Tag Archives: U.S. Military

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – October 28, 2022

The cover of the 28 October edition of the Guardian Weekly.

The Guardian – Inside the October 28, 2022 Issue:

Britain’s political fever dream continued apace this week as Rishi Sunak became prime minister without anyone even voting for him. The former chancellor, the country’s third prime minister in less than two months and the fifth in six years, is also the UK’s first leader of colour and the first Hindu to take the office.

Jonathan Freedland considers how big a blow Truss’s ill-judged stint in power has delivered to the school of neoliberal economic thought.

Brazil also faces a judgment day this weekend, as Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva square up in a presidential runoff of deep significance for the country and the planet, with the protection of the Amazon at stake. The outcome is on such a knife-edge that not even the nation’s gangsters can decide who to vote for, as our Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports.

On the subject of the environment, don’t miss Naomi Klein’s long read about how Egypt’s government has used the coming Cop27 conference to greenwash its own oppressive political activities.

Then, there’s a revealing interview with Chelsea Manning, who opens up to Emma Brockes on what really happened when she leaked thousands of classified US military documents.

Morning News: 80 Years After Pearl Harbor, Car Politics, Office & Home

The Japanese attack set America on a course toward military hegemony; recent administrations have walked it back. We ask what the country would fight for now.

A clash of priorities between national and city-level politicians the world over makes for fraught politics on car ownership. And our columnist envisages how the office will compete with home in a post-pandemic world.

Morning News Podcast: U.S. Airstrike In Syria, Covid Relief Plan, Airlines

President Biden orders U.S. airstrike targeting Iran-backed militia, GOP mayors embrace pandemic relief plan, and complaints against airlines and travel agencies hit record high.

Defense: ‘Future Of The Aircraft Carrier’ (Video)

Expensive, massive and lethal, the aircraft carrier has been the cornerstone of American security for close to a century, but with advances in missile design, will it remain on top? Aircraft carriers are expensive. The latest carrier in the U.S. Navy, part of what’s called the Ford class, costs $12.8 billion per ship, and that’s before the cost of fixing new technology, aircraft flying off the deck and the cost of operating the carrier in the high seas for months at a time. The U.S. has more active aircraft carriers than every other country in the world combined. The U.S. Navy currently has ten Nimitz-class carriers, one Ford-class carrier and nine amphibious assault ships, which are smaller and focus on helicopters and short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft. A Nimitz-class carrier can carry a mix of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E-2D Hawkeye surveillance aircraft and an assortment of other support aircraft and helicopters. The carrier fighter of the future is the F-35C. But to field the new aircraft, most U.S. carriers will need to be upgraded.

Morning News Podcasts: Impeachment Trial Opens, Extremism In U.S. Military

On the first day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, the Senate voted that the trial of a former president is constitutional, setting up days of arguments from House managers and Trump’s defense team.

Also, the U.S. military will pause normal operations to examine the problem of domestic extremism within the military ranks. And, Twitter is testing a new pilot program to try and get the spread of misinformation on the platform under control.

History: Planning And Building ‘The Pentagon’

The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.

Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on 11 September 1941, and the building was dedicated on 15 January 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project;[6] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.

The Pentagon is the world’s largest office building, with about 6,500,000 square feet (150 acres; 0.60 km2) of floor space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (85 acres; 0.34 km2) are used as offices.[7][8] Some 23,000 military and civilian employees,[8] and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 miles (28.2 km)[8] of corridors. The central five-acre (2.0 ha) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed “ground zero” on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.