makes Avangard unique is its manoeuverability as the vehicle constantly changes its course and altitude while it flies through the atmosphere, zigzagging on its path to its target, making it impossible to predict the weapon's location, as former Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov revealed. This characteristic ensures that the target this hypersonic missile is actually heading to remains virtually secret, according to the US think tank Rand Corporation.

China has brought to market a hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile, said to be the first of its kind on the international market for buyers seeking a "reliable and affordable deterrence against threats from the sea," according to China.org.

"The system is intended for rapid and precision strikes against medium-size ships, naval task forces, and offshore facilities," said a representative from China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) in November.

According to CASIC, the CM-401 is fitted with a terminal radar guidance unit featuring a nose-mounted gimballed antenna. Once launched, the missile flies along a ballistic trajectory, reaching a near-space altitude. The weapon is stated to have an average speed of Mach 4 and a peak of Mach 6, although it is not clear at what altitudes these speeds are reached. -Janes.com

The missile flies between 20 and 100 kilometers above earth (12 - 62 miles) and maneuvers at hypersonic speeds.

Washington's decision to drop out of the INF has fueled speculation about the return of a full-blown, Cold-War style nuclear arms race, as Russia has reflexively threatened to build up its tactical defenses along Europe's periphery in the face of what's expected to be a buildup of American intermediate-range arms.

But whatever happens between the two nuclear superpowers, Germany wants no part of it.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned this week that the US better not be thinking about stationing its intermediate-range missiles in Germany - or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. For the last 30 years, the treaty has prohibited stationing intermediate-range arms in Europe. Any push to change that would almost certainly be met with "widespread resistance" in Germany, Maas said, so as to avoid a scenario where Europe is put in the middle of a tug-of-war between Russia and the US.

In August, 2010, six months before Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was launched by the Washington NGOs including the NED, the Soros Foundations, Freedom House and others, President Obama signed Presidential Study Directive-11 (PDS-11), ordering Washington government agencies to prepare for “change.” The change was to be a radical policy calling for Washington’s backing for the secret fundamentalist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood sect across the Middle East Muslim world, and with it, the unleashing of a reign of terror that would change the entire world.

According to US Congressional testimony of Peter Hoekstra, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Obama Administration PSD-11 directive–as of March 2017 still classified Top Secret–“ordered a government-wide reassessment of prospects for political reform in the Middle East and of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the process. “

A Grandiose Task Force

By tapping former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan to temporarily replace famed former Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, President Trump may have found a like-minded advocate for the U.S. weapons industry.

Shanahan is a controversial choice. During Shanahan's two-year stint as Mattis's deputy defense secretary, Boeing has landed a series of lucrative military contracts worth $20 billion, on top of the Chicago company's previous deal to build aerial-refueling tankers and naval fighters for the Pentagon.

Mattis' resignation on Thursday came one day after Trump announced, via Twitter, that the terror group known as Islamic State is no longer a threat and the United States will withdraw all 2,000 of its troops from Syria.

Blackwater, the controversial US private security firm, has flagged its intent to resume business, taking out a full-page commercial in the latest edition of Recoil magazine with a chilling message declaring “We are coming.”
The resurrection within the military contractors’ market of notorious Blackwater, which, after numerous scandals and several rebrandings, is now known as Academi, has analysts looking deeper into US intent to withdraw from the wars in the Middle East. The advertisement in Recoil, made public after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation, prompted concerns that president Donald Trump might be seeking to privatize ongoing American engagements in Afghanistan and Syria, following the declared troops' withdrawal from the region.

The Russian Defence Ministry, on special orders from President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday conducted a successful final test launch of a new hypersonic glide missile system ahead of its official deployment in 2019, according to reports from Russian state media. The new weapon, called the Avangard, uses an intercontinental ballistic missile and a hypersonic glide vehicle and can travel 20 times the speed of sound.

In Wednesday's field exercise, the hypersonic weapon was launched from the Dombarovsky Air Base in the southern Ural Mountains. Moscow said the missile successfully struck a designated practice target on the Kura Missile Test Range, more than 3,700 miles away.

“Putin arrived at the National Defense Control Center and gave the command to start the tests,” the Kremlin’s press office said, according to Russian media outlet Sputnik. “The launch was conducted by combat troops of the Strategic Missile Forces from the Dombarovsky launch facility.”