No Safe Place In Next War: The Army’s Expanded Battlefield

A soldier from the Army’s offensive cyber brigade during an exercise at Fort Lewis, Washington.

 

What if the next war starts, not with a gunshot, but with a tweet? As tensions rise, US troops discover their families’ names, faces, and home addresses have been posted on social media as they prepare to deploy, along with exhortations to kill the fascists/imperialists/infidels (pick one). Trolls call them late at night with death threats, a mentally ill lone wolf runs over a soldier’s children, fake news claims the military is covering up more deaths, and official social media accounts are hacked to post falsehoods. The whole force is distracted and demoralized.

Meanwhile, defense contractors discover the networks they use to deliver supplies to the military have been penetrated. Vital spare parts go missing without ever leaving the warehouse because the serial number saying which crate they’re in has been scrambled in the database. As railways and seaports prepare to transport heavy equipment, they discover key railroad switches, loading cranes, and other equipment – civilian-owned but vital to the military operation – now malfunction unpredictably, forcing prolonged safety inspections.

It’s Way Too Easy to Hack the Hospital

If you recall this post from 2011, you knew this day was coming.

The culture of “Patch & Pray” will be the downfall so long as America chooses to be reactive over proactive.

 

Firewalls and medical devices are extremely vulnerable, and everyone’s pointing fingers

In the fall of 2013, Billy Rios flew from his home in California to Rochester, Minn., for an assignment at the Mayo Clinic, the largest integrated nonprofit medical group practice in the world. Rios is a “white hat” hacker, which means customers hire him to break into their own computers. His roster of clients has included the Pentagon, major defense contractors, Microsoft, Google, and some others he can’t talk about.

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But when he showed up, he was surprised to find himself in a conference room full of familiar faces. The Mayo Clinic had assembled an all-star team of about a dozen computer jocks, investigators from some of the biggest cybersecurity firms in the country, as well as the kind of hackers who draw crowds at conferences such as Black Hat and Def Con. The researchers split into teams, and hospital officials presented them with about 40 different medical devices. Do your worst, the researchers were instructed. Hack whatever you can.

3-D Printed Missiles Now a Thing

 

Raytheon, one of the U.S.’s largest defense contractors, has built a missile almost entirely from 3-D printing technology.

“The day is coming when missiles can be printed,” Raytheon said in a press release. “Researchers at Raytheon Missile Systems say they have already created nearly every component of a guided weapon using additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3-D printing. The components include rocket engines, fins, parts for the guidance and control systems, and more.”

US loses Simulated Air War with China

The Rand Corporation, one of the Defense Department’s most trusted and longest running contractors, was hired by the Pentagon to carry out a computerized and simulated war between China and the US. The results were so horrifying, they were deemed classified, but were leaked to the press. What the computer models showed was that in the most likely scenario for a US-China war, the United States was soundly defeated by the Chinese military.

Most Americans will immediately and arrogantly close their ears to any suggestion that the US could lose a war to anyone. So, it’s a good thing that war correspondent David Axe and War Is Boring published the step-by-step actions each military takes to show readers exactly how and why America loses. The account, leaked to the media and published by Medium.com, shows how the blame lies squarely on one thing – the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s abysmal failure in combat.

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According to the Rand war scenario developed for the Pentagon, the most expensive military weapon in the history of mankind is a complete and utter failure. The futuristic warplane is supposed to replace all other jet fighters in the US arsenal at a cost of $1 trillion and climbing. As one critic published a few weeks ago, that’s enough money to buy a $100,000 home for every homeless family in America for the next six generations.

The F-35 didn’t fail because of its recurring engine fires or the problems it’s still having with vertical landings and take-offs. It failed because it was designed to do too many things. And sometimes, especially in war, quantity beats quality. We used to joke as teens that you could line up the Chinese and machinegun them down all day and night and they would still reproduce faster than we could eliminate them. Ironically enough, that’s basically the tactic that leads to America’s defeat to the Chinese military in Pentagon simulations.

FBI: Chinese hacker accessed gold mine of data on F-22, F-35 and 32 U.S. military projects

A Chinese hacker allegedly broke into the network of world’s largest aerospace company and other defense contractors to steal sensitive information on the United States’ F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, as well as Boeing’s C-17 cargo plane.

The FBI believes that Su Bin, formerly of the Chinese aviation firm Lode Technologies, and two Chinese-based co-conspirators accessed a gold mine of information from Boeing and other contractors in Europe. The plan was to gather enough information so that the communist nation might “stand easily on the giant’s shoulders,” The Register reported Monday.

Putin Crosses Obama’s Pink Line

Exclusive: Michael Savage declares, ‘The neocons don’t care which side you’re on’

Let me make sense of what’s happening in Ukraine for you as that country descends into armed chaos, threatening to oust the legitimately elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and place the country in the hands of rebel forces spearheaded by Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Chechen Islamist radicals.

Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, along with Obama adviser and designated liar Susan Rice, are neo-conservatives, neocons for short. The neocons, first in the form of the Trilateral Commission and more recently as the Carlyle Group, thrive on military conflict. When the world is at war, the neocons and the defense contractors who work with them make enormous amounts of money.

The neocons don’t care which side you’re on, as long as they can work with you to create a political situation that they can grow into a war from which they will profit.

The Ukrainian “revolution” was fostered and encouraged by Nuland, Rice and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. These three were instrumental in staging a destabilization campaign. Working with Ukrainian neo-Nazis, they fostered the Ukrainian uprising that has caused elected the Ukrainian president to flee from Kiev.

Arizona Sen. John McCain was also part of this duplicity. McCain went to Kiev in December last year and helped incite the mobs that would overthrow the legitimately elected president. If there were such a thing as a Nobel Anti-Peace Prize, McCain would win it hands down for his work in Egypt and Syria, topped off by what he’s done in Ukraine.

Homeland Security Taps Generals to Run Domestic Drone Program: The Rise of Predators at Home

DHS decided – with virtually no reviews or evaluations – to purchase unarmed versions of the Predator drones used abroad for “signature strikes” (targeted drone killing). The department, whose mission includes “border security,” has also relied on military bases along the land border and coastal waters to host its own drone fleet.Since DHS began acquiring Predators, along with Predator variants called Guardians, from General Atomics nine years ago, this domestic drone program has proved an abysmal failure – whether measured by its effectiveness in immigration enforcement, drug control, or counterterrorism.  A series of reports by the General Accountability Office, Congressional Review Service, and the DHS Inspector General’s Office have documented the paltry achievements, the alarming strategic confusion, and near-systemic logistical and technical shortcomings of the DHS drone program.

These government reports pointed to the complete absence of any cost-benefit evaluations and efficiency assessments of the DHS drone program.

Yet these official reviews failed to shed any light on the department’s controversial decision to deploy only the hugely expensive military-grade Predator drones and to enter into sole-source contracts with General Atomics to provide, maintain, and even operate the federal government’s domestic drone fleet.

Inside Japan’s invisible army

The country’s constitution bans it from having a traditional standing army. But its so-called Self Defense Force is one of the world’s most sophisticated armed bodies.

FORTUNE — On paper, Japan is a pacifist nation. It ranks 6th on the Global Peace Index, a list tabulated by peace activists at Vision of Humanity. Japan’s constitution makes illegal a traditional standing army. But a recently published defense white paper shows the extent to which the country has one of the most well-equipped “invisible” armies in the world.

Japan’s armed forces are euphemistically dubbed the “Self Defense Force” (SDF) — officially it’s an extension of the police.

Iran begins construction of $300 million anti-aircraft missile base

New facility near the city of Abadeh will host 7 battalions, says senior commander

Amid increasing talk of a possible Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities, Iran has begun construction of a new, state-of-the-art, anti-aircraft missile base.

The new base, located near the city of Abadeh, in southern Iran, will cost $300 million, be home to 6,000 personnel, and host seven battalions, Iran’s Fars news agency reported Tuesday.

The Deputy Commander of the Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base, Mohammad Hosseini, said the base, the largest of its kind in Iran, will also include one of the most important military training centers in the country.

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Also on Tuesday, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled an upgraded version of a short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile just weeks after it was test-fired, Iranian state media reported.

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Iran has also been pushing to upgrade its missiles, which already can target Israel and US bases in the Middle East. The Pentagon released a report in June noting significant advances in Iranian missile technology, acknowledging that the Islamic Republic has improved the accuracy and firing capabilities of its missiles.

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Iran’s purported military advancements are impossible to independently verify because the country does not release technical details of its arsenals or rely on equipment from major international defense contractors.

Full article: Iran begins construction of $300 million anti-aircraft missile base (The Times of Israel)