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Trump Administration Keeps Obama LGBT Policies at Pentagon, Other Agencies

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The Defense Department recently held an LGBT Pride Month event, while the Army conducted transgender sensitivity training, moves that baffled retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin and some other conservatives.

They had expected that the new command, under President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, would revise if not reverse some of the Obama administration’s policies on transgender individuals in the military.

“I was very surprised, not so much by Donald Trump but by Gen. Mattis. I thought his total focus would be on military readiness and winning wars, and not social engineering,” Boykin told The Daily Signal.

Boykin is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council, which promotes traditional values.

The retired Army general argues that political correctness about both gender identity and women in combat is degrading the morale and readiness of the armed services by having troops spend hours in classrooms learning about gender issues.

“For 16 years we’ve been at war. When service members are not deployed overseas, they are preparing for war,” Boykin said. “Not one minute of preparation time should be squandered on social experiments.”

On June 12, the Pentagon held its sixth annual LGBT Pride Month celebration. Anthony M. Kurta, a retired Navy rear admiral, stressed its importance.

“[L]et us reflect on the service and sacrifice of all DOD members, past and present,” Kurta said, according to a Defense Department press release on the event. “We take pride in the contributions of all who defend and serve our country, and rely on the diversity of our members to meet our mission.”

Kurta is the Defense Department’s undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, a position he has held since 2014 under the Obama administration.

One group of conservative leaders, the Conservative Action Project, called for the Trump administration to “discontinue funding and directing personnel resources” for special interest events such as LGBT Pride Month that “do not strengthen military readiness.”

Some of those conservative leaders, including Reagan administration veteran Becky Norton Dunlop, say they understand that such programs likely have operated on autopilot since Trump succeeded Barack Obama as president Jan. 20.

Trump did not issue a presidential proclamation declaring June as LGBT Pride Month, as Obama did in the eight previous years.

Just before June, however, the Navy issued its own statement anticipating LGBT Pride Month.

“To remain the finest seagoing fighting force, the Navy needs men and women who are the right fit for the right job regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, creed, or gender identity,” Capt. Candace Eckert, the Navy’s special assistant for inclusion and diversity, said. “Our goal is to ensure that the mission is carried out by the most qualified and capable sailors.”

Other federal agencies, from the State Department to the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Veterans Affairs, confirmed to The Daily Signal that they use government resources to promote LGBT Pride Month during June.

Kathy McGettigan, the Trump administration’s acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees all federal employees, heralded the month celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

“LGBT Pride Month is just one way that we can honor the struggles and achievements of the LGBT community, including the LGBT members of our federal workforce,” McGettigan, a 25-year employee, wrote June 9 on the Office of Personnel Management website. Her post provided related links for LGBT employees.

“Enjoy your celebration and Happy Pride Month,” McGettigan wrote.

The Department of Veterans Affairs put up three large LGBT Pride Month posters in its central office in Washington. The agency printed 150 bulletins to hand out at an event scheduled June 22 at VA headquarters, Sterling Atkins, the VA’s diversity and inclusion specialist, told The Daily Signal.

As for the State Department, a spokeswoman told The Daily Signal that the department “issued guidance to embassies and consulates allowing them to, as appropriate to their local context, recognize LGBTI Pride Month.” The “I” in LGBTI stands for “intersex.”

The State Department did not provide specifics.

The Small Business Administration scheduled an event June 21 and printed 75 pamphlets, spokeswoman Carol Wilkerson told The Daily Signal.

Conservatives interviewed say they particularly are concerned about the military, specifically with transgender recruits, because of what they consider issues of preparedness for war and unit cohesion.

“This puts extra burdens on military doctors and nurses who have to provide these hormone benefits and surgeries to service members who aren’t deployable for months. So, this becomes a magnet [for people seeking gender transition],” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a conservative pro-defense group, said in an interview.

Both the Republican Party platform and Trump as the nominee for president “vowed to eliminate political correctness in the military,” Donnelly told The Daily Signal.

“Military voters put trust in the president, but now there are so many Obama holdovers in the Pentagon making policy,” she said.

Donnelly, Boykin, and Dunlop were among 85 conservative leaders— including former members of Congress and former Cabinet officials—who signed a May 16 “memo from the movement” as part of the Conservative Action Project.

The memo raises similar concerns about government time and resources being devoted to “gender transitioning,” saying:

It must be difficult to suffer from gender dysphoria and confusion about one’s sexual identity, but concerns about these individuals do not justify mandates on military medical doctors and nurses to approve, provide, or participate in life-altering transgender treatment or surgeries. Many object to these experimental treatments on grounds of medical ethics or sincere religious convictions. …

[C]ontinuing implementation of the Obama transgender policies for service members would ignore the strongly felt concerns of women particularly, who do not want to be exposed to individuals of the opposite sex in facilities which offer minimal privacy. This grave problem must be taken seriously when the incidence of sexual assaults and rape in the military is so severe. …

Secretary Mattis should suspend and, upon further careful study, rescind Defense Department and military service directives permitting transgender individuals to serve. … Further, the Trump administration should discontinue funding and directing personnel resources for special interest events, including LGBT Pride Month events in June, which do not strengthen military readiness.

The memo was signed by cultural, economic, and national defense conservatives because frivolous defense spending affects everyone, said Dunlop, chairwoman of the Conservative Action Project, who is the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“This is entirely at the feet of Secretary Mattis,” Dunlop told The Daily Signal. “The president clearly, just by watching him, is a delegator.”

Even so, Dunlop, who worked in the Reagan administration, said she understands the Trump administration may not be able to address related issues immediately. But, she said, she would like to see movement in the right direction.

“Things do take time, but we expect to see evidence of changes,” Dunlop said. “We have not even seen evidence of people put in place to make the changes at the Defense Department.”

Readiness and combat effectiveness are the priority, Lt. Col. Myles Caggins, a Defense Department spokesman, told The Daily Signal. He said the department, at Kurta’s direction, conducted a review of the military’s ability to work with new transgender enlistees.

In a statement provided to The Daily Signal, Caggins said:

Diversity is a source of strength for the Department of Defense, and is a key to maintaining our high state of readiness. Diversity encompasses more than demographic differences (e.g., race, gender, and sexual orientation) — we also value diversity of thought, background, language, culture, and skills.

Matt Thorn, executive director for OutServe-SLDN, a Washington-based advocacy group for LGBT individuals in the military, dismissed the concerns expressed by the conservative leaders. SLDN stands for Service Members Legal Defense Network.

“This is expected from the far right, and it doesn’t have any foundational basis,” Thorn told The Daily Signal. “There is no evidence that we’ve heard or seen that makes the argument that transgender people [in the armed forces] affect military readiness.”

Navy veteran Ken Boehm, chairman of National and Legal Policy Center, a government watchdog group, was among the signers of the memo. Continuing the Obama administration’s social engineering policies is fiscally irresponsible, he told The Daily Signal.

“The Obama administration stuffed the Pentagon with people who didn’t have the defense of the country in mind, but had social engineering on their mind. Every dollar we spend on social engineering is one dollar less we are spending on defense,” Boehm said.

Boehm said he doesn’t understand why the Trump administration hasn’t made a change, but is willing to give Mattis the benefit of the doubt.

“I would suspect it’s a little like drinking from a fire hydrant,” Boehm said of what may be on the defense secretary’s mind, adding:

There is already one problem after another. I’ve never viewed Mattis as squishy. Trump authorized him to handle troop levels in Afghanistan. If he has that authority, I’d think he would tighten other things up. But sometimes you have to make trades in the short term for the bigger picture.

At this early juncture, it likely is a matter of priorities for the Trump administration, said Steven Bucci, a retired Army Special Forces officer and former top Pentagon official who was military assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Every day a policy is in place, it gets harder. Because of the ‘little c’ conservative nature of the Department of Defense, change is difficult,” Bucci, now a visiting fellow on national security policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

“Ash Carter’s legacy was women in combat and transgender issues,” Bucci said, referring to the last of Obama’s three defense secretaries, and a deputy to the previous two. “I don’t think we want Mattis to focus on the social issues as his No. 1 priority. We want him fighting bad guys. It’s unrealistic to think he would change the policies this early.” (For more from the author of “Trump Administration Keeps Obama LGBT Policies at Pentagon, Other Agencies” please click HERE)

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Pentagon Teeters on the Edge of Full-Scale War in Afghanistan

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President Donald Trump’s most senior advisers will present him with a plan to escalate the U.S. military’s mission in Afghanistan, The Washington Post reports.

This plan includes ramping up the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan along with changing the U.S. military’s rules of engagement while supporting the Afghan National Security Forces. The goal of the plan is to curb the Taliban’s battlefield gains and push them into entering a peace process with the Afghan government.

Both U.S. military commanders in charge of the war have told Congress the U.S. is in a stalemate with the Taliban and needs a few thousand more troops to tip the balance.

Trump will reportedly make the final call on the plan before a May 25 meeting with NATO heads of state in Brussels. Trump campaigned on a promise to defeat the Islamic State, which has a nascent presence in Afghanistan. The terrorist group is just one of a myriad problems for the U.S. in Afghanistan.

The Taliban movement controls nearly one-third of the Afghan population and more territory than at any time since 2001, a new United Nations report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveals. The plan essentially doubles down on supporting the Afghan National Security Forces in the fight against the Taliban. The Afghan forces, however, are beset by a host of problems, which nearly $75 billion in U.S. aid has been unable to fix so far. (Read more from “Pentagon Teeters on the Edge of Full-Scale War in Afghanistan” HERE)

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The Pentagon Has a ‘Ghost Soldiers’ Problem

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Since 2002, billions of U.S. tax dollars have been spent rebuilding Afghanistan after decades of war. A big chunk of that money pays Afghan soldiers and police. But it turns out a lot of those troops may not, in fact, exist. We investigate how your tax money is being wasted on “ghost soldiers.”

Here’s my interview with John Sopko, who is the inspector general watching over the U.S. taxpayer billions spent to rebuild Afghanistan.

Sharyl Attkisson: When you say “ghosts,” what are you referring to?

John Sopko: What we’re talking about are policemen, Afghan policemen, Afghan military, Afghan civil servants who don’t exist or they have multiple identity cards and we’re paying their salaries. By “we” I mean the United States and the international community…

For years, multiple audits have shown there’s no way to prove that the money we send for salaries is going to a real live body. And the payroll numbers just don’t add up. For example, Sopko says, in June 2016 the supposed number of Afghan military and police was 319,595. But an Afghan official told the Associated Press “the best internal estimate” of the real number was “around 120,000.”

Attkisson: This implies fraud, obviously.

Sopko: Absolutely. Major fraud. And what’s happening is the commanders or generals or other higher officials are actually pocketing the salaries of the ghosts. And I remember President [Ashraf] Ghani, again, at that time he wasn’t president, saying, “John, you, the United States government, are paying the salary of an Afghan who’s a teacher, he’s a civil servant, he’s a doctor, he is a policeman, and he’s a soldier. And it’s the same Afghan. And he doesn’t exist.”

Attkisson: What kind of money are we talking about?

Sopko: Hundreds of millions of dollars, we’re talking about, that may be lost.

Attkisson: In multiple letters and audits, Sopko has taken the Pentagon, which manages the money, to task stating, “Persistent reports raise questions regarding whether the U.S. government is taking adequate steps to prevent taxpayer funds from being spent on so-called ‘ghost soldiers.’” And he says the “ghost” phenomenon extends beyond Afghan and security paychecks to other forms of aid.

Sopko: It’s not just the salaries. We’re funding schools based on the number of students, so if you invent or inflate the number of students, you’re going to be paying more money. On the soldiers and police, we’re paying for extra boots, food for everything else and logistics for numbers that don’t exist.

Attkisson: Is there any way to tell who’s taking the money?

Sopko: It’s difficult because of the security situation. It’s really up to the Afghans or designing systems for the Afghans to implement.

The Pentagon is implementing a new system of biometrics in Afghanistan, using fingerprints, photos, and blood type. It recently said up to 95 percent of Afghan police and 70 to 80 percent of soldiers are now enrolled. The idea is to dispense with old ghosts, and ensure proof of life among a faraway force funded by U.S. taxpayers. The Pentagon expects to complete its person-by-person verification of Afghan’s army and police in July. (For more from the author of “The Pentagon Has a ‘Ghost Soldiers’ Problem” please click HERE)

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Pentagon Plans Next Major Missile Intercept Test for Late May

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The Pentagon has tentatively scheduled for late May the next intercept test of its $36 billion ground-based missile defense system — the first in nearly three years, according to a spokesman.

With North Korea ramping up its ballistic missile development and President Donald Trump vowing to rein in Kim Jong-un’s regime, the success of missile defense efforts has taken on heightened importance in Washington. The head of the U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force General John Hyten, told a Senate panel this week that “although North Korea is not an existential threat,” it’s “the most dangerous and unpredictable actor in the Pacific region.”

While confirming the May target, the next missile defense test remains contingent on the availability of testing resources, Missile Defense Agency spokesman Christopher Johnson said via email. Interceptors are located at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The system is managed by Boeing Co.

North Korea’s weapons program is expected to be a major subject of talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida starting Thursday. The U.S. president has said Beijing can do more to rein in North Korea. Beijing, in turn, has protested an Obama administration decision to deploy an Army missile system called Thaad in South Korea designed to intercept short and medium-range systems. (Read more from “Pentagon Plans Next Major Missile Intercept Test for Late May” HERE)

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$10 Trillion Missing From Pentagon and No One — Not Even the DOD — Knows Where It Is

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Over a mere two decades, the Pentagon lost track of a mind-numbing $10 trillion — that’s trillion, with a fat, taxpayer-funded “T” — and no one, not even the Department of Defense, knows where it went or on what it was spent.

Even though audits of all federal agencies became mandatory in 1996, the Pentagon has apparently made itself an exception, and — fully 20 years later — stands obstinately orotund in never having complied.

Because, as defense officials insist — summoning their best impudent adolescent — an audit would take too long and, unironically, cost too much.

“Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when an audit would be completed,” Rafael DeGennaro, director of Audit the Pentagon, told The Guardian recently. “Meanwhile, Congress has more than doubled the Pentagon’s budget.”

Worse, President Trump’s newly-proposed budget seeks to toss an additional $54 billion into the evidently bottomless pit that is the U.S. military. . .

[W]ithout the mandated audit, the DoD could be purchasing damned near anything, at any cost, and use, or give, it — to anyone, for any reason.

Officials with the Government Accountability Office and Office of the Inspector General have catalogued egregious financial disparities at the Pentagon for years — yet the Defense Department grouses the cost and energy necessary to perform an audit in compliance with the law makes it untenable.

Astonishingly, the Pentagon’s own watchdog tacitly approves this technically-illegal workaround — and the legally-gray and, yes, literally, on-the-books-corrupt practices in tandem — to what would incontrovertibly be a most unpleasant audit, indeed.

Take the following of myriad examples, called “plugging,” for which Pentagon bookkeepers are not only encouraged to conjure figures from thin air, but, in many cases, they would be physically and administratively incapable of performing the job without doing so — without ever having faced consequences for this brazen cooking of books.

To wit, Reuters reported the results of an investigation into Defense’s magical number-crunching — well over three years ago, on November 18, 2013 — detailing the illicit tasks of 15-year employee, “Linda Woodford [who] spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.”

Woodford, who has since retired, and others like her, act as individual pieces in the amassing chewed gum only appearing to plug a damning mishandling of funds pilfered from the American people to fund wars overseas for resources in the name of U.S. defense.

“Every month until she retired in 2011,” Scot J. Paltrow wrote for Reuters, “she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s – a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

“And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. ‘A lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate,’ Woodford says. ‘We didn’t have the detail … for a lot of it.’”

Where a number of disparities could be corrected through hurried communications, a great deal — thousands each month, for each person on the task — required fictitious figures. Murkily deemed, “unsubstantiated change actions” — tersely termed, “plugs” — this artificial fix forcing records into an unnatural alignment is common practice at the Pentagon.

Beyond bogus books, the Pentagon likely flushed that $10 trillion in taxes down the toilet of inanity that is unchecked purchasing by inept staff who must be devoid of prior experience in the field of defense.

This tax robbery would eclipse the palatability of blood money — if it weren’t also being wasted on items such as the 7,437 extraneous Humvee front suspensions — purchased in surplus over the inexplicable 14-year supply of 15,000 unnecessary Humvee front suspensions already gathering warehouse-shelf dust.

And there are three items of note on this particular example, of many:

One, the U.S. Department of Defense considers inventory surpassing a three-year supply, “excessive.”

Two, the stupefying additional seven-thousand-something front suspensions arrived, as ordered, during a period of demand reduced by half.

Three, scores of additional items — mostly unaccounted for in inventory — sit untouched and aging in storage, growing not only incapable of being used, but too dangerous to be properly disposed of safely.

Worse, contractors greedily sink hands into lucrative contracts — with all the same supply-based waste at every level, from the abject disaster that is the $1 trillion F-35 fighter program, to the $8,123.50 shelled out for Bell Helicopter Textron helicopter gears with a price tag of $445.06, to the DoD settlement with Boeing for overcharges of a whopping $13.7 million.

The latter included a charge to the Pentagon of $2,286 — spent for an aluminum pin ordinarily costing just $10.

Considering all the cooking of numbers apparently fueled with burning money stateside, you would think Defense channeled its efforts into becoming a paragon of economic efficiency when the military defends the United States. Overseas. From terrorism. And from terrorists. And terrorist-supporting nations.

But this is the Pentagon — and a trickle of telling headlines regularly grace the news, each evincing yet another missing shipment of weapons, unknown allocation of funds, or retrieval of various U.S.-made arms and munitions by some terrorist group deemed politically less acceptable than others by officials naming pawns.

In fact, so many American weapons and supplies lost by the DoD and CIA become the property of actual terrorists — who then use them sadistically against civilians and strategically against our proxies and theirs — it would be negligent not to describe the phenomenon as pattern, whether or not intent exists behind it. . .

For now, we know generally where our money is going: war. Which aspect of war — compared to the power of your outrage about its callous and reckless execution in your name — matters little. (For more from the author of “$10 Trillion Missing From Pentagon and No One — Not Even the DOD — Knows Where It Is” please click HERE)

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Anti-Trump Clinton Supporter to Lead Pentagon Think Tank Under Mattis

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Patrick Cronin from the liberal non-profit Center for New American Security (CNAS) has joined the Defense Department under Gen James Mattis to run the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, a think tank within the Pentagon.

Bill Gertz, a national security expert and columnist at the Washington Times, reports that Cronin’s appointment has “set off criticism among conservative China analysts who are concerned about” his “views and writings on China.”

As Gertz reports, Cronin was the signatory to an anti-Trump protest letter which proclaimed unity in “opposition to a Donald Trump presidency.”

Initially, a Pentagon press release said that Secretary Mattis approved the selection of Cronin, but the think tank page has been updated to claim that Mattis was not involved in the process.

To make matters worse, it appears as if Cronin has previously signed multiple anti-Trump letters.

Not only that, but Cronin took his advocacy against Trump a step further than most of his fellow anti-Trump signatories.

Cronin, a self-proclaimed Republican, voted for Hillary Clinton in the November election. While some of his Republican colleagues veered towards third-party candidates, and others decided simply not to vote in the election, Cronin took the minority route and threw his weight behind Clinton.

“Only one candidate has thought through America’s challenges, understands policy, has a positive and inclusive vision, is smart about the world in which we live, and is ready to be president, and I intend to vote for her—Hillary Clinton,” Cronin said in June.

Cronin served as a senior USAID official under President George W. Bush. Before moving into the Pentagon, he worked as a senior director at the liberal CNAS, which is funded in part by the far-left Soros family.

Though the Pentagon now insists that Secretary Mattis had nothing to do with Cronin’s appointment, he is ultimately in charge of the Defense Department. Mattis had recently attempted to bring Cronin’s former colleague from CNAS, Michele Flournoy, into the Pentagon as one of his top deputies.

The defense secretary is reportedly pushing for another leftist from the Soros-funded Center for American Progress to join him at the Pentagon.

Mattis also tried to nominate Obama loyalist Anne Patterson — a hated figure in Egypt because of her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood — to the Defense Department, before the White House rejected her nomination. (For more from the author of “Anti-Trump Clinton Supporter to Lead Pentagon Think Tank Under Mattis” please click HERE)

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Pentagon Successfully Tests Micro-Drone Swarm

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The Pentagon may soon be unleashing a 21st-century version of locusts on its adversaries after officials on Monday said it had successfully tested a swarm of 103 micro-drones.

The important step in the development of new autonomous weapon systems was made possible by improvements in artificial intelligence, holding open the possibility that groups of small robots could act together under human direction.

Military strategists have high hopes for such drone swarms that would be cheap to produce and able to overwhelm opponents’ defenses with their great numbers.

The test of the world’s largest micro-drone swarm in California in October included 103 Perdix micro-drones measuring around six inches (16 centimeters) launched from three F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, the Pentagon said in a statement.

“The micro-drones demonstrated advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying and self-healing,” it said. (Read more from “Pentagon Successfully Tests Micro-Drone Swarm” HERE)

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Pentagon Plays Hide and Seek With Trillions of Your Tax Dollars

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After years of protesting that they were “too big to audit,” the Pentagon is finally under a congressionally-mandated review. Under a law passed in 2009, the Pentagon must provide their financials to Congressional overseers by September 30, 2017.

However, a new report published by the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General (IG) highlights how problematic the Pentagon’s books truly are. The IG now believes there is “considerable risk” that the Pentagon will not be audit-ready by the date mandated by law.

And, really, it’s more than just a simple problem. To borrow a Trumpism, it’s a YUGE problem. In fact, according to the Pentagon, the U.S. Army has trillions of dollars in accounting errors in their books. Yes, trillions. These errors are based on missing receipts and invoices, or statements that literally just don’t add up.

Reuter’s Scot Paltrow found that the Pentagon didn’t simply misplace a few receipts, nor was it as simple as offering an Accounting 101-style refresher. Instead, Paltrow concludes, that the military was forced to “make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that it’s books are balanced.”

As the report highlights, we’re talking about insane bookkeeping flubs. In fact, the Pentagon fabricated nearly $2.8 trillion ledger entries in just the third quarter of 2015; overall, $6.5 trillion in fabricated entries for the year. The evidence is damning; such poor mishandling will put additional scrutiny on defense spending, the largest expenditure in the discretionary budget. As can be expected, it will be difficult for the military to justify needed resources when, in fact, the Pentagon admits:

[F]inancial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. In addition, DoD and Army could not rely on their accounting system data when making management and resource decisions.

How could this happen?

Part of the problem begins with the culture of military support in Washington. For years, military spending has been a sacrosanct topic. Politicians are often reluctant to question or challenge the ever greater need for military resources; it is a subject that can immediately make a politician look weak on national security.

Today, the military spends roughly as much as it did during the Cold War era, or at least, during the Reagan defense buildup. All told, including war funding, the military will cost the U.S. taxpayer roughly $586 billion this year.

To truly put the size of our defense budget into perspective, it is often helpful to compare it to, well, the resources of other nations – particularly those who may be foes. As you can see in the chart, we crush everyone in military might; or at least when it comes to buying military hardware.

The inability of the Department of Defense to manage their own budget is an affront to the American taxpayer, as well as to the troops the DoD oversees. Every few months a new story develops where the military has literally lost billions of dollars. For example, in April of 2015, the military was accused of losing $45 billion in Afghanistan.

That’s nearly as much as the federal government provides to build our nation’s roads, each year. Taking taxpayer funds for granted; squandering them, or losing them is a disservice to the American people. Yet, that is not even the most unfortunate aspect.

Most concerning is what this means for the fate of U.S. Military might in the future. The federal government is cash strapped, with $19.5 trillion in debt, and a social safety net that is consuming the federal budget. As a result, each dollar sent to the DoD will be under greater and greater scrutiny.

Even the Pentagon realizes that asking for additional funds to build up the military is unrealistic when they fail to account for the resources they currently have. In their Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) proposal, a five-year defense budget, the Pentagon has effectively asked for flat funding, or, on average, $534 billion per year through 2020.

In fact, instead of expanding the military, the Pentagon is already looking for new savings. Plans are in place to reduce the number of active duty troops, from 1.31 million to 1.27 million. The Pentagon also would like to reform military pay and initiate a new round of base realignments and closures.

The U.S. military is the best in the world. Men and women throughout our history have sacrificed their lives to protect the freedom we cherish, even as they seek to liberate other lands from tyranny and terror. However, the means to achieve these heights should not be abused. The sacred honor with which our troops commit themselves should not be disregarded and shamed by an organization that squanders the pledges of U.S. taxpayers. Each dollar committed to our national defense should be treated with respect, and with purpose. Anything less tarnishes the honor of our troops, and the costs which they have so bravely borne. (For more from the author of “Pentagon Plays Hide and Seek With Trillions of Your Tax Dollars” please click HERE)

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Pentagon Approves Contract to Sell Smart Bombs to Turkey

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The Pentagon has signed a deal to sell nearly $700 million worth of smart bombs to Turkey as tensions are escalating between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq.

The sale, announced on Tuesday, comes at a crucial time for Turkey’s military, which continues to be heavily embroiled in attacking the Kurds in the volatile northern part of Iraq . . .

The Pentagon granted the contract to Ellwood National Forge and General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems for the sale of BLU-109 bunker busting bomb bodies and components, the first reported sale of such bombs to Turkey . . .

Based on reports, BLU-109 bombs have been in the Pentagon’s inventory since 1985 and are said to have been used on militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bomb contains 550 pounds of high explosive Tritonal, a combination of 80% TNT and 20% aluminum powder. The BLU-109’s tail fuse delays the bomb’s detonation until the bomb has penetrated the targeted bunker, ensuring complete destruction. (Read more from “Pentagon Approves Contract to Sell Smart Bombs to Turkey” HERE)

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Pentagon Research Could Make ‘Brain Modem’ a Reality

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The Pentagon is attempting what was, until recently, an impossible technological feat—developing a high-bandwidth neural interface that would allow people to beam data from their minds to external devices and back.

That’s right—a brain modem. One that could allow a soldier to, for example, control a drone with his mind.

This seemingly unlikely piece of technology has just gotten a lot less unlikely. On Feb. 8, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the U.S. military’s fringe-science wing—announced the first successful tests, on animal subjects, of a tiny sensor that travels through blood vessels, lodges in the brain and records neural activity.

The so-called “stentrode,” a combination stent and electrode, is the size of a paperclip and flexible. The tiny, injectable machine—the invention of neurologist Tom Oxley and his team at the University of Melbourne in Australia—could help researchers solve one of the most vexing problems with the brain modem: how to insert a transmitter into the brain without also drilling a hole in the user’s head, a risky procedure under any circumstances. (Read more from “Pentagon Research Could Make ‘Brain Modem’ a Reality” HERE)

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