North Korea: Red Alert

The Biden administration says two North Korean missile launches in recent weeks were test firings of a powerful new long-range ICBM, and warned that a full-range test could soon follow.

The tests were of a missile reportedly larger than an ICBM North Korea launched in 2017 that was assessed to be capable of reaching the United States.

American missile defence and reconnaissance forces in the Pacific have been placed in a state of “enhanced readiness” in preparation for a full-range test, a senior administration official said.

The official outlined the US intelligence assessment of the recent launches on the condition of anonymity: “The purpose of these tests, which did not demonstrate ICBM range, was likely to evaluate this new system before conducting a test at full range in the future, potentially disguised as a space launch,” said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby in a statement.

North Korea has claimed the March 4 and February 26 launches were merely to test cameras to be installed on a future spy satellite. Multiple UN Security Council resolutions prohibit North Korea from firing ICBMs, and the US will announce a new round of sanctions meant to make it more difficult for the country to access technology needed for its weapons programmes, the official said.

The 2017 launch was part of a series of tests that prompted then-president Donald Trump to threaten North Korea’s leaders with “fire and fury” and brought the two countries to the brink of more serious conflict.

The new missile was first revealed to the public in 2020 during celebrations marking the 75th birthday of North Korea’s Communist Party in Pyongyang.

(Source: AP)

China's devious move under cover of virus

A Vietnamese fishing boat has been rammed and sunk. Military aircraft have landed at its artificial-island fortresses. And large-scale naval exercises has let everyone know China's navy is still pushing the boundaries, hard.

As outbreaks debilitate the US Navy, there are fears China may be using the coronavirus pandemic as cover for asserting control over the South China Sea, as China's People's Liberation Army knows this presents an opportunity: "The outbreak of COVID-19 has significantly lowered the US Navy's warship deployment capability in the Asia-Pacific region," an article on its official website declares.

Meanwhile, the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier strike group has retreated from the contested waterway in an unscheduled return to Guam - with hundreds of cases of COVID-19 on board. That has international affairs analysts worried that even a short-term withdrawal of US and international from the East and South China Seas could give Beijing the opportunity it has been waiting for: "I think China is exploiting the US Navy's coronavirus challenges to improve its position in the South China Sea by giving the appearance it can and will operate there at will while the US is hamstrung," former Pacific Command Joint Intelligence Centre director Carl Schuster told CNN.

(Read more...)

¿What if all the wolves decide to attack now?

With a forced aircraft carrier in port and nuclear missile crews hit by Covid-19, the United States are now facing the possibility of a large-scale opportunistic attack, taking advantage of the drop in defenses on all fronts: According to Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, all US nuclear facilities except one have been affected by the virus.

Fortunately, the Pentagon has been completely proactive in establishing a "bubble" system in early March, creating two separate operational teams for submarines and nuclear missile silos. However, it is worth considering to what extent these measures should have been adopted previously, considering that on Thursday 9 the Newsweek magazine published a map showing that cases of coronavirus had appeared in 150 military bases.

In addition to what was reported by Newsweek, it is known that four aircraft carriers have also been reached, among which the aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt stands out, forced to dock in Guam for a long period due to an outbreak that has affected 416 of the 4.800 on board . The other three aircraft carriers affected have been USS Reagan, docked in Japan, and USSs Vinson and Nimitz, both under maintenance in Washington state.

Perhaps the United States have done the big mistake in being so transparent, because nature shows us time after time that wolves get emboldened as more weakness they perceive in their prey. ¿Will China take advantage to expand its military presence further into the Pacific? ¿Will Russia fail to take advantage of this golden opportunity to strengthen its military presence in the Arctic? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, North Korea... ¿Will all of them fail to seize this opportunity to deliver the great blow to their eternal and hated enemies? ¿Or perhaps are all of them just waiting for the best moment to deliver the great blow, when the United States will show its maximum level of weakness? I prefer not imagine it. In that case, May God mercy all of us. Good afternoon, and good luck.

US Defense Budget: ¿Where goes the money endly go?

¿Where does the money of the US taxpayer really go?

Watching the scene from outside US, it results difficult to understand how some countries with much less defense budgets are achieving better results.

Let us think on Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle made by Russia: As reported,  it has been launched from the Dombarovskiy missile base in the southern Ural Mountains, and successfully hit a practice target on the Kura shooting range on Kamchatka, 6000 kilometres (3700 miles) away, reaching speeds close to Mach 25, what means roughly 10 Km/s or 6 miles/s.

¿Truth or lie? If the above is truth, this would mean that no US anti-missile could knock it down. In another words: United States could lay fastly out of combat in case a military conflict against Russia.

So, again: ¿Where has the money of the US taxpayer really gone?

Sergei Ivanov, a former Russian defence minister, has said in televised comments that the Avangard constantly changes its course and altitude while it flies through the atmosphere, chaotically zigzagging on its path to its target, making it impossible to predict the weapon’s location.

¿Truth or lie? If truth, ¿United States has something similar? For the moment, it seems simply that the answer is "no".

So, again: ¿Where has the money of the US taxpayer really gone?

Ivanov has stated also that the Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle has cost hundreds of times less than what the US has spent on its missile defence system.

¿Truth or lie? Well, bearing in mind the russian defence budget, it can not be a lie at all.

And now the the cherry on the cake: Ivanov has revealed that Russia began to develop the Avangard after 2002 when the US withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and began developing defences against ballistic missiles.

¿Truth or lie? Well, this is not the right question. The right question is -or should be- the following :  If a dwarfy budget as the russian defence budget has allowed Russia to get something like the Avangard in just 16 years, ¿Where has the money of the US taxpayer really gone during these 16 years?

Additive Manufacturing of missile engines: Three interesting capabilities

The rocket that blasted into space from New Zealand on May 25 was special, as it is the first to be powered by an engine made almost entirely using 3D printing. 

Members of the team behind the Electron rocket at US company RocketLab said the engine was printed in 24 hours adding that 3D printing proved to offer three interesting capabilities over traditional manufacturing techniques:

1) The ability to produce highly complicated shapes. For example, lattice structures produced in exactly the right way so that they weigh less but are just as strong as similar solid components. This creates the opportunity to produce optimised, lightweight parts that were previously impossible to manufacture economically or efficiently with traditional techniques.

2) The ability to work best for the production of relatively small, intricate parts rather than large, simple structures, where the higher material and processing costs would outweigh any advantage.

3) The ability to produce whole systems in one go rather than from lots of assembled parts. For example, NASA used it to reduce the components in one of its rocket injectors from 115 to just two. 

Poland, Romania and Spain, targets of russian missiles

Poland, Romania and Spain have volunteered to take on elements of an American missile shield, despite Russia's firm opposition to US missile defense near its borders in Europe, and the constant warning of Russia regarding that states who decide to harbor elements of such defensive system will be target of the russian missiles.

The relationship between the United States and Russia are currently tense, especially in Europe, with the respective allies of countries that repeatedly meet pulling, buzzing and intercepting the other aircraft over the Baltic Sea in June. If that were not enough, it is rumored that US President Donald Trump would be considering to abandon the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty (INF).

The agreement restrains US and Russian missiles within ranges of 500 to 5.500 kilometers, but Republicans want to close the deal to develop new missiles, arguing that Russia would already done the same. Viktor Shamanov, head of the Defense Committee in the Russian lower house and leading military expert for the United Russia party, addressed the issue today: "We have to wait for a US decision, but I think withdrawing would be worse for everyone because This would provoke an arms race in which nobody will be winner ".

South Korea: China pissed due to the US antimissile plans

Beijing has voiced its concerns over THAAD plans, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang saying last month that “deploying missile defense on the Korean peninsula would not be in the interest of regional stability or strategic balance.”

The plans are justified by a growing missile threat from North Korea against America’s allies South Korea, Japan and military bases. The US military plans to deploy its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense in South Korea and, according to some media reports, is pressuring Seoul to do so instead of developing a national missile defense system.

"There was consideration being taken in order to consider THAAD being deployed here in Korea. It is a US initiative, and in fact, I recommended it as the commander," General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of United States Forces Korea (USFK), said last month addressing a forum hosted by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, in Seoul. Washington is looking for a region-wide, operational anti-missile defense system, with military experts believing that it would be actually aimed against China’s increasing military presence.

Washington so far has not officially proposed Seoul host its anti-missile system, with the plan being currently internally debated, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said. While previously South Korean officials maintained that they want to provide protection from possible missile attacks domestically, on Wednesday South Korean acting Defense Minister Kim said he would not object to Korea hosting the American system, as long as Seoul does not pay for it.