U.S. allocates $175 million in military aid to Baltics in 2020
The United States has allocated $175 million in military aid to the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for 2020, the Estonian defense ministry said Monday.
The three countries are NATO members and all of them border Russia.
The Estonian defense ministry said that along with $125 million in general military aid, Washington has for the first time earmarked a separate $50 million budget line to boost air defense capabilities of the three ex-Soviet republics — seen by many military experts a weak area in their current defense.
The overall aim of U.S. military aid to Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius is to strengthen “the deterrence and defense posture in the Baltic States including in the area of airspace and especially in the field of air defense,” Estonian Defense Minister Juri Luik said in a statement.
The three Baltic nations, which joined NATO in 2004, are all staunch allies of Washington.
They have been highly worried over what they have perceived to be waning interest by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in trans-Atlantic relations and NATO’s joint defense commitment, particularly since Trump had earlier called the military alliance obsolete.
As Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have no fighter aircraft, NATO fighter jets are responsible for policing Baltic airspace on a four-month rotational basis from bases in Estonia and Lithuania. AP
Navy contract change eliminates Pearl Harbor shipyard jobs
New U.S. Navy contracting terms have resulted in a pullout by a major contractor that is expected to result in the loss of hundreds of jobs at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, officials said.
BAE Systems PLC will no longer perform Navy surface ship repair at Pearl Harbor, eliminating about 325 jobs, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
The Navy contracts with private shipyards and other firms for maintenance on non-nuclear surface ships.
The multinational security, aerospace and ship repair firm was the prime contractor for repair projects through which subcontractor surface ship work was funneled.
BAE announced a five-year multi-ship, multi-option contract in 2014 for modernization and maintenance on nine destroyers and cruisers at Pearl Harbor.
But multi-ship, multi-option contracts using cost-reimbursement have been replaced nationally by a Navy strategy called “multiple award contract-multi order,” officials said.
The new system uses firm-fixed-price contracts that do no allow adjustments for cost overruns, officials said.
BAE cannot bid on smaller, $1 million to $2 million contracts under the new Navy format, but can seek major ship projects that can be $50 million to $100 million, officials said.
BAE’s decision not to tender a new bid resulted from analysis of the Pearl Harbor business environment under the new contracting structure, spokesman Karl Johnson said.
More than 6,000 civilian and military personnel primarily work on submarines at Pearl Harbor. BAE was assigned the use of pier-side space and Dry Dock 4 and expanded its surface ship workforce using hundreds of subcontracted workers.
Under the new construct, the Navy will earmark the smaller jobs for small businesses, “so the big guys like BAE cannot bid on the smaller work, which kept them busy between the big jobs,” said John Stewart of the Ship Repair Association of Hawaii. AP
Putin says Russia is leading world in hypersonic weapons
President Vladimir Putin said Dec. 24 that Russia is the only country in the world that has hypersonic weapons.
Speaking at a meeting with top military brass, Putin said that for the first time in history Russia has an edge in designing a new class of weapons unlike in the past when it was catching up with the United States.
He said that the first unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle is set to go on duty this month, while that the air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missiles already have entered service.
Putin first mentioned the Avangard and the Kinzhal among other prospective weapons systems in his state-of-the-nation address in March 2018.
Putin said then that the Avangard has an intercontinental range and can fly in the atmosphere at a speed 20 times the speed of sound. He noted that the weapon’s ability to change both its course and its altitude en route to a target makes it immune to interception by the the enemy.
Speaking Tuesday, he described the Avangard as a “weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defense systems.”
The Kinzhal, which is carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, entered service with the Russian air force last year. Putin has said that the missile flies 10 times faster than the speed of sound, has a range of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and can carry a nuclear or a conventional warhead. The military said it’s capable of hitting both land targets and navy ships.
The United States and other countries also have worked on designing hypersonic weapons, but they haven’t entered service yet. AP
Belarus’ leader warns Russia against forceful merger
The president of Belarus warned Russia on Dec. 24 against a forced merger of the two ex-Soviet neighbors, saying such a move by Moscow could trigger a war.
In an interview with Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said the West would see a forceful attempt to join the two countries as a threat and stand up to Russia.
His statement reflected simmering tensions between the two allies sparked by the Kremlin’s push for deeper integration.
Lukashenko has ruled Belarus, a nation of 10 million people, for more than a quarter century while tolerating little dissent and relying on cheap energy and loans from Russia.
Russia and Belarus signed a 1997 union agreement that envisaged close political, economic and military ties but stopped short of a full merger.
The Kremlin has recently increased pressure on Belarus, raising energy prices and cutting subsidies. It argued that Belarus should accept closer economic integration if it wants to continue receiving energy resources at Russia’s domestic prices.
It stoked concerns in Belarus that Moscow could be contemplating taking over its neighbor, fear that arose following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Some in Belarus theorized that Putin could see a merger as a way to extend his rule by taking a new position of the head of the new unified state after his current term as Russian president ends in 2024.
Lukashenko and Putin had two rounds of talks this month but failed to reach agreement on a deeper integration. The negotiations triggered opposition rallies in the Belarusian capital of Minsk against any integration plans.
Lukashenko has insisted he would never surrender his country’s independence.
“If Russia tries to violate our sovereignty as some people say, you know how the global community will respond; they will be drawn into a war,” Lukashenko said in the radio interview. “The West and NATO won’t tolerate that because they would see it as a threat to themselves. In that sense, they would be right.” AP