Tag: SecDef

By Scott Jackson

Statement from new U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was sworn in the day before yesterday. This is some of what he had to say today in a messages to the forces. 

“…The President gave us a clear mission: achieve Peace through Strength. We will do this in three ways – by restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and reestablishing deterrence.

-We will revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military. We are American warriors. We will defend our country. Our standards will be high, uncompromising, and clear. The strength of our military is our unity and our shared purpose.

-We will rebuild our military by matching threats to capabilities. This means reviving our defense industrial base, reforming our acquisition process, passing a financial audit, and rapidly fielding emerging technologies. We will remain the strongest and most lethal force in the world.

—We will reestablish deterrence by defending our homeland — on the ground and in the sky. We will work with allies and partners to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific by Communist China, as well as supporting the President’s priority to end wars responsibly and reorient to key threats.

We will stand by our allies – and our enemies are on notice.

All of this will be done with a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.

I have committed my life to warfighters and their families.

Just as my fellow soldiers had my back on the battlefield, know that I will always have your back. We serve together at a dangerous time. Our enemies will neither rest nor relent.

And neither will we. We will stand shoulder to shoulder to meet the urgency of this moment.

Like each of you, I love my country and swore an oath to defend the Constitution. We will do that each and every day,” 

-End statement 

Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox News personality only narrowly won his confirmation for SecDef with a Vice President tie breaker after the 3 republicans in the Senate joined with every democrats to vote no. His confirmation hearing was filled with allegations of past misconduct( that he denies) and claims that he is too inexperienced in leading a large organization like the U.S. military. 

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Russian oil refinery struck by a wave of Ukrainian drones.

Ukraines most effective strategy throughout the war has been the destruction of Russian logistics on the frontlines and behind the lines using missiles and drones. This constant picking away at the Russian war machines supplies has kept Russia pulling for stockpiles nobody thought would ever be needed. Supplies that went untouched for decades are now being pulled from occasionally (especially with regard to armored vehicles). This strategy worked so well that Ukraine decided to expand on it with unrelenting attacks on Russian oil production. The thought is simple: try to make fighting the war too costly to continue to fight.Russia is supposed to be an oligarchy and no matter how many of their rich and powerful Putin has thrown out of windows they do still hold some power in the country and can cause him problems.

The refinery targeted was the Ryazan oil refinery almost 300 miles from Ukraine. It has been targeted by drones multiple times in the past 72 hours and has suspended all operations. The most recent attack took place on January 26th at 1:00AM (Russia time) Video discovered of one of the attacks shows a massive fireball as a result.

The full extent of the damage is yet unknown but we do know that among the damaged equipment that the oil storage was set ablaze as well as equipment used to load the product into rail cars.Russian media claims that the plants AVT-4 unit, which processes the crude oil into fuel distillates, was heavily damaged.

The Ryazan oil refinery is one of Russia largest with the capacity to process 17 million metric tons of oil a year.The profit from this oil is used to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine which is growing costlier as the years go by. Neither side can keep this up forever but with these attacks on important and valuable Russian targets Ukraine hopes to tip the scales in their favor.

Andriy Kovalenko, a reporter in Ukraine said on his Telegram channel ” The refinery plays an important role in providing fuel for both the civilian and military-industrial complex of Russia,”.