Speaking to the press on Tuesday, US Department of Defense press secretary John Kirby completely denied all suggestions of any American plans to stage an incident. “Those statements by Minister Shoigu are completely false… they’re false,” Kirby said, in response to a question from a reporter. Earlier on Tuesday, at …
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The new rules were rolled out on Monday, Department of Defense officials told AP, though the official document has not been made publicly available yet. It is the first update to the extremism policy since 2012. The update focuses “exclusively on actions” as opposed to “any particular ideology or any …
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Congress has authorized $7 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, the Pentagon’s program to confront China. This continues the US’ flawed practice of throwing money at the military to solve problems created by bad policy. Like its predecessors, the PDI is doomed to fail. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act …
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“There are active discussions here in the department at the policy level about booster shots and whether or not to make those mandatory,” Kirby told reporters during a Friday press briefing, adding “There have been no final decisions made about that.” Asked about the some 40,000 unvaccinated troops across all …
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Testifying at the Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Wednesday, Assistant Defense Secretary for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner sounded alarms over Taiwan’s safety, insisting that Washington must help it to counter a “real and dangerous” threat from China. “Bolstering Taiwan’s defenses is an urgent task,” he said, adding “We are …
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Previous drafts of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2022 included the measures, but they are missing from the latest compromise introduced on Tuesday. The 670-page explanatory notice for the reconciliation bill lists all the changes made from the House and Senate versions. The two anti-Russian measures, originally proposed …
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The new approach was touted by Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, during a panel discussion on Saturday. In “a lot of these commercial companies, their product is commercial. But if we can work with them upfront early in the design stage, we can leverage their …
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US Central Command, which oversees military operations around the Middle East, announced the upcoming probe on Friday, hours after an American MQ-9 Reaper drone bombed an unspecified location in Idlib province, where a number of jihadist rebel groups continue to hold ground. “We abhor the loss of innocent life and …
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A complaint filed on Thursday by Oklahoma named President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and a long list of federal officials and agencies as defendants, arguing that the vaccine mandate, namely for the state’s National Guard branch, violates the US Constitution and has no legal basis. “The president unilaterally has …
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Speaking on Thursday during a visit to South Korea, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin demanded Moscow pull back its military from its Ukrainian frontier or face the hardest round of sanctions ever imposed. When asked about which form the embargoes will take, he said that the “best methods” will be …
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