Thread: The Four Decommissioned U.S. Aircraft Carriers Are

U.S. Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese Firms

VIDEO: U.S. Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese Firms | Video - ABC News


Cities hire Chinese instead of American workers for building projects.

http://www.alipac.us/f19/broke-briti...5/#post1262580 <--- LINK

UK aircraft carrier plans in confusion as ministers revisit square one

Decision expected by Easter on which US joint strike fighter Britain will buy: ministers now want to revert to original choice

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 March 2012 14.21 EST


A US joint strike fighter. The UK is deciding whether to buy the cheaper 'cats and flaps' version or revert to the vertical-landing model. Photograph: Joely Santiago/AP

Britain's troubled and increasingly expensive plan to equip the navy with new aircraft carriers has been plunged into fresh turmoil as ministers consider reversing their earlier decision to change the type of plane that should fly from them, it has emerged.

The government announced in last autumn's strategic defence review that it had decided to buy the "cats and flaps" (catapults and arrester gear) version of the US joint strike fighter. This would have a "longer range and greater payload ... the critical requirement for precision-strike operations in the future", the government stated.

Moreover, the government added, it will be cheaper. It would also enable French planes to land on British carriers, and vice versa, inkeeping with the new UK-French defence spirit of co-operation.

Now, in an extraordinary volte-face, the Ministry of Defence says the "cats and flaps" planes may well be cheaper but it would be too expensive to redesign a carrier – more than £1bn – to accommodate them. The ministry is thus faced with the prospect of renegotiating a deal with the US, reverting to its original plan – namely buying the short take-off and vertical landing version of the aircraft, even though it is acknowledged to be less effective and more expensive .

The latest chapter in the troubled saga of Britain's future aircraft carriers – whose own estimated costs have soared – was raised on Thursday in a letter to the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, from Jim Murphy, his Labour opposite number.

Murphy referred to "worrying suggestions" that the government was about to change its mind about the kind of aircraft to buy from the US. "It is vital that there is now clarity on the government's plans for this vital area of the defence equipment programme," he wrote.

Murphy said the decision in the defence review to scrap the Harrier fleet meant the UK would have no carrier aircraft capability until 2020 – and then only one carrier would be operational.

Defence officials said that the government was "re-assessing" its earlier decision because, they indicated, of pressures on the defence budget.

HMS Queen Elizabeth, the first carrier, will be mothballed immediately it is launched in 2016, according to existing plans. The second, HMS Prince of Wales, will be able to put to sea by 2020, but it is not known how many planes will be able to fly from it – nor what kind.

The two carriers, originally priced at £3.5bn, are now estimated to cost £6.2bn. According to the Commons public accounts committee, the cost is likely to icrease to as much as £12bn.

The government, which originally said it wanted more than 100 joint strike fighters, says that it will have just six operational ones by 2020. The unit cost of the joint strike fighter, made by Lockheed Martin, has soared because of production problems and delays caused by US defence budget cuts. Britain's BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce have big stakes in a future deal adapting the joint strike fighter for British forces.

A spokesperson for the MoD said: "We are currently finalising the 2012-13 budget and balancing the equipment plan. As part of this process, we are reviewing all programmes, including elements of the carrier strike programme, to validate costs and ensure risks are properly managed. The defence secretary expects to announce the outcome of this process to parliament before Easter."

UK aircraft carrier plans in confusion as ministers revisit square one | UK news | The Guardian

Obama mulls giving Moscow data on missile defense

By Jim Wolf
Tue Mar 6, 2012 7:56pm EST

WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - The Obama administration disclosed on Tuesday that it is considering sharing some classified U.S. data as part of an effort to allay Russian concerns about a controversial antimissile shield.

The administration is continuing negotiations begun under former President George W. Bush on a defense technical cooperation agreement with Moscow that could include limited classified data, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Brad Roberts told a House of Representatives' Armed Services subcommittee.

He gave no details on the sort of data that might be shared under such an agreement.

Russia strongly opposes the U.S.-engineered bulwark being built in and around Europe against ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like Iran.

Moscow fears that such a shield could grow strong enough over time to undermine Moscow's own nuclear deterrent force and has threatened to deploy missiles of its own as a counter.

"We're not the first administration to seek coooperation on missile defense," Roberts, who is responsible for nuclear and missile defense policy, told the subcommittee on strategic forces.

Nor is the administration the first "to believe that cooperation could be well-served by some limited sharing of classified information of a certain kind if the proper rules were in place to do that," he said in reply to questions from Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican.

"The Bush administration headed down precisely the same path," Roberts said.

"We're making no progress" in persuading Russia to drop its opposition, despite the willingness to consider sharing certain sensitive data, he added.

The Obama administration is pursuing this cooperation because it would be in the security interests of the United States, NATO and Russia by strengthening the defensive capabilities of both NATO and Russia, Roberts said.

Under any such agreement, NATO would be responsible for the defense of its member states and Russia would be responsible for the defense of Russia, Roberts added in written testimony.

Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said he had no knowledge of any move to share with Moscow any classified information on the U.S. technology used to knock out target missiles.

"I never received a request to release classified information to the Russians," he told the panel, testifying alongside Roberts.

Panel chairman Michael Turner said last November that he would oppose any Obama administration effort to provide Russia information on the so-called burnout velocity of Raytheon Co Standard Missile-3 interceptors, a key part of the layered defense.

"The House Armed Services Committee will vigorously resist such compromise of U.S. missile defense capabilities," he said in a speech last November.

Republicans who control the panel will back legislation that would bar the administration from transferring classified missile defense technology to Russia as part of any negotiations or for any other purpose, a congressional staff member said.

Obama mulls giving Moscow data on missile defense | Reuters

Trillion-Dollar Stealth Fighter Cleared for Flight Training

Posted by: Dreier



The Air Force’s F-35A Joint Strike Fighter is finally cleared to begin introductory flights at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida — four months late.
The belated “Military Flight Release” is a big step forward for the stealthy JSF, which is slated to replace almost all of the Pentagon’s tactical jets over the next 30 years but has been plagued by design problems, safety concerns, delays and cost increases.

Initial flights by the first dozen planes will be “limited” and “scripted,” the Air Force said. Marine and Navy versions of the new warplane could also take to the skies over Eglin before too long. The flying will slowly become more realistic as Lockheed Martin improves the jets and pilots and ground crews grow more comfortable using them.

The military estimates buying and flying the full fleet of roughly 2,500 F-35s could cost $1 trillion over 50 years. A program review in November found 13 expensive design flaws, some of which had caused the F-35 to be briefly grounded last summer.

In October, Dr. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, asked the Pentagon to consider delaying training flights at Eglin until the late summer of this year — 10 months later than planned at the time. Rushing into training could endanger pilots’ lives, Gilmore said. “Historically, flight training has not commenced for newly developed aircraft until 2,000 hours to 5,000 hours of monitored flight test have been accumulated,” Gilmore wrote. At the time, the F-35 had accumulated just 1,000 hours of testing — a number that has since increased.

Air Force Lt. Gen Thomas Owen and Navy Vice Adm. David Venlet rejected Gilmore’s advice, but assured him that training would not begin until they were certain the JSF was ready. They believe that moment has arrived. “The Air Force, Joint Strike Fighter Program Office and other stakeholders have painstakingly followed established risk acceptance and mitigation processes to ensure the F-35A is ready,” said Gen. Donald Hoffman, the commander of Air Force Materiel Command.

The training will proceed at a crawl. “The plan will be to start flying, not training, but to start flying with test-qualified aviators initially to do what we call local area orientation,” Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz said. “We will build to a threshold, which will allow the training leadership in the Air Force to declare ‘ready to train’ with other than test-qualified aviators.”

Really, there’s no rush. As part of the Five-Year Defense Plan published early this month, the Pentagon announced it would further slow down JSF production to allow more time for testing. The single-engine fighter is now slated to enter front-line service no earlier than 2018, seven years later than originally planned.

That means six years of pilots training on a jet that isn’t ready for combat. But even that is an improvement over the current situation. Eglin’s 33rd Fighter Wing has been borrowing old F-16s while awaiting clearance to fly its F-35s. ”The most-frustrated pilot is one who isn’t flying at all,” Marine Col. Arthur Tomassetti told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.



> Pentagon Helps New Stealth Fighter Cheat on Key Performance Test <--- LINK

Trillion-Dollar Stealth Fighter Cleared for Flight Training « Zen Haven

With The Enterprise Just 4 Days Away From Arrival, A SWIFT Cut Off Of Iran



Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/15/2012 11:27 -0400

Update: as we hit print, we see headlines that the UK will cooperate with the US on bilateral agreement to release oil stocks. Crude down big on the news, which is merely an advance move ahead of almost inevitable war with Iran, simply to make the spike more palatable.

The push to get Iran to do something terminally irrational (now that USS Enterprise in its final tour of duty is almost on location just off the side of CVN-70 Lincoln and CVN-72 Vinson in the Arabian Sea, where the US will shortly have not one, not two, but three aircraft carriers) is now in its final stretch. As AP reported earlier, Iran has been now entirely cut off from the global financial system, as that anchor of international financial transactions, SWIFT, has just taken Iran off the grid. This leaves Iran with just three options for international trade: making gold into a fully convertible currency, barter, or exchanging Rials for Renminbi and other local currencies.
From the AP:

The SWIFT global financial transaction service said Thursday that it was cutting ties with Iranian banks that are subject to European Union sanctions aimed at discouraging the country from developing nuclear weapons.

The action effectively enforces EU sanction because the world's financial transactions are impossible without using SWIFT, and it will go a long way toward isolating Iran financially.

The company's name stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It is a banking hub crucial to oil, financial transactions and other trades.

In a statement, SWIFT said the EU decision "prohibits companies such as SWIFT to continue to provide specialized financial messaging services to EU-sanctioned banks."

"Disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and unprecedented step for SWIFT," Lazaro Campos, chief executive of SWIFT, said. "It is a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify financial sanctions against Iran."

In other words: Iran, please do your worst. And just to make it easier, the US has now stacked an entire armada of easy targets in close vicinity, which not even a naive fool can mistake anymore for prewar preparations.
Here is what the naval picture in the Arabian Sea looked like most recently, where courtesy of Stratfor we can see that not only is CVN-65 full steam ahead to its final date with history somewhere off the shores of Iran, but that LHD8 Makin Island crossed the Straits of Hormuz recently. Just because.
Virtually the entire non-parked naval fleet will be in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf in the next 4-6 days, where 3 aircraft carriers and one big-deck amphibious warfare ship are just waiting for the order.






With The Enterprise Just 4 Days Away From Arrival, A SWIFT Cut Off Of Iran | ZeroHedge

US navy to position three aircraft carriers near Iran

Monday, March 19, 2012

TEHRAN: Iran will make absolutely no concessions on its nuclear programme, a key lawmaker declared on Sunday amid high geopolitical tensions and ahead of mooted talks with world powers.

“The parliament will never allow the government to go back even one step in its nuclear policy,” Aladin Borujerdi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary foreign policy commission, told the official IRNA news agency.

Iran’s recent announcements that is stepping up uranium enrichment and made its own 20-percent enriched nuclear fuel showed the country “totally masters nuclear science,” he said. “If the P5+1 countries don’t accept the reality of Iran’s nuclear abilities, they will suffer from that,” Borujerdi was quoted as saying.

His comments precede expected talks agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 group of powers — the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany.Iran has formally requested a date and venue for the negotiations, the previous round of which collapsed in Istanbul in January last year.

The Islamic republic has been buffeted in recent months by ramped-up Western economic sanctions. It has also been threatened with possible military action against its nuclear facilities by Israel and the United States.

Throughout, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, denying Western suspicions — largely echoed in a November report by the International Atomic Energy Agency — that it was conducting military research towards designing nuclear weapons.

Borujerdi told IRNA that the United States and its allies have seen in recent months that Iran’s scientists have managed to make nuclear fuel enriched to 20 percent, among other achievements.

“Lawmakers expect the (Iranian) nuclear negotiating team to change the situation, to obtain a cancellation of (UN) resolutions (on Iran) and that the Iranian nuclear issue is taken from the Security Council and put back before the governors’ board of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said.

The remarks suggested Iran was taking a defiant negotiating position for the talks with the P5+1 — one as hardball as the stance adopted by the United States and some of its allies, notably France and Britain.

US President Barack Obama has warned that Iran’s leaders have to understand that “the window for solving this issue diplomatically is shrinking.”

The US navy will have three aircraft carriers positioned near Iran in the coming days, and is doubling the number of minesweeping ships and helicopters based in the Gulf.

Israel, meanwhile, is keeping up rhetoric that makes many think the Jewish state — the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, which is not involved in the talks — is serious about possibly attacking Iran, with or without US support.

A majority of Israel’s 14-member security cabinet now supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in launching a pre-emptive strike on Iran in a bid to end its nuclear programme, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported on Thursday, citing political sources it did not identify.

“Israel is very close to the point when a very tough decision should be made — the bomb or the bombing,” former military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told reporters earlier this month.
The Western sanctions are taking a toll on Iran’s vital oil exports, though to what extent is unclear amid competing declarations from Tehran and from Western agencies.

While shipments have certainly been curtailed to several markets, the tensions over the showdown have driven global oil prices higher, giving the Islamic state higher revenue per barrel of oil it manages to sell.


US navy to position three aircraft carriers near Iran - The News