Special Operations

US Top General in Afghanistan Claims Russia is Arming the Taliban

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan has said the Russians are supporting and supplying arms to the Taliban, adding more fuel to the already tense relationship between the two superpowers.

General John Nicolson said in an interview with the BBC that he’s seen “destabilizing activity by the Russians.” He said Russian weapons are being supplied to the Taliban via the Tajik border. Russia has denied US allegations in the past, citing that there isn’t any evidence.

We see a narrative that’s being used that grossly exaggerates the number of Isis [Islamic State group] fighters here,” Gen Nicholson told BBC News. “This narrative then is used as a justification for the Russians to legitimise the actions of Taliban and provide some degree of support to the Taliban.”
“We’ve had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial support provided by the enemy. We’ve had weapons brought to this headquarters and given to us by Afghan leaders and said, this was given by the Russians to the Taliban,” he continued. “We know that the Russians are involved.”
Much of Gen Nicholson’s career has been spent in the conflict in Afghanistan. He narrowly escaped death when his office in the Pentagon was destroyed by one of the 9/11 planes and the US campaign in Afghanistan has shaped his career ever since.
He believes this direct Russian involvement with the Taliban is relatively new. He says Russia has conducted a series of exercises on the Afghan border with Tajikistan. “These are counter terrorism exercises,” says Gen Nicholson, “but we’ve seen the Russian patterns before: they bring in large amounts of equipment and then they leave some of it behind.”

Despite the war fought between the Russians and Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1980s, their shadowy alliance could be a simple fact is that now their aims are more closely aligned. Nicholson pointed to destabilizing Russian activity in Syria as well.

To read the entire article from the BBC, click here:

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Trump Replaces McMaster as National Security Adviser with Hardliner Bolton

U.S. President Donald Trump in yet another shakeup of his foreign policy team, on Thursday, replaced H.R. McMaster as national security adviser with John Bolton. Bolton will be the third national security adviser of the Trump White House already and is a hawk who has advocated using military force against North Korea and Iran.

The move, announced in a tweet and a White House statement, came little more than a week after Trump fired Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and nominated Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo to replace him.
The shakeup shows Trump, in office for 14 months, surrounding himself with advisers more likely to agree with his views and taking his foreign policy in a more hawkish direction.
What it means for a prospective summit meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is unclear. The meeting is supposed to happen by the end of May, but an exact time and place have yet to be settled on.
Bolton’s appointment could doom the already endangered Iran nuclear deal. It could also lead to friction with Trump on how tough to be on Russia, with the president still holding out hope for improved ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The news of Bolton’s appointment followed a meeting he had with Trump in the Oval Office. Even Bolton was caught by surprise. “I didn’t really expect an announcement this afternoon, but it’s obviously a great honor,” he told Fox News after the announcement. “I’m still getting used to it.”

If people are expecting softer tones from the White House, this appointment won’t make them happy. One can expect the administration to adopt a more confrontational approach to China, North Korea and Iran.

To read the entire article from Reuters, click here:

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Trump to Limit Transgender Troops Service? New Policy Expected Friday

The Trump Administration has a new policy on the sticky subject of transgender troops that will likely restrict their service. The policy is slated to go into effect on Friday and comes after months of court challenges and talks inside the Defense Department.

In August, President Trump sent Defense Secretary Jim Mattis a memo ordering him to propose changes to the Obama-era policy that allows transgender troops to serve openly and receive medical treatment, including sexual reassignment surgery.
Mattis made his recommendation on transgender service to the White House in February. If Trump does not accept it, the Pentagon will revert to its pre-2016 practice that effectively banned transgender troops from service on medical grounds, according to the memo.
Mattis, since taking charge at the Pentagon, has emphasized the readiness of troops to deploy and fight. In February, the Pentagon established a policy that dismisses troops if they cannot deploy for a period of one year. Presumably, that principle could affect transgender troops who require medical care that could not be provided in a war zone.
Federal courts have ruled that the Pentagon must allow transgender troops to volunteer for service. Several transgender recruits have signed up since becoming eligible Jan. 1.
A RAND Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon in 2016 found that there could be several thousand transgender troops among the active-duty force of one million. The report determined that their medical treatment would have a minimal impact on military readiness.

Under the current policy since 2016, transgender troops can serve openly seek medical attention and allows recruits to join the military if they have been stable in their gender for at least 18 months.

To read the entire article from USA Today, click here:

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New Balance Strikes Deal To Manufacture Shoes for the Military

New Balance announced it had reached a $17.3 million agreement to make sneakers for the military. The Boston-based shoe brand will make the new 950v2 specifically for the military.

“This is a great win for the preservation and growth of American manufacturing jobs,” says Rob DeMartini, President & CEO at New Balance. The brand currently employs about 1,000 workers in the United States, and though it estimates this military deal with lead to more hires, it’s unclear how many new employees will join as a direct result.
The NB-military relationship significantly predates the Trump administration. “New Balance has been the sole supplier of athletic footwear to the US Navy and the US Marine Corps since at least 1998,” says Brad Miller, General Manager of New Balance’s Enduring Purpose division (which oversees its “Made in the USA” projects). “We also have provided footwear for the US Army and US Airforce.”
Then, in 2012, New Balance sought a contract to create sneakers for the U.S. military—they even invested in an IMEVA machine, a device that allowed them to produce fully molded midsoles here in the U.S.—but a deal never came to fruition. In 2016, the Boston Globe reported that the dad sneaker experts promised to remain quiet about the TPP in exchange for the contract—a promise they claimed President Obama never kept.
Under the deal, New Balance will produce and distribute a model called the 950v2. According the New Balance, the 950v2 “was developed specifically for the military and will be available in three running shoe types for men and women including neutral, stability and motion control.” To make the shoes, the brand is working with 21 American subcontractors, with materials that are 100% made in America.
The “Made in the USA” part seems like an obvious condition, but in the past, New Balance has faced legal trouble for what some considered false “Made in the USA” claims, including a 2016 lawsuit (still pending) alleging that the brand knowingly sold sneakers labeled “Made in the USA” that were made of up to 30 percent foreign labor and materials.

While the $17 million-dollar contract is a lot of money, it is a drop in the bucket to the $4 billion dollars a year revenue made by the company. Why is it a big deal to the company? Patriotism, while other companies are openly spouting anti-Trump campaigns, the New Balance brand is, while not specifically pro-Trump very much pro-American.

To read the entire article from GQ Magazine, click here:

Photo courtesy: New Balance

Teacher Who Called the Military, “the Lowest of the Low” Fired

The teacher from California who called members of the U.S. military, “the lowest of our low” in a video captured by one of his students has been fired. As soon as the video hit social media, it triggered criticism from across the nation including the White House.

The El Rancho Unified School District held a Tuesday night vote to determine the fate of Gregory Salcido, a history teacher at El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera, southeast of Los Angeles.
The board’s decision, nearly two months after his comments went viral, was a unanimous: Salcido is out, said Board of Education President Aurora Villon.
Salcido, who also serves on the Pico Rivera City Council, has 30 days to appeal the school board’s decision, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Salcido’s expletive-filled rant appeared to connect the undetermined outcome of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the intellectual capabilities of the troops fighting them.
“Because we have a bunch of dumbs— over there,” Salcido said in the video. “Think about the people who you know who are over there. Your freaking stupid Uncle Louie or whatever. . . They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people. They’re the lowest of our low.”
The military was losing to “dudes wearing freaking robes and chanclas [flip-flops] in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he told his students.
“The data is in, we don’t have a good military,” he continued. “We couldn’t beat the Vietnamese. They’re a bunch of people this freaking big throwing rice at us.”
He also criticized military recruiters in public schools. “It’s a lie that our military is freaking b—,” he said.
Salcido’s profane and disparaging comments sparked harsh condemnation: The school district was deluged by thousands of emails, many from veterans, active-duty troops and military family members, the Times reported.
“He’s disgraced us, disgraced this city, disgraced this nation,” said Councilman Bob Archuleta, a veteran whose two sons are on active duty, the Times said.
Pico Rivera, a predominantly Latino city of 63,000, was founded by veterans after World War II and maintains a strong connection to the military, its mayor, Gustavo Camacho, told The Washington Post.
“I and my fellow council members strongly disagree with Mr. Salcido’s point of view,” Camacho said in January. “Quite frankly, we denounce his statements.”

It will be interesting to see of Salcido runs for re-election to the Pico Rivera City Council and what kind of support he’s generates.

To read the entire article from Tampa Bay News, click here:

Photo courtesy: Screen Shot

US Air Force To Adopt Army’s MultiCam Uniform

The U.S. Air Force could be soon wearing the same duty uniforms as the U.S. Army, the “MultiCam” according to documents that were on social media last week.

The documents, reportedly from the Air Force Uniform Office, suggest ditching the service’s “Airman Battle Uniform” in favor of the Army’s MultiCam “Operational Camouflage Pattern.”

The change would see airmen trade their digitized tiger stripes designed to mimic a Vietnam-era uniform for a brown-and-green pattern made for use in Afghanistan.
A uniform change could be announced in June with the changeover starting on Oct. 1, the documents say.
Air Force Capt. Kathleen Atanasoff, a Pentagon spokeswoman, confirmed in a statement last week that the service is looking at options for a new utility uniform but said no decision has been made.
“We regularly review uniform policy and gather feedback from airmen via a number of channels,” she said. “The Air Force uniform policy team and senior leaders are currently considering this feedback and working on possible courses of action.”
One recommendation is that the Air Force, which adopted its current uniform in 2007, go with the OCP Army Combat Uniform, she said.
OCPs are already worn by airmen who deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq and in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
Some airmen at Yokota Air Base — home of U.S. Forces Japan and the 5th Air Force in western Tokyo — said they liked the idea of wearing MultiCam.
“It’s the best thing ever,” Staff Sgt. Jed Campbell, an air transportation craftsman for the 730th Air Mobility Squadron, said Tuesday. “Wearing [MultiCam] was something to look forward to about deploying to Afghanistan. They’re so much more comfortable.”

It makes more sense having the services in the same duty uniform and will ease on problems for resupplying the troops overseas. The washed out tiger stripe pattern that the Air Force is currently using doesn’t seem to blend very well anyway.

To read the entire article from Stars and Stripes, click here:

Photo courtesy US Air Force

Austin Bombing Suspect Killed in Shootout With Police

Police in Austin, Texas have killed the suspect in a rash of bombings across the area in recent weeks after an armed confrontation early on Wednesday morning, police sources have revealed to the media.

The Austin Police Department was working on an “officer-involved shooting” on I-35, according to a tweet from the department.
Austin has been on edge after a series of package or other bombs detonated across the city over the past few weeks.
The most recent of these occurred Sunday when two people were injured by a device believed to have used a tripwire.
Authorities have warned that the devices appear to be getting more sophisticated and asked residents of one neighborhood to stay indoors Monday.
The FBI has sent 350 special agents to the Texas capital as well as extra bomb squads.
“We are clearly dealing with a serial bomber,” Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. “We will have to determine if we see a specific ideology behind this.”

More details will be posted as they become available

To read the entire article from Stars and Stripes, click here:

Photo courtesy NBC News

Last Living MOH Recipient from Iwo Jima Honors “Guardian Angel”

“Woody” Williams never knew the names of the Marines who helped protect him during some of the fiercest fighting in World War II. But finally, he was able to pay his respects to the men who saved his life.

Seventy-three years ago on the island of Iwo Jima, Hershel “Woody” Williams randomly chose several fellow Marines to give him rifle cover as he made a one-man charge with his flamethrower against a network of Japanese pillboxes.
He spent four hours unleashing flames into the pillboxes that had stymied advance for days, racing back to the Marine Corps lines to refuel the flamethrower, and then running again into battle — all while covered by only four riflemen.
Williams was ultimately awarded the Medal of Honor on Feb. 23, 1945, for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” as the official citation describes it. He “daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machinegun fire” coming out of reinforced concrete pillboxes, on which bazooka and mortar rounds had no effect.
At one point, Williams mounted a pillbox, stuck the flamethrower’s nozzle through an air vent and killed the enemy within it.
Two of the Marines covering Williams died that day, but he never knew their names, and never knew where their remains rested until just a few months ago.
On Saturday, Williams, with the Medal of Honor hanging around his neck, stood over the Hawaii grave of Charles Fischer, one of those “guardian angels” who helped him survive that day and is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, nicknamed the Punchbowl.
He saluted the Marine, who died a private first class that day, and then slowly bent down and placed a purple lei upon his headstone.
“I have always said I’m just the caretaker of it,” Williams said later of the Medal of Honor. “It belongs to them. They sacrificed for it. I didn’t.”
Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded to men who fought on Iwo Jima; Williams is the last still alive.
Williams was in Hawaii to dedicate a Gold Star Families Memorial Monument at the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe. The monument was initiated by Williams through the organization he founded, the Hershel Woody Williams Medal of Honor Foundation. This is the foundation’s 33rd monument to be dedicated; they recognize the sacrifices made by families who have lost loved ones in the service of their country.
After the Saturday morning dedication, the 94-year-old Williams visited the Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu, where the remains of hundreds of servicemembers who died during World War II are interred.
Patrick O’Leary, a foundation board member whom Williams has dubbed his “research guru,” sleuthed the identity of Fischer by poring through hundreds of military documents concerning the Iwo Jima campaign waged in February and March 1945. Using five witness statements that had been given in the course of recommending Williams for the Medal of Honor, O’Leary was able to reliably pinpoint the company the riflemen were in and found that only a corporal and a private first class had been killed that day.
“It just has to be them,” O’Leary said. “Nothing else fits.”
Last fall he tracked down Fischer’s gravesite in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The other Marine is buried in Long Island, N.Y.

To read the entire article from Stars and Stripes, click here:

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Nerve Agent Poisoning Puts Secret Russian Military Labs in the Spotlight

The recent events that unfolded in the UK with the nerve agent poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on a bench in Salisbury is putting the secret labs of the Russians that research and manufacture these weapons in the spotlight.

During his last run for the presidency, in 2012, Russian leader Vladimir Putin startled U.S. military experts with a mysterious pledge to develop novel kinds of weapons to counter the West’s technological edge. Armies of the future, he said, would need weapons “based on new physical principles” including “genetic” and “psychophysical” science.
“Such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons,” Putin said in an essay published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Russian government’s newspaper of record, “but will be more ‘acceptable’ in terms of political and military ideology.”
Since the start of Putin’s second term, a construction boom has been underway at more than two dozen institutes that were once part of the Soviet Union’s biological and chemical weapons establishment, according to Russian documents and photos compiled by independent researchers. That expansion, which includes multiple new or refurbished testing facilities, is particularly apparent at secret Defense Ministry laboratories that have long drawn the suspicions of U.S. officials over possible arms-treaty violations.
“The big question is, why are they doing this?” said Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological weapons expert with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. In a newly released book, “Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia,” Zilinskas and co-author Philippe Mauger analyze hundreds of contract documents and other records that show a surge in Russian research interest in subjects ranging from genetically modified pathogens to nonlethal chemical weapons used for crowd control.
During the Cold War, Soviet leaders spent vast sums to create weaponized versions of 11 different pathogens — including the microbes that cause anthrax, smallpox and the plague — while also experimenting with genetically altered strains. They created new classes of chemical toxins, such as Novichok, reportedly used in the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England.
A fourth-generation nerve agent more deadly than VX, Novichok is the stuff of legend. Russia denies that it ever researched or manufactured such nerve agents, but it arrested a former Soviet weapons scientist on charges of divulging state secrets after he published details about Soviet Novichok production in newspaper articles and a memoir.

Even after the fall of the former Soviet Union, the Russians didn’t allow inspectors inside their former chemical warfare research labs. Some thought the shape of the labs was part of the reason but many in the intelligence field believed that they were hiding something.

To read the entire article from Washington Post, click here:

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Russia Stockpiling Nerve Agent, Says British Foreign Secretary Johnson

The British government isn’t backing down from accusing the Russians of being behind the attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson saying that the Russians are stockpiling the nerve agent used in the attack.

Sergei and his daughter Yulia Skripal remain critically ill in hospital after being found slumped on a bench and exposed to the substance in Salisbury.

Johnson also dismissed a suggestion by Russia’s EU ambassador that the agent might have come from a UK laboratory.
Vladimir Chizhov had said the Porton Down lab in Wiltshire may have been the source of the substance.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said Russia is “culpable” for the attack.
On Sunday, newly elected President Vladimir Putin denied Russia was behind the incident but added that he was “ready for co-operation” with the UK.
He told reporters: “Any reasonable person understands that it would be total rubbish, ravings and nonsense for anyone in Russia to allow themselves such antics ahead of the election and the World Cup.”
UK Prime Minister Theresa May told MPs that Porton Down – Britain’s military research base – identified the substance used as being part of a group of military-grade nerve agents known as Novichok developed by the Soviet Union.
Mr Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok.”
He said Russia’s reaction to the incident “was not the response of a country that really believes itself to be innocent”.

Meanwhile, the Russians deny the accusations and claim that the British are to blame for the attack and have said it is a plot by the West to alienate Russia due to setbacks in the Middle East, particularly Syria as an excuse.

To read the entire article from BBC, click here:

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