US President Donald Trump has signed into law $700 billion in funding to the Pentagon, which includes a pay raise for troops and funding for a number of pet projects. It also breaks the ceiling set by the 2011 law on budget caps. Congress sent the final version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to Trump at the end of November, and he ceremonially signed the bill Tuesday. T [...]

Advanced weapon systems and lack of necessity for bases in foreign nations are key factors that will allow the Russian military to defend the nation, despite receiving far less funding than their US counterparts, Putin said. [...]

The Trump White House has set a record, as US troops deploy around the world in an ever-widening net of American outreach at the end of a gun barrel. According to new data, US Special Operations troops, including Navy Seals and Army Green Berets, were deployed in 149 nations in 2017, a 150 percent jump from the administration of George W. Bush, and a modern record for shipping US military policy [...]

The US has a serious addiction problem. George W Bush previously warned about its “addiction to oil”. Current President Trump this week declared the nation’s addiction to opiate drugs an “emergency”. While his predecessor Barack Obama’s calls for firearms controls following numerous mass shootings fueled concerns of “gun addiction”. [...]

Lee sits down with Jimmy Dore, political comedian and host of the “Jimmy Dore Show," to talk the viability of the of the Draft Bernie movement and the fraudulent Democrats. As the Democrats make their move to the center and give nothing but lip service to the progressive left, what should we do to make sure that the Bernie Sanders progressive movement doesn't die? The two also discuss how politi [...]

President Trump’s troika of generals may ease public fears about his irascible unpredictability, but they also are busy padding the U.S. military budget and fattening up friendly arms manufacturers, JP Sottile writes. Americans are really counting on President Trump’s vaunted  team of generals who are widely regarded as “the adults in the room.” Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Securit [...]

Don’t laugh or adjust your sets. Donald Trump really is going ahead with a new military campaign in Afghanistan, despite an army of experts telling him it will only worsen matters. All he needs now is a Hollywood scriptwriter and Alec Baldwin. [...]

Surprising as it may be to the US, their staunch NATO ally Turkey is listing the American-made warplanes and missiles it says are vulnerable to the Russian-made S-400 SAMs it has just bought. An infographic published on Wednesday by the state-run Turkish news agency Anadolu details the components of an S-400 battalion and the system’s capabilities. Half of the picture shows aircraft the system � [...]

The Senate passed a $700 billion defense policy bill on Monday, exceeding what even Trump requested. Come you masters of warYou that build all the gunsYou that build the death planesYou that build the big bombsYou that hide behind wallsYou that hide behind desks– Bob Dylan, Masters of War, 1963 The US Senate passed a $700 billion defense policy bill on Monday that puts the US on track to have [...]

US President Donald Trump is finding his campaign promises increasingly difficult to fulfill, but his leaning towards military interventionism could be the most fundamental breach of trust for his Rust Belt supporters. Across the globe, we see potential new Trump foreign military actions or the expansion of old ones. [...]

The price tag attached to Britain’s next generation F-35 fighter jets is expected to rise dramatically. The controversial aircraft is in urgent need of an upgrade at a time when the British pound continues to fall in value. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) will pay around £80 million ($103 million) more for its F-35s, which have faced widespread criticism due to a number of technical mishaps [...]

The UK is investing in F-35 fighter jets, part of a massive £160 billion program to re-equip the British military. It comes in the midst of painful austerity when there is no money for anything else, says political analyst Dan Glazebrook. The UK's plan to purchase F-35 fighter jets has MPs debating the increasing costs.   [...]

An annual gathering of mayors from around the country is calling on Congress to reverse course by moving funding out of the military budget and into human and environmental needs. The U.S. Conference of Mayors on Monday unanimously passed three resolutions opposing deep cuts in social and environmental programs to increase funding for the military. [...]

The F-35’s dismal performance record is driving up operating costs for the fighters, according to a recent government report. The F-35’s unreliability and slow repair time contribute to its tendency to be something of a black hole for US taxpayer dollars. [...]

I’m not the only person to note that if Jesus ever actually showed up in America it would be our “Christians” who would shout him down — if, that is, he talked about peace and the horror of an imperial nation addicted to war. “Blessed are the peacemakers”? No thanks! If you ever want to know what it looks like when a mob in love with far right nationalism and on fire with a lust for [...]

Russia appears to have drawn a "red line" by suspending the air safety agreement, which Moscow and Washington reached in October 2015 to prevent aerial accidents in Syria's crowded skies, Director on geopolitical studies at the Brussels-based European Institute for International Relations (IERI) Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann told Sputnik. [...]

Americans have shown that they strongly refute almost every aspect of the proposed budget of US President Donald Trump, a plan described as perfectly mirroring the agenda of his extremely wealthy cabinet members. A new Quinnipiac poll published Friday revealed that a wide majority of US citizens oppose the sweeping cuts proposed by Trump to popular long-term government programs. [...]

On Tuesday the Pentagon denied that it attempted to cover up a study from 2015 indicating potential savings in noncombat administrative programs of $125 billion. Through recommendations based on a back-office waste evaluation, the Defense Department hopes to save $7.9 billion in the next five years. [...]

Someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to use a $3 million Patriot missile to take out a rogue quadcopter. Militaries face a real challenge: the adaptation of cheap civilian tech. Are quadcopters the new IEDs? [...]

The US Marines’ King Stallion will not only be the world’s priciest helicopter but also it is poised be acquired at a higher per-unit cost than the US Air Force’s insanely expensive F-35A. Both aerial vehicles share at least one other characteristic, aside from their absurdly high cost and regular poor performance, as they are both manufactured by Lockheed Martin or subsidiary Sikorsk [...]

When the global military empire takes money from programs that poor people depend on and gives it to rich military contractors - it is a theft and looting of the national budget, says Brian Becker, the National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition. [...]

Watching Washington attack one sovereign state after another since the collapse of the Soviet Union prompts the question: Are we Americans behaving out of some inherent aggression, or is this just old-fashioned empire building by a global superpower? [...]