Special Operations

Serbs Arrest Two Americans for Filming Military Buildings with Drone

The Serbian Ministry of Defense has reportedly arrested two Americans from Florida for filming military facilities in Belgrade using a drone, Serbian television is reporting. Two women from Ukraine traveling with the men were released after being questioned.

The news follows several other security-related issues in Serbia involving foreigners. An American was reportedly arrested earlier this month in possession of a firearm, and “pro-government media alleged that he was a former Navy SEAL and had planned the assassination of unidentified Serbian officials,” per the AP.
The Ministry of Defense said the two Americans and two Ukrainians were detained on Sunday trying to film buildings that once housed the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia, until they were destroyed by NATO bombing in 1999. The Serbian Defense Minister said, “It is not a coincidence that such a large number of foreign citizens tried to bust into premises controlled by the Army of Serbia.”
The arrests come as Russia and the West are vying for influence in Serbia, the largest of the states to emerge from the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Orthodox Christian and Slavic, Serbia has close historical ties with Moscow, but President Aleksandar Vucic has made joining the European Union a priority.

Serbian broadcaster Pink reported Tuesday that the two Americans still being held by police are from Florida and claim they are working for a non-governmental organization.
The two Ukrainian women with the Americans have been released, with local media
reporting
they are from Luhansk, a city in the east of Ukraine, which is occupied by Russia.
There is still some confusion
of
the number of arrests, with Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin claiming that members of Military Police on Sunday and Monday detained a total of eight foreign nationals in connection with the incident.

Serbian security in the northern city of Novi Sad reported that a British and an Afghan national were detained after entering an unused military facility. Also, a couple with Spanish passports were also detained in the nearby holiday resort of Fruska Gora after attempting to walk into an army depot, another report said.

Why the Americans were there and why they were interested in a bombed out military building is bound to generate some questions. Not the least of which is why were two Ukrainian women with them.

There were some reports that the Serbian military has denied, that the site was radioactive, and workers feared working there in the cleanup.

To read the entire article from Axios, click here:

Germany’s Lack of Military Readiness “Dramatic” Bundeswehr

The German military’s combat readiness was criticized by a scathing report by their parliament’s military commissioner as debates rage over the country’s increasing involvement in overseas military missions.

Germany’s military has deteriorated in recent years amid budget cuts and poor management, according to a report published on Tuesday by Parliamentary Armed Forces Commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels.

The call on politicians to double-down on reforms and increase funding came in the same week a Defense Ministry paper revealed German soldiers did not have enough protective vests, winter clothing or tents to adequately take part in a major NATO mission.
What’s wrong with the Bundeswehr?

Bartels pointed to “big gaps” in personnel and equipment. At the end of 2017, no submarines and none of the air force’s 14 large transport planes were available for deployment due to repairs.
Other equipment, including fighter jets, tanks and ships, was outdated and in some cases not fully operational because of bad planning or a lack of spare parts. Some air force pilots were unable to train because too many aircraft were being repaired.
Soldiers have experienced increasing levels of stress and there was a lack adequate leadership due to some 21,000 vacant officer posts.
The report said the government needed to pursue reforms “with greater urgency” and increase defense spending.
A lack of funding and inefficient management structures and planning were behind the problems. Germany has cut defense spending since the end of the Cold War. In 2017, it spent about 1.2 percent of its economic production in 2017 on the armed forces, which is below the 2 percent target recommended by the NATO alliance.

Germany has come under increasing criticism by some, including U.S. President Donald Trump for not spending 2 percent of their GNP on defense which Trump and others say, degrades the unity of NATO.

Meanwhile, the debate in the German government continues as some feel they should meet the NATO goal of 2 percent defense spending while others say the number is only a “target range” of spending.

To read the entire article from Deutsche Welle, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

US Show of Force in the Black Sea Sending Russia a Message

The US Navy has taken what it calls proactive measures by sending an increased presence into the Black Sea to counter what it has termed increased Russian presence there. Lately, the Russians have become belligerent to any US or NATO presence there, which it considers their territory.

It’s a region that has become increasingly fraught with tensions as Russia has reinforced its military forces in the area following its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move rejected by the vast majority of the international community.
On Saturday the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Carney joined the USS Ross in the Black Sea to “conduct maritime security operations,” according to a statement from the US Navy’s 6th Fleet, which oversees US naval operations in the region. It’s the first time two US Navy warships have been in the Black Sea since July 2017.
“Our decision to have two ships simultaneously operate in the Black Sea is proactive, not reactive,” US Navy Vice Adm. Christopher Grady, the commander of 6th Fleet, said in a release announcing the Carney’s arrival.
“We operate at the tempo and timing of our choosing in this strategically important region,” Grady said, adding that “the continued presence of the U.S. Navy in the Black Sea demonstrates our enduring commitment to regional stability, maritime security of our Black Sea partners, and the collective defense of our NATO allies”

The Russians are sensitive about any NATO ships in the Black Sea, which it considers their territory. That’s why they’ve buzzed US surveillance planes, in one case coming within 5-feet of one last month. They’ve also deployed submarines to the area in response.

NATO officials counter that their countries own more coastline on the Black Sea than the Russians do and they’ll continue to operate there. One official was quoted as stating “The Black Sea isn’t a Russian lake.”

To read the entire article from CNN, click here:

Photo courtesy: US Navy

Former SF Soldier Indicted for Kickbacks Related to Stolen Material

A former Special Forces soldier has been indicted by a federal grand jury in a scheme to illegally allow U.S. military equipment in Afghanistan to be stolen and sold on the black market and to use the proceeds to get a pool at his new home in North Carolina along with several vehicles.

Joseph Russell Graff was stationed at Fort Bragg in 2012 when he was deployed to Afghanistan and assigned to Forward Operating Base Salerno for a few months. As soldiers were preparing to move to a base in Kabul, Graff accepted $300,000 to $350,000 in cash to let an Afghani into a secure section of FOB Salerno so he could steal military equipment and sell it on the black market, according to an indictment handed up last week.
Graff smuggled the cash back to Pope Field inside a metal sign, shuffled it among various banks to avoid reporting requirements and then used much of it to have an in-ground pool and deck built at his home in the Pitt County town of Grimesland and to help purchase a Polaris RZR 800S jet ski, a 2006 Jeep Liberty, a 2014 Mazda 6 and a 2013 GMC Yukon, according to the indictment.1
Graff, who now works for the Morehead City Fire Department, is charged with embezzlement, bribery, illegally structuring bank transactions, money laundering and possession of a machine gun.
Federal authorities want to seize the vehicles, the jet ski, cash and several weapons from Graff, as well as force the sale of his home, with the proceeds going to the government, according to the indictment.

It wasn’t made clear if the case against Graff is the sole indictment that will be forthcoming on this case or if the government believes that Graff did not act alone in the alleged theft.

To read the entire article from WRAL TV, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

3rd SFG Opens Doors to Attract New Special Forces Candidates

The 3rd Special Forces Group used the entire family approach in trying to attract new recruits to the Special Forces Regiment. They opened their doors to soldiers and their families from Ft. Bragg looking for soldiers to be the next generation of Green Berets.

Dozens of Fort Bragg soldiers and their families converged at the headquarters of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group on Thursday for an open house meant to introduce those troops to the unit, showcasing the capabilities and opportunities in the Green Beret community.
Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, 20th Engineer Brigade, 18th Field Artillery Brigade, 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 16th Military Police Brigade and other Fort Bragg units attended the event, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between 3rd Special Forces Group and the Special Operations Recruiting Battalion.
Command Sgt. Maj. Bruce W. Holmes, the senior enlisted leader of 3rd Group, said the Special Forces community wants to attract the best soldiers, regardless of shape, size, color, gender, experience or job specialty.
“We don’t discriminate,” he said. “We’re taking men and women. Any rank. Any (military occupational specialty).”
Sgt. 1st Class Alex Martinez, commander of the Fort Bragg Special Operations Recruiting Center, said the open house was a “sneak peek of what life is like as a Green Beret.”
Vehicles and equipment, including weapons, were on display. And Special Forces soldiers and their spouses were on hand to answer questions and address concerns.
“It’s a perfect collaboration,” Martinez said. “It’s units partnering with SORB to recruit their own force.”

One of the selling points was geared towards the families. Special Forces soldiers, while deployed a lot, do enjoy a much more stable existence for the families because they generally remain in the unit for a long period of time. That cuts down on the constant moving that many families in the military have to endure. And because of that, the units, and the families tend to be closer.

To read the entire article from Fayetteville Observer, click here:

Photo courtesy: US Army

Israel Hits Several Hamas Targets After Bombing Wounds 4 Soldiers

The Israeli military hit multiple Hamas targets located in the Gaza Strip in the second decisive action on Sunday after an earlier counterattack on Saturday. The Israelis were hitting Hamas in response to a bomb detonation that wounded 4 IDF soldiers and rockets, fired from Gaza which landed in Israeli territory.

The Israeli Army in a statement said the rockets hit a residential building but no one was seriously hurt.

The military said that eight of the targets it attacked were located in a Hamas military compound, where the group stores weapon, manufacturing infrastructures and carries out training.
Earlier, the army said it struck six Hamas targets in Gaza in what it described as a “large-scale attack.” The military said the targets included a Hamas attack tunnel reaching from Gaza into Israeli territory and two military compounds.
Earlier on Saturday, four Israeli soldiers were wounded – two seriously and two others moderately – when a device exploded near the troops at the fence bordering the southern Gaza Strip. The wounded soldiers were evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva with burns and shrapnel injuries.
According to the IDF, the incident unfolded when soldiers from the Golani Brigade and the Engineering Corps approached the border fence after noticing a Palestinian flag hung in its vicinity. After the soldiers approached the flag, the device exploded. Two tunnels originating in the Strip and extending into Israeli territory were found in the past near the site.
The military believes that the Popular Resistance Committee in Gaza, an umbrella group made up of militants from different armed factions, hung the flag there during Friday’s demonstration in order to attract the soldiers. The committee described the explosion as “a heroic act in response to the enemy’s infiltration into the Gaza Strip.”

With the increased Iranian presence along the border and the Israeli air strikes on their command and control facilities, the ante is going to be upped along the strip as well as with the border to Lebanon.

To read the entire article from Haaretz, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

DOD is Getting Tough With “Deploy or Get Out” Policy

The Department of Defense is getting tough with their “deploy or get out” policy and will begin separating troops who have been undeployable for over a year. Under the new policy, they’ll begin separating troops as early as October 1^st.

The Defense Department is cracking down on the roughly 286,000 troops who are not healthy enough to go overseas.

New policy put out by Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Robert Wilkie on Feb. 14, could affect 13 to 14 percent of the military force.
“The situation we face today is really unlike anything we have faced, certainly in the post-World War II era,” Wilkie said during a Feb. 14, Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee hearing. “If Mr. [Jeff] Bezos at Amazon walked into Christmas week and 14 percent of his workforce could not perform their duties then [it] would no longer be the largest company in the world,”
The new policy exempts pregnant and postpartum service members, but they are the only group getting a pass in the policy.
Troops who have been non-deployable for more than a year may obtain a waiver from the secretary of their military department to stay in the service.
The military may also begin separating a person from the service once a determination has been made that he or she will remain non-deployable for more than a year. The military does not have to wait the full year.
Medical boards will review the conditions of those who have been wounded.
Service members will be given disability or administrative separation.
DoD began exploring its options for non-deployable troops in July after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made clear “every action [by DoD] will be designed to ensure our military is ready to fight today and in the future.”
Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel Dailey said in 2015 that non-deployable soldiers were the number one problem in the Army.
“If you will not or cannot fight and win, then there’s no place for you in the Army,” Dailey said. “We have to become unemotional about this. We have a job to do.”
About 100,000 soldiers are currently non-deployable and only 10 percent of the Army’s non-deployable soldiers will ever be fit to serve again.

The Army is fighting an obesity problem as well, with 10 percent of the force too overweight to deploy. For that, there is no excuse and those soldiers who fall into that category should be forced out. But combat wounded personnel should be given every opportunity to recover and return to the force if that is their wish.

To read the entire article from Federal News Radio, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Egypt Kills 53 Terrorist in Week-Long Sinai Offensive

Egypt’s military and police forces have continued their offensive in the Sinai Peninsula in an attempt to rout the Islamic State and other Islamist militants out of the area, officials said on Thursday. And in the continuing operations, they’ve killed 53 terrorists and detained another 680 suspects in the week-long operation.

Following the directives of President Sisi, the army is keeping the heat on the Islamist insurgents and pushing deeper in trying to crush any insurgent activity.

The security operation, which involves the army, navy, air force and police, began last Friday and targeted “terrorist and criminal elements and organizations” in north and central Sinai, parts of the Nile delta and the western desert, Colonel Tamer al-Rifai told a news conference broadcast on state television on Thursday.
Rifai said forces have destroyed over 1,000 kg (2,205 lbs) of explosives, 378 militant hideouts and weapon storage facilities including a media center used by the militants.
He added that 680 people, some of them suspected militants or wanted criminals, were also detained in the operation.
The air force, which has carried out more than 100 airstrikes in northern and central Sinai since the operation began, has focused on militant hideouts outside residential areas to avoid hitting civilians, air force Brigadier General Alaa Dawara said.
Major General Yasser Abdel Aziz of the Military Operations Authority said the operation would end when Sinai was free of “terrorists”.
“It could be extended or shortened according to the situation and that is what will be determined in the coming days,” Abdel Aziz told journalists.
He said after the military operation, Egyptian authorities would push ahead with a comprehensive development plan for Sinai.
Outside the peninsula, the Egyptian military said the operation also covers parts of the Nile Delta and the Western Desert, where other militants have waged attacks, some believed to be staged out of neighboring Libya.

The Islamic State in its official newspaper al-Naba encouraged Egyptians to attack government forces to show that the campaign is a failure. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been fighting the IS in the Sinai since 2013 when he was the Army chief. He’s now seeking re-election in March.

To read the entire article from Reuters, click here:

Photo courtesy: Egyptian military

Center for American Progress Calls for Voter Suppression of Military

A left-wing organization with ties to both the Clinton and Obama camps has called for tighter election security in the wake of the Russian tampering probe. So, they want to make it tougher on military personnel stationed overseas from voting.

This group has, for years claiming voter suppression and now they want to do the same thing to the military, saying military members should be banned from voting via email or fax.

One state that allows such vote casting is Colorado. The center called on the state to “prohibit voters stationed or living overseas from returning voted ballots electronically.”
“Regardless of the state’s secure ballot return system for electronically voted ballots, we recommend that all voted ballots be returned by mail or delivered in person,” said the 245-page report.
Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams defended the practice, saying the state has incorporated safeguards to protect the integrity of ballots cast by military personnel living overseas.
“They don’t believe someone who works on a submarine should be allowed to vote. We do,” the Republican said in a statement.
Conservatives were quick to blast the report’s recommendation as unworkable and politically motivated.
“Perhaps they think that Navy SEALs can swim ballots ashore, hand them off to Army paratroopers who can parachute into Colorado to drop off the ballots?” asked the conservative website Colorado Peak Politics.
“You can bet that if the military historically voted Democrat instead of Republican, the Center for American Progress would not have a problem with it,” Peak said in a Monday post.

For an organization founded by former Clinton and Obama White House advisor John Podesta that has stood for granting more and better voter access, this action is a definite about-face. They have opposed state efforts to scale back early voting periods, remove inactive voters from rolls and especially fight any attempt to require government-issued photo identification to cast ballots.

But now they want to restrict military voter’s rights. Why? One Conservative, J.Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said this shouldn’t be a surprise, given military members’ voting history.

“CAP would oppose that because they don’t like that the military votes against their interests nearly all of the time,” Mr. Adams said in an email. “But there are very few votes that come in that way, so it’s not a really big issue. CAP wants to make it easier for felons and criminals to vote but wants to make it harder for fighting men and women overseas.”

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

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

UK Accuses Russian Military of “Malicious Cyber Attack”

The British Foreign Minister has pointed the blame at the Russian government, specifically their military for a global cyber attack that ripped thru European businesses a year ago, accusing the Russians of “weaponizing information” in the realm of cyber warfare.

Foreign Minister Tariq Ahmad said, “the U.K. government judges that the Russian government, specifically the Russian military, was responsible for the destructive NotPetya cyberattack of June 2017.”

The fast-spreading outbreak of data-scrambling software centered on Ukraine, which is embroiled in a conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in the country’s east. It spread to companies that do business with Ukraine, including U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck, Danish shipping firm A.P. Moller-Maersk and FedEx subsidiary TNT.
Ahmad said the “reckless” attack cost organizations hundreds of millions of dollars.
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson accused Russia of “undermining democracy, wrecking livelihoods by targeting critical infrastructure and weaponizing information” with malicious cyber attacks.
“We must be primed and ready to tackle these stark and intensifying threats,” Williamson said.
Denmark’s defense minister, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, said that the hack was meant to specifically cause damage. “Russians have lifted this up to a higher level where the aim is to cause harm just like in a military attack,” he was quoted as saying by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied Russia’s involvement.
“We categorically deny the accusations. We consider them unfounded and baseless and see them as a continuation of a groundless Russophobic campaign,” he said in a conference call with reporters.

While the Russians continue to claim that they are blameless, it remains a fact that too many of these attacks come from within their own borders and they’ve done precious little to stop them. And their businesses have been scarcely affected.

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

Photo courtesy Wikipedia