Are AR-15’s weapons of war? Here’s what a former Fort Benning commander had to say
Mona Moore – June 4, 2022
A former Fort Benning commander took a stand in the country’s ongoing debate on gun control with a thread of tweets posted Thursday evening.
“Let me state unequivocally — For all intents and purposes, the AR-15 and rifles like it are weapons of war,” retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton wrote on Twitter.
The retired major general went on to write the AR-15 was the civilian version of the M16, a close relation to the M4 rifles currently used by the military.
“It is a very deadly weapon with the same basic functionality that our troops use to kill the enemy,” Eaton wrote.
Eaton broke down the differences between the M16, M4 and AR-15 in the thread of seven tweets. He said those opposed to assault weapon bans were playing with semantics, when they claimed any meaningful difference existed between military weapons and AR-15 rifles.
“…The AR-15 is ACCURATELY CALLED a ‘weapon of war.’ … Don’t take the bait when anti-gun-safety folks argue about it,” he wrote. “They know it’s true. Now you do too.”
The tweets came on the heels of one of the country’s deadliest weeks in recent history. In the days since the Uvalde, Texas shooting, 20 mass shootings have claimed the lives of 17 people and injured 88 others, according to Gun Violence Archive. The researchers defined a mass shooting as any shooting with four or more victims shot, either injured or killed.
“The chicken soup in her thermos stayed hot all day while her body grew cold. She never had a chance to eat the baloney and cheese sandwich. I got up 10 minutes early to cut the crust off a sandwich that will never be eaten.
Should I call and cancel her dental appointment next Wednesday? Will the office automatically know? Should I still take her brother to the appointment since I already took the day off work? Last time Carlos had one cavity and Amerie asked him what having a cavity feels like. She will never experience having a cavity. She will never experience having a cavity filled. The cavities in her body now are from bullets, and they can never be filled.
What if she had asked to use the bathroom in the hall a few minutes prior to the gunman entering the room, locking the door, and slaughtering all inside? Was she one of the first kids in the room to die or one of the last? These are the things they don’t tell us. Which of her friends did she see die before her? Hannah? Emily? Both? Did their blood and brains splatter across her Girl Scout uniform? She just earned a Fire Safety patch. What if it got ruined? There are no patches for school shootings.
Was she practicing writing GIRAFFE the moment he walked in her classroom, barricaded the door and opened fire? She keeps forgetting the silent “e” at the end. We studied this past weekend, and now she doesn’t need to take the spelling test on Friday. None of them will take the spelling test on Friday. There will be no spelling test on Friday. Because there is no one to give it. And no one to take it.
These are the things I will never know:
I will never know at what age she would have started her period. I will never know if she had wisdom teeth. (Or if they would have come in crooked.)I will never know who she spoke to last. Was it the teacher? Was it her table partner, George? She says George is always talking, even during silent reading. Did she even scream?
She screamed the lyrics to We Don’t Talk About Bruno at 7:58 AM as she hopped out of my car in the circle drive. She always sings the Dolores part, her sister sings Mirabel and I’m Bruno. “And I wanted you to know that your bro loves you so Let it in, let it out, let it rain, let it snow, let it goooooo……..”Did the killer ever see Encanto?
Could we have sat in the same row of seats, on the same day, munching popcorn? What if Amerie brushed past him in the aisle? Did she politely say, “Excuse me,” to the boy who would someday blow her eye sockets apart? Was he chomping on bubble gum as he destroyed them all? If so, what flavor? Cinnamon? Wintergreen?
Was the radio on as he drove to massacre them? Or did he drive in silence? Was the sun in his eyes as he got out of the car in the parking lot? Did his pockets hold sunglasses or just ammunition? These are the things I will never know.
There is laundry in the dryer that is Amerie’s. Clothes I never need to fold again. Clothes that are right now warmer than her body. How will I ever be able to take them out of the dryer and where will I put them if not back in her dresser? I can never wash clothes in that dryer again. It will stand silent; a tomb for her pajamas and knee socks.
Her cousin’s graduation party is next month and I already signed her name in the card. Should I cross it out? That will be the last card I ever sign her name to. The dog will live longer than she will. The dog will be 12 next month and she will be eternally 10. What will the school do with her backpack? It was brand new this year and she attached her collection of key-chains like cherished trophies to its zipper. A beaded 4 leaf clover she made on St. Patty’s Day. A red heart from a Walk-a-Thon. A neon ice cream cone from her friend’s birthday party.
Now there will be no more key-chains to attach. No more trophies. Surely they can’t throw it out? Would they throw them all out? 19 backpacks, full of stickered assignments and rain boots, all taken to the dumpster behind the school? Is there even a dumpster big enough to contain all that life?
These are the things someone else knows:
The moment the semiautomatic rifle was put into his hands–was “Bring Me a Higher Love” playing in the gun store? “Get off my Cloud” by the Rolling Stones? Maybe it was Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Did the Outback Oasis salesperson hesitate as they slid him 375 rounds of ammunition? not my problem my kids are grown and out of school Or I don’t have kids, so I don’t have to worry about their skulls getting blown across the naptime mat. Or fingers crossed there’s a good guy with an equally powerful gun that will stop this gun if needed. Did they sense any danger or were they more focused on picking that morning’s Raisin Bran out of their teeth?
My Nana used to say, “Pay attention to what whispers, and you won’t have to when it starts screaming.” But now I know there is a more deafening sound than children screaming. More horrific even, than automatic rifles on a Tuesday morning.
I beg the world:
Pay attention to what’s screaming today, or be forced to endure the silence that follows.”
‘Whatever I want with my guns’: GOP lawmaker pulls out handguns during House hearing on gun control
Candy Woodall – June 3, 2022
WASHINGTON – Florida Congressman Greg Steube pulled out multiple handguns during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday aimed at curbing mass shootings.
The Republican congressmanappeared by video conference from his Florida home, arguing that Democrats are trying to strip Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms by restricting the ammunition they use.
“Don’t let them fool you that they’re not attempting to take away your ability to purchase handguns,” Steube said. “They are using the magazine ban to do it.”
The congressman said his Sig Sauer P365 XL comes with a 15-round magazine and would be banned if the Democrats’ “Protecting Our Kids Act” passes. The congressman also said the Glock 19 would be banned.
He also displayed his Sig Sauer P226 and Sig Sauer 320.
Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., holds up his own handgun as he speaks via videoconference as the House Judiciary Committee holds an emergency meeting to advance a series of Democratic gun control measures, called the Protecting Our Kids Act, in response to mass shootings in Texas and New York, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 2, 2022.
The display of weapons added to the tension of a legislative hearing packed with partisan and personal broadsides over an issue that has deeply divided Ameicans.
As Steube demonstrated his firearms, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, of Texas, could be heard cutting into his speech.
“I hope the gun is not loaded,” she said.
Steube sharply responded: “I’m at my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns.”
Video: Biden calls for ‘common sense’ gun reform
Biden calls for ‘common sense’ gun reform amid a series of deadly mass shootings
President Biden addressed gun control as mass shootings continue to plague the nation’s schools, stores, and most recently, a hospital.
The congressman also drew criticism from Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.
“This is who Republicans are. Kids are being buried and they’re bragging about how many guns they own during our gun safety hearing,” he said. “They are not serious. They are a danger to our kids.”
Everything you need to know about this gun control package: Democrats don’t even want to let me show what they’re trying to ban.
I’m an American in my own home, and I’ll do whatever I want with my guns, Mr. Chairman. pic.twitter.com/pH2OIsnlVp
— Congressman Greg Steube (@RepGregSteube) June 2, 2022
Candy Woodall is a Congress reporter for USA TODAY.
“I would like to express my condolences to all of the relatives and family members of the children who were killed in an awful shooting in Texas in a school,” Zelenskyy said. “The people of Ukraine share the pain of the relatives and friends of the victims and all Americans.”
Authorities said a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday in Uvalde, a small community about an hour from the Mexican border.
An 18-year-old male, armed with a rifle, shot his grandmother before going to the school and opening fire in the state’s deadliest shooting in modern history. It was the country’s third mass shooting within weeks, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Erick Estrada.
In Ukraine, almost 250 children have been killed since the Russian invasion began in February, according to U.N. humanitarian agency figures shown earlier this month.
“I feel it is my personal tragedy when children are killed in Texas, and now in my country Russian military is killing our children,” Zelenskyy said.
CBS News poll: More Americans label GOP extreme, but Democratic Party as weak
Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus, and Kabir Khanna – May 22, 2022
With midterm primaries helping set the direction for the Democratic and Republican parties, most Americans, including many of the parties’ own voters, aren’t terribly happy with the parties or what they’re talking about. Given that Sunday’s CBS News poll finds most aren’t happy with the direction of the country either, the major political parties aren’t providing much solace.
For starters, the Democratic Party — which controls Congress and the presidency — is not seen by a majority as either “effective” or “in touch,” which are, no doubt, important measures for a party in power. The Democratic Party is more apt to be described as “weak,” a label applied by a slight majority of Americans, than it is “strong.”
The Republican Party, for its part, is described by a slight majority as “extreme,” a term Americans apply to the GOP more so than to Democrats, though neither really escapes the label. Independents are more likely to call the GOP extreme. The GOP is described as “strong” more often than as “weak,” but it is also described by Americans more often as “hateful” than as “caring” — by double digits.
Primaries tend to find candidates arguing over matters that appeal to their bases, but as different as each side’s campaigns are, there is something voters of each side share: a desire for candidates to focus on inflation. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given how large it looms for most Americans.
Among Democrats, who also want a focus on taxing the wealthy and racial justice, many also want their candidates to focus on protecting abortion rights. In fact, especially among those who care a lot about the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade — almost all say they want the party’s nominees to focus on abortion rights.
Republicans want their nominees to focus on stopping illegal immigration and talk about traditional values. Illegal immigration is especially a priority among self-described conservative Republicans.
A majority of independents also want the Democrats to focus on abortion rights.
And there’s an asymmetry on abortion focus between the parties: even more Democrats want their candidates to focus on supporting abortion rights than Republicans want their candidates to talk about opposing it.
But despite being in power during a time of inflation, Democrats don’t cede that much ground to Republicans on who’s trusted to deal with it. It’s 51% of Americans who trust the GOP, not much more than the 49% who trust the Democrats on inflation. It’s the same nearly even gap on the economy. And that may be because the parties’ candidates aren’t talking about it enough.
Democrats have an advantage being trusted on abortion and coronavirus.
The Trump factor
Within the Republican rank-and-file, there’s a divide over how much they want to hear about loyalty to former President Donald Trump, some of which we’re seeing play out in the primaries right now. A slight majority of Republicans do want their candidates to focus on showing loyalty to Trump, but nearly half don’t. Related to this, four in 10 Republicans want the nominees focused on the 2020 election, but most don’t.
Who is fighting for whom?
We also see such dramatic differences in which people Americans think the parties support — or don’t. The overall picture reminds us of how much Americans see the parties dividing them, not only on policy, but by demographic groups.
Americans overall are more likely to see the Republican Party as fighting for White people than for Black people — by more than two to one. In fact, more say the Republican Party fights against the interests of Black Americans than is neutral toward them. It’s similarly true for views of the Republican Party’s approach to Hispanic people, with more feeling it works against them, rather than for them, and by more than two to one, against LGBTQ people than for them. Americans do think the GOP fights more for people of faith than do Democrats.
Conversely, they see the Democratic Party as fighting for Black and Hispanic Americans more so than for White Americans.
Americans are more likely to believe the GOP fights more against the interests of women than for women, and women overall describe things this way.
Men, meanwhile, are much more likely to think the Democrats fight more for women than for men, but a majority of men think the Republican Party fights for them (and more so than for women).
Echoing some of these perceptions are big differences in how partisans within the parties approach the country’s racial diversity — and each group’s partisans tend to think they’re not being treated fairly.
Big majorities of Democrats think immigrants make America better in the long run; a majority of Republicans say they make America worse.
Republicans are more likely to say White Americans suffer “a lot” of discrimination than they are to say Black Americans do.
Democrats see quite the opposite. And Democrats are more likely to say it’s very important for political leaders to condemn White nationalism.
Republicans tend to see America’s changing diversity as neither good nor bad, but those who take a position tend to say bad. Democrats (whose ranks are made up of more people of color) say it’s a good thing.
This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,041 U.S. adult residents interviewed between May 18-20, 2022. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as to 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±2.5 points.
‘Solid symbol of United States strength’: USS Nimitz introduced an enduring era
Hill Goodspeed – May 22, 2022
The scene in Norfolk, Virginia, on May 4, 1975, awakened memories of earlier ceremonies in the historic place where many Navy ships embarked upon their service on the Seven Seas. Historic aircraft carriers under the overall command of an admiral whose namesake ship entered service that day. Amidst pageantry that included a 21-gun salute, colorful flags fluttering in the breeze and martial music, President Gerald R. Ford marked the commissioning of the USS Nimitz (CVN 68), the world’s second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
President Gerald R. Ford and other dignitaries are pictured during the commissioning ceremony for USS Nimitz on May 3, 1975.
“I see this great ship as a double symbol of today’s challenging times. She is first of all a symbol of the United States, of our immense resources in materials and skilled manpower, of our inexhaustible energy, of the inventive and productive genius of our free, competitive economic system, and of our massive but controlled military strength,” said the president, who during World War II sailed as a crewman on board an aircraft carrier in Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet. “Wherever the United States Ship Nimitz shows her flag, she will be seen as we see her now, a solid symbol of United States strength, United States resolve — made in America and manned by Americans. She is a movable part and parcel of our country, a self-contained city at sea plying the international waters of the world in defense of our national interests. Whether her mission is one of defense, diplomacy or humanity, the Nimitz will command awe and admiration from some, caution and circumspection from others, and respect from all.”
President Ford’s words were prophetic and still ring true today for not only Nimitz, but also the nine Nimitz-class carriers that have followed her down the ways, the last being USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), which was commissioned in 2009. Though the Gerald R. Ford-class carriers, the lead ship of which was commissioned in 2017, represent the Navy’s newest flattops, the ships of the Nimitz class will remain a vital component of the Navy’s arsenal.
With the final decommissioning of USS Enterprise (CVN 65) on Feb. 3, 2017, Nimitz became the oldest active aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy. In today’s digital world, it is humorous to read a newspaper account from 1975 lauding the technology on board the ship, where her first commanding officer, Capt. Bryan Compton, could address the crew on color television, which also boasted three channels for viewing by off-duty sailors and Marines. That she now operates with sophisticated 21st century technology speaks to the soundness of the Nimitz-class design, the lead ship having adapted to the times in her 47th year of service.
The USS Nimitz operates in company with the battleship USS Missouri in 1987.
After a brief shakedown cruise in the Caribbean and North Atlantic following her commissioning, Nimitz deployed to the Mediterranean in July 1976 with the guided-missile cruisers USS South Carolina (CGN 37) and USS California (CGN 36), marking the first time in a decade that nuclear-powered ships deployed to the Mediterranean. In 1979, the carrier played a starring role on the silver screen, the ship’s spaces transformed into a Hollywood set for the filming of “The Final Countdown” starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen. The plot involved Nimitz and her crew going back in time to the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack and the decision on whether to alter the course of history. The film provided a number of crewmen the opportunity to speak lines and featured aerial sequences showing VF-84 Jolly Rogers F-14 Tomcats with their colorful skull and crossbones tail markings.
It did not take long for the nation’s newest flattop to also assume a leading role on the real world stage. In 1980, while underway in the Indian Ocean during a deployment marked by 144 consecutive days at sea, RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters launched from the ship to take part in Operation Evening Light (also known as Operation Eagle Claw). The attempted rescue of 52 American hostages held in Tehran ended in tragedy at a landing site in the Iranian desert. The following year, while Nimitz conducted exercises in the Gulf of Sidra near Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s “Line of Death,” two of her embarked F-14 Tomcats of the VF-41 Black Aces shot down a pair of Libyan Su-22 Fitters after the enemy aircraft fired upon them.
RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters are pictured on the flight deck of the USS Nimitz prior to the attempted rescue of the Iran hostages.
Shifting to her new homeport of Naval Station Bremerton, Washington, in 1987, Nimitz spent the ensuing years participating in Operations Earnest Will, protecting the shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf and flying combat air patrols as part of Operation Southern Watch. In the Far East, she provided U.S. Navy presence off Taiwan during a volatile standoff between that nation and China in 1995. In 1997 to 1998, she completed an around-the-world cruise, concluding it at Norfolk, the place of her birth, where she entered the yard for refueling and overhaul.
She emerged in June 2001, and just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks put to sea and set course for her new homeport at NAS North Island. California. In March 2003, she deployed for the first time to the Fifth Fleet Area of Responsibility and launched air strikes in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The cruise marked the first deployments of both the F/A-18F Super Hornet and E-2C Hawkeye 2000, with Nimitz also becoming the first aircraft carrier to deploy with an air wing containing two Super Hornet squadrons.
In 2005, the carrier commemorated 30 years of service, film crews spending the entire deployment on board for the PBS documentary “Carrier,” which provided an intimate look at life aboard the ship. Amidst deployments supporting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nimitz shifted her homeport to Everett, Washington, and helped evaluate the future of carrier aviation as the platform for the first carrier landings of the F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. The carrier’s 2017 deployment included combat operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, followed by a period in overhaul.
An F/A-18C Hornet from the VMFA-323 “Death Rattlers” makes an arrested landing on the flight deck of the USS Nimitz in 2021.
A testament to the ship’s longevity occurred during her most recent deployment in the shadow of COVID-19, an 11-month cruise in which the carrier and embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17 conducted over 35,345 flight hours and 14,141 traps. Among the latter was a landing by an F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 323 Death Rattlers. It marked the final time that the venerable aircraft, which equipped the famed Blue Angels from 1986 through 2020, deployed on board an aircraft carrier. When Nimitz entered service in 1975, the Hornet had yet to make its first flight.
In a message to the personnel of the U.S. Pacific Fleet on Sept. 2, 1945, Fleet Admiral Nimitz wrote about what they owed to those who made the ultimate sacrifice during World War II.
“To them we have a solemn obligation … to insure that their sacrifice will help to make this a better and safer world in which to live,” he stated. “It will also be necessary to maintain our national strength at a level which will discourage future acts of aggression aimed at the destruction of our way of life.”
The number of times Nimitz will leave the shores of the United States are numbered, her decommissioning slated for 2025, a half century after President Ford so eloquently captured in words what she represented. In that time, she has more that met the obligations her namesake outlined in 1945, and the class of carriers that followed her will carry that torch for many decades to come.
Hill Goodspeed is the historian for the National Naval Aviation Museum and a columnist for the News Journal.
Azovstal steel plant becomes symbol of Ukrainian resistance
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – April 25, 2022
In what has become a symbol of their fierce defense against Russia, Ukrainian forces are holding onto the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in the besieged city of Mariupol, which continues to come under assault despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his defense chief last week to merely blockade the plant.
The pocket of resistance is the last holdout in the strategic port city, which has been largely reduced to rubble amid Russian bombardment. The plant’s tunnel network has sheltered Ukrainian defenders and has become a story of heroism for the country.
Ukrainian officials said Sunday that Russian forces were attempting to storm the factory as well as conducting airstrikes in the surrounding area. “Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych wrote on Facebook. Moscow said Monday that it would stop hostilities to allow civilians to escape, but Ukrainian officials said they needed a more substantive safety guarantee.
What is it?
Smoke rises above the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 21. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
The 90-year-old metallurgical steel plant was almost completely destroyed by Russian forces during the siege of Mariupol and has been surrounded by Russian troops since early March. The entire city has had limited access to food and water throughout the blockade and bombardment.
The factory has since emerged as the last pocket of organized resistance in the siege, with an estimated 2,000 troops and 1,000 civilians said to be holed up in nuclear bunkers underneath the structure.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s National Guard released new video footage of what it said were women and children sheltering in underground tunnels.
“We want to see peaceful skies. We want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman said in the video, according to a translation by the Associated Press. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.”
A Ukrainian soldier and civilians on Sunday inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. (Handout via Reuters)
What are the conditions inside?
While Ukrainians are holding on, the situation remains dire, military officials inside the plant say.
Video published by Ukrainian forces shows a young girl saying she hasn’t seen the sun since Feb. 27, just after the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also shows a soldier distributing candy to children.
It’s unclear how much food, water and other supplies the survivors have left.
“We are taking casualties,” Serhiy Volyna, commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marine brigade forces in Mariupol, said in a video posted to YouTube. “We have very many wounded men. [Some] are dying. … The situation is rapidly worsening.”
Why is the plant so significant to Russia?
The plant itself is not, but Mariupol has been one of Russia’s key objectives in the war. Completing its capture would give Moscow its biggest victory yet, especially since Russia’s efforts to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, earlier in the war failed.
“Russia’s decision to besiege rather than attack Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant means many Russian units remain fixed in the city and cannot be redeployed,” the British Defense Ministry said Monday. “Ukraine’s defense of Mariupol has also exhausted many Russian units and reduced their combat effectiveness.”
Mariupol would also help Russia establish a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula — annexed by Moscow eight years ago — to Ukraine’s breakaway republics that are effectively controlled by Russia-backed separatists.
What does Putin say?
On Thursday, the Russian president declared that Mariupol had been “liberated” and publicly told his defense minister to call off the storming of the Azovstal plant, ordering that it be “blocked off” instead.
Putin also called on the remaining Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms — something Ukrainian forces are unwilling to do.
“We will continue to defend it until there is an order to retreat from our military leadership,” Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Battalion, told the New York Times on Sunday. “And if we are going to leave, we are going to leave with our weapons.”
US military aid to Ukraine surpasses $3 billion under Biden. Here’s what’s been provided
Joey Garrison, USA TODAY – April 17, 2022
WASHINGTON – More than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems. About 5,500 Javelin missiles. More than 7,000 small arms. And 50 million rounds of ammunition.
Vowing to “stand with Ukraine,” President Joe Biden and his administration have committed nearly $2.6 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion Feb. 24, supplying a range of weapons for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression.
The latest round, $800 million, was authorized Wednesday. Since August, nearly $2.8 billion has been specifically allocated for military assistance, but the White House said the total amount of aid is closer to $3.2 billion since Biden took office. That would include money from a $13.6 budget bill Biden signed in March that contained money to arm Ukrainians.
There’s also been indirect assistance to allies such as a Patriot missile system the United States repositioned to Slovakia after its government agreed to supply an S-300 air defense system to Ukraine.
“We won’t be able to advertise every piece of security we give because our allies and partners are supplying to Ukraine through us,” Biden said last week, “but advanced weapons and ammunition are flowing in every single day.”
A Ukrainian soldier holds a Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) that was used to destroy a Russian armored personnel carrier (APC) in Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 12, 2022.
Most of the assistance has been authorized through the Foreign Assistance Act. Biden has rebuffed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s calls to implement a “no-fly” zone over Ukraine and a proposal from Poland to send fighter jets to a U.S. air base in Germany to facilitate their transfer to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly pushed Western allies, particularly the United States, to provide more aid amid allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed war crimes and genocide.
“Without additional weapons, this war will turn into an endless bloodbath that will spread misery, suffering and destruction. Mariupol, Bucha, Kramatorsk – the list goes on,” Zelenskyy tweeted this week. “No one will stop Russia except Ukraine with heavy weapons.” He ended with the hashtag “#ArmUkraineNow.”
A Ukrainian serviceman fires an NLAW anti-tank weapon during an exercise in the Joint Forces Operation, in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine.
Here’s a timeline of Biden’s infusion of aid:
April 13 – $800 million
The Biden administration authorized $800 million in additional security assistance to Ukraine after a call between Biden and Zelenskyy. Russia concentrates attacks in the eastern Donbas region after retreating from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
New weapons and machinery – 18 155mm Howitzers (long-range cannons), 40,000 artillery rounds and 200 M113 armored personnel carriers – are meant to expand Ukraine’s military capabilities for a drawn-out fight. The new round of aid provided 500 Javelin missiles and anti-armor systems, adding to the supply the United States has already provided.
The package includes 10 AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars, two AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radars, 300 switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems, 11 helicopters and 100 armored multipurpose vehicles. Other equipment included “unmanned coastal defense vessels,” though the Department of Defense did not elaborate.
“Responsible nations have to come together to hold these perpetrators accountable” for war crimes in Ukraine, President Joe Biden tells the North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) conference in Washington on April 6.
April 6 – $100 million
Biden authorized $100 million in security assistance to support Ukraine, providing Javelin missiles for Ukrainian forces.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Javelin anti-armor systems are an “urgent Ukraine need,” and they’ve been used effectively against Russian forces.
“We know they’re using them,” he said. “You can see the evidence for yourself when you look at the videos and the images on TV of these burnt-out tanks and burnt-out trucks and armored personnel carriers.”
April 1 – $300 million
The Biden administration authorized $300 million in aid to Ukraine to fill many of the requests Zelenskyy has made. The package came via the Defense Department’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative – which involves new contracts rather than the U.S. military’s stocks.
April 1 – $300 million
The Biden administration authorized $300 million in aid to Ukraine to fill many of the requests Zelenskyy has made. The package came via the Defense Department’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative – which involves new contracts rather than the U.S. military’s stocks.
The package included laser-guided rocket systems, armed drones, armored vehicles, machine guns, commercial satellite imagery services, medical supplies, night-vision devices, thermal imagery systems and tactical secure communication systems.
March 16 – $800 million
Biden authorized $800 million in military aid for Ukraine, hours after Zelenskyy made an impassioned appeal for help during a virtual address to U.S. Congress. It marked the single-largest military funding provision at the time, later matched by the infusion of aid on April 13.
The package included 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,000 Javelin missiles, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems, 100 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems, 100 grenade launchers, 5,000 rifles, 1,000 pistols, 400 machine guns, 400 shotguns and 25,000 sets of body armor and helmets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a virtual address to Congress by video at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2022.
March 12 – $200 million
A little more than two weeks into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Biden administration authorized $200 million for Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the aid would help Ukraine “meet the armored, airborne and other threats it is facing.”
The package included an assortment of small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, as well as military services, education and training.
Feb. 26 – $350 million
The infusion of U.S. military aid came two days after Russia’s invasion: $350 million toward Javelin missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, small arms and ammunition.
“It is another clear signal that the United States stands with the people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereign, courageous and proud nation,” Blinken said about 48 hours after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Ukrainian serviceman surveys the damage to an apartment building shelled in the city of Chuhuiv, Ukraine, on April 8.
December – $200 million
As the White House ramped up warnings about a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration confirmed on Jan. 19 that it authorized $200 million in military aid in late December.
The package, which came as Moscow military forces were building up on the Ukraine border, included Javelin and other anti-armor systems, grenade launchers, munitions, and nonlethal equipment. It arrived in Ukraine on Jan. 25.
August – $60 million
Coinciding with a White House meeting between Biden and Zelenskyy, the White House committed $60 million in military aid to Ukraine on Aug. 31 as Russia increased its military presence around Ukraine.
The package included Javelin anti-armor systems and other lethal and nonlethal defense capabilities.
“Russia’s buildup along the Ukrainian border has highlighted capability shortfalls in the Ukrainian military’s ability to defend against a Russian incursion,” the White House said in a notification to Congress. “Ukraine’s significant capability gaps must be urgently addressed to reinforce deterrence in light of the current Russian threat.”
$13.6 billion in humanitarian, security aid in budget bill
Biden signed a $1.5 trillion government spending bill March 15 that included $13.6 billion in humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine.
The White House said the funds would “augment” other aid to provide defense equipment for Ukraine, humanitarian assistance and U.S. troop deployments to neighboring countries.
About half the $13.6 billion was to arm Ukraine and cover the Pentagon’s costs for sending U.S. troops to surrounding Eastern European nations. The remainder went toward humanitarian and economic assistance, strengthening regional allies’ defenses and protecting their energy supplies and cybersecurity needs.
WINIFRED, Montana – Ed Butcher, 78, tied up his horse, kicked mud off his cowboy boots and walked into his house for dinner. He’d been working on the ranch for most of the day, miles away from cellphone range. “What did I miss?” he asked his wife, Pam, as he turned their TV to cable news. “What part of the world is falling apart today?”
“Russia’s aggression has gone from scary to terrifying,” the TV commentator said, as Pam took their dinner out of the oven.
“We’re talking about a war that involves a very unstable nuclear power,” the commentator said, as they bent their heads over the venison casserole to say a prayer.
“This could escalate,” the commentator said. “It could explode beyond our wildest imaginations.”
Ed turned the TV off and looked out the window at miles of open prairie, where the wind rattled against their barn and blew dust clouds across Butcher Road. Ed’s family had been on this land since his grandparents homesteaded here in 1913, but rarely had life on the ranch felt so precarious. Their land was parched by record-breaking drought, neglected by a pandemic work shortage, scarred by recent wildfires, and now also connected in its own unique way to a war across the world. “I wonder sometimes what else could go wrong,” Ed said, as he looked over a hill toward the west end of their ranch, where an active U.S. government nuclear missile was buried just beneath the cow pasture.
“Do you think they’ll ever shoot it up into the sky?” Pam asked.
“I used to say, ‘No way,’ ” Ed said. “Now it’s more like, ‘Please God, don’t let us be here to see it.’ “
The missile was called a Minuteman III, and the launch site had been on their property since the Cold War, when the Air Force paid $150 for one acre of their land as it installed an arsenal of nuclear weapons across the rural West. About 400 of those missiles remain active and ready to launch at a few seconds notice in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. They are located on bison preserves and Indian reservations. They sit across from a national forest, behind a rodeo grandstand, down the road from a one-room schoolhouse, and on dozens of private farms like the one belonging to the Butchers, who have lived for 60 years with a nuclear missile as their closest neighbor.
It’s buried behind a chain-link fence and beneath a 110-ton door of concrete and steel. It’s 60 feet long. It weighs 79,432 pounds. It has an explosive power at least 20 times greater than the atomic bomb that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima. An Air Force team is stationed in an underground bunker a few miles away, ready to fire the missile at any moment if the order comes. It would tear out of the silo in about 3.4 seconds and climb above the ranch at 10,000 feet per second. It was designed to rise 70 miles above Earth, fly across the world in 25 minutes and detonate within a few hundred yards of its target. The ensuing fireball would vaporize every person and every structure within a half-mile. The blast would flatten buildings across a five-mile radius. Secondary fires and fatal doses of radiation would spread over dozens more miles, resulting in what U.S. military experts have referred to as “total nuclear annihilation.”
“I bet it would fly right over our living room,” Ed said. “I wonder if we’d even see it.”
“We’d hear it. We’d feel it,” Pam said. “The whole house would be shaking.”
“And if we’re shooting off missiles, you can bet some are headed back toward us,” Ed said.
Over the years, they’d reckoned with every conceivable threat to their land. Drought killed the nutrients in the soil. Hail destroyed the crops. Wolves and mountain lions attacked the cattle. Eagles dive-bombed the sheep. Animal skulls littered the same prairie where dozens of newborn calves arrived each spring. The Butchers’ eldest son had died suddenly on the ranch of an asthma attack. Their great-grandson had just been delivered in the bunkhouse, the sixth generation to be born onto the property. One of the things Ed appreciated about ranch life was that it brought him closer to the natural cycles of life and death, which only made the idea of man-made, mass nuclear destruction more unimaginable.
“I guess we’d head for the storage room,” Ed said.
“Make a few goodbye calls,” Pam said. “Hold hands. Pray.”
Ed got up to clear his plate. “Good thing it’s all hypothetical. It’s really only there for deterrence. It’ll never actually explode.”
“You’re right,” Pam said. “It won’t happen. Almost definitely not.”
* * *
Even though it was on their ranch, they had never been allowed down inside the missile silo. Sometimes they saw convoys of Humvees and a wide-load semi traveling on their dirt roads toward the launch site, and once Ed had glimpsed part of the Minuteman III as it was being lowered into the ground, with its black-and-white painted warhead and rocket engine. But the exact comings and goings of the missile on their land remained classified. The 80-foot bunker was mostly a place of their imagination.
It was known to the government as Launch Facility E05, one of 52 active nuclear missile sites on the old homestead farms of Fergus County. The government had chosen to turn the lonely center of Montana into a nuclear hot spot in the 1950s because of what was described then as its relative proximity to Russia, and also because the region could act as what experts called a “sacrificial nuclear sponge” in the event of nuclear war. The theory was that rather than unloading all of its missiles on major U.S. cities, an enemy would instead have to use some of those missiles to attack the silos surrounding Winifred, Mont., home to 35,000 cattle and 189 residents whose birthdays and anniversaries were all printed on the official city calendar.
Winifred was where the Butchers went for church on Sundays and for mail delivery each Wednesday, but they spent most of their time with their children and grandchildren on the ranch. They had 12,000 acres to manage and no paid employees, so two decades into retirement, Ed was still helping mend fences and check on the cows.
“Are you heading out today on the horse?” Pam asked him one morning, knowing he still occasionally liked to ride up to 20 miles a day.
“Nah, too cold,” he said. “I’m a fair-weather cowboy anymore. I’ll take the four-wheeler.”
He put on his work gloves and drove onto the ranch, bumping over fields of sagebrush and dry creek beds as he turned away from the silo and neared the ponderosa pine forest on the south end of the property. He passed his grandfather’s old bunkhouse, his father’s first hunting cabin and a dozen hills and landmarks named after family friends and dead pets. Several horses spotted his four-wheeler and ran over to greet him. “No treats today, fellas,” he said, and he continued out to the cow pasture, where the first calf of the spring had been born overnight. He watched the calf struggle to stand and then fall back over. “Come on, girl. You’ve got it,” he said, and he turned off the engine and watched until the calf got back on its feet.
He’d only lived away from the ranch once during his life, when he went to college in Billings and then started a career as a professor in North Dakota. He’d been on his way toward a doctorate in U.S. history until his father had a heart attack in 1971, and his mother called to say she was planning to sell the ranch unless he wanted to move back to Montana. He was their only child. The Butcher name was on the road, just like the Wickens and the Wallings and the Stulcs and all of the other original homestead families. Even though he loved teaching, he moved back with Pam to take over the ranch.
Their soil was usually too dry for grain, and there was almost no margin in raising cattle. It was no way to get rich, but over the years, Ed had taught himself and his three children to “get fat off the scenery,” he said. Now, as he drove, he watched the snow melt off the nearby Judith Mountains and the cumulus clouds roll across the sky from Canada. A herd of antelope raced across the prairie and a porcupine waddled across the road in front of him.
“Not much has changed out here in a hundred years,” he said, and then he drove over the hill toward the silo, which was a few miles from their house. The parched yellow grass on the government’s one acre of land matched the rest of the Butcher ranch, but the Air Force had installed a chain-link fence and a portable bathroom. Behind the fence there were a few telephone poles, a small circle of concrete in the ground and a metal manhole cover that led down to the bunker. “No trespassing,” a small sign read. “Use of deadly force authorized.”
When the military built the launch site during Ed’s teenage years, he’d seen it mostly as a potential intrusion, a symbol of federal government overreach and what he called the “insanity of the nuclear arms race.” He’d been born into the dawn of nuclear warfare, and even if the historian in him believed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end World War II, he hoped never to see that kind of devastation again in his lifetime. As a college professor, he’d driven a Volkswagen bus with a peace sign painted on the rear window, and Pam had attended a small protest against the Minuteman missiles at a federal building in rural North Dakota. They’d moved back to the ranch expecting that they might see some of the nuclear drama they’d heard about at other silos: toxic chemical leaks, accidental near-explosions, Russian spies or groups of nuns who chained themselves to the silo fence in acts of protest.
But, instead, each time Ed went to check on the silo, all he found was wind and sky and occasionally a cow entangled in the fence. The Air Force replaced the original Minuteman missile with a Minuteman II and then a Minuteman III. Military crews built better dirt roads on the Butcher ranch. They plowed those roads in winter. They provided jobs for electricians and contractors in Fergus County. They worked on the launch site mostly under the cover of night, and, as far as Ed could tell, nothing much ever happened. The missile was never launched. The nuclear apocalypse never came. After a while, the silo started to feel to Ed less like a hazard than just another part of the landscape. It was a benign relic of the Cold War. It was one acre out of 12,000 – or at least that’s what Ed had thought until late February, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear weapons on higher alert.
“I bet Russian satellites are counting the hairs on my head right now,” Ed said.
He looked up at the sky and then pulled his hat down toward his eyes. He turned away from the silo and headed back to check on the cows. “I liked it better when this place felt like a piece of history,” he said.
* * *
Instead, at that moment:
Motion sensors were detecting any movement within 100 yards of the launch facility.
Military helicopters were patrolling for suspicious activity across all 450 active missile sites in Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado.
Two members of the Air Force team were beginning another 24-hour shift in a bunker seven miles from the Butcher ranch, where they took an elevator 60 feet below ground into a small room reinforced with four-foot concrete walls. They had a tiny bathroom. They had a bed. They had an escape tunnel. They had a control panel where they could key in an eight-digit code to launch 10 nuclear missiles from Fergus County into the sky.
And a few miles further down the road, Ed’s youngest son was at the county courthouse, helping to work on the next generation of America’s nuclear arsenal. Ross Butcher, 53, was one of three elected commissioners in Fergus County, and lately part of his job was to coordinate with the military as it began replacing the Minuteman IIIs with a new and more efficient nuclear weapon, called the Sentinel. The Air Force had ordered 642 of them from Northrop Grumman at an estimated lifetime cost of about $260 billion, and now the military had sent Fergus County officials letters and power point presentations about what to expect during the next 10 years of “nuclear improvements to enhance our national defense.”
“A complete renovation to all launch facilities,” read one slide, and Ross flipped over to the next.
Thirty-one new communications towers. Eight more control centers. Twelve-hundred miles of high-speed underground wiring. Two workforce hubs with 2,500 to 3,000 employees.
“They’re talking about adding almost 50 percent to our population,” Ross said. “That kind of impact changes everything.”
National polling had shown that most U.S. taxpayers don’t want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a fleet of nuclear weapons that the government hopes will remain underground until they eventually expire, but the military had found little of that resistance in Fergus County. Malmstrom Air Force Base in nearby Great Falls contributed more than $375 million to the local economy each year. Towns across rural Montana had named school teams after the Minuteman and built museum exhibits on nuclear history, and Fergus County had erected a 60-foot decommissioned missile as a monument next to the playground in a city park.
Ross had gone to meetings across central Montana about the impact of the new Sentinel missile, and he’d made the case that Fergus County’s role was both economic and patriotic. “This is world peace through superior firepower,” he’d said. He’d lived alongside a nuclear missile on his family’s ranch for 53 years, and in all of that time, no country had fired a nuclear weapon.
“Nukes are a part of our global reality, so we better have good ones,” he’d told county officials. “I’d love to go around promoting total world peace, but it’s not realistic. We need to show that big stick or a bully can start pushing us around.”
Which brought him to the last piece of information the Air Force had sent to Fergus County, about the projected lifetime of the Sentinel missiles in a continuing era of nuclear armament:
“Strong deterrence and protection into the 2070’s and beyond,” it read.
* * *
Back at the ranch, Pam Butcher had begun to wonder if mankind would survive that long. “Everywhere I look, it’s like humanity’s moving toward its final hours,” she said, because that’s how she interpreted the recent wildfires, the droughts, the political instability in Europe, the erosion of American democracy, the inflation of the U.S. dollar, the coronavirus pandemic, and also the series of tragedies that had devastated her family in the past few years. Her brother and his wife had recently been killed in a collision with a semitruck. Her son-in-law had died of the coronavirus in 2021. And Trevis, her eldest son, had suffered a fatal asthma attack in his sleep after working 16-hour days on the ranch in dust and wildfire smoke. He’d always been in good health, and at the time of his death, he was managing the ranch and also becoming a leader within Montana’s state Republican Party. The only way Pam could make sense of his death was by thinking that God needed Trevis to help get things in order for a monumental event. Maybe God was preparing for the rapture, Pam thought.
She’d started to get ready herself, storing several years of extra food supplies in the cellar and ordering dozens of books and DVDs from a Christian website. They sat in piles around the living room: “Midnight Strikes,” “Final Age of Man,” “Realms of the Dead,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Final Empire,” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
“Oh, look,” Pam said, one afternoon, as she flipped through the stack and then held up her newest DVD to show Ed. On the cover was an image of a parched desert landscape, a nuclear firebomb, three men wearing hazmat suits, and a crumbling Statue of Liberty. “MEGADROUGHT,” the cover read. “The Annihilation of the Human Race Accelerates.”
“Will you sit and have a piece of cake and watch it with me?” Pam asked.
Ed shook his head and walked to his desk across the room. “You go ahead. I’m going to answer some emails.”
“Next time,” she said, and she sat in front of the TV and started the DVD. The screen flashed with disconnected images from around the world: an empty reservoir, a famished child, a group of rioters breaking the windows of a car, a screaming woman, a military helicopter, a cloud of smoke, a nuclear missile launching into flight.
“The four horsemen from the Book of Revelation are now riding,” the narrator said, as a fire spread across the TV screen. “We have transitioned into the prophetic end times.”
“Amen,” Pam said, as she turned up the volume. “Amen.”
“Are you prepared for the worst?” the narrator asked. “Who will survive?”
Pam’s plan was to go toward the cellar, where she thought she’d stockpiled enough supplies for them to be self-sufficient for at least a few years. They had a freezer full of meat and 3,000 rounds of military-grade ammunition to hunt the deer and elk on their land. They had a generator, 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and 20,000 gallons of propane. They could use their central fireplace to heat the whole house and their bushels of wheat to make fresh flour. Pam had gone online to buy water-filtration devices, purification tablets, and more than a dozen five-pound “survival kits” that included evaporated soup and freeze-dried meals.
“The earth is under attack,” the narrator said.
“Everyone on the planet is in grave danger,” he said.
“North Korea, China, and Iran could all launch nuclear attacks. Russia is flexing its military muscle. America should expect an unimaginable threat at an unimaginable time.”
Pam had imagined it. She had seen the threat with her own eyes when she was 8 years old and her father woke her in the middle of the night to watch the United States launch one of its first tests of an unarmed nuclear missile in rural Nevada, not far from where her family lived in Utah. She watched the sky light up with a flash of orange light as the missile rose above earth and disappeared overhead, leaving behind a cloud of smoke that rolled outward across the desert. Only years later did she begin to think about what would happen once a missile made its final descent. She’d taken a tour of a nearby launch control center, sat in the bunker with the Air Force team, and heard about realities of nuclear war. The missile on the Butcher ranch could demolish an entire city. The detonation of all 150 nuclear missiles in Montana could blanket the world in fire and smoke, block out sunlight, lower Earth’s temperature, devastate agriculture, and lead to mass starvation and extinction.
“War is now inevitable,” the narrator said, as the camera shook and people wearing gas masks ran from the sound of machine guns. Pam watched missiles and fireballs shoot across her TV screen until finally it went dark.
“Wow,” she said, after a moment, and Ed looked up from his computer.
“Wow,” he said.
“What did you think?” she asked him.
“I think whenever the good Lord calls, I’ll be ready to go with him,” he said.
“It’s getting so real,” she said. “It feels like it could happen at any moment.”
***
That night, the temperature dropped below freezing, a snowstorm rolled in from the mountains, and Ed awoke to the sound of an emergency call. His grandson, Josh, had gone to check on the cattle a little after 3 a.m., and he’d found the second calf of the season lying motionless at the bottom of a ravine. The calf was only a few hours old, and it had stumbled away from its mother and fallen into the frozen creek bed. Josh had picked up the calf, carried it to his truck, and turned up the heat. He’d driven back to the house and put the calf into an electric warming bed, but it was still cold and mostly unresponsive.
“I think we’re going to lose this one,” Josh told Ed, but when they checked on the calf a few hours later, it had opened its eyes. It was sluggish but not dead, so they decided to drive it back onto the ranch to see if it could somehow reunite and bond with its mother.
Ed’s daughter-in-law drove the pickup truck past the missile silo and out toward the cow pasture. His 4-year-old great-granddaughter held the calf in the passenger seat, trying to hug it back to warmth. Ed and Josh sat in the bed of the truck, and then they dropped the calf in the field and tried to call over to its mother.
“Mooo,” Josh yelled.
“Mooo. Come get your baby,” Ed called out, but the cow ignored them. This was her first calf, and she had no experience mothering. She chewed on the grass. She laid down. She glanced over at the shivering calf, stood up, and then walked farther away.
“She’s shunning her,” Josh said.
“It’s natural,” Ed said. “You have to expect some losses.”
“Yeah, but the second calf,” Josh said.
Ed nodded “I know. It hurts.”
They mended a nearby fence and started heading back toward the truck. “Mooo!” Ed called out, one more time, and the cow looked at him and then stood. She walked in the direction of her calf. She looked at it and eventually licked its head. She lay beside the calf and shielded it from the wind as the sun started to break through the clouds.
Ed stood next to his great-granddaughter and watched for another few moments, until finally the cow prodded the calf onto its feet and led it back toward the herd.
“How great is this?” Ed asked his great-granddaughter. There were no predators circling the cow pasture, no military helicopters patrolling above the ranch, no explosions coming from the silo over the hill. For the moment, it was just sky and wind and another new life awakening on the Butcher family ranch, where the missile was still buried below ground.
On the Ukrainian battlefield, the Switchblade UAV scored its first kill.
By admin – April 14, 2022
For the first time, the Ukrainian Army used the American Switchblade UAV on the battlefield, and it exceeded expectations
The Switchblade UAV has not only made its way to the Ukrainian Army, but it is also being used to attack and destroy targets on the battlefield. The US Department of Defense only recently made this information public. Ukraine is said to have received 100 Switchblade 300 attack drones, with the same number of Switchblade 600 UAVs (designed to destroy armored vehicles) being delivered, according to official data. According to the Pentagon, a large number of Switchblade drones have been delivered to Ukraine, but more are on the way. Furthermore, Washington does not rule out the possibility of providing many other types of US-made attack UAVs in the future.
Even so, the US Department of Defense has decided to withhold information about the use of attack drones, citing a security concern about disclosing the specific operation of the Switchblade UAV on the battlefield. The Switchblade is a single-purpose tactical attack drone developed by AeroVironment in the United States, based on the Israeli Harpy and Harop’s success. The light Switchblade 300 and the heavy Switchblade 600 are two different models of this UAV line. Currently, the United States has given Ukraine both versions to use for various purposes.The Switchblade 300 is intended to destroy light armoured vehicles as well as enemy personnel. There is an option for the UAV to attack enemy drones as well.
The UAV is small in size, with a length of 610 mm and a total weight of only 2.7 kg, and it folds easily into a backpack. Switchblade 300 is a mortar-launched aircraft with a range of up to 10 kilometres and a flight time of about 10 minutes. The drone identifies, tracks, and hits the target using digital cameras and GPS. It can also be automated to attack a stationary target with provided coordinates. The Switchblade 300’s warhead is similar to that of a grenade, and it can explode when it hits a target or detonates in the air. The operator has the ability to cancel the attack and reroute the drone. UAV powere
The nuclear missile next door
