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Умєров наголосив, що тепер у «Армія+» доступно вже 22 електронні рапорти
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Washington — The United States has been ramping up its Indo-Pacific region air bases to ensure they are protected against attack, a spokesperson for the U.S. Pacific Air Forces told VOA this week, amid concerns over vulnerabilities they face in countries such as Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea against potential Chinese strikes.

“While we are continually improving our theater posture, warfighting advantage, and integration with allied and partners, Pacific Air Forces stands ready every day to respond to anything that poses a threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to invest in infrastructure and technology to enhance the resilience and survivability of our bases and facilities across the theater including hardening airfields and buildings while investing in advanced security systems to protect our personnel and assets,” the spokesperson told VOA on Tuesday.

The Air Force was authorized with “$916.6 million to improve logistics, maintenance capabilities, and prepositioning of equipment, munitions, fuel, and material in the Indo-Pacific” through the fiscal 2024 Pacific Deterrence Initiative, the spokesperson added. The Pacific Deterrence Initiative is a set of defense priorities set up in 2021 by congress to support U.S. goals in the Indo-Pacific, primarily to counter China.

The comments were made in response to a report last week by the Hudson Institute claiming that U.S. aircraft at allied Indo-Pacific country bases could suffer major losses from Chinese attacks unless those bases are fortified.

If left unfortified, the U.S. air power in the region would be significantly reduced compared to China’s, according to the report, Concrete Sky: Air Based Hardening in the Western Pacific.

One of the reasons, according to the report, is that the U.S. is lagging behind China in the number of shelters that could hide and protect the aircraft from attacks.

China more than doubled the number of aircraft shelters since the early 2010s, having more than 3,000, according to the report. Across 134 Chinese air bases located within 1,000 nautical miles from the Taiwan Strait, China has more than 650 hardened aircraft shelters and nearly 2,000 nonhardened individual aircraft shelters.

A hardened shelter is a reinforced structure made of steel, concrete, and other materials to protect military aircraft from enemy strikes.

In comparison, the U.S. has added two hardened shelters and 41 nonhardened ones within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait and outside South Korea since the 2010s, continues the report.

This means if a war breaks out over Taiwan, U.S. aircraft could suffer more damage than China’s if they attacked each other’s bases in the region, which would prevent U.S. air operation for a duration of time, said analysts.

According to Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program, attacks on U.S. bases in the Pacific region, including Japan could “prevent the U.S. Air Force from conducting fighter operations for about the first 12 days of a conflict from U.S. bases in Japan.”

Grieco continued, based on her own report published by the Stimson Center, that Chinese missiles could also take out runways and aerial refueling tankers, rendering them unusable over a month at U.S. bases in Japan and over half week at U.S. military bases in Guam and other Pacific locations.

“It’s not possible to harden a runway or taxiway,” that is exposed as easy targets to destroy, disabling aircraft from taking off, she said. This begs the question of whether it is worth investing in hardening facilities, she adds.

The Hudson Institute report says within the 1,000 nautical miles of Taiwan, China has added 20 runways and 49 taxiways since the 2010s while the U.S. added one runway and one taxiway.

Unhardened airfields

Among U.S. air bases in allied countries of Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea, those in the Philippines are the least protected, Timothy Walton, one of the authors of the Hudson report, told VOA.

“In Japan, Kadena and Misawa Air Bases are the most fortified U.S. bases, while the remainder are largely unfortified,” said Walton, a senior fellow at Hudson’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.

“In the Republic of Korea, the two U.S. Air Force bases, Osan and Kunsan, are hardened. Airfields in the Philippines are unhardened,” he said.

Grieco said the U.S. would mostly rely on its bases in Japan, Guam, and other Pacific locations as South Korea would “restrict the use of U.S. bases in its territory in a Taiwan contingency out of concern about North Korean aggression and to avoid a rupture with Beijing.”

U.S. Representative John Moolenaar, the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, and 13 other lawmakers underlined last year the importance of hardened shelters to protect against Chinese attacks.

In a letter sent to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro in May, they said, “U.S. bases in the region have almost no hardened aircraft shelters compared to Chinese military bases,” leading to U.S. air assets being “highly vulnerable to Chinese strikes.”

Aside from hardened shelters, analysts pointed to dispersing airfields as important.

Steven Rudder, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former commanding general of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, said, “When you look at the number of aircraft in the Asia Pacific, I am not sure that the ability to harden every single aircraft parking space would be as effective as a distributed force.”

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense researcher at Rand Corporation, said dispersing airfields are important against nuclear strikes.

Against conventional warhead missiles, shelters are “key to the protection,” said Bennett. “But if there’s a nuclear threat, you’ve got to have different airfields” as alternative locations to park and land aircraft and to provide logistic support such as fueling, maintenance, and repair, he said.

Bennett added the disparity in the number of aircraft shelters between the China and U.S. seems to stem from U.S. air superiority.

“What the U.S. Air Force tends to perceive is that we’ve got the ability to deal with the Chinese air force in an air-to-air combat” where China traditionally felt it would lose air-to-air combat against the U.S. and therefore wants to take U.S. aircraft on the ground before engaging in air while sheltering theirs heavily on the ground, Bennett said.

“The question becomes, as the Chinese aircraft get better and as they start fielding fifth generation fighter, will the U.S. need the ability to attack Chinese airfields with conventional weapons? I don’t think the Defense Department has considered it as one of important tasks,” Bennett said.
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For nearly three years, a combat medic from California named Jennifer Mullee has been saving the lives of Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines. Mullee decided to join the Ukrainian war effort following the death of a close friend. Anna Kosstutschenko has her story. Camera: Pavel Suhodolskiy  
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Дмитро Масловський загинув у рукопашному бою з російським військовим у селі Трудове на Донеччині
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The Army expects to meet its enlistment goals for 2025, marking a dramatic turnaround for a service that has struggled for several years to bring in enough young people and has undergone a major overhaul of its recruiting programs.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the Army is on pace to bring in 61,000 young people by the end of the fiscal year in September and will have more than 20,000 additional young people signed up in the delayed entry program for 2026. It’s the second straight year of meeting the goals.

“What’s really remarkable is the first quarter contracts that we have signed are the highest rate in the last 10 years,” Wormuth said. “We are going like gangbusters, which is terrific.”

Wormuth, who took over the Army four years ago as restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were devastating recruitment across the military, also flatly rejected suggestions that the Army is “woke.”

Critics have used the term to describe what they call an over-emphasis on diversity and equity programs. Some Republicans have blamed “wokeness” for the recruiting struggles, a claim repeated by President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, during his confirmation hearing this week.

Wormuth dismissed the claims.

“Concerns about the Army being, quote, woke, have not been a significant issue in our recruiting crisis,” she said. “They weren’t at the beginning of the crisis. They weren’t in the middle of the crisis. They aren’t now. The data does not show that young Americans don’t want to join the Army because they think the army is woke — however they define that.”

Hegseth has vowed to remove “woke” programs and officers from the military. And during his hearing Tuesday, he told senators that troops will rejoice as the Trump administration takes office and makes those changes.

“We’ve already seen it in recruiting numbers,” he said. “There’s already been a surge since President Trump won the election.”

In fact, according to Army data, recruiting numbers have been increasing steadily over the past year, with the highest total in August 2024 — before the November election. Army officials closely track recruiting numbers.

Instead, a significant driver of the recruiting success was the Army’s decision to launch the Future Soldier Prep Course, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022. That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2024, the Army met its recruiting goal of 55,000 and began to rebuild its delayed entry pool. About 24% of those recruits came out of the prep course. Wormuth said she expects it will contribute about 30% of this year’s recruits.

The Army and the military more broadly have struggled with recruiting for about a decade, as the unemployment rate shrank, and competition grew from private companies able and willing to pay more and offer similar or better benefits.

Just 23% of young adults are physically, mentally and morally qualified to serve without receiving some type of waiver. Moral behavior issues include drug use, gang ties or a criminal record. And the coronavirus pandemic shut down enlistment stations and in-person recruiting in schools and at public events that the military has long relied upon.

Wormuth said a private survey along with more recent data show that the key impediments to joining the military are concerns “about getting killed or getting hurt, leaving their friends and family, and having a perception that their careers will be on hold.”

That survey, done in 2022, found that “wokeness” was mentioned by just 5% of respondents.

Wormuth acknowledged that the latest data show one element mentioned by Hegseth — that the number of white men enlisting is a bit lower. She said the persistent criticism about wokeness could be one reason.

“Any time an institution is being inaccurately criticized and demeaned, it’s going to make it harder to recruit. And I think that is what we have seen,” she said. “In terms of ‘is the Army woke’ — which I will take to mean focused on things that don’t make us more lethal or effective or better able to defend this nation — I would say the Army is absolutely not woke.”

As an example, she said recruits get one hour of equal opportunity instruction in basic training and 95 hours of marksmanship.

She also said there has been an increase in minority enlistment. The service brought in the highest number ever of Hispanic recruits in 2024 and saw a 6% increase in Black recruiting.

In 2022, the Army fell 15,000 short of its enlistment goal of 60,000. The following year, the service brought in a bit more than 50,000 recruits, widely missing its publicly stated “stretch goal” of 65,000.

The Navy and the Air Force all missed their recruitment targets in 2023, while the Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force have consistently hit their goals.

Critics have also charged that the military has lowered standards under President Joe Biden’s administration. Asked if that was true for the Army, Wormuth said the service actually resolved not to do that to meet its recruiting goals. Instead, she said, the prep course helps recruits meet the standards.

Other changes that have helped the recruiting turnaround, she said, include an overhaul of the system used to select recruiters, which now chooses soldiers more suited to the task, as well as an increased use of data analytics to improve marketing and ads.

The Army also increased the number of medical personnel being used to help process routine waivers to move them more quickly through the system. A consistent complaint across the military has been that it took too long to get a waiver approved and that recruits were moving on to other jobs as a result of the delays.

 
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Аналітики вважають, що коментарі Патрушева спрямовані на підрив та загрозу українській державності
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Washington — President Joe Biden announced Friday that he was commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, using his final days in office on a flurry of clemency actions meant to nullify prison terms he deemed too harsh. 

The recent round of clemency gives Biden the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. The Democrat said he is seeking to undo “disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy, and practice.” 

“Today’s clemency action provides relief for individuals who received lengthy sentences based on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, as well as outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes,” Biden said in a statement. “This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities, and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars.” 

The White House did not immediately release the names of those receiving commutations. 

Still, Biden said more could yet be coming, promising to use the time before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated Monday to “continue to review additional commutations and pardons.” 

Friday’s action follows Biden’s commutations last month of the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the pardoning of 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. That was the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history. 

All of this comes as Biden continues to weigh whether to issue sweeping pardons for officials and allies who the White House fears could be unjustly targeted by Trump’s administration. Though presidential pardoning powers are absolute, such a preemptive move would be a novel and risky use of the president’s extraordinary constitutional power. 

Last month, Biden also commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office. Trump has vowed to roll back that order after his term begins. 

Biden also recently pardoned his son Hunter, not just for his convictions on federal gun and tax violations but for any potential federal offense committed over an 11-year period, as the president feared Trump allies would seek to prosecute his son for other offenses. 

If history is any guide, meanwhile, Biden also is likely to issue more targeted pardons to help allies before leaving the White House, as presidents typically do in some of their final actions. 

Just before midnight on the final night of his first term, Trump, a Republican, signed a flurry of pardons and commutations for more than 140 people, including his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black and ex-members of Congress. 

Trump’s final act as president in his first term was to announce a pardon for Al Pirro, ex-husband of Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro, one of his staunchest defenders. Al Pirro was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges and sentenced to more than two years in prison in 2000. 
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«17 січня споживання електроенергії, станом на 9:30, було на 1,2% нижчим, ніж в цей же час попереднього дня»
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Sasha Selipanov, a well-known car designer, was born in the Soviet Union but at 17 moved to the U.S. In California, he mastered the skill of designing high-end cars, creating vehicles for Lamborghini and Bugatti among others. He showed VOA Russian the concept of his first hypercar, which he is building in Los Angeles.

Click here for the full story in Russian. 
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As the U.S. and Armenia signed a strategic partnership agreement in Washington this week, experts say the Kremlin is slowly losing one of its few remaining allies. While Moscow says that Armenia’s distancing itself from Russia will bear consequences, the Armenian government is trying to steadily chart a pro-Western path. 

Click here for the full story in Russian. 

 
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Повітряні сили підтверджують збиття 33 ударних БПЛА у кількох областях, 9 дронів були втрачені, ще один безпілотник полетів у напрямку Румунії
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«Крім того, країни працюватимуть разом, щоб зупинити банди, які незаконно перевозять людей, та захистити нашу інфраструктуру», йдеться в повідомленні
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Slovenian model turned US first lady Melania Trump is headed back to the White House after a bittersweet experience in the limelight after her husband, President-elect Donald Trump, first took office in 2016. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias gives us a look at her life and voter expectations for her second term.
Camera: Veronica Balderas Iglesias
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washington — Washington has been bracing for lots of things this week, including several more days of frigid temperatures and hordes of people and police for the presidential inauguration and related protests around the city next week.

Officials said this week that they expected about 250,000 ticketed people to descend on the U.S. capital as Donald Trump takes the oath of office as president again. He last served from 2017 to 2021.

Fewer visitors are expected for next Monday’s ceremony than were present at Trump’s first inauguration, local and federal officials said at a press conference. In 2017, they prepared for more than 1 million people.

Temperatures are expected to be particularly low in Washington on Monday. The temperature at noon, when Trump will be sworn in, is predicted to be in the low 20s F, which is about 20 degrees below normal.

Enhanced security

Even though a lower turnout is expected this time around, recent acts of violence — like the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans — mean there will be an enhanced security presence, the officials said.

On Inauguration Day, 25,000 law enforcement and military personnel will be in the District of Columbia to provide security, including the full activation of D.C. police, 7,800 National Guard troops and about 4,000 officers from around the country, according to William McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Washington Field Office.

Leading up to the inauguration, Washington will be home to both celebratory events and protests.

A Trump victory rally is planned for Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena, where the Village People, an American band, will perform.

The arena has 20,000 seats, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the company that operates the arena, told a D.C. news station.

The company said in a statement to News4 that the arena has been offered to every administration, “irrespective of party,” for decades.

“We are happy that President Trump has accepted our offer, and we will welcome him and his guests to Capital One Arena on January 19,” the statement said.

While there will be three official inaugural balls, more than a dozen unofficial inaugural balls are scheduled throughout the weekend in Washington.

However, protests are scheduled, too.

On Saturday, a demonstration called the People’s March is expected to draw tens of thousands of people to downtown Washington. The demonstration is organized by various civil rights, racial justice and reproductive health groups.

“As Trump assumes the presidency in January, we are gathering to mobilize our collective power and stand against his efforts to roll back our rights and freedoms,” Analilia Mejia, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement.

On Monday, the Answer Coalition’s National Day of Action will feature a rally and march, according to media reports.

Accustomed to crowds

Washington officials said they’re used to managing crowds and protests.

“Here in the city, we allow peaceful protests all the time,” D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a press conference this week. “But when it comes to violating the law, we’re just not going to tolerate it.”

On Monday night, after the inauguration, Trump is expected to shuttle among the three official inaugural balls.

But inauguration celebrations won’t be limited to Washington.

For instance, in Florida, where Trump resides at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the pro-Trump Villages M.A.G.A. Club is hosting an inaugural party on Monday evening, about 60 miles northwest of Orlando. The celebration has already sold out, according to an Eventbrite listing advertising the party.
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People hospitalized for flu should be tested for bird flu within 24 hours, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday, in an expansion of the agency’s efforts to tackle increasing infections in humans. 

The advisory is intended to prevent delays in identifying human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) viruses amid high levels of seasonal influenza. 

The risk to the general public from bird flu is low, and there has been no further evidence of person to person spread, the agency said. 

Still, influenza A-positive patients, particularly those in an intensive care unit, should be tested ideally within 24 hours of hospitalization to identify the viral subtype and determine whether they have bird flu, the agency said. 

Prior to Thursday’s guidance, hospitals generally sent batches of samples to labs for subtyping every few days. 

Faster testing also aims to help doctors identify how people became infected and provide their close contacts with testing and medicine more quickly, if needed, said Nirav Shah, the agency’s principal deputy director, on a call with reporters. 

The CDC does not believe it has been missing bird flu infections in people, Shah said. No surveillance system detects 100% of cases, he added later. 

“The system is working as it should,” said Shah, adding that health officials want results sooner in case any public health action is needed. “What we need is to shift to a system that tells us what’s happening in the moment.” 

Nearly 70 people in the United States, most of them farmworkers, have contracted bird flu since April, as the virus has circulated among poultry flocks and dairy herds. Three people have tested positive without a clear source of exposure to the virus, according to CDC. 

Most infections in humans have been mild, but one fatality was reported in Louisiana last week. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has more than 300 personnel working on its bird flu response and has spent $1.5 billion on its efforts to curb the spread among poultry and dairy cattle, said Eric Deeble, a deputy undersecretary at the agency. 

The USDA last week said it would rebuild a bird flu vaccine stockpile for poultry. 

USDA officials have met several times with the transition team of the incoming Donald Trump administration to try to ensure a smooth handoff on agency actions to curb the spread of the virus, including a tabletop exercise at the White House on Wednesday, Deeble said. 

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses CDC, also have repeatedly met with the transition team on Zoom calls and have shared their bird flu playbook, officials said on the press call.  

HHS said on Thursday it plans to put $211 million toward mRNA-based vaccine technology to better respond to emerging infectious diseases such as bird flu.  
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SPARROWS POINT, MARYLAND — Most Americans and visitors to the United States encounter Customs and Border Protection agents when they enter or return to the country at land crossings or airports. But CBP also is responsible for inspecting goods leaving the country, which creates a nearly impossible assignment of trying to intercept all stolen automobiles being shipped out of the U.S.

At the Port of Baltimore, CBP scrutinizes several hundred vehicles every day, and on average will find one illegal export — nearly all headed to a particular region of the world, says Adam Rottman, CBP’s director at the Port of Baltimore. He acknowledges that CBP has neither the time nor manpower to inspect every shipping container.

“I’d say 90 to 95% of every one of our stolen automobiles is headed to West Africa,” he tells VOA.

Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami, said, “There are people who are stealing cars and car parts to sell them very quickly in the local markets. And then there are people literally stealing cars and putting them on containers and selling them, shipping them all over the world, not just to Africa, but also to the Middle East and to Asia.”

On any given day at the Port of Baltimore, CBP’s manifest of seized vehicles resembles the inventory of a small used car lot: a Kia purchased fraudulently at auction in New Jersey is bound for Ghana; a Mercedes-Benz valued at $48,000, purchased with a stolen identity in Ohio, is slated for shipment to Togo; a $75,000 Ford Raptor inside a container with one or two additional stolen vehicles and boxes of new power tools is headed for West Africa.

Rottman peeks inside one container for which no vehicles are listed.

“It’s supposed to be only household goods in there,” he says. “In this example, there’s at least three, probably four cars in that container.”

Rottman walks to another container opened for inspection.

“This container, we just opened today. The vehicle on the top there, that Honda, we’ve already verified through the VIN (vehicle identification number) that the car is stolen. There’s two [vehicles], more in the back,” he says.

CBP operates giant mobile X-ray trucks, the VACIS M6500s, which in minutes can scan shipping containers and determine if they should be opened for a closer inspection.

A growing problem

Auto theft is a problem accelerating across the United States. While the early part of the 2010s saw a decline in vehicle thefts, there has been a notable increase since 2020, influenced by factors that include the coronavirus pandemic and social media videos demonstrating how certain car models can easily be stolen.

The criminals frequently rent cars for a 30-day period and immediately drive them into a nearby container and paste a fake VIN over the real one. The car will not be reported stolen by the rental agency for a month. By then, it may already be on a ship.

Rottman stands in front of the container that has the expensive Ford Raptor inside.

“They’ll take the VIN number on the dashboard on your windshield. They’ll make a fake VIN. They’ll put it over the top, glue it on, so it would come up [on computer databases] clean, or it’s not on file when we look it up,” he explains. “But right away, we noticed the checked digit on the VIN doesn’t match what’s supposed to be on a Ford truck.”

For some buyers in Africa or on other continents, unwittingly acquiring a car stolen in the U.S. may seem like a good deal, but some of the vehicles are known to have been in accidents and could be unsafe, including airbags that no longer work.

“You could be putting your family members in danger by driving some of these stolen cars,” says Rottman.

There is also a moral hazard.

“When they purchase a car like this that’s been stolen, they’re funding these transnational criminal organizations. And criminal organizations are willing to do anything to make money,” Rottman says, noting that such activities by car theft gangs include human trafficking, drug smuggling and even terrorism.

Authorities in some African countries are working with Interpol and other transnational law enforcement agencies to seize some of the stolen vehicles that slip through American ports.

Cooperation is not consistent because of government corruption in some countries.

“Some governments will play nicer, and other governments won’t, and you can’t search every container. And that’s why the security at the port is so critically important,” Piquero of the University of Miami told VOA.

With so many buyers seeking a deal on a used car — often with no questions asked — there is unlikely to be a slowdown anytime soon in the global traffic of stolen vehicles.
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