The Navy has proven over the decades it will buy just about anything a defense contractor can think to sell them. That is why the Navy now has six 13 foot long ten foot high unmanned helicopter drones based on its ships. Recently one of the drones went AWOL and headed right for Washington, DC’s restricted airspace. Yeah the drone went rogue. The good news is the Navy managed to land the contraption before it harmed anyone. It could have been worse, say a CIA drone with a hellfire missile on board that decided it wasn’t coming in from the cold. You can read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/security-features/51266-us-navy-drone-goes-awol-over-dc
Russia and NATO announced Wednesday that they intended to increase efforts to develop a joint system that would protect their troops from short-range missile attacks.
Neither party faces imminent threat but both see this as a path to developing a wider anti-missile system to protect Europe and North America against Iran’s long range missiles.
These short-range systems are different from the more sophisticated ballistic missile defense system that President Obama proposed for Europe, which will most likely be approved by NATO nations at the summit next November in Lisbon, Portugal.
NATO spokesman James Appathurai said, “More than 30 countries have or are developing ballistic missiles, not all of whom are friends. Iran is an obvious example.”
An interview with Joe Trento about C-802 missiles and what they mean for the Persian Gulf.
In 2006, the U.S. Navy claimed it had a defense against the Iranian C-802 cruise missiles. But Iran, once again, put U.S. credibility to the test. During the war between Hezbollah and Israel, on July 14, 2006, Iranian-trained Hezbollah elite forces, operating with undercover Iranian commandos in Lebanon, fired two radar-guided C-802 missiles at the Israeli warship INS Hanit stationed 10 miles off the coast of Lebanon. The attack was timed to coincide with a speech being aired in the region by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who promised to deliver a series of “surprises” to Israel at the time the rocket was fired. In that missile attack, launched from Iranian-manned launchers smuggled into Beirut, four Israeli sailors died, and the Hanit suffered severe damage. The ship’s cruise missile detection system was not turned on. According to Israeli navy sources, these defensive systems are only turned on if the ship’s captain feels his ship is threatened by a cruise missile attack. If there is a small boat attack, that would be handled by the ship’s guns, a different system. Continue reading The Secret History Part II: The C-802 Cruise Missile: How the CIA left the Navy Defenseless against an Iranian Missile
In a city known for the sometimes overwhelming presence of acronyms, two have been noticeably absent from the Senate floor for over a decade. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) both pertain to nuclear nonproliferation measures. Almost ten full years after the passage of the CTBT failed in the Senate, President Obama said in Prague in April 2009, “My administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.” Little has been mentioned of the CTBT since. Continue reading START/CTBT Mired in Shifting Politics
A recent TEEB for Business report estimated that the world’s 100 largest corporations do $7.3 trillion in damages each year to the global environment. These “externalized” costs are not borne by the business itself, but by society as a whole. Changing the way that corporations do business is critical to solving global environmental crises such as climate change. In the book Corporation 2020, Pavan Sukhdev presents a vision of how » read more
www.dcbureau.org is a project of the Public Education Center, a 5013C Public Charity. The PEC hires career investigative reporters to conduct ground breaking reporting on major security and environmental issues for the sole purpose of public education. We need your support..
Sign up to receive national security and environmental news updates from DC Bureau:
On DCBureau are a story and timeline about the history of the Clean Water Act and the efforts to undermine it. Together they show an incremental, well-funded, organized campaign to weaken the law. On the 40th Anniversary of the Act, it is important to remember that environmental laws enjoyed bipartisan support for years. Weakening environmental regulations through the Congress and courts will have lasting, irreversible results.
Read in The New York » read more
A new web documentary quotes security experts as saying the Savannah River Site, where massive amounts of weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous substances are stored, is vulnerable to a terrorist attack that could have dire consequences for the entire southeastern United States. The documentary reveals the Site is guarded by a foreign-owned firm with a checkered security record. The radioactive material is stored in aging buildings. The small private guard force » read more
Share Our Stories: Feel free to republish our articles, graphics and blog for free. Just credit us and link to us, but please don't edit our material or sell it separately. (We're licensed under Creative Commons, which provides the legal details.)
