FRIDAY FOTO: February 26, 2016

Osprey at Sunrise.

U.S. Air Force photo by Technical Sergeant Efren Lopez

A Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft hovers over the desert before departing from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California.

The Osprey crew is assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 363.

FRIDAY FOTO:

Ewww.

U.S. Marine Corps Photo by Gunnery Sergeant Ismael Pena

Adding a whole new dimension to the phrase “Stay Hungry,” U.S. Marine Corps Corporal Sam Teifke  eats a live scorpion during Exercise Cobra Gold 16, at Sattahip, Thailand.

Teifke, with Maritime Raid Force of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, was taking part in jungle survival training course led by the Royal Thai Reconnaissance Marines. If you look closely, you can see his amused fellow Marines reflected in his sunglasses.

Cobra Gold, in its 35th iteration, is a multi-national exercise designed to increase cooperation and interoperability through solving solutions for common challenges.

Troops from Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand participated in this year’s Cobra Gold, which is aimed at advancing  regional security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific area.

UNMANNED AIRCRAFT: First Afghan Drone; U.S. Navy Foreign Sales Plan; China Drones in Africa

Afghan Scan Eagle.

The Afghan military could be flying its first unarmed surveillance drone as early as March, according to a U.S. commander in Kabul, Reuters reports.

The NATO-led military alliance will provide the remotely piloted Insitu ScanEagle aircraft, and will train Afghan soldiers to operate the system, said Major General Gordon Davis, commander of the unit that procures new equipment for the Afghans, Reuters said.

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Navy Plans Foreign Sales.

Insitu’s RQ-21 Blackjack drone, now being flown by the Marine Corps, is among the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) the U.S. Navy says it will offer for foreign sales.

Reporting from the Singapore Air Show, Defense News, says the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout, a small unmanned helicopter, and Northrop Grumman’s high flying MQ-4C Triton, a large-scale maritime surveillance aircraft, will be among the UAS available to foreign military customers.

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Nigerian Drones from China?

For African governments facing tight defense budgets and chronic security threats, Chinese military equipment has great appeal, particularly as it often comes as part of a broader package of trade and investment, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

Ten African nations have started buying equipment from China within the last 10 years, including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Angola and Nigeria.

And armed drones may be among the military equipment Nigeria is buying. In January 2015, photos of an armed drone that had crashed in a field in Nigeria’s northeastern state of Borno found their way onto the Internet. A second crash was reported in June. The drone was identified as a CH-3, an armed version of earlier drones built by China Aerospace Science and Technology, a vast state-owned enterprise employing more than 170,000 people.

FRIDAY FOTO (February 12, 2016)

Calm Beside the Storm.

U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Tyler Preston

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Sarahkate Barambangan appears unfazed by the Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier roaring past her as it takes off from the flight deck of the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) in the Gulf of Oman, January 26, 2016.

According to the yellow shirt and helmet she is wearing, Petty Officer Barambangan is either an aircraft handling officer or catapult and arresting gear officer. Or she could be a plane director taking a break since she’s not crouched down pointing in the other direction.

The Kearsarge is a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship that can carry 2,000 Marines and their equipment to the beach. The ship has a crew of over 1,000 sailors, plus six Harrier jets, six Sea Hawk helicopters and a number of MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

 

NATIONAL SECURITY:

European Reassurance.

The Pentagon is seeking $2.8 billion in the next budget cycle for Army training and preparedness missions in Europe, to reassure U.S. allies worried about the activities of a resurgent Russia.

Soldiers of the U.S. 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment take part in a live-fire exercise in Konotop, Poland last month. They were conducting squad-level training alongside Polish troops in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a multinational demonstration of continued U.S. commitment to security of NATO. (Army photo by Sergeant Paige )

If approved by Congress, that money will go to continued rotations of Army Brigade Combat Teams in and out of Europe, as well pre-positioning equipment stocks in Europe, so they don’t have to be shipped over during a crisis.

In introducing the Defense Department’s $582.7 billion budget request for the Fiscal Year starting October 1st, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Tuesday (February 9) that the United States is facing what military planners consider “the most significant shift in the future security environment — and that is a return to an era of great power competition.”

Work added: “Today, we are faced by a resurgent, revanchist* Russia and a rising China.  Both are nuclear-armed powers.  Both are fielding advanced capabilities at a rapid rate.  Both are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.”

Russia, in particular has been more aggressive on western borders abutting NATO, Work said. And that has made many of Russia’s neighbors, particularly in Scandinavia and the Baltics region, very nervous.

The Baltic Sea region via Wikipedia

To ease those worries the Obama administration has created the European Reassurance Initiative. As Russia has seized parts of Ukraine and tried for more, threatened Poland and the Baltic states and recklessly pushed its bombers and fighter jets through Scandinavian airspace the military reassurance has gone up, from $444 million in Fiscal 2015, $509 million last year to this year’s $2.8 request.

 

It’s all part of the part of the $523.9 billion budget request, plus an additional $58.8 billion for overseas contingency operations (OCO). That contingency request is way down from the years when U.S. troops were engaged in combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army’s part of the OCO request is $23 billion, up $2 billion from last year.

In addition to Russia and China, the United States must also deal with “a more unpredictable and dangerous North Korea,” said Work, adding that North Korea is already a nuclear-armed regional power.  North Korea is pursuing advanced ballistic missile capabilities that Work said “already threaten our Allies and the broader stability of the Asia-Pacific region.” Other challenges include Iran, which is trying to the regional super power of the Middle East and the campaign against global terrorist networks, which Work said “will be an enduring condition for much of the next 25 years.”

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*  A person who seeks retaliation or revenge; spec. a person who advocates or fights for the return of a nation’s lost territory-Oxford English Dictionary.

 

 

FRIDAY FOTO (February 5, 2016)

Black Widow Falcon.

Air Force photo by Tech. Sergeant Robert Cloys

U.S. Air Force Capt. Brad Hunt taxis to the runway in an F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft on Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, February 1, 2016.

From this angle one can see how far out ahead of the wings the pilot sits. One can also see the mountains of the Hindu Kush in the background.

Hunt is a pilot assigned to the 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. Known as the “Black Widows,” the 421st EFS began a six-month deployment in Afghanistan October 28, 2015.

 

AROUND AFRICA: Niger, Somalia, Burundi-Rwanda

Libya Threat.

NIGER: CIA World Factbook

According to Bloomberg, officials in the West African nation of Niger say instability in nearby Libya poses a bigger threat to them and other nations in the Sahel than Boko Haram violent extremist Islamist group.

The government of the landlocked Niger will spend 10 percent of its annual budget on defense through the next five years to protect itself from militants, Interior Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou tells Bloomberg in an interview in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

Niger, the world’s fourth-largest producer of uranium shares borders seven nations including Libya, where the so-called Islamic State has gained a foothold amid a power vacuum caused by a breakdown in central authority.

“As long as Libya isn’t stabilized, it’s obvious that there will be a permanent threat throughout the Sahel,” Massaoudou said.

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Somali Jet Blast.

Somali officials investigating an apparent bomb blast that forced a passenger jet to make an emergency landing in Mogadishu tell the VOA news site that the explosion was likely the work of militant group al-Shabab.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior security official told VOA’s Somali Service that investigators have evidence that al-Shabab was behind the blast and that they will present their conclusions soon.

Somalia’s former national intelligence director, Ahmed Moallim Fiqi, said the nature of the incident and the evidence available so far both indicate it was “a planned bomb attack.”

A passenger on the Djibouti-bound Airbus 321 has been confirmed missing by the airline, the BBC reports. Daallo Airlines had previously said that all the passengers had been accounted for.

It is thought that the man fell out of the hole, which appeared shortly after take-off from Mogadishu on Tuesday (February 2).

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Rwanda Accused.

BURUNDI: CIA World Fact Book

A confidential United Nations report has repeated previous allegations that Rwanda has been recruiting and training Burundian rebels on its territory with the goal of ousting Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza.

A group of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said it had interviewed 18 Burundian fighters in DRC’s South Kivu Province, according to the VOA website.

They all told the experts that “they had been recruited in the Mahama Refugee Camp in eastern Rwanda in May and June 2015,” and were given two months of military training by instructors who “included Rwandan military personnel,” according to the U.N. experts. Their findings were first reported by Reuters.

Rwanda has dismissed the allegations in the leaked U.N. report, according to the BBC. Similar allegations have been made by Burundi’s government.

A political crisis in the country, sparked by President Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term last April, has led thousands to flee.