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
FORT LIBERTY? HOW CREATIVE – Fort Bragg will get a new name by the end of the year. Fort Bragg could be referred to as Fort Liberty by the summer, while Army leaders received marching orders earlier this month to have the change in place by the end of the year.
WHY NOT MAKE IT 24 WEEKS? OR A YEAR?! – Navy lays out new 12-week parental leave policy. The Navy on Thursday announced details on the military’s new policy providing 12 weeks of parental leave to parents after birth, adoption, or long-term foster care placement.
No more Marine Corps discharges or mandate for COVID-19 vaccine. Left unanswered in the Marine Corps announcement is whether unvaccinated Marines will still be considered undeployable.
POLITICS
Defense industry decries possible GOP-led spending cuts. AIA letter begs lawmakers to avoid another sequestration deal.
Santos: Claims by veteran that I stole money from dog’s charity ‘shocking and insane.’ Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) said that claims that he stole money from a GoFundMe for a veteran’s dying dog were “shocking” and “insane,” denying the news that surfaced on Tuesday.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Why the US must calculate a ‘solvency’ risk as it arms Ukraine. The Biden administration has had two overriding military goals in the Russia-Ukraine war: First, to deny Moscow victory against Kyiv, and second, to avoid direct U.S. involvement in the fighting. Through large-scale weapons transfers to Ukraine, Washington has so far achieved both objectives. But at the start of the war’s second year, a third strategic challenge looms: to simultaneously maintain U.S. military readiness in its priority theater of East Asia, as well as the Middle East.
CHINA BIGGEST CULPRIT – Coast Guard: Illegal fishing has surpassed piracy as a global threat. Illegal fishing has surpassed piracy as a Coast Guard global concern in the maritime domain, the service’s top officer overseeing response policy said Wednesday.
Challengers and challenges: The promise and perils of UK leadership. The number of Challenger 2s heading to Ukraine is small – a company of 14 tanks – but the strategic effect of this decision could be very large if it achieves the UK’s aim of “unlocking” the “Leopard coalition” of European countries who own over 2000 Leopard tanks but need Germany’s approval to send them to Ukraine.
HOMELAND SECURITY
‘INVADERS’ GET SHOT? – Texas National Guard soldier shoots migrant at border. An internal document obtained by Army Times does not indicate that the migrant was armed.
SERIOUSLY, DOJ?! – THEY “MILLED AROUND” INSIDE CAPITOL – 3 active-duty Marines who work in intelligence arrested for alleged participation in Jan. 6 riot. Three Marines were arrested Wednesday for their participation in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
TOTALLY SEPARATE ISSUES. HE DIDN’T HAVE WEAPONS AT CAPITOL – Navy reservist charged in Jan. 6 riot convicted on weapons charges. A jury has convicted a Navy reservist from Virginia accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 on separate charges that he illegally possessed silencers disguised to look like cleaning supplies.
CHINA THREAT
This Threat From China Could Kill Tens of Thousands of Americans. Electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) are short, powerful bursts of electromagnetic energy. They have the potential to destroy a country’s power grid. This fact is not lost on the Japanese government. By the decade’s end, the Japanese intend to have effective countermeasures against EMPs in place. The United States, however, has no such plan in place. This decision could prove to be catastrophic. The Chinese regime poses the biggest EMP threat to the U.S. In 2020, an EMP expert published a report aptly titled “China: EMP Threat.”
Taiwan defense experts expect few US boots on the ground if war breaks out with China. International support could be key to deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, according to Taipei-based defense experts who say U.S. forces aren’t likely to fight on the island or in the strait separating it from mainland China.
RUSSIA THREAT
Coast Guard monitoring Russian ship lurking off Hawaiian coast. The U.S. Coast Guard is continuing to monitor a Russian vessel believed to be used for intelligence gathering, service officials said Thursday.
UKRAINE WAR
CIA director holds secret meeting with Zelensky on Russia’s next steps. CIA Director William Burns traveled in secret to Ukraine’s capital last week to brief President Volodymyr Zelensky on the U.S. assessment of the weeks and months ahead.
US still holds back long-range ATACMS missiles from Ukraine. “Our judgement to date is [that] the juice isn’t really worth the squeeze,’ says top defense official.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 331. The Russian army launched a “local offensive” near Orikhiv in southern Ukraine, a Russian-installed official said. The Kremlin warned that any Ukrainian attacks on Crimea would be “extremely dangerous” after The New York Times reported that US officials were warming to the idea of helping Kyiv attack the Black Sea peninsula.
In Dnipro missile strike: Nine floors of random death and destruction. Some victims had fled the country’s harshest front lines in the east and south, only for the war to catch up to them in a city considered a relative safe haven.
US has given $113B in aid to help Ukraine in its war with Russia, oversight report says. Three inspectors general, including the Pentagon’s top watchdog, have issued their first comprehensive oversight plan that outlines transparency efforts to manage and keep track of billions of dollars that the U.S. has provided Ukraine to defend itself against invading Russian forces.
Inside the urgent push to arm Ukraine for a spring offensive. Over the past few weeks, Western allies of Ukraine have committed massive packages of mechanized armor to break the stalemate with Russia. Here’s how it came together — and what they expect Kyiv to do with it.
PODCAST: Ukraine won’t receive U.S. long-range missiles. The U.S. government nixed the idea of sending Ukraine long-range missiles.
NORTH KOREA THREAT
TRUMP’S ‘BIG RED BUTTON’ MOVING TO S. KOREA – What’s needed to put nukes in S. Korea? It’s time to start planning, new report says. An independent, bipartisan commission is recommending the U.S. and South Korea begin “pre-decisional” discussions about what it would take to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to the region should tensions reach a point where such a move is warranted.
North Korea passes new defense budget. North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament has passed a budget that sustains a high level of defense spending, despite the country’s economic troubles as leader Kim Jong Un pushes for an aggressive expansion of his nuclear arsenal.
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY – NATO, MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA ASIA, LATIN AMERICA
US National Security Advisor lands in Israel as Netanyahu’s government faces possible political crisis. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan landed in Israel on Wednesday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Israel formally requests 25 F-15 EX from the US: Sources. Jerusalem previously expressed interest in the F-15s, along with F-35s, but political instability delayed the official move.
US cable: Russian paramilitary group set to get cash infusion from expanded African mine. The Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization linked to Russia, is expanding its mining projects in Africa to bring in millions to prop up its military operations in Ukraine, according to a Western official and a U.S. cable obtained by POLITICO.
Kenyan security forces kill 10 suspected al-Shabab fighters. Kenya has suffered attacks for a decade as retribution for joining the peacekeeping force fighting al-Shabab in Somalia.
South Africa to hold naval drill with Russia and China amid Ukraine war. The 10-day naval exercises are a show of diplomatic independence for South Africa, which is part of an alliance with Brazil, Russia, India and China — known as BRICS.
US, Syrian Kurdish forces detain IS militant. The U.S. military says that American and Kurdish Syrian forces detained an Islamic State group militant following a helicopter raid in eastern Syria.
SPACE
Space Force chief sets ‘lines of effort’ for service success. “A capable and resilient weapon system will be operationally ineffective if its personnel, expertise, tactical employment, and sustainment are insufficient for the mission,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman says in his first commander’s note on fielding combat-ready space forces.
US MILITARY
DARPA takes big step forward on X-plane that maneuvers with air bursts. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has taken a major step forward toward creating an experimental airplane that can be maneuvered without traditional ailerons or other mechanical devices, instead using short bursts of air.
The military needs recruits with ADHD. The condition can be a disability in some roles, but it can be a super ability in others.
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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“………..creating an experimental airplane that can be maneuvered without traditional ailerons or other mechanical devices, instead using short bursts of air.”
Sounds like the entire Biden administration.
I wonder if you also have to hold your nose while around the airplane???
On the Chinese EMP threat — We have known about the EMP threat since 1962 when the Starfish burst in the South Pacific tripped circuit breakers 1000 miles away in Hawaii. None of the presidents since then have taken the threat seriously. When I worked part time for Congressman Rohrabacher 8 years ago he was aghast at the problem and I prepared a position paper for him. Unfortunately, he got beaten by the “green wave of Democrat cash” in the next election. The threat is worse now than it has ever been with Iran and North Korea having nuclear weapons and the capability to launch them into orbit. I cannot get anyone in the legislature on the local or national level to take this threat seriously. Our champion at the national level, Dr. Peter Pry, died last year. If Paul Cespo wants more background information on the problem I would be happy to talk to him and send him more information. Dr. George A. Kuck