A “Domain Awareness Gap” Failure? (U.S. Northern Command)

General Keith Kellogg, who was the Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff of the United States National Security Council in the Trump administration, says he was never notified! And he went to every daily briefing.

NO BRIEFING DURING TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY

GATEWAY PUNDIT notes:

….Former Trump advisor John Bolton, former DNI Ric Grenell, Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Former Secretary of State and CIA Direcor Mike Pompeo, President Trump , Defense Secretary Mattis, and former DNI John Ratcliffe, spoke out that that this was a lie.

This never happened during the Trump years. And if it did happen, the top officials in Trump administration were not notified – which is just as bad.

The military is changing their story.  Now they want you to believe that the intelligence community discovered the balloons during the Trump years — BUT NEVER NOTIFIED THEIR INTEL LEADERS!….

DOMAIN AWARENESS GAP

PJ-MEDIA discusses why this may well be the case:

….The American military had a “domain awareness gap,” according to Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

“Every day as a NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” VanHerck said. “And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail.”

What’s a “domain awareness gap”? General VanHerck didn’t define the term, but Breaking Defense offered a partial explanation.

When VanHerck speaks of a “domain gap,” he’s referring to the U.S. Northern Command not having “the correct mix of sensor capabilities.”

The four-star general, a staunch proponent of beefing up US sensing capabilities to include over-the-horizon radars, did not disclose the number of past detection failures or where the balloons had flown. John Kirby, the White House National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said today that the Biden administration discovered three incidents during the Trump administration when “surveillance balloons, by the [Chinese government] transited US airspace” for “brief periods of time.” On Saturday a senior defense official told reporters there had been another incident earlier in Biden’s presidency. None were for the duration of last week’s saga.

That still doesn’t answer the question of how the balloon transits were detected after the fact. Here we get into the classified area of intelligence gathering,

“The intel community, after the fact … assessed those threats through additional means of collection and made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transiting North America,” VanHerck said. He noted that USNORTHCOM does not have the authority to collect intelligence inside US borders but was able to track the movement of last week’s balloon because it was granted “specific authorities.”

So part of the problem was jurisdictional. But what those “additional means of collection” are is classified. It still doesn’t answer the question of why no one was informed if the intel was somewhere in some database. That would appear to be a big gap in our intelligence gathering that General VanHerck and Northern Command might want to address with all speed.

Likewise JUST THE NEWS has this:

The Air Force general charged with protecting America’s air space from hostile threats acknowledged Monday that the U.S. military failed to detect some previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons, calling it a troubling “awareness gap” that needed fixing.

“We had gaps on prior balloons,” Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters.

The comment by the North American Aerospace Defense Command commander both raised concern about NORAD’s vaunted ability to detect airspace threats and also undercut a bungled weekend effort by the Biden administration to try to suggest former President Donald Trump failed to react to three incursions on his watch.

In fact, VanHerck told reporters during a Pentagon briefing, the Trump administration wasn’t told about the incursions because NORAD missed them and that they only recently were detected after the fact by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” he said, declining to be more specific about how earlier flyovers of Chinese spy balloons were missed……

Which makes KJP’s comments seem coherent (POWERLINE):

….Q How is it possible that this administration discovered at least three previous balloons that flew over the U.S. under the previous administration, but Trump officials didn’t know it was happening?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah, so, look, I think that — and we have talked about this before, about how the — when it — when the PRC government surveillance balloons trans- — trans- — trans- — transited the continental U.S. briefly at least three times, as you just mentioned, during the President’s — the prior administration and once that we know of the beginning of this administration’s. But never for this duration of time, as we know.

This information was discovered prior to the admin- — administration left, but the intelligence community, as I said, is prepared to give — give briefings to key officials. But this is something —

Q Prior or post?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: — this is something — sorry, post. So this is something that we — they did not — they were not aware of, as we’ve just laid out. But again, we are ready to brief key officials to let them know what — you know, what the intelligence community was able to figure out…..

A Veteran’s Dying Words To President and Vice-President Elect

  • “General Mattis, it appears I am out of ammunition but I continue to fight with my last breath. I do not fear death for I know where I am going and I am only going home for a rest.”

Dr. Larry, a Marine, Gives Final Farewell to Donald Trump from His Death Bed… A close family friend notes:

  • “Larry passed a few mins ago please keep all his family in your prayers” I’ve reached out to her for support. Please respect the family’s privacy, but do offer condolences and prayer!

THE DAILY WIRE has more:

Former Marine combat photographer Dr. Larry Lindsey made a career shooting pictures and video for big names, including Animal Planet, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, Fox Sports Network, and others.

But being an ardent and vocal Trump supporter in his last years and posting videos to his Youtube channel in favor of The Donald while railing against the wickedness of Crooked Hillary garnered him quite an internet following. 

On Saturday, Dr. Lindsey posted his final video (below) while in the hospital hooked up to an oxygen machine and monitors. He addressed president-elect Donald Trump, vice-president elect Mike Pence and General James Mattis, saying that is was the “greatest honor” of his life waging battle with them on their way to the White House. He added, “I have been prouder of being a Marine than anything I’ve ever done in my life. Having a hand in some small way in fighting for my country has meant the world to me. There is no greater honor for me than to have great men like you leading this country back to its foundation and back to God. Mr. Trump I have no doubt in my heart and my mind that you will be perhaps the greatest president in the history of our country.”…

Laura Ingraham Decimates Juan Williams

  • Williams argued “So you have people who I would say don’t fit into exactly a team of rivals, but to many people a team of radicals. A team of radicals in terms of, what are these people representing? Flynn, Mike Flynn, I don’t think he could be confirmed, but so he’s getting the — the national security advisor job.”
  • Bob Woodward sounded more pragmatic: “ They are hard liners. But I think, as Laura was suggesting, in presenting — in talking about these people, when you dig into who they are and they have controversial pasts, presenting them is one dimensional, is a giant mistake. These are complex people.”

(Via NEWSBUSTERS)