The U.S. Department of War has been accused of withholding information regarding the true scale of American casualties sustained during the ongoing war with Iran, following a report by The New York Times citing U.S. officials who stated that dozens of injuries suffered in recent Iranian attacks were not publicly disclosed. The report has renewed scrutiny over Pentagon casualty reporting practices as American forces continue to face sustained missile and drone attacks across the Middle East.
Author: Michael
More than a year ago, I speculated here about a connection between the forthcoming Boeing F-47, a modest technology demonstration program from the 1990s and a little-remembered pioneer of stealth.
A set of images of an unknown aircraft in an infra-red video, released this month, suggests I may have been on target. The video was taken by Youtube creators Project Fear, close to the secure flight-test facility known as Area 51. The footage has been vouched for by Anders Otteson, who brought us another classified aircraft in January.
NGAD F-47. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Iran Must Never Have a Nuclear Weapon—and That Requires Ending the Regime That Wants One: For months, the Commander-in-Chief has repeated a clear, absolute endstate: Iran will never—never—possess a nuclear weapon. That objective is not a talking point. It is the only outcome consistent with American security, Israeli survival, and the prevention of nuclear-armed theocratic blackmail of the global energy system, even as alternative pipelines begin to offer partial redundancy.
The Kuomintang Party (KMT), the principal opposition to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is increasingly vocal in calling for a less risky approach to cross-strait relations. Not surprisingly, Beijing is enthusiastically encouraging that trend. PRC officials repeatedly remind the Taiwanese people that tensions were far milder during the administration of Ma Ying Jeou, Taiwan’s last KMT president, who governed the island from 2008 to 2016.
F-35 program leader Lieutenant General Greg Masiello delivered something of a lite-beer testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, with many questions deferred to a closed session. But the discussion (transcript here) pointed to a big and little-discussed change to air warfare technology – fighter radars so powerful that they can act as high-power microwave (HPM) weapons. And this involves not just the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning but also British Eurofighter Typhoons and the multinational Global Combat Aircraft Program (GCAP).
HPM is not just a type of jamming.
How Long Until Putin Is Presiding Over A Ruined Economy and Country?: Russia is evidently taking advantage of Ukraine’s Patriot interceptor shortage, proving that without the air defenses it needs, Ukraine is still vulnerable to Russian ballistic missiles. Moscow appears to believe that exploiting that shortage right now could be enough to force Kyiv back into a defensive position and reduce its ability to strike back.
Russia continues to push back against ongoing Ukrainian long-range strikes by escalating its ballistic missile campaign, overnight launching one of its largest ballistic missile attacks of the entire war. The strikes, which carried into the morning of Sunday, July 19, saw Russian forces target sites across Ukraine’s capital city with more than 100 drones. The attack poses a great challenge for Kyiv as it seeks the rapid delivery of new Patriot interceptor missiles – the only weapon proven to be capable of reliably intercepting Russian ballistic missiles.
Russia launched 41 missiles and 125 drones against Ukraine overnight into July 19, concentrating most of the missile attack on Kyiv in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called one of the largest ballistic barrages against the capital since the war began. At least one person was killed, and 17 were injured in Kyiv and the surrounding region, according to the Kyiv Independent’s updated account.
U.S. Strikes Iranian Nuclear Site as Tehran Hits Out at Kuwait: The United States launched its eighth consecutive night of strikes against Iran overnight into Sunday, July 19 – this time targeting major military and nuclear sites as well as coastal defenses and missile facilities.
Iranian authorities claim that the United States struck the construction site of a new nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran, although Washington has not confirmed that the facility was deliberately targeted. Meanwhile, Iran launched another wave of missile and drone strikes aimed at U.S.
A third American service member died on Saturday during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone’s ordnance, U.S. Central Command announced Sunday.
U.S. troops were carrying out a controlled detonation of the unexploded ordnance on a downed Iranian attack drone in northern Iraq. CENTCOM did not elaborate on what went wrong, but in the process one American was killed while another suffered minor injuries. The military did not identify the deceased, citing policies to withhold the name until family is notified.
The fatal incident comes a day after two U.S.