Category: Military

Pentagon Moves Troops To Prepare For Possible Sudan Embassy Evacuation.

The Pentagon is repositioning troops near the country of Sudan to prepare for a possible embassy evacuation as the nation devolves into civil war.

The Defense Department moved additional troops and equipment to a naval base in Djibouti, a small African country on the Gulf of Aden, to prepare for the potential evacuation, The Associated Press reported. The Pentagon said publicly it was deploying “additional capabilities” to the region but did not provide specifics.

Planning for an evacuation reportedly intensified after an American diplomatic convoy came under fire in Sudan on Monday. Fighting broke out in the country earlier this week between two rival factions, loyal to two warring military leaders who had been co-governing until negotiations toward a democratic process recently collapsed.

The State Department said Thursday that all embassy staff in Khartoum are currently safe and accounted for, but that the conditions on the ground are not currently stable enough for an evacuation of the staff or of other American citizens in the country. The department estimates that about 16,000 American citizens are in the country, but cautioned the figure is likely somewhat inaccurate. Americans in Sudan are being advised to shelter in place and avoid traveling on the streets.

Khartoum’s airport has been shut down and control over the area is disputed. The last time the United States conducted a ground evacuation of embassy personnel was in Libya in 2014, although it is unclear what methods could be used to do so in Sudan. At least 330 people have been killed in the several days of fighting so far, according to the most recent estimates, and an agreed ceasefire earlier this week failed almost immediately.

None of them are good

Here are the 7 biggest revelations from the US leaks so far.

The biggest leak of classified documents in a decade created a sprawling crisis in Washington this week as records detail alleged U.S. spying on allies, insights into American thinking on the war in Ukraine and at least two neutral countries mulling plans to support Russia.

Pentagon officials are still reviewing the documents for validity and the Justice Department is overseeing a criminal investigation of the leak.

The documents have circulated online since March and possibly as early as January before picking up attention last week after a New York Times report.

There may be more documents to come, but the leak has already done a lot of damage, forcing crucial U.S. allies to respond in what has become an arguably embarrassing incident for Washington.

Here are the seven biggest revelations in the documents so far.

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Finland to officially join NATO on Tuesday
The country, which shares a border with Russia, applied to join the military alliance in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

It is the first enlargement of NATO since North Macedonia joined the alliance in 2020.

The announcement was confirmed by NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who said the move will make Finland and other members safer.

“We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at NATO headquarters. It will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security and for NATO as a whole,” he told reporters in Brussels.

He also expressed his hope that Finland’s neighbour Sweden will be permitted to join in the coming months.

Russia immediately responded to the announcement, with an official telling state-owned news agency RIA that the country would bolster forces along its 1,300km (810 mile) border with Finland.

‘We will strengthen our military potential in the western and northwestern direction,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko told RIA.

“In the event that the forces and resources of other NATO members are deployed in Finland, we will take additional steps to reliably ensure Russia’s military security.”

Finnish president Sauli Niinistö, defence minister Antti Kaikkonen and foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, are now due to attend a ceremony to mark Finland’s membership of NATO.

“It is a historic moment for us. For Finland, the most important objective at the meeting will be to emphasize NATO’s support to Ukraine as Russia continues its illegal aggression,” Mr Haavisto said in a statement.

“We seek to promote stability and security throughout the Euro-Atlantic region.”

Turkey was the last of NATO’s 30 members to accept Finland’s application – which ends the country’s decades of military non-alignment.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier in March that Finland had secured his country’s blessing after taking concrete steps to keep promises to crack down on groups seen by Ankara as terrorists, and to free up defence exports.

However, Turkey is still blocking the approval of Sweden joining NATO, with the government saying Stockholm has so far failed to sufficiently crackdown on similar groups.

Quote O’ The Day
The military is not a therapy program – Sarah Hoyt

Military Officials: Diversity Training Makes Soldiers Feel ‘Included’.

Top military officials in the Biden Administration recently attempted to defend far-left “diversity” training in the military, claiming that such sessions make all soldiers feel more “included.”

As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Air Force Chief of Staff General C.Q. Brown gave an interview for Defense One defending the practice of diversity training, claiming that “when people join our military, they want to look around and see somebody who looks like them.”

“They want to be part of a team, and feel like they’re included,” Brown added.

Brown praised the practice for its alleged efforts to build “cohesive” teams for all service members, “no matter their background.”

Similarly, General David Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, claimed that he has seen “zero evidence” of any negative impact from such left-wing policies when it comes to the end result of making stronger Marines.

House Republicans are currently attempting to cut funding for such far-left practices in the military; other examples include a program in the Army for training soldiers on how to use “gender pronouns,” and a similar training video for the Navy discussing pronouns and “safe spaces.”

Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) declared that the Biden Administration’s efforts to force politics into the military are “shaping the Department of Defense into an institution that is spearheading toxic social policies instead of restoring military strength.”

“On the House Armed Services Committee, we are laser-focused on the threats we face and the capabilities we need to defeat them,” said Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

The fight over the politicization of the military comes as most branches struggle with reaching the appropriate levels of recruitment numbers in recent years. Last year, the U.S. Army missed its minimum recruitment goal by 15,000.

This is what happens when pronouns are a higher priority than logistics

U.S. Weapons Stockpile Disaster Limiting Our Ability To Deter China In Taiwan
It’s so bad now, even the New York Times is reporting about it.

In late January we reported that U.S. military weapons stockpiles were so low that various commentators were describing the shortages as “uncomfortably low,” “insufficient,” “precarious,” and “dangerous” due to the large quantities of these weapons we had given free of charge to Ukraine: U.S. Weapons Stockpiles “Uncomfortably Low” Due To Arms Shipments to Ukraine:

To date, the U.S. military has provided a “staggering” amount of military hardware and munitions to Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion, amounting to more than $27 billion. This U.S. support has included over 1 million rounds of 155 mm howitzer ammunition. It has also included 8,500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 32,000 anti-tank missiles of other types, 5,200 Excalibur precision 155 mm howitzer rounds, and 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, among many other weapons systems and munitions.

[T]he Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense concludes that “[t]he fact that only a few months of fighting in Ukraine consumed such a large percentage of U.S. Stingers and Javelins suggests that the DOD’s plans, and the stockpiles that result from them, are insufficient.” Even the Washington Post has conceded the seriousness of the situation, noting that “[s]tocks of many key weapons and munitions are near exhaustion,” and citing a…CSIS report that concludes that “the U.S. defense industrial base is in pretty poor shape right now [and] we don’t make it past four or five days in a war game before we run out of precision missiles.” The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) describes the state of U.S. weapons stockpiles as “precarious.”

The U.S. Naval Institute describes them as “dangerous” due to their low inventory levels. Even a U.S. Department of Defense official quoted by the Wall Street Journal admitted that munitions stockpiles are “uncomfortably low” in that they are “not at the level we would like to go into combat.” This official explained that the only reason the issue isn’t “critical” is because “the U.S. isn’t engaged in any major military conflict” at the moment.

The key problem, of course, as we reported, is that the administration’s official position is that, in the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark Milley, “we will continue to support [Ukraine] all the way” and “[w]e will be there for as long as it takes to keep Ukraine free,” despite the obvious impact of such support on U.S. weapons’ stockpile levels.

And one of the side issues, although of critical seriousness, is that this arms largesse to Ukraine severely impacts our ability to come to Taiwan’s aid in case of an invasion by China, as we reported:

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U.S. contractor killed, five service members and contractor wounded in drone strike in Syria

US retaliates with airstrikes in Syria after Iranian drone strike kills US contractor

The U.S. military carried out several airstrikes in Syria on Thursday in response to a drone strike Iranian forces conducted earlier in the day on a coalition base that killed one American.

The Defense Department said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps crashed a UAV into a building near Hasakah in northeast Syria at approximately 1:38 p.m. local time, leaving one U.S. contractor dead. The attack also wounded five U.S. service members and another U.S. contractor.

U.S. intelligence assessed the UAV and determined it to be of Iranian origin — so President Biden authorized the military to retaliate, the Pentagon said.

Three service members and the U.S. contractor were medically evacuated to Coalition medical facilities in Iraq while the other two wounded service members were treated on-site.

“As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” Secretary Austin continued. “No group will strike our troops with impunity.”

He added: “Our thoughts are with the family and colleagues of the contractor who was killed and with those who were wounded in the attack earlier today.”

The Pentagon said the U.S. took “proportionate and deliberate action” that limited the risk of escalation in its targeted response.

The U.S. has roughly 900 troops stationed in Syria.

30 years after we started a massive drawdown from Germany…..

US establishes first permanent military garrison in Poland

The US has opened its first military garrison in Poland. It follows last year’s pledge by President Joe Biden to establish a permanent base – America’s first on NATO’s eastern flank – in Poland following Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

“We have been striving for this for years – for this word ‘permanent’ – and it has now become fact,” said Polish defence minister Mariusz Błaszczak at today’s opening ceremony. While Poland has long hosted US troops on a rotational basis, it had lobbied Washington for that to be turned into a permanent presence.

“This is a historic moment, a sign that the United States is committed to Poland and NATO, and that we are united in the face of Russian aggression,” declared Błaszczak.

The garrison – housed in Poznań at Camp Kościuszko, which is named after the 18th-century hero who fought for both Polish and US independence – will act as the headquarters for the US Army’s V Corps in Poland.

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The Biden administration leaked the military records for Republicans who were running for elective office to try to hurt their election chances.

House weaponization panel probes release of Air Force records to political operatives

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is probing the Air Force over the improper release of military service records to a political opposition research group.

In a letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on Thursday, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, demanded that the service branch hand over all documents and communication related to the release of Official Military Personnel Files to Due Diligence Group, LLC, a research firm that obtained the records of multiple GOP candidates in the lead up to the midterm elections in 2022.

Rep. Chis Stewart, Utah Republican, co-signed the letter.

An internal Air Force investigation revealed last month that the service improperly released the military duty information for 11 individuals. The investigation was launched after the disclosure of Indiana House Republican candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green’s military records ahead of the midterms.

Several other GOP candidates have since come forward to report that their military records were improperly released.

Two sitting members of congress, Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Zach Nunn of Iowa, were also among those whose records were improperly released.

In a letter to Mr. Bacon last month, the Air Force said a Due Diligence Group employee posing as a background investigator requested his records.

“Department of the Air Force employees did not follow proper procedures requiring the member’s authorizing signature consenting to the release of information,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told CNN last month. “There was no evidence of political motivation or malicious intent on the part of any employee.”

She said the Air Force is “committed to preventing any such unauthorized disclosure of private information from occurring again” and will perform monthly audits.

Ms. Stefanek told Politico that “virtually all” of the 11 unauthorized requests for the records came from Due Diligence Group.

Mr. Jordan said on Thursday that the improper releases “may have violated Department of Defense policies and federal law.”

“While the Air Force has rightfully taken responsibility for these inappropriate OMPF disclosures, questions remain unanswered about the U.S. Air Force’s collection, maintenance, and dissemination of this sensitive information,” Mr. Jordan wrote.

‘On DOD property’ purchases? That means the PX, and just to make a point, PX prices aren’t all that much, if any, lower than what’s outside the front gate, where there also will be no waiting periods either, unless there’s a state law. This is Kabuki Theater.

SecDef wants to study waiting periods, age restrictions on guns and ammo for active duty military

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is calling on the Pentagon to hire more mental health workers and directing military-run health care clinics to screen for alcohol abuse in order to reduce veteran suicides, but he’s holding off on implementing several anti-gun proposals recommended by the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, at least for a few more months.

That committee is recommending the Defense Department institute a seven-day waiting period for all gun sales on DoD property, along with a four-day waiting period for ammunition purchases. In addition, the committee says the Pentagon should raise the age to purchase a firearm on base to 25-years-old. On Thursday Austin called for the creation of a suicide prevention working group that will look at how feasible it would be to implement the committee’s recommendations, with a deadline of June 2nd for the working group to submit its findings.

His orders reflect increasing concerns about suicides in the military, despite more than a decade of programs and other efforts to prevent them and spur greater intervention by commanders, friends and family members. But his omission of any gun safety and control measures underscores the likelihood that they would face staunch resistance, particularly in Congress, where such legislation has struggled in recent years.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters in a briefing Thursday that Austin’s orders involved areas where the department already has the authority to take immediate steps.

“While we recognize that suicide has no single cause, and that no single preventative action, treatment or cure will eliminate suicide altogether, we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health and morale of our total force,” Ryder said.

The initial study committee recommended that the department require anyone living in military housing to register all privately owned firearms. In addition, the panel said the department should restrict the possession and storage of privately owned firearms in military barracks and dorms.

Reducing veteran and active duty suicides is an incredibly important goal, but the draconian gun control policies recommended by the committee are liable to create a backlash; not only on Capitol Hill but among many military members and potential recruits, at least if Austin moves forward with implementing them. The military is already struggling to meet its recruiting goals, and imposing a host of anti-gun restrictions on active-duty and reserve members would likely make those problems a lot worse.

That helps to explain why Austin didn’t immediately move to implement those proposals, but choosing to kick this can down the road for a couple of months rather than reject the gun control components of the suicide prevention recommendations means that these bad ideas could still become a nightmare for members of the military before long. Instead of trying to restrict the Second Amendment rights of our men and women in uniform, I hope that Austin’s working group takes a look at some of the efforts to prevent veteran suicide taking place within the 2A community, starting with the Sentinel app that was recently awarded a $1-million dollar grant from the VA. The app was developed by D.C. Project member Kathleen Gilligan, who lost her own son to suicide a decade ago, and aims to help veterans look out for each other.

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Doesn’t surprise me one bit. If you’re old enough to remember some of the the special -at the time, fake – effects used in the original ‘Mission Impossible’ TV series, you’ll have seen some stuff that some one eventually figured out how to really do.

The US Special Operations Forces Are Considering Utilizing Deepfakes for Psy-Ops, Report Alleges

It could turn into an “arms race” of a whole new kind – deep fakes, as a weapon of war, or at least of a propaganda war, that the US is now openly speaking about deploying.

After years of repeated warnings about the abuse of deep fakes and how seriously that can interfere in elections, and produce other reprehensible results to society and democracy – the current US authorities are preparing to start using deepfakes as a tool of disseminating disinformation and/or propaganda campaigns.

It would seem that for now at least the targets would be other countries, and this type of online propaganda campaigns are slated to be carried out by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

That’s according to an Intercept report which cites federal procurement documents it has been able to review.

The contracting documents that show where SOCOM wants to go are asking for third parties to build solutions that would allow this branch of the security apparatus (known generically as psychological operations – psy-ops) to develop the “deepfaking” capabilities.

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Doggle Boon, 1 ea.

Pentagon Says It Needs A Massive Overhaul Of All F-35 Fighter Jets

The Pentagon is requiring a fix on all of the roughly 900 advanced F-35 fighter jets as an engine vibration issue stalled deliveries, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program Office said Thursday, according to Defense News.

An order went out Wednesday to the entire F-35 fleet to retrofit the entire fleet worldwide, which will encompass installing new parts on hundreds of fighters globally as well as a “small number” of aircraft that have been grounded since December, the Pentagon’s F-35 program division (JPO) told Defense News. An engine vibration issue cropped up in a few newly-made jets carrying Pratt & Whitney-made F135 engines.

“Root cause investigation is still ongoing to determine where these system sensitivities intersect with the excitation frequencies,” Jen Latka, vice president of F135 programs at Pratt & Whitney, told Defense News Thursday.

The engine supplier for Lockheed Martin’s highly-sought F-35 fighter jet halted deliveries on Dec. 27 while an investigation into an accident earlier that month was ongoing, stalling hundreds of planned jet deliveries.

The JPO also grounded a small group of newer jets after an F-35B variety crashed on a Texas runway earlier that month during a routine quality check, according to Defense News. Video taken at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth on Dec. 15 showed an F-35B that had recently emerged from the production line bouncing off the ground during landing, tipping forward and spinning as its nose and wing touched the ground.

Lockheed Martin, the company that makes F-35 Lightning II warplanes, also suspended flights at its three production sites, effectively stymying new deliveries.

The investigation identified a “rare” vibration issue in the engine interacting with yet unknown factors, Defense News reported. Pratt & Whitney announced in February it had discovered a solution for the issue and resumed deliveries on Feb. 24.

“Only a small number of aircraft were impacted by the harmonic resonance,” JPO told The Daily Caller News Foundation

Each fix will take roughly 4 to 8 hours to complete and is “inexpensive [and] non-intrusive,” the JPO added, recommending a span of 90 days to get all 890 units globally up and running again.

“The safety of flight crews is the JPO’s primary concern,” the JPO told Defense News.

 

A government watchdog recently called the F-35 program, shared with seven partner nations and seven additional buyers, the Department of Defense’s “most ambitious and costly weapon system in history.” Despite billions in Congressional funding allocations, cost and performance issues have plagued the program.

Up to 6% of the U.S. military’s F-35 warplanes remain grounded at any given time due to the inability to sustain Pratt & Whitney-made engines, according to a July report from the Government Accountability Office.

The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin finalized a $30 billion contract to deliver up to 398 new fighter jets to the DOD and partner nations on Dec. 30, according to a statement. DOD tacked on an additional $7.8 billion and 127 jets to an existing contract, including the first planned deliveries for Belgium, Finland and Poland.

 

MARINES DITCH FAMOUS SCOUT SNIPER PROGRAM

The Marine Corps is dismantling its iconic Scout Sniper platoons – a facet of each infantry battalion for generations – and is doing away with the coveted 0317 Military Occupational Specialty.

The product of a grueling training pipeline that yields field-ready precision marksmen qualified on the M40, M110, and M107 series rifles, the Marine Scout Sniper program is facing permanent disbandment as a result of a shifting focus in the country’s amphibious warfare service.

A leaked Feb. 21 unclassified message from Lt. Gen. D. J. Furness, the deputy commandant for plans, policies, and operations, detailed that the current 18-member Scout Sniper Platoons assigned to the Corps’ infantry battalions will quickly transition to 26-member Scout platoons – in other words, cutting the snipers in favor of a unit that would provide more “continuous all-weather information gathering.”

Spots in the Scout Sniper Basic Course will be zeroed out in the coming fiscal year while a nascent sniper capability will be continued in the Corps’ Reconnaissance and Marine Special Operations units under a new Military Occupational Specialty – 0322 MOS (Reconnaissance Sniper) – via a revamped, shorter training program.

The problem with that is, as these groups typically operate detached from standard infantry units, the highly specialized skill will in effect vanish at the battalion level, which will be left to get by with the current designated marksmen already at the company level. Under current doctrine, DMs typically only have a three-week course under their belt and train to engage targets out to 500 meters, rather than the much longer ranges that Scout Snipers train to achieve.

The USMC Scout Sniper Association is urging the Commandant of the Marine Corps to reconsider what the group terms an “ill-advised” policy decision that will gut the program that has been tweaked and perfected over the past 80 years.

“This announcement by the Deputy Commandant, Plans, Policy, and Operations on Tuesday is the result of misguided assumptions and decades of neglect of the community of men who are Scout Snipers,” said the Association.

“It’s unlikely that any officer who commanded and employed Scout Snipers in combat agrees that removing a sniper capability from the infantry battalion makes sense. Replacing an 18-man Scout Sniper Platoon with a 26-man Scout Platoon will not solve the ‘all weather information gathering’ problem. Retaining the skill set and the combat capability of Scout Snipers by offering a viable career path to Scout Snipers and providing them with more engaged leadership might.”

The shift away from having dedicated sniper platoons in each infantry battalion comes as the number of battalions themselves is dwindling.

The Corps’ three active-duty divisions would field a total of 27 infantry battalions between them if they were at full strength, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Long reduced to just 24 battalions all told, in 2020 the current commandant unveiled a plan to case the colors of three additional infantry battalions and the 8th Marine Regiment to make room to form a new Marine Littoral Regiment, the latter optimized to leapfrog rapidly across islands and coastal spaces with a smaller footprint when compared to the current force.

The result is a Corps with just 21 active-duty infantry battalions, shortly, in addition to cuts in tiltrotor, attack, and heavy-lift aviation squadrons and disbanding of all of the branch’s tank battalions.

One Year in the Russo-Ukrainian War: the Big Pixels

Last Friday we looked at the seven points we discussed a year earlier the day the Russo-Ukrainian War broke out. As promised, today we look at seven points a year in everyone needs to hoist onboard.

Though I nibble on the edges a bit, these are not detailed, tactical “lessons learned.” Land combat details simply are not my bag. No, these a big pixel items. Mostly land centric like the war, but are directly transferrable to the maritime and other domains.

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A really deep dive into the subject

Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They’re UFOs.

We may not know the identities of all the mysterious craft that American military personnel and others have been seeing in the skies as of late, but I have seen more than enough to tell you that it is clear that a very terrestrial adversary is toying with us in our own backyard using relatively simple technologies—drones and balloons—and making off with what could be the biggest intelligence haul of a generation. While that may disappoint some who hope the origins of all these events are far more exotic in nature, the strategic implications of these bold operations, which have been happening for years, undeterred, are absolutely massive.

Our team here at The War Zone has spent the last two years indirectly laying out a case for the hypothesis that many of the events involving supposed UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as they are now often called, over the last decade are actually the manifestation of foreign adversaries harnessing advances in lower-end unmanned aerial vehicle technology, and even simpler platforms, to gather intelligence of extreme fidelity on some of America’s most sensitive warfighting capabilities. Now, considering all the news on this topic in recent weeks, including our own major story on a series of bizarre incidents involving U.S. Navy destroyers and ‘UAP’ off the Southern California coast in 2019, it’s time to not only sum up our case, but to discuss the broader implications of these revelations, what needs to be done about them, and the Pentagon’s fledgling ‘UAP Task Force’ as a whole.

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US shoots down another high-altitude object, Montana airspace temporarily closed

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he ordered the takedown of “an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.”

“Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object,” he tweeted.

Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage, Trudeau said.

The object was shot down approximately 100 miles from the Canada-U.S. border in central Yukon, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told reporters during a press briefing Saturday night. It appears to have been a “small, cylindrical object” that was flying at about 40,000 feet, she said.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the high-altitude object over Alaska late Friday evening, according to Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. Two U.S. F-22 aircraft monitored the object over Alaska, then Canadian aircraft joined as it crossed into Canadian airspace, he said.

Following a call from Trudeau to President Joe Biden on Saturday, Biden authorized that U.S. aircraft take down the new high-altitude object and a U.S. F-22 shot it down with a sidewinder missile, Ryder said.

The leaders authorized that the “unidentified, unmanned object” be taken down “out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of their militaries,” according to a White House readout of the call. They also stressed the importance of recovering the object to determine its purpose or origin, the readout stated.

“As Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations to help our countries learn more about the object, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Ryder said in a statement.

The development comes a day after the White House said an unknown “high-altitude object” was shot down over the waters off Alaska.

That object was about the size of a small car and flying at around 40,000 feet, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Friday. U.S. Northern Command said Saturday it had no further details on the object’s “capabilities, purpose or origin.”

Trudeau said he supported the “decision to take action.”

“Our military and intelligence services will always work together, including through @NORADCommand, to keep people safe,” he tweeted Friday.

NORAD confirmed on Saturday that there was a temporary space restriction over Montana.

The airspace was closed due to an object “to ensure the safety of air traffic in the area during NORAD operations. The restriction has been lifted,” the statement read.

“NORAD detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits. NORAD will continue to monitor the situation,” the statement continued.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines said he was in contact with the Pentagon regarding the object in the airspace and receiving frequent updates.

“Montanans still have questions about the Chinese spy balloon that flew over our state last week. I’ll continue to demand answers on these invasions of US airspace,” he tweeted.

The U.S. also shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, after tracking it across the continental U.S. for several days.

U.S. officials said Friday that the undercarriage of the Chinese balloon — where the surveillance equipment and other technology was housed — had been located.

In the wake of the incident, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it added six Chinese entities to their Entity List for “supporting the PRC’s military modernization efforts, specifically those related to aerospace programs, including airships and balloons and related materials and components, that are used by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for intelligence and reconnaissance,” according to a press release.

By adding these companies to the list, the U.S. can block them from “obtaining U.S. items and technologies without U.S. government authorization.”

The move is aimed at sending a “clear message to companies, governments, and other stakeholders globally that the entities on the list present a threat to national security,” the release said.

Apropos of the training; The “AIT” portion of a tank crewman’s One Station training is 5 weeks, while the M1 tank mechanic’s AIT training takes 24 weeks.

We don’t have enough tanks to send to Ukraine, Pentagon admits: Biden’s promise to send 31 Abrams could take up to a YEAR – because the US has to buy more

The Biden administration administration’s plan to send Ukraine a battalion of lethal Abrams tanks will be hampered by the production timeframe and the Pentagon’s insistence that it does not have any in surplus, the Defense Department revealed Thursday.

Unlike some of the high-tech weaponry the U.S. has been shipping to Ukraine as part of a multi-billion effort to deter Russia’s invasion, the U.S. military does not ‘have these tanks available in excess in our U.S. stocks,’ deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh’ told reporters.

The means it could take months before the tanks, which President Biden called the most capable in the world, reach their destination. It is anyone’s guess what the state of play in the war will be at that point. The one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion is approaching.

‘These things are going to require training maintenance, sustainment, that is going to take a very long time to also train in Ukrainians on,’ Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh Singh told reporters Thursday, a day after Biden announced the transfer.

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