FRIDAY FOTO (June 27, 2014)

Robo Mule

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Corporal Matthew Callahan)

A four-legged robot, known as the Legged Squad Support System, follows Lance Corporal Timothy Knaggs (center), a team leader with India Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment during an exercise at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows in Waimanalo, Hawaii.

The LS3 is designed to carry Marine’s supplies like water, food and ammunition through rough terrain and is undergoing concept-based experimentation. The machine is operated with a Tactical Radio Control (TRC) worn on the operator’s back. The LS3 operates in three modes; Joystick Mode allows for manual operation with a handheld controller; Go-To Mode, in which the operator sets a waypoint for the LS3 to travel to, and Follow Me Mode, where the machine uses sensors on the TRC to follow the operator as in this photo.

The Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, tested the LS3 as part of a wider testing of new equipment for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory during Rim of the Pacific 2014 (RIMPAC), the world’s largest international maritime exercise in and around Hawaii.

LS3, also known as Robo Mule, was developed by Massachusetts robot manufacturer Boston Dynamics with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). and the Marine Corps. DARPA is the Pentagon’s think-outside-the-box research unit. Over the years it has come up with such breakthroughs as the predecessor to the Internet and radar-evading stealth technology.

To see a fascinating — and somewhat creepy — video of the LS3 in action, click here.

AROUND AFRICA: Nigeria and Cameroon Battle Boko Haram, Kenyan Governor Arrested, Ebola Out of Control

HOT SPOTS

Nigeria Blast

Nigeria’s location
(CIA World Factbook)

An explosion at a shopping mall in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, has killed 21 and injured 17, according to officials.

No organization has claimed responsibility for the attack at the Emab Plaza mall in Abuja’s upscale Wuse 2 neighborhood, the Associated Press reported, but many in Nigeria are blaming the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, which is behind a wave of bombings, killings and kidnappings.

On Monday (June 23) a bomb at a medical college in the northern city of Kano killed eight people. At least 14 more were killed last week in a bomb blast in Damaturu, a state capital in Nigeria’s violence-wracked northeast. That attack came at a World Cup television viewing site. In May, twin car bombs at Jos in the central part of the country left more than 130 people dead. A car bomb at a bus station killed 24 more in the Christian quarter of Kano.

According to the AP, two separate explosions in Abuja in April killed more than 120 people and wounded about 200 more at a busy bus station. Both of those blasts were claimed by Boko Haram.

Meanwhile, government officials are cautioning Nigerians to be on the alert in the wake of the Abuja blast.  A government spokesman told Voice of America that the government will continue warning Nigerians about the dangers posed from terrorists.  “We have issued the alert earlier on. It’s an ongoing event. Even yesterday we have a security awareness programs with principals of schools, an initiative that was introduced by the government,” said the spokesman Mike Omeri. “We have also been campaigning on the media for citizens to be more careful and they should be alert even before the World Cup, and the venues for viewing should be more secured.”

But critics say the government and security forces have not been doing enough — including finding and rescuing hundreds of high school girls kidnapped in April by Boko Haram. Despite worldwide condemation and pledges  to provide assistance in locating and returning the girls, they still remain prisoners, their whereabouts uncertain. According to the Canadian news site CBC News, of 395 students who were at the secondary school in the village of Chibok, near the Cameroon border, on April 14, 219 remain unaccounted for. Meanwhile, witnesses say, Islamic extremists have abducted 60 more girls and women and 31 boys from villages in northeast Nigeria.

Cameroon’s Boko Haram Crackdown

Cameroon
(CIA World Factbook)

Cameroon, Nigeria’s neighbor to the south, has been having its own troubles with Boko Haram militants and this week Cameroon’s military killed 10 suspected Boko Haram members in a clash near the border town of  Mora. Officials said they also arrested 50 Nigerian businessmen on suspicion of collaborating with Boko Haram.

More is just across the border with Nigeria’s Borno state, where the Boko Haram insurgency has raged for five years. The group opposes Western teaching in Nigeria’s schools and wants to create Islamic state practicing strict Sharia law.

Colonel Chioka Pierre told Voice of America that Nigeria security forces have been conducting sweeps as part of an intensified crackdown on violent incidents, believed to be connected to Boko Haram.  He said they have been searching more than half a dozen border villages to prevent incursions or to stop militants from using Cameroon as a hideout or launching pad for attacks.  He said local residents were cooperating with the military to root out Boko Haram suspects in the area.

Kenya: Governor Charged

A regional governor in Kenya has been arrested and charged with terrorism and murder over attacks attacks in the Lamu district in which scores of people were killed.

Issa Timamy was charged over the attacks on the Mpeketoni town area. He faces several charges including murder. Kenya’s president has blamed the attacks on political networks, despite claims of responsibility by the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab, according to the BBC.

At least 60 people were killed in the attacks earlier in June killed, as gunmen descended on hotels and a police station.

HEALTH

Ebola Outbreak

Electron micrograph of an Ebola virus virion.
(Centers for Disease Control)

NPR is reporting that an Ebola outbreak in West Africa is now the largest and most deadly wave of that virus ever recorded. The first cases were confirmed in Guinea in March. Health in West Africa officials thought they had the disease under control, but they did not. A rash of new cases has popped up in the neighboring countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is calling for “drastic action” and announced an 11-nation summit meeting of the growing crisis.

As of Sunday, 635 cases of haemorrhagic fever – most confirmed to be Ebola – including 399 deaths have been reported across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, AFP reported via The Guardian. This week the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said the outbreak of the virus, which is deadly in up to 90% of cases, was “out of control,” AFP said.

.

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Ian Fleming, Future Threat Predictor

Bombs, James Bombs.

Ian Fleming

Reading a 50-year-old paperback spy novel, purchased for half a buck at the local library’s used book shelf, we were struck by the prophetic nature of the following passage about two NATO nuclear bombs held for ransom by terrorists.

Bond reached in his pocket for another cigarette. It couldn’t be, yet it was so. Just what his Service and all the other intelligence services in the world had been expecting to happen. The anonymous little man in the raincoat with a heavy suitcase–or golf bag, if you like. The left luggage office, the parked car, the clump of bushes in a park in the center of a big town. And there was no answer to it. In a few years’ time, if the experts were right, there would be even less answer to it. Every tin-pot little nation would be making atomic bombs in its backyards, so to speak. Apparently there was no secret now about the things. It had only been the prototypes that had been difficult–like the first gunpowder weapons for instance, or machine guns or tanks. Today these were everybody’s bows and arrows. Tomorrow, or the day after, the bows and arrows would be atomic bombs. And this was the first blackmail case … if they couldn’t be stopped in time, there would be nothing for it but to pay  up.

“Thunderball” cover.

Ian Fleming, British novelist, former journalist and wartime planner and intelligence officer wrote those words 53 years ago in the 1961 James Bond novel “Thunderball.”

In a world where China, India, Pakistan and North Korea all have nuclear weapons, terrorists turn jetliners into weapons of mass destruction and the biggest threats come, not from rival nations, but non-state actors, loosely organized international organizations like al Qaeda, Fleming’s fantasy threat seems oddly prophetic. His words leave us with something to ponder in our time. They give us some food for thought.

*** *** ***

Food for Thought is an occasional musing at 4GWAR about activities in the homeland security, counter terrorism and special operations world.

 

 

THIS WEEK in the WAR of 1812 (June 22-June 28, 1814)

U.S. Victory at Sea.

On June 28, at the mouth of the English Channel, the American sloop of war, USS Wasp, captures and destroys the British sloop, HMS Reindeer.

U.S. Marines in the rigging of the USS Wasp fire down on the crew of the HMS Reindeer.
(U.S. Marine Corps 1945 painting by Staff Sgt. John F. Clymer, courtesy National Museum of the Marine Corps)

The Wasp, a ship-rigged sloop of war, is the fifth American ship to bear the name — the fourth in two years. The 24-gun Wasp, under the command of Master Commandant Johnston Blakely set sail on May 1 with orders to raid British commerce in the English Channel.

By late June the Wasp has taken seven British merchant vessels and is closing in on two more on the morning of the 28th, when the Reindeer, a 21-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop, comes on the scene. The Reindeer, sailing out of Plymouth, is under orders to hunt down the Wasp.

The Wasp is the bigger ship with a bigger crew (173 sailors and Marines compared to 118 on the Reindeer) and more powerful guns. Because the winds were light, it took the two vessels half the day to draw close enough to fire effectively. The two ships traded broadsides for 20 minutes before the the Reindeer’s bow came to rest against the Wasp making them close enough for boarding parties to attack. The British boarding party was driven back under heavy fire from Marines in the Wasp’s rigging.

After repulsing the British boarding party, the American sailors and Marines swarmed over the shattered Reindeer, forcing the British to seek shelter below deck. The British commander, Captain William Manners, was killed along with 24 other sailors and Marines, 42 more were wounded.  American casualties were nine dead and 15 wounded.

The Reindeer was so badly damaged it couldn’t be salvaged, so Blakely ordered her set afire. The prisoners were taken aboard the Wasp or transferred to a neutral ship. Wasp had to sail to the French port of L’Orient for repairs for her own battle damage.

*** *** ***

War in Quebec.

Northern Front in the War of 1812
(U.S. Army Office of Military History)

On the same day, across the Atlantic on the New York-Canadian border, U.S. troops skirmish for second time in two days with British forces at Odelltown, Lower Canada. There have been a series of indecisive skirmishes on the border between New York and Lower Canada (what is now Quebec) during the spring and summer of 1814.

Military records of the time, according to the Website North Country Now, report that U.S. troops from the 30th and 31st U.S. Infantry regiments advance from Plattsburgh to Champlain and Chazy near the border  west of Lake Champlain. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Forsyth, with 70 riflemen, advances to Odelltown, south of LaColle in Quebec, where they are attacked by about 200 lightly armed British troops. The Americans suffer one killed and five wounded. The British, three killed and five wounded. Forsyth withdraws to Champlain in New York.

Northern Vermont and New York near LaColle, Quebec

But on the 28th, Forsyth is ordered to advance into Canada again to lure the British into attacking the Americans and chasing them back across the border where other U.S. troops are waiting to ambush them. The plan works but as 150 Canadian Indians allied with the British advance toward the ambush site, Forsyth steps up on a log to get a better view and is shot and killed by an Indian. The U.S. troops open fire, driving off the Indians, who suffer 17 dead.

 

 

FRIDAY FOTO (June 20, 2014)

Black Hawks Up

Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin Cossel

UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the 1st Battalion, 140th Aviation Regiment, 40th Combat Aviation Brigade, depart Camp Roberts, California in a tactical formation. The Black Hawks were on their way to pick up California National Guard soldiers for an air assault mission. The troops also trained for disaster relief and emergency response.

TERRORISM: The Widening Syria-Iraq Threat

 Deja vu all over again

Iraq map by CIA World Factbook

Syria, courtesy of the Institute for the Study of War

Back in February, 4GWAR reported that new Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was troubled by foreign jihadists streaming into war-torn Syria, which was turning into an incubator for future terrorists.

Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, Johnson said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had become “very focused” on foreign fighters heading to Syria, where foreign Islamists have radicalized and complicated the three-year civil war with the Bashar al-Assad regime. The DHS concern is what these fighters will do when they return to their home countries or travel elsewhere, indoctrinated with a violent Islamist mission.

Then in April we reported on another threat emanating from Syria: the rise of the Iranian-backed, Lebanese-based Hezbollah militia as a military force in Syria. In a report, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), another Washington think tank, said that Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia which has been battling Israel and the West for decades, has become a major player in the Syrian conflict.

Hezbollah has been designated as a Global Terrorist organization by the United States since 1995 for a long history of terrorist attacks against American citizens and officials – including the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon during the 1980s.

ISIS Territory in Syria and Iraq
Red is area controlled by ISIS
Yellow is area claimed by ISIS
(Via Wikipedia)

Now this: President Barrack Obama says he is sending up to 300 special operations forces to assess the situation on the ground in Iraq, where forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have captured several cities in northern and western Iraq in a sweeping attack out of Syria.

But Obama made clear that he will hold back more substantial support for Iraq – including U.S. Airstrikes – until he sees a direct threat to U.S. Personnel or a more inclusive and capable Iraqi government, according to the Washington Post.

At the White House, Obama said “American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq, but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people, the region, and American interests as well.”

Obama, who withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, said he’s positioned “additional U.S. military assets in the region. Because of our increased intelligence resources, we’re developing more information about potential targets associated with ISIL. And going forward, we will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action, if and when we determine that the situation on the ground requires it. If we do, I will consult closely with Congress and leaders in Iraq and in the region.”

But Obama emphasized “that the best and most effective response to a threat like ISIL will ultimately involve partnerships where local forces, like Iraqis, take the lead.”

 

 

UNMANNED SYSTEMS: Defense Industry Looks to Public Safety Sector to Revive Flat U.S. Market

 Not Quite Ploughshares.

Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich in the United Nations Art Collection

“And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” – Book of Isaiah, Chapter 2, Verses 3-4.

The U.S. defense industry isn’t quite making ploughshares yet, but as U.S. defense spending has declined, the unmanned systems sector has been talking up the capabilities of its robots, ‘droids and drones to help find lost hikers, track fleeing crime suspects and assist firefighters in remote wilderness areas.

Long time unmanned aircraft makers like AeroVironment and Insitu held briefings at last month’s big robotics industry conference in Orlando, Florida, about how their unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) could assist police looking for evidence or firefighters battling wildfires. The shift to the commercial market was the talk of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) gathering in Orlando.

Wall Street and industry analysts say the U.S. defense market is flat and while manufacturers may be looking hopefully to the commercial market, business will be slow until the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally decides how to integrate unmanned aircraft into the National Air Space.

All this and more is covered in an Aviation Week article your 4GWAR editor co-authored with Mike Fabey in Washington and Christina Mackenzie in Paris. The story Saving Grace: Robotic systems target civil market as defense lags, is the June 16 Defense Technology Edition of Aviation Week.

AeroVironment’s Qube quadcopter in action.
(Courtesy AeroVironment, Inc.) s http://www.avinc.com

AROUND AFRICA: Benghazi Attack Suspect, Nigeria Violence

Nabbed.

Libya
(CIA World Factbook)

U.S. Special Operations Forces and the FBI have captured one of the suspected leaders of the 2012 fatal attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack.

According to the Washington Post, the joint special operations and FBI Mission had been planned for months and was approved by President Barack Obama on Friday (June 13). The suspect was identified by the Pentagon as Ahmed Abu Khatallah. Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said Khatallah is in U.S. custody in a secure location outside of Libya. There were no civilian casualties related to the operation, and all U.S. personnel involved in the operation have safely left Libya, Kirby said.

Officials said he would be brought to the United States in the coming days to face charges in a civilian court, the New York Times reported, adding that  a sealed indictment sworn out secretly last July and made public on Tuesday (June 17) outlined three counts against him in connection with the deaths of Mr. Stevens, State Department official Glen Doherty and two CIA contractors – Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods.

*** *** ***

Nigeria Bombing

A suicide bomber has killed several people watching a televised World Cup soccer match in northern Nigeria’s Yobe state.

A hospital worker told the BBC that truckloads of injured people are being treated in overcrowded wards. “The injured people are so numerous I cannot count them,” the worker said after the blast in Damaturu town, BBC reported.

An emergency has been declared in three states, including Yobe, amid attacks by suspected Boko Haram militants.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian military has arrested more than 400 people traveling in southern Nigeria on suspicion they are members of Boko Haram. The men, and reportedly a few women, were traveling in more than 30 buses when they were stopped by the army Sunday (June 15) and detained at an army barracks in Abia state, according to the Voice of America.

Nigeria map
(CIA World factbook)

Local officials said they were suspected of being members of Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent group that has killed thousands of people in the past five years, mostly in the northeast part of the country. But a traditional leader from the north told VoA that the travelers were traders, looking to do business in the south.

Tensions have risen since a church bomb in another southern Nigerian city over the weekend raised fears that Boko Haram is seeking to operate in the southern part of the country. Another attack was reported in the strife-torn north, where more than 20 people killed Sunday (June 15) in the village of Daku. And more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April remain missing, despite pledges from Nigerian authorities and governments around the world to free them.

THIS WEEK in the War of 1812 (Jun 15-June 21, 1814)

Men in Motion

“Wellington at Waterloo” by Robert Alexander Hillingford via Wikipedia

There was little if any gunfire this week in 1814 but leaders in Canada, London,Washington and Upstate New York were setting things in motion that would lead to the bloodiest battle of the war in Canada and British attacks on Baltimore, Washington and New Orleans later in the year.

In June, 10,000 British troops – veterans of the Duke of Wellington‘s campaign against the French in Spain – are sent to the Americas, first to Bermuda and then on to Quebec.

British Major General Robert Ross – one of Wellington’s best generals – is set to command troops raiding the eastern seaboard. Ross and his troops depart Bordeaux, France June 2, reaching Bermuda on July 25.

With Napoleon removed from the scene, the British prime minister Lord Liverpool, means to teach the upstart Americans a lesson – particularly after U.S. Troops burn York (later to become Toronto, Canada) in 1813.

For the past year, British troops based at Virginia’s Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay have conducted a series of raids: burning towns and plantations, seizing food and other supplies as well as southerners’ slaves. Many of the now free slaves join the British Corps of Colonial Marines.

The British raid Havre de Grace, Maryland in May 1813, Hampton, Virginia in June. Frenchtown, Fredericktown and Georgetown all on Maryland’s Eastern Shore are also raided in 1813. Raids against military targets in 1814 include: Pongoteague Creek on May 30; a skirmish between British and American naval forces at Cedar Point, Maryland on June 1 and additional skirmishes between the British fleet and a U.S. Navy flotilla of barges turned into gunboats at St. Leonard’s Creek, Maryland between June 8 and June 26.

President James Madison

On June 20, near Benedict, Maryland on the Patuxent River, an advance party of U.S. cavalry clashed with a British raiding party, killing one and capturing five.

Meanwhile, U.S. President James Madison and his cabinet still have their eyes on Canada. Madison thinks if U.S. generals can take parts of Lower Canada before Wellingtons veterans reach North America, the United States will have a bargaining chip at the peace negotiations. Washington dispatches troops from Ohio on June 19 to begin a campaign to control Lake Huron and recapture  Mackinac Island. More troops are moved along the Niagara frontier between New York and Canada, although little is done to reinforce Baltimore, Washington or New Orleans.

 

FRIDAY FOTO (June 13, 2014)

Gathering of Eagles.

U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman John Nieves Camacho

A flight of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets from the 4th Fighter Wing accompany their commander,  Col. Jeannie Leavitt, (middle airplane) on her final flight May 29, 2014, over North Carolina.

Leavitt left Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, where she commanded the 4th Fighter Wing, for a Pentagon assignment as the principal military assistant to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Leavitt became the first Air Force female fighter pilot in 1993, and the first female wing commander in 2012. She recorded more than 2,600 flying hours in the F-15E. In 1993, the Defense Department changed its rules, allowing women to serve as combat pilots. She was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The photo above was taken from a KC-135 aerial refueling tanker.

Co. Leavitt speaking in 2012 at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Technical Sergeant Colette Graham)