February 20, 2013

Lawmaker: Army program needs more oversight

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2013-02-20-HTS-reaction_ST_U.htm

Lawmaker: Army program needs more oversight
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY,
Posted 10h 43m ago

Washington — The Army needs to justify the continuation of a $250million program to send social scientists to the battlefield because of problems outlined in a report by USA TODAY, a congressman said in a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh on Tuesday.

The Pentagon has lost the ability to objectively assess the value of Human Terrain System teams and other programs, said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

"I would like to know whether the Army is considering expansion of the Human Terrain System, as well as any justification for continuing the program in light of severe and detrimental cuts to military operations," Hunter said in the letter.

Problems come to light with programs such as Human Terrain teams, he said, only when Congress or the media ask probing questions. Military officials lose objectivity when they've been involved with programs for years, Hunter said.

February 20, 2013

Banksters Rip Apart Spanish Health Care

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/48184/banksters-rip-apart-spanish-health-care

Banksters Rip Apart Spanish Health Care
by Thom Hartmann | February 19, 2013 - 10:01am

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's latest health care rankings of the 34 most developed nations in the world, the United States ranks dead last in male life expectancy.

We also rank near the very bottom in preventing premature death, infant mortality, total health care coverage, number of practicing doctors, and preventing heart disease deaths.

But, here's some good news (at least for those fans of Americanized health care): our world rankings might soon improve.

Not because we're radically changing our privatized system that puts profits ahead of people's lives. But because banksters in Europe are forcing several nations that rank ahead of us to ditch their national public health care systems, and replace them with more privatized (and profitable) American-style health care systems.

February 20, 2013

Congress: End Endless War and Stop Becoming “the Evil That We Deplore”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/20



Congress: End Endless War and Stop Becoming “the Evil That We Deplore”
by Norman Solomon
Published on Wednesday, February 20, 2013 by Common Dreams

Congress waited six years to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resolution after it opened the bloody floodgates for the Vietnam War in August 1964.

If that seems slow, consider the continuing failure of Congress to repeal the “war on terror” resolution—the Authorization for Use of Military Force—that sailed through, with just one dissenting vote, three days after 9/11.

Prior to casting the only “no” vote, Congresswoman Barbara Lee spoke on the House floor. “As we act,” she said, “let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

~snip~

Now, Rep. Lee has introduced H.R. 198, a measure to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force. (This week, several thousand people have already used a RootsAction.org special webpage to email their Senators and House members about repealing that “authorization” for endless war.) Opposed to repeal, the Obama administration is pleased to keep claiming that the 137-month-old resolution justifies everything from on-the-ground troops in combat to drone strikes and kill lists to flagrant abrogation of civil liberties.

February 20, 2013

Unpaid fines, leaks and spills at volumes beyond worst case scenarios for Enbridge Inc.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/sustainability/unpaid-fines-leaks-and-spills-volumes-beyond-worst-case-scenarios-enbridge-inc



Unpaid fines, leaks and spills at volumes beyond worst case scenarios for Enbridge Inc.

~snip~

On June 19, a flange gasket joining two sections of an Enbridge pipeline broke, spewing 230,000 litres of oil sands bitumen from a 12-year old pumping station near Elk Point, Alberta – just two hours due east of Bruderheim.

In fact, Enbridge has had more than 600 recorded leaks and breaks over the last decade.

One of those occurred in January 2010, in the rustic 437-person town of Neche, North Dakota. Located less than two kilometres south of the Manitoba border, the farming community saw 47,000 litres of oil leak into their farmland when Enbridge's pipeline cracked.

But this accident paled in comparison to the company's Cheecham, Alberta spill – one year earlier. After a small-diametre Enbridge pipe broke, oil began spurting skyward into the surrounding area. The accident, Enbridge claimed, was too small to have registered in its pipeline monitoring system.

February 19, 2013

(Canadian) National Defence to buy fewer bombs if F-35 selected as new air force fighter

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/national-defence-to-buy-fewer-bombs-if-f-35-selected-as-new-air-force-fighter/article8705866/

National Defence to buy fewer bombs if F-35 selected as new air force fighter
MURRAY BREWSTER
OTTAWA — The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, Feb. 14 2013, 6:46 PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Feb. 14 2013, 6:49 PM EST

If the Harper government proceeds with its controversial F-35 program, the stealth fighters might not drop as many bombs or fire as many missiles as previously estimated.

National Defence has drastically revised how much it would spend on weapons for the multi-role fighter, according to a Parliamentary Library research publication tabled this week.

~snip~

The amount National Defence has set aside for weapons has been cut to just $52-million for the estimated 30-year operational life of the jets, compared with estimates in two previous reports of $270-million and $300-million.

Modern bombs and missiles are expensive. Laser-guided munitions – known as JDAMS – cost an average of $24,000 each, while Hellfire air-to-ground missiles cost $58,000 apiece.



unhappycamper comment: $52 million worth of bombs over 30 years does not sound all that good. (BTW, Hellfire missiles cost $160 grand a pop, not $58 grand.)

February 19, 2013

The Wizards At Lexington Institute Attack Time Magazine For F-35 Article

http://www.avionics-intelligence.com/news/2013/02/18/time-magazine-shoots-at-f-35-misses.html


TIME MAGAZINE SHOOTS AT F-35, MISSES
Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
Monday, February 18, 2013

Last week, Time magazine published a lengthy diatribe against the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, the F-35 fighter. The plane is being built in three versions to meet the diverse warfighting needs of the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. If it is successful, America can look forward to another four decades of global air dominance -- the warfighting edge that explains why no U.S. ground troops have been killed by hostile aircraft in 60 years. If the program falters, there is no way that the Pentagon's aging fleet of tactical aircraft can deliver that kind of protection through mid-century.

So the stakes are very high. But you'd never know that from the sloppy job that Time did on the story. For instance, the piece says that the short range of the Navy's F-35s will require aircraft carriers to "sail close to enemy shores." In reality, the F-35 will deliver about 40% more combat radius than the Navy planes it is replacing. Elsewhere, it states that a stealthy jet like the F-35 "requires sacrifices in range, flying time and weapons-carrying capability." But the most common version of F-35, the Air Force variant, has a combat radius 25% greater than that of the non-stealthy F-16s it will replace while carrying a bigger bomb-load; in some scenarios, F-35 can carry over three times the bomb-load of an F-16. And it asserts that the plane's "squat fuselage" forced designers to put the tailhook of the Navy version in a location where it doesn't work well, without noting that the tailhook issue has been solved.

The Time story is full of misleading statements. It says that the advent of unmanned drones "makes the idea of flying a human through flak and missiles seem quaint," without mentioning that drones can't survive when subjected to flak or missile fire. It cites a former official saying the Air Force refused to consider purchasing the longer-range Navy version of the plane without noting that the Navy version costs more and is poorly suited to Air Force needs. It complains about a supposed doubling in costs while failing to note that the cost of the most common version has fallen in each successive production lot, and is on track to match that of the legacy F-16 fighter at the end of the second Obama Administration. It asserts the high-tech helmet worn by F-35 pilots is "plagued with problems," without acknowledging that fixes have been found and even without fixes, the helmets are better than anything being used today.

What readers get instead of a thoughtful assessment is a strung-together collection of disconnected facts, often taken out of context, that isn't even internally consistent much less balanced. For instance, the complaint about the Air Force failing to consider purchasing the longer-range Navy version of F-35 comes one paragraph after a complaint about the short range of the Navy version. That's what happens when your only goal is to make the strongest case for a preconceived conclusion. So the fact that three military services have stuck with the F-35 program through five presidential administrations is barely mentioned; the fact that all of America's future adversaries are likely to be better equipped with air defenses than Al Qaeda or the Taliban gets short shrift; and the admission that "pilots love the F-35" is rendered inexplicable by all the negatives offered elsewhere in the story.




unhappycamper comment: The F-35 is low-hanging fruit, should a congress-critter concerned with the National Budget actually do something useful.

February 19, 2013

The F-35 Stealth Fighter Is Designed for No One

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-f-35-stealth-fighter-is-designed-for-no-one



You can have three planes in one, but it will cost you.

The F-35 Stealth Fighter Is Designed for No One
By Derek Mead

Renewed budget stress in Washington and the looming sequester that proposes fairly drastic cuts to the defense budget (along with everything else) has renewed interest in one of the Pentagon's most embarrassing problems: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is still nowhere near completed, and its cost overruns continue to balloon. Since 2001, the program has almost doubled in cost at close to $400 billion at this point. The bloated jet, which is still being designed as we speak despite production having already started, can't even pass its performance tests, so those tests are being made easier.

All in all, this future jet continues to dig itself a disaster pit that, no matter how many billions are spent on it, will be nearly impossible to climb out of. Why's that? In a bit to cut costs–or, more likely, in a bid to give the appearance of cutting costs–the jet has been designed with three variants in mind for the three branches of the military expecting to use it.

That's not so much of an issue, as pretty much all military planes have custom variants designed for various uses. But rather than modify an existing airframe to a new purpose, all three branches came to the F-35 drawing board with an idea in mind, and designers have had to try to mush those three designs into one cohesive, high-performance plane. The Air Force, Navy, and Marines all have very different ideas of what they need, and having them all fight to get exactly what they want into the same, do-it-all airframe means no one wins.

~snip~

The military has, until now, used a wide range of fighter and fighter-attack planes precisely because you need the right tool for the job. Trying to develop a Swiss Army knife while also making it the best in the world is a task that simply isn't going to happen, at least not without an endless budget and zero deadlines. The end result is a program that's still chugging along with no actual deadline in sight. The question is how long the pet program of defense-minded congressmen (those who count the 144,000 workers employed by the F-35 among their constituents, at least) will continue plodding into the future. With the drone war continuing to scale up at a much cheaper cost, it's an important question to ask.

February 19, 2013

The Saga of the F-35…And the Coming Sequester Flak

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136312-1,00.html



The F-35 is the only fighter in development for the Air Force, Navy and Marines

The Saga of the F-35…And the Coming Sequester Flak
By MARK THOMPSON Monday, Feb. 25, 2013

~snip~

The price tag, meanwhile, has nearly doubled since 2001, to $396 billion. Production delays have forced the Air Force and Navy to spend at least $5 billion to extend the lives of existing planes. The Marine Corps--the cheapest service, save for its love of costly jump jets (which take off and land almost vertically) for its pet aircraft carriers--have spent $180 million on 74 used British AV-8 jets for spare parts to keep their Reagan-era Harriers flying until their version of the F-35 truly comes online. Allied governments are increasingly weighing alternatives to the F-35.

But the accounting is about to get even worse as concern over spending on the F-35 threatens other defense programs. On March 1, if lawmakers cannot reach a new budget deal, the Pentagon faces more than $500 billion in spending cuts in the form of sequestration, which translates into a 10% cut in projected budgets over the coming decade. Two years ago, the White House predicted that those cuts would be so onerous to defense-hawk Republicans that they would never happen. But the GOP is now split, with a growing number of members who are more concerned about the deficit than defense.

"We are spending maybe 45% of the world's budget on defense. If we drop to 42% or 43%, would we be suddenly in danger of some kind of invasion?" asked Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican and part of a new breed of deficit hawks who talk of spending as a bigger threat than war. "We're bankrupting our country, and it's going to put us in danger."

~snip~

The sad irony is that cutting the F-35 at this point won't save much money in the near term, because the Pentagon recently pushed nearly $5 billion in F-35 contracts out the door. Yet sequester-mandated cuts will push both the purchase of additional planes and their required testing into the future with an inevitable result: the cost of each plane will rise even higher. Unfortunately, that won't be anything new for the F-35 Lightning II.

February 19, 2013

F-35 warplane costs driven up by production choice: U.S. general

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/19/us-lockheed-fighter-bogdan-idUSBRE91I01120130219

F-35 warplane costs driven up by production choice: U.S. general
CANBERRA | Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:24pm EST

(Reuters) - A decision to start production of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet before it was fully tested has driven up the $396 billion cost of the troubled project and increased risks, the U.S. general heading development of the warplane has said.

~snip~

"A large amount of concurrency, that is, beginning production long before your design is stable and long before you've found problems in tests, creates downstream issues where now you have to go back and retrofit airplanes and make sure the production line has those fixes in them," Bogdan told ABC's Four Corners program late on Monday.

"That drives complexity and cost. Let's make no mistake about it. This program still has risks, technical risks, it has cost issues, it has problems we'll have to fix in the future," he said in his first interview on the problem-plagued F-35.

Australia's government is looking at buying 24 more Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets amid continuing delays and setbacks in the Joint Strike Fighter project, which is the costliest program in Pentagon procurement history.

February 19, 2013

Beechcraft Exits Bankruptcy On Eve Of Air Force's Light Air Support Pick

http://defense.aol.com/2013/02/19/beechcraft-exits-bankruptcy-air-force-las-light-air-support/



Beechcraft's two prototype AT-6 "Texan II" attack planes in flight.

Beechcraft Exits Bankruptcy On Eve Of Air Force's Light Air Support Pick
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: February 19, 2013

Wichita-based Beechcraft -- formerly Hawker Beechcraft -- has officially emerged from bankruptcy with a new name, 2,000 fewer employees, $2 billion less debt, and one last shot at a bitterly contested Air Force contract to provide ground attack planes to Afghanistan. The Air Force's decision on the Light Air Support program may come as early as this week.

Today's announcement puts a nail in the coffin of Sinophobic speculation that Beechcraft would sell out to Beijing. The Kansas-based aircraft manufacturer did accept a $50 million "non-refundable deposit" from a Chinese firm, Superior Aviation Beijing, that was interested in acquiring it. But concerns over Superior's business bona fides and the security of Beechcraft's defense programs ultimately scotched the deal.

So the reorganized Beechcraft will remain an American company -- albeit with a major facility in Chihuahua, Mexico. It will continue building T-6 military trainers for the Navy, although the Air Force has finished its T-6 buy. And it will still build "King Air" civil aircraft that are sometimes converted for the armed forces. What it will shed, along with the Hawker name, is its money-hemorrhaging line of business jets, a sector savaged by the recession.

Beechcraft's exit from Chapter 11, approved by the court on Feb. 1st, formally went into effect this past Friday, although it was only announced today. This coming Friday, the 22nd, the Air Force is expected to announce its (hopefully) final decision on the Light Air Support contract, a $355-plus million program to equip the fledgling Afghan Air Force with low-cost, low-tech, easy-to-operate propeller planes to strafe the Taliban once US jets withdraw.


on edit to add: This is a 20-plane, $355 million deal.