Associated Press – The Pentagon said Thursday the cost to build its next-generation fighter jet has doubled to as much as $113 million per plane since 2001. The bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Progam, delivered Thursday to Congress, was swiftly denounced by lawmakers who said runaway spending on major weapons systems has become all too common. Read article
CBS News – Doctors and parents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are blaming a sharp increase in the number of birth defects on the highly sophisticated weapons U.S. troops have used in the city during the war. The BBC reported Thursday the staggering statistic from doctors in the city that the number of heart defects found in newborn babies is 13 times the number of similar birth defects in Europe. U.S. troops carried out a major offensive in the city in 2004. Military spokesman Michael Kilpatrick told the news organization it takes public health concerns “very seriously.” Read article
Bloomberg – Missile attacks by U.S. drone aircraft in northwest Pakistan since 2004 have killed as many as 1,216 people, one third of them civilians, according to a report by a Washington-based think tank. The unmanned aircraft based in neighboring Afghanistan have carried out 114 raids in the past six years, killing up to 849 militants, the report by the New American Foundation said. Since Jan. 1, drones have attacked Taliban based in the South Asian country’s tribal areas 18 times, it said. The minimum number of people who likely died in the total attacks is 834, of whom 549 were thought to have been militants. The data was collated from media reports. Read article
Fox News – Drones are aircraft, but the technology that powers them has been advancing more like a rocket. Here’s a look at tomorrow’s drones, which are key to a modern military. Drones are aircraft, but the technology that powers them has been advancing more like a rocket. Here’s a look at tomorrow’s drones, which are key to a modern military. Read article
BBC – Australians have expressed outrage that a company which uses schools for weekend war games has promoted them as being “perfect killing fields”. One parents’ association described the promotions, in the state of Queensland, as totally inappropriate. Read article
BBC – Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC investigation finds. Former rebel leaders told the BBC that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money. They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time. One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) – from Western governments and charities including Band Aid – was channelled into the rebel fight. Read article
Times Online – Russia is to buy four warships from France in the biggest defence deal with a Nato member since the end of the Cold War. In a move that has alarmed Georgia and the Baltic States, France and Russia said that they were in “exclusive talks” on the sale of Mistral-class amphibious assault ships. President Sarkozy said that he wanted to “turn the page on the Cold War” after meeting President Medvedev in Paris. Read article
Washington Report – This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion. Read article
Guardian – A senior Iraqi spy has accused the prime minister, Nour al-Maliki, of handing out thousands of guns to tribal leaders in a bid to win votes. The claim was made by Iraqi National Intelligence Service former spokesman, Saad al-Alusi, a week before Iraq’s general election, in which allegations of vote buying and exorbitant handouts have become widespread. Read article
Reuters – China’s military warned the United States on Thursday to “speak and act cautiously” to avoid reigniting tensions between the two powers, denying the People’s Liberation Army played a part in Internet hacking. Huang Xueping, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense, said his government would not reverse its decision to suspend “bilateral military plans” with Washington after it said in late January that it would sell $6.4 billion of arms to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own. Read article
Times Online – Iran’s Supreme Leader took to the deck of a naval guided missile destroyer yesterday in defiance of the international storm sparked by the United Nations’ warning that Tehran may be building a nuclear bomb. There were renewed calls for sanctions from the United States, Britain, France and Germany. But some of the strongest reaction came from Russia, the country traditionally most reluctant to impose them, raising hopes of a consensus at the UN Security Council. Read article
Times Online – Russia raised Western hopes that it will support tougher international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme by announcing a delay in delivery of S-300 advanced air defence missiles. The postponement for unspecified “technical problems” was made public a day after Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, urged Russia to support “crippling” sanctions against Tehran during a visit to Moscow. Read article
Jerusalem Post – Russia sees no reason to stall on the sale of its S-300 anti-missile systems to Iran, the Kremlin’s powerful Security Council said on Sunday, Reuters reported. The possible sale of Russian air defense hardware to the Islamic Republic is a major irritant for both Israel and the United States. Both have pressed Moscow not to go ahead with a deal that could protect Iran’s nuclear facilities from air strikes. Read article
“Far from victory in the Cold War, the superpower nuclear arms race and the corresponding militarization of the American economy gave us ramshackle cities, broken bridges, failing schools, entrenched poverty, impeded life expectancy, and a menacing and secretive national security state.”
- Richard Rhodes
Reuters – A high-powered laser aboard a modified Boeing Co 747 jumbo jet shot down an in-flight ballistic missile for the first time, highlighting a new class of ray guns best known from science fiction. The flying laser’s long-awaited test on Thursday showcased a potential to zap multiple targets at the speed of light and at a range of hundreds of kilometers, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said in a statement. Read articlde
Epoch Times – BAE, the second biggest defence contractor in the world, agreed on February 5th to pay out nearly £300 million to the US and the UK after admitting guilt in a long-standing corruption scandal. The British company said it would plead guilty to charges of false accounting and misleading statements made to both the US and the UK at the same time. Read article
yNet – Two Israeli missile boats pass through Egypt’s Suez Canal en route to Red Sea, according to Arab media reports; Cairo adopts strict security measures to ensure ships’ safety. Egyptian sources estimate vessels headed to Persian Gulf. Read article
“Consider what the world might have done with the $5.5 trillion expended by the government to create, store, and deploy nearly 65,000 nuclear weapons held by the USA and USSR during the 19080’s. Imagine the improvements in health, education, environmental protection, transit, technology, sustainable development and foreign aid that might have changed the course of civilisation if these resources had been redirected for the greater good.”
- Prof. John Wargo, Green Intelligence
New York Times – Romania’s top defense body approved an American proposal to base missile interceptors there, the country’s president said Thursday in a hastily arranged announcement. The president, Traian Basescu, said in a statement that Romania, a former Warsaw Pact member and now part of NATO, was prepared to negotiate with the United States to accept ground-based interceptors as part of an antiballistic missile defense system. He said it could be working by 2015. Read article
CNN – Nearly 40 years ago, Hermogenes Marrero was a teenage U.S. Marine, stationed as a security guard on the tiny American island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico. Marrero says he’s been sick ever since. At age 57, the former Marine sergeant is nearly blind, needs an oxygen tank, has Lou Gehrig’s disease and crippling back problems, and sometimes needs a wheelchair. Read article
BBC – Romania has agreed to host missile interceptors as part of a new US defence shield, its president says. President Traian Basescu said the plan was approved by the defence council. It still needs parliamentary approval. The US scrapped a previous missile shield, based in Poland and the Czech Republic, which had infuriated Russia. Read article
Associated Press – President Barack Obama is seeking increased funding for nuclear weapons research and security programs next year, even as his administration promotes nonproliferation and has pledged to reduce the world’s stockpile of nuclear arms. The administration on Monday asked Congress for more than $7 billion for activities related to nuclear weapons in the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $624 million from the 2010 fiscal year. Read article
BBC – A US missile defence test designed to shoot down long-range missiles was aborted when the radar system failed. Rick Lehner, a Missile Defense Agency spokesman, said the target missile represented the type of technology that North Korea or Iran might develop. Read article
Ed – Ooops! Good news for the ‘enemy’ 
Times Online – British forces use white phosphorus artillery rounds in Afghanistan, but not as an anti-personnel weapon. Instead, the weapon is deployed to provide smoke-cover to help extract forces under fire or to hide the movement of soldiers from the enemy. In extreme situations, it could be used to blow up, for example, a downed helicopter or some other piece of equipment to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. White phosphorus munitions were also used by British troops in Iraq, though not since 2005. Read article
ABC – Israel has disciplined two military officers for ordering an artillery attack using white phosphorous on the United Nations headquarters in Gaza last year. The compound was shelled even though UN staff had repeatedly told the Israeli army there were no militants inside and that it was sheltering hundreds of civilians. Read article
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