On November 12, two days before Israel launched the Operation Pillar of Defense attack on the Gaza Strip, the three-week-long Austere Challenge 12 interceptor missile exercises held by the U.S. and Israel in the latter nation ended.
The largest-ever joint war games, with 3,500 American and 1,000 Israeli military personnel involved, tested the Israeli Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow territorial and the longer-range U.S. Patriot and Standard Missile-3 interceptor systems.
On November 14 the Pentagon's website reported that while in Australia for this year's annual Australia-U.S. Ministerial Meeting, Defense Secretary Panetta met one-on-one with his Australian counterpart, Defense Minister Stephen Smith, and the two reached an agreement to transfer "two key space systems" from the Western Hemisphere to Australia.
They are a U.S. Air Force C-band space surveillance radar currently based in Antigua in the West Indies and a space surveillance telescope designed and built by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that is now located in New Mexico.
U.S. missile interception and space war assets are being deployed to Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Asia-Pacific region to consolidate a global network of first-strike and counter-retaliation capabilities that will be employed for purposes of political blackmail and, in the worst case scenario, for offensive warfare of a dangerous nature never witnessed before.
Barring effective organizing to prevent it, the next four years will not be generous to the cause of world peace and disarmament.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
