Tag: military equipment

Germany sells fifth nuclear submarine to Israel

Germany’s Federal Security Council has approved the export of a fifth submarine to Israel.

It’s the penultimate submarine promised to Israel by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and will be handed over by the company Thyssen Krupp.

Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper revealed the approval, citing the Federal Security Council’s report to the parliamentary Economics Committee.

Germany’s Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) builds the new Air Independent Propulsion Dolphins and the decision to sell them has been criticized for two reasons. One, in that German taxpayers are shouldering a third of the cost.

Secondly, the vessels are reportedly capable of being equipped with nuclear weapons.

Peter Roberts is an expert in sea power and naval weapons systems at the Royal United Services Institute in London and told Sputnik News that Israel will want to produce and develop nuclear capability on the new submarines.

“That’s the long term aspiration”, says Roberts. “But does it have it right now? No.

“These are new batch of submarines that Israel is receiving which have a markedly increased capability on what they’d had previously in terms of range, covertness and ability to reach different parts of the world then they had previously been able to do.”

Roberts adds that the submarines have the capability to become nuclear armed, “but probably not right now.”

“Several hurdles have to be overcome before it can be armed with a nuclear warhead.”

He explains that the key to being able to arm the submarines with nuclear weapons is down to the delivery mechanism.

“The Israelis rely on the fact they could fire the Popeye submarine missile — a system that the Americans successfully launched in 2002. But traditionally the Israelis only keep the Harpoon anti-ship missile.”

“These are the first submarines that will be able to fire this missile, the size of the torpedo tubes allow it to be fired, they have a bigger tubes for bigger missiles.

“The submarines would have the ability to launch them [missiles] — it’s the weapon itself that is the critical part and developing that weapon and navigation system for the guidance from within a submerged submarine is a further challenge.”

Peter Roberts says it’s difficult to say whether the submarines are distinctly designed for nuclear weapons.

“The Israelis will want to add this to their golf bag of capability which will give them huge resilience in their nuclear forces — but they’re not there yet.”

According to an article written by Anthony Bellchambers for Global Research, the Dolphin Class nuclear powered submarines “that have already been converted by the Israeli navy to being armed with ICB nuclear missiles…has given the Israeli state ‘deep sea dominance’ that is now virtually irreversible.”

Adding that German Chancellor Merkel agreed to supply Israel with the vessels “without any prior consultation with the EU.”

Pentagon accused of fueling Ferguson confrontation

The Pentagon might not have boots on the ground in Ferguson, Mo., where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by police on Saturday, but it does have wheels on the street.

Michelle McCaskill, media relations chief at the Defense Logistics Agency, confirms that the Ferguson Police Department is part of a federal program called 1033 that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of surplus military equipment to civilian police forces across the United States. The materials range from small items, such as pistols and automatic rifles, to heavy armored vehicles such as the MRAPs used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“In 2013 alone, $449,309,003.71 worth of property was transferred to law enforcement,” the agency’s website states.

According to McCaskill, the most recent transfer of military equipment from the Department of Defense to small Ferguson was in November and included two vehicles as well as a trailer and a generator. Details on the vehicles and their intended uses have not been released by the Pentagon. Information on any prior transfers is also unavailable.

A state public safety official told USA TODAY that the Pentagon does not allow detailed information on “tactical” equipment to be released at a police force level, only at a county level. According to a document provided by the official, police forces in the same county as Ferguson received advanced rifle sights and night vision equipment between 2012 and 2014.

There is no evidence that any such equipment has yet been used in the Brown case and its aftermath. But such “police militarization” is just one element of an often toxic relationship between minority communities and local police.

Since the creation of the 1033 program by Congress in the early 1990s, the program has distributed $4.3 billion of excess equipment, ranging from innocuous office supplies to bomb-disposing robots and other advanced technology. The flood of military supplies — along with the continuing drug war and grant programs from other federal agencies that provide military-style equipment — has pushed the culture of police forces far from its law-enforcement roots.

Indeed, the motto of the 1033 program is “From Warfighter to Crimefighter.”

So it is not a surprise that police officers often seem prepared for war. In Ferguson, that change is most dramatically revealed in the images of camouflage-wearing police officers with assault rifles, body armor and multiple extra magazines facing unarmed protesters with their hands preemptively raised in the air.

The disturbing trend of police militarization permits law enforcement agencies to view people in their communities as threats, rather than as citizens with rights, reports TheWashington Post’s Radley Balko, who has covered the militarization of the police extensively.

Elsewhere in Missouri, agencies participating in the 1033 program have acquired “aircraft (both fixed wing and rotary) and four-wheel drive vehicles (such as pickup trucks, blazers, ambulances and armored personnel carriers),” according to the state’s Department of Public Safety.

If there’s one thing a community in turmoil does not need is for anyone to turn up the heat as protesters and police face off and tempers simmer. But before a local police officer fired his first shot at the unarmed teen, the U.S. military helped make sure there was plenty of fuel to bring things to a boil.

Source: USA TODAY