Author Archives: markdowe1

NBC Warfare

Nerve agents and their deadly effect

CHEMICAL WARFARE

NERVE agents are among the most deadliest chemical weapons used in warfare and assassinations over the last 30 years.

Experts say the clear liquids can be made at only “a few laboratories in the world” and are strictly government-controlled.

They can kill within minutes, by disrupting electrical signals through the nervous system which makes it difficult to breathe. People cough and foam at the mouth as their lungs fill with mucus, they vomit, sweat, become incontinent and their eyes run. Victims typically die from suffocation.

It is described by experts as “turning on all the taps”. Dr Simon Cotton, from the University of Birmingham, says: “If you have ever seen a fly sprayed it drops on its back and lies with its legs in the air, twitching – this is the result of nerve agents taking hold.”

. See also History is littered with examples of chemical and biological attacks…

Nerve agents were developed in Germany in the 1930s as pesticides but were found to be extremely toxic. The first modern nerve agents, including sarin – released by a Japanese cult on the Tokyo subway in 1995 – were devised by the Germans during World War II.

Germany never used chemical weapons, despite producing ten tons of sarin. Production was taken over by the Soviet army after it captured the plant at Dyernfurth.

A new generation of the chemical weapons including VX, which was invented by the British during the Cold War and is 150 times more deadly than sarin. The UN classes it as a weapon of mass destruction.

A “fourth generation” of nerve agents, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, are said to be even more toxic than VX. These Novichoks, meaning newcomer in Russian, contain two harmless chemicals which become toxic when mixed in an aerosol or missile. This makes them easier to store and transport safely.

Professor Malcolm Sperrin, of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, says: “Symptoms of exposure may include respiratory arrest, heart failure, twitching or spasms – anything where the nerve control is degraded.”

Scientists do not want to say how nerve agents are created, for fear of copycat attacks. However, the ingredients are cheap and easy to obtain. They were first used in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

VX is one of four main nerve agents and is usually inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Just a fraction of a drop can take effect within seconds and “fatally disrupt the nervous system”, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. They can be administered via aerosol or smeared on a victim’s face.

North Korean leader’s Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died within 20 minutes after his face was smeared with VX at an airport in Malaysia last February.

Standard
Britain, Government, Russia, Society

Defence Secretary: Putin has hostile intent

BRITAIN-RUSSIA RELATIONS

VLADIMIR Putin has “hostile intent” towards Britain, the Defence Secretary has said. Gavin Williamson called for the UK to wake up to the threat posed by Russia.

He warned that the Kremlin had developed a much more aggressive posture towards the UK in the past 12 months and the country should not sit submissively by.

With relations between Britain and Russia believed to be at an all-time low, Mr Williamson told MPs that the country needed to “match what Putin is doing with Russian forces”.

During defence questions in the Commons, he said: “Putin has made it quite clear that he has hostile intent towards this country.

“We’ve been seeing the build-up of his forces across the Eastern front and in terms of what they’re doing over many years now – we have to wake up to that threat and we have to respond to it.

“And it is not just through nuclear weapons – our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is absolutely integral to maintaining the peace, but it is also through conventional armed forces. We have to match what Putin is doing with Russian forces.”

His comments came after he was asked by Labour’s Barry Sheerman about comments the Russian president had made in a statement-of-the-nation speech last week.

Mr Sheerman pointed out that Mr Putin had basically announced “a new Cold War”.

Mr Putin boasted in his speech that Russia had developed an arsenal of invincible nuclear weapons that are immune to enemy detection.

SERGEI SKRIPAL

Skripal

A former colonel in Russian military intelligence, Skripal was considered by the Kremlin to be one of the most damaging spies of his generation.

SERGEI Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence, was considered by the Kremlin to be one of the most damaging spies of his generation.

He was responsible for unmasking dozens of secret agents threatening Western interests by operating undercover in Europe.

Col. Skripal, 66, allegedly received £78,000 in exchange for taking huge risks to pass classified information to MI6.

In 2006, he was sentenced to 13 years in a Russian labour camp after being convicted of passing invaluable Russian secrets to the UK.

A senior source in Moscow said at the time: “This man is a big hero for MI6.”

After being convicted of “high treason in the form of espionage” by Moscow’s military court, Col. Skripal was stripped of his rank, medals and state awards.

He was alleged by Russia’s security service, the FSB, to have begun working for the British intelligence services while serving in the army in the 1990s.

He passed information classified as state secrets and was paid for the work by MI6, the FSB claimed.

Col. Skripal pleaded guilty at the trial and cooperated with investigators, reports said at the time. He admitted his activities and gave a full account of his spying, which led to a reduced sentence. In July 2010, he was pardoned by then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and was one of four spies exchanged for ten Russian agents deported from the US in an historic swap involving red-headed “femme fatale” Anna Chapman.

Mrs Chapman, then 28, was a Manhattan socialite and diplomat’s daughter, who had lived and worked in London during a four-year marriage to British public schoolboy Alex Chapman.

After the swap at Vienna airport, Col. Skripal was one of two spies who came to Britain and he has kept a low profile for the past eight years.

He is understood to have been debriefed for months before being given a home and a pension.

Col. Skripal was turned by MI6 when he was posted abroad as a military intelligence agent in Europe in the mid-1990s. During his years working for MI6, the spy unmasked dozens of agents threatening Western interests.

Col. Skripal was so well-connected that even after his retirement from his spy service in 1999 he continued to pass exceptional secrets to London by staying in touch with his former colleagues as a reservist officer.

He may finally have been snared by the FSB after passing his intelligence to MI6’s infamous “spy rock” – a fake stone packed with receiving equipment in a Moscow park.

Russian secret services exposed the ploy in 2006, revealing how British undercover agents transmitted their data to the rock via a hidden hand-held device while walking past it.

After Col. Skripal’s conviction, one official said: “His activities caused a significant blow to Russia’s external security.”

Chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said: “It is impossible to measure in roubles or anything else the amount of harm caused by Skripal.”

State-run TV in Russia even compared him to the legendary Soviet double agent Oleg Penkovsky, who spied for Britain and the US during the height of the Cold War.

Penkovsky was shot by a firing squad in 1963 and is regarded as one of the most effective spies of all time.

Standard
Britain, Government, Military

The UK’s military capability is being drained by overseas aid

DEFENCE

BRITAIN’S military must stop being used as a ‘cash cow’ for overseas aid missions, the ex-armed forces minister has said.

Sir Mike Penning warns operations such as the Royal Navy’s task of rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean are ‘draining military capabilities’.

The senior Conservative says the Ministry of Defence must stop being seen as a ‘soft option’, warning that the backbone of the UK’s operational defence capability is being ‘stripped out’.

Sir Mike, who served eight years as a Grenadier Guard, says the cash for the Trident nuclear deterrent should be removed from the defence budget to free up more cash. ‘The MoD has got to stop being a soft option. It needs to spend what it has wisely and stand up to those who see it as a cash cow,’ he said.

The defence budget for 2016-17 was £35billion – of which around £2billion was earmarked for the annual operating costs of Trident.

Sir Mike warns that if the costs of the nuclear deterrent were not taken out of the budget then the MoD would be forced to cut more warships and troops.

‘The core and backbone of our operational defence capability are being stripped out at a time when our enemies are testing us every day’. He also says that the Department for International Development (Dfid) should shoulder the cost of more missions.

Sir Mike Penning, a former soldier who served eight years as a Grenadier Guard, said the cash for the Trident nuclear deterrent should be removed from the defence budget to free up more cash.

Britain should be proud of its commitment to aid spending, ‘but not if the cost is adversely affecting our military capability’. Sir Mike adds: ‘The question to be asked is why it should be our ships and troops being used when there are other ways to help.’

The Navy has been providing ships to rescue migrants and destroy smuggling boats in the Mediterranean since 2015.

Sir Mike says the aid ministry should be using its funds to lease other ships so naval assets could be freed up for other tasks. Emphasising the point that Royal Navy ships have helped to rescue thousands from the sea, he simply asks whether that is the best use of naval resources, and asks: ‘Why can’t we use some of the 0.7 per cent we have committed to international aid to lease ships that are much more suitable for the job?’

This would ‘free up the Royal Navy to do what they are trained and equipped to do – namely protect us… We should be using the Department for International Development cash where it is needed, not draining our military capabilities.’

A spokesperson for Dfid said: ‘Dfid works closely with the MoD to increase security overseas, and both departments want to use both the aid and defence budgets in the wisest way to boost our global influence and make the UK safer.

‘The International Development Secretary has had a series of meetings to see how the two departments can better achieve their aims.’

 

TRUE, with defence spending pared to the bone, former Armed Forces minister Sir Mike Penning asks a pertinent question. Why, he wonders, are we diverting warships from defending us to the job of rescuing migrants from the Mediterranean? There should be enough cash in our bloated foreign aid budget to lease far more suitable vessels for this task. Equally, we should ask what has happened to properly joined-up government?

 

Standard