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Anonymous ID: f5d6bd May 11, 2021, 5:14 p.m. No.13639344   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>9454 >>9800

BOSTON — The USS Constitution will make its way across Boston Harbor and reopen to the public on May 21.

 

The underway will be broadcast live on the Navy’s Facebook page and will feature demonstrations on climbing, firing a 24-pound long gun, using shipboard weaponry, and will conclude with a 21-gun salute, according to a statement Tuesday from the Navy.

Following the underway, the ship known as Old Ironsides will reopen for free public tours.

 

The warship will also fire a 17-gun salute at Coast Guard Sector Boston, the former site of the shipyard where USS Constitution was built and launched in 1797.

 

It is the ship’s first underway in more than a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Public visits were suspended in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, but the ship reopened in August only to close again in November.

The USS Constitution is the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat, and played a crucial role in the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, actively defending sea lanes from 1797 until 1855.

 

It earned its nickname during the War of 1812 when British cannonballs bounced off its wooden hull.

 

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2021/05/11/uss-constitution-to-reopen-to-public-on-may-21/

Anonymous ID: f5d6bd May 11, 2021, 5:18 p.m. No.13639380   🗄️.is đź”—kun

TOKYO — Japanese ground troops joined American and French counterparts in their first three-way exercise on Japanese land, as they seek to strengthen military ties amid growing Chinese assertiveness in the region.

 

The “ARC21” exercise started Tuesday at the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Ainoura base in Nagasaki prefecture. Japan is seeking to expand its military ties beyond its alliance with the United States to include “like-minded” countries such as France, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told reporters.

 

He said France, the only European nation with a permanent military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, is “a like-minded country that shares with Japan the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.” He said Japan welcomes France’s participation in the region and hopes to expand the partnership further.

 

About 100 Japanese troops, including rapid amphibious deployment units, or Japanese marines, joined by 60 troops each from the French army and U.S. Marine Corps, are to conduct urban warfare drills followed by amphibious operation exercises under a scenario of defending a remote island from an enemy invasion.

 

more:

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021/05/11/japan-us-france-hold-1st-joint-drills-on-japanese-land/

Anonymous ID: f5d6bd May 11, 2021, 5:22 p.m. No.13639429   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Like many of you, I turned to HBO’s “Chernobyl” to fill the gaping void left when “Game of Thrones” aired its final and extremely unsatisfying season. The horror of the 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown in Pripyat, Ukraine, brought to life for television reinvigorated the general public’s interest in the area, which hosts a 1,600 square-mile exclusion zone that has been abandoned since the disaster.

 

But for others, like The Chernobyl Spirit Company, the exclusion zone is a land of opportunity. At least, until their first batch of “ATOMIK,” an alcohol distilled from slightly radioactive apples, was seized by Ukrainian authorities on its way to the United Kingdom.

 

“It seems that they are accusing us of using forged Ukrainian excise stamps, but this doesn’t make sense since the bottles are for the UK market and are clearly labeled with valid UK excise stamps,” said Jim Smith, an environmental science professor at Portsmouth University and the founder of The Chernobyl Spirit Company, in a statement.

 

The Chernobyl Spirit Company has for the last two years worked with the Palinochka Distillery to produce ATOMIK using apples from the Narodychi District — one of the only remaining inhabited areas affected by the accident. It’s an artisinal vodka, more lovingly referred to as a moonshine, which is completely safe, according to scientists.

 

“This is no more radioactive than any other vodka,” Smith told BBC in 2019. “Any chemist will tell you, when you distil something, impurities stay in the waste product. We asked our friends at Southampton University, who have an amazing radio-analytical laboratory, to see if they could find any radioactivity. They couldn’t find anything — everything was below their limit of detection.”

 

The venture is designed to give back to local communities affected by the disaster. According to the website, at least 75 percent of the profits will go to wildlife conservation and people of the affected areas.

 

“We hope this issue can be resolved so that we can continue our work trying to help people affected by the devastating social and economic impacts Chernobyl had on communities,” Dr. Gennady Laptev, a Chernobyl “liquidator” who worked at the plant in the first weeks after the accident, said in the release.

 

https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/2021/05/11/alcohol-made-near-chernobyls-exclusion-siezed-by-ukrainian-authorities/

Anonymous ID: f5d6bd May 11, 2021, 5:30 p.m. No.13639490   🗄️.is đź”—kun

WASHINGTON — For 50 years the Minuteman missile has been armed and ready, day and night, for nuclear war on a moment’s notice. It has never been launched into combat from its underground silo, but this year it became the prime target in a wider political battle over the condition and cost of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

 

Minuteman was not intended to last half a century, so it’s overdue to be replaced or refurbished. Some see this as a moment to push for scrapping it altogether, abandoning one leg of the traditional nuclear “triad” — weapons that can be launched from land, sea and air. Most in Congress favor keeping the land-based leg by replacing Minuteman with a new missile; President Joe Biden’s position is not yet clear.

 

The outcome of the fight likely will steer nuclear policy and strategy for decades to come. It could influence how U.S. allies in Europe and Asia view the reliability of America’s nuclear “umbrella” — the security net that has allowed most of them to forgo developing nuclear weapons of their own. Some argue that it could make the difference between war and peace in an era of rising Chinese military power.

Navy Adm. Charles Richard, who as head of U.S. Strategic Command is in charge of nuclear warfighting plans, says Minuteman is so old that Air Force technicians have had to perform magic to keep it fully functional while coping with severely limited spares for components such as missile launch switches.

 

“I’m afraid there’s a point where they won’t be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat and the system won’t work,” he told a House hearing April 21. Asked later by a reporter if he meant Minuteman had become unreliable, Richard said it’s safe and dependable for now but with “no more margin” for delay in replacing it.

 

more:

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/05/11/decision-on-minuteman-missile-to-shape-us-nuclear-policy-for-decades/