US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

American airstrikes on Sunni militants in northern Iraq began on Friday, marking the first major armed U.S. engagement in the country since 2011. On Twitter, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby announced that two F-18 planes dropped 500-pound laser-guied bombs on a target near Erbil, the seat of the Kurdish regional government. The United States had already begun airdropping humanitarian supplies to the besieged Yazidi people escaping Islamist forces in northern Iraq.

In a night-time address to the nation on Thursday, President Barack Obama announced the first U.S. delivery of food and water to the Yazidis, who fled for the mountains after IS fighters took their home city of Sinjar. The supplies include 8,000 ready-to-eat meals and thousands of gallons of drinking water. In his address, Obama emphasized the humanitarian threat to the Yazidis, an ethnic Kurdish group that follows a faith similar to Zoroastrianism; IS fighters regard them as devil worshippers. In his remarks, Obama said that IS attacks on ethnic and religious minorities "could constitute" genocide.

Obama also stressed that the U.S. would not send ground troops to Iraq. "I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes," he said. "As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq."

Since June, the IS has taken large stretches of northern and western Iraq, and is now within thirty miles of the Kurdish region's capital city of Erbil. In response, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has sent his air force to aid the Kurdish fighters. The U.S. will also increase military aid to the Kurdish regional government.

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Jura said:

navyreco's view

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timepass said:

....WHAT ABOUT PALESTINE GENOCIDE BY israel....

ARE they considering strikes against JEWISH extremists...

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Moscow (AFP) - Russia said Saturday that it had chased away a US submarine that had approached its territorial waters in the Barents Sea.

A representative of the naval headquarters told Russian news agencies that what was believed to be a Virginia class fast attack submarine was discovered close to Russian territorial waters on Friday.

Thanks to "active measures by the Northern Fleet's anti-submarine forces, the submarine was 'pushed away'" from the area near Russia's territorial waters in the Arctic, the naval official was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

An anti-submarine aircraft was also involved in the operation, in which no force was used.

The official said contact with the sub lasted 27 minutes, and was far from the only incident with foreign subs in that part of the Russian Arctic recently.

The deputy head of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, Leonid Kalashnikov, said on Echo of Moscow radio that such incidents are quite common.

"Occasionally other countries test how the submarine location service is working," the lawmaker said, suggesting that the rather unusual announcement was a public relations move by the navy to call attention to their work.

The incident comes amid heightened tensions between the West and Russia over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis.

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FORBIN said:

One Nellis aggressor squadron being deactivated

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USAF have 3 Agressors sqns and USN/USMC 4.

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Russia: Apparent U.S. sub driven from Barents Sea
Aug. 9, 2014 - 06:00AM |
The Associated Press
FILED UNDER
News
World News
MOSCOW — Russian state news agencies say the country's navy claims to have driven away a submarine believed to be American that entered Russia's northern waters.

The reports Saturday cited an unnamed representative of the navy's general staff as saying the incident occurred Thursday in the Barents Sea. The Barents Sea lies off northwest Russia and the Russian navy's Northern Fleet is based on its shores.

The reports said the fleet sent several vessels and an anti-submarine Il-38 aircraft to drive the submarine away

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