Special Operations

Trump Administration Weighing Terrorist Label for Iran’s IRGC

There is an ongoing debate in the Trump administration on whether the United States should label the powerful Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. The move is seen as using everything in their power to halt Iran’s force projection in several areas.

While some warn a designation could pose risks to US personnel and installations overseas, it would allow the White House to freeze IRGC assets, impose travel bans and levy criminal penalties on top of pre-existing economic sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.
“The United States is trying to change malign behavior of the Iranians and deter their aggression,” said Chris Costa, the executive director of the Spy Museum and a recently retired special adviser to Trump on counterterrorism. For that goal, “the special designation is a very important tool,” he said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in favor of the designation, sources familiar with his thinking say.
“There’s lots of things that are being discussed, things that will prove, we believe, very effective at the end goal-which is, at the end of the day, what matters, right?” Pompeo told CNN in a recent interview. “The end goal is to convince the Islamic Republic of Iran to be a normal country.” He declined to discuss specific plans for future sanctions and designations.
But labeling an official state military as a terror group, particularly a group with the reach and force of the IRGC, would be unprecedented and could expose US diplomatic and military officials to additional hazards, some warn.
The powerful military and security body is key to Iran’s influence in the Middle East, often linked to Iran’s support for terrorism. The organization controls wide swaths of the Iranian economy, including the energy sector.
The IRGC “provides weapons, training for regional proxies, regional forces … it focuses on terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis,” Costa, the former National Security Council counterterrorism adviser told CNN. “They’re a regional spoiler.”

Many in the intelligence community have always felt the IRGC is a terrorist group and saying that labeling them as such will not increase the threat level for US personnel in close proximity to them anyway.

To read the entire article from CNN, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Calls To Boost Military Budget Adding to Growing Unease in UK

The United States and Great Britain have been staunch allies thru World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict as well as in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Syria. But the lack of spending in the British military has some fearing that the UK’s military prowess will be looked upon as irrelevant unless they receive a huge shot in the arm with budget boosts.

“There is a concern that the U.K. is falling ever further behind and becoming even more useless from a U.S. point of view,” said Andrew Dorman, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a think tank in London.
Britain has traditionally seen itself as one of the world’s leading military powers, and its annual defense spending of 35.3 billion pounds (around $46.6 billion) is still the largest in Europe
But years of squeezed budgets and rising demand in other areas, such as the publicly funded National Health Service, have dented Britain’s military prowess, some warn.
At risk, these experts say, is the so-called special relationship with the U.S., a widespread source of pride among many politicians and the defense establishment.
The British Army has shrunk to 82,000 personnel, which the BBC pointed out is the smallest it’s been since the Napoleonic Wars some 200 years ago.
And in January a government spending watchdog warned that the Ministry of Defense’s shopping list over the next decade was “not affordable” — leaving it as much as 21 billion pounds short (about $27.7 billion).
On Tuesday, lawmakers in the U.K.’s Defense Select Committee published a report urging the government to boost military spending by at least 8 billion pounds a year (around $10 billion) to plug this gaping “black hole” and improve capability elsewhere.
Not only does the U.K. risk “failing both its citizens and its allies,” the report said, but it is also in danger of becoming obsolete in the eyes of its American partners and losing traction in NATO.
“Defense spending is an area where a strong message needs to be sent to our allies and adversaries alike,” said Defense Committee chairman Julian Lewis.

There are many in the British government that fear with President Trump calling for the European allies in NATO to pull more of their own share in defense spending, that the UK will be left far short to defend itself from threats, mainly from the east.

To read the entire article from NBC News click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Military Pilots Encountering UFOs, and the Pentagon Doesn’t Comment

Despite the declassification of two videos documenting encounters between US Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified flying objects, the Pentagon and the Defense Department isn’t investigating these encounters and treats them simply as isolated incidents.

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.

A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately-owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015.

Unfortunately, we have no idea, because we aren’t even seeking answers.

I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I know from numerous discussions with Pentagon officials over the past two years that military departments and agencies treat such incidents as isolated events rather than as part of a pattern requiring serious attention and investigation. A colleague of mine at To the Stars Academy, Luis Elizondo, used to run a Pentagon intelligence program that examined evidence of “anomalous” aircraft, but he resigned last fall to protest government inattention to the growing body of empirical data.

Meanwhile, reports from different services and agencies remain largely ignored and unevaluated inside their respective bureaucratic stovepipes. There is no Pentagon process for synthesizing all the observations the military is making. The current approach is equivalent to having the Army conduct a submarine search without the Navy. It is also reminiscent of the counterterrorism efforts of the CIA and the FBI before Sept. 11, 2001, when each had information on the hijackers that they kept to themselves. In this instance, the truth may ultimately prove benign, but why leave it to chance?

The military personnel who are encountering these phenomena tell remarkable stories. In one example, over the course of two weeks in November 2004, the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser operating advanced naval radar, repeatedly detected unidentified aircraft operating in and around the Nimitz carrier battle group, which it was guarding off the coast of San Diego. In some cases, according to incident reports and interviews with military personnel, these vehicles descended from altitudes higher than 60,000 feet at supersonic speeds, only to suddenly stop and hover as low as 50 feet above the ocean. The United States possesses nothing capable of such feats.

On at least two occasions, F-18 fighters were guided to intercept these vehicles and were able to verify their location, appearance and performance. Notably, these encounters occurred in broad daylight and were independently monitored by radars aboard multiple ships and aircraft. According to naval aviators I have spoken with at length, the vehicles were roughly 45 feet long and white. Yet these mysterious aircraft easily sped away from and outmaneuvered America’s front-line fighters without a discernible means of propulsion.

The Pentagon stopped funding research into UFO phenomenon back in 2012. It is high time that the issue of investigating these incidents further is now.

To read the entire article from Christopher Mellon for the Washington Post click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Special Operations Forces Selection PT Preparation Week 15, Day 2

Monday morning means our weekly mini-UBRR test to judge where our fitness level is at. Start off with pushups, sit-ups, and crunches, then to the bar for V-ups, Pull-ups, and dips before a 5-mile run.

Remember to stay hydrated and mark your progress in your workout log book.

Training:

More preparation for the UBRR

1 x 1-minute Pushups

1 x 1-minute Sit-ups

1 x 1-minute, Crunches

1 x 1-minute, V-ups

1 x Dips as many as possible to muscle failure (No time limit)

1 x Pullups as many as possible or to muscle failure (No time limit)

5-mile run (40-minute maximum)

Stretch well after completion

Russia Withdrawing Troops and Aircraft from Syria

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Russians have withdrawn a large number of troops and aircraft, according to state-run news agency Tass,

Putin said they withdrew more than 1,000 military personnel and more than 20 aircraft from Syria in the last few days.

“Only over the past several days, 13 planes, 14 helicopters and 1,140 personnel have been pulled out [of Syria],” the Russian leader said, state news agency Tass reported. Putin explained that Russia has been removing its forces from the Middle Eastern country since he visited in December.
Tass also reported on Thursday that the Black Sea Fleet frigate Admiral Essen had “accomplished” its mission in the Mediterranean and is headed back to the city of Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula. Russia has a permanent task force in the Mediterranean, with a naval base located in the Syrian coastal city of Tartous.
Putin praised the Russian military’s success in Syria, saying the “army clearly demonstrated its growing potential and better coordination among military units in the struggle with terrorists.”
Earlier this month, Assad said in an interview that he believes the conflict will come to an end in “less than a year.” He added that his army will take back “every inch” of the country, claiming that he has the “support” of his people.
Assad’s army has turned its attention to the country’s southwest region, as the last remaining pockets of rebels have been defeated near Damascus and Homs. Now, the military aims to reconquer the opposition-held area near the border of Jordan and the disputed Golan Heights, which are claimed by Israel and Syria.
But the region has recently become more complicated, with neighboring Israel launching strikes on Iranian-backed militias, which support Assad, stationed in the region. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Iran and Tehran-backed militias began withdrawing from the disputed Golan Heights border with Israel last week, as part of a Russian-brokered deal with Israel.

President Trump has reportedly been seeking the help of Putin to curb the Iranian military presence in Syria. Their basing of rockets, especially along the Golan Heights on the border with Israel will only lead to further warfare in Syria and beyond.

To read the entire article from Newsweek, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

US Military Ends 70 Year Stay in South Korean Capital

The United States formally ended seven decades of military presence in Seoul, South Korea’s capital Friday with a ceremony to mark the opening of a new headquarters.

Camp Humphreys, about 45 miles south of Seoul, has opened and many of the U.S. troops have already moved there. The rest of the command will relocate there by the end of the year.

The U.S. military had been headquartered in Seoul’s central Yongsan neighborhood since American troops first arrived at the end of World War II. The Yongsan Garrison was a symbol of the U.S.-South Korea alliance but its occupation of prime real estate was also a long-running source of friction.
Located in the western port city of Pyeongtaek and close to a U.S. air field, the new 3,510-acre (1,420-hectare) command cost $11 billion to build and is the largest overseas U.S. base. South Korea has paid about 90 percent of the cost.
“This headquarters’ building, within the headquarters’ complex that surrounds it, represents the significant investment in the long-term presence of U.S. forces in Korea,” Gen. Vincent Brooks, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said during the opening ceremony. “U.S. Forces Korea will remain the living proof of the American commitment to the alliance.”
In a message read out at the ceremony by an aide, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that the headquarters is the cornerstone of the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
“In opening a new era of the U.S. forces headquarters in Pyeongtaek, I hope that the U.S.-South Korea alliance will develop beyond a ‘military alliance’ and a ‘comprehensive alliance’ and become a ‘great alliance,'” Moon said in the statement.
The relocation is part of a broad U.S. plan to realign its 28,500 troops and their bases in South Korea into two major hubs: one in Pyeongtaek and the other in the southeastern city of Daegu. U.S. officials say they want to move out of highly populated areas and improve efficiency and military readiness.
“Modern warfare is all about concentrating and deploying forces quickly, and Pyeongtaek in these terms has many advantages because it can really function as an outlet, unlike Yongsan, which was stuck in the middle of a population center,” said Yun Jiwon, a security professor at Pyeongtaek University.

The Yongsan area has always had a foreign military presence. The Chinese, when they occupied the country in the late 19^th century, the Japanese from 1910 thru the end of World War II, and finally the U.S. after the Japanese left occupied it from 1945-1949 but returned a year later when the Korean War began all based in Yongsan.

To read the entire article from ABC News, click here:

Photo courtesy AP

Charleston Man Scammed VA for 200K in Benefits, Never Served in the Military

In a bizarre case, a Charleston man who never served in the military has been arrested after he scammed the VA for nearly $200,000 in medical benefits by claiming he fought in Vietnam and was awarded two Purple Hearts.

And this isn’t the first time that he’s been caught doing so according to federal prosecutors and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Keith Hudson, 70, pleaded guilty to health care fraud in U.S. District Court this week. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for the scam, which marked the second time authorities said he has posed as a U.S. Navy veteran for benefits.
Hudson was suspected of carrying out a similar scheme in Connecticut where he received medical care at VA facilities from 2003 until authorities caught on about two years later, according to federal court records. He was placed in a pretrial diversion program.
In the latest case, Hudson received more than $197,000 in benefits after applying to the VA in Charleston in 2015.
Prosecutors said he went as far as to make up the name of a medal he claimed he received.
An investigation by the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General revealed Hudson submitted a forged Department of Defense separation from active duty document — the same falsified form that he used in the Connecticut case.
He said he saw combat as a medic and suffered wounds and other trauma when he served from August 1967 through October 1971. Hudson said he received two Purple Heart medals but the citation on the document was inaccurate.
The form also claimed Hudson received the Fleet Marine Force Medal with Marine Device, but no such medal exists. He said he received a Combat Medical Badge, but that award is only given for service in the U.S. Army.
The document had a stamp from the Alaska State Defense Force, which investigators said was suspicious because the force is a volunteer group and not an official military organization.
Additionally, the typeset of the Social Security number on Hudson’s form was different than the rest of the document.
Employment and fingerprint records from the time frame Hudson said he was in the Navy showed he worked a variety of jobs in New York and Maine.

With the massive influx of veterans having fought in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other places, the number of fraudulent VA claims is skyrocketing. In just a six-month period of 2017, federal authorities have made over 80 arrests and recovered $2.9 million dollars in fines, restitution, and penalties for fraudulent VA claims.

Those numbers are more than double what was recovered 10 years ago

To read the entire article from The Post and Courier, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Military Preparing to Hold and House 32,000 Illegal Immigrants

With the flood of illegal immigrants rushing the border, the U.S. military is preparing plans to hold, and care for up to 12,000 family members in detention facilities across the southwestern United States on military bases.

The new request comes addition to the plans to house as many as 20,000 immigrant children at Defense Department facilities who are apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border without an adult relative or are separated from parents.
The military is being asked to help provide space to hold the migrants because existing federal facilities are running out of capacity due to the waves of people, mostly from Central America, who are being swept into the system due to the Administration’s policy of referring all border crossers for prosecution. On Monday, Defense Secretary James Mattis identified two Texas military bases as the sites where migrants will be held: Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base.
The Trump Administration has yet to publicly identify where the groups of migrants will be held, but an official told TIME that Fort Bliss is being prepared to house families whose adults face criminal charges for the Department of Homeland Security. Fort Bliss, located near El Paso on the Rio Grande river across the U.S.-Mexico border, is an Army base comprised of more than 1 million acres across New Mexico and Texas.
Capacity is an urgent need. The Pentagon said in a statement late Wednesday it needs to be ready for as many as 2,000 people to be ready for detention within 45 days. A senior administration official says the 45-day timeline is likely to be on the long side. The official says the White House is pushing for a quicker ramp-up and expects the Pentagon will be able to deliver.
Meanwhile, the same Administration official says children who arrive on the U.S. border without a parent will stay at Goodfellow under a program run by the Department of Health and Human Services. The base is located further north near San Angelo in central Texas.
The military has had this role before. In 2014, the Obama Administration placed around 7,700 migrant children on bases in Texas, California and Oklahoma. The temporary shelters were shuttered after four months.

The Pentagon has also been asked to identify available land and “construct semi-separate, soft-sided camp facilities capable of sheltering up to 4,000 people, at three separate locations,” in the event of enough space not being available.

To read the entire article from Time, click here:

Photo: screenshot of an illegal immigrant video

China Will Increase Its Defense Ties, Influence in Africa

China’s presence in Africa has been steadily growing and since establishing their first overseas military base in Djibouti, they are looking to expand their foreign military presence all across the continent.

The claim is to protect their national assets, where the Chinese government has dumped billions in economic assistance. But now, they’re looking to expand their influence in the military field as well, challenging the US at every turn.

In Djibouti, where Chinese companies have constructed strategic ports and Africa’s first electric transnational railway, Beijing last year formally launched its first overseas military base, which also operates as a logistics and intelligence facility. Many experts now anticipate more Chinese bases in the years to come, with Namibia rumored as a potential location.
Meanwhile in Tanzania, where the state-run conglomerate China Merchants Holdings International is hoping to invest in the Bagamoyo mega port, China built a complex designed to train local armed forces earlier this year. And, at the first-ever China-Africa Defense and Security Forum in Beijing on Tuesday, the communist state announced it will provide African countries with “comprehensive support” on matters such as piracy and counter-terrorism. That includes providing technologies, equipment, personnel and strategic advice, local media reported.
All that comes amid expectations for the U.S. to reduce troops in Africa under President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, which is set to boost Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government as the dominant foreign power on the continent.
“In recent years, Chinese arms sales to Africa have surpassed the United States,” said Luke Patey, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies: “In particular, Chinese small arms and light weapons have spread rapidly since China is less inhibited by selling arms to countries in the midst of conflict than Western providers.” That goes hand in hand with Beijing’s expanding military cooperation, he continued.
The world’s second-largest economy has long described Sino-Africa cooperation as a “win-win” arrangement — one that provides China with natural resources and African economies with badly-needed infrastructure. But while the flood of Chinese resources may be welcomed by the region’s cash-strapped governments, the fear is that increased capital could translate into political leverage.
In fact, many speculate that it was Beijing’s concerns over its investments that resulted in the 2017 coup that ousted Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe — a charge that Xi’s administration has denied.

The Chinese will no doubt look to expand their base in Djibouti as well as start exploring other avenues in the very near future. As the events in Zimbabwe showed, the influence of China and their willingness to project their force is a new, and unsettling threat to the West in the region.

To read the entire article from CNBC, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Russia Calls Off Ceasefire With US in SW Syria, Israel Hits Iranian Base

With what was termed breaches of the ceasefire agreements by insurgent groups in southwest Syria, the Russian air force in Syria announced the end of the ceasefire agreement they reached with the United States and Jordan in the area.

Meanwhile, government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are staging a new offensive to retake one of the last rebel-held regions in that area of the country.

The Hmeymim base, an airfield located in the west coast province of Latakia, is one of two major Russian-leased military installations in Syria, the other being a naval base about 40 miles down the coast in Tartous. Russian warplanes—likely based in Hmeymim—reportedly struck targets Monday in the southwestern province of Daraa, where Russia and Syria had agreed last year to a ceasefire with rebel groups attempting to overthrow Assad since a 2011 uprising backed by the U.S., Turkey and Gulf Arab states.
“The end of the period of reduced escalation in southern Syria can be confirmed after it was breached by extremist groups and illegitimate armed groups operating against Syrian government forces, while the agreement remains in the Syrian province of Idlib,” the Central Channel for the Hmeymim Military Base wrote on Facebook.
The base also denied reports of civilian casualties in a later message, maintaining that “Russian bombers do not target civilian sites by any means. Our missions are limited to the destruction of the terrorist bases belonging to the Nusra Front and ISIS [Islamic State militant group] terrorists, in order to support friendly land forces advancing on the ground.”
The ceasefire collapse also occurred as airstrikes reportedly struck Damascus International Airport on Tuesday. While the attack remains unclaimed, it has been widely blamed on Israel, who rarely takes responsibility for strikes against Iranian and pro-Iran targets in neighboring Syria. The U.K.-based, pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Israeli warplanes struck “a shipment of Iranian weapons” that had arrived at the airport, while Russia’s state-run Sputnik News highlighted reports claiming an Iranian cargo plane may have been the target.
Iran-backed groups, such as the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement, have reportedly pulled back from southwestern Syria as part of a recent agreement, but Iran has maintained that it would not leave Syria unless asked to do so by the local government. The latest airstrikes in Damascus, however, may indicate that the deal has fallen apart or did not preclude Israeli attacks elsewhere in the country. Last week, unclaimed airstrikes blamed on both the U.S. and Israel reportedly killed dozens—including Iraqi militias—in Syra’s far eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

Assad has kept close relationships with both Moscow and Tehran during the Civil War but has called for the forces of both the United States and Turkey, which they claim are in their country illegally and without permission to leave immediately.

To read the entire article from Newsweek, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia