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A top Pentagon official admits U.S. defenses against Russian hypersonic missiles are “inadequate.”
…Hamas says its fighters are fully prepared for any attack by Israeli forces on Rafah, while the first shipment of aid to a U.S.-built floating pier in the Palestinian enclave has departed from Cyprus.
…Anti-regime forces are tightening the noose around the military junta in Myanmar, a country in play in U.S.-China geopolitical competition.
…Some of the anti-Israel protests on U.S. college campuses have been supported by organizations that traveled to communist Cuba to receive resistance training, according to an investigative report by Gelet Martinez Fragela.
…And Congress is formally probing Princeton University’s ties to Iranian regime officials.
A Senate Armed Services hearing turned heated this week when Strategic Forces subcommittee Chairman Sen. Angus King laid into Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Missile Defense John Hill about why the Biden administration’s 2025 missile defense budget request falls far short on funding the senator said was needed to meet the growing threat of hypersonic missiles from foreign adversaries — in particular, Russia.
“We have no defense for hypersonic missiles, yes or no? Mr. Hill? Any defense on hypersonic missiles?” Mr. King pressed during one exchange. If Russia launches a hypersonic missile traveling 6,000 miles per hour and “you are the commander of an aircraft carrier in the Greenland gap. … What do you do?”
Mr. Hill responded: “We have some systems in the terminal stage, but we need more. You are correct — … our hypersonic defenses are inadequate. … No argument, we need to focus on hypersonic defenses.”
Mr. King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, then stressed that “this is next-year kind of stuff. I don’t get the budget.”
Russia has claimed significant advances in hypersonic missile development and deployment programs in recent years. Ukrainian researchers said in February that Russian forces had hit Kyiv with a hypersonic Zircon missile.
The number of U.S. Special Forces missions around the world is expected to increase dramatically over the coming decade, according to Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, who says the reason is that America is staring down great-power challenges from China and Russia, regional threats from Iran and North Korea, and the resurgence of extremist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda.
“In this decisive decade, autocrats and terrorists alike seek to upend the free and open international system,” Gen. Fenton said in a keynote address this week at the Special Operations Forces Week convention in Tampa, Florida. National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang reports from the gathering that the rapidly evolving technological battlespace — defined by drone swarms, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence — is creating unique new challenges.
Current and retired military officials say deeper partnerships with allies will be needed to stave off enemy influence in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere. One former official told Mr. Wolfgang that U.S. Special Forces could be crucial in “irregular warfare” operations to weaken enemies from within and chip away at their ability to conduct traditional and nontraditional warfare against the United States.
Russia is once again escalating its bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, carrying out relentless drone and missile strikes against the country’s energy sector and electrical grid.
Ukrainians say attacks in recent weeks have been more ferocious than ever as Russian forces press an initiative in the country’s south and east. Threat Status special correspondent Guillaume Ptak has a sobering report from the front lines that examines the battered environs of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where there is vivid evidence of the physical and personal devastation of Russia’s assault.
Last Friday, a Russian glide bomb tore through the cloudless sky and landed on one of Kharkiv’s quiet residential neighborhoods, annihilating two houses and killing an 82-year-old woman. As stunned onlookers gathered around the smoldering ruins and firefighters extinguished the last glowing embers, 74-year-old Kharkiv resident Valerii Kharchenko remarked to Mr. Ptak that the event, though horrific, had become routine for his city.
Over the past few months, Russian bombs and militarized drones have been striking major cities and small villages across Ukraine.
Two classified State Department documents made public in part by a House subcommittee suggest Chinese President Xi Jinping was involved in covering up the deadly COVID-19 outbreak.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz reports that the heavily censored reports sent from American diplomats in Taiwan to the State Department in July and August 2020 also provide new clues to the Chinese military’s role at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the location that at least two U.S. intelligence agencies believe played a role in the origin of the pandemic.
The redacted State Department reports, once labeled “secret/sensitive” and “secret/noforn” (no foreign dissemination), were made public this week by a select House Government Oversight subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.
Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup penned a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday asking that the full contents of the documents be made public. “The American people deserve to see the information that is hidden under these redactions,” the Ohio Republican wrote.
Why would any sane government allow terrorist sympathizers into the country it’s elected to protect? That’s the question put forward by Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. August Pfluger, both Republicans, who’ve introduced Senate and House versions of the Terrorist Inadmissibility Codification Act, which they say would give Congress the power to revoke the “visas of foreign visitors who support Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, al Qaeda, Palestine Islamic Jihad or any related group.”
“The First Amendment guarantees every American the right to free speech, but no one has the right to destroy private property, trespass illegally or attack innocent people,” the two lawmakers write. “This is why college administrators are justified in disbanding anti-Israel protests-turned-riots by force. We can and should, however, go one step further: We should deport the non-Americans who have participated in these riots.”
“What would President Franklin Roosevelt’s response have been if another nation had called on him to stop U.S. and Allied forces from taking Berlin and squashing the Nazi regime in 1945?” asks columnist Cal Thomas.
“How about President Harry Truman when it came to dropping nuclear bombs on Japan, prompting its swift surrender?” Mr. Thomas writes. “In the case of Germany, if the Allied forces had pulled their punches, Hitler might have survived, regrouped his National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and continued killing Jews.”
“Those analogies,” Mr. Thomas argues, “are applicable when it comes to what Israel is trying to achieve in Rafah — the defeat of Hamas, rendering it incapable of carrying out its threat to repeat the murderous spree it conducted against Israel last Oct. 7 ‘over and over again.’”
• May 10 — U.S. Leadership in Multilaterals: A Fireside Chat with Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Trade and Development Alexia Latortue, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• May 13 — The Way Ahead to Secure Taiwan’s Resilience, Wilson Center.
• May 13 — Strengthening the Middle Ground of the Defense-Industrial Landscape, Atlantic Council.
• May 13 — Implementing the US International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy, Atlantic Council.
• May 14 — Holding China Accountable for Its Role in the Most Catastrophic Pandemic of Our Time: COVID-19, The Heritage Foundation.
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