Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

AFP
June 19, 2009
By Michel Moutot

TAMPA, Florida (AFP) — The target may be in Iraq or Afghanistan, but if a US air attack risks killing civilians the decision to strike is taken by leaders at this military base in sunny Tampa, Florida.

In a windowless room at the sprawling MacDill Air Force Base, home to the US Central Command (CENTCOM), several dozen officers monitor developments across the Middle East, the Gulf and Central Asia 24 hours a day.

They also watch events in the pirate-infested waters off Somalia’s shores. …

A huge flat screen monitor on the left broadcasts live images caught by cameras aboard unmanned aerial vehicles, both spy planes and drones. Reconnaissance video streams and attacks are also tracked in real time. …

In the center of the room, another monitor continuously shows updated summaries of key data and information. Digital clocks on the wall gives the time in Tampa, Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and “Zulu” (GMT). …

Among the computer screens sit two powerful Sun workstations.

“Their job is to use picture and imagery to calculate what weapon to use,” said Schappler, adding that the calculations at CENTCOM are completed simultaneously with others in the field.

“They discuss it and find a common ground. But if they still disagree, it goes to the higher level. So, the decision is taken here. But often, in the meantime, the target is gone.”

Despite all the high-level coordination, there are sometimes mistakes — mistakes that often prove costly in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the US air strikes are deeply unpopular.

US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have their own command posts and operations centers, but personnel at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, in the western US state of Nevada, maneuver the pilotless Predator and Reaper drones that fly over Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. …

www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gzDDNUI-_Yxjf024X_5c_m9JZ40w

NTI: Global Security Newswire
June 12, 2009

Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Kinetic Energy Interceptor project is officially dead, Reuters reported yesterday (GSN, June 11).

The U.S. missile-defense project had undergone $1.2 billion of work, but fell victim to the Obama administration’s plans to cut funding for missile defense activities in the fiscal 2010 budget. The Defense Department delivered a stop work order in May and formally terminated the program Wednesday.

The Kinetic Energy Interceptor was designed to destroy enemy missiles during the early stages of flight. A major test of the technology was scheduled for September, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that the system’s cost and limited capabilities made it expendable.

The project was cut “for the convenience of the government” rather than any problem with the defense contractor, according to the termination message (Jim Wolf, Reuters, June 11).

www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090612_9681.php

Reuters
June 17, 2009
By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia hopes U.S. President Barack Obama will not pursue his predecessor’s plan to deploy weapons in space but Moscow is ready to respond appropriately to any such moves, a senior Russian general said on Wednesday.

Russia, negotiating with the United States a new treaty to curb nuclear arms to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) expiring in December, has argued against the “weaponization of space.”

President Dmitry Medvedev, due to receive Obama next month on his first visit to Moscow, has said Russia’s conditions for new nuclear arms accords include banning arms in space. …

“As far as I know, today’s U.S. administration has somewhat different plans — they have become more down-to-earth and more realistic,” one of Russia’s deputy defense ministers Vladimir Popovkin, in charge of weapons, told a news conference.

He said Russia could find a cheap way of dealing with any potential U.S. space defense system. …

www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE55G4I820090617

The Epoch Times – New York
Jun 14, 2009

LONDON—A planned U.S. missile shield may not strengthen Europe’s security and could hurt NATO’s interests if deployed in the face of Russian opposition, members of parliament said on Sunday.

The United States says the anti-missile system is designed to prevent potential attacks from countries such as Iran, but the plan has outraged Moscow which sees it as a threat.

Russia has urged Washington to drop its plan to put 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Both former Soviet satellites are now NATO members.

Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, made up of legislators from the main political parties, voiced reservations about the U.S. plan in a report on weapons proliferation.

“We are not convinced that, as they are currently envisaged and under current circumstances, the United States’ planned ballistic missile defence (BMD) deployments in the Czech Republic and Poland represent a net gain for European security,” it said.

“We conclude that if the deployments are carried out in the face of opposition from Russia, this could be highly detrimental to NATO’s overall security interests,” the report said.

www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/18113/

By Mark Mazzetti
New York Times
June 8, 2009

On May 19, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, sent a classified memorandum announcing that his office would use its authority to select the top American spy in each country overseas.

One day later, Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent a dispatch of his own. Ignore Mr. Blair’s message, Mr. Panetta wrote to agency employees; the C.I.A. was still in charge overseas, a role that C.I.A. station chiefs had jealously guarded for decades.

The dispute has posed an early test for both spymasters, with Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, now trying to negotiate a truce. The behind-the-scenes battle shows the intensity of struggles continuing between intelligence agencies whose roles were left ill defined after a structural overhaul in 2004 that was intended to harness greater cooperation and put an end to internecine fights. …

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/us/politics/09intel.html

By Nathan Hodge
June 8, 2009
Wired News – USA

The U.S. military is stepping up training and reviewing target sets in case the North Koreans decide to go to war …

As we learned last week, North Korea looks to be prepping for another long-range missile test, and South Korea has reportedly outlined plans to strike back if North Korea targets its warships. The U.S. military is also preparing for the worst; Aviation Week ace reporters Amy Butler and Dave Fulghum have an excellent rundown of stepped-up military preparations in the event North Korea follows through on its belligerent rhetoric.

Fulghum, reporting from Osan Air Base, South Korea, notes that the U.S. Air Force is identifying critical training fixes for close air support and air-to-air combat — two missions that would be critical in the first 72 hours of the fight. He also takes a close look at a first-day-of-the-war mission for joint tactical air controllers: XATK (pronounced “ex-attack”), the mission to destroy long-range, North Korean artillery.

… the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is boosting its sensor capabilities so U.S. decisionmakers will have more reaction time in the event of a missile launch or an actual attack. The U.S. military made a deliberate decision not to try to intercept a North Korean Taepodong-2 in April; it will be interesting to see if this time around … commanders deploy more missile defense assets or step up their alert.

www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/us-preps-for-possible-showdown-with-pyongyang/

By American Forces Press Service
June 4, 2009

FORT GREELY, Alaska: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stepped down inside a missile silo here yesterday …

Fort Greely, about 100 miles into the Alaskan interior from Fairbanks, is home to one of two ground-based, mid-course defense units housing missile interceptors on the West Coast. The other is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. …

“We have a good capability here,” Gates said after a tour of the site. “I think knowing that we have this and that it becomes more effective in each passing day should be a source of comfort to the American people in an uncertain world.”

Sixteen interceptors are in the ground here, with plans to add two more. Combined with those at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the United States will have 30 such interceptor systems. More could be added if needed, Gates said.

In a brief meeting with reporters, Gates said he has planned nearly $1 billion in the 2010 budget for the development of ground-based interceptors. The budget also allows for developing other missile technologies that protect troops in the field, ships at sea and provide theater defense, he added. …

www.defencetalk.com/gates-meets-soldiers-on-front-lines-of-us-missile-defense-19485/

By Tim Cocks
Washington Post – Reuters
June 2, 2009

U.S. combat forces will vacate all Iraqi cities on schedule by the end of this month, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said Tuesday, including the still violent insurgent holdout of Mosul.

U.S. combat troops are scheduled to leave Iraq’s towns and cities by June 30 and redeploy to bases outside, according to a security pact that took effect in January.

Some U.S. and Iraqi officials had suggested this might have to be delayed in the case of Mosul, where al Qaeda and other insurgent groups still carry out frequent attacks. …

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060201119.html

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The Orange Party
June 01, 2009

The shameful cover-up by the foreign secretary who lied to parliament over illegal secret renditions on the tiny crown island of Diego Garcia has been exposed, while the government’s disgraceful dirty little secret has been systematically wiped from the official record.

Time and again the … government has scoffed at suggestions the island was used as a Guantanamo (Gitmo) style black-site prison.

Now two terror suspects who were flown by the CIA to the UK territory and later allegedly tortured have been named and evidence about their treatment has been revealed for the first time, according to the Guardian. …

After repeated denials by ministers, fresh evidence prepared for the commons foreign affairs committee by Clive Stafford Smith, of the human rights group Reprieve, show two men, referred to by foreign secretary, David Miliband, had been rendered through the island in 2002.

And the government had systematically destroyed flight logs for the US airbase, according to LibDems foreign affairs spokesman Edward Davy.

The government has an appalling record over the tiny island in the Indian Ocean since leasing it out to the US in the 1970s. Then locals were forced out to live in poverty more than 1,000 miles away in Mauritius, so the island could be turned into a US military base.

One of the alleged terrorists held at Diego Garcia cited in the Reprieve evidence before he was flown on to Gitmo is the subject of a police investigation into “possible criminal wrongdoing” by the CIA and an MI5 officer.

Stafford Smith said: “It is time for the UK government to come clean about its role in the detention and to reveal who else has been held on and rendered through Diego Garcia, what happened to them there, and where they are now.”

Unlike Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, no-one can drop by Diego Garcia, even with a UK passport. Anyone entering territorial waters will be arrested. The island, which has a huge airstrip, is full of US military …

The government has a shameful record over the use of the island and the treatment of its people. In 2004, Blair exiled the whole population from the Overseas Territory when he issued an Order of Council stopping the islanders from ever going back, using the ‘royal prerogative’ without recourse to parliament or the crown.

http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/uks-secret-gitmo-exposed_5737.html

BY Craig Covault
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
May 26, 2009

A new military satellite so highly classified the U.S. government will not even divulge which military or intelligence agency owns it is undergoing final checkout for liftoff this summer at Cape Canaveral.

The placement into the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s launch schedule of the $500 million class secret mission, on a large booster and close to launch – but with no public disclosure of who will command it – is highly unusual.

The satellite weighs at least two tons and is code named “PAN.” …

The mission is part of a surge in military spacecraft launch operations at Cape Canaveral, which has already launched three military flights in 2009. The Cape is to launch as many as five more during the second half of the year starting with PAN.

The late placement of PAN in the public schedule, minus any other information, could signal that the Defense Dept. and intelligence agencies are beginning to stiffen secrecy around the growing number of U.S. military space flights. …

The PAN designation is likely a meaningless term used simply so the mission can be called something that will not give away its identity during integration with the launcher. …

The Defense Dept. acknowledges openly that the NRO manages imaging, signal intelligence, and ocean surveillance missions and their relay satellites.

The Air Force operates communications satellites and missile warning spacecraft.

In addition the Missile Defense Agency is openly launching new spacecraft to develop advanced warning sensors while the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing technologies that aid all of the agencies. …

www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0905/26milspace/