Iran's Shahab-3 Just Obliterated Dimona — The World Will Never Be The Same

Scott Ritter Updates

BREAKING: Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missile has struck the Dimona nuclear facility — and the world as we know it has changed FOREVER. Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, breaks down what this strike REALLY means for the Middle East, Israel, and global nuclear security.

💥 What happens when a nuclear site gets hit?

💥 Why is the mainstream media SILENT on this?

💥 Is this the beginning of World War 3?

💥 What does Scott Ritter say the West is hiding?

The Dimona nuclear reactor has been Israel's most guarded secret for decades. Now, Iran's most powerful ballistic missile — the Shahab-3 — has allegedly reached its target. The geopolitical shockwaves are being felt from Washington to Moscow.

Scott Ritter — the man who PREDICTED this escalation — gives his unfiltered, expert analysis that you will NOT hear on CNN, Fox News, or BBC.

Join The US Military - Kill And Die For Israel

Brian McGlinchey | Stark Realities

President Trump's decision to join Israel in launching a regime-change war on Iran has so far cost the lives of at least 13 American service members. More than 200 have been wounded, dozens seriously enough to require evacuations to military hospitals in Europe and the United States. Among them are individuals who've suffered traumatic brain injuries, burns and shrapnel wounds. One was facing potential amputation of an arm or leg.

As much as these service members and their families are victims of Iran's justified retaliation for a surprise attack perpetrated amid ongoing negotiations, they're victims of a betrayal perpetrated by their president and the joint chiefs of staff, who cast them into an unconstitutional war of aggression, packaged in lies and initiated to advance the agenda of a foreign government, while undermining the security of their own country.

Of course, US casualties comprise a small subset of the total bloodshed. In executing this unjust war, Americans have collectively inflicted far more death and dismemberment than they've endured, teaming up with their Israeli counterparts to kill more than 3,000 Iranians, including some 150 schoolgirls — mostly between age 7 and 12 — whose school was destroyed by Tomahawk cruise missiles at the war's very start.

Though it should have already been apparent, Operation Epic Fury should make clear that — service members' good intentions aside — combat waged under the US flag rarely has anything to do with American security. Moreover — and I say this as former Army Reserve enlistee and Regular Army officer — anyone thinking of starting or extending a military career should understand that their government may send them to be killed, maimed or psychologically damaged, and to slaughter foreign innocents, so long as it helps those in power remain in the good graces of the extremists who rule Israel, and their powerful collaborators inside the United States.

A New Regime-Change War Built On False Premises

Under international law, a war of aggression is considered a supreme war crime unto itself, and Operation Epic Fury is precisely that. Like so many of America's wars before it, this one was launched on false premises. Contrary to the US-Israeli narrative...

Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. In 2007, the US intelligence community assessed that Iran halted any effort to develop a nuclear weapon in 2003. Since then, the intelligence community has periodically re-validated that conclusion, most recently in March 2025. Belying Trump's claim that the United States had only two weeks in which to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this week testified that Iran had made "no efforts" to rebuild its enrichment capacity after it was devastated by last summer's US bombing.

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The price of war on Iran: Washington’s mounting military and financial drain

Abbas al-Zein | The Cradle

The US-Israeli war on Iran has triggered one of the most dangerous escalations witnessed in West Asia in recent years. US military bases spread across the Persian Gulf region have increasingly come under direct missile and drone attack, marking a significant shift in the nature of regional warfare. 

While initial coverage concentrated on battlefield developments and the pace of aerial bombardment, the broader and more consequential cost of confrontation – both military and economic – has gradually begun to take shape.

Alongside reciprocal strikes, there are growing indications of rapid depletion in high‑value missile defense systems, extensive use of expensive strategic munitions, and rising operational strain across US forces. 

At the same time, global markets and energy supply chains have begun to respond to the expanding confrontation. These overlapping dynamics raise fundamental questions about the distribution of losses during the early phase of the war and about the long‑term trajectory of escalation.

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Israel's high-tech investment boom is fuelled by genocide

Comment: It's nothing new. Israel has always been obsessed with technology that kills, be it germ, chemical, atomic or psychological warfare. 

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Farah Choucair | Middle East Eye

Brutal technology field-tested on Palestinians has helped to propel the state's economy to the top of global performance charts

Late last year, the Economist published an article titled “Which economy did best in 2025?” The annual ranking of 36 mostly rich countries, conducted for the fifth year in a row, aimed to pinpoint the “economy of the year”. 

The Economist compiled data on five indicators: inflation, GDP, jobs, stock market performance, and “inflation breadth”, measuring the share of product categories with an annual price increase of more than two percent.

Countries were ranked on each measure, creating an “overall score of economic success” in 2025. To my surprise, Israel ranked third, after Portugal and Ireland. 

Two main indicators have driven this “economic success”. Israel’s economy recorded a GDP growth rate of 3.5 percent, surpassing the global average of around 3.2 percent. More surprisingly, its stock market soared, with share prices growing by 53 percent over the previous year - outperforming the world’s major stock markets.

Although Israel has been waging war on Gaza for more than two years now, such figures typically reflect a strong economy, with companies reporting solid earnings and growth, and domestic and foreign investors expressing their confidence in the country.

According to a Times of Israel report, foreign investors “flocked to Israeli markets to buy shares starting in mid-2024 after a sell-off at the outbreak of the war in 2023”. 

Citing data from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the report noted that as of last September, “the value of holdings by foreign financial institutions in Tel Aviv stocks, excluding dual-listed stocks, reached a historic record of $19.2 billion, more than double the figure before the outbreak of war”.  

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Israel's growing role in Taiwan's air defense alarms Beijing

Uriel Araujo | Infobrics.org

Israel's expanding ties with Taiwan, particularly in missile defense, are quietly reshaping regional geopolitics and alarming Beijing. In this context, even small defense transfers could undermine years of careful diplomatic calibration.

Israeli-Taiwanese cooperation, long discreet and underreported, is now moving into far more sensitive terrain. Recent reports indicate that Israeli know-how has been quietly feeding into Taiwan's emerging missile-defense architecture, the so-called "T-DOME," a system explicitly inspired by Israel's Iron Dome. As a matter of fact, this development has already triggered a blunt diplomatic rebuke from Beijing, raising uncomfortable questions about Israel's long-standing balancing act between rival global powers.

A detailed account of this growing cooperation comes from Nadia Helmy, Visiting Senior Researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), who notes that Chinese intelligence agencies have detected expanding Israeli assistance to Taiwan's missile shield, particularly in radar integration, command-and-control architecture, and layered interception concepts. According to Helmy, Beijing views this cooperation not as an isolated commercial exchange but as a strategic signal, thereby crossing a political red line.

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Ex-Mossad Head: We've 'Boobytrapped And Manipulated' Equipment in 'All Countries You Can Imagine'

Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation

Ex-Mossad head Yossi Cohen boasted during a recent podcast that Israel has "boobytrapped" and "manipulated" equipment like that used in their pager attack in Lebanon in "all countries that you can imagine."

He said he "invented" the "manipulated equipment method" in 2002 to 2004 and had already used it in the "Second Lebanon War" back in 2006.

WATCH

Cohen's comments were made on the Oct 16 episode of the Zionist propaganda podcast The Brink.

I said after the pager and walkie talkie attacks on Lebanon that "any goods connected to Israel must now be assumed to be rigged with explosives until proven otherwise."

For a country that's so obsessed with getting laws passed in America and throughout the West to ban engaging with BDS, the decision to rig consumer goods with explosives and then boast about having boobytrapped and manipulated equipment throughout the world is truly remarkable.

This clearly represents a global security threat. 

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Exposing JFK Airport’s hidden arms pipeline to Israel

Shaniyat Turani-Chodhury | Mondoweiss

 

Shipping records obtained by Mondoweiss show New York's JFK Airport is a key transit hub for U.S. weapons parts headed to Israel's genocide in Gaza.

On July 16, 2025, a Boeing 747 operated by Challenge Airlines lifted off from JFK Airport in New York. The cargo manifest listed a 347-kilogram shipment from Lockheed Martin. Inside was a BRU-68 bomb release unit, a mechanism that allows an F-35 fighter jet to drop 2,000-pound bombs.

The flight's final stop was Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel, home to the F-35I fleet bombing Gaza.

This was not an isolated transfer. Internal shipping records shared by the Palestinian Youth Movement, and cross-referenced with public flight-tracking data, reveal a steady flow of U.S.-made weapons components moving from New York to Israel. Parts for fighter jets, missile launchers, and ammunition have routinely left JFK on commercial cargo flights while Israel's air campaign destroys homes, schools, and hospitals.

These shipments started before the current genocide, but have increased greatly since October 7, 2023. They continue now despite mounting evidence of war crimes and calls for an arms embargo. What they reveal is that New York City is a crucial logistical hub in the supply chain arming Israel's assault.

Between July 2 and July 23, at least six arms shipments from JFK to Israel were verified through waybills, flight data, and internal records provided to Mondoweiss. These findings add new depth to earlier reporting in The Intercept and The Ditch, showing how JFK Airport has become a critical link in Israel's military supply chain.

"What these records show is that the genocide in Gaza isn't only manufactured in Washington — it's facilitated right here in New York," said Kaleem Hawa of the Palestinian Youth Movement. "JFK has become a gateway for the weapons that are killing our people."

These flights and their deadly cargo reveal the logistics networks arming Israel's genocide in Gaza that, for many in the U.S., is hiding in plain sight. 

 

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Army Developing AI Missiles That Identify Their Own Targets

Technocracy News

Technocrats at defense contractors have developed a hybrid targeting system using drones and AI that find their own targets, then coordinate with artillery-launch missiles for destruction.

There has never been a weapon created in the history of mankind that was not used in battle.
 ⁃ TN Editor

The U.S. Army is working on a new artillery shell capable of locating enemy targets, including moving tanks and armored vehicles. The shell, called Cannon-Delivered Area Effects Munition (C-DAEM), is designed to replace older weapons that leave behind unexploded cluster bomblets on the battlefield that might pose a threat to civilians. The shell is designed to hit targets even in situations where GPS is jammed and friendly forces are not entirely sure where the enemy is.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Army fielded dual purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) artillery rounds. DPICM was basically the concept of cluster bombs applied to artillery, with a single shell packing dozens of tennis ball-sized grenades or bomblets. DPICM shells were designed to eject the bomblets over the battlefield, dispersing them over a wide area. The bomblets were useful unprotected infantry troops and could knock out a tank or armored vehicle’s treads, weapons, or sensors, disabling it.

DPICM made artillery more lethal than ever, but there was a cost nobody foresaw: unexploded dud bomblets often littered battlefields, becoming a danger to civilians long after the war was over. An international movement to ban cluster bombs and artillery came about, and though the U.S. isn’t a signatory it has pledged not to use munitions with a dud rate greater than one percent. Dud rates for such weapons often reach five percent or more.

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PENTAGON: New laser tech can make people hear commands

futurism.com

The Pentagon is working on a weapon that uses lasers and plasma to transmit sound files, even human speech, directly to individual people at great distances.

That’s according to a story by the Military Times newspaper, which reports that military researchers are working on ways to use lasers and plasma to control crowds. The story is short on technical details — but, at the same time, a troubling glimpse of the military’s desire to control people using next-gen tech.

Frikkin Lasers

 

It’s not clear how the tech works.

And for now, the Military Times reports that the Pentagon’s scientists haven’t yet built a speech-transmitting laser capable of passing through a wall — though officials believe it could be ready to deploy in as little as five years.

Hearing Voices

 

But, as the tech progresses, Live Science reports that the lasers could be beamed down from military planes or other vehicles to issue instructions or disperse crowds of protestors or otherwise disgruntled people in the area.

“Now I can put it anywhere. Range doesn’t make any difference,” chief scientist Dave Law told Military Times. “Put plasma at a target, modulate it and it can create a voice.”

READ MORE: Pentagon scientists are making talking plasma laser balls for use as non-lethal weapons [Military Times]

More on brain lasers: MIT Used a Laser to Transmit Audio Directly Into a Person’s Ear

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US Police Have Killed Over 1,200% More Citizens Than Mass Shooters Since 2015

Matt Agorist
Free Thought Project

Tragically, in America, mass shootings — in which murdering psychopaths go on rampages in public spaces — have claimed the lives of 339 people since 2015. While this number is certainly shocking and far too high, during this same time frame, police in America have claimed the lives of 4,355 citizens. 

While some of these citizens were armed and dangerous, others were innocent, unarmed, and include small children. Daniel Shaver was one of these people whose life was brought to a screeching halt as he begged on his knees for police not to shoot him. Despite being innocent and unarmed, this father of three was murdered in cold blood by Philip Brailsford who was never held accountable and allowed to retire from the police force with his pension.

Jeremy Mardis was another one of these citizens who was gunned down in cold blood by two killer cops. Mardis was just 6-years-old when he was murdered by these killer cops — one of whom was released last month after serving less than two years for his role in this innocent child’s death.

The list goes on. Yet despite its increasing length, most American citizens think that reining in 
America’s deadly police problem is somehow “unpatriotic” or “un-American.” Instead of the right realizing the threat to freedom caused by cops who can kill thousands with impunity, they blame the left. Instead of the left realizing the threat to freedom caused by cops who kill with impunity, most of them blame guns.

The result of this complacency and failure to address the problem has been less freedom and more gun grabs. 

Sadly, most people who call for gun control fail to realize what that actually means—only the government has the guns. And, if the above numbers are any indicator of what that would mean, this would be a horrific scenario.

Every time a lunatic, who is usually on some form mind-altering pharmaceutical, goes on a shooting rampage, the do-gooders in Washington, with the aid of their citizen flocks, take to the TV and the internet to call for disarming the American people.

The citizens who call for themselves and their neighbors to be disarmed, likely think no deeper than the shallow speeches given by the political blowhards, designed to appeal to emotion only. They do not think of what happens during and after the government attempts to remove guns from society. They also completely ignore the fact that criminals do not obey laws and making guns illegal would have zero effect on criminals possessing guns.

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Raytheon Technologies merger, power-hogging industry trends and the racket of war

Christian Sorensen
Dissident Voice

 Last week two giant war corporations, Raytheon and United Technologies, announced they would merge in early 2020. The new behemoth, to be known as Raytheon Technologies, is expected to have a combined value of over $100 billion in capitalist markets. Recent history provides context to understand today's war industry and the nature of this merger.

The nineteen-nineties witnessed a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. war industry. Some of the bigger moves were Boeing merging with McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed acquiring Martin Marietta, and Raytheon gobbling up Hughes Aircraft. These moves occurred in parallel to another phenomenon: Home and abroad, the Pentagon effectively doubled down on the corporatization of military functions. Jobs that once were carried out by the troops (e.g. mowing the lawn, serving chow, logistics, eavesdropping on governments, transportation, combat) were increasingly in the private domain, up for grabs to the shrewdest corporation.
The Clinton White House, a country club of neoliberal ideology, was fully onboard. It encouraged the corporatization of the War Department. This aligned well with President Clinton's other accomplishments in office: attacking sovereign nations (e.g. expanding sanctions against Iran's oil sector in 1995, and launching industry ordnance at Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, and Sudan); brutalizing the destitute, working poor, and caged (via the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act, the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, the 1996 Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Act, and the 1994 Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act); and aiding corporate greed (by passing NAFTA and the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act and boosting spending on war). One of Clinton's most damaging achievements, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, complemented these activities by deregulating the telecoms and allowing cross-ownership in corporate media, clogging the information space with info-tainment and permitting corporate ideology to further dominate our perception of the world around us. Support for neoliberal economic polices, including the corporatization of war, is one of many traits that both parties in the D.C. regime share.

When the dust settled at the end of the 1990s, three beasts hogged about two-thirds of the power in the U.S. war industry: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. These corporations set out to please shareholders and insatiable Wall Street investment firms. The Pentagon had less leverage over the war industry at this time, because, in part, these three beasts were nearly the only game in town. War corporations soon stepped up their game, influencing Capitol Hill with greater ferocity and creativity. Campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures increased. And more titans of capital cycled from war corporations through the Pentagon's leadership ranks. The war industry also pursued more foreign military sales, including increased sales to brutal regimes like Mubarak's Egypt, the House of Saud, and the Zionist Entity known as Israel. Enter 9.11. With Muslims to bomb and Asian countries to occupy, the Department of War acceded to full corporatization.

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‘Irrational & unlawful’: UK govt dealt landmark defeat over arms sales to Saudi Arabia

RT

In a legal challenge brought by anti-arms trade campaigners, three of the UK’s top judges concluded that it was “irrational and unlawful” of the government to allow arms sales to Saudi Arabia without making proper checks. 

The UK Court of Appeal has ruled that the British government has “made no attempt” to assess whether Riyadh had breached international humanitarian law in the Yemen war.

… the process of decision-making by the Government was wrong in law in one significant respect.

However, the judges said that their ruling does not mean that UK arms export licences to Saudi Arabia have to be suspended immediately.

See also: UK report on ‘human rights’ forgets to mention Saudi Arabia in section on Yemen war

Military-Industrial Blockbuster: United Technologies To Buy Raytheon, Creating One Of World's Largest Defense Firms

Zero Hedge

United Technologies has agreed to buy Raytheon in an all stock deal, forming one of the world's largest aerospace and defense companies with more than $74 billion in revenue and $13.5 billion in EBITDA, through one of the industry’s biggest deals ever.



With $69 billion in pure A&D sales, the new company will be the third largest Aerospace and Defense company in the world after Boeing and Airbus.



Looking ahead, the combined company is expected to generate tremendous cash flow growth...

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Will the US ever be held accountable for its war crimes?

Jean Perier
New Eastern Outlook

For more than a decade, the United States has been steadily increasing the scale of its illegal military operations across the Middle East, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of ousting the Taliban who allegedly granted sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. According to a study released by Brown University, more than 140,000 Afghan militants and civilians have died in the fight.

Since December 2001, the United States has been conducting various operations in Somali, and even today the Pentagon carries out both air strikes and ground operations, accompanied by a constant toll of civilian lives.

Back in 2003, Washington launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam Hussein of WMDs he didn't even have and to convert Iraq into a «democracy», plunging this country into a state of perpetual chaos guaranteeing that it will remain a Western bastion in the Arab and Islamic World for years to come.

Eight years ago, the US succeeded in destabilizing Libya, when US warplanes attacked the troops of Libya's most successful ruler to date - Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, Washington took every step to ensure his government would be ousted and and its key leaders murdered. The Libyan conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. In 2016, Barack Obama said that Libya was probably the "worst mistake" of his presidency.

The seven years of war in Syria resulted in a death toll of half a million Syrian nationals. Here, American troops are stationed illegally to fight ISIS and "indigenous ground forces." The strange wording that Washington uses in its official rhetoric is no coincidence, since more than on one occasion US armed forces have opened fire on both Syrian government troops and civilians, with no official rationale ever being given to explain this brutality.

In Yemen, the United States has been backing Saudi Arabia's efforts to put an end to the Houthi rebellion for three years. Washington carries on supplying Saudi authorities with high-precision weapons, combat aircraft and intelligence. This war has already triggered the largest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, with 20 million people finding themselves on the brink of starvation. 

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US, Israel to supply anti-aircraft missiles to Kurdish militants in Syria: Report

Press TV

 

The United States and Israel are reportedly set to supply anti-aircraft missiles to Kurdish militants in northern Syria amid tensions between Ankara and Washington over the latter’s support for the militants, which the Turkish government views as terrorists.

Citing local sources, Turkey’s Yeni Safak daily reported that the US is set to deliver shipments of Stinger Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) to militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK, it added, has designated the towns of Rmelan and Shaddadah in Syria’s Hasakah Province as well as the Jalabiyah and al-Omar regions as launching points for its American-supplied missiles.

Ankara is unhappy with Washington’s support for Kurdish militants of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it views as an extension of the PKK, and has repeatedly called on the US administration to stop providing them with arms.

The PKK has been fighting for autonomy inside Turkey for decades and runs bases in neighboring Syria and Iraq as well.

The report further said the regime in Israel has also vowed to supply the Kurds with Spike anti-aircraft missiles in the Syrian provinces of Dayr al-Zawr and Raqqah following high-level meetings between the militants and Tel Aviv.

Israel has long been backing the militants operating against the Syrian government. The regime has, on several occasions, criticized Turkey for its operations against the Kurdish militants.

The US-Kurdish alliance is closely coordinating the missiles’ deployment to Syria as part of a “special joint strategy,” according to the report.

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U.S. Responsible for 36 Percent of Total Global Military Expenditure

trust.org

Global military expenditure reached its highest level last year since the end of the Cold War, fueled by increased spending in the United States and China, the world's two biggest economies, a leading defence think-tank said on Monday.

In its annual report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said overall global military spending in 2018 hit $1.82 trillion, up 2.6 percent on the previous year.

That is the highest figure since 1988, when such data first became available as the Cold War began winding down.

U.S. military spending rose 4.6 percent last year to reach $649 billion, leaving it still by far the world's biggest spender. It accounted for 36 percent of total global military expenditure, nearly equal to the following eight biggest-spending countries combined, SIPRI said.

China, the second biggest spender, saw military expenditure rise 5.0 percent to $250 billion last year, the 24th consecutive annual increase.

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Weaponized nanotech - These "Insects" Are NOT What You Think

secureteam10

Jeremy Hunt is lying about Britain’s role in Yemen

Stop The War Coalition

In a recent Politico article Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, has defended the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and The UAE. Arms that are often used in perpetuating Yemen’s civil war. Hunt claims the UK-Saudi relationship ‘Helps us influence their leaders’ toward peaceful resolution. In reality, Britain’s supply of arms only feeds the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The multi Billion pound Al Yamamah (The Dove) arms deal provides Saudi Arabia with 25% of its arms imports for use fighting Houthi forces in Yemen. As the second largest arms supplier to the Saudi led coalition Britain is culpable in its infamous war crimes. Such atrocities have included bombing a wedding party killing 20 civilians; bombing a funeral killing 140 civilians and wounding 600 more; and even an air attack on a school bus leaving 40 Yemeni children dead. British firm BAE systems provides the typhoon jets used for this type of air to surface attacks. No wonder that the UK wouldn’t back a UN investigation into Saudi war crimes.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have been killed in the conflict, and millions more displaced. Combined with mass starvation and a cholera epidemic Yemen is now the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. 

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Shipyard Evacuated After Bomb Reportedly Discovered Aboard Nuclear Submarine

Zero Hedge

Staff at Barrow's shipyard in Devonshire have been evacuated following reports that a bomb has been found aboard a nuclear submarine, according to local press reports.

An employee said staff in the Devonshire Dock Hall complex had been told about an anonymous tip that there was a bomb aboard one of the Astute class vessels at the shipyard.

A spokesman for BAE systems, the British defense firm that runs the yard, confirmed that there is an "ongoing incident" at the yard.

"We can confirm there is an ongoing incident at our Barrow site and we are liaising with Cumbria Police who are carrying out an investigation. As a precaution the Devonshire Dock Complex has been closed. Staff, contractors and local residents are being kept informed."

Police said they have arrived to assist BAE staff, and although an ambulance was called to the scene, there have been no reports of injuries.

Ukraine: US arms sales making big business money while ordinary people pay the price

The Conversation

Selling lethal weapons to Ukraine is the equivalent of pouring kerosene onto a flame. But ongoing hostilities between Ukraine and Russia – including the Kerch strait crisis, which began late last year when Russia intercepted three Ukrainian vessels and took 24 crew members captive – are also a major business opportunity for the world’s largest defence contractors. Despite the risk of serious escalation, these companies continue to provide Ukraine with lethal aid so it can defend itself against Russia – for a price, of course.

The US special representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volker, stated recently that Washington remains committed to providing support to Ukraine and its military, including anti-tank systems. He even hinted that the US is considering expanding the types of lethal aid that it could begin selling to Ukraine, saying: “We also need to be looking at things like air defence and coastal defence.”

This is a troubling prospect. In March, US army general Curtis Scaparrotti said that the US could also bolster the Ukrainian military’s sniper capabilities. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said:

There are other systems, sniper systems, ammunition and, perhaps looking at the Kerch Strait, perhaps consideration for naval systems, as well, here in the future as we move forward.

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