Hawks are screeching about a series of high profile firings and resignations that occurred at the Pentagon last week, seeing in the personnel moves a dark portent of a possible coup by the Trump administration. The dismissals are “nefarious… decapitations,” according to The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin; while journalist Mona Charen dubbed the high-profile resignations a “purge.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper was summarily dismissed last Monday by tweet. Several other top Pentagon hands swiftly followed Esper out the door: his chief of staff, Jen Stewart, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, James Anderson, the acting undersecretary of defense for policy, and Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In addition, Trump is reportedly considering firing CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The named replacements are anathema to the military-industrial establishment, particularly Senate-rejected retired Army General Anthony Tata, who has a history of Islamophobic comments, as top Pentagon policy official, former aide to retired Gen. Michael Flynn Ezra Cohen-Watnick as acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and retired Army Col. Doug Macgregor, a tireless advocate to end America’s endless wars, as special assistant to Christopher Miller, the new acting Pentagon Chief.
The U.S. Army has announced the activation of two new air defense batteries that use the Iron Dome interceptor system. The batteries, based at Fort Bliss in Texas, will help protect systems such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system from attack. Iron Dome will likely deploy to South Korea, where it would protect THAAD forces there from North Korean rocket attack.
In 2000, the Israeli military started seeing a new, asymmetric threat from regional terrorist groups. Short-ranged rockets, each carrying a small high explosive warhead, were being smuggled to groups like Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Fired from the Gaza Strip, these rockets are inaccurate and poorly aimed. They're also difficult to detect before launch and are fired in large numbers, becoming an effective terror weapon.
In response, the U.S. government paid Israeli defense contractors Rafael and Israeli Aerospace Industries to come up with an anti-rocket air defense system.
The result was Iron Dome. Each battery consists of three to four stationary launchers with a combined 20 Tamir missiles and a battlefield radar system. According to Raytheon, which is partnering with Rafael to build Iron Dome in the U.S., each battery can protect an area of 60 square miles.
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