British troops sent to investigate drones over US airbases in the UK
British troops are heading to United States airbases across the United Kingdom to protect them from possible drone attacks. This comes after multiple drone sightings at three different U.S. Air Force operation bases in the last week.
Neither U.S. nor U.K. officials said who might be behind the drone activity, but intelligence officials warned about increased Russian operations against Western countries supporting Ukraine.
In December 2023, the U.S. military reported an unidentified swarm of drones flying near Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base.
As of Tuesday, Nov. 26, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder isn’t making any connections between that or the recent incidents.
“It’s something the department has been looking closely at … how it applies to our facilities, our personnel, whether it’s in the combat zones or outside of combat zones,” Ryder said. “But in terms of these particular incidents in the U.K. versus the ones in the states … I don’t want to speculate.”
The U.S. military said the recent drones ranged in size and appeared to be coordinated.
Photos show China expanding spy stations in Cuba, 1 near US naval base
New satellite imagery shows China may be expanding electronic spying stations in Cuba. The island is just 90 miles south of Florida, giving it an ideal position to monitor sensitive U.S. communications and maritime activity in the region.
This latest development follows the Pentagon’s 2023 denial of a reported agreement between China and Cuba to construct an electronic eavesdropping facility in Cuba. At the time, the Pentagon press secretary labeled the report as “inaccurate.”
“I can tell you based on the information we have that is not accurate,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a press briefing in 2023. “We are not aware of China and Cuba developing any type of spy station.”
Despite the denials, there is growing evidence suggesting Chinese interest in using Cuba as a surveillance hub, directly challenging U.S. dominance in the region.
China’s goal to expand its military presence globally is well-documented, and Cuba offers an ideal foothold for the People’s Liberation Army in the Caribbean. According to a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Cuba is one of several countries where China aims to set up military bases.
Despite official secrecy surrounding China’s activities, recent imagery offers a comprehensive look at four active sites likely used for electronic surveillance operations.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently released a report about ongoing construction near the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, signaling deepening defense and intelligence ties between China and Cuba.
Chinese involvement in Cuba’s technology sector is extensive, with tech giants Huawei and ZTE playing pivotal roles in shaping Cuba’s telecommunications infrastructure. Both companies are blacklisted by the U.S. for espionage risks.
A notable new site at El Salao houses a sophisticated antenna array designed for signal interception — a technology still valued by China even after its abandonment by the U.S. and Russia post-Cold War.
Other sites like Bejucal and Calabazar have been significantly upgraded, including the installation of large dish antennas that enhance China’s space communications and surveillance capabilities.
The CSIS report emphasizes the strategic use of Cuba’s proximity to the southeastern U.S. for intelligence gathering by China. The expansion means China could intercept communications from U.S. military bases, space-launch facilities and commercial shipping routes.
Gaza Health Ministry reports 10K dead; UN calls it a ‘graveyard for children’
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said more than 10,000 people have been killed since Israel launched its strikes on the territory following the terror attacks that left more than 1,400 dead. The ministry added that more than 4,100 children are among the dead in Gaza, and 25,000 people have been injured.
Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres
President Biden has previously said he had no confidence in figures provided by the agency run by Hamas. And while the New York Times reports that the ministry’s numbers could not be independently verified, Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said on Monday, Nov. 6, that “we know the numbers are in the thousands.”
“Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day. More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades,” Guterres said. “More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organization.”
Speaking to ABC News on Monday, Nov. 6, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his stance that there would only be a cease-fire if Hamas released the 200-plus hostages.
ReutersGetty ImagesGetty Images
In the early days of the conflict, Israeli Defense Forces announced it dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza, which is roughly half the size of New York City.
Senate confirms top military nominees, Tuberville says his hold will continue
The Senate approved three key military nominees that had been held up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., in overwhelmingly bipartisan votes. That means Gen. Eric Smith is the new Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Randy George is now chief of staff of the Army, and Air Force Gen. Charles Brown will become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Gen. Mark Milley retires at the end of September.
The delay in their approval led to a bitter fight.
“These men should already be confirmed. They should already be serving in their new positions. The Senate should not have to go through procedural hoops just to please one brazen and misguided senator,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said when he announced the votes.
Tuberville began placing holds on all military nominees — 300 and counting — in March. He is protesting a Pentagon policy that provides paid time off and travel expenses for military service members who get an abortion.
“These three honorable men will finally be able to assume their positions and the abortion policy that Senator Tuberville abhors will remain in place. Senator Tuberville will have accomplished nothing,” Schumer said.
Straight Arrow News asked Tuberville for his response to Schumer.
“Well, we got three new promotions as of today. A lot more than he’s had. And he would have never done this had we not called his hand. And so he blinked, he knows how to do it,” Tuberville said. “Main thing is the American people need to see that we can do this, even with my holds. But he won’t admit it. And again, we’re gonna keep pushing to get the policy moved back because this is an illegal policy.”
Tuberville’s hold prevented the nominees from being approved quickly and in large groups. They could still be approved individually with full votes. The big difference is the time it takes.
Tuberville responded to critics who contend spending extra time on military nominees takes away from other legislative priorities.
“It’s going to. Problem is we’ve been doing this for seven months, we could have been doing a few a week. But they refused to do it because they didn’t think they were wrong. Well, they’re dead wrong on this. And so the American people on a controversial subject like this, abortion, need to have their voice heard through their senator and congressman. It doesn’t need to be dictated from the White House with a memo or the Pentagon,” Tuberville said.
Tuberville said he will continue his hold on the other 300 nominees. He said if they’re going to be approved, the Pentagon can either change its abortion policy or the Senate can vote on each one individually.
Democrats have called Tuberville’s hold a threat to national security, while Republicans have said they disagree with the way in which he’s protesting. But when Schumer announced the votes, Republicans said he should have done it a while ago.
“Because while everybody is grousing about the senator from Alabama, Chuck Schumer knew full well that he could have done this months and months ago. If we had been lining those nominees up, we wouldn’t have these vacancies today,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said.
The Pentagon has also said the hold hurts its operations. Those who have been nominated but not approved serve in an acting capacity and have limits on their authority. Pentagon press secretary Gen. Pat Ryder recently made a football analogy, and said imagine if NFL coaches were serving in an acting capacity as the season started.
GOP calls on Schumer to vote on military nominees, Tuberville continues hold
Senate Republicans are calling on Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bring military nominees to the floor for a vote. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has a hold on 301 military nominations, stopping the Senate from quickly approving them in groups.
“I’m not gonna change my mind,” Tuberville said. “I’m just holding up a group at one time. They can bring, bring them individually up as quick as they can.”
Schumer responded by saying Republicans need to get Tuberville in line and that holding a vote would shift the burden of approving these nominees to Democrats.
Tuberville is protesting the Pentagon policy that provides travel expense reimbursement and paid time off for military members who get an abortion. Republicans also oppose the policy, but many disagree with the way in which Tuberville is protesting.
“We can’t let every grievance shut down the promotion system. So I am ready to vote,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said “We’re voting on all kinds of nominations. And I think now, you know, if we have to have 300 votes, so be it.”
Three-hundred individual roll-call votes could take months, so Republicans want Schumer to prioritize the most important nominees like members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We’ve been having a lot of three-day work weeks. How about if we actually work four days a week? Just a thought. Most Americans work five or six.” Sen. John Kennedy R-La., said. “Senator Schumer could use that extra time to move these nominations.”
Democrats contend Tuberville is harming national security. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said Tuberville is negatively impacting military readiness.
According to the Pentagon, nearly 650 of the more than 850 general and flag officer nominations could be affected by the end of the year if Tuberville doesn’t release his hold. That number includes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest ranking military officer.
The nominees are currently serving in an acting capacity in their new positions and simultaneously fulfilling the duties of their old job.
“Imagine going into the football season with a bunch of acting coaches for each of our teams with a regulation that limits any of those acting coaches from presuming that he or she was actually going to officially lead the team,” Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press cecretary, said.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro was more blunt.
“As somebody who was born in a communist country, I would have never imagined that actually one of our own senators would actually be aiding and abetting communist and other autocratic regimes around the world,” Del Toro told CNN.
Tuberville called Del Toro’s remarks unfortunate.
“Well, you don’t want to know my real thoughts because probably the language wouldn’t, wouldn’t be very good. But he shouldn’t have done that. He should have called me,” Tuberville said.
Government launches ‘one-stop shop’ for UFO information
The truth is out there — and it may be found on a government’s agency website. Mulder and Scully can quit looking at the skies for answers and now just log onto AARO.mil.
That’s the website of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the office that the Department of Defense launched in 2022 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest, including what was once referred to as unidentified flying objects, UFOs, now called unidentified aerial phenomena, UAPs.
The AARO’s website is being described by government officials as a “one-stop shop” for all declassified information related to its office and unidentified objects.
“The posting of the website is the next step in the — in this process, in terms of ensuring that the public has information and insight into UAPs. And so what you see today is what has been declassified to date,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a press briefing on Thursday, Aug. 31.
The government is still in the process of building the site, but it’s live right now to the public. The site currently includes videos under “Cases,” with some “unresolved” and others stating what AARO assesses the UAP to be.
The site also features graphs of UAP reporting trends showing the objects’ altitudes and where they are most often found. It will also house official reports, transcripts, press releases, and other resources including aircraft, balloon and satellite tracking sites.
Source: AARO.mil
There will be additional features coming soon, the DOD says. A reporting tool for government employees, both past and present, is expected to be on the site in the fall.
“AARO will launch a secure reporting tool on the website to enable current and former U.S. government employees, service members, or contractors with direct knowledge of U.S. government programs or activities to contact AARO directly to make a report,” a DOD press release said.
Th news comes as reportssay Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks will now oversee AARO with Director Sean Kirkpatrick reporting to her.
In July, Straight Arrow News covered “Disclosure Day” on Capitol Hill when the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs held a hearing about UAPs.
Though the fictitious Mulder and Scully were mentioned a bit ago, the committee made it clear it was serious when it came to reporting UAPs.
“We’re not here to bring little green men into the room. Sorry to disappoint about half of y’all. We’re just here to get to the facts,” Rep. Tim Burchett said.
The committee heard from former fighter pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor, along with former intelligence officer David Grusch.
As SAN’s Ryan Robertson reported, Grush said based on interviews with more than 40 witnesses, he believed the U.S. government is in possession of UAPs.
“I know the exact locations, and those locations were provided to the inspector general and some of which to the intelligence committees,” Grusch said. “I actually had the people with the firsthand knowledge provide a protected disclosure to the inspector general.”
In at least some of the recovered craft, Grusch said bodies were also recovered.
US to send widely banned ‘steel rain’ cluster munitions to Ukraine
Tanks, jets, long-range missiles and now cluster munitions. There’s a growing list of weapons requested by Ukraine that the United States initially denied but then approved sending anyway.
Despite much of the high-tech weaponry and electronic warfare in use in Ukraine, the frontlines look more like something from World War I, just with better guns. Artillery is still the deciding factor in most battlefield engagements, which Russia has more of while Ukraine is running out of ammunition.
To make up for the deficit, the latest $800 million weapons package from the U.S. to Ukraine will include controversial cluster munition artillery shells to be fired from 155 mm Howitzer cannons.
Officially known as dual purpose improved conventional munitions; they’re designed to increase the kill zone of a single projectile. They are packed with bomblets that disperse while the shell is still in the air.
One DPICM can take out multiple armored vehicles. When it comes to trench warfare, the ability to disperse bomblets from the air above enemy positions is why DPICMs came to be known as “steel rain” during Operation Desert Storm.
Pentagon press secretary Gen. Pat Ryder said the munitions are “clearly a capability that would be useful in any type of offensive operations. I would note that the Russians have already been employing cluster munitions on the battlefield, many which include a very high dud rate reportedly.”
The “dud rate” is the percentage of bomblets that don’t detonate. Even when used in optimal conditions, not every bomblet will explode. Some land in water, or mud or other soft area. Sometimes the unexploded ordinance is found years later and then explodes.
When used in open fields or areas where pinpoint artillery might not be the most effective, however, cluster munitions are the weapon of choice. The U.S. used cluster munitions in every major war since Korea. Even the supreme allied commander of NATO called DPICMs “very effective weapons.”
Be that as it may, more than 120 nations have bans in place on cluster munitions. In the U.S., it’s typically against the law to sell or transfer cluster weapons with a dud rate higher than 1%. The cluster weapons the U.S. wants to send Ukraine has a dud rate between 2-3%. Some watchdog groups said it’s higher.
To get around the law, President Joe Biden will invoke part of the Foreign Assistance Act which allows presidents to send aid and weapons to foreign countries, despite restrictions, so long as the transfer is of vital interest to U.S. national security. Former President Donald Trump waived the same prohibitions in 2021 when he allowed the export of cluster munition technology to South Korea.
The White House has reportedly been mulling the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine for some time. The fact the Ukrainians are already using cluster munitions on Ukrainian soil reportedly made the decision easier for the Biden administration.
Human Rights Watch called on Russia and Ukraine to stop using cluster munitions and urged the U.S. not to supply them. The group said that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used the weapons, which have killed Ukrainian civilians.
Russian general detained days after Wagner Group rebellion
A Russian general appears to be one of the first officials to suffer consequences after Wagner Group mercenaries staged a brief rebellion. Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine, has reportedly been detained.
It’s not clear where Surovikin is detained, or whether he has been charged with any crimes. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Surovikin’s whereabouts on Thursday, June 29.
“I recommend you to contact the Defense Ministry. This is the ministry’s prerogative,” Peskov said. “You need to understand [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is the supreme commander, and he works with the defense minister, the chief of the General Staff. As for all the structural units in the ministry, I ask you to contact the ministry.”
Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has spoken positively of Surovikin, while criticizing other Russian military leaders. On June 27, The New York Times reported that U.S. officials believe Surovikin had advanced knowledge of Prigozhin’s plan to stage the rebellion.
It isn’t clear if Surovikin will be the only Russian general to face consequences from the Wagner Group rebellion. U.S. officials are still monitoring the effect of the rebellion on the group itself.
“What I would tell you is right now we continue to see some elements of the Wagner group in Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a press briefing Thursday. “But in terms of the future of Wagner Group, that’s really a question best addressed by Russia, which, of course, as you know, funds the Wagner Group and how they will be employed going throughout the rest of this conflict and elsewhere around the world.”
The fallout from the Wagner Group rebellion comes as Ukraine continues its counteroffensive on Russia. Ukrainian forces are attempting to wear down the Russian military and reshape battle lines to create more favorable conditions. One strategy could be to try to split Russia’s forces in two so that the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, is isolated from the rest of the territory it controls.
