FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – American Liberty News (ALN) – in collaboration with respected national security expert Paul Crespo and the Center for American Defense Studies (CADS) – provides our readers the PDB:
Not the President’s Daily Brief, but almost as good – PAUL’S DAILY BRIEFING.
Get Your Best Daily Defense and Foreign Affairs Intelligence Here in One Brief. Read the summaries or dive deeper via the linked articles.
PENTAGON WOKE WATCH
STAY OUT OF WOKE CULTURE WARS – Pat Donahoe, ex-general, now civilian, wants a word with the Army. But is the service, which opted not to punish him for his social media posts attacking FOX News personality Tucker Carlson, willing to listen?
2,100 sailors in limbo as Pentagon grapples with end of COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The Navy separated 25 active-duty sailors between Nov. 28 and Dec. 28 due to their failure to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the service told USNI News.
IDIOTIC OBSESSION – Pentagon begins work to strip DOD of Confederate-linked names and items, rename 9 Army posts. The Pentagon has until Jan. 1, 2024, to carry out those recommendations, which include renaming two Navy ships and nine Army installations in southern states.
OR MILITARY COULD STOP ITS WOKE ANTI-WHITE AGENDA WHICH ALIENATES CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES, AND WHITE SOUTHERNERS – ITS BEST DEMOGRAPHIC FOR RECRUITING – The military could ease its recruiting crisis by doing more to resolve systemic racial issues. The U.S. military entered 2023 amid its largest recruiting crisis since the end of the Vietnam War, with the possibility of being short thousands of new recruits. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act cut the Army’s size by 30,000 personnel, and the Pentagon is employing multiple methods to improve Gen Z recruitment, from video games, to increasing cash enlistment bonuses and changing mottos and commercials.
POLITICS
PODCAST – Today’s Episode: What no House speaker could mean for national security. Today, a group of lawmakers discuss the national security concerns of not having a House speaker.
GET SOME! – CRAZY LIKE A FOX? – Trump vows to deploy US special forces, military assets to ‘inflict maximum damage’ on cartels. Trump comments come after more than 2.3 million migrant encounters in FY 2022
NATIONAL SECURITY
COMPETING WITH AUSTRALIA FOR NUKE ‘BOOMERS’ – Reed, Inhofe warn Biden AUKUS risks becoming ‘zero sum game’ for US Navy. “We are concerned that what was initially touted as a ‘do no harm’ opportunity to support Australia and the United Kingdom and build long-term competitive advantages for the U.S. and its pacific allies, may be turning into a zero-sum game for scarce, highly advanced U.S. SSNs,” wrote the SASC heads.
Drone advances in Ukraine could bring new age of warfare. Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.
‘FOREIGN MEDDLING’ EXAGGERATED BY DEMOCRATS FOR PARTISAN REASONS – Foreign meddling in US elections affects allies’ trust, study finds. When respondents were told that American democracy wasn’t working reliably, they lost faith in the U.S. commitment to partnerships.
Ukraine and the two-war construct. How much security is enough security? During the Cold War, the question was rather straightforward. The United States had one adversary — the Soviet Union — which it would need to deter and if necessary, defeat. For the last three decades, this deceptively simple question has proven exceedingly difficult to answer. For years, American defense strategy argued for a “two-war construct,” namely that the United States should have sufficient military capability and capacity to fight and win two simultaneous wars in different theaters against major regional powers, like Iraq and North Korea. Now, it can’t.
HOMELAND SECURITY
5 takeaways from what defense leaders told the Jan. 6 committee. A special congressional committee investigating the violence recently released more than 900 pages of testimony from military leaders on the attack.
US national cyber strategy to stress Biden push on regulation. The White House wants expanded requirements for private companies that operate in critical infrastructure sectors.
IG finds lapses in vetting of foreign military personnel who come to US for instruction. The Somali soldier arrived in Texas for U.S. military training, failed his English language proficiency test soon thereafter, then skipped out.
CHINA THREAT
China developing own version of JADC2 to counter US. China is pursuing a new military construct known as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare to align its forces from cyber to space, an effort U.S. officials say is fueled by a need to counter the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative.
US Destroyer makes first US warship Taiwan Strait transit of 2023. USS Chung-Hoon (DDG-93) made the first Taiwan Strait transit of 2023, the Navy announced Thursday.
Chinese company signed an oil extraction deal with Afghanistan’s Taliban. Taliban has signed a deal with a Chinese company to extract oil from northern Afghanistan’s Amu Darya basin as the radical Islamist group attempts to bolster the South Asian nation’s increasingly impoverished and isolated economy. The agreement with China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co is the first major international energy extraction deal the Taliban has signed since taking control of Afghanistan in 2021.
RUSSIA THREAT – UKRAINE WAR
US and Germany pledge infantry fighting vehicles for Ukraine. The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to equip Ukraine with Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, while German officials said they would send Marders, decades-old weapons of a comparable class, as well as Patriot air defenses.
Here’s how Ukraine could use the Bradley Fighting Vehicles it’s getting from the US, experts say. Bradley Fighting Vehicles proved their worth in urban environments during the Iraq War. Read More
Wagner chief frees prisoners who fought in Ukraine for Russia. Yevgeny Prigozhin filmed telling convicts who served six months on the front line, ‘don’t rape women’ in Russia.
Putin orders weekend truce in Ukraine; Kyiv won’t take part. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Kyiv indicated it won’t follow suit.
For many of the 1,271 Americans under Russian sanctions, it’s a point of pride. A Harvard astrophysicist. A Silicon Valley billionaire. Hollywood actors. Convicted murderers.
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY – NATO, MIDDLE EAST, ASIA, AFRICA
EXCITING FIREFIGHT – Mexico nabs son of drug lord ‘El Chapo’ before Biden visit. Mexican security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán, an alleged drug trafficker wanted by the United States and one of the sons of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a pre-dawn operation Thursday that set off gunfights and roadblocks across the western state’s capital.
UN internal report flags rebels flouting ceasefire in eastern DRC. There is uncertainty about the status of the conflict in parts of east DRC, although M23 rebels agreed to a ceasefire. Read More
Chad says it foiled ‘destabilization’ attempt by officers. A group of 11 officers, led by a human rights activist, was behind the attempt, according to a government statement.
FINALLY – AS TRUMP DEMANDED – PAY YOUR SHARE! – Czech government OKs bill for 2% GDP spending on military. The Czech government on Wednesday approved a bill aimed at bringing defense spending at the required NATO goal of 2% of gross domestic product as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues.
Sweden’s massive opportunity to rethink its role in Nordic defense. Of the four Nordic countries, Sweden faces the longest journey towards a new regional defense approach — but also has an opportunity to undergo significant, smart transformation for a modern era that sees it finally join the NATO alliance.
Australia to buy US-made HIMARS in boost to defense systems. Australia announced Thursday it will boost its defense capabilities by spending more than AU$1 billion (U.S. $683 million) on new advanced missile and rocket systems, including American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, already successfully used by Ukraine’s military.
IRAN THREAT
HELP THEM START A REVOLUTION – Students in Iran are risking everything to rise up against the government. The price paid by this generation of Iranian student activists is rising by the day. And as the repression deepens, their demands are becoming more radical.
US MILITARY
New in 2023: Project Overmatch heads to sea. 2023 will see the Navy deploying its high-tech and super-secretive Project Overmatch capability aboard a carrier strike group for the first time.
Marines to conduct urban raid training on Oahu. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit’s Japan-based Maritime Raid Force will return to Oahu on Friday to conduct a series of training events through Jan. 20.
BUT WILL THEY GIVE TROOPS HEADACHES? – Army green lights an advanced version of its ‘mixed reality’ goggle. The Army is moving ahead with an advanced variant of its mixed reality goggles aimed at transforming situational awareness and more for the dismounted soldier.
How the Army’s largest battle in Somalia since ‘Black Hawk Down’ unfolded. “Over time, using covert and overt means, we forced the enemy to attack in the way we wanted and, in a place, most advantageous to us.”
END of PDB
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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an idea like that could get the CIA and mafia to knock him off!
No use Tac bombers for raids to light up drug factories alone
Better yet hyper velocity (KEW) weapons from high altitude (low earth orbit even better) – highly effective and can be extremely accurate. And no fall out 😉