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| Troopers of 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, received their M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicles Jan. 11, at Fort Stewart, Ga. This is the first of many combat tracked vehicles the Spartan Brigade will receive this year. The brigade is in the middle of converting into the Army’s 15th armored brigade combat team, the conversion will provide combatant commanders increased capabilities to address global threat. |
THE Ministry of Defence (MoD) feels it will be “screwed over” in a new military review that could result in severe cuts for the Armed Forces, it has been learned.----------
Former chief of defence staff, Lord Boyce, declared the Government is ignoring the cries from every military commentator in their apparent plans to deny extra funding to the MoD.Story here.
He stated: “The defence budget is not in a good place and soothing words from the Government that all is in order run counter to every single other commentator on defence.”
He elaborated that “savings measures are being run that are not efficiencies at all but capability cuts”.
Dozens of Conservative MPs are said to have written to the Chancellor pushing for a defence increase.
If Mr Hammond refuses to budge on his military budget, the Army reportedly faces being cut further from its 82,000 target with a number less than 70,000 from 78,000 and the Royal Marines could fall from 6,500 to 5,500.
The MoD previously warned that it needs between £17billion and £20billion to make up for a shortfall in cash in the next decade from April next year.
The body previously thought that an extra £2billion a year would be agreed as part of the review by Mr Sedwill - the MoD now has until next year to submit ideas for the ongoing review.
Ideas including the sacking of 1,000 marines, cutting two warships as well as scrapping a plan to building a replacement for the UK’s nuclear submarines are reportedly part of the MoD’s suggestions for military savings.
With no letup in a weeks-long government offensive, aid workers warn the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Idlib is on a par with what was seen last year in neighboring Aleppo, where an unrelenting ground and air offensive by Russian warplanes and Syrian government ground forces prompted an international outcry.-------------------------
U.N. officials and aid workers say many civilians in Idlib, desperate to escape pummeling airstrikes, are refugees from other parts of the war-torn country, many, like Alhamdo from Aleppo, who are now scurrying from town to town, moving as best they can as bombardments reach them.
They have no place to go and are trapped in what was meant to have been a “de-escalation zone” as Syrian government forces expand an offensive on rebels, a mix of jihadist and more moderate insurgents, in what appears to be a determined bid to finish off opposition in Idlib.
Turkey, much as it did last year during the siege of Aleppo, has refused to open its borders to more Syrian refugees. And complicating the situation for fleeing civilians, Turkey appears to be gearing up to launch an offensive on the nearby Kurdish enclave of Afrin. Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said an operation against the Kurdish-held enclave was imminent.-------------------------
President Bashar al-Assad’s elite Tiger Forces have seized more than 40 towns in the southern Idlib countryside since December, and according to Syrian military officials more units are being dispatched, a prelude to an attack on an air base at Abu Dhuhour under the control of al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).Story here.
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| A vehicle with unrivaled mobility, the BvS10 BEOWULF is a dual body, amphibious vehicle with well-proven technology that is designed to provide total operational support where other vehicles cannot. |
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| JOINT BASE ELEMDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (Jan. 9, 2018) - Paratroopers assigned to the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, U.S. Army Alaska, descend over Malemute drop zone during airborne training at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The Soldiers of 4/25 belong to the only American airborne brigade in the Pacific and are trained to execute airborne maneuvers in extreme cold weather/high altitude environments in support of combat, training and disaster relief operations. |
One Marine was killed and another taken into custody after a fight broke out at Camp Pendelton’s School of Infantry on Tuesday, according to a Marine official.Probably over something stupid too. Someone is gonna pay because of another person's "oh shit" moment that went too damn far.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the Marine was fatally stabbed.
“An NCIS [Naval Criminal Investigative Service] investigation has been opened, and is currently ongoing,” Marine Capt. Joshua Pena, a spokesman for the Corps’ Virginia-based Training and Education Command, told Marine Corps Times Tuesday.
Pena said the incident occurred “aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, at the School of Infantry West.”
Pena declined to offer any other information.
“The name of the deceased will not be available until 24 hours following next of kin notification,” Pena said.
This story was first reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
A former CIA officer who was charged Tuesday with unlawful possession of secrets is suspected of a much worse crime: betraying U.S. informants in China, sources familiar with the case told NBC News.Story here.
The former officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, was arrested Monday after flying into New York on a Cathay Pacific flight from his home in Hong King, federal authorities announced.
Lee, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, was charged with a single count of unlawfully possessing national defense information, based on a 2012 search that found him to be in possession of two notebooks containing the true names of CIA assets and covert facilities, which are some of the agency's most closely guarded secrets.
But sources familiar with the case say he is suspected of funneling information to China that caused the deaths or imprisonment of approximately 20 American agents, in one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades.
The project came about [in 2016], when Rhea McCauley, Ms. Parks’s niece, met Mr. Mendoza in Detroit. As part of an art project that explored his own sense of home, as well as the American subprime mortgage crisis, Mr. Mendoza successfully transported an abandoned house from Detroit to Europe, winning the trust of Detroit community members along the way. Ms. McCauley told him she had managed to buy back the family house for $500, but she could not find anyone interested in saving it from demolition.Go to Bayou Man's house to read the rest of this drama.
Mr. Mendoza, who makes his living as a fine-arts painter, agreed to help. He raised a little over $100,000 by selling some of his paintings, and set out for Detroit. There, he worked with a local team to take apart the house, which had fallen into extreme disrepair.
He then shipped the wooden exterior to Berlin, where he spent the winter painstakingly rebuilding it, mostly alone, by hand. “It was an act of love,” he said.
That the house had to be shipped to Berlin to be saved is extraordinary, said Daniel Geary, a professor of American history at Trinity College Dublin, given that, “in general, in the U.S., with public heroes, there is an attempt to preserve anywhere they lived.”
Mr. Geary said that to him, the neglect of a house like this one speaks to a contemporary American unwillingness to deal with racism’s legacy.
