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Category: military – Page 177

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New infrastructure upgrades were completed at Lhasa-Gonggar earlier this year, satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows. Workers at the civil-military airfield widened a road and built an additional parking apron near the base of the mountain.

Earlier this month, India’s Hindustan Times reported that China had built an underground facility to house fighter aircraft at the airport. Quoting three unnamed officials, the report said that an underground hangar was large enough to hold up to 36 aircraft.

That assertion however is inaccurate. Imagery shows the new parking apron with markings indicative of parking positions for up to thirty-six aircraft, but does not show activity to tunnel into the mountain to create a hardened hangar. To date aircraft have not relocated to the apron nor have any additional aircraft deployed to the airbase as a result.

Continue reading “Clarification: China has yet to Build an Underground Facility at Gonggar” | >

In collaboration with the Autonomous Disinformation Research Network – @DisinfoResearch

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019, leaked data from the defunct neo-Nazi forum, Iron March, emerged online, exposing the personal information of more than 1,200 members, including the locations of their IP addresses and, in some cases, their real names. Already, activists sifting through the database have uncovered several fascists around the country, including some in uniform. A thoroughly transnational network, Iron March stemmed from a site called International Third Position Forum, was launched by a Russian, produced a terror group in the U.S., and facilitated coordination among terror groupings in the U.K. and elsewhere, all through the power of the internet.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Iron March involved members whose goals of recruiting through the U.S. military underlied their fantasies of ultimately destroying liberal democracy through a fascist paramilitary insurgency. It went on to develop a small but lethal “accelerationist” terrorist group called Atomwaffen Division (Nuclear Weapons Division), responsible for murders, an assassination attempt, and failed bomb plots. It also recently became famous for adding journalists from a Quillette article to a hit-list called “Sunset the Media.” Though what they mostly seem to do is put up stickers in what they laughably call “the stickening.”

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During World War II, an amazing amount of innovation, including radar, reliable torpedoes, and code-breaking, helped end the war faster. This will be the same with the pandemic. I break the innovation into five categories: treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing, and policies for opening up. Without some advances in each of these areas, we cannot return to the business as usual or stop the virus. Below, I go through each area in some detail.

The scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19.

By Bill Gates

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O,.,o.

Throughout Syria’s lengthy conflict, Bellingcat has worked to investigate a large number of chemical attacks, including the nature of the weapons deployed in those attacks, using open source evidence. From modified chlorine cylinders to locally made surface to surface rockets filled with Sarin, Bellingcat has revealed the nature, and origin, of these chemical weapons, confirming the Syrian government’s involvement in a range of chemical attacks.

Following a series of Sarin attacks in Al Lataminah and Khan Sheikhoun in March and April 2017, Bellingcat worked with open source evidence to slowly piece together the nature of the bomb used in the attacks. Bellingcat first published its conclusions in November 2017, and continued to build on the body of evidence it had uncovered. After the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) report was published this week, confirming the type of bomb used in the March 24 and March 30, 2017 Sarin attacks in Al Lataminah, we now have their confirmation of the type of bomb used, the Syrian M4000 chemical bomb.

Continue reading “The Open Source Hunt for Syria’s Favourite Sarin Bomb” | >

Appropriate references can help observers determine the size of North Korean rockets with modest confidence. Using this method, the author has previously identified the unique North Korean SCUD-ER ballistic missile by establishing its body diameter at almost exact 1 meter instead of the common SCUD’s 0.88m width[1].

Images from recent parades and test firing of North Korean rockets have offered more opportunities for relatively accurate estimation of the rockets’ dimensions. In this analysis, the author will present findings on the dimension of the missiles/ mock-ups exhibited in the April 15, 2017 parade in North Korea. The findings would in turn shed light on the technological sophistication of these weapon systems.

The “new HS-10” .

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The path forward begins with admitting the nation has a bomber shortfall. Retiring more aircraft exacerbates the problem. Nor is this just an Air Force problem. Bombers are national assets essential to our security strategy and must be prioritized accordingly. If other services have excess funds to invest in ideas like a 1,000-mile-range cannon when thousands of strike aircraft, various munitions and remotely piloted aircraft can fill the exact same mission requirements, it is time for a roles and missions review to direct funding toward the most effective, efficient options. Bombers would compete well in such an assessment. Ultimately, the solution demands doubling down on the B-21 program.

There comes a point where you cannot do more with less. Given the importance of bombers to the nation, rebuilding the bomber force is not an option — it is an imperative.

Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem served as a fighter pilot and held various command positions. He concluded his service as the director of plans, policy and strategy at North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. He is currently the director of studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, where Douglas Birkey is the executive director. Birkey researches issues relating to the future of aerospace and national security, and he previously served as the Air Force Association’s director of government relations.

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The Pentagon’s cutting edge science department is working to create a therapeutic “shield” that could be mass produced to provide temporary protection for people from diseases like the coronavirus, boosting their immunity until an actual vaccine is developed. The result could also help slow the viruses’ advance, buying time for hard-pressed hospitals and clinics worldwide.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has funded efforts to create such therapies from studying COVID-19 samples from individuals who have already recovered from the virus. Scientists working with the organization’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (PPP) are sequencing the B cells of one individual who recovered from COVID-19. B cells create antibodies, proteins created by the human immune system to fight a particular invading microorganism.

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