The funds to pay for new unmanned technologies are being reallocated from other programs within the Navy’s budget — part of the “efficiencies” drill mandated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Navy Undersecretary Robert Work said that the department is planning to add $800 million to the budget for the MQ-8B Fire Scout vertical take-off and landing unmanned aircraft program.
••• This is the same Fire Scout that the Navy decided to build after extensive lobbying by Northrop Grumman’s Rent-A-Generals, then decided it didn’t need. Now, the program is back to life with money freed up by Pentagon “cuts.” Support the troops!
“[S]upporting the troops” has become a categorical imperative across the political spectrum. In theory, such support might find expression in a determination to protect those troops from abuse, and so translate into wariness about committing soldiers to unnecessary or unnecessarily costly wars. In practice, however, “supporting the troops” has found expression in an insistence upon providing the Pentagon with open-ended drawing rights on the nation’s treasury, thereby creating massive barriers to any proposal to affect more than symbolic reductions in military spending.
There is a reverence for the military in the US…that transcends political affiliation and pervades popular culture. On aeroplanes the flight attendant will announce if there are soldiers on board to great applause. When I attended a recording of The Daily Show, John [sic] Stewart made a special point before the show of thanking the servicemen in the audience.
But while the admiration for those who serve and die may be deep and widespread, interest in what they are doing and why they are doing it is shallow and fleeting.
••• Seriously: Support the troops! We really, really mean it.
It may not be politically correct to suggest letting mercenaries deal with humanitarian nightmares like Somalia and Darfur. But political correctness doesn’t save lives. Sending in mercenaries would.
••• On second thought, support the mercenaries—it’s a lot easier.
A semiautonomous regional government in Somalia on Friday defied the central government’s decision to end relations with a private security company linked to the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, underscoring the weakness of the authorities in Mogadishu.
••• Who’s in charge here? The AP follows up the story of Saracen International and Erik Prince in Somalia.
Is our own Saracen International tied to a plot to tinker in international politics? Heck if we know.
But we can tell you that Bill Lawrence, one of the company’s principals, is an 83-year-old engineer who’s not only interested in killer SUVs, but also wants to be a pioneer of accessories for hookahs.
••• Phoenix New Times interviews the Saracen (Arizona) owner first spotlighted here and teases out the details that, “Roger Harrison, his business partner was a former ambassador to Jordan.”
“The more weapons the governments in Khartoum and Juba acquire, the more we will see arms ‘seeping’ from their armed forces to proxies and non-state armed actors, via theft, sales, corruption, battle-field losses, and so forth,” she explains.
••• I’m quoted in this IPS story by Hilaire Avril on what a global small arms treaty could mean for sub-Saharan Africa.
“This affair concerns individuals who were involved in a wider network of arms deals that could have seen tens of thousands of weapons flooding into Iraq with seemingly no controls or accountability,” Sprague said.
••• A baby-faced British arms dealer is wanted by US prosecutors.
More than 62,000 firearms have disappeared from the inventories of licensed U.S. gun dealers in the past three years
••• Mere spoilage.
As part of the Afghan tradition of bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” boys as young as 9 are dressed as girls and trained to dance for male audiences, then prostituted in an auction to the highest bidder. Many powerful men, particularly commanders in the military and the police, keep such boys, often dressed in uniforms, as constant companions for sexual purposes.
… The Taliban originally came to prominence in Kandahar when they intervened in a fight between two pedophile warlords over the possession of a coveted dancing boy. The Taliban also oppose the practice, and banned it when they were in power.
••• Something worth thinking about: The Taliban banned pederasty, but not the American proxy force.