| http://www.almartinraw.com/column18.html
Seafood Linguini, Exploding Hockey Pucks and "Marshmallows" by Al Martin The Friendly Colonel reports this weekend's menu at the Redstone Arsenal was sautéed seafood linguini. He was sitting at a table next to a Chinese colonel who was actually attempting to eat his seafood linguini with chopsticks. It caused quite an alarm. The general in charge thought that someone had shot him because he had a big red spot on his white dress shirt. What happened was that the Friendly Colonel sat next to a group of eight guys who were supposed to be representatives of what is supposedly the most secret military unit in the United States, stationed at the Redstone Arsenal. The code name of this group is "Minus." Since he had been telling people that he was in the arms business, they were showing him their wristwatches. They were all wearing matching wristwatches, which were about half of the size of a hockey puck on a wrist strap. He said "you've never seen such technology in such a little case." It was supposed have 102 functions all in this one item. You can receive coded transmissions from satellite phones. As they were talking, the guy said he was getting an email from a submarine. You can also blow up a building from a distance of two miles with one of these items. The guy was half in the bag and he kept rambling on and on about all the functions that the Friendly Colonel was getting tired of hearing them all. It also has an omni-directional hypersensitive listening device. With this device, he says you can hear what someone is saying in the next room through a wall. He also said "This thing does everything except wipe your ass." So what happened is that a mechanism in this device suddenly made a sharp loud noise. Everybody who was there jumped because they didn't know what it was. The general, who was half in the bag, looked at the Chinese arms merchant who had the marinara sauce all over the front of his shirt - and he thought somebody had shot him. These guys from the "Minus" group drive around in what they themselves call a "tank-car." It's like nothing you can imagine. He said it looks like a cross between a Humvee and a black Cadillac limousine. It's armor-plated and has 20mm cannons inside and all sorts of other weapons. It also has a remote satellite dish that comes out of the back. The Minus Group is supposed to be some sort of ultra-secret ready-deployment team. They were kind of vague about what it is that they do, other than they kept talking about "state security" and the security of the state in the event of a crisis. It makes you wonder about the "security" of whose "state." The Friendly Colonel added that the announcer this week was a German officer who was dressed in the uniform of an American National Guard. He was parading around in an Alabama State National Guard uniform. Yet he was an officer of the German Army. He spoke very little English, so that nobody could understand what he was saying, except the other German guys who were there. He has said that you never know who anyone is. You see Russian guys wearing Israeli uniforms. You see Israelis wearing German uniforms. Everyone is wearing uniforms other than from their own country. And now all the Chinese, German and Russian arms dealers are becoming super-paranoid. They're looking for new routes to ship weapons because of the various ongoing investigations. The media's looking at it quietly, and it's making them nervous as hell. They've been switching more and more of the shipments from Department of Defense aircraft to civilian contract aircraft. The problem is the lifting capability of the civilian aircraft compared to the military aircraft. Now they're forced to dismantle equipment and they're complaining that it adds to the cost. But, of course, all they're complaining about is illegal. Illegal sales. Illegal weapons systems. Embargoed countries. All illegal. The only thing they're concerned about is the added cost, and nobody even mentions that everything is illegal. The Chinese guy that spilled the marinara sauce bought a quantity of these satellite-transmitting, exploding, wristwatch hockey puck devices. It doesn't have an exact name. It has some sort of designated code. It's like the Dick Tracy Watch of the 21st Century. The Friendly Colonel says he's been offered every type of weapon imaginable if he wants to broker it, yet he doesn't know anything that they're talking about. He pretends like he knows and he writes down all the code numbers on the back of napkins. If someone calls him up, he says, "Are you talking about code number such and such?" By the way, the Chinese arms merchant's name was "Mr. Murphy." That was the name on his nametag. And it's the name he's officially using in the United States. After the linguini dinner during which he slobbered all over himself, they had a sale, and "Mr. Murphy" bought a large quantity of what are called "Above-Ground, Pressure-Sensitive, Anti-Personnel Mines." They're actually nicknamed "Marshmallows." The Friendly Colonel watched the Department of Defenses sales and promo videotape they showed at the sale. The last time we used the "marshmallows" was in 1994 in the Balkans. Finally under international pressure, we withdrew them from our inventory because too many people who weren't supposed to were getting hurt from them. This is a weapon system that's dropped in the form of a canister device. It's a canister filled with these things. The canister drops, breaks apart and these little things are disbursed. They're about the size of a Skippy peanut butter jar. They fall through the air and they have a slight bullet shape for aerodynamic purposes. After they come out of the canister, a thin tail pops out of them. There are shards of metal on the end. Picture an umbrella that has slits in it and that's what it looks like. As it spins around, it slows its descent. They land like a helicopter lands without power. In other words, centrifugal force causes the tail rotor to counter-rotor and brakes its descent. These are the most advanced of this type of weapons we have yet developed. The reason they get their nickname of "marshmallow" by the way is because the exterior is coated with a very soft spongy material. When they hit something, a hard object, like a building, they make absolutely no noise and they won't make a telltale dent. One of the earlier problems with this weapon system was premature exploding, but now that they have this protective coating, they have a more sophisticated type of detonation system. They're pressure sensitive. If you touch them, they explode. The promo video showed how powerful these devices are. They're only about twice the size of a hand grenade. They put the device in the middle of a 50-gallon plastic barrel that was filled with wet sand, then they remote detonated it. The video shows first in slow motion, then in fast motion that there's nothing left. The sand is completely disbursed and the barrel is completely destroyed. It's just broken into little pieces of plastic. This type of weapon system is not new. The Germans used them during World War II and the Germans launched them against Britain. The Chinese guy bought a large quantity of these ultra-sensitive anti-personnel mines. You don't even have to touch them before they explode. If you simply wave your hand in front of it, it'll explode. It has a shrapnel effect, which is absolutely devastating. So the Chinese guy who calls himself "Mr. Murphy" bought a large quantity of them. The Friendly Colonel had jokingly told him that since they had a large problem in the storage and transportation of these weapons, "You might want to consider doing business with my company." When asked about his company he told him "Trans Global Shipping," a company which doesn't exist. He just made it up. Later "Mr. Murphy" invited him out to lunch. The Friendly Colonel called the local storage center which is called U-Pack-It. He just got their rates, multiplied it by three, and told the price to the Chinese guy. Then he drove him past the place and said, "These are my company's special storage units." And the guy believed him. Then when he was on the phone, he was asked what's it called. He could tell there were some other Chinese guys in the background. "It's called U-Pack-It," he told him. The Chinese guy then turned around and said, "oynga magouynga chopsuey fooey louey Upackit Upackit." And the other Chinese guys said, "Ah so. U pack it U pack it." They sounded like a bunch of parakeets "U packit U packit." So the Friendly Colonel's going to do business with them. He'll make about thirty grand for a few weeks of storage. The Chinese guy told him that he thought the rates were "very reasonable." Then he told the Friendly Colonel he's having this stuff trans-shipped first through Mexico, then through Costa Rica, then to Ecuador. But the final destination is Tsing Hua University of Taiwan. That's the ultimate destination of these anti-personnel devices. He got a waiver through customs and they're being shipped as "educational materials." He wouldn't tell him where they're going from there. This arms merchant might not be from the People Republic of China. He might actually be a Taiwanese arms merchant and Taiwan might actually be the end recipient of the marshmallows, but he couldn't be certain. What happens at Redstone is that this officer in charge of customs is getting invited into frauds himself, but he's not receiving money under the table. It seems to be directed from higher-up. It's a directive from higher up, and it's all part of the covert and illegal rearming of China. In other news, one of the Senate investigating committees has gotten a batch of documents from one of the nearly retired FBI agents. While the committee thought that up to 35% of helicopters were serviceable, it turns out that internal Department of Defense records show that in the entire inventory of helicopters within the US defense command structure (including all helicopters -- assault helicopters, rescue helicopters, surveillance helicopters, fire control helicopters), only one in five is serviceable at any given time. Only 20% of the helicopters can be put into operation. The reason these helicopters don't work is because the spare parts don't work. And the reason that the spare parts don't work is because the majority of the spare parts for these sophisticated helicopter weapons systems are made by Chinese controlled companies. They are subcontracted out to Chinese-controlled dummy corporations which in turn will retain an American retired colonel, general or admiral to be chairman of the cut-out to make it appear that it isn't a Chinese cutout -- when in fact it is. The Chinese make these spare parts and one of the Friendly Colonel's friends said that half of the spare parts are the wrong size and the connections are backwards and they don't work. They believe that this is an undeclared warfare against the United States. It's always been assumed that the Chinese are simply incompetent and can't make these spare parts correctly, but by now the US has given them so much technology (military and high tech manufacturing technology) that they can't be so incompetent any more. Also it has been pointed out that this is a superb cover to transfer more military technology to the Chinese. If you give them the schematics to build all the parts of the systems, then they have the ability to put the weapon system together without giving them the schematics of the system itself. Corroborating Al Martin Raw sources, the just released GAO Report concerning defense readiness reports that within the US military inventory, defective spare parts are at all-time high. There is also a report that military repair and service units have to cannibalize operating weapons systems that actually work. It is increasingly affecting military readiness. Some Air force and Army units report only a 20% effective readiness status due to the number of weapons systems that don't work because of the defective spare parts. Part of the Associated Press report on this topic claims that GAO commented that a certain series of news articles on a certain internet news service website had come to GAO attention in recent weeks. Because of this series of articles, the report continues, the GAO is now launching a new investigation into suspected fraud in spare parts procurement at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. (See "Fraud for Lunch"). In an on-site report, the Friendly Colonel says that Department of Defense standards for testing components are an absolute joke. "Testing" consists of components being put on a machine that looks like it was made in the 1970s. It sends an electrical charge through it and "if the red light don't go off, they say OK it's good." The sergeant major in charge was there and he had chewing tobacco stains around his mouth. He was there with his subordinates. They stuck a bunch of wires and connectors on a thing which went into a big blue box that looked like it was made in about 1973. When asked "How do you know if the parts any good?" the sergeant major answered, "Well, if that there light on the counter, if it don't go off, then it's good." And that was the entire testing procedure for the components. If you talk about incompetence, it's us who are the incompetents. Nobody wants to spend money on sophisticated testing equipment because it's so much more expensive than it used to be. Also it requires more highly trained people to run testing equipment. Traditionally the Department of Defense testing centers are a dumping ground for all the numbskulls that can't do anything else. It's guys who have been there for thirty years and they're still third sergeant. The sergeant major knew absolutely nothing about what this machine did. All he knew is that you stuck the part in the slot where it says "Stick part in slot" (it actually has it written there so people will know what to do) and the other end of the machine has an index card scotch taped to it which reads "If red light goes off, part no good." Regarding the leaks -- the FBI found out it was one of the older guys who leaked out this information about the poor quality of US helicopter systems and the problem with the spare parts, the spare parts being Chinese made, and that it's just another way to transfer technology to China while maintaining deniability. Everyone can say, "We never gave the Chinese the schematics to build these." But who's going to ask "But did you give them the schematics to build all the different components that make up this weapons system?" |
