Tag Archives: Department of Defense

Trump to order mental health aid to prevent suicide among military veterans

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin (L) after signing the Veterans Affairs Choice and Quality Employment Act at Trump's golf estate in Bedminster, New Jersey U.S. August 12, 2017.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday was set to sign an executive order that will direct government departments to try to prevent suicide among military veterans by treating mental health problems before they become more serious.

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin told reporters on a conference call that Trump wants to address an alarming trend, that of 20 veterans a day taking their own life.

“That is just an unacceptable number and we are focused on doing everything we can to try to prevent these veteran suicides,” Shulkin said.

Trump’s order will direct the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan in 60 days to provide access to mental health treatment and suicide prevention resources for uniformed service members in the first year following military service.

The new order will cost about $200 million year to implement, money that will be diverted from the agencies’ current budget, a senior administration official said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by David Gregorio)

Chinese jets intercept U.S. military plane over South China Sea

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative file image of an octagonal tower with a conical feature at its top, located on the northeast side of Subi Reef

By Idrees Ali and Megha Rajagopalan

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – Two Chinese fighter jets carried out an “unsafe” intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, drawing a rebuke from Beijing, which demanded that Washington end surveillance near China.

The incident, likely to increase tension in and around the contested waterway, took place in international airspace on Tuesday as the U.S. maritime patrol aircraft carried out “a routine U.S. patrol,” a Pentagon statement said.

The encounter comes a week after China scrambled fighter jets as a U.S. Navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea.

Another Chinese intercept took place in 2014 when a Chinese fighter pilot flew acrobatic maneuvers around a U.S. spy plane.

The intercept occurred days before President Barack Obama travels to parts of Asia from May 21-28, including a Group of Seven summit in Japan and his first trip to Vietnam.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.

Washington has accused Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea after creating artificial islands, while Beijing, in turn, has criticized increased U.S. naval patrols and exercises in Asia.

The Pentagon statement said the Department of Defense was addressing the issue through military and diplomatic channels.

“ENDANGERING SECURITY”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the U.S. statement was “not true” and that the aircraft had been engaging in reconnaissance close to China’s island province of Hainan.

“It must be pointed out that U.S. military planes frequently carry out reconnaissance in Chinese coastal waters, seriously endangering Chinese maritime security,” Hong told reporters at a regular press briefing on Thursday.

“We demand that the United States immediately cease this type of close reconnaissance activity to avoid having this sort of incident happening again,” Hong said, adding that the actions of the Chinese aircraft were “completely in keeping with safety and professional standards”.

“They maintained safe behavior and did not engage in any dangerous action,” Hong said.

China’s Defense Ministry said in a fax that it was looking into reports on the incident.

The Pentagon has yet to release the precise location of the encounter.

SIGNAL OF DISPLEASURE?

In 2015, the United States and China announced agreements on a military hotline and rules of behavior to govern air-to-air encounters called the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES).

“This is exactly the type of irresponsible and dangerous intercepts that the air-to-air annex to CUES is supposed to prevent,” said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank.

Poling said either some part of China’s airforce “hadn’t gotten the message”, or it was meant as a signal of displeasure with recent U.S. freedom of navigation actions in the South China Sea.

“If the latter, it would be very disappointing to find China sacrificing the CUES annex for political gamesmanship.”

Zhang Baohui, a security expert at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, said he believed the encounter highlighted the limitation of CUES, and shows that Chinese pilots would still fly close to U.S. surveillance planes if needed.

“Frankly, we’re always going to see these kinds of incidents as China will always put the priority on national security over something like CUES whenever it feels its interests are directly threatened,” he said.

While the precise location of the encounter is not yet known, regional military attaches and experts say the southern Chinese coast is a military area of increasing sensitivity for Beijing.

Its submarine bases on Hainan are home to an expanding fleet of nuclear-armed submarines and a big target for on-going Western surveillance operations.

The Guangdong coast is also believed to be home to some of China’s most advanced missiles, including the DF-21D anti-ship weapon.

The Pentagon last month called on China to reaffirm it has no plans to deploy military aircraft in the Spratly Islands after China used a military plane to evacuate sick workers from Fiery Cross Reef, where it has built a 3,000 meter (9,800 ft) runway.

In April 2001, an intercept of a U.S. spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the American plane to make an emergency landing at a base on Hainan.

The 24 U.S. air crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologized for the incident. That encounter soured U.S.-Chinese relations in the early days of President George W. Bush’s first administration.

Last month, the Pentagon said that Russia had intercepted a U.S. Air Force aircraft over the Baltic Sea in an “unsafe and unprofessional” way.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington, Greg Torode in Hong Kong, and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Sandra Maler, Lincoln Feast and Mike Collett-White)

In Paris, military chiefs vow to intensify Islamic State fight

PARIS (Reuters) – Defense chiefs from the United States, France, Britain and four other countries pledged on Wednesday to intensify their fight against Islamic State, in an effort to capitalize on recent battlefield gains against the militants.

Islamic State lost control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, in a sorely needed victory for U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. But critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, say the U.S. strategy is still far too weak and lacks sufficient military support from Sunni Arab allies.

“We agreed that we all must do more,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference after talks in Paris among the “core” military coalition members, which also included Germany, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands.

A joint statement by the Western ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition “to accelerate and intensify the campaign.”

The Paris setting for the talks itself sent a message, coming just over two months after the city was struck by deadly shooting and bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian sounded an upbeat tone about the campaign, saying Islamic State was in retreat.

“Because Daesh is retreating on the ground and … because we have been able to hit its resources, it’s now time to increase our collective effort by putting in place a coherent military strategy,” he said.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said the goal was now to “tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria in Raqqa.”

Carter forecast that the coalition would need to ramp up the number of police and military trainers. He also emphasized preparations to eventually recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State and the expanding role of U.S. special operations forces in Iraq and Syria.

COALITION NOT “WINNING”

Still, U.S. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other critics of U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach to the war effort say Islamic State still poses a potent threat.

“ISIL has lost some territory on the margin, but has consolidated power in its core territories in both Iraq and Syria,” McCain said at a Wednesday hearing on U.S. war strategy, using another acronym for Islamic State.

“Meanwhile, ISIL continues to metastasize across the region in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Its attacks are now global, as we saw in Paris.”

Carter has sought to lay out a strategy to confront Islamic State, both by wiping out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and by addressing its spread beyond its self-declared caliphate.

But U.S. officials have declined to set a timeline for what could be a long-term campaign that also requires political reconciliation to ultimately succeed.

Carter announced a meeting next month of defense ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, in what he described as the first face-to-face meeting of its kind.

“Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight,” he said. “And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward.”

(Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier, editing by Larry King)

Military Drones Could Carry Chemical Weapons

The military has a plan that could include drones carrying chemical weapons within the next 25 years.

The Department of Defense has released its Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap that shows a plan to have drones hunt in “swarms” that will have its own artificial intelligence that could have them deviate from a programmed mission on their own.

The drones would “deviate from mission commands” if they spot “a better target” according to a report in London’s Daily Mail.

The report also says that designs are being created to make chemicals within weapons reach a more powerful and faster explosion.

The Federal Aviation Administration says that within 20 years, there will likely be as many as 30,000 drones flying in U.S. airspace.

Department of Defense Calls Evangelical Christians and Catholics “Extremists”

On the heels of the discovery of a Pentagon training document calling the founding fathers of America “extremists” and labeling conservative organizations as hate groups, a training document has been uncovered calling evangelical Christians and Catholics as an “extremist” group in the same category as al-Qaeda and Hamas.

The document also lists Mormons on the extremist list along with Sunni Muslims. Strangely, Shia Muslims were not listed as an extremist group. Continue reading →