Military Aviation

Remembering Randy Shughart, MOH, Born on this Day 1958

Today we remember one of our most famous Special Operations warriors. Randy Shughart would have been 60 years old today. Shughart and Gary Gordon, both Delta Force operators and snipers died in Mogadishu, Somalia in October 1993 after being inserted alone into a crash site for a Blackhawk helicopter which had been shot down while raiding a headquarters of Somali militiamen headed by Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

With the aircrew killed and only the pilot, CWO Michael Durant badly wounded, the two Delta snipers held off hundreds of Somalis until they were both killed. Both Shughart and Gordon were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their selfless sacrifice, the first time it had been awarded since the Vietnam war.

Background: Shughart was born August 13, 1958, in Lincoln, Nebraska. His father Herbert was in the United States Air Force at that time. But his father would leave military service and move the family to Pennsylvania to work a dairy farm.

The younger Shughart graduated from high school in Newville, PA and immediately joined the Army in 1976 and was assigned to the 2nd Ranger Bn. at Ft. Lewis, Washington. After an initial four-year hitch, he left active duty in 1980 and went into the Army Reserve.

In December 1983, he returned to active duty and in 1984 attended and graduated the Special Forces Qualifications Course. The next year, he volunteered for and was selected for Delta Force, the Army’s premier counter-terrorist unit in 1986. He took part in Delta’s operations in Panama during Operation Just Cause in 1989-90.

Black Hawk Down: In 1993 the humanitarian situation in Somalia had reached a crisis situation. The United States, after having stood by and done nothing in the Rwanda crisis decided to act. Rival clan militias were destroying the country and killing hundreds of people. The worst of all perhaps was the clan of Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the Habr Gidr.

After years of indiscriminate killing, the Aidid militia was targeted by the U.S. In August of 1993, the Pentagon dispatched a task force from the Special Operations command consisting of Rangers from the 3rd Ranger Bn. Delta Force Operators and Special Operations Aviation from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The operation, code-named Operation Gothic-Serpent would reach a head on October 3, 1993.

The task force received intelligence that Aidid’s warlords were meeting at a location in Mogadishu and the Task Force Commander, General Garrison ordered a raid consisting of Rangers and Delta operators and a convoy of 12 Humvees. The raid force would involve 19 aircraft and 160 personnel.

The operation was slated to take 30 minutes and capture Aidid’s foreign minister Omar Salad Elmi and his top political advisor, Mohamed Hassan Awale. While Delta operators would take down the target building, four groups of Rangers would fast rope into the perimeter and seal the target area until the convoy of vehicles would reach the objective, pick up the Rangers, Delta operators and captives and spirit everyone safely back to the airbase.

Immediately things went awry. One Ranger missed the rope and fell 70 feet to the ground, suffering severe head and neck injuries. The three-vehicle convoy to evacuate him back was badly shot up with one Ranger getting killed.

The convoy under LTC Danny McKnight was delayed as Somalis made impromptu roadblocks of burning tires and debris. Had the convoy had armored vehicles as Garrison had requested from the White House and was denied, they could have swept those aside easily.

The roadblocks would become an even bigger issue on the way back from the Olympia Hotel where the raid took place. Then the plan and operation went to hell in a matter of minutes.

A Blackhawk, callsign Super 61 was shot down with an RPG. Both pilots were killed, the crew chiefs severely injured. Two Delta snipers SSG Daniel Busch and SSG Jim Smith were defending the crash site. A “Little Bird” an MH-6 landed with the co-pilot getting out to help the now wounded Delta operators into their bird. A CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue bird, despite being hit with an RPG deposited a Delta and Air Force Pararescue team on the ground and moved the wounded crew chiefs to a secure location where they defended their position. That bird made it back to the base.

Twenty minutes later a third Black Hawk, callsign Super-64 piloted by CWO Mike Durant was clipped with an RPG. Seconds later he crashed. In another Black Hawk, Super-62, Delta snipers Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart asked permission twice to land to defend Durant’s crash site, which they could observe from the air. They were denied. However, on the third request, Garrison allowed them to go in. They knew what awaited them on the ground.

They could see a mob of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Somalis rushing the second crash site. A group of 90 Delta and Rangers were pinned down surrounding the first crash site and couldn’t make it to them. The two Delta men were on their own.

As they were taking off, Super-62 was raked by fire, an RPG blew the door gunner’s leg off and several crew members were wounded, the pilot had a bullet wound to his shoulder and his co-pilot was unconscious. Somehow the pilot CWO Mike Goffena made it safely back to the base.

Gordon and Shughart made it the crash site as the crowd was closing in. Despite being vastly outnumbered and outgunned, Durant was shocked at the coolness of the operators under fire.

In a later interview, he said, “They didn’t seem alarmed the situation that we were in. It was just focused on the task, doing what they needed to do to improve our situation, and get through it, get us rescued. Whatever it is they needed to do.”

Shughart and Gordon moved the crew members to a safer location and attempted to put a perimeter in place. Armed with just their sniper rifles and handguns, they were hopelessly outnumbered. They followed their training and slowly, meticulously picked off their targets. Gordon, cried out “Damn, I’m hit,” according to Durant and then heard nothing as Shughart moved to him.

Seconds later Shughart came to Durant and gave him Gordon’s CAR-15 and last magazine and uttered only two words, “good luck.” He then went back to his post with his M-21 sniper rifle and fought for another 10 minutes. Once he ran out of rifle ammunition, he fought on with his pistol until that too was out of ammo and he was killed.

The Somalis raced to the position and dragged the bodies out into the street and stripped them of their equipment and clothing and paraded them around in a frenzy of mob activity. Durant rarely escaped death when after being beaten by the mob, one of Aidid’s men decided he was worth more as a hostage and he was dragged away.

He was held for 11 days before he was released. He eventually recovered from his injuries and flew for another eight years until he retired in 2001.

Both Shughart and Gordon’s families were presented with the Medal of Honor on their behalf by President Clinton. Shughart’s father refused to shake the President’s hand and made some disparaging remarks about him to the press afterward.

Shughart’s body was eventually recovered and is buried in Westminster Cemetery, Carlisle, Pennsylvania with full military honors.

General Garrison took total responsibility for the raid, not pointing the finger at anyone other than himself. He moved over to the JFK Special Warfare Center until his retirement on August 1, 1996. At his retirement, several of the men from Delta came up to him prior to his ceremony and gave him the news that Aidid was dead. Killed the same day as Garrison retired. There were some wry smiles and handshakes that hot, North Carolina afternoon. Some hard feelings were still raw three years later.

Medal of Honor citation:
Citation:
Sergeant First Class Shughart, United States Army, distinguished himself by actions above and beyond the call of duty on 3 October 1993, while serving as a Sniper Team Member, United States Army Special Operations Command with Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Sergeant First Class Shughart provided precision sniper fires from the lead helicopter during an assault on a building and at two helicopter crash sites, while subjected to intense automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade fires. While providing critical suppressive fires at the second crash site, Sergeant First Class Shughart and his team leader learned that ground forces were not immediately available to secure the site.

Sergeant First Class Shughart and his team leader unhesitatingly volunteered to be inserted to protect the four critically wounded personnel, despite being well aware of the growing number of enemy personnel closing in on the site. After their third request to be inserted, Sergeant First Class Shughart and his team leader received permission to perform this volunteer mission.

When debris and enemy ground fires at the site caused them to abort the first attempt, Sergeant First Class Shughart and his team leader were inserted one hundred meters south of the crash site. Equipped with only his sniper rifle and a pistol, Sergeant First Class Shughart, and his team leader, while under intense fire from the enemy, fought their way through a dense maze of shanties and shacks to reach the critically injured crew members.

Sergeant First Class Shughart pulled the pilot and the other crew members from the aircraft, establishing a perimeter which placed him and his fellow sniper in the most vulnerable position. Sergeant First Class Shughart used his long range rifle and side arm to kill an undetermined number of attackers while traveling the perimeter, protecting the downed crew.

Sergeant First Class Shughart continued his protective fire until he depleted his ammunition and was fatally wounded. His actions saved the pilot’s life. Sergeant First Class Shughart’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest standards of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.

Photos: US Army

Making the Big Leap, From High School to Special Operations

A good friend of mine is a career law enforcement professional here in New England and although we don’t hang out on a regular basis, whenever we run into one another we’ll stop and catch up. So weaving around a stoppage in the road a few weeks ago, I saw my friend trying to make sense of a hopeless mess that is traffic around here and he told me that his son had graduated high school and had enlisted and was heading to a Special Operations unit, after his basic training …which is, provided he passes his courses.

This wasn’t a surprise to me at all, I’ve known his son for the past three years since a friend of mine who was taught the high school journalism class asked me to go to his classroom and talk about my roundabout way of working my way into a journalist’s job. It wasn’t the classic way of going to college and getting out and breaking in as a youngster. And like clockwork, every spring my friend would ask me to come to speak to his sophomore class until he passed away much too young recently.

Most of the kids would ask about the New England Patriots since I have another gig writing about them for an NFL website. I won’t call it a job, since my wife tells me that going down to Gillette Stadium to watch guys play football and then talk to football players isn’t a job, it is just a fun way to get paid. And with that, I can’t argue. So the kids would want to know about Bill Belichick, Tom Brady et al except for one kid.

Since I knew his father from law enforcement, he knew my background in Special Forces and he’d want to talk about the military and all things about the different Special Operations units. He made it clear when he was a sophomore that as soon as he graduated high school that he was enlisting and although his parents wanted him to go to college first, that was his plan. And he didn’t deviate during the next few years. In fact, whenever his dad and I would talk, he’d say all his son wanted to talk about was enlisting as soon as he finished school and wanting to be part of SOF.

Since a few weeks ago, we have been trying to find a convenient time in our schedules for all of us to sit down, as now that the time is growing near, he wanted to pick my brain one final time before embarking on his experience.

His parents are justifiably proud of him and his decision and they know this isn’t something he thought about for a very short amount of time, so they know he’s serious and will be “all-in”, but being parents are also (again justifiably) worried about the world situation. And they’d like me to give him some final advice. And it is easy…

Enjoy the Process: Soak up every second of your time in the military and get the absolute most out of it. As we’ve said here on these pages many times, the military is what you make of it. For several months you won’t be where you eventually hope to be. But the ends will justify the means. Don’t be discouraged by the regular military. There will be times when it seems that time and the basic part of your training will go by interminably slow. That will change quickly once you get to your Selection class.
Surround Yourself With Positive People: No matter where you go and what you do in the military, there are going to be very positive, upbeat people and negative Nancys who see a cloud in every sunny day. Ignore the noise, and cull any of the toxic MFers right out of your circle. Their toxic BS is poison, avoid them at all costs. Tune out the rumor mill and never listen to any of it. 99.9 percent of them are total science fiction. Find the upbeat, positive people in your class and hang with them. Their positivity will rub off on you and vice versa. You won’t be up all the time and neither will they, but the positive people make the courses fun. And there is no reason why even hard work can’t be fun. My SFQC course had one of the best soldiers and funniest guys I ever served with, CW3 Ret. Danny Averitt (RIP). His alter ego in the course was “CPT Camouflage” who kept the students (and cadre) in stitches. Years later in Group, guys would still ask about Danny about “the Captain”. We miss both of them.
Selection Is Only the Gateway: Remember any of the Selection courses is just a crack in the door to get you in the pipeline. Once again, it isn’t going to be easy and you’re going to be tired, hungry and sore. That is what the courses are designed for, whether it be SFAS, RIP, BUDS or anything else. This is the reason you enlisted, don’t worry about next week, next month or anything else. Take it a day at a time, if necessary, half a day at a time. As we’ve stated here often “Embrace the Suck” and like the above paragraph, surround yourself with positive people. Be yourself and throw yourself completely into it and let the chips fall where they may. At a minimum, you’ll have no regrets on how things work out.
Be a Rucker: No matter what your job is in Special Operations, or your unit, you’ll have to become intimately familiar with your rucksack and carry a lot of weight in it. The better you are at rucking, the easier things will be for you at your unit and in your job. We have published several articles on how to become better at humping the pain pill. And there is no magic formula to it, it is just practice and preparation. But rucking is just a part of (a big part) overall physical fitness. Always strive to be in the best possible shape you can be in.
Team Players Are Always in Vogue: While we all have watched Rambo and Braddock, the thing to remember is that those are films. No one wants a lone wolf, you have to be a team player and a guy who everyone wants on their team. Learn your job backward and forwards and learn everyone else’s. Stuff will happen and you may be tasked to do someone else’s job in a pinch. Be a problem solver and always keep your head about you.
Don’t Ever Quit: Believe that nothing is impossible and that will be the truth. Contrary to what you’ll be told, passing these courses is probably 70 percent mental and only 30 percent physical. Don’t worry about feedback from the cadre, if none is forthcoming. As long as you are standing in formation, you are good to go and only worry about things you can control. You don’t have to look like an NFL linebacker or run as fast a marathon runner to pass. Just remember, everything you do is under a microscope and you’re always being assessed.

Starting a career in Special Operations is a huge step for anyone, especially a young man just out of high school. There is a long, long way to go but the end result is worth the journey. Standing in the formations as part of the SOF units means you are continuing the legacy of excellence that your predecessors passed down to you. Strive to not just meet the standards, but set even higher ones.

Photo: U.S. Army

Green Berets and Afghan Commandos Take ISIS Stronghold

U.S. Green Berets and Afghan special operations troops captured a town that the Islamic State (ISIS) had claimed as their local capital. The large joint operation has been on-going for several weeks and culminated with the capture of Gurgoray on Saturday.

No Americans or Afghan troops were killed in the offensive, which the U.S. military said killed 167 fighters from the Islamic State group – also known as ISIS or Daesh – and involved a complex multipronged attack on Gurgoray, a town purported to be the group’s capital in Deh Bala district in Nangarhar province.
“This area, two months ago, was controlled by Daesh,” Brig. Gen. John W. Brennan Jr., commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, said at a special operations outpost in Deh Bala. “We pushed them into the mountains, so they cannot harm the people here.”
The U.S. and Afghan offensive involved five Special Forces teams and three Afghan commando companies. In total, 600 members of the U.S. Army Special Forces, also known as Green Berets, participated in the mission, which began in April and continued into June, a U.S. military officer said.
Checkpoints manned by U.S. Special Forces, Afghan commandos and police now rise high above the valleys of Deh Bala, while American fighter-bombers continue to blast the Gurgoray Valley to stifle movements there by ISIS remnants.
Nangarhar province is one of the few places Americans continue to fight alongside Afghan forces in battle, and it has also been the deadliest spot for U.S. servicemembers, with a third of American combat deaths occurring there last year.
The finger-like mountain ridges and wheat-filled valleys of Deh Bala district in Nangarhar have long provided shelter to insurgents – the Taliban, al-Qaida and now ISIS.
The district’s center lies 21 miles south of Jalalabad, the provincial capital where ISIS claimed recent deadly suicide attacks, and 11 miles west of Aachin, where the U.S. military in April 2017 dropped the largest bomb in its arsenal, “the mother of all bombs,” on an ISIS cave network.
Due to its location on the border with Pakistan, Deh Bala served as a key supply route for ISIS.
“ISIS was using this site as a site to prepare and stage high-profile attacks,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Thiel, commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group.

After airlifting Afghan commandos and Special Forces teams to the ridges surrounding the valley, the coalition troops controlled the high ground and put the ISIS fighters under fire as they gradually closed the noose as they forced them out.

U.S. officials said they found evidence of ISIS fighters from 10 different countries in Gurgoray.

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

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

July 1947 Crash in Roswell, NM Spawns Entire Industry on Aliens

In the years right after World War II, the United States conducted several experiments using nuclear weapons in the deserts of the Southwestern U.S. In July of 1947, something crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. Whether it was a weather balloon as the official government and Air Force reports suggest or an alien spacecraft is anyone’s guess. But what isn’t debatable is that the incident created an entire cottage industry around alien life, not only in Roswell but in Hollywood and beyond.

For years the story languished and then in the 1970s with the massive influx of sci-fi books and films across the country, interest in the incident(s) at Roswell resurfaced in a big way as alien and UFO conspiracy theorists descended on New Mexico, each with a fresh theory on “what really happened.”

The 1990s had the Air Force released two reports about what the supposed true nature of the crashed object. The government has stuck to the same basic story that it was with a twist. The object was a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul.

Beginnings: The story began far from Roswell when on June 14, William Brazel, a ranch foreman picked up pieces of debris about 30 miles northwest of the town and base. But later reports published on July 8th called the find, “sometime last week” which meant around July 1-2.

Brazel initially described the debris to the Roswell Daily Record as a “large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.” He told the local law enforcement, Sheriff Wilcox about his find and the sheriff contacted the Army and Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).

An Army Major and a man in plain clothes accompanied Brazel back to the site where they picked up a few more pieces of debris. It was on July 8th when the PAO officer for RAAF, Major Walter Haup issued a press release and first used the words, “flying disc”. His release was covered in the Roswell paper the next day, stating:

The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet [3.5 m] long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards [180 m] in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet [1 m] long and 7 or 8 inches [18 or 20 cm] thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches [45 or 50 cm] long and about 8 inches [20 cm] thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds [2 kg]. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.

The FBI Fort Worth office cabled Washington with the news and quoted an Air Force Major while it stated the following:

“The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a ballon [sic] by cable, which ballon [sic] was approximately twenty feet (6 m) in diameter. Major Curtan further advices advises [sic] that the object found resembles a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, but that telephonic conversation between their office and Wright field had not [unintelligible] borne out this belief.”

The military tried to hide the true purpose of the object, which was nuclear test monitoring by telling the public that the crashed object was a weather balloon. They had the pieces flown to Fort Worth Army Airfield. They then held a press conference, where pieces of the debris were shown which matched the weather balloon story and in no way resembled an alien spacecraft. The story faded quickly the next day and went into a deep sleep for over 30 years.

Project Mogul: Why the Army and the government covered up the events in Roswell took place long before the 1947 incident. Since the early days of World War II, a group of geophysicists and oceanographers had been working on a top-secret atomic espionage project at New Mexico’s Alamogordo Air Field that was code-named “Project Mogul”.

Project Mogul consisted of the use of high-altitude weather balloons to carry low-frequency sound sensors into the tropopause, high above the earth. In this part of the earth’s outer atmosphere, sound waves can travel for thousands of miles without interference, much like under the ocean. With microphones placed by balloons high into this sound channel, the United States could gather intelligence on any nuclear testing as far away as the Soviet Union.

From the Smithsonian: The debris found by Brazel in his sheep pasture outside Roswell was the remains of a 700-foot-long string of neoprene balloons, radar reflectors (for tracking) and sonic equipment that the scientists had launched from the Alamogordo base in June and that had, evidently, crashed in early July 1947.

Due to security restrictions, no one at Roswell would have been aware of the project and would legitimately have no idea what the objects were. According to unconfirmed reports, several members of the RAAF base believed the debris was a Soviet spy balloon sent to monitor the U.S. The story about the weather balloon was thin, but for the most part, people were satisfied and the newspapers let the matter drop. But for some people, the story rang hollow and they were looking for much deeper answers.

Those people and others saw what the Pentagon began doing in the 1950s as very suspicious and it tied into what they saw as a continuation of the events at Roswell.

Conspiracy Theories Abound: The military conducted a series of secret “dummy drops” all across New Mexico. These experiments encompassed not only bases and test ranges but other public lands as well. The tests were meant to test ways for the Air Force pilots to survive ejecting from aircraft at high altitudes.

The Air Force constructed featureless dummies with latex “skin” and aluminum “bones”, which at first glance appeared to look like space aliens. But people grew suspicious when they’d see things fall from the sky and then watch as soldiers would descend on the landing site and whisk away the evidence as soon they arrived.

For the conspiracy theorists, this convinced them that extraterrestrial creatures were landing on earth and that the government was covering it all up.

Starting around 1978 and lasting well into the 1990s there were a slew of UFO researchers that firmly believed that an alien spaceship had crash-landed in New Mexico in 1947. These researchers descended on the area and interviewed hundreds of supposed witnesses to the event.

Most were debunked and a few were absolute fabrications but a story in the Huffington Post in 2012, breathed some new life into the subject when retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French alleged that there wasn’t one crash at Roswell but two.

The surprising part is that French was once the Air Force officer in charge of debunking alien spacecraft claims. He said the first alien craft was actually shot down utilizing an electronic pulse-type weapon that disabled the space crafts controls and forced the UFO to crash.

He further claims that the second crashed a few days later while trying to recover the first one. French flew hundreds of combat missions in Korea and Vietnam and later worked in intelligence. He said he saw pieces of an Alien spacecraft with inscriptions on it that appeared almost Arabic.

The problem is, pulse-type weapons didn’t exist in the 1950s or 60s but we never let that interfere with a good story. And French’s story is the best yet.

In a country obsessed with Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. There will never be an end to such stories. So, do you believe that “we are not alone” in the galaxy? It would be hard and a bit ludicrous to believe that we’re the only form of life out there.

The recently released footage of the Air Force and Navy pilots seeing UFOs that are infinitely more advanced than our latest and best fighter aircraft would give immediate credence to that fact. So why doesn’t the government or the Pentagon issue a statement stating that they believe that E.T. wasn’t phoning home but buzzing around our military aircraft?

The Pentagon funded a $22 million dollar project to study UFO encounters between 2007 and 2012. Most of the cash went to a single contractor, Bigelow Aerospace, which built a facility in Nevada outside of Las Vegas to study physical evidence related to various UFOs. The group supposedly came into possession of “metal alloys and other materials” that had allegedly originated in some of the UFOs.

The unit was shut down, ostensibly for budgetary concerns but perhaps it is time to not only research these phenomena but to actually put forth a true effort into finding how all of these incidents around the world connect.

One thing is for certain, all of these incidents began with the July 1947 incident at Roswell and whether they are aliens or man-made secret projects, more effort needs to be put forth to identify and understand them.

But the autopsies of aliens at Roswell? I’m not buying that one.

Photos: Wikipedia

President Maduro Warns Military of Impending ‘US Invasion’

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has warned the military to be on alert after reports on Wednesday had the United States planning to invade the country. President Trump supposedly was calling for the invasion with his staff.

“You cannot lower your guard for even a second, because we will defend the greatest right our homeland has had in all of its history, which is to live in peace,” Maduro said. “A military intervention on the part of the US empire will never be a solution to Venezuela’s problems.”
Maduro alluded to a report by The Associated Press that Trump had asked his aides why the US couldn’t simply invade Venezuela. According to the report, former State Secretary Rex Tillerson and ex-national security adviser H.R. McMaster took turns explaining the possible fallout.
Both officials are no longer at the White House.
The report also detailed a meeting between Trump and four Latin American leaders in which the US president raised the idea, only for it to be rejected by his counterparts. The White House has refused to confirm the report’s validity, saying it will not comment on personal conversations.
Last year, Trump told reporters that he was “not going to rule out” a military option, saying it was “certainly something that we could pursue.”
Trump has described Maduro as a “dictator,” saying he should no longer be in power. Under Maduro, Venezuela has witnessed a significant deterioration of human rights and the erosion of democratic institutions.
More than 130 people were killed and hundreds more injured in 2017, when a Supreme Court order to strip the opposition-held National Assembly triggered months of anti-government protests. Venezuela has continued to struggle with exorbitant inflation and chronic shortages of basic supplies, including food and medicine.

With their people starving and a total meltdown of the economy, nearly a million Venezuelans have been flocking across the border into Colombia. The currency of the country is next to worthless.

In many places, the barter system is making a comeback. In one place a haircut cost five bananas and two eggs or a sack of corn flour. Water is being rationed although it is plentiful, the infrastructure has shut down.

Inflation is running at impossible levels for the government to keep up with. Medicine, food, and water are all in short supply.

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

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Russian Veterans Urge Putin to Tell the Truth About Syrian Mission

In an intriguing turn of events, Russian veterans want the Russian government to acknowledge that private military contractors are fighting in the war in Syria, doing the country’s bidding to keep Russian “troop” strength low. They want to secure financial and medical benefits for the contractors as well as their families.

The statement breaks years of public silence about a secret operation involving thousands of Russian civilians fighting in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad whom Moscow has been helping militarily since September 2015.
Based on accounts of people who knew killed fighters and a military medic, Reuters earlier reported that over a hundred contractors had died in combat since the start of the operation in Syria. The Kremlin denies such an operation exists.
“For three years already, we have been receiving complaints and appeals from Russian citizens who were injured in Syria and cannot undergo medical treatment in Russia,” said the statement, signed by retired Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, retired Colonel Vladimir Petrov and Yevgeni Shabayev, a Cossack leader.
“Soldiers and officers of these combat units have no social, medical or financial support from the state … We demand that the status of combat participants in private military companies be recognised,” the statement said.
The Kremlin is often criticized by the liberal opposition for its foreign military campaigns but rarely faces objections from Russia’s military elite, which is generally happy that Moscow is in a standoff with the West.
Moscow says that while some Russian civilians may fight in Syria, they went there on their own initiative and have no connection to the military, which is conducting air strikes with a limited presence on the ground.
According to Russian law, being a mercenary is a crime.

The Russian contractors are hired by a company called Wagner and is owned by Dmitriy Valeryevich Utkin, a former Ukranian citizen who was a Colonel and brigade commander of a special forces Spetsnaz unit of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).

Wagner has training facilities for their contractors on Russian military bases at Molkino near the village of Molkin. Wagner, (named after Utkin’s callsign) also has been linked to Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is also a close friend of Russian President Putin.

Putin was photographed with Utkin and several of his lieutenants which set off speculation in the past. The contractors have been active in Ukraine, Central African Republic, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya.

To read the entire article from US News and World Report, click here:

US Vows to Keep Strait of Hormuz Open Despite Iranian Threats

With the Iranians threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, the US military has promised to keep Gulf waterways open to oil tankers as the tensions increase on both sides of the equation.

Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the US military’s Central Command, told the Associated Press news agency on Wednesday that US sailors and its regional allies “stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce wherever international law allows”.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday hinted Iran could halt regional exports if it is stopped from exporting oil after the US pulled out of the nuclear deal with world powers.
“The Americans have claimed they want to completely stop Iran’s oil exports. They don’t understand the meaning of this statement, because it has no meaning for Iranian oil not to be exported, while the region’s oil is exported,” the website, president.ir, quoted him as saying.
Separately, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Wednesday that they were ready to prevent regional oil exports if Iranian oil sales were banned by the US.
Praising Rouhani’s remarks, Major-General Qassem Soleimani said he was ready to implement such a policy if needed.
“I kiss your (Rouhani’s) hand for expressing such wise and timely comments, and I am at your service to implement any policy that serves the Islamic Republic,” Soleimani, commander of Quds force, in charge of foreign operations for the Revolutionary Guards, said in a letter published by state news agency IRNA.

The Iranian economy is tanking and they’re having protests across the country. Meanwhile, their leaders are trying to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with the European Union, so they can continue to finance their military operations outside of Iran.

To read the entire article from Al Jazeera News, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Hamas Using Fake Dating Apps, World Cup, Honeypots to Spy on Israeli Troops

Hamas hacked into hundreds of smartphones of Israeli soldiers using fake dating and World Cup apps in order to gain sensitive information about the Israeli military and bases around the Gaza strip.

The IDF’s Military Intelligence conducted an investigation which found that the 11 Hamas operatives (three approached soldiers on WhatsApp, eight approached soldiers on Facebook) were an intelligence network of the Hamas terrorist organization which asked the soldiers to download applications which compromised their cell phones with Trojan horse viruses.

The apps allowed malicious software controlled by Hamas to be planted into Android smartphones, enabling militants in the Strip to access pictures, phone numbers and email addresses of soldiers posted close to the border, and even allowed Hamas to control the phones’ cameras and microphones remotely.
In a number of cases, Hamas has been able to film what was happening on Israel Defense Forces bases without the soldiers being aware their phones had been hacked. Beginning in January 2018, the military’s information security department has received complaints from soldiers and commanders about attempts by suspicious people on social networks recommending soldiers to download apps from the official Google Play Store. Soldiers who downloaded the app immediately gave Hamas access to all the information on their phone.
The military began examining these apps and swiftly discovered that Hamas was behind them, and that it was operating fake Facebook profiles to build trust with soldiers since 2017 to get the soldiers to download the apps.
The operation by the unit responsible for information security was dubbed “operation broken heart.”
Hamas also used a fitness app to identify the phone numbers of soldiers who went jogging near the Gaza border. The minute Hamas had these numbers, it began sending the soldiers, and others, requests to download their “Trojan Horse” apps.

Both male and female soldiers were approached with these tactics, while most soldiers immediately informed their commanders, several did not. It was learned that the female soldiers were quicker to cut off communications with the Hamas operatives than the men.

Despite this, the apps in question remain online.

To read the entire article from Haaretz, click here:

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China’s Military Suffering From “Peace Disease” With No War Experience

A Chinese military newspaper was subtly rattling a saber when it said that the PLA is suffering from “peace disease” after nearly four decades without war.

The People’s Liberation Army Daily wrote, “Peace disease has been a common symptom in our military for decades.”

The Chinese PLA hasn’t had any combat experience since a brief foray into Vietnam in the late 1970s and it added, “If we do not make up our mind to eliminate those evils, we must pay a heavy cost in the event of a war.”

Although China boasts the world’s largest standing military, with more than 2.1 million active-duty servicepeople, the country’s last offensive took place in the late 1970s in Vietnam. As a result, military leaders and the Chinese president are afraid troops have grown complacent and less capable. Xi aims to transform his nation’s military into a world-class fighting force within the next 30 years.
“We can only stop a war when we are able to fight,” the PLA newspaper wrote. “Let the army get back on the right track, concentrating on combat-ready training.”
Retired PLA Colonel Yue Gang pointed to corruption, as well as avoiding responsibilities, as the major problems plaguing the Chinese armed forces.
“Apart from corruption, job omission is the next key symptom of ‘peace disease’ in the Chinese military that should be cured,” Yue said, pointing out that the government is working to address both issues.
The army publication also warned that China currently faces greater security threats and unprecedented global concerns. Currently, China continues to flex its muscles in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, raising tensions with multiple Asian neighbors. Beijing has also moved to open foreign military outposts, such as a military hub in the African country Djibouti.

In an effort to confront the U.S. at every turn, China has now befriended an old enemy Russia, to improve ties with the Russians and work together against U.S. interests. After a visiting Russian high ranking military officer to China, Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe vowed that the two nations will “jointly deal with threats and challenges.”

The Chinese potential adversary, the U.S. military has no such “peace disease” having been in constant combat since 2001 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and several other global hotspots. Despite this, the Chinese continue to push the envelope in the South China Sea, Djibouti, where Chinese military fired lasers at U.S. planes taking off from nearby airfields and potentially blinding pilots and other places

To read the entire article from Newsweek, click here:

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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:

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