Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is expanding its power and spending in the Central Command region, including in countries needed by the U.S. to gather intelligence on extremist activities in Afghanistan.

“The United States faces a new era of strategic competition with China and Russia that is not confined to one geographical region and extends into the (Central Command) area of responsibility,” said Kurilla during the committee’s hearing on his nomination. “As the United States rightfully prioritizes competition with China, we must remain engaged in the Middle East and Central and South Asia.”

Kurilla, a combat-hardened officer with extensive experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, got a friendly reception from the panel and was told he would probably be confirmed.

If he gets the job, Kurilla would take over as the Pentagon continues to try to shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific and counter a rising China, and to bolster defenses against Russia in Europe. But Iran and Tehran-backed proxies have kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on U.S. and allied forces across the Middle East, often hindering plans to shift more troops out of the region.

Kurilla would replace Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who is retiring after three years leading the command. McKenzie has overseen a tumultuous time in the region, with America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the dismantling of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and escalating threats from Iran and its proxies as they launch more attacks against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and ships at sea.

Kurilla, who is currently the commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, told the committee that after the hearing he was deploying to Germany as part of the U.S. effort to reassure allies concerned about Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s borders.

Asked about the potential for repercussions in the Middle East of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kurilla said he believes that it could spill over into Syria, where Russia already has a military base and troops.

“If Russia does invade Ukraine they would not hesitate to be able to act as a spoiler in Syria as well,” said Kurilla, who previously served as a deputy at Central Command.

He added that the U.S. doesn’t believe Russia wants to go to war with the United States.

On China, Kurilla said 18 of the 21 countries in the Central Command region have signed strategic agreements with Beijing, which has increased its development in the Middle East. The U.S., he said, has to be able to counter China there.

Senators quizzed Kurilla on efforts to monitor al-Qaida and Islamic State extremists in Afghanistan, now that there are no longer U.S. forces in the country. He said efforts continue to work with surrounding nations to set up “over-the-horizon” capabilities.

The U.S., which left Afghanistan at the end of August, has been struggling to negotiate with a number of countries in the region to allow overflights, basing or other intelligence gathering from within their borders. Military leaders say it is difficult to monitor extremist groups from afar because doing so requires long drone flights that allow limited surveillance time.

Asked about working with the Taliban, Kurilla said the U.S. should take a pragmatic approach. He said the Taliban also views the Islamic State group as an enemy, so that may be a potential area of agreement. He also said the U.S. must find ways to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and that may involve Taliban help with food deliveries.

Kurilla graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1988, and has served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanding conventional and special operations forces. He commanded a Stryker battalion in Iraq in 2004, and was shot and wounded.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-general-says-russia-turmoil-could-spill-to-middle-east/ar-AATCKqt

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At a nomination hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral John Aquilino said capturing Taiwan is China’s “number-one priority,” and that the prospect is “much closer to us” than most believe.

Aquilino, who currently heads the U.S. Pacific Fleet, awaits Senate confirmation as President Joe Biden‘s pick to lead U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. It operates in “the most consequential region for America’s future,” the top Navy official said.

The post China Invasion of Taiwan Would Threaten U.S. Credibility in Asia, Top Admiral Warns first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON — Over recent days, officials from the newly minted U.S. Space Force and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed multiple congressional committees on an “uptick” in Russian military activity in space targeting U.S. defense and intelligence satellites, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

While the sources declined to comment on the specifics of recent incidents, which follow general increases in Chinese and Russian aggression in space, these recent actions were deemed “serious enough” to merit briefings on Capitol Hill, said one of the sources. Officials also briefed committees on plans to counter the Russian aggression, the source said.

The aggressive acts come amid rising concerns about Russian and Chinese activities in space, particularly when it comes to anti-satellite weapons. Earlier this year the Pentagon stood up the Space Force, a new branch of the military authorized by President Trump, which is supposed to help protect U.S. space assets.

Much of the work related to protecting military systems in space in classified, but during a recent virtual conference, Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Tim Lawson hinted at “things coming” that would help combat space-based threats, while emphasizing the importance of creating a large, resilient network of small satellites that are less vulnerable than the large military and intelligence satellites currently operating.

Representatives for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. “ODNI does not discuss intelligence matters or sensitive and classified communication with Congress,” wrote an ODNI spokesperson in an email. Spokespeople for the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the Pentagon and the Space Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Yuanwang-class Chinese space tracking ship. (Siyuwj via Wikicommons)

Russian meddling in space has long been a topic of concern for the U.S. government, within the Pentagon and the broader national security apparatus. Space has not been a safe “sanctuary” for several decades, noted Robin Dickey, an analyst at the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy. 

“The Russians have been doing this s–t for several years,” explained one former national security official who served during the Trump administration.

Russian military satellites and other spacecraft frequently perform what are called “proximity” operations, explained the former official, which involve getting close to U.S. satellites to search for vulnerabilities or determine capabilities, not unlike adversaries scanning digital networks for virtual flaws in cyberspace. “It’s a dangerous game,” continued the former official. “People need to wake up.”

The U.S. government’s fleet of spy and defense satellites is worth billions of dollars and helps blanket the globe in near constant coverage, helping U.S. officials spot worrisome developments like a new weapon test or locate a terrorist hideout. Satellites are vital for communication, navigation, weather, environmental monitoring, and defense and intelligence more broadly.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, tasked with collecting and analyzing intelligence for the Pentagon, recently published a lengthy report titled “Challenges to Security in Space.” According to the report, both China’s and Russia’s militaries “view space as important to modern warfare” and aim to conduct operations there “as a means to reduce U.S. and allied military effectiveness.”

The DIA authors also noted that both Russia and China are developing “jamming and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based antisatellite missiles”—technology that could have direct negative or destructive impacts on U.S. satellites. Russia’s space weaponry may be able to disrupt or degrade U.S. communications and navigation through GPS, block the U.S.’s view of satellite imagery or even destroy certain satellites, according to the DIA.

A mockup of the Russian GLONASS-K satellite navigation system. (Kirill Kukhmar/TASS via Getty Images)

On July 23, the U.S. Space Command announced it had evidence that Russia had tested a new “space-based anti-satellite weapon” — technology the Russian Defense Ministry had said was designed to run tests on its own space equipment.

Gen. John Raymond, commander of the U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Space Force chief of space operations, had previously warned about similar activities. “This is further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems, and consistent with the Kremlin’s published military doctrine to employ weapons that hold U.S. and allied space assets at risk,” he said in a statement at the time.

Christopher Ford, a senior State Department official, condemned that Russian test as an example of “Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control, with which Moscow aims to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting its own counter space program — both ground-based anti-satellite capabilities and what would appear to be actual in-orbit anti-satellite weaponry.”

Later in July, however, officials from the Departments of State, Defense and Energy as well as the National Security Council met with Russian counterparts for a lengthy discussion about space policy and security, and “expressed interest in continuing these discussions and improving communications.”

Cover thumbnail image: ImageBank/Getty Images

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/sources-russian-aggression-against-us-intelligence-satellites-sparks-congressional-briefing-214104043.html

The post Sources: Russian aggression against U.S. intelligence satellites sparks congressional briefing first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Trump administration has started the arduous process of canceling $3.6 billion in military construction projects to fund its plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper began notifying lawmakers Tuesday which projects will be canceled in their districts. Top Democrats immediately blasted the plan.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was among the first lawmakers to say his district will be impacted by the funding cuts, for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“This decision will harm already planned, important projects intended to support our service members at military installations in New York, across the United States, and around the world,” Schumer said. “It is a slap in the face to the members of the Armed Forces who serve our country that President Trump is willing to cannibalize already allocated military funding to boost his own ego and for a wall he promised Mexico would pay to build.”

Schumer went on to say that Trump is trying to “usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse and loot vital funds from our military.” He also signaled Congress will strongly oppose any funds for new wall construction.

The Washington Post reported that Pentagon officials said they will halt 127 military construction projects to help build 175 miles of wall.

The plans come nearly seven months after Trump announced a national emergency to use roughly $8 billion to build a wall to curtail illegal immigration along the U.S. southern border. Of that, $3.6 billion was slated to come from the military construction funds, the Trump administration said during the Feb. 15 announcement.

The funds are being shifted from the Pentagon’s 2019 fiscal year budget, which was approved earlier this year and runs until Sept. 31.

“President Trump’s immigration efforts have failed since Day 1,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Today, he made it clear he is willing to take funds from our troops and disaster victims and divert them to try to protect his political right flank. And ultimately, that could put Americans at risk.”

For months, Democrats have pushed to get a list of the projects that would be held in lieu of the wall. However, the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped until this week.

Congressional sources said a full list was slated to be released Wednesday, with lawmakers learning from the Pentagon which additional projects are on the chopping block.

Reed said the diversion of funds should be legally challenged and struck down in the courts. He encouraged broad, bipartisan opposition in Congress and the courts to “misusing defense dollars.”

Traditionally, the Pentagon conducts a midyear review in April to hunt down budget savings that can be moved to programs that need the money. Now, the Pentagon is redirecting funds to the wall.

Congress is usually involved in approving the reallocation of military funds, otherwise known as “reprogramming.” But not this time.

Following demands from lawmakers, the Pentagon had been slated to release the list of cut military construction projects in May, but the plans were delayed.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/03/757262799/trump-administration-diverts-3-6-billion-from-military-projects-to-border-wall

The post Trump Administration Diverts $3.6 Billion From Military Projects To Border Wall first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is right. The Kremlin’s new, nuclear-armed Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle can defeat any U.S. defense.

The real danger, however, is that some senior U.S. officials seem to believe American defenses such as the U.S. Navy’s SM-3 and the Army’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile-interceptor can stop a weapon such as Avangard.

Bad advice could encourage a reckless U.S. president to pursue a risky foreign policy while wrongly taking comfort that the Pentagon’s missile-defense systems protect the United States from nuclear retaliation.

That’s the latest warning from Ted Postol, a scientist and nuclear-weapons expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Statements made by Vladimir Putin clearly and unambiguously indicate that he understands that U.S. missile defenses currently have no capabilities to deal with existing Russian ballistic missiles, yet alone something like a hypersonic-like vehicle.”

“What concerns Putin is that U.S. political and military leadership is so out of touch and so politicized with regard to the missile defense issue that a future president might actually think that they could get away with striking Russian nuclear forces and then using missile defenses to defend against a straggling Russian counterattack,” Postol explained.

Avangard launches atop a rocket before separating and gliding toward its target at an altitude just below the upper limit of the atmosphere and a velocity 20 times the speed of sound or faster.

No existing U.S. missile defense system can target a vehicle moving that fast at such a relatively low altitude for a strategic weapon. “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us,” U.S. Air Force general John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in March 2018.

But not all American leaders appreciate this fact, Postol said. “For example, [retired] general James Cartwright [the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011] testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that it was his judgment that the GMD system could under some circumstances have a greater than 90-percent intercept rate against a small number of ICBMs.”

“When pressed by [then-]senator Birch Bayh of Indiana about the strength of his conclusion, he stated that he would advise a U.S. president to this effect in a crisis,” Postol continued.

“Without going into the details at this moment, I believe his reasoning was based on a total misunderstanding of the testing statistics associated with that system. The problem is that one can imagine circumstances where somebody with Cartwright’s extraordinarily limited understanding but appearance of knowledge could be seen as an expert by a president during a crisis.

“Although such a circumstance is extremely improbable, when one is talking about the potential of a large-scale nuclear exchange occurring due to such impressive levels of advisory ignorance, anyone who is worried about these problems would take Cartwright’s ignorance very seriously.

“So the real problem from Putin’s point of view is the potential that someone in American leadership could take an extraordinarily ill-advised decision under some kind of crisis situation to try to destroy Russian nuclear strike forces with a preemptive strike and then try to deal with the ragged retaliation using missile defenses,” Postol went on.

“However ludicrous this concern may appear, it is not simply the fantasy of an ill-informed Russian leader. In fact, it is a reasonable concern of a sophisticated thinking well-informed Russian leader who sees potential adversaries with remarkably ill-informed political and military leadership.

“So it is very clear that Putin’s strategy is to develop nuclear strike systems that even someone who is completely ignorant would understand cannot be addressed with missile defenses,” Postol warned.

Putin’s own words seem to back up Postol’s assertion. “I hope our newest systems will make think those who got accustomed to militarist and aggressive rhetoric,” Putin commented while announcing progress on Avangard.

“The point of the weapon is to make it clear, even to somebody who is totally ignorant, that missile defenses would have no capability to deal with the weapon,” Postol said. “This is the strategy behind building and deploying ballistic missile warheads that maneuver above the atmosphere to disrupt GMD and SM-3 tracking and homing systems, and it is also the strategy behind the hypersonic … vehicle.”

“Putin understands that U.S. missile defense systems basically have little or no chance of intercepting anything,” Postol concluded. “But he is not so worried about the systems as he is the numbskulls who make decisions about when and how to use the systems.”

David Axe serves as the new Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring  and Machete Squad.

Image: Reuters.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-hypersonic-nuke-warning-america-41597

The post Russia’s Hypersonic Nuke Is a Warning to America first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Quebec City (CNN)President Donald Trump said Friday that Russia should be reinstated to a leading group of industrialized nations ahead of his visit to the G7 summit this weekend.

CNN’s Elise Labott, Matt Wells, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Hilary McGann contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/politics/russia-g7/index.html

The post Trump says Russia should be reinstated in group of leading industrialized nations first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The U.S. military is concerned that the government isn’t moving quickly enough to ramp up American production of the plutonium cores that trigger nuclear warheads, as the Trump administration proceeds with a $1 trillion overhaul of the nation’s nuclear force.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the Cabinet official who oversees the nation’s nuclear labs, promised in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he would meet the Pentagon’s demands, even though the only lab capable of producing the triggers hasn’t made one suitable for a nuclear weapon in years.

“It is important for us to be able to send a clear message that we can get it done, we can get it done on a timely basis and get it done in a way that taxpayers respect is thoughtful about their concerns,” Perry said in a rare appearance by the nation’s top energy official at the Senate body overseeing the military.

Known as “plutonium pits” because they rest inside nuclear bombs like a pit inside a stone fruit, the roughly grapefruit-size spheres are a critical component of nuclear weapons because they trigger nuclear fission when squeezed by explosives. They require replacement as they degrade over time or end up destroyed during regular checks of the nation’s nuclear weapons.

At issue is the Pentagon’s demand that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — overseen by the Energy Department — be able to produce 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026 and 80 a year by 2030 to sustain the military’s plans for its nuclear weapons.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is just coming back on line after suspending pit production years ago because of safety concerns. The lab recently restarted its operation but is still producing only research-and-development pits that are unsuitable for U.S. weapons. The lab would require a sizable expansion to ramp up to 80 pits a year.

Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, who oversees U.S. nuclear forces as the head of Strategic Command, said he was worried about whether the nation’s nuclear establishment will be able to meet the requirement, despite assurances from officials at the Energy Department and NNSA.

“I still have concerns,” Hyten said in a Senate testimony earlier this week. He said he was “very nervous” that the requirement might be met only “just in time.”

Hyten warned that the nuclear weapons the Pentagon is developing — new bombers, submarines, ICBMs, low-yield submarine-launch ballistic missiles, air-launch and sea-launch cruise missiles — all require reliable warheads. He expressed concern about the age of some plutonium pits being used.

Nearly all current pits were produced between 1978 and 1989, according to the Pentagon. There is some debate about how long they can last and whether the military in fact needs such high production levels. In 2006, a study by two of the nation’s nuclear labs assessed that majority of plutonium pits for most nuclear weapons have minimum lifetimes of at least 85 years.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has discontinued many of the nuclear weapons capabilities the nation built up during the Cold War. The country began to rely largely on dismantling existing nuclear weapons for plutonium pits and stockpile management, particularly as defense spending priorities diverted to the global war against terrorism.

Now the United States is facing a reckoning as Russia and China also race to advance their nuclear arsenals and much of the infrastructure the military relies on to support its nuclear capabilities ages out. The United States no longer operates the full range of facilities capable of producing nuclear weapons and for nearly two decades stopped producing plutonium pits altogether.

“Past assumptions that our capability to produce nuclear weapons would not be necessary and that we could permit the required infrastructure to age into obsolescence have proven to be mistaken,” the Trump administration said in the nuclear weapons policy it published in February. “It is now clear that the United States must have sufficient research, design, development, and production capacity to support the sustainment and replacement of its nuclear forces.”

Perry highlighted the Trump administration’s decision to budget more funding for the NNSA for that purpose in his testimony Thursday. The 2018 spending bill that the House approved Thursday allocates $10.6 billion to weapons activities within the NNSA — which includes infrastructure updates, maintenance and repairs — an increase from $9.2 billion in 2017 and $8.85 billion in 2016. The administration has requested $11 billion in 2019.

But doubts persist about whether the agency charged with stewarding the country’s nuclear weapons can achieve such a complex task, while escaping a past marred by cost overruns and safety incidents.

The administration faces billions of backlogged repairs to aging facilities. At one point in recent years, chunks of the ceiling were falling out at the Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a facility established during the Manhattan Project to enrich uranium for the first atomic bombs.

“When I go to Oak Ridge, and I’m in facilities that were built in some cases before I was born, and that’s a spell ago, then it becomes abundantly clear to me,” Perry, who is 68, said Thursday.

For the first 13 months of the Trump administration, the NNSA lacked a Senate-confirmed director chosen by President Trump, resulting in lost time on some of the most pressing political decisions to be made on nuclear matters.

Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, a former health physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was sworn in to administer the agency on Feb. 22. The Trump administration had kept in place an Obama-era appointee, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, in the meantime.

Gordon-Hagerty has promised to prioritize resolving the plutonium-pit issue and escape the past problems at the NNSA, where big projects have resulted in cost overruns and mismanagement.

For much of the Cold War, the United States produced  plutonium triggers  at a  facility called Rocky Flats outside Denver. The facility  shut down in 1989 months after federal agents raided the premises due to environmental crimes.

Nearly two decades later, the United States resumed a limited operation to manufacture plutonium pits in 2007, this time at Los Alamos.

By then, the NNSA was in the midst of plans to build a bigger plutonium pit production facility at the lab, which would have increased capacity and added protections against earthquakes. But the NNSA canceled the project in 2012 after spending nearly half a billion dollars on designs as cost estimates spiraled out of control.

Around the same time, the existing Los Alamos production line was shut down amid safety incidents documented last year in reports by the Center for Public Integrity. The lab only recently restarted the operation.

Now the NNSA must decide how to expand production of plutonium pits to meet the Pentagon’s requirements by 2030. Under one option being considered, less ambitious “module” buildings would be constructed at the existing Los Alamos site.

An alternative would include repurposing one of the most problematic projects the Department of Energy has ever undertaken, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, to produce pits instead of fulfilling its original purpose of turning weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel.

The facility is billions of dollars over budget and still only partially built. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have tried to kill the project, but Congress has continued funding it primarily due to political support from the South Carolina delegation.

The NNSA is due to deliver its final recommendation to Congress about how to expand plutonium pit production by May 11.

The Senate committee members pointed out that the NNSA took three years to analyze where the new production facility should be housed and still failed to issue a decision. The former Texas governor said he would be “greatly concerned” if the new timeline isn’t met.

The post Energy Secretary Rick Perry promises more triggers for nuclear weapons first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

ARTICLE SUMMARY

The Pentagon’s top commander in the Middle East told lawmakers today that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s gains in the yearslong civil war will bolster Iran’s ability to frustrate US aims in the region.

 REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

A Syrian army soldier is seen securing Syrian Arab Red Crescent trucks carrying aid at the entrance of Wafideen camp in Damascus, Syria, March 5, 2018.

America’s top military commander in the Middle East told Congress today that President Bashar al-Assad’s recent gains in the Syrian civil war will enhance Iran’s ability to support proxy groups in the region.

Chief of US Central Command Joseph Votel told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the intervention by Iran and Russia has proven decisive in bolstering the embattled Syrian leader. Assad appears on the verge of regaining opposition-held holdouts in Idlib province and the Damascus suburbs.

“From a civil war standpoint, it would appear that the regime is ascendant here,” Votel told Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “It means that we will contend with the influence of Iran.”

Votel did not disagree with the senator’s characterization that Assad’s forces had “won” the war with the help of Iran and Russia.

Iran is believed to have as many as 125,000 troops and Shiite-backed proxy forces in Syria under the watch of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. That includes 8,000 Hezbollah fighters in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, the centerpiece of the US-backed battle against the Islamic State (IS).

At the conclusion of the conflict, Votel told lawmakers, “Iran could be in a position where they could support Lebanese Hezbollah better.”

Speaking at Stanford University in January, ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for an open-ended US presence in Syria to counter Iran. He also insisted that the United States is seeking a political transition away from Assad.

It’s not clear if CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who President Donald Trump named as Tillerson’s successor today, will aim to continue the policy, and Votel provided no clarity today on whether US officials still sought Assad’s dismissal. “I don’t know that that’s our particular policy at this point,” he said.

“Well, if you don’t know, I doubt if anybody knows, because this is your job, to take care of this part of the world,” Graham responded. The South Carolina Republican recently visited Jordan and Israel and wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed on March 12 decrying the lack of a “coherent strategy” to deal with Iran’s influence in Iraq and Syria. Graham also called for no-fly zones within Syria to allow the return of refugees and the continuation of efforts to train and equip Syrian rebel forces.

Some 2,000 US troops remain in Syria, officially, to train rebel forces to fight remnants of IS. The Pentagon, however, appears to be curtailing the use of Incirlik Air Base in nearby Turkey to provide air support in the fight against the militant group. The Defense Department has asked for $300 million to train Syrian fighters, including the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in the fiscal year that begins in October, a 40% cut from the current year’s request.

Though US forces have tried to stay out of the wider war, special operations forces recently repelled a pro-Assad attack on the US-backed SDF near oil fields in territory once held by IS. Votel said he didn’t think that rebel forces in Ghouta and Idlib could topple Assad within the next year.

As pro-Assad forces continue to hit the rebel-held Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta with bombs and chlorine gas, the Pentagon is discouraging Trump from launching military operations to try to stem the humanitarian crisis. Trump has mentioned eastern Ghouta in recent calls with US allies, including French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The best way of doing this is through political and diplomatic channels,” Votel said.

Yet as the White House is set to formulate a tougher policy on Iran, with Pompeo replacing Tillerson at the State Department, the Pentagon is carefully watching Trump’s May 12 deadline to determine whether the United States will continue suspending sanctions as called for under the 2015 nuclear deal. Last fall, US Defense Secretary James Mattis called on the United States to remain in the deal, and Votel appeared to reiterate that position in testifying before lawmakers today.

The nuclear agreement “addresses one of the principal threats that we deal with from Iran,” Votel said. If the deal ends and Iran resumes prohibited nuclear activities, the Middle East commander said, the United States will need “another way” to deal with the threat.

Jack Detsch is Al-Monitor’s Pentagon correspondent. Based in Washington, Detsch examines US-Middle East relations through the lens of the Defense Department. Detsch previously covered cybersecurity for Passcode, the Christian Science Monitor’s project on security and privacy in the Digital Age. Detsch also served as editorial assistant at The Diplomat Magazine and worked for NPR-affiliated stations in San Francisco. On Twitter: @JackDetsch_ALM, Email: jdetsch@al-monitor.com.

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Source: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/03/pentagon-braces-emboldened-iran-syria-gains.html

[Disclaimer]

The post Pentagon braces for emboldened Iran after Syria gains first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

FILE PHOTO: A convoy of US troops near Warsaw, Poland. © Kacper Pempel / Reuters

US troops in the Baltic countries would be “outranged, outgunned and outmatched” by Russians in case of a conflict, the head of the US European Command told lawmakers, seeking to secure funds in the face of a Moscow “threat.”

“If you look at it in a concentrated way on the border of Eastern Europe and only on the ground force, I would agree with that statement,” General Curtis Scaparrotti told Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.

Inhofe was referring to the recent RAND Corporation report which found that Russian forces could take the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania within 60 hours. The report has been compiled over the past several years, with the assistance of EUCOM, Scaparrotti said.

“I don’t have any argument with the basis of the report and the threat that we have,” he added. Though the RAND report concluded that NATO has “sufficient resources, personnel, and equipment to enhance conventional deterrence focused on Russia,” it argued a “more robust posture … is worthy of consideration.”

Scaparrotti: #Russia is carrying out a campaign of destabilization to change the international order, fracture @NATO, and undermine U.S. leadership around the world.

“Hence my comment that I don’t have all the forces I need in Europe today,” Scaparrotti lamented, despite admitting that the US has “repostured forces” and “rewritten plans” of containing Russia over the past few years.

Last month, EUCOM requested $6.5 billion for its European Deterrence Initiative in 2019, which is roughly $2 billion more than requested for fiscal 2018.

Roaring cannons: Massive US-led artillery drills kick off in Europe (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)

Following plans drafted by the Obama administration, the US deployed military forces into Poland and the Baltic states last year, to “reassure” its allies in the face of “Russian aggression.” Reserving the right to defend its national security, Moscow has long sought compromises in the face of the US and NATO’s creeping expansion towards Russian borders after the end of Cold War, with Poland joining in March 1999 and the Baltic States in 2004.

Scaparrotti took over EUCOM in May 2016, and has continued the drumbeat of hostility to Russia set by his predecessor General Philip Breedlove. He asked the lawmakers to approve the budget requests for more troops, supplies and information warfare programs to counter the “threat” of Russia.

At Thursday’s hearing, he accused Moscow of seeking to “change the international order, fracture NATO, and undermine US leadership.” Russia continues to intercept “routine reconnaissance flight operations over the Baltic and Black Seas, flying dangerously close to our aircraft and occasionally causing unsafe conditions for our pilots operating in international airspace,” Scaparrotti informed lawmakers, adding that Russia also “continues to hold snap exercises and to limit transparency of planned exercises.”

The US general failed to mention, though, that most of Russia’s military drills take place inside its own borders. The one exception was the September 2017 ‘Zapad’ exercise jointly organized with Belarus. Even though Moscow and Minsk were upfront and transparent about the number of troops involved and the objectives, some NATO, US and Ukrainian officials claimed they were a cover for something more sinister.

‘Citing perceived Russian threat, US is trying to get a foothold in Europe by means of #NATO‘ – #Lavrov https://on.rt.com/8zct 

Imagined Russia threat is pretext for US dominance in Europe through NATO – Lavrov — RT World News

Citing a perceived Russian threat, the US is trying to get a foothold in Europe by means of NATO, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. The alliance continues to expand, devouring even Moscow’s…

rt.com

Meanwhile, as Scaparrotti was complaining to the senators about Russia’s threatening drills, some 3,700 troops from 26 NATO member states were conducting artillery exercises at the Grafenwoehr range in Germany. The drills, dubbed Dynamic Front 18, began on February 23 and are scheduled to end on March 10.

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Just last year, EUCOM conducted “over 2,500 military-to-military engagements, including over 700 State Partnership Program events in 22 countries,” Scaparrotti informed the Senate, as well as 22 exercises with nine allies under a special program for Eastern Europe. The US military is also stepping up efforts to “counter Russia’s propaganda and misinformation campaigns” through a joint effort with the State Department called the Russian Information Group (RIG), Scaparrotti said.

Among the long list of ills Scaparrotti accused Russia of was conducting the June 2017 NotPetya cyber-attack, interfering in elections across Europe, and endangering the Balkan countries’ “brighter future as part of the Euro-Atlantic family of nations.” The general also spoke approvingly of the recent Trump administration decision to sell Javelin anti-tank missiles to the government in Kiev, and noted that the US has spent “over $850 million” in aid to Ukraine since 2014.

Though Scaparrotti argued that Moscow could challenge US dominance by 2025, there was little mention of several new weapons in Moscow’s arsenal, revealed last week by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a message to the US and NATO that their attempts to intimidate and contain Russia have failed.

“All the things you were trying to prevent through your policies have already happened. You have failed to hold Russia back,” Putin said.

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Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/420836-general-russia-outgunned-nato/

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