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HOMELAND SECURITY

Biden Shrinks the U.S. Military The President’s Pentagon budget reveals the armed forces in a state of managed decline.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-defense-budget-pentagon-u-s-military-china-russia-israel-ukraine-ba7fd46b?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden opened his State of the Union address last week invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. This week he rolled out a military budget fit for 1991, the twilight of the Cold War. Will Congress step up to defend the country amid compounding threats?

The President’s $850 billion request for the Pentagon in 2025 is a mere 1% increase over 2024. That’s a cut after inflation, the fourth in a row Mr. Biden has proposed. What’s happened in the past year? Israel was brutally attacked and is now fighting a war for survival. Iranian proxies have fired drones and rockets at U.S. troops in the region more than 100 times, and its terrorists in Yemen have taken a global shipping lane hostage.

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a bloody slog that he could still win. North Korea is ratcheting up its belligerence toward South Korea, which the U.S. is bound to defend. China announced recently a 7.2% increase in defense spending. One recent think-tank report estimates Beijing is fielding high-end equipment five to six times faster than the U.S.

Mr. Biden thinks this is an acceptable moment to put American defenses on a diet, and the Administration says it’s merely complying with budget caps negotiated last year with Congress. Yet few priorities escaped the axe.

The U.S. Army will contract, and not because America is relying less on land forces, which are in high demand in Europe and the Middle East. The Army is asking for 442,300 troops, though the Biden Administration requested 485,000 as recently as 2022. The healthier number for the missions required is 500,000. Shrinking the force is no substitute for fixing the underlying problem, which is a struggle to find recruits.

The U.S. Navy will purchase only six ships and retire 10 early, which would shrink the fleet to 287 ships in 2025 from 296 today. Perhaps the most egregious choice is the Administration’s decision to purchase only one Virginia-class attack submarine, instead of a planned two.

Iran has a shot at sinking a US Navy aircraft carrier Maya Carlin

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/iran-has-a-shot-at-sinking-a-us-navy-aircraft-carrier/

Could Iran Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier? Yes, There Is a Chance: On Tuesday, a cruise missile launched by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels came within one mile of an American warship. Typically, the Navy’s destroyers shoot down missile barrages launched by the rogue group at a range of eight miles or more.

For the first time since the uptick in attacks in the Red Sea commenced this Fall, however, a cruise missile came close enough for the USS Gravely to use its Close-In Weapon System (CIWS).

The Islamic Republic of Iran is increasingly threatening American interests in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East. Its regional proxy groups have ramped up rocket, drone and missile barrages targeting U.S. assets following the Israel-Hamas war.

Do Iran or their affiliate groups have the capability to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier?

How Iran Could Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier 

In the final days of 2023, Iranian-state media outlets reported that its naval forces had developed a new cruise missile capable of reaching targets more than 600 miles away.

According to Tehran, the Talaeiyeh is a long-range “smart” missile that can switch targets and adjust course during flight.

The Nasir has short-range capabilities and can be launched from warships. News of these new missiles coincided with the attack on the Norwegian-owned tanker Strinda in mid-December.

The U.S. Central Command released that an Anti-Ship Cruise Missile launched from a Houthi-controlled region in Yemen struck the vessel. Since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, the Iranian-backed group has fired dozens of barrages of missile and drone attacks targeting vessels in the Red Sea.

At Least 160 Attacks Carried Out Against U.S. Forces in the Middle East Since Mid-October By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/30/at-least-160-attacks-carried-out-against-u-s-forces-in-the-middle-east-since-mid-october/

The attack against American troops in Jordan on Sunday, which took the lives of three soldiers, was the latest in a series of at least 160 terrorist attacks against American forces in the Middle East since October.

As reported by Fox News, U.S. officials revealed the true total number of attacks following the news of Sunday’s attack, which sparked widespread outrage and has led to calls for retaliation against Iran, which backed the proxy group responsible for the attack. It marked the deadliest attack on American forces since 2021.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, finally back from his controversial unannounced absence due to prostate cancer, issued a statement expressing his “outrage and sorrow for the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded,” adding that “we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops.”

The base that was struck in Jordan is referred to as Tower 22, and houses roughly 350 troops who are stationed there primarily for the purpose of wiping out any remnants of the terrorist group ISIS. Most of the personnel on the base were asleep when the drone attacked.

“We are mourning with Americans across the country today who are mourning the deaths of three souls, three service members who lost their lives,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday. “As we all know, yesterday was a very dark day.”

The attack, and particularly Iran’s culpability, represents the latest escalation in tensions in the region, which began on October 7th when the Islamic terrorist group Hamas struck the state of Israel, killing over 1,400 civilians and launching a war between the two that is still ongoing. Elsewhere in the region, the Houthis in Yemen have begun attacking ships in the Red Sea and disrupting global maritime trade.

The Human Cost of Failed Deterrence Fewer Americans may enlist in the military if the Commander in Chief won’t stop assaults on their bases and ships.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-biden-deterrence-iran-pentagon-three-americans-killed-breonna-moffett-william-rivers-kennedy-sanders-cd4a0357?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The White House released a photo of President Biden in the Situation Room on Monday, portraying him as large and in charge of a response to the murders of three Americans on Sunday. That’s a nice PR image, but does Mr. Biden realize what a corrosive effect his deterrence failures are having on U.S. public and military morale?

The Pentagon on Monday identified the Americans killed in the Sunday drone attack on a U.S base in Jordan: Sgt. William Rivers, Spc. Kennedy Sanders, and Spc. Breonna Moffett. All hailed from Georgia and ranged in age from 23 to 46. They were killed when a drone eluded the base defenses and hit the container unit that serves as base housing.

Iranian proxy forces have attacked U.S. forces 165 times in the Middle East since Oct. 17. At least 80 Americans have been wounded. If this keeps up, more of the public will wonder why any Americans should be based overseas if the Commander in Chief won’t protect them.

Some 66% of voters in a Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute poll late last year said they support maintaining “military bases around the world to deter attacks and respond quickly if something happens.” But Mr. Biden is neither deterring attacks nor responding quickly.

His failure so far to protect U.S. troops may inflame public suspicion that Americans are dying for little discernible reason in the Middle East. It’s a gift to Donald Trump and a growing left-right isolationism that wonders why Americans should be deterring rogue states. This is dangerous as global threats grow worse—from Europe to the Middle East to the Korean peninsula.

What We Don’t Know About the Danger of DEI in the Airline Industry is Scarier than What We Know By William Sullivan

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/what_we_dont_know_about_the_danger_of_dei_in_the_airline_industry_is_scarier_than_what_we_know.html

United Airlines became the subject of derision and mockery recently as a viral video emerged of United’s CEO Scott Kirby proclaiming his company’s potentially disastrous and deadly mission to have half of their future hires be “women or people of color” as part of its corporate quest for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), an ideological cancer that has been eating away at America’s academic, economic, and societal strength for years.

The reasons for the acute public outrage aren’t mysterious.  Millions of Americans fly commercially, and the idea of plummeting 30,000 feet over several minutes in anticipation of you and your family’s death is a frightening enough prospect for most people that the very idea of prioritizing race or gender in selecting pilots and mechanics seems nothing short of insane. 

And in the past weeks, we’ve learned that the door plug of an Alaska Airlines fuselage blew off of the aircraft at 16,000 feet, depressurizing the cabin and creating a scenario so harrowing and nightmarish that one passenger felt compelled to send a presumedly final text: “Mom our plane depressed. We’re in masks. I love you.”

The Boeing 737 Max was the plane involved, which some may remember was grounded after two deadly crashes overseas in 2018 and 2019, which claimed 346 lives in total and were both deemed the result of faulty equipment on the airplane. 

As many Americans are only now discovering as a sidenote to other outrageous DEI news, such as the FAA being decidedly hellbent on taking DEI to its most ludicrous extent by “actively recruiting” people who suffer from “severe intellectual abilities,” Boeing has also long been suicidally devoted to woke DEI initiatives.  They now claim, for example, that they want their employees to “look like America,” but are looking to have 92.5% of interview slates be “diverse,” i.e., non-white males.  This, of course, means that they are quite illegally prioritizing non-white male applicants for employment, and I am very much looking forward to the forthcoming lawsuits on these grounds. (See: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.)

A 43% Drop in White Recruits Caused the Army’s ‘Recruitment Crisis’ The real military recruitment crisis is DEI discrimination against white people. January 16, 2024 by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-43-drop-in-white-recruits-caused-the-armys-recruitment-crisis/

The military recruitment crisis that has crippled our defense capabilities has been talked to death by generals, politicians and pundits who have blamed everything from rising minimum wages to obesity to Gen Z culture for the problem. They have raised enlistment bonuses to unprecedented levels, spent fortunes on ad campaigns that feature lesbian weddings and doubled down on DEI as the answer to the crisis. And yet the crisis has grown worse.

That’s because recruitment was a self-inflicted problem caused by a woke racist military.

Between 2018 and 2023, white Army recruits, once the mainstay, fell from a bare majority of 56% to a minority at 44%.

This was not an unintended effect, but policy.

“We are an Army that wants to look like America,” Maj. Gen. Kevin Vereen, the first black head of Army Recruiting Command, had proclaimed.

Gen. Gary Brito, the first black head of Army Training and Doctrine Command under whose purview recruiting falls, and the former deputy Army chief of staff for personnel, had boasted of Army “listening sessions” on racism, diversity and inclusion in order to maximize diversity.

Military brass had been tasked with creating a military that “looked more like America” and as a result the number of white Army recruits declined year by year and fell 43% from 44,042 in 2018 to 25,070 in 2023.

Black, Hispanic and other minority recruits became a majority, but there weren’t any more of them than there had been before. Minorities were joining the Army at the same rate as they had before, but with fewer white recruits they had become a majority by default.

Intel Officials: Hezbollah Could Strike in U.S. By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/12/intel-officials-hezbollah-could-strike-in-u-s/

On Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials warned that the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah could launch attacks against Americans abroad, or even carry out an attack against the homeland directly.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the four anonymous officials voiced their concerns to Politico, with one saying that “Hezbollah could draw on the capability they have … to put people [in] places to do something. It is something to be worried about.”

Hezbollah, the officials noted, has more capabilities than any other terror group in the region, including a vast international network. The ongoing tensions in Israel after the October 7th terrorist attacks by the Islamic terror group Hamas have led to broader chaos throughout the Middle East.

Hezbollah is one of the groups that has been clashing with Israeli forces since October 7th. On Tuesday, Hezbollah struck an Israeli base with drones, to which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded by killing three Hezbollah members in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah tried to justify its attacks by claiming they were in retaliation for the killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut last week.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate in December that the threat of a foreign terrorist organization attacking the U.S. has increased since October 7th, saying that he sees “blinking lights everywhere I turn.”

Other escalations throughout the Middle East include the Yemeni Houthis repeatedly attacking ships in the Red Sea, disrupting a major maritime shipping lane, as well as militants in Iraq and Syria repeatedly attempting to attack American troops in both countries over 100 times. There was an explosion in Iran during a ceremony honoring the late Qasam Soleimani, killing roughly 100 people, for which the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took credit.

Our Incompetent Elite is Opening Up America to Attack Our enemies are very serious about one particular thing. by Kurt Schlichter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-incompetent-elite-is-opening-up-america-to-attack/

My first Townhall Column of the year was my top 2024 predictions, but one prediction did not fit with its snarky vibe. Let me make it now. In 2024, we’re going to see a massive terrorist attack here in the United States. I’m not going to sugarcoat it – I’m worried that we’re facing a terrorist threat unlike anything we’ve ever seen and that a lot of Americans are going to die. It does not have to happen, but because the people running this country are so corrupt, malicious, and incompetent, it will.

The people running this country have made choices – like throwing open the border – that are going to kill a lot of Americans because our enemies, unlike our alleged leaders, are serious people. They’re serious about subjugating and killing us. But the only things our leadership is serious about are keeping their names off pervert passenger lists, skimming endless Ukrainian cash, and pronouns, pronouns, pronouns, always pronouns. We have a distinctly unserious elite in the most serious of times.

When October 7 happened, we saw the Israelis caught unawares by an asymmetrical attack where a determined and cunning foe leveraged all its limited strengths against the Jewish state’s very few weaknesses, allowing Hamas to execute a short but bloody rape and murder spree. Understand that 10/7 was not a military assault, though it used violent means. It was an information operation, an operation designed not primarily to destroy the combat power of the IDF but to attack the will of the Israeli people and force Israel to change its policies. That did not work. Israel was stronger than Hamas imagined, and it hit back harder and more consistently than the terrorists expected, despite the shameful backstabbing by the Biden administration and the screaming of the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party here at home.

Second Largest U.S. Land Owner Is a CCP Member

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/01/11/second-largest-us-land-owner-is-a-ccp-member-n2633516

The second-largest foreign landowner in the United States is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

According to a report reviewed by the Daily Caller, Chen Tianqiao— founder, chairman, and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group, owns nearly 200,000 acres of land in Oregon. 

The Chinese national made billions from online gaming, making him one of the most significant non-American landholders in the U.S. In only five years, Tianqiao became one of China’s largest Internet companies, producing some of today’s most popular games, such as, “The Word of Legend,” “Dungeons & Dragons Online,” and “Final Fantasy XIV.”

How Does a Navy Sailor Spying for China Come Away With Only 2 Years in Prison? Zhao transmitted the specific location and timing of US Navy movements and radar blueprints. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-does-a-navy-sailor-spying-for-china-come-away-with-only-2-years-in-prison/

I have no idea why the DOJ is putting out a press release about this. It seems more like the sort of thing to never mention again.

A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments.

According to court documents, Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, aka Thomas Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiring with the intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe.

Between August 2021 and at least May 2023, Zhao received at least $14,866 in at least 14 separate bribe payments from the intelligence officer. In exchange for the illicit payments, Zhao secretly collected and transmitted to the intelligence officer sensitive, non-public information regarding U.S. Navy operational security, military trainings and exercises, and critical infrastructure. Zhao entered restricted military and naval installations to collect and record this information.

Zhao transmitted plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre, operational orders and electrical diagrams and blueprints for a Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar system located in Okinawa, Japan.