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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE

The Biden administration is destroying our national security infrastructure By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/the_biden_administration_is_destroying_our_national_security_infrastructure.html

America has been facing a helium crisis that goes far beyond balloons and threatens our medical care and military readiness. Thankfully, a new helium reservoir has just been discovered, but the ongoing helium shortage won’t instantly go away and, combined with the Biden administration’s many anti-military policies, still leaves us vulnerable to a military strike by a foreign actor.

On Friday, news broke about the helium reservoir, along with the fact that (a) our national security depends on helium, (b) we’re dangerously low on that essential gas, and (c) a current reserve sell-out will reduce helium capacity going forward:

A potential helium reservoir was discovered in Minnesota last week after drillers bored deep beneath the forest floor of the state’s Iron Range as supplies of the noble gas dwindle in the U.S.

Pulsar Helium Inc., a Canadian-based company, announced in a news release on Thursday that its team encountered gases with concentrations of up to 12.4% helium when its drilling rig reached a total depth of 2,200 at the Topaz Project drill site. Helium concentrations above 0.3% are considered economically viable.

[snip]

Helium’s unique qualities make the gas an important and desired resource.

While known as a lightweight gas that can fill balloons and blimps, helium can also take a liquid form that acts as a coolant for superconducting magnets needed to operate MRI machines and in the manufacturing of semiconductors. The gas also has applications in the defense industry, from rocket engine testing to air-to-air missile guidance systems and more.

In January, the Compressed Gas Association warned in a letter that the U.S. government’s selling of its Federal Helium Reserve system (FHR) “could lead to severe disruptions in the U.S. helium supply chain.”

If you’re wondering what the “government’s selling of its Federal Helium Reserve” means, the answer is that the U.S. just sold off part of its stockpile.

On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium.

Fmr Navy Intel Cmdr Reveals Biden Suppressed Info on Previous Chinese Spy Balloons What did the Biden admin know about the Chinese spy balloons and when did it know it? Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fmr-navy-intel-cmdr-reveals-biden-suppressed-previous-chinese-spy-balloon-info/

Remember the Chinese spy balloon over Montana? We’ve had hints that it was only the tip of the iceberg and we know that the Biden administration attempted to cover it up until a viral civilian’s photo made it a national issue. But now there’s confirmation that the Biden administration was aware of multiple spy balloons.

Former Rear Admiral Michael Studeman had headed up the Office of Navan Intelligence. In an op-ed at the Financial Times, he reveals that “when I was director of intelligence for the Indo-Pacific Command, for example, I watched as numerous requests to publicise Chinese malign activities were disapproved by Washington, including a recommendation to publicise Beijing’s use of high-altitude surveillance balloons over the sovereign airspaces of the US, our allies and Asian partners. This was many months before the shooting down of a Chinese balloon flying over the US last year.”

Now this is important because the Biden administration claimed that it was not aware of previous spy balloons.

According to U.S. officials, Chinese balloons crossed over the U.S. at least three times during the Trump administration and at least one other time earlier in the Biden administration.

However, the U.S. was not aware of the Chinese incursions at the time, according to Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of NORAD and the officer responsible for domestic air threats.

He told a news conference that the military only learned of the intrusions after they were pieced together by the intelligence community after they happened.
“At least one time earlier.”

Happy Millard Fillmore Day: Don Feder

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/feb/18/like-biden-our-country-is-suffering-from-memory-lo/

As long as the left controls education, Americans will have a meager grasp of history

Republicans should try to avoid feeling smug about the president’s memory problems.

So he thinks that the leaders of France and Germany are men who have been dead for decades. He confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt, and he can’t quite recall the years he was vice president.

At 81, President Biden is the oldest man to serve in the Oval Office, and it shows.

But like our president, America, too, is suffering from memory loss.

On Monday, we’ll celebrate Presidents Day, which takes two real holidays and rolls them into one that’s surreal. Once upon a time, we observed the birthdays of George Washington, the man more responsible than any other for our independence, and Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union during the Civil War.

Now we have a holiday to honor everyone who has ever held the office, including such towering figures as William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan and Jimmy Carter.

Like tearing down statues, this is part of the process of erasing our history.

A survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellowship showed that 37% believed Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Edison, invented the lightbulb. In a 2017 survey, 43% of college graduates did not know that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. And to think there are those who question the value of higher education.

This is the product of a relentless assault on teaching American history.

In his book “Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story,” Timothy S. Goeglein identifies the principal culprit as Marxist historian Howard Zinn, whose “People’s History of the United States” is assigned reading for millions of high school and college students.

Zinn, coincidentally one of my professors at Boston University back in the 1960s, used history to indoctrinate. He taught that the American saga is one of genocide, exploitation and aggression. His book should be subtitled “Learn How to Hate Your Country in 729 Pages.”

China’s Infiltrators: ‘They Are Coming Here to Kill Us’ Gordon Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20388/china-infiltrators-us

China’s Communist Party is at this moment putting in place the infrastructure in America to attack America.

[I]n Reedley, California, near Fresno, authorities found a secret Chinese biological weapons lab with at least 20 pathogens, including the one for Ebola, and almost a thousand mice that had been genetically engineered to spread disease.

Chinese agents, in addition to hobbling Americans with disease and gunning them down, could bomb power stations, attack military bases, start wildfires, poison reservoirs, or create terror in dozens of ways.

These tactics come straight out of Unrestricted Warfare, a 1999 book written by two Chinese air force colonels and first published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing. The colonels argued that China can and should employ any tactic in attacking a militarily superior United States. Now, Americans can see how Beijing is operationalizing the suggestions in this how-to manual.

Chinese attackers are already in America, more are arriving by the day, and they are armed.

Videos posted to X (Twitter) show Chinese migrants firing pistols. One video is of a Chinese female with a sniper rifle.

There is no Second Amendment in China, and Chinese citizens are not permitted to possess firearms. So is it possible that the shooters in the videos are merely taking advantage of a new-found freedom in their new home country ?

Unlikely.

One of the migrants videoed was in America for only three weeks and arrived in the country with no money and no identification.

Houthi Cruise Missile Came Within Seconds of Hitting USS Gravely “We can’t afford to sit here and play catch indefinitely” Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/houthi-cruise-missile-came-within-seconds-of-hitting-uss-gravely/

Instead of ending Houthi capabilities to terrorize the Red Sea, Biden carried out some light air strikes and promised to impose sanctions in 30 days.

This is the result.

A cruise missile launched by the Houthis into the Red Sea on Tuesday night came within a mile of a US destroyer before it was shot down, four US officials told CNN, the closest a Houthi attack has come to a US warship.

In the past, these missiles have been intercepted by US destroyers in the area at a range of eight miles or more, the officials said. But the USS Gravely had to use its Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) for the first time since the US began intercepting the Houthi missiles late last year, which ultimately succeeded in downing the missile, officials said.

The CIWS, an automated machine gun designed for close-range intercepts, is one of the final defensive lines the ship has to shoot down an incoming missile when other layers of defense have failed to intercept it…

Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was “concerning” that the Houthi missile managed to get so close to a US warship.

“If it’s going at a pretty good clip, one mile translates to not very long in terms of time,” Karako said.

The Houthis acquire much of their weapons technology from Iran, Karako said. Even slower cruise missiles could cover a mile within a matter of seconds, and the decision time for the commanders of warships is compressed because of the narrow waterways in the Red Sea.

This is what acting defensively means, as I wrote earlier.

Iran has a shot at sinking a US Navy aircraft carrier Maya Carlin

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/iran-has-a-shot-at-sinking-a-us-navy-aircraft-carrier/

Could Iran Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier? Yes, There Is a Chance: On Tuesday, a cruise missile launched by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels came within one mile of an American warship. Typically, the Navy’s destroyers shoot down missile barrages launched by the rogue group at a range of eight miles or more.

For the first time since the uptick in attacks in the Red Sea commenced this Fall, however, a cruise missile came close enough for the USS Gravely to use its Close-In Weapon System (CIWS).

The Islamic Republic of Iran is increasingly threatening American interests in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East. Its regional proxy groups have ramped up rocket, drone and missile barrages targeting U.S. assets following the Israel-Hamas war.

Do Iran or their affiliate groups have the capability to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier?

How Iran Could Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier 

In the final days of 2023, Iranian-state media outlets reported that its naval forces had developed a new cruise missile capable of reaching targets more than 600 miles away.

According to Tehran, the Talaeiyeh is a long-range “smart” missile that can switch targets and adjust course during flight.

The Nasir has short-range capabilities and can be launched from warships. News of these new missiles coincided with the attack on the Norwegian-owned tanker Strinda in mid-December.

The U.S. Central Command released that an Anti-Ship Cruise Missile launched from a Houthi-controlled region in Yemen struck the vessel. Since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, the Iranian-backed group has fired dozens of barrages of missile and drone attacks targeting vessels in the Red Sea.