Tensions Rise As Beijing Sharpens Focus On Taiwan And Japan

PAUL’S DEFENSE BRIEF (PDB) – Chinese intelligence outfit (spies) contacted a former senior U.S. State Department officer late last year, requesting that they draft an assessment of U.S. policy priorities in Venezuela in exchange for payment. Details pending.

Expansion. Satellite imagery shows China is set to illegally reclaim land on another reef in the contested South China Sea for yet another military base.

Taiwan’s $40 billion special defense budget plan to fund advanced long-range U.S. missiles and sea drones that could prove crucial to countering a Chinese invasion.

Japan’s Prime Minister said while a hypothetical U.S.-China clash over Taiwan wouldn’t immediately mean Japan will take military action, Japan will respond within legal limits should the U.S. be attacked during a joint operation. Sounds overly specific and restrictive.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – Here’s a roundup of today’s other top defense news from conservative national security expert PAUL CRESPO.

THE PDB – Not the President’s Daily Briefing, but almost as good – PAUL’S DEFENSE BRIEF:    

NATIONAL SECURITY

Key takeaways from the new National Defense Strategy released by the Pentagon on Friday, Jan. 23, which describes how the department will implement its responsibilities under the National Security Strategy. It is a highly political document that spends more time criticizing its predecessors than making an analytically rigorous case for a new approach.

In 2006, this author helped establish NATO Special Operations Forces Command in Belgium. It included commandos from more than 19 nations. Over the next two years, they learned that common values were much more important than national differences.

U.S. defense industrial base is often understood through its largest prime contractors, but the system’s true vulnerabilities lie deep below the surface.

HOMELAND DEFENSE

U.S. base commanders to have more say in defeating drone intrusions. All unauthorized drone flights in the vicinity of U.S. military installations have now been classified as a surveillance threat.

Still, Bureaucratic confusion leaves Pentagon sites exposed to drones. Major military installations in the U.S. are unprotected from drone attacks, despite policies that mandate otherwise, says IG.

HOMELAND SECURITY

Coast Guard’s newest weapon for border security: Jet skis.

A Tennessee man is facing prison time for hacking a VA health platform, accessing a Marine veteran’s personal health information, and posting it on an Instagram feed he named “@hackedthegovernment.”

DEFENSE POLITICS

Congress hurtles toward partial shutdown after anti-ICE activist killed in Minneapolis. White House press secretary urged Senate Democrats to advance the government funding package that must become law before the weekend to avoid a partial shutdown, rejecting their proposal to remove DHS funding.

Space Force program office turns to new acquisition tools to leverage commercial assets. Leaders say they are uniquely prepared among the services to embrace the Trump administration’s acquisition reforms.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s record F-35 deliveries last year come with a caveat: Slightly less than half the 191 in its largest weapons program should have been delivered about two years ago.

Attempts to defraud service members, veterans, and their families are so rampant that advocates are pushing for an entirely new approach to cracking down on predators and root causes.

US POWER OVERSEAS

Outside the Contiguous United States (CONUS). Over 1,000 troops are involved in the latest iteration of Sentry Aloha. Air National Guard units from across the country are in Hawaii for a large-scale exercise hosted by the Hawaii Air Guard’s 154th Wing, the largest wing in ANG.

GREENLAND CRISIS

Senior Greenlandic official dismissed Trump’s desire for the U.S. to gain sovereignty over the land on which its military base sits. She said the president’s proposal is a “red line.”

IRAN THREAT

Details of the multiday U.S. Air Force exercise in the Middle East are sparse as the U.S. military presence in the region grows and White House warns Iran to stop its murderous crackdown on anti-regime protesters.

VENEZUELA THREAT

Other big news has displaced headlines about Venezuela. But there have been a number of important statements from the U.S. and one disturbing statement by Venezuela’s radical communist interim “leader” since the U.S. apprehended Maduro and his wife.

NARCO THREAT

Families of two Trinidadian men killed in a U.S. military strike on a drug-smuggling boat in October filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S., the first legal challenge of its kind to President Trump’s targeting of drug vessels along narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific.

RUSSIA THREAT/UKRAINE WAR

Nearly 2 million military casualties to date, study finds, with Russia bearing the brunt of losses.

EUROPEAN DEFENSE

Europeans are “dreaming” if they think the continent can defend itself without the U.S., NATO Secretary General said to members of the European Parliament, citing the costs of going it alone and the need to build up nuclear capability. France disagreed.

SPACE THREATS

Space Force to select satellite manufacturers as soon as March for next-gen spy satellites – Geosynchronous Reconnaissance & Surveillance program.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Russian surveillance ship Kareliya seemingly concluded a two-week surveillance mission around Japan’s southwest region, its time in the area overlapping with that of a Chinese surveillance ship that replaced it.

Huge. After two decades of negotiations, the EU and India announce “mother of all deals,” representing 25% of global GDP, to create a market of two billion people.

US MILITARY

New E-4C doomsday plane could take on airborne ICBM launcher role. The Air Force is taking back responsibility for the Airborne Command Post mission from the Navy, known as Looking Glass.

Air Force has partnered with Stanford University to evaluate an AI cockpit assistant designed to reduce pilot workload during high-stress situations, such as in-flight emergencies and system diagnostics.

The elite Navy test and evaluation squadron, VX-9 “Vampires” based out of NAWS China Lake, is now test flying the Air Force’s F-35A model, not the carrier-based F-35C.

Keeping seven LCS’s. The surface fleet will have a total of seven littoral combat ships after the Navy shelved plans to decommission the hulls ahead of their expected service lives.

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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