U.S.-led coalition strikes ISIS in Syria

The United States has begun airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

“U.S. military and partner nation forces are undertaking military action against [ISIS] terrorists in Syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles,” said Rear Admiral John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary.

U.S. Central Command said Bahrain (see al-monitor.com), Jordan (see Newsweek), Qatar (Wikipedia), Saudi Arabia (The Atlantic) and the United Arab Emirates (Voice of America) had either participated in or supported the strikes, without elaborating.

More at Al Arabiya News

PLO and Hamas agree landmark pact, Israel responds with air strikes

The two main rival Palestinian factions have signed an accord designed to end seven years of sometimes violent division, paving the way for elections later in the year and the formation of a unity government within weeks.

The move, after a day of talks between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza that lasted until three in the morning, comes less than a week before the expiry of the deadline for US-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 29 April and is certain to complicate US efforts to seek another nine-month extension to those talks. Israel immediately responded by saying the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was moving to peace with Hamas instead of peace with Israel. "He has to choose," said the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. "Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace, so far he hasn't done so."

After the agreement was announced, Israel cancelled a planned session of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. It also launched an air strike on a site in the north of the Gaza Strip, wounding 12 people including children, which underscored the deep mutual suspicion and hostility that persists.

The Guardian

US Air Force Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle

The U.S. Air Force is developing tiny unmanned drones that will fly in swarms, hover like bees, crawl like spiders and even sneak up on unsuspecting targets and execute them with lethal precision.

The Air Vehicles Directorate, a research arm of the Air Force, has released a computer-animated video outlining the the future capabilities of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). The project promises to revolutionize war by down-sizing the combatants.

Read more on Daily Mail

Syria confirms Israeli airstrike

The Syrian army has confirmed that Israeli jets crossed into Syria below radar level at dawn and carried out airstrikes against military targets.

It is unclear, however, what the exact nature of the target of Wednesday's air strikes was. Syrian state media said that the strikes targeted a military research centre near Damascus, while regional security sources told the Reuters and AP news agencies that the target was convoy of trucks allegedly carrying anti-aircraft missiles for Hezbollah in Lebanon. "Israeli fighter jets violated our airspace at dawn today and carried out a direct strike on a scientific research centre in charge of raising our level of resistance and self-defence," the army's general command said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA on Wednesday evening.

The strike came "after terrorist groups made several failed attempts in the past months to take control of the site," the statement added, using the term President Bashar al-Assad's government uses for rebel fighters. The jets entered Syrian airspace via Mount Hermon, or Jabal el-Sheikh in Arabic, the army said. "They... carried out an act of aggression, bombarding the site, causing large-scale material damage and destroying the building," state television quoted the military as saying. The army added that two site workers were killed in the strike, and five others wounded.

Al Jazeera English

Vladimir Putin: Russia Military To Get Hundreds Of New Warplanes and Helicopters

Russia's military will get 1,600 new warplanes and helicopters by 2020, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, as part of efforts to strengthen the country's armed forces.

Putin has worked hard to restore pride in the Cold War-era superpower's military since his first election in 2000.
The planned addition of 600 military planes and 1,000 helicopters is part of a 23 trillion rouble ($720 billion)programme to re-equip a military still weakened by spending cuts prompted by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
"We are talking primarily about providing our forces with state-of-the-art modern technology," Putin said at an air show on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the country's air force.

Huffington Post

CIA seeks new authority to expand Yemen drone campaign

The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, U.S. officials said.

Securing permission to use these “signature strikes” would allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior, such as imagery showing militants gathering at known al-Qaeda compounds or unloading explosives.

The practice has been a core element of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan for several years. CIA Director David H. Petraeus has requested permission to use the tactic against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has emerged as the most pressing terrorism threat to the United States, officials said.

If approved, the change would probably accelerate a campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen that is already on a record pace, with at least eight attacks in the past four months.

The Washington Post

Upgrades to Killer Drone Could Make It Fly for 2 Days Straight – Wired Danger room

WikiLeaks cable: U.S. troops handcuffed and shot Iraqi children in raid

According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, U.S. troops massacred an Iraqi family in the town of Ishaqi in 2006, handcuffing and then shooting 11 people in the head including a woman in her 70's and five children ages five and under.

McClatchy is reporting that the soldiers then called in an air strike on the house to cover up evidence of the killings.

This account differs sharply from an official version of the 2006 incident, which indicated that coalition forces captured an al Qaeda in Iraq operative in the house, which was destroyed in a firefight. The WikiLeaks cable, however, corroborates accounts by Ishaqi townspeople and includes questions about the incident by Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

The cable is dated twelve days after the incident, which took place March 15, 2006. In it, Alston says that autopsies performed in Tikrit on bodies pulled from the wreckage of the farmhouse indicated that all of the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

The Raw Story

Also see Military clears troops in Ishaqi raid probe on MSNBC from 2006 and Mass death returns to Ishaqi. – Uruknet also from 2006

Operation Odyssey Dawn

Western allies unleashed a series of dramatic air and missile strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's military as international leaders mounted the biggest intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As night fell the United States launched Tomahawk missiles at Libyan targets from a warship stationed in the Mediterranean, in what the Pentagon called "Operation Odyssey Dawn." At the same time Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed that British forces were in action "over Libya".

The strikes took place barely 48 hours after the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorising the use of "all necessary force" to protect civilians from Gaddafi's military surge. The patience of the international community finally ran out when Gaddafi's troops pounded the rebel stronghold of Benghazi early yesterday, hours after the Libyan dictator had promised a full ceasefire and invited foreign officials into his country to monitor it.

The Guardian

French warplanes attack tanks and US launches cruise missiles, as international military intervention begins – Al Jazeera