Breaking: Syria prepping chemical weapons

The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Al-Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday. 

The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials told the American network.

 As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. Reports on Monday indicated that engineers working for the Assad regime have begun combining the two chemical precursors needed to weaponize sarin gas. But Wednesday, the officials said, the nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.

 The officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn't been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn't issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, "There's little the outside world can do to stop it."

 Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated her country’s warnings to Assad not to use chemical weapons, saying he would be crossing "a red line" if he did so. Speaking Wednesday at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clinton said the Syrian government was on the brink of collapse, raising the prospect that "an increasingly desperate Assad regime" might turn to chemical weapons or that the banned weapons could fall into other hands.

 The Syrian government said this week that it wouldn't use chemical weapons on its own people and President Barack Obama warned that doing so would be "totally unacceptable." But U.S. officials said this week that the government had ordered its Chemical Weapons Corps to "be prepared," which Washington interpreted as a directive to begin bringing together the components needed to weaponize Syria's chemical stockpiles.

 Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel is closely monitoring Syria’s potential use of chemical weapons. “Together with the international community, we are closely monitoring developments in Syria regarding its stores of chemical weapons,” said Netanyahu. “I heard President Obama's important remarks on this issue and we are of the same mind, that such weapons must not be used and must not reach terrorist elements.”

 Israel has expressed concern that the chemical weapons arsenal maintained in Syria will indeed end up in the wrong hands – specifically, the hands of Hizbullah or other terrorists who aim to annihilate the Jewish State.

Iran claims to have captured another US Drone- US doubtful

Iranian state television has showed images of what it says is an unmanned US drone captured in its airspace.

The Revolutionary Guards said they had brought down a ScanEagle - one of the smaller, less sophisticated drones employed by the Americans.

Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi told the Fars news agency that the drone had conducted several reconnaissance flights over the Gulf in recent days.

But the US Navy said none of its drones was missing in the Middle East.

Other nations in the region, including the United Arab Emirates, also operate ScanEagles - low-cost, long-endurance aircraft with a 10ft (3m) wingspan, Associated Press says.

Rear Adm Fadavi said that "such drones are usually launched from large warships".

Fars said the drone was captured "in the last few days" without giving further details.

A spokesman for US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain said: "The US Navy has fully accounted for all unmanned air vehicles operating in the Middle East region.
"We have no record that we have lost any ScanEagles recently."

"Our operations in the Gulf are confined to internationally recognised water and air space.

Last month, the US said Iranian warplanes had shot at a US surveillance drone flying in international airspace. Iran said the aircraft had entered its airspace.

November also saw Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, write to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to complain about what he said were repeated US violations of Iranian airspace near the Bushehr power station, describing them as "illegal and provocative acts".

A year ago, Iranian TV broadcast pictures of an American RQ-170 Sentinel surveillance drone that Iran said had been brought down using electronic warfare. The US said it had malfunctioned.

Iran rejected a US call for the return of the drone. It subsequently claimed to have developed its own unmanned drone.

Washington and Tehran are engaged in a dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme.

The Revolutionary Guards are an elite unit of the Iranian military which operate their own naval forces.

A U.S. Navy spokesman said all U.S. drones are "fully accounted for."

Cmdr. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, cast doubt on Iranian claims Tuesday that the U.S. ScanEagle drone entered Iranian airspace, saying U.S. operations in the Persian Gulf are "confined to internationally recognized water and airspace."

The U.S. Navy spokesman said no American drones are missing in the Middle East. He said that U.S. ScanEagles have been lost in the sea in the past, but none have gone down recently.

Other nations in the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates, have ScanEagle drones in service.

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Europe consortium aiming to build civil tiltrotor

Graham Warwick Washington

Europe is drawing up plans to build ground and flight demonstrators for commercial and regional aircraft, a compound helicopter and tiltrotor under a civil-aviation research program that will run from 2014-20.

The €3.6 billion ($4.7 billion) Clean Sky 2 program, funded 50:50 by government and industry, is being proposed as a follow-on to the €1.6 billion Clean Sky technology initiative now underway. 

But the final scale of the new effort will depend on the outcome of negotiations over funding for the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, which has a projected budget of around €80 billion.

Clean Sky 2 will have two major aims. One is to take technologies developed under Clean Sky to a higher level of system maturity through more-integrated demonstrators, with the aim of meeting the environmental targets set by European industry in its Vision 2020. The other is to begin work on technologies needed to meet the more challenging longer-term objectives outlined by industry in its Flightpath 2050.

“We need to achieve the full Vision 2020 targets and start a new wave of technologies moving toward the Flightpath 2050 goals,” says Eric Dautriat, executive director of Clean Sky. “We need to go beyond the 2020 goals, to an intermediate step of 2030-35, and it needs to be started now.”

Launched in 2008, Clean Sky runs to 2017 and includes six integrated technology demonstrators for commercial and regional aircraft, business jets, rotorcraft and engines. Advances being developed under Clean Sky are projected to reduce aviation CO2 emissions by about 30%, against the Vision 2020 goal of 50% to 40% from technologies and 10% from air traffic management.

“There remains another 10% to reach the full Vision 2020,” says Dautriat. “In Clean Sky 2 we need to increase the maturity of technologies and increase the CO2 savings in parallel.” Where Clean Sky is “clearly focused on the environment,” Clean Sky 2's objectives will be “more than just environmental,” he says. The new research program will fit within the “smart and green transport” pillar of the EC's Horizon 2020, which has as targets the environment, mobility and competitiveness.

Whereas Clean Sky is aimed at increasing technology readiness levels (TRL) across a broad front, Clean Sky 2 will be focused on raising the readiness level of systems incorporating the new technologies. “We want to move to the maturity of the system rather than TRL only,” he says. “So we intend to deliver more highly integrated demonstrators than in Clean Sky.”

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North Korea preps for missile launch

BBC: North Korea has begun installing a rocket at its Sohae launch pad ahead of a planned launch this month, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports.

The North's state news media say the launch is an attempt to put an observation satellite into space, between 10 and 22 December.

It is expected to take scientists several days to assemble the three-stage rocket at the Sohae station.

The US and its allies say it is a cover for long-range missile technology.

Ambassadors from China, the US, Russia and Japan met South Korean officials in Seoul on Monday to discuss the situation.

Korean Air is planning to reroute flights over the Yellow Sea to avoid possible collisions with rocket debris, according to the Associated Press.

The airline could not be reached for comment.

North Korea announced plans to a launch the rocket despite concern expressed by its main ally, China.

In a statement on Sunday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the country hoped that "all relevant parties will do that which benefits peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula" and that "all sides will respond calmly and avoid exacerbating the situation".

China acknowledged North Korea's right to the peaceful use of outer space, but said it should abide by a UN ban on ballistic missile tests.Flight path

Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean government source as saying: "North Korea installed the first-stage rocket onto the launch pad. That means North Korea is starting its process of launching a long-range missile."

The agency added: "It will take three or four days for North Korea to erect all three stages of the long-range rocket, South Korean intelligence and military officials say."

The BBC's Lucy Williamson, in Seoul, says North Korea's state media have described the rocket launch as being for peaceful purposes, with the aim of putting a polar-orbiting earth observation satellite into space.

But Japan has begun deploying a surface-to-air missile defence system to the southern island of Okinawa and is putting its armed forces on stand-by in response to the plan, officials confirmed on Monday.

Russia, too, has warned that the rocket launch would violate UN Security Council restrictions which prevent the country from conducting missile or nuclear-related activities.

"We urgently appeal to the government [of North Korea] to reconsider the decision to launch a rocket," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement, according to Reuters.

A senior government source said the Russian military was ready to intercept the rocket if it deviated from its trajectory, Russian state media reports.

Meanwhile the Philippines said the launch violated UN resolutions barring from testing ballistic missile technology.

The test will be the second to take place under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who took over the leadership of the country after the death of his father Kim Jong-il almost a year ago.

South Korea is preparing for a presidential election scheduled for 19 December.

North Korea has notified its neighbours of the planned flight path, telling them it will follow a similar route to that of the most recent rocket launch, in April, which failed.

The rocket, of the same Unha-3 variety, was supposed to pass over seas between China and the Korean Peninsula where the first stage of the rocket would fall into the sea, then to move over Okinawa.

The second stage was due to fall in seas off the coast of the Philippines.

"Unha" is Korean for "galaxy", and is the name given by North Korea to the space launcher version of its Taepodong-2 missile, which has an estimated range of 2,200km (1,300 miles). The missile has not yet been successfully tested.