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| NATO Tiger Meet 2018 (NTM18) is hosted by the Polish Air Force 2nd Tactical Air Wing at Krzesiny Air Base near Poznan, Poland. _______ Twenty-two flying squadrons from Allies Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom and Partners Austria and Switzerland as well as a NATO Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) plane – in total approx. 70 aircraft and ten helicopters – are scheduled to participate in the event. |
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| Navy Cross recipient Sgt. Maj. Bradley Kasal, the Marine legend behind one of the most iconic images from the Iraq War, retired after 34 years of service to the Corps. Fair winds and following seas, Sgt. Maj. |
“[E]arlier reports that the shooter used an AR-15 style rifle were wrong,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement about Friday’s murders at Santa Fe High School. Per the Houston Chronicle, “He said the shooter … used a shotgun and a .38 caliber revolver…”Story here.
No semi-automatic handguns or rifles were involved. No so-called “assault weapons”…
You could almost hear gun-grabber hearts breaking. And it leads to a dilemma for them, because their M.O. is to call for gun bans as a necessary step every time semi-autos are used. To be consistent, especially noting how much human carnage was accomplished without them, they must now demand something they haven’t felt politically ready to unveil: A ban on revolvers and shotguns.
You know it's what they ultimately want.
The first would return to the origins of the modern gun-grab movement.
“We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest,” Handgun Control, Inc. founder Nelson “Pete” Shields told The New Yorker in 1976. To help mask its intent, the group changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, but its ultimate goals as articulated by Shields remain.
“[W]e'll have to start working again to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. . . . The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition-except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors-totally illegal.”
green on blueAs you've heard by now we suffered another school shooting. This time in the Galveston area of Texas.
phrase used to describe attacks on NATO forces by members of the Afghan security forces
Additional Information
The spike in the "green on blue" attacks has prompted Nato to boost security measures while working together with their Afghan counterparts. The measures include assigning "guardian angels" – soldiers who watch over their comrades as they sleep.
President Trump’s budget plans will fail at “rebuilding” the armed forces, but there’s room for lawmakers to act, according to a new American Enterprise Institute report.Story here.
The conservative think tank argues the president’s 2019 budget request bets too heavily on research and development for next-generation technologies and that lawmakers must tilt the balance toward procurement of existing technologies to replace aging stocks.
“The American military will bottom out in the 2020s,” AEI’s Mackenzie Eaglen writes in a report published Wednesday: “Defense Budget Peaks in 2019, Underfunding National Defense Strategy.”
“The Pentagon will never have the chance to use the weapons it is developing if it’s preempted by a failure of deterrence in the 2020s, rendering the RDT&E expenditures for those systems irrelevant,” Eaglen writes.
Shortchanging procurement would be risky, Eaglen argues, as the Pentagon expects a procurement bow wave due to increased wear and tear on core aircraft, ships and tanks. To boot, it creates a vulnerability adversaries might seek to exploit.
“Unless the bow wave of procurement can be successfully mitigated, competitors will realize that the American are weak today but will be strong tomorrow—and it is better to act now than later,” Eaglen writes.
Though the bipartisan two-year budget deal yielded a substantial $700 billion defense top-line for 2018, the $716 top-line for 2019 just keeps pace with inflation. Budget Control Act caps, and their enforcement mechanism, sequestration, are due to return in 2020 unless lawmakers act again to ease them.
Readiness and modernization are likely to increase over the president’s 2019 budget request if lawmakers tinker under the hood as they did in 2017 and 2018.
For example, the House Armed Services Committee has already included three Littoral Combat Ships in its draft of the 2019 defense policy bill, versus the administration’s request for one. The bill would block the Air Force from killing the JSTARS recap program.
DoD’s $124.4 billion for procurement in 2017 leapt 19 percent to $147.7 billion in 2018, but it would fall 2.3 percent to $144.3 billion in the president’s proposed 2019 budget.
On the flip side, DoD’s $73.9 billion for RDT&E in 2017 increased 23 percent to $90.6 billion in 2018, and it would grow 2 percent to $92.4 billion in the president’s proposed 2019 budget.
