Military Spending

April 2, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Space Force Called “ Provocative, destabilizing & basically insane”

This article by Karl Grossman originally appeared in Counterpunch.org.

Spring Quarterly 2019

Image courtesy of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Beginning to fulfill his declaration of last year about turning outer space into a war zone and establishing a US “Space Force,” President Trump was at the Pentagon January 17 promoting a plan titled “Missile Defense Review.”

As The New York Times said in its headline on the scheme: “Plans Evoke 1983 ‘Star Wars’ Program.” Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, calls it “provocative, destabilizing and basically insane.”

Trump said at the Pentagon: “We will recognize that space is a new war-fighting domain with the Space Force leading the way. My upcoming budget will invest in a space-based missile defense layer technology. It’s ultimately going to be a very, very big part of our defense and obviously of our offense.”

The new United States’ outer space military plan comes despite the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, that designates space as a global commons to be used for peaceful purposes…. It has been ratified or signed by 123 nations. The release of the 100-page “Missile Defense Review” follows Trump’s June announcement at the Pentagon that he is moving to establish a US Space Force as a sixth branch of the US armed forces. He said then, “It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space”…. [On Feb. 19, Trump signed “Space Policy Directive-4” ordering the Pentagon to establish the Space Force.]

As the Times said: “In the most contentious proposal, the report embraced Reagan’s Star Wars plan of putting weapons in space to shoot down enemy missiles during ascent.” The Times also noted that “the document was careful to describe the step as largely a research project—for now.”

Of this component, the “Missile Defense Review” says: “The space-basing of interceptors also may provide significant advantages, particularly for boost-phase defense. As directed by Congress, [Pentagon] will identify the most promising technologies, and estimated schedule, cost, and personnel requirements for a possible space based defensive layer that achieves early operational capability for boost-phase defense.”

The Reagan Star Wars program also utilized a “defense” rationale—it was formally called Strategic Defense Initiative. … Despite its claim of being defensive, it was criticized for being offensive and a major element in what the US military in numerous documents then and since has described as “full spectrum dominance” of the Earth below that the US is seeking in taking the “ultimate high ground” of space.

Gagnon, whose Maine-based organization has been a world leader since its formation in 1992 in challenging the weaponization of space, said: “The new Trump space proposal is a key element in Pentagon first-strike attack planning sold to the public as ‘missile defense.’ The system is not actually designed to protect the US from every nuclear missile launched at us—that would be a mathematical impossibility. This Star Wars system would only work as the ‘shield’ to be used to pick off Russian or Chinese retaliatory responses after a US first-strike sword is thrust.”

Gagnon said “we know this because the Space Command” (the division of the US Air Force which Trump seeks to have succeeded by a separate Space Force) “has been computer war gaming such a scenario for years—they call it the ‘Red team’ versus the ‘Blue team.’ ”

“The kicker,” regarding the US space military plans, said Gagnon, “is that the costs would be colossal—what the aerospace industry has long said would be the ‘largest industrial project in human history.’ The only way the US can pay for it is by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and by twisting the arms of NATO members to pony up more money.”

The Outer Space Treaty was spurred, as Craig Eisendrath, who had been a US State Department officer involved in its creation … said, “we sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized…to keep war out of space.”

[The treaty] provides that nations “undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in space in any other manner.”

In recent decades, Canada, Russia and China have been leaders in pushing a treaty that would broaden the Outer Space Treaty—the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) Treaty. This treaty would ban all weapons in space. But US administration after administration, Democrat and Republican, have refused to support the PAROS Treaty, thus providing a veto of its passage at the United Nations.

The new “Missile Defense Review” is explicit in how the US “will not accept any limitation or constraint on the development or deployment of missile defense capabilities.”

The announcement of the new US space plan came a day after the US confirmed it would [withdraw from] the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987. [Note: This has now taken place.]

… An AP story out of Russia [in January] reported: “The Russian Foreign Ministry described the new US strategy as a proof of ‘Washington’s desire to ensure uncontested military domination in the world.’ … It warned that the expansion of the US missile defense system ‘will inevitably start an arms race in space with the most negative consequences for international security and stability.’”

The “’implementation of its plans and approaches will not strengthen security of the US and its allies,’ the ministry said in a statement. ‘Attempts to take that path will have the opposite effect and deal another heavy blow to international stability.’”

The AP story said: “The Russian Foreign Ministry described the review as an attempt to reproduce President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ missile defense plans on a new technological level and urged the Trump administration to ‘come to its senses’ and engage in arms control talks with Russia.”

Meanwhile, Defense News is questioning whether Congress will fund the “Missile Defense Review” proposals. It said that “unless Congress approves the major funding increases that will be required to make it a reality, many of those programs may fall by the wayside—and questions are emerging over whether these systems will be funded by the Democratic House of Representatives that is looking to cut defense spending.” …

—Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, & an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is the author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. This article is excerpted from Counterpunch.org.

January 3, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Let’s Stop Taking Doomsday to the Bank

A mock-up of the new nuclear-armed gravity bomb known as B61-12 was wheeled into a congressional hearing room so lawmakers could see and feel the reality of planning and preparing for indiscriminate, uncontrollable mass destruction with firestorms, radiation and long-term genetic mutations.

By John LaForge

Nineteen governments have ratified the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. With 31 more, it will become international law. The International Court of Justice in 1996 declared that any use of nuclear weapons would be “generally unlawful” and referred to them as the “ultimate evil.” UN General Assembly Resolution 1653 says in part: “Any state using nuclear or thermo-nuclear weapons is to be considered as violating the Charter of the United Nations, as acting contrary to the laws of humanity and as committing a crime against [hu]mankind and civilization.”

Yet the US government is actively proceeding to build ever more “usable” nuclear weapons, increasing the likelihood of the unthinkable — by accident or design. One is the new B61 gravity bomb (model 12) now being developed by more than a dozen US companies that are gratuitously taking doomsday preparations to the bank.

The National Nuclear Security Administration hired the contractors to design, test, build and maintain the B61-12s (a gravity bomb dropped from fighter jets and heavy bombers), set for mass production in 2020. The biggest weapons profiteers in the world are cashing in on the B61 project. Addresses and phone numbers of the nuclear war grifters are listed below in case readers want to directly give them some grief. These are some of the nuclear holocaust hucksters:

Consolidated Nuclear Security Corp. (CNS) is the giant partnership that operates the sprawling Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and produces the bomb-grade uranium “jacket” of the future B61. CNS’s members are a Who’s Who of the nuclear war system including: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bechtel National, and Orbital ATK, among others.
Boeing has designed and is producing the “tail kit” for the new B61-12, steerable fins that will radically improve accuracy, and give the H-bomb new military capabilities.
Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest military contractor, is helping Boeing make the B61-12 in effect the world’s first “smart” nuclear bomb.
Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico is the lead designer for the B61-12 which is expected to cost over $12 billion. Indeed, all three national nuclear weapons laboratories — Los Alamos and Sandia, in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California — have contributed to the design of the B61-12. Think of it as a jobs program for PhD dead enders.
Bechtel National, Inc. normally “puts the US on the cutting edge of missile development” as its website says, but at Y-12 it’s got a piece of the B61 golden goose.
Orbital ATK, Inc. (formerly AlliantTech Systems) is also in on the B61 boondoggle at Y12. Headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, ATK designs and builds missile propulsion systems, military electronics, precision weapons, armament systems, and large- and small-caliber ammunition — including 120mm depleted uranium shells.
Honeywell runs the Kansas City Plant in Missouri making non-nuclear components for all nuclear warheads including the B61s, and has contracted to run the Sandia National Lab.
Integrated Technology Corp. is an information management firm; while Fluor Federal Services, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Fluor Corporation of Irving, Texas, provides engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance, and project management.
Longenecker & Associates, Inc. is a consulting firm that provides specialized, technical and management services to nuclear industries, particularly the planning of “startup and commissioning” of nuclear systems and facilities.

It is the blind careerism and money grubbing of these companies and their congressional lackeys that is driving nuclear weapons production in the United States. Civil society is in a fierce struggle against them in order to see the Bomb stigmatized and banned — like chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions.

Plowshares movement defense attorney Kary Love has suggested that “Rather than targeting governmental installations, a program hitting corporate sponsors could succeed. Divestiture movements, public shaming, moral condemnation may bear fruit.” Here are a few to start with:

Lockheed Martin, 6801 Rockledge Dr., Bethesda, MD 20817; 972-603-9818.

Boeing Defense, Space and Security, PO Box 516, St. Louis, MO 63166; 314-232-0232.

Bechtel National, 50 Beale St., San Francisco, CA 94105; 415-768-1234.

Honeywell / Kansas City Plant: 14520 Botts Rd., Kansas City, MO 64147; 816-488-2000; & New Mexico location, 2540 Alamo SE, Bldg. A., Albuquerque, NM 87106; 505-267-4020.

Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Corp., Y-12 National Security Complex, Bear Creek Rd., Oak Ridge, TN 37830.

Orbital ATK, 45101 Warp Dr., Dulles, VA 20166; 703-406-5000.

Integrated Technology Corp., 1228 North Stadem Dr., Tempe, AZ 85281; 480-968-3459.

Fluor Federal Services Corp, George Washington Way, Richland, WA 99354; 509-376-6808.

Longenecker & Associates, Inc., 2514 Red Arrow Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89135; 702-493-5363.

You can also take part in an international campaign to take money from the financiers of the companies producing nuclear weapons. Dont’ Bank on the Bomb!

December 31, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Congress Could Trim Bomb Production Plans, Tweek Nuclear Attack Policy

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2018-19

Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to cut back on some of the Trump/Obama nuclear weapons production programs, and curb presidential nuclear attack authority.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., joined Ted Lieu, D-CA and others in introducing HR 6840, the Hold the LYNE – Low-Yield Nuclear Explosive – Act. Tri-Valley CAREs in Livermore California reports that the bill would prohibit funds from being used for research, development, production or deployment of the new nuclear warhead. The bill has been referred to the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, and Lieu promises to re-introduce the measure in 2019.

Rep. Smith has criticized the $1.7 trillion, 30-year plan to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal—land-based missiles, submarines, and heavy bombers—as both unaffordable and dangerous, Politico reports. “There’s no such thing as a low-yield nuclear war,” says Rep. Lieu; and Smith warns that the proposed nuclear weapon “brings us no advantage and it is dangerously escalating,” Politico reported.

Rep. Lieu and Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA, have also introduced HR669 and its tandem measure S200, the Restricting First-Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017. The legislation, now with 82 co-sponsors, would prohibit a president from launching a nuclear first-strike without a declaration of war by Congress. Rep. Lieu’s office told Nukewatch Nov. 4 that he will reintroduce the measure in the upcoming session.

Key Democrats have also targeted a proposed $100 billion replacement for today’s land-based Minuteman III missiles dubbed “Ground Based Strategic Deterrent” now in early development. “The rationale for the triad I don’t think exists anymore. The rationale for the numbers of nuclear weapons doesn’t exist anymore,” Rep. Smith said to a recent gathering of the Ploughshares Fund.

“But pork-barrel politics and campaign cash are slowing disarmament,” the Huffington Post reported. Current and future land-based missile are championed by the “ICBM Coalition,” a group of House and Senate members from states where the missiles are deployed, tested or repaired—Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Colorado, California, and Louisiana.

Maintenance workers inspect a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

But high-level critics want them abolished and are pushing back. Former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and Leon Panetta both want current ICBMs scrapped and plans for their replacement cancelled. Last year Sec. Panetta told Reuters news service, “There is no question that out of the three elements of the triad, the Minuteman missiles are at a stage now where they’re probably the most antiquated.” In a series of articles published in major papers, Sec. Perry and General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argue that, “the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force,” and “save about $100 billion over the next three decades.” And they wrote, “We are safer without these expensive weapons and it would be foolish to replace them.”

What you can do: Call, email or write your Representatives and Senators urging them to co-sponsor bills to cancel low-yield nuclear warheads, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and the president’s sole nuclear war-making authority.

November 10, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Armistice Day First

“After the War a Medal and Maybe a Job.” Cartoon by John French Sloan, 1914

It gets harder to commemorate World War I, because of time and the public’s embrace of or indifference to a permanent war economy.

About the Great War British novelist H.G. Wells wrote on August 14, 1914, “This is already the vastest war in history. … For this is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever. Every soldier who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war — it is the last war!”

Optimists said it would be short. Instead, it was the worst bloodbath to date with an estimated 16 to 37 million dead. Combat and other acts of war killed at least 7 million civilians and over 10 million military personnel, while diseases, hunger, pogroms and targeted genocide killed millions more. Rather than “for ever” stopping war, the unprecedented wartime profiteering and victor’s imposition of vengeful reparations the set the stage for World War II’s 70 million fatalities, and the nearly continuous string of money-making legalized murder that has continued since. One low estimate is that since “war to end all war,” about 100 million people have died in war zones.

Armistice Day was established in 1919 to revere the peace, and to remember and commemorate WW I’s the suffering, horror, fear, pain, and loss. In 1918, the headlines roared: “Armistice Signed, End of the War!” and Armistice Day was grounded in the near universal revulsion against war’s dreadful costs, futility, graft, pointlessness and particularly against the corruptions of the politicians who prolonged the conflict. Today’s US governments all spend hundreds of billions on weapons production jobs that our xenophobic fearmongering and its consequent wars sustain. As long as US allies keep trading their oil and cash for US guns, even barbaric, medieval dictatorships like Saudi Arabia (which has beheaded 600 prison convicts since 2014) are coddled, pampered, guided and supplied militarily in its ghastly war of deliberately induced pandemics and malnutrition against Yemen.

In September 2014, on a visit to Italy’s largest military cemetery the Pope warned of a “piecemeal” World War III that may have already begun — with dozens of ongoing, undeclared wars, official crimes, state-sponsored fighter jet and drone attacks, and specialized commando raids the world over. A short list of current warring includes US combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia; civil wars in Nigeria, Maghreb, Libya, and South Sudan; and the Mexican drug war. Pope Francis said about all this, “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, and destruction.”

“Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.” — Harry Patch, pictured, the last surviving soldier of World War I, 2007. Photo: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images.

In 1954, Armistice Day was replaced with Veterans Day, and so our public celebration of peace and an end to war became a rally to “support the troops,” a state and federal day off, and a platform for military recruitment. Not everyone was pleased. The novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a World War II veteran and POW, later wrote, “Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”

Two critics of World War I come to mind. Montana Congresswoman Jannette Rankin said, “You can no more win a war than win an earthquake,” and in his statement during his Court Martial in 1918, Max Plowman said: “I am resigning my commission because I no longer believe that war can end war. War is a disorder, and disorder cannot breed order. Doing evil that good may come is apparent folly.” — John LaForge.

This was written for the Duluth Reader Weekly,

http://duluthreader.com/articles/2018/11/08/15056_armistice_day_first

Let’s Stop Taking Doomsday to the Bank

Armistice Day First

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By John LaForge

Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2018-19

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