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China is sending its largest surface combatant, the amphibious landing ship Kunlun Shan, to the Gulf of Aden to serve as a command ship for a PLA Navy anti-piracy task force, according to China Defense Blog. This marks the first deployment of the 071 LPD, launched in 2006, the largest naval ship of its own design China has built to date with an estimated displacement of around 20,000 tons. China is scheduled to command the multinational task force operating off the coast of piracy haven Somalia. Accompanying the Kunlun Shan is the destroyer Lanzhou and the supply ship Weishanhu. Available...

Chinese media reports that beginning today the People’ Liberation Army (PLA) will hold six days of military exercises in the East China Sea, a message, analysts say, to the U.S. Navy not to steam its carrier battle groups too close to Chinese shores. While a Chinese military official said the drills are routine, observers say the anti-carrier exercise is intended to pressure the U.S. Navy not to hold joint exercises with the carrier USS George Washington and South Korean ships in the Yellow Sea. Respected China analyst Andrew Erickson says the live fire training aims to demonstrate China’s ability to...

A public announcement saying that the Chinese navy will kick-off a six-day exercise tomorrow in the East China Sea that will feature live ammunition has stirred speculation about the timing of the drill. A fleet under the PLA will take part in the drill from tomorrow to July 5 in waters off Zhengjiang's east coast in the East China Sea, according to a notice published Sunday on the local Wenzhou Evening News at the request of the fleet. The drill will be held from midnight to 6 pm every day. All irrelevant ships are prohibited from entering the region during...

The chatter in China, and military deployments, indicate that the leadership believes they are now able to take Taiwan by force, before the United States can intervene. Such an attack would have to be without warning, because the United States would put forces in the way if there was any indication that an invasion was imminent. This development comes as no surprise to those who have been watching military and political developments in China and Taiwan during the past two decades. At the end of the Cold War, China had three million troops on active duty, but their weapons, warships...

Guess who holds patent for carbon trading plan Disgraced Fannie Mae CEO set to cash in for millions Obama housing adviser Franklin Raines Former Clinton and Obama budget adviser Franklin Raines owns a key carbon-emissions patent he developed as CEO of the government-sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae, positioning him and his partners to make millions of dollars if it is used in any carbon-capping scheme implemented by the Obama administration. Raines and his associates led Fannie Mae and Congress to believe Fannie Mae owned the patent, despite public records to the contrary, a WND investigation has found. Raines and his...

Excerpts from a special report to the recent 29th National Convention of the Communist Party USA, by Joelle Fishman. Joelle Fishman role in the Communist Party's Political Action Commission, which gives her responsibility for organizing Party support for "progressive" Democratic Party candidates at the state, congressional, senate and presidential level. She is also, incidentally, the daughter - in - law of late Soviet spy, Victor Perlo[caption id="attachment_611" align="aligncenter" width="322" caption="Joelle Fishman addresses CPUSA 29th Convention"][/caption] Fishman acknowledges that the Communist Party supported Barack Obama in 2008 - though certainly; not for the first time. The 2010 elections are at the...

Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare. Small firms will be even likelier to lose existing plans. The "midrange estimate is that 66% of small employer plans and 45% of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfathered status by the end of 2013," according to the document. In the worst-case scenario, 69% of employers — 80% of smaller firms — would lose

A senior Chinese admiral delivered a three-minute “rant” to 65 visiting US officials in Beijing last month, in which he said that US arms sales to Taiwan proved that Washington viewed China as an enemy. Since then, US diplomats and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have tried to portray the remarks by Rear Admiral Guan Youfei as at odds with the thinking of the rest of the Chinese government. But in a Washington Post report published on Tuesday, Post reporter John Pomfret interviewed a wide range of experts, officials and military officers in China who indicated that Guan’s speech...

The American people are too simple to choose from "an array of products" in "a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do." Behold the words of Donald Berwick -- doctor, Harvard professor, and Obama's nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), arguably the most powerful position in U.S. medicine, directing the flow of almost one trillion dollars a year.

Last month was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). At the naval parade held to commemorate the event, in front of delegations from 29 countries, PLAN Commander General Wu Shengli declared that Beijing intended to build aircraft carriers, spurring widespread speculation over China’s blue-water ambitions. So what should we make of Beijing’s assertiveness and openness about its carrier plans? My advice: ignore it. Traditional measures of naval power fail to give an accurate picture of China’s maritime ambitions and capabilities. Beijing currently lacks the hardware and skills to keep a carrier at sea,...

spent the morning at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment’s release of their new report “AirSea Battle: A Point of Departure Operational Concept” (you can find the report here as well as the briefing slides). Lots to unpack here from the 123 page report, the author’s brief and the lively discussion that followed. CSBA says that China’s military modernization aims at denying U.S. air and maritime freedom of maneuver and access in the Western Pacific (WestPac) by targeting bases and ships with precision guided missiles. China’s buildup of increasingly capable anti-access/area-denial “battle networks” will, over time, make the current...

White House officials eager to sell the most popular aspects of the health reform law are focusing on four areas to gain votes and popularity for key lawmakers ahead of November's midterm elections. Politico: "Top administration officials, who meet regularly with outside special interest groups to coordinate the public relations effort, have so far focused on expediting and amplifying four key areas of the new law: expanding coverage to young adults, covering sick people with pre-existing conditions or high medical costs, providing tax breaks to small businesses and helping a select group of seniors pay for prescription drugs." Politico reports...

Satellite photos recently revealed that the Chinese Navy has received J-11 jet fighters. These are illegal Chinese copies of the Russian Su-27. This plagiarism has been a source of friction between Russia and China for over five years. It all began, legally, in 1995, when China paid $2.5 billion for the right to build 200 Su-27s. Russia would supply engines and electronics, with China building the other components according to Russian plans and specifications. But after 95 of the Chinese built aircraft were built, Russia cancelled the agreement. They claimed that China was using the knowledge acquired with this Su-27...

The other day we linked to a piece by a Navy commander warning of increasingly activist Chinese naval exercises in recent months. IISS has a new brief providing useful detail on a number of recent Chinese sorties into the South China Sea. Two exercises in March and April were the first of any real size beyond the First Island Chain, and “indicated that deployments beyond the chain were now official policy,” says London based IISS. The flotillas contained the PLA’s most advanced warships, of Russian manufacture (Kilo class diesel electric subs and Sovremenny class destroyers). In March and April a...

For much of the Cold War, China's navy was little more than an elaborate coast guard. It was barely a blip on the maritime horizons of Japan and Southeast Asia. Today the Chinese armed forces are in the midst of an intense and sustained modernization program, and the navy has emerged as a key service for protecting and advancing national interests. It gets more than one-third of the declared military budget. China's navy, like those of other leading nations, aims to protect vital trade routes, project power and influence, and deter potential adversaries. What makes the Chinese navy significantly different...

WASHINGTON — Pioneering moonwalking astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of hastily concocting an ill-conceived road map for manned space exploration in its move to shelve NASA's back-to-the-moon program. Armstrong, who took man's first steps on the moon in 1969, and Cernan, who took the last steps in 1972, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that President Barack Obama's plans to end shuttle flights and shift responsibility for building manned spacecraft to commercial companies was a risky strategy that reflected a predilection for developing commercial spacecraft industry at all costs.

So is the Federal Communications Commission really going to place common carrier restrictions on Internet service providers? Well, yes, but not too many of them. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Friday said he would move to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, while at the same time insisting that ISPs be exempt from the vast majority of regulations in the current common carrier rules.

As the eyes of the world are on the Expo in Shanghai, tensions are rising in the seas between Japan and China. Last month, Chinese warships and submarines were spotted near Okinawa. There was also an incident involving Chinese navy helicopters flying dangerously close to Japanese ships. The most recent incident, involving an aggressive Chinese ship forcing the cancellation of a Japanese marine survey, has been called a violation of Japan’s sovereign rights by the Japanese government: The latest incident occurred on Monday afternoon in the East China Sea, about 320 kilometers northwest of Amami Oshima Island, Kagoshima Prefecture. A...

Military Advantage: Our defense secretary proposes doing what no other foreign adversary has done: sink the U.S. Navy. We don't need those billion-dollar destroyers, he says. Meanwhile, the Chinese navy rushes to fill the vacuum. Once Britannia ruled the waves, later to be replaced by America and its Navy. From the Battle of Midway to President Reagan's 600-ship fleet that helped win the Cold War, naval supremacy has been critical to the protection and survival of our nation. Which is why we find the recent remarks of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the Navy League at the Sea-Air-Space expo so...

The growing capacity of China military force tip the balance in the regional stability of the Asia Pacific area including Taiwan Strait and Southeast Asia, noted Admiral Robert F. Willard, the current Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), while adding that in a broader context, the biggest challenge to US navy in the Pacific Ocean is China, according to Liberty Times report. “In response to China’s immense presence in the Pacific Ocean, the PACOM will step up its efforts to maintain the regional stability,” said Willard at an interview by the Straits Times, a Singaporean news media. China is...