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Pentagon: F-35 won’t have a chance in real combat
Three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (Reuters/Lockheed Martin/Darin Russell)
Fatal flaws within the cockpit of the US military’s most expensive fighter jet ever are causing further problems with the Pentagon’s dubious F-35 program.
Just weeks after a fleet of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters was grounded for reasons unrelated, a new report from the Pentagon warns that any pilot that boards the pricey aircraft places himself in danger without even going into combat.
In a leaked memo from the Defense Department’s director of the Operational Test and Evaluation Directorate to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon official prefaces a report on the F-35 by cautioning that even training missions cannot be safely performed on board the aircraft at this time.
“The training management system lags in development compared to the rest of the Integrated Training Center and does not yet have all planned functionality,” the report reads in part.
In other sections of the lengthy DoD analysis, Operational Test and Read more…
Pentagon Inks Deal for Smartphone Tool That Scans Your Face, Eyes, Thumbs
California-based AOptix landed a deal with the Defense Department for its biometrics identification system that loads onto a smartphone (shown here as a hardware mock-up). Photo: AOptix
In a few years, the soldier, marine or special operator out on patrol might be able to record the facial features or iris signature of a suspicious person all from his or her smartphone — and at a distance, too.
The Defense Department has awarded a $3 million research contract to California-based AOptix to examine its “Smart Mobile Identity” biometrics identification package, Danger Room has learned. At the end of two years of research to validate the concepts of what the company built, AOptix will provide the Defense Department with a hardware peripheral and software suite that turns a commercially available smartphone into a device that Read more…
Pentagon confirms plan to create new spy agency
March 7, 2012: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP)
The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that it is carving out a brand new spy agency expected to include several hundred officers focused on intelligence gathering around the world.
At a time of budget cutbacks, particularly in the military, it’s unclear how the Defense Department has been able to move around the money to afford a new agency. The Pentagon wouldn’t get into specifics saying only that the so-called “Defense Clandestine Service” wouldn’t involve “significant new resource requirements.”
The service would be an offshoot of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Officers drawn from that agency would be sent to beef up U.S. intelligence teams in areas that are now receiving more attention. They include Africa, where Al Qaeda is increasingly active, as well as parts of Asia, where the North Korean missile threat and Chinese military expansion are causing increasing U.S. concern.
Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby called the Read more…
Pentagon knows China will be America’s greatest enemy starting in 2017
America’s Emerging Military Posture
After a decade marked by two long wars, massive increases in military spending, and a ballooning deficit, it is no surprise that the Obama administration plans a $450 billion Pentagon budget reduction over the next decade, equal to approximately 5% of its budget. However, as a result of the automatic cuts that may arise from a congressional failure to reach a timely agreement on the amount to be cut, the reduction could actually reach $1 trillion, or approximately 12% of the military’s budget.
While the size, manner, and effect of these cuts is difficult to ascertain at this juncture, there can be little doubt that there will be significant reductions to the US defense budget over the coming decade. The US military will see a relative decline in strength as emerging powers — most notably China and India — continue to build up their militaries. An absolute decline in the defense budget, combined with a relative decline in comparative military strength vis-à-vis some emerging powers, will force the US to revaluate its military posture.
There is considerable debate about how much these defense cuts will impact the Read more…
Black Helicopters Seen In Multiple States As Pentagons Deployment Of 20,000 Troops Inside United States Set To Be Ready This Year
I can personally say that I have witnessed this with my own eyes as I reside in Austin, TX. Almost daily I have seen unmarked helicopters in pairs of two or three with one usually being a Chinook hovering at low altitudes as I feel the vibration through the walls of my house. It usually it occurs after 2PM and during the evening hours before sunset. -Crisisboom
Note: Both The Washington Post and Russia Today reported in 2008 that the Pentagon was training 20,000 troops to be deployed inside The United States to serve as a response to a mass terror attack or civil unrest following an economic collapse.
Since our groundbreaking article, Pentagon To Deploy 20,000 Troops In CONUS For Civil Unrest, we have received many different tips and eye witness accounts related to the possible deployment of foreign and/or American military to quell civil unrest inside the United States as well as a reports of a growing number of large, unmarked black helicopters.
Activist Post, a great website that has supported The Intel Hub from the beginning, also received some significant tips from their version of our article that they posted:
There have been massive large black helicopters flying over my city of Boulder, Colorado at sunrise; the helicopters have two large propellers,they appear to be transport helicopters. This hasn’t happened before; they fly in Read more…
Pentagon declares the Internet a war domain
The Pentagon released a long-promised cybersecurity plan Thursday that declares the Internet a domain of war but does not spell out how the U.S. military would use the Web for offensive strikes.
The Defense Department’s first-ever plan for cyberspace states that DOD will expand its ability to thwart attacks from other nations and groups, beef up its cybersecurity workforce and expand collaboration with the private sector.
Like major corporations and the rest of the federal government, the military “depends on cyberspace to function,” the DOD strategy states. The U.S. military uses cyberspace for everything from carrying out military operations to sharing intelligence data internally to managing personnel assignments.
“The department and the nation have vulnerabilities in cyberspace,” the document states. “Our reliance on cyberspace stands in stark contrast to the inadequacy of our cybersecurity.”
Other nations “are working to exploit DOD unclassified and classified networks, and some foreign intelligence organizations have Read more…
Pentagon reveals 24,000 files stolen in cyber-attack
The Pentagon has disclosed that it suffered one of its largest ever losses of sensitive data in March when 24,000 files were stolen in a cyber-attack by a foreign government.
By Nick Allen
William Lynn, the US deputy secretary of defence, said the data was taken from the computers of a corporate defence contractor.
He said the US government had a “pretty good idea” who was responsible but did not elaborate.
Many cyber-attacks in the past have been blamed on China or Russia, and one of the Pentagon’s fears is that eventually a terrorist group will acquire the ability to steal data.
Mr Lynn disclosed the March attack in a speech outlining a new cyber-strategy, which formally declares cyberspace a new warfare domain, much like air, land and sea.
It calls for developing more resilient computer networks so the Read more…
DARPA’s advance research arm building virtual Internet to battle cyber attacks
The Pentagon’s advanced research branch is working on a virtual version of the Internet to further the U.S.’s resistance against cyber attacks. According to Reuters, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, more commonly known as DARPA, is setting up something called the National Cyber Range. The National Cyber Range would be a virtual “testbed” to simulate a mini-Internet. Officials could use it to test virtual cyber-warfare games that experiment with different computer-generated-attack situations.
DARPA, the same agency that started that whole Internet thing in the 1960s, created the National Cyber Range project to make it simple to create different scenarios, combine those scenarios, and ultimately test any potential situations that may have to be dealt with on the real Internet. The purpose is to test things like network protocols as well as satellite and radio Read more…
Pentagon: Cyber Attacks Can Qualify as Acts of War
The Pentagon has finished drafting its first official “computer sabotage strategy,” determining that online cyber attacks from another country can constitute an act of war, enabling the U.S. to retaliate with military force.
“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” a military official told The Wall Street Journal by way of example.
The formal strategy underlines a rising need to systematically respond to attacks on the computer systems of the U.S. and other countries. In 2009, a strain of the Microsoft Windows computer virus Stuxnex, which some believe originated from Israel with U.S. help, damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities. More recently, Google was the victim of cyber attacks that allegedly originated in China, an affair the the White House became involved in.
The 30-page document, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, is also likely to spark debates about a number of unaddressed issues, including whether the U.S. can truly determine the origin of an attack and when a cyber attack is serious enough to constitute an act of war, the WSJ notes.
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