Special Operations

US Air Force Increasing the Airstrikes in Afghanistan

With the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria nearly complete, the U.S. Air Force is quickly turning its attention back to Afghanistan. As the number of close air support missions dwindles in Iraq and Syria, the need in Afghanistan remains constant and the Air Force is stepping up the air campaign.

In April 2017, American and allied jets dropped over 3,000 bombs on ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
But a year later, aircrafts dropped just 254 bombs, a sign of how much the war against ISIS has changed, according to a new strike report released over the weekend from the U.S. Air Force.

Throughout April, the U.S. military dropped the second-highest amount of bombs in Afghanistan in six-and-a-half years, the Air Force report said. The 562 bombs dropped in Afghanistan last month were more than the combined March and April totals in Iraq and Syria.
U.S. Forces Afghanistan released a video showing 28 Taliban fighters getting mowed down by American drones in Farah Province, which borders Iran.
The Pentagon wouldn’t rule out Tehran’s influence.
“I don’t think you can ever rule out how much Iran interferes throughout this region. Iran remains the most destabilizing factor in the Middle East. So no, I don’t think you can ever rule out their mischief,” Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said at a press conference at the Pentagon Thursday.
White didn’t offer any specific details about the battle last week.
According to the latest numbers, the U.S. Air Force dropped two-times more bombs in Afghanistan than Iraq and Syria last month, as the Afghan spring offensive against the Taliban ramps up.
The U.S. Air Force said that Afghan jets recently helped destroy 29 Taliban narcotics labs as a way of cutting off a key revenue source for the Taliban.

While a year ago, U.S. Air Force jets fired or dropped 40,000 munitions against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria against about 4000 in Afghanistan, those numbers have changed.

U.S. commanders from the Central Command are no stating that Afghanistan is the “main effort” for American troops in the Middle East.

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

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Orange, MA Hosts Armed Forces Weekend Military Expo

The small town of Orange, Massachusetts was the scene of a large Armed Forces Expo over the weekend complete with battle reenactments from the Civil War, World War I and World War II. They even had a flyby with a C-47 Skytrain, complete with markings from the D-Day invasion. A few lucky visitors got to take a ride in the vintage warbird as it skirted above the battlefield.

As the air raid siren sounded, soldiers scrambled on the battlefield and gunshots echoed. Smoke from artillery blasts clouded the air and a warplane droned overhead.

This World War II battle marked the first of three battles reenacted on the last day of Orange’s Military History Expo this year, which took place over Armed Forces weekend.

Reenactment soldiers depicted what a typical battle scene would look, feel and smell like during WWII, complete with accurate vehicles, artillery, and uniforms. At the end of the battle, spectators clapped and cheered.
As she left, a bystander commented to another about the realness of the scene, especially the smell of smoke lingering in the air.
Two more reenactments would be performed in the coming hours: Civil War and World War I. In the meantime, guests could meander through almost 20 acres of military history including WWI trenches, military vehicles from each era — including some horses — camps, first aid tents and more.
The event ran Friday through Sunday, each day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
One of the main attractions was a true WWII veteran: a rare C-47 warplane known as Whiskey 7, which some lucky event-goers got to take for a ride. This same plane deployed paratroopers over Normandy during the D-Day invasion.
The warbird flew over the battlefield during the WWII reenactment as spectators craned their necks to catch it in action.
The expo featured tangible military history from the Civil War, WWI, WWII and Vietnam. To add authenticity to the event, signs mimicked the WWII-era Burma Shave signs along the road leading to the battlefields. An announcer in an Armed Forces Radio Service tower occasionally interrupted his announcements with Burma Shave advertisements. In between, WWII-era music played over loudspeakers.
Re-enactors in a variety of uniforms strolled the grounds alongside visitors, many of whom were veterans themselves. Some drove historical military Jeeps around the grounds.
Military vehicles, including tanks and ambulances, were parked throughout the venue so people could tour them. Some younger event-goers got to climb inside.

The interactive, expo is striving to grow each year and the event is designed to show what life in the military was like in each of the eras right up through Vietnam

To read the entire article from Greenfield Recorder, click here:

Photo courtesy Christine Wisniewski, Greenfield Recorder of a WWII reenactment group battle scene

Veterans Ruck March 370 Miles to Honor Fallen Troops

A group of Nevada veterans are rucksack marching 370 miles from Las Vegas to the northern area of the state to honor those troops who have given their lives in combat since 9/11.

The march will cover about eight days and is expected that 170 veterans will take part.

Leo Garcia is marching with the weight of 7,000 fallen veterans on his back.
“I’m walking in remembrance of our heroes who gave their lives for our country,” said Garcia, an Air Force veteran. “When we raised our hands to serve this country, we did it because we love our country.”
The Ruck March, led by the UNLV Rebel Veterans Organization and the Reno-based Truckee Meadows Community College Veterans Club, began at 6 a.m. Sunday at Sky Pointe Drive in northwest Las Vegas. Marchers headed north along U.S. Highway 95, carrying 7,000 dog tags in honor of fallen military members since 9/11.
The Southern Nevada marchers, who on Sunday dubbed themselves the Rebel Ruckers, expect to have made it to Goldfield on Thursday. There, they will hand off the rucksacks to their northern allies, who will continue marching to Fernley.
“I do this for those who gave their life for me, because even though they don’t know me, they gave their life so that I could be here today,” said LC Garcia, whose son served in the Army.
As the Garcias and other marchers readied themselves for their 10-mile stretch, Alexandria Sawin whizzed around the group, snapping photos.
Sawin, a UNLV student, Air Force veteran and president of the Rebel Veterans, plans to walk the last 12-mile leg of the march Thursday before the northern marchers take over.
“Imagine carrying 40 pounds through a desert with highs in the 90s,” she said Sunday. “Still, it’s nothing compared to the sacrifice that all these service members who were killed in action have endured. It’s the least we could do to honor them.”
Sawin said the march also recognizes the lives that were irrevocably changed during deployment.
“This is a really special event that’s close to my heart,” she said. Today, we honor what they may have lost from serving.”

One of the other issues that the group is trying to publicize is the rate of veterans suicide which remains at nearly 22 per day.

To read the entire article from Las Vegas Review-Journal, click here:

Photo courtesy Las Vegas Review-Journal

Pakistan Building Fence Along Border with Afghanistan

In order to slow the flow of terrorists from Afghanistan, Pakistan has begun a project to construct border fences along their porous 1500-mile border with Afghanistan.

The project is slated to cost $483 million and the military is hoping it will help in dismantling militant networks in the largely lawless North and South Waziristan regions.

“For the better security of our country and nation, we had to do this work,” a Pakistani army official, Brig. Nisar, who uses only one name, told journalists during a government-organized visit to the border this month.
The barrier has angered the Afghan government, which disputes the location of the boundary and says the fence will tear communities apart.
Construction began last year on two fences that parallel each other as they snake through the remote, mountainous landscape. Standing 13 feet high on the Afghan side and 11 feet on the Pakistani side, sharp spirals of silver barbed wire are cradled at the top of each.
Additional coils of barbed wire have been placed on the ground in the gap between the fences, which are dotted with Pakistani military towers.
The military says it will have 92 percent of the national border fenced before the end of 2019.
However, only three miles of the 789-mile stretch of the border along the remote southwestern province of Balochistan has been fenced so far, according to a military official who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity.
Beyond Balochistan, Pakistani authorities said the other part of the fence, including the portion visited by NBC News, would eventually total 516 miles in length. Around 146 miles of that stretch has been completed, according to officials.
Some parts of the border will not be fenced as they are too mountainous.

The Pakistanis have accused the Afghans of not doing enough to secure the border area and claim terrorists from ISIS use Afghanistan to plan operations. The Afghan government also disputes where the actual border is, put in place by the British during the 19^th century.

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

File Photo courtesy Wikipedia of construction along Pakistan-Afghan border

UK Considering Sending More British Troops to Afghanistan

After calls by President Trump to NATO allies to join the U.S. and send more troops into Afghanistan, the UK defense secretary has written to Theresa May recommending the UK boosts its military presence in the country.

Currently, there are more than 600 troops in the capital of Kabul, there helping train local Afghan Security Forces.

BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale said he understood that Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson recommended sending up to 400 more army personnel into Afghanistan, joining the 600 already there training Afghan soldiers.
The UK troops would help train Afghan forces and not be in combat.

In 2017, the US announced a plan to send in thousands more troops, which would bring the US total to about 15,000.
It is part of a strategy to help fight the Taliban and deal with the rising threat from the Islamic State group.
The last UK combat troops left Afghanistan in 2014 after being involved in the conflict since 2001.
General Sir Richard Barrons, a former commander of joint forces command who led campaigns in Afghanistan, said the UK “has to recognise that the decision to leave in 2014… hasn’t worked”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the national army and air force in Afghanistan were “not strong enough” to defeat the Taliban alone.
The decision to increase troops would “send an important message to our allies, and the Taliban,” he added.
“The only way this war is going to end is when the Taliban realise they can’t fight their way back to government. They have to resort to dialogue.”

This comes at a time when the size of the British Army is the smallest in more than 200 years. Currently, the army has just over 77,000 troops, well short of its goal of 82,000.

The UK defense ministry cites several factors for the low numbers including the end of combat operations in the region, a pay freeze and the Army’s recruitment process which has been beset by glitches in their computer system which has slowed the process.

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

Photo courtesy AP

With the Islamic State on the Run, Al-Qaida Calls For Jihad

Al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged followers to wage war against the US for opening an embassy in Jerusalem. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. While many Middle East experts claim the move is an attempt to capitalize on the fall of its main rival, the ISIS, it is the normal operating procedure to call for jihad against the United States.

President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem “was clear and explicit, and he revealed the true face of the modern Crusade,” al-Qaida leader Zawahiri said in a recording circulated on social media this week. “Standing down and appeasement does not work with them, but only resistance through the call and jihad.”
But, despite al-Zawahiri’s new appeal, “reactions thus far don’t show any sort of organized online campaign from either side,” Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, said in a tweet, referring to the social media channels of al-Qaida and the “Islamic State” (often abbreviated as IS or ISIS).
That silence may be indicative of a shift, according to Ian Oxnevad, a Middle East scholar at the University of California, Riverside. He told DW that while there wasn’t much of a backlash, “that does not mean that it is not present.”
“This is a chance for al-Qaida to reinvent itself,” Oxnevad said. “Al-Qaida can co-opt old IS networks and strategies while setting up new cells in Europe,” which provides a “base of potential recruits along with a social infrastructure removed from new realities in the Middle East.”

After the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Al-Qaida took a blow that it has been slow to recover from. But as the US has shifted its focus in counter-terrorism from them to ISIS, they’ve recovered and have looked to expand. And they have, in Asia and other places such as Algeria and Pakistan.

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

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Germany’s Military Readiness is Abysmal Despite NATO Obligation

As Germany prepares to assume the mantle as the head of NATO’s crisis response force in 2019, its military forces are in a horrible state of readiness that has left the military virtually non-deployable.

Despite their economic strength, security experts claim that the Germans will be unable to meet their obligations and that they are among the weakest armed forces in NATO.

“The readiness of the German military is abysmal,” said Jorge Benitez, a NATO expert with the Atlantic Council in Washington. “For years, German leaders have known that major elements of their armed forces, such as tanks, submarines and fighter jets, are not fully operational and can’t be used for actual military missions.”
The military dysfunction is likely to re-emerge as a flashpoint between Berlin and Washington when President Donald Trump attends a NATO summit in July.
Berlin’s persistent shortcomings and resistance to meeting NATO spending targets is likely to further strain relations with Washington and risks a standoff that could eventually test the unity of the alliance and the American commitment to it.
Trump, long ambivalent about the value of NATO, remains fixated on Germany as a security free-rider: The alliance “helps them a hell of a lot more than it helps us,” Trump said in December.
Among the failures: none of Germany’s submarines is operational, only four of its 128 Eurofighter jets are combat-ready and the army is short dozens of tanks and armored vehicles needed for NATO missions.
In addition, troops are short on the basics: body armor, night vision gear and cold-weather clothing.
The situation is so dire that 19 helicopter pilots from Germany’s Bundeswehr were forced to turn in their flight licenses because of a lack of training time.
“Germany has the largest economy in Europe but has been dragging its feet on fixing its scandalous defense problems,” Benitez said. “Part of the problem is political and reflects the willingness of German leaders to consistently inhibit defense spending for the sake of other priorities.”

Many are attempting to blame the problems that Germany has to President Trump. That he is so unpopular that any show of upping its defense spending would be a sign of kowtowing to him. That is simplistic and ridiculous. What about their commitment to their NATO allies?

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

Photo courtesy US Army

More Google Employees Quit Over Military AI Flap

Google employees are quitting the internet giant over the company’s work with “Project Maven”, a drone program that is using artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help analyze huge amounts of captured surveillance footage.

Billed as a way of maintaining “advantages over increasingly capable adversaries,” the project is formally known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. Its objective is “to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights at speed” for human analysts.
More than 3,000 Google staffers signed a petition in April in protest at the company’s focus on warfare. “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” it read. “Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
An open letter calling for change was published Monday by the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), a non-governmental organization (NGO) made up of experts in artificial intelligence (AI), humanitarian law and human rights campaigning. It came as Gizmodo reported that around a dozen Google employees had recently resigned over the firm’s ties to Maven.
Billed as a way of maintaining “advantages over increasingly capable adversaries,” the project is formally known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. Its objective is “to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights at speed” for human analysts.
More than 3,000 Google staffers signed a petition in April in protest at the company’s focus on warfare. “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” it read. “Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

The military claims that it is not going to use the project for offensive purposes but they do admit that the program allows them to “enhance their military decision-making”.

To read the entire article from Newsweek, click here:

File photo of a drone from Wikipedia

Suspect for CIA Hacking Tools Dump in Jail on Child Pornography

The suspect in the CIA’s hacking tools release onto WikiLeaks is a former agency computer programmer, a black eye for the organization as it details all of the cyber weapons arsenals according to court documents that have been released.

Joshua Adam Schulte, the former agency programmer has not been charged with stealing or passing along the secret documents, however. Instead, he is being held in Riker Island jail on child pornography charges as the government investigates how the files were spirited off to WikiLeaks, which posted the stolen documents in March 2017.

Meanwhile, Schulte’s lawyers have protested that numerous government search warrants that gave investigators access to the suspect’s personal electronic devices were based on false information and failed to turn up “any connection to the WikiLeaks investigation,” according to a court hearing transcript from January.
Government prosecutors disputed the characterization, countering in the hearing that Schulte “remains a target of that investigation.”
Schulte first came to the attention of investigators just days after WikiLeaks initially posted the cache, known as Vault 7, which contained roughly 8,000 documents detailing how the CIA could transform smartphones and even internet-connected TVs into spying devices.
“The FBI believed that Mr. Schulte was involved in that leak,” one of Schulte’s attorneys said, according to the court transcript. The Washington Post first reported the court filing linking Schulte to the leak, and the Post and The New York Times reported his CIA employment.
If Shulte is found to be responsible for the Vault 7 theft, it would represent a major victory for U.S. intelligence agencies, which have struggled to keep a lid on their most sensitive documents in recent years — and to publicly explain how the most embarrassing breaches occurred.
Recent leaks from both the CIA and the National Security Agency have particularly rattled the intelligence community as they came after the Obama administration installed new provisions to clamp down on insiders shuttling secrets out of the building.

The problem with prosecuting a trial such as this within the court system is that in bringing the evidence in open court will normally entail revealing even more government secrets. They’ll hold the suspect on these unrelated charges until they decide how much information they plan to release.

To read the entire article from Politico, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Marines Beefing Up Security at US Embassies After Jerusalem Opening

In the aftermath of the violence in Israel over the moving of the United States embassy to Jerusalem, the Pentagon is ordering the Marines to augment and bolster security at all U.S. embassies in the Middle East and Africa.

The Marines have already begun adding security forces to their normal Embassy protective personnel because of the Jerusalem situation as well as the U.S. pullout from the Iran nuclear deal.

The Defense Department is not disclosing the number of Marines being deployed or their locations although it’s been known for weeks that security has been increased at US diplomatic installations in Israel including the new embassy in Jerusalem.
“DOD takes necessary steps to mitigate threats to U.S. personnel, embassies and consulates around the world. At the request of the Department of State, and in coordination with host nations, the Department of Defense has deployed additional Marine Security Guards to several U.S. embassies for the purpose of temporarily augmenting security,” Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich told CNN.
Escalating violence in the Gaza strip area has also led to increased concern it could spark demonstrations in other locations.
The Marines are being sent from a unit called the Marine Security Guard Security Augmentation unit which has advanced training beyond the routine Marine Corps embassy guard who protect installations inside their fence perimeter.
The additional Marines “are uniquely postured to respond expeditiously,” the Marine Corps statement said.
US embassies throughout the Middle East and Muslim countries are on alert because of three key events: the US embassy opening in Jerusalem on Monday, the beginning of Ramadan and the Nakba anniversary for Palestinians.
Palestinians mark what they call the “Nakba” or Catastrophe, in memory of the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were either driven from, or fled, their homes during the Arab-Israeli war that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

This wasn’t unexpected, the Pentagon and the Marine Corps have been anticipating this development for several weeks and the plans have been in place to augment security for US personnel and property.

As of today, there is no specific terror threat against U.S. interests but rather just a heightened sense of preparedness that will prevent any untold incidents happening.

To read the entire article from CNN, click here:

Photo courtesy US Marine Corps