Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

HOHENFELS Germany: Deep in a Bavarian forest, a black reconnaissance drone buzzes overhead, piloted by US soldiers hoping to put lessons learnt from the war in Ukraine into practice.
Cheaper and more plentiful than in the past, drones are changing the face of modern warfare, particularly in Ukraine.
Both Moscow and Kyiv use them for armed attacks as well as surveillance, making it hard for combatants to hide.
“It’s a transparent battlefield. That’s why in Ukraine you see troops deep down in bunkers or consistently moving,” said Brig. Gen. Steve Carpenter, training with the army at a base in Hohenfels, in the southern German state of Bavaria.
“You stop, you die.”
Army Chief of Staff General Randy George said the US military is changing as a result of what it sees in Ukraine and the way drone warfare is developing.
That means making a unit’s footprint smaller and more mobile, making them harder to target.
During the exercise, involving soldiers from the US army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, the battle headquarters changed position four times in nine days.
No more than about 20 personnel are usually there at any one time — far fewer than in past campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, when upwards of 100 may have been at a command post.
Of the lessons drawn from the Ukraine war, “I think the most important is the speed with which we need to change,” said George, urging the army to become more “flexible, nimble, adaptive.”

With new technology moving fast in Ukraine, the US military also wants to speed up its procurement processes.
There were tentative signs of this at Hohenfels.
New transport trucks were being tested just three months after the army asked General Motors to repurpose a civilian vehicle, a period that Alex Miller, George’s science and technology adviser, said “might be” record time for the army.

But building drones at scale could prove more challenging for the United States.
Russian and Ukranian forces often deploy cheap, off-the-shelf Chinese drones.
But the United States, amid rising tensions with Beijing, does not want to have to rely on a potential adversary for its supplies.
The US industrial base has meanwhile eroded in recent decades.
The number of people employed in defense industries in the country dropped by 1.9 million, or 63.5 percent, in 2023 compared to the level in 1985, according to the Department of Defense.
“American industry doesn’t have the ability to produce drones like the Chinese,” said Col. Dave Butler, George’s communications adviser.
And he believes there is only one person in the United States who could potentially produce drones at scale in the event of war.
That businessman is Elon Musk, since Tesla makes far more of its own components than other vehicle makers.
“If we had to suddenly flick on a switch and make 10,000 drones a month, only Elon could do it,” he said.
Musk, the multi-billionaire entrepreneur, has been a fixture on the American political scene since President Donald Trump made him one of his closest advisers.
For technology adviser Miller, the need is acute and the United States could use help.
“We are trying to incentivise... an American industrial base for things like flight controllers, things like cameras and antennas,” he said.
But he added that NATO allies must join in, saying that it “can’t just be us — it’s got to be Europe too.”
 

WASHINGTON : President Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to Washington — and his latest target is the US Department of Education.
Trump has described it as ineffective, wasteful and dominated by radical leftists, and in an interview airing Sunday told Fox News he would order Elon Musk, the man leading his cost-cutting efforts, to turn his sights next on the Education Department.
Underscoring his intention, the Republican president had earlier directed Linda McMahon, his education secretary nominee, to “put herself out of a job.”
Democratic politicians, teachers’ unions and many parents are in an uproar, calling Trump’s plan to shut down the agency an assault on public education.
Conservative groups, on the other hand, hail it as a long-overdue measure to reassert local control over American classrooms. But they acknowledge that the task of winding down the vast department will not be easy.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest labor union, said closing down the Education Department would be devastating for students with disabilities, low-income students and other children at risk.
“If it became a reality, Trump’s power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students... and gut student civil rights protections,” Pringle said, adding that the union will oppose the plan.

Gutting the Education Department is part of a broader effort by Trump and his tech billionaire adviser Musk to radically trim the US federal government.
The administration has already attempted to close down the US humanitarian agency and to put thousands of federal workers on leave. It has also offered buyouts to tens of thousands — efforts that sent shock waves around Washington and that are now being challenged in courts.
Traditionally, the federal government has had a limited role in education in the United States, with only about 13 percent of funding for primary and secondary schools coming from federal coffers, according to the NEA, the rest being funded by states and local communities.
But federal funding is invaluable for low-income schools and students with special needs.
And the federal government has been essential in enforcing key civil rights protections for students, such as the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling that ended racial segregation in public schools, or a 1990 federal law guaranteeing access to education for students with disabilities.
“There’s been a traditional federal role in trying to make sure that the most disadvantaged kids get what they need. And the civil rights enforcement is important,” said Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

Trump has shown a willingness to use federal power to regulate school policy. Earlier this week he issued an executive order to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports in schools and universities.
Lindsey Burke, head of education policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, hailed Trump’s plan to get rid of the federal department, saying it has failed to improve academic standards, with American students continuing to lag behind their international peers.
Burke argues that education decisions must be made at the local level.
“Kids in South Carolina are different than kids in California, right? I mean, this is the United States, it’s a vast and diverse country,” said Burke.
“It is no service to families to put those dollars in the hands of distant federal bureaucrats who do not know these children’s names or their hopes or dreams or aspirations.”

But putting the education secretary out of a job might be easier said than done.
By law, the Education Department can be shut down only by an act of Congress, and most experts agree Trump lacks the votes to do that.
“This is mostly a talking point, it’s not going to happen,” said Petrilli. “A few weeks from now, I think this will be in the rearview mirror.”
It’s unclear how the Trump administration will proceed with its efforts to dismantle the department. Burke said it might seek to move some of its key units — civil rights enforcement, student loan servicing, statistics — to other agencies.
But Kevin Carey, head of education policy at the liberal New America think tank, fears the administration is now in a “strange territory of extralegality” and will not be shy about dismantling the agency one way or another.
“I think the question isn’t, ‘Will Congress abolish the Department of Education?’ It won’t. The question is, ‘Will Trump destroy the Department of Education on his own?” Carey told AFP.
Trump’s education secretary pick, McMahon, is a former professional wrestling executive with little experience in education — and known for once slapping her daughter during a televised wrestling match.
McMahon’s US Senate confirmation hearing is set for Thursday.