Military & War News and Discussions

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caltrek
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War Crimes Trial of Ex-Kosovo President Kicks Off in The Hague
by Molly Quell
April 3, 2023

Introduction:
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Courthouse News) — Joining a small club of former heads of state to face international justice, Kosovo's former president Hashim Thaçi reiterated his innocence as his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity started on Monday.

The 54-year-old and three co-defendants are facing 10 counts of torture, murder and illegal detention before a special court in The Hague for their alleged roles in atrocities committed during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s.

Thaçi and Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi were founding members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which took up arms against Serbian forces following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. All four men went on to political careers in Kosovo after the conflict ended.

“Nobody is above the law,” prosecutor Alex Whiting told the packed courtroom at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers during his opening statements Monday.

Thaçi, wearing a grey suit and blue tie, took notes during the presentation. He and his co-defendants have been in pretrial detention for more than two years, since their arrest in November 2020.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/war-cri ... he-hague/
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caltrek
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Defense Argues Ex-president of Kosovo Had No Control Over Militia Fighters
April 4 , 2023

Introduction:
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Courthouse News) — Kosovo’s former president denied the war crimes charges against him on Tuesday, telling a special tribunal that he expects to be “vindicated” at the end of the proceedings.

Defense counsel for Hashim Thaçi and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders charged with multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity argued the men lacked the authority to have stopped murder and torture during Kosovo’s yearlong struggle for independence, blaming the atrocities on local militia leaders.

“He simply did not have effective command of the KLA,” Thaçi’s lawyer, Gregory Kehoe, told the packed courtroom at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, Netherlands.

Thaçi's co-defendants – Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi – are founding members of the KLA, which took up arms against Serbian forces following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. All four men went on to political careers in Kosovo after the conflict ended. They are now facing 10 counts of torture, murder and illegal detention.

“Nobody is above the law,” prosecutor Alex Whiting said in his opening statements on Monday.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/defense ... fighters/
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US, Philippines launch war drills across disputed South China Sea
Source: AP

By JIM GOMEZ an hour ago
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — American and Filipino forces on Tuesday launched their largest combat exercises in decades in the Philippines and its waters across the disputed South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, where Washington has repeatedly warned China over its increasingly aggressive actions.

The annual drills by the longtime treaty allies called Balikatan — Tagalog for “shoulder-to-shoulder” — will run up to April 28 and involve more than 17,600 military personnel. It will be the latest display of American firepower in Asia, as the Biden administration strengthens an arc of alliances to better counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan, an island democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

That dovetails with efforts by the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea, which China claims virtually in its entirety, by boosting joint military exercises with the U.S. and allowing rotating batches of American forces to stay in additional Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact.

“The relationships that we have, that we build into these exercises, will make us faster to respond to conflict, crisis, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Eric Austin said.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/us-philippin ... osition_06
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caltrek
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Science Fiction Is Influencing How We Conduct War and We Might Not Like The Results
by Mike Ryder
April 12, 2023

Introduction:
(Science Alert) From high-tech fighting machines to supercomputers and killer robots, science fiction has a lot to say about war. You might be surprised to learn that some governments (including the UK and France) are now turning their attention to these fantastical stories as a way to think about possible futures and try and ward off any potential threats.

For many years now, science fiction writers have made prophesies about futuristic technologies that have later become a reality. In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke famously predicted the internet. And in 1983, Isaac Asimov predicted that modern life would become impossible without computers.
This has made governments take note. Not only can science fiction help us imagine a future shaped by new technologies, but it can also help us learn lessons about potential threats.

There are many issues that science fiction engages with, which will no doubt be feeding into defense research around warfare and ways to mitigate risk. While we can never predict the future completely, we can only hope that our leaders and decision-makers learn lessons alluded to in science fiction, so that we may avoid the dystopia that some science fiction suggests.

Here are four issues from science fiction that governments may be considering (see linked article for a discussion of each of these listed issue areas).
1. Super soldiers…
2. Drones…
3. Bio-engineering…
4. Behavioural modification…
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/science-f ... e-results
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caltrek wrote: Wed Apr 12, 2023 2:49 pm Science Fiction Is Influencing How We Conduct War and We Might Not Like The Results
by Mike Ryder
April 12, 2023

Introduction:
(Science Alert) From high-tech fighting machines to supercomputers and killer robots, science fiction has a lot to say about war. You might be surprised to learn that some governments (including the UK and France) are now turning their attention to these fantastical stories as a way to think about possible futures and try and ward off any potential threats.

For many years now, science fiction writers have made prophesies about futuristic technologies that have later become a reality. In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke famously predicted the internet. And in 1983, Isaac Asimov predicted that modern life would become impossible without computers.
This has made governments take note. Not only can science fiction help us imagine a future shaped by new technologies, but it can also help us learn lessons about potential threats.

There are many issues that science fiction engages with, which will no doubt be feeding into defense research around warfare and ways to mitigate risk. While we can never predict the future completely, we can only hope that our leaders and decision-makers learn lessons alluded to in science fiction, so that we may avoid the dystopia that some science fiction suggests.

Here are four issues from science fiction that governments may be considering (see linked article for a discussion of each of these listed issue areas).
1. Super soldiers…
2. Drones…
3. Bio-engineering…
4. Behavioural modification…
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/science-f ... e-results
What a mess. The advances it would have otherwise from these areas in cool technology is nice.
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caltrek
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Breaking Down Your Tax Bill
by Lindsay Koshgarian
April 19, 2023

Introduction:
(Other Words) Many of us rushed to file our taxes before this year’s April 18 deadline. While we all hope for a refund to help pay the rent or cover a vacation, we also want our taxes themselves to pay for worthwhile things.

Every year, my project at the Institute for Policy Studies creates a tax receipt to help people see what their taxes paid for. Here’s what we learned this year.

On the one hand, our federal income taxes fund a lot of good, popular things. The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act has saved lives. Food stamps (also known as SNAP) feed millions of hungry children and families. And Medicare will be there for all of us as we age.

On the other hand, there’s a lot that we might want to do differently.

You probably expect that some of your federal income taxes go to the military. But did you know that the average taxpayer spent $1,087 on private military contractors alone? That’s more than double the $474 that went towards paying the troops.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/breaking-down-your-tax-bill/
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caltrek
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Global Military Spending Hits All-Time High of $2.24 Trillion
by Brett Wilkins
April 24, 2023

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) An annual analysis published Monday revealed that global military spending rose to an all-time high of over $2.2 trillion last year, driven largely by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Western response, as well as the steadily increasing Pentagon budget in the United States.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) annual report showed a 3.7% overall increase in worldwide military expenditures to $2.24 trillion in 2022, including a 13% rise in Europe—the continent's sharpest increase in three decades—amid Russia's war on Ukraine.

Ukrainian defense spending skyrocketed 640% last year to $44 billion, the biggest single-year increase ever recorded by SIPRI. Meanwhile, Russian military spending surged 9.2% to $86.4 billion.

Conclusion:
"The continuous rise in global military expenditure in recent years is a sign that we are living in an increasingly insecure world," said (Nan) Tian (SIPRI senior researcher). "States are bolstering military strength in response to a deteriorating security environment, which they do not foresee improving in the near future."
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/glob ... -spending
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Russia’s Other Empire in the Making
Bloodier than Ukraine

26 April 2023

Russia plans to create a ‘confederation’ of sympathetic states across the Sahel and West Africa, according to intelligence leaks from the U.S. It’s also targeted countries further south, notably Madagascar and Mozambique, while it pours misinformation and disinformation into the presses of, mainly, West African newspapers.

The intelligence leaks reveal that Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin, works through his ally, Yevgeny Prigozhin (and Prigozhin’s Wagner Group), to gain control and influence in Africa.

Best known for its bloodthirsty mercenary activity, Wagner also engages in cyberwarfare and election rigging in Africa, the leaks show. Wagner can deploy about 50,000 men, the intelligence estimates, though it’s unclear how losses in Ukraine affect that number.

Outside of Ukraine and Russia, Prigozhin has men in Sudan, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and Burkina Faso. They’ve been accused of human rights abuses ranging from rape to massacre in Mali and the CAR, and while Wagner fighters were forced to flee Mozambique by a small team of former Zimbabwe special forces, they retain a small cyberwarfare unit in the capital, Maputo, the leaks show.

It’s unclear if Wagner has forces in Burkina Faso yet, though the group is negotiating a contract with the Burkinabe government in Ouagadougou. The landlocked nation is waging war against a confusing blend of Jihadists and narco warriors. An April 20 massacre of 60 people in the northern village of Karma confuses the issue further because the killers wore the government’s military uniforms.
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/04/26/wagn ... n-ukraine/
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Northrop Grumman's IBCS C&C defense system takes command
By David Szondy
May 02, 2023
Northrop Grumman's Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), which combines multiple current air and missile defense command and control systems into one, has been granted initial operational capability. This means it can begin active deployment.

Modern armies depend heavily on command and control systems to coordinate operations and minimize the fog of war that often results in defeat and needless casualties. It's a concept that has grown increasingly sophisticated in recent decades, but it's also run into the law of diminishing returns as the number of different C&C systems has ballooned, forcing them to handle a wide variety of technologies from different generations.

To alleviate this, Northrop Grumman has come up with IBCS for the US Army, which takes over the duties of multiple previous C&C systems. It integrates feeds to and from sensor networks, weapon systems and land, sea, air, and space platforms to achieve Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) capabilities.
https://newatlas.com/military/northrop- ... cs-system/
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Biden to Name Air Force Chief to Top Military Post, Officials Say
Source: New York Times
The appointment of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. would mean that the top two Pentagon leadership positions would be inhabited by Black men for the first time in American history.

President Biden is expected to announce soon that he has chosen Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the Air Force chief of staff, to become the country’s most senior military officer, according to two U.S. officials.

If he is formally nominated and approved by the Senate, General Brown will succeed Gen. Mark A. Milley, whose term as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff expires at the end of September.

General Brown would be only the second Black man to become chairman, following Colin L. Powell, who served in that position during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

General Brown’s appointment and confirmation would also mean that along with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the top two Pentagon leadership positions would be inhabited by African American men for the first time in American history. It would be a singular step for minorities in a military whose leadership has long been dominated by white men.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/us/p ... illey.html
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