Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

China.org.cn
Xinhua, November 30, 2012

More than 140 residents lived near Kadena air base of U.S. Air Force in Japan’s Okinawa lodged a lawsuit on Friday to try to ban the night and early morning flights at the base and asked for damages payment.

The accusers filed the lawsuit with local court in the city of Okinawa, complaining that they have suffered from aircraft noise which made them difficult to sleep in the night and early morning.

Among other 22,000 plaintiffs of anther lawsuit against such flights, the 144 accusers also asked for a payment of 216 million yen (about 2.56 million U.S. dollars) in damages.

Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima said Friday that he will continue pushing the plan to relocate the U.S. bases outside his prefecture despite a potential change of government after next month’s general election.

Japan and its U.S. alliance are at odds on the issue of removing U.S. Air Force bases in Okinawa to other places for years. But the two sides still can not reach an agreement.

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2012-11/30/content_27275992.htm

Foreign Policy
By Kevin Baron
November 29, 2012

Key Senate Republicans on Thursday threw their support behind a controversial proposal to develop an East Coast missile defense site in the U.S. to defend against Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles that do not yet exist.

During ongoing floor debate of the Senate’s fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill, New Hampshire’s Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) said she endorsed language in the House-passed bill authorizing the Pentagon to spend $100 million to study locations in the northeast United States for ICMB missile defenses. That provision was a surprise addition when the House bill emerged from the House Armed Services Committee and survived floor debate.

Ayotte introduced an amendment [along with Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman] with similar language and immediately withdrew it before a vote, instead offering her verbal support for the House bill. Ayotte argued Iran could develop a nuclear-tipped, long-range missile that could reach the United States. U.S. defenses currently would not allow for a defensive knock-down and counterattack, she argued.

“I think this is deeply troubling and we should be developing that capacity.”

Ayotte said the National Research Council recommended an additional ballistic missile site in the Northeast. “particularly against Iranian ICBM threats,s hould they emerg.” That report, however, was funded by the Missile Defense Agency and concluded the U.S. should not try to invest in defenses that attempt to strike missiles as they launch, rather ones that would have better luck with set up back on U.S. soil to catch missiles as they’re further in flight.

Ayotte also argued “some analysts” believe Iran “could develop that capacity” of long-range missiles by 2015. “I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t want to be in a position to make sure that the east coast of our country would be as protected as the West coast,” Ayotte said, specifically of Iran, which she argued was trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. …

Read on: http://e-ring.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/29/senate_republicans_back_east_coast_icbm_missile_defense

Business Insider
By Michael Kelley
November 21, 2012

Senior U.S. military officers are considering increasing the American military presence in the east Mediterranean, Barbara Starr of CNN reports.

“From there, you can get to a lot of places in a short period of time,” one military official with direct knowledge of the discussions told CNN. “What we are looking at is what is our presence in the region and what should it be.”

Starr notes that the easiest option would be to extend deployments of Navy ships passing through the region. That was done this week when three warships on reserve—carrying more than 2,000 Marines, Harrier jets, V-22 tilt rotor aircraft and a variety of helicopters— was ordered to head to Israel in case Americans needed evacuation in a worst case scenario. …

Read onwww.businessinsider.com/us-troops-mediterranean-2012-11

Saudi Gazette
November 13, 2012

The Dalai Lama on Monday lamented the US military presence in Japan at a press conference in Okinawa, where anti-American feeling has flared after alleged crimes by servicemen. “It is not right to have foreign military bases, but such situations unfortunately exist all around the world,” the Tibetan spiritual leader told reporters, according to Jiji Press. Deep-seated anti-Americanism in Okinawa has intensified following the alleged rape of a local woman by two servicemen and the alleged assault on a schoolboy by another. The second incident came days after top brass imposed a nationwide night-time curfew on all US military personnel as they looked to quell rising anger over the first case.

www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20121113142745

Voice of Russia – UK Edition
November 3, 2012

South Korea won`t develop its own anti-missile defense system. Seoul is not interested in joining Washington’s plans to build up missile defenses in the Asia-Pacific region. The announcement comes after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta`s recent visit to the Korean Peninsula.

Officially, Seoul opposes technical aspects of the global anti-missile defense system in Asia, saying that South Korea is interested in protecting itself from missiles launched at a range of just 500-1000 km (obviously, from Pyongyang), while the US system is designed to work at a much greater range. But the real reason behind the argument is perhaps that Seoul does not want to get on its northern neighbor’s nerves, to say nothing about China as Beijing is a major opponent of the U.S. anti-missile plans in Asia.

Washington’s allies in the West seem to be fed up with the issue of US anti-missile defense plans. It looks as if they would like to distance themselves from this US project which is hardly possible amid intense pressure from the U.S. Now Washington has turned its sights to Asia. …

Read on: http://ruvr.co.uk/2012_11_03/Seoul-US-missile-defense/

The Japan Times
October 18, 2012

Okinawans expressed anger Wednesday over the alleged rape of a local woman by U.S. sailors, an incident that came hot on the heels of another alleged sexual assault involving a marine in the prefecture.

Calls to remove all U.S. bases from Okinawa swelled in response to the rape allegations, with Miyoko Ashimine, head of a local group dealing with gender issues, demanding their immediate closure.

“With Ospreys in the sky and weapons on land, where can local residents walk (in safety)?” asked Ashimine, referring to the U.S. Marine Corps’ recent deployment of tilt-rotor MV-22 Ospreys to the Futenma air station on Okinawa Island despite safety concerns.

The chairman of Okinawa’s prefectural assembly, Masaharu Kina, said local residents have suffered since the end of World War II because of the presence of U.S. bases.

“The United States says it will enforce strict discipline every time there is an incident, but that won’t resolve anything,” Kina said. …

Read on: www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121018a9.html

Wired.com
By Spencer Ackerman
October 17, 2012

Just in time for a presidential election in which both candidates compete to be besties with Israel, the U.S. and Israeli militaries are holding a big, high-profile exercise to practice shooting Iranian missiles out of the sky. Only neither country wants to say the exercise is about either Iran or presidential politics.

Starting in late October, the U.S. and Israel will spend three weeks jointly testing the abilities of their Patriot missile batteries, Aegis ships, networked command systems and newer interceptors to prevent everything from rockets to armed drones to long-range ballistic missiles from hitting Israel from multiple locations. It’ll be the closest operational look the U.S. has gotten thus far to Israel’s new Iron Dome system to protect against short-range missiles and rockets. About 3,500 U.S. troops will participate in what Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the U.S. Third Air Force, called “the largest exercise in the history of the longstanding military relationship between the U.S. and Israel.”

The joint tests, dubbed “Austere Challenge 2012,” are part of a series of missile-defense drills that the U.S. and Israel schedule every two years. Only this year, there’s a contextual difference that’s hard to ignore: the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran, which is likely to prompt retaliation from Iran and its terrorist proxies on Israel’s borders; and persistent tension between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which has become an issue in the politics of both countries. …

Read on: www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/us-israel-missiles/

Wall Street Journal (blog)
By Rachel King
October 11, 2012

The scale and speed of cyber attacks is escalating and companies face more risk than ever before. Armed with technology that can help attribute attacks, the United States now has the capacity to locate attackers and hold them responsible, said U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Thursday night, in his first policy speech on cybersecurity. The Department of Defense is also updating its rules of engagement and procedures that guide a potential military response to a cyber attack.

Senior defense officials say a sophisticated virus attack against Saudi Arabian state oil company ARAMCO in August is an example of this escalation. “All told, the Shamoon virus was probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date,” said Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense in his first policy speech on cybersecurity. Secretary Panetta spoke Thursday night at a Business Executives for National Security dinner.

The Shamoon virus attacked 30,000 Saudi ARAMCO workstations and replaced crucial system files with an image of a burning U.S. flag. That virus added false information that overwrote all of the real data on those machines. The government declassified information to help the public understand the magnitude of the threat. …

Read on: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/10/11/u-s-defense-chief-warns-of-digital-911/

New York Times
By Michael R. Gordon and Elisabeth Bumiller
October 9, 2012

The United States military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there handle a flood of Syrian refugees, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons and be positioned should the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict.

The task force, which has been led by a senior American officer, is based at a Jordanian military training center built into an old rock quarry north of Amman. It is now largely focused on helping Jordanians handle the estimated 180,000 Syrian refugees who have crossed the border and are severely straining the country’s resources.

American officials familiar with the operation said the mission also includes drawing up plans to try to insulate Jordan, an important American ally in the region, from the upheaval in Syria and to avoid the kind of clashes now occurring along the border of Syria and Turkey.

The officials said the idea of establishing a buffer zone between Syria and Jordan — which would be enforced by Jordanian forces on the Syrian side of the border and supported politically and perhaps logistically by the United States — had been discussed. But at this point the buffer is only a contingency. …

Read on: www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/middleeast/us-military-sent-to-jordan-on-syria-crisis.html

MostlyMissileDefense.com
September 27, 2012

The recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Report Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense indicates that in addition to deploying Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland, the Missile Defense Agency would like to deploy a TPY-2 X-band radar at each site. Specifically the report states (in its appendix on System Cost Methodology) that: “As part of the Phased Adaptive Approach for the European missile defense system, MDA has proposed that each interceptor site location include a forward-based (FBM) AN/TPY-2 X-band radar system.” If true, this statement has several interesting possible implications about the MDA’s radar plans.

First, it would seem to provide further support for the idea, most clearly spelled out in the telephone press conference announcing the NAS Report’s release, that the Aegis radars really play a secondary role in the EPAA. As discussed in the post of September 13, 2012, in the NAS view of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, the Aegis radars primarily serve as communication relays to the interceptors, transmitting the target track data from the more powerful X-band radars.

Alternatively, it could reflect plans to co-locate a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD battery with each Aegis Ashore site, since a TPY-2 radar can be used as either a Forward-Based X-band (FBX) radar or a THAAD Battery radar. However, it is hardtop see why this would be needed, unless doubts existed about the ability of the Aegis Ashore site to defend itself from ballistic missile attack.

Secondly, if true, this statement would indicate that the supply of available TPY-2s is beginning to dwindle. The U.S. currently plans to plans to buy 11 TPY-2 X-band radars, with the last of these scheduled to be delivered in fiscal year 2015. Three of these are already deployed as FBXs in northern Japan, Israel, and Turkey. …

Read on: http://mostlymissiledefense.com/2012/09/27/ballistic-missile-defense-more-on-x-band-radar-locations-september-27-2012/