General: Supply chain problems are hurting nuclear modernization
Defense News, By Joe Gould, 16 Sept 22,
WASHINGTON ― The nominee to lead the U.S. nuclear arsenal said Thursday that supply chain snags that are pummeling the defense industrial base are also hurting Washington’s plans to modernize its aging nuclear arsenal.
“I would venture to say that it’s probably being seen across the Department of Defense, but in particular for the nuclear portfolio,” Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, nominated to lead U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, at his confirmation hearing.
………… It’s taking some nuclear programs up to 90 days to source certain U.S.-made components that would have typically taken 10 days, he said.
Operating and modernizing the nuclear force will cost $634 billion in the 2021-2030 period, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last year. Along with the expense of the Energy Department managing nuclear stockpiles, the Defense Department is modernizing the sea, air and land-based legs of the nuclear triad.
………………………………………… Looming over the hearing was Strategic Command’s scramble to reimagine nuclear deterrence theory that simultaneously faces Russia and China……………………. more https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/09/15/general-supply-chain-problems-are-hurting-nuclear-modernization/
On the disappearance of our international website – nuclear-news.net
This website is taking over for now
One is tempted to think that it’s a conspiracy by the nuclear lobby.
But no – it’s the good old bureaucratic bungling. First the nuclear-news.net website was registered under Digital Business Media (Australia). But they’ve disappeared – and sent nuclear-news.net to TPP Wholesale, and they sent it to Webcentral Group Limited dba Melbourne It (Australia). Webcentral Group Limited dba Melbourne It (Australia) sent it back to TPP Wholesale – who assure me that they will fix it – (but when?)
Nuclear Power Is Too Risky Even in Peacetime. Ukraine Is the Tip of the Iceberg.
the IAEA, is in the business of promoting nuclear energy even as it decries the grave risks around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
https://truthout.org/articles/nuclear-power-is-too-risky-even-in-peacetime-ukraine-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/?utm_campaign=Truthout+Share+Buttons Linda Pentz Gunter, Truthout, September 13, 2022
The alarms raised by the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the dire situation around Ukraine’s war-torn Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant offer the most extreme — and most compelling — case for discontinuing the use of nuclear power.
The consequences of an attack on the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station could result in a core meltdown, a fuel pool fire or radioactive waste cask breach that would send a radioactive plume across potentially thousands of miles, depending on the scale of the disaster and the direction of the wind.
Fires are the biggest risk, especially for the unprotected fuel pools that are not housed within the more robust containment area of the reactor building. Given the proximity of the six Zaporizhzhia units to each other, a fire at one of the Zaporizhzhia reactors or fuel pools could spread to any or all of the other five.
The radioactive fallout released by such fires and explosions would persist in the environment for decades or longer. The 1986 Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine, which involved only one, relatively new reactor with a small radioactive load, rendered 1,000 square miles of land — the Exclusion Zone — too radioactive for human habitation even today. Ukraine is home to a total of 15 reactors, most dating back to the 1980s, plus the closed but still dangerous Chornobyl site. As such, they all house huge radioactive inventories of fuel, in the reactors and irradiated in the pools and waste casks.
However, it is not enough simply to admonish warring countries, as the United Nations has done, not to shell nuclear power plants — likely unenforceable given the violently entrenched conflict over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nuclear power is also a liability beyond the war zone.
Numerous studies by the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Nuclear, where I work, have demonstrated that keeping current reactors running, and especially building new ones, is too slow and too expensive a way to address the climate crisis. Added to that, nuclear power has never solved its radioactive waste problem, and mining the uranium needed to fuel reactors comes with significant environmental justice violations.
Furthermore, nuclear power cannot be relied upon to operate safely, or even at all, under the now rapidly worsening climate conditions. Many plants are coastal and vulnerable to sea-level rise. Flooding is also a risk at inland reactors, all of which sit on a body of water, needed to cool the reactor.
Drought and heat waves reduce those cooling water supplies, or render the water too warm to use, forcing reactors to power or even shut down, as we have already seen in France. Wildfires could result in catastrophic conflagrations at nuclear plants. Nuclear plants also need to shut down in violent weather conditions. All of these deficiencies of reliability are directly related to the high risks of using nuclear power.
Nuclear power is also not an efficient way to reduce carbon emissions. In fact, As Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, Amory Lovins, continues to point out, nuclear power actually makes climate change worse.
Renewable energy can achieve greater carbon emissions reductions faster and at less cost than nuclear power. Combining renewables with energy efficiency is even more effective. Lovins has shown that, in the U.S., it now costs more to run the country’s aging reactor fleet than to provide the same services through new renewables, or by using electricity more efficiently.
Nuclear power and renewables also have a tendency to cancel each other out. Countries that have prioritized nuclear power have squeezed out renewables. As a result, nuclear-dependent countries such as France have scant renewable energy supplies for essential backup when nuclear power shuts down due to war, weather extremes, or other factors. As a result, France imports renewable electricity from Germany, a net power exporter and where nuclear power is about to be 100 percent phased out.
Nuclear power is also expensive. “New plants cost 3–8x or 5–13x more per kWh than unsubsidized new solar or wind power, so new nuclear power produces 3–13x fewer kWh per dollar and therefore displaces 3–13x less carbon per dollar than new renewables,” Lovins wrote in Bloomberg last December.
In fact, current analysis shows that nuclear power is the most expensive form of energy, and renewables are the least expensive, when factoring the costs of construction and installation. The investment bank Lazard analyzed the levelized costs of energy (a measure of the average net cost of electricity generation over the lifetime of a generator), concluding that wind and solar energy are about five times cheaper than nuclear power.
The costs of wind and solar have declined by 90 percent between 2009 and 2021, while nuclear costs have increased by 23 percent over the same time period, according to the 2022 Annual Energy Outlook from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
As Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Jacobson showed this year with his 100 percent renewable road map, the U.S. could meet all its clean energy needs with renewables and zero nuclear power.
Jacobson’s paper also lays to rest the red herring argument over land use. Nuclear proponents assert that nuclear plants take up less space than wind or solar farms. But Jacobson’s plan “requires only ~0.29% and 0.55% of U.S. land area for footprint and spacing, respectively, for new energy technologies.”
In this context, one should also not forget that a 1,000 square mile radioactively dangerous exclusion zone is not exactly a productive use of land.
Jacobson also addresses concerns around jobs, pointing out that a 100 percent renewable economy delivers “~4.7 million more long-term, full-time jobs than lost across the U.S.”
Even under COVID-19 recovery conditions in 2021, renewable energy delivered growth in the U.S. job market. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “solar energy jobs increased by 5.4%, adding 17,212 new jobs. Wind energy jobs increased by 2.9%, adding 3,347 new jobs. Energy efficiency jobs increased by 2.7%, adding 57,741 new jobs.” Meanwhile, “nuclear electricity, coal, and petroleum jobs decreased in 2021.”
The promised and much-touted “new” reactors remain an illusory mirage. As physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists writes in Advanced Isn’t Always Better, they come with numerous and unaddressed safety problems that fail to justify the kind of financial support they currently receive, largely through tax payer-funded subsidies.
Many of the so-called next generation of reactor designs are considered “small,” but they can range from truly small 10 megawatts to not really small at all 450-550 megawatts.
One of these “small modular reactors” is the Natrium, a project of billionaire Bill Gates. Gates has already received an $80 million subsidy for a scheme that nuclear nonproliferation experts such as Gregory S. Jones view as a high proliferation risk. Jones sees the project as a likely failure with an unrealistic timeline that would only deliver the reactor, if at all, several decades from now, far too late to address the climate crisis.
Furthermore, small modular reactors rely on an assembly line of mass production in order to be even vaguely economical. This is an unattractive business proposition since it is more economic to build one large reactor than hundreds if not thousands of small ones and explains why the small modular reactor design, which has been around for decades, has been consistently rejected by investors.
Given all the evidence, what explains the pervasively stubborn insistence on the continued use of nuclear energy, and government-funded nuclear expansion plans, when it is clearly the least-suitable answer to the climate crisis on every front?
Perhaps a clue is to be found in a 2017 report by the Energy Futures Initiative — The U.S. Nuclear Energy Enterprise: A Key National Security Enabler — which states that: “a strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide for nuclear Navy requirements. This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with the commercial nuclear energy sector and has a strong presence in states with commercial nuclear power plants.”
Perhaps a clue is to be found in a 2017 report by the Energy Futures Initiative — The U.S. Nuclear Energy Enterprise: A Key National Security Enabler — which states that: “a strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide for nuclear Navy requirements. This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with the commercial nuclear energy sector and has a strong presence in states with commercial nuclear power plants.”
A 2019 Atlantic Council report — The Value of the US Nuclear Power Complex to US National Security — reiterates this, stating: “Civil nuclear underpins military nuclear” and that “the lack of a civilian nuclear sector would present an immediate and significant economic shock (and impact on the labor force) — which, in turn, would have immediate and longer-term budgetary implications for the US government.”
This is a connection that many who oppose nuclear weapons, but not nuclear power, fail to recognize. And it’s a pathway further enabled by the IAEA, which is in the business of promoting nuclear energy even as it decries the grave risks around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
World BEYOND War Volunteers to Reproduce “Offensive” Peace Mural
https://worldbeyondwar.org/world-beyond-war-volunteers-to-reproduce-offensive-peace-mural/By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 14, 2022
A talented artist in Melbourne, Australia, has been in the news for painting a mural of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers hugging — and then for taking it down because people were offended. The artist, Peter ‘CTO’ Seaton, has been quoted as saying he was raising funds for our organization, World BEYOND War. We want to not only thank him for that but offer to put the mural up elsewhere.
Here is a small sampling of the reporting on this story:
SBS News: “‘Utterly offensive’: Australia’s Ukrainian community furious over mural of Russian soldier embrace”
The Guardian: “Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia calls for removal of ‘offensive’ mural of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers”
Sydney Morning Herald: “Artist to paint over ‘utterly offensive’ Melbourne mural after Ukrainian community anger”
The Independent: “Australian artist takes down mural of hugging Ukraine and Russia soldiers after huge backlash”
Sky News: “Melbourne mural of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers hugging painted over after backlash”
Newsweek: “Artist Defends ‘Offensive’ Mural of Ukrainian and Russian Troops Hugging”
The Telegraph: “Other wars: Editorial on Peter Seaton’s anti-war mural & its repercussion”
Here is the artwork on Seaton’s website. The website says: “Peace before Pieces: Mural painted on Kingsway close to the Melbourne CBD. Focusing on a peaceful resolution between the Ukraine and Russia. Sooner or later the continued escalation of conflicts created by Politicians will be the death of our beloved planet.” We couldn’t agree more.
World BEYOND War has funds donated to us specifically for putting up billboards. We would like to offer, should Seaton find it acceptable and helpful, to put this image up on billboards in Brussels, Moscow, and Washington. We would like to help with reaching out to muralists to put it up elsewhere. And we would like to put it on yard signs that individuals can display around the world.
Our interest is not in offending anyone. We believe that even in the depths of misery, despair, anger, and revenge people are sometimes capable of imagining a better way. We’re aware that soldiers try to kill their enemies, not hug them. We’re aware that each side believes that all the evil is commited by the other side. We’re aware that each side typically believes total triumph is eternally imminent. But we believe that wars must end with the making of peace and that the sooner this is done the better. We believe that reconciliation is something to aspire to, and that it is tragic to find ourselves in a world in which even picturing it is deemed — not just unliklely, but — somehow offensive.
World BEYOND War is a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. World BEYOND War was founded on January 1st, 2014, when co-founders David Hartsough and David Swanson set out to create a global movement to abolish the institution of war itself, not just the “war of the day.” If war is ever to be abolished, then it must be taken off the table as a viable option. Just as there is no such thing as “good” or necessary slavery, there is no such thing as a “good” or necessary war. Both institutions are abhorrent and never acceptable, no matter the circumstances. So, if we can’t use war to resolve international conflicts, what can we do? Finding a way to transition to a global security system that is supported by international law, diplomacy, collaboration, and human rights, and defending those things with nonviolent action rather than the threat of violence, is the heart of WBW. Our work includes education that dispels myths, like “War is natural” or “We have always had war,” and shows people not only that war should be abolished, but also that it actually can be. Our work includes all variety of nonviolent activism that moves the world in the direction of ending all war.
Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Ukrainian lawmakers to drop media bill
https://cpj.org/2022/09/cpj-calls-on-ukrainian-lawmakers-to-drop-media-bill/ Paris, September 13, 2022 – In response to media reports that Ukraine’s parliament passed in its first reading on August 30 a media bill that threatens to restrict press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement calling for the bill to be dropped:
“Ukraine’s media bill seriously imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information at a time when citizens need it the most,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Ukrainian legislators should abandon the bill, or at least pause its progress in parliament until the European Union can weigh in with recommendations.”
Ukraine, a candidate to join the EU, is required to reform its media laws–many of which were implemented in the 1990s–in order to begin negotiations for membership. Matti Maasikas, the head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said in an interview published on August 23 that the bill was currently under evaluation by the EU and the Council of Europe, which could issue recommendations by the end of September.
The bill has the support of members of the ruling party, which has a majority in the Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament. To become law, it would need to pass two more readings in parliament and then be approved by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
As of September 13, the website of the Verkhovna Rada did not indicate the date of the second reading. “They have 21 days [after the first reading] to make amendments. But then it can take a month or up to the end of the year to be approved,” Sergiy Tomilenko, the head of the Ukrainian National Union of Journalists (NUJU), a local trade group, told CPJ via messaging app.
If passed, the legislation would expand the powers of the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting, the state broadcasting regulator, allowing it to regulate online and print outlets, invalidate the registration and license of any media outlet, block online media without a court order, and request that social media platforms and web browsers remove content forbidden under the law, according to multiple media reports.
According to an analysis posted on Telegram by NUJU, only 10% of the bill directly addressed commitments that Ukraine has undertaken as a candidate to join the EU. “The rest reflects the authorities’ desire to have more influence on the media: to issue injunctions, fines, and shut them down,” Tomilenko said in a statement NUJU posted to Telegram.
The new bill was amended only a few weeks before the vote, without a preliminary discussion with journalists and members of the media, Tomilenko said in the same statement.
CPJ emailed the Verkhovna Rada for comment, but did not receive any reply.
US EU LOOMING CRASH, BILLIONS OF US $$ POURING INTO UKRAINE, WAR BETWEEN THE US AND RUSSIA
Bruce Gagnon interview – 13 September 22, https://www.bitchute.com/video/4zlLVGLWEONw/ Youtube has removed Regis Tremblay’s videos – I suppose, for political reasons. This time he is interviewing Bruce Gagnon – long-time doughty warrior for preventing war in space. I wish I had time to transcribe it
Fast transition to renewables will save the world up to $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050
Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as
much as $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050, an Oxford University study says. The
report said it was wrong and pessimistic to claim that moving quickly
towards cleaner energy sources was expensive. Gas prices have soared on
mounting concerns over energy supplies. But the researchers say that going
green now makes economic sense because of the falling cost of renewables.
“Even if you’re a climate denier, you should be on board with what we’re
advocating,” Prof Doyne Farmer from the Institute for New Economic Thinking
at the Oxford Martin School told BBC News. “Our central conclusion is that
we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it’s
going to save us money,” he said.
BBC 13th Sept 2022
Continued drop in France’s nuclear power energy production
Nuclear power generation at EDF’s (EDF.PA) French reactors in August fell
by 37.6% year on year to 18.1 terawatt hours (TWh), mainly due to the
impact of the discovery of stress corrosion, the utility said on Tuesday.
EDF said on its website that total nuclear generation in France since the
start of the year was 191 TWh, down 20.2% compared with January-August
2021.
Reuters 13th Sept 2022
Russia’s uranium exports can continue – exempt from sanctions imposed on other commodities
The German government said Monday that it can’t stop a shipment of Russian uranium destined for French nuclear plants from being processed at a site in Germany because atomic fuel isn’t covered by European Union sanctions on Russia.
Environmentalists have called on Germany and the Netherlands to block a shipment of uranium aboard the Russian ship Mikhail Dudin — currently docked in the French port of Dunkirk — from being transported to a processing plant in Lingen, close to the German-Dutch border.
“We have no legal grounds to prevent the transport of uranium from Russia, because the sanctions imposed by the EU due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine exempt the import of nuclear fuel … to the EU from import bans,” said a spokesman for Germany’s Environment Ministry, Andreas Kuebler. Safety requirements for the shipment had been examined and foundto meet requirements, meaning German authorities had to approve it, he added.
Washington Post 12th Sept 2022
Plunging costs of renewable energy – as nuclear power costs increase
The tumbling cost of renewable energy means transitioning away from fossil
fuels over the next 30 years will save the world “at least $12 trillion”,
according to researchers at the University of Oxford.
The decarbonisation
of the energy system will not only see a major reduction in the cost of
producing and distributing energy, but will also allow for greater levels
of energy to be produced and therefore help expand energy access around the
planet.
The faster the transition to renewables occurs, the greater the
potential for savings, the team found, and urged governments to recognise
the enormous boost to the global economy, that abandoning fossil fuels will
bring about.
“There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean,
green energy will be painful, costly and mean sacrifices for us all – but
that’s just wrong,” said Professor Doyne Farmer, who leads the team that
conducted the study at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the
Oxford Martin School. The research team analysed thousands of transition
cost scenarios produced by major energy models and examined data on: 45
years of solar energy costs, 37 years of wind energy costs and 25 years for
battery storage.
They said the research reveals that the real cost of solar
energy dropped twice as fast as the most ambitious projections in these
models, revealing that, over the past 20 years, previous models “badly
overestimated the future costs” of renewable energy technology compared to
the reality of cheap renewables we are already seeing today.
The research also suggests nuclear power will play a diminishing role in the future
global energy mix due to the rising costs of building reactors. “The costs
of nuclear have consistently increased over the last five decades, making
it highly unlikely to be cost competitive with plunging renewable and
storage costs,” the researchers said. Meanwhile, the study showed the costs
for storage technologies, such as batteries and hydrogen electrolysis, are
also likely to fall dramatically.
Independent 13th Sept 2022
Permit problems for Sizewell C nuclear project? Cooling system could kill millions of fish.
Permit problems for Sizewell C predicted after report confirms cooling
mechanisms can kill millions of fish. The Sizewell C nuclear reactor may
face obstacles in receiving an environmental permit after a report revealed
that the cooling mechanism at a similar development could kill millions of
fish.
ENDS 12th Sept 2022
Ukraine’s threatened nuclear power plant has been shut down. Has a crisis been averted?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-12/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-explainer/101430510 By Andrew Thorpe, with wires
The sixth and final operating reactor at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shut down on Sunday to lower the risk of a radiation disaster amid the continuing fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
Key points:
- All six of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s reactors have now stopped, in a “cold shutdown”
- The move diminishes the risk of meltdown as an active fission reaction is no longer taking place, but the nuclear material at the site still requires constant cooling
- Constant shelling around the plant risks further disrupting the plant’s electricity supply and causing its cooling systems to fail
The move became possible after the plant was partially reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, following weeks of
disconnections and reconnections caused by heavy shelling in the area damaging power lines.
The facility had been isolated from the power grid and operating in “island mode” since September 5, meaning only one reactor remained operational, generating power to run the cooling systems and other crucial processes for the rest of the plant.
Fighting near the plant, one of the 10 biggest atomic power stations in the world, fuelled fears of a disaster like the one that took place at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine in 1986, when a reactor exploded and contaminated a vast area that remains unsafe to live in.
So, are we out of the woods yet?
While Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are protected by a reinforced containment shelter that should withstand being hit by a shell or rocket, a disruption in the electrical supply to the plant risks knocking out its cooling systems, which are essential for the reactors’ safety — even after they have been shut down.
Nuclear reactor cores continue to emit radioactivity and generate heat long after they have finished operating, meaning systems that circulate water through the cores to cool them are required to stay operational for extended periods of time.
The risk of a full-scale meltdown diminishes over time once reactors cease operating, meaning Zaporizhzhia’s “cold shutdown” is a significant risk-reduction strategy — but the danger is far from over yet.
Further damage to the plant’s electricity supply, a high likelihood given the continued fighting, would require the plant to begin running its safety systems using emergency diesel generators.
TODAY. The Ukrainian propaganda war becomes ever more sinister – with “filtration”
“Filtration” – yes – that’s the key word. It means the torture, expulsion, killing, of people that you call ‘collaborators” ETC. in Western propaganda now, there are dozens of media reports on how the Russians are abusing Ukrainians.
Then there’s just this one headline from the Wall Street Journal – “Ukraine hit squads are killing Russian occupiers and collaborators” (behind a paywall). What could they be thinking of? – When the standard Western dogma is that all the bad things are done by Russia, and Ukrainians are squeaky clean.
One report , from a pro-Russian media source, says “Ukraine cracks downs on civilians – official“
I can’t imagine why on earth the Wall Street Journal lapsed from its religious Western duty to blacken Russians, but I bet they won’t let it happen again.
A heretical thought from a Westerner – but is it possible that, not just Russia, but both sides are guilty of atrocities, in this hate-filled Ukraine situation?
The Weapons Industry as a Taxpayer Scam
In all, the top five weapons contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman—split more than $200 billion in “defense” revenue in the last fiscal year, mostly from the Pentagon but also from lucrative foreign arms sales. The new budget proposals will only boost those already astounding figures.
Military contractors and arms manufacturers cash in as Congress adds billions to the Pentagon budget each year.
The jobs card is the strongest tool of influence available to the arms industry in its efforts to keep Congress eternally boosting Pentagon spending, but far from the only one
So far, in the 2022 election cycle, weapons firms have already donated $3.4 million to members of the House Armed Services Committee
There are scant, if any, restrictions against members of Congress owning or trading defense company stocks, even those who sit on influential national-security-related committees. In other words, it’s completely legal for them to marry their personal financial interests to those of defense contractors.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/09/12/weapons-industry-taxpayer-scam JULIA GLEDHILL, WILLIAM HARTUNG, September 12, 2022 Congress has spoken when it comes to next year’s Pentagon budget and the results, if they weren’t so in line with past practices, should astonish us all. The House of Representatives voted to add $37 billion and the Senate $45 billion to the administration’s already humongous request for “national defense,” a staggering figure that includes both the Pentagon budget and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. If enacted, the Senate’s sum would push spending on the military to at least $850 billion annually, far more—adjusted for inflation—than at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or the peak years of the Cold War.
U.S. military spending is, of course, astronomically high—more than that of the next nine countries combined. Here’s the kicker, though: the Pentagon (an institution that has never passed a comprehensive financial audit) doesn’t even ask for all those yearly spending increases in its budget requests to Congress. Instead, the House and Senate continue to give it extra tens of billions of dollars annually. No matter that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has publicly stated the Pentagon has all it needs to “get the capabilities… to support our operational concepts” without such sums.
It would be one thing if such added funding were at least crafted in line with a carefully considered defense strategy. More often than not, though, much of it goes to multibillion dollar weapons projects being built in the districts or states of key lawmakers or for items on Pentagon wish lists (formally known as “unfunded priorities lists”). It’s unclear how such items can be “priorities” when they haven’t even made it into the Pentagon’s already enormous official budget request.
In addition, throwing yet more money at a department incapable of managing its current budget only further strains its ability to meet program goals and delivery dates. In other words, it actually impairs military readiness. Whatever limited fiscal discipline the Pentagon has dissipates further when lawmakers arbitrarily increase its budget, despite rampant mismanagement leading to persistent cost overruns and delivery delays on the military’s most expensive (and sometimes least well-conceived) weapons programs.
Inn short, parochial concerns and special-interest politics regularly trump anything that might pass as in the national interest, while doing no favors to the safety and security of the United States. In the end, most of those extra funds simply pad the bottom lines of major weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. They certainly don’t help our servicemembers, as congressional supporters of higher Pentagon budgets routinely claim.
A Captured Congress
The leading advocates of more Pentagon spending, Democrats and Republicans alike, generally act to support major contractors in their jurisdictions. Representative Jared Golden (D-ME), a co-sponsor of the House Armed Services Committee proposal to add $37 billion to the Pentagon budget, typically made sure it included funds for a $2 billion guided-missile destroyer to be built at General Dynamics’ shipyard in Bath, Maine.
Similarly, his co-sponsor, Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA), whose district abuts Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipyard, successfully advocated for the inclusion of ample funding to produce aircraft carriers and attack submarines at that complex. Or consider Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee and a dogged advocate of annually increasing the Pentagon budget by at least 3% to 5% above inflation. He serves a district south of Huntsville, Alabama, dubbed “rocket city” because it’s the home to so many firms that work on missile defense and related projects.
There are even special congressional caucuses devoted solely to increasing Pentagon spending while fending off challenges to specific weapons systems. These range from the House shipbuilding and F-35 caucuses to the Senate ICBM Coalition. That coalition has been especially effective at keeping spending on a future land-based intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed the Sentinel on track, while defeating efforts to significantly reduce the number of ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal. Such “success” has come thanks to the stalwart support of senators from Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, all states with ICBM bases or involved in major ICBM development and maintenance.
The jobs card is the strongest tool of influence available to the arms industry in its efforts to keep Congress eternally boosting Pentagon spending, but far from the only one. After all, the industrial part of the military-industrial-congressional complex gave more than $35 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress in 2020, the bulk of it going to those on the armed services and defense appropriations committees who have the most sway over the Pentagon budget and what it will be spent on.
So far, in the 2022 election cycle, weapons firms have already donated $3.4 million to members of the House Armed Services Committee, according to an analysis by Open Secrets.org, an organization that tracks campaign spending and political influence. Weapons-making corporations also currently employ nearly 700 lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress, while spending additional millions to support industry-friendly think tanks that regularly push higher Pentagon spending and a more hawkish foreign policy.
The arms industry has another lever to pull as well when it comes to the personal finances of lawmakers. There are scant, if any, restrictions against members of Congress owning or trading defense company stocks, even those who sit on influential national-security-related committees. In other words, it’s completely legal for them to marry their personal financial interests to those of defense contractors.
The Cost of Coddling Contractors
Continue readingVeteran Intelligence Professionals: Ukraine Decision Time for Biden
We hope you have been adequately briefed on the likely outcome of the recent Ukrainian “offensive”
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time
REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented, VIPS
Mr. President:
Before Defense Secretary Austin flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your circle of advisers
Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President. We learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did not come back from Vietnam.
Vietnam: President Lyndon Johnson preferred to believe Gen. William Westmoreland who told him and Defense Secretary McNamara in 1967 that South Vietnam could win – if only LBJ would supply an additional 206,000 troops. CIA analysts knew that to be untrue and that – worse still — Westmoreland was deliberately falsifying the number of forces he faced,……………………….
All being fair in love and war, the generals in Saigon were determined to offer a rosy picture……………………
The Demise of Imagery Analysis: Until 1996, CIA had an independent capability to do unencumbered military analysis enabling it to speak the truth – even during war. ……………the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC,) a solid reputation for professionalism and objectivity.
………………………. In 1996, when NPIC and its 800 highly professional imagery analysts were given, kit and kaboodle, to the Pentagon, it was goodbye to impartial intelligence.
Iraq: Retired Air Force General James Clapper was eventually put in charge of NPIC’s successor, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and thus was well positioned to grease the skids for the “war of choice” on Iraq.
Indeed, Clapper is one of the few senior functionaries to admit that, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, he was “leaning forward” to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; could find none; but went along anyway…………………………
Afghanistan: You will recall the extreme pressure on President Obama coming from Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, and generals like Petraeus and McCrystal to double down in sending more troops to Afghanistan. They were able to push aside Intelligence Community analysts,……………………..
The President, as you well know, deferred to Gates and the generals. And, last summer, it was left to you to pick up the pieces, so to speak……………………..
Syria – Austin’s Reputation Not Without Blemish: Closer to home, Secretary Austin is no stranger to accusations of politicizing intelligence………………………….. The analysts claimed their reports were being changed by higher-ups to dovetail with the administration’s public line that the US was winning the battle against ISIS and the al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria……………………….
In Summary: We hope you take the time to review this history – and to take it into account before sending Secretary Austin off to Ramstein. …………………. (We hope you have been adequately briefed on the likely outcome of the recent Ukrainian “offensive”.)
You may also wish to seek counsel from CIA Director William Burns and others with experience in the history of Europe – and particularly of Germany. Media reports suggested earlier that in Ramstein Secretary Austin will commit to providing Ukraine with still more weaponry and will encourage his colleagues to do the same. If he follows that script, he may find few takers – particularly among those most vulnerable to winter cold.
FOR THE STEERING GROUP: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
signed by 19 highly qualified members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. https://original.antiwar.com/veteran-intelligence-professionals-for-sanity2/2022/09/05/veteran-intelligence-professionals-ukraine-decision-time-for-biden/
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 