Dead Drop: October 25

A RECYCLED RUNWAY PROGRAM: While China seems determined to create new military bases in the Pacific – by making its own islands in the South China Sea to put them on – the United States apparently is taking a less environmentally radical approach. The Wall Street Journal says the DOD is utilizing long-abandoned U.S. airstrips that were once used to launch bombing campaigns against Japan during World War II and bringing them back into use. The strips are overgrown with dense foliage though after being ignored for decades, so crews armed with machetes are hacking their way along the runways once used to launch B-29s. The idea is to create a lot of dispersed airstrips that could be used as forward operating bases if needed. Naturally, the military has an acronym for that – the U.S. Air Force calls it “ACE” – for Agile Combat Employment. Clever.

NO MORE RECYCLED PURFUME BOTTLES:  Remember Dawn Sturgess, the British woman who died in 2018 after being exposed to a discarded perfume bottle that contained poison that Russian GRU operatives discarded after using it in an effort to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal who was living in the UK? A former GRU officer himself, Skripal had spied for Britain in the 1990s but was caught and jailed in Russia only to be released later in a spy swap - but it seems Putin and his pals are not the type to let bygones be bygones. Well now, according to the BBC, an inquiry into the incident is examining whether the UK did enough to try and protect Skripal prior to the attack. You might remember that right after the failed assassination attempt, lots of Russian “diplomats” were expelled from the UK and other Western nations in protest over Russia trying to kill people who are living in the West (something a former British spy described to The Cipher Brief as ‘highly annoying’).  Authorities believe the discarded perfume bottle that Sturgess picked up had “enough poison to kill thousands” of people. Thousands. Not exactly a professional hit job.