FRIDAY FOTO (September 27, 2019)

Not Your Typical Gunnery Sergeant.

U.S. Department of Defense photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

Members of the “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band stand in formation during an honor cordon at the Pentagon, September 23, 2019. The ceremony welcomed German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to the Pentagon.

The stripes on the assistant drum major‘s sleeve indicate she is a gunnery sergeant, a senior non-commissioned officer usually in charge of the weaponry and weapons training of a company or platoon, although many gunnery sergeants become drill instructors (DIs), the sergeanst charged with training civilian recruits to become Marines.

Things are a little different in the Marine Band.  Assistant Drum Major Gunnery Sergeant Monica Preston leads the band in ceremonial commitments and, as the company gunnery sergeant, she is responsible for unit and new member training.

On parade, she also gets to wear that cool hat and an ornate sash called a baldric. It is embroidered with the Marine Band’s crest and the Marine Corps’ battle colors. That big brass thing she is holding is a mace, embossed with the battles and campaigns of the Marine Corps. Drum majors use the mace to signal commands to the musicians.

Gunnery Sergeant Stacie Crowther was the first female Assistant Drum Major for “The President’s Own” in its 221-year history. She reported for duty with the band in March 2017. Earlier in September, Crowther, now a master sergeant, moved on to a new role as Bandmaster for the Quantico Marine Band.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Deadly Year for Green Berets; McRaven on Afghanistan; New Brazil Commando Unit

Every Single One.

Every single active-duty Special Forces Group has lost at least one soldier in Afghanistan or Syria this year, the Task & Purpose website reports.

Special Forces Qualification Course graduates in 2012 wearing their green berets for the first time. (U.S. Army photo by Dave Chace, Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School)

A total of 12 members of the Army special operations forces community have died in 2019. All but one of those soldiers were killed in combat. The most recent special operators to fall are: Sergeant 1st Class Jeremy W. Griffin, 1st Special Forces Group, on September 16; Sergeant 1st Class Dustin B. Ard, also of the 1st Special Forces Group, on August 29; and Master Sergeants Luis F. DeLeon-Figueroa and Jose J. Gonzalez, both of the 7th Special Forces Group and killed in the same action on August 21. All four soldiers were mortally wounded during combat operations with Afghan Army troops.

Ten of the 17 U.S. troops killed so far this year in Afghanistan were Army special operators. Eight of the fallen were Green Berets. Another was attached to the 10th Special Forces Group and one other was a Ranger, according to Task & Purpose.

“Green Beret teams are embedded with the Afghan commandos, which is doing the lion’s share of the fighting on the ground – that’s why they’re taking the lion’s share of the casualties,” Representative Michael Waltz (R-Florida) — a retired Special Forces officer —  told Task & Purpose. For a list of the Special Operations soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Syria this year, click here.

More than 2,400 U.S. service personnel have died in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 to topple the Taliban, which sheltered bin Laden.

*** *** ***

Ex-Top U.S. Commando on Afghanistan.

Admiral William McRaven speaks to Special Operations commanders in January 2012. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Christopher Williams)

The former head of U.S. Special Operations Command ― who oversaw the mission that took out Osama Bin Laden ― believes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is far from over. “I’ve said we have to accept the fact — I think we do — that we’re going to be there for a very long time,” retired Navy Admiral William McRaven told an audience at the New America Special Operations Forces Policy Forum in Washington September 19.

McRaven, a Navy SEAL who headed SOCOM from 2011 to 2014, said it was a mistake to sit down with the Taliban, the Military Times reported. “I do believe that if we negotiate some sort of settlement with the Taliban, and that settlement involves the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan,” he said, “it won’t be six months or a year before all of the blood and treasure we have put into Afghanistan will have been reversed because the Taliban will come back in and do what the Taliban do.”

The Taliban and U.S. diplomats reportedly had reached an interim peace agreement this summer after nine rounds of peace talks in the Gulf State of Qatar. However, the deal fell apart just before the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks when President Trump canceled a secret meeting with Taliban officials at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

*** *** ***

New Brazilian Commando Unit.

Brazil’s Navy plans to create its own maritime special operations command, to be designated as the Comando Naval de Operações Especiais (CoNavOpEsp), according to the Jane’s 360 website.

Brazil’s Army has had special ops troops, Comando de Operações Especiais, (C Op Esp) since 2003.

The organization will be based in Rio de Janeiro under a rear admiral as part of the Naval Operations Command (ComOpNav). The plan calls for CoNavOpEsp — under a single command structure — to unify the direction and co-ordination of special operations missions, Jane’s reported.

Among the missions the existing Army commando unit, Comando de Operações Especiais, is tasked with: Direct action, airfield seizure, special reconnaissance, airborne and air assault operations, and personnel recovery.

*** *** ***

U.S., Estonian Commandos Train in Vertical Insertion.

Air Commandos with the U.S. Air Force 352nd Special Operations Wing, trained with Estonian and other U.S. special operations forces near Amari, Estonia, in early September. A NATO member since 2004, Estonia, like other Baltic nations once occupied by the Soviet Union, has been under pressure from Russia. A massive series of cyber attacks that paralyzed Estonia in 2007 was believed to be the work of Moscow, although the accusation was never proven.

From September 3 though September 9, the Estonian and U.S. commandos conducted a multitude of air operations out of an Air Force Special Operation Command CV-22 Osprey.  The tilt rotor aircraft is the Air Force’s premier Special Cops vertical lift assault platform. “Ospreys and their crews are capable of the full spectrum of SOF [Special Operations Forces] missions in all phases of conflict. They conduct the infiltration, exfiltration, and resupply of special operations forces throughout the European theater,” said U.S. Air Force Colonel Clay Freeman, commander of the 352nd Special Ops Wing.

An Estonian Special Operations Forces operator fast ropes out the back of a U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey on a similar training mission in 2017.   (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sergeant Matt Britton)

U.S. and Estonian troops spent the week focused on three mission objectives: Familiarization with the Fast Rope Insertion and Extraction System (FRIES) ;  casualty evacuation; and rapidly loading and off-loading a tactical vehicle from the aircraft.

During the FRIES training, U.S. and Estonia personnel practiced fast-roping from twilight and into the night. That new capability will allow forces to be inserted into small or confined areas were normal aircraft landings are impractical.

*** *** ***

More Training for USAF First Female Ranger.

Back in August, U.S. Air Force 1st Lieutenant Chelsey Hibsch made history by becoming the first female in the U.S. Air Force to graduate from the tough Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Air Force First Lieutenant Chelsey Hibsch, of the 821st Contingency Response Squadron, has her  Ranger tab pinned on after graduating from the U.S. Army Ranger School August 30, 2019, at Fort Benning, Georgia. (U.S. Army photo John Tongret)

Hibsch, a security forces officer assigned to the 821st Contingency Response Squadron (CRS) at Travis Air Force Base in California,  will be back with her unit training for short-notice disaster response and combat zone airfield preparation worldwide, the website Military.com reported.

The 821st CRS is part of the 621st Contingency Response Wing, whose highly specialized personnel are trained to deploy quickly in order to open airfields or establish, expand, sustain and coordinate air mobility operations for wartime tasks or disaster relief.

Then-2nd Lieutenant Chelsey Hibsch, speaking at a Women’s History Month luncheon at Yokota Air Base, Japan, on March 26. (U.S. Air Force photo by Machiko Arita)

Hibsch, a former enlisted airman from Attica, New York, was in the process of transitioning to the 621st from a previous assignment in the Indo-Pacific region when she was selected for Ranger School — a challenging, two-month-long course. Competing in the Ranger Assessment Course at Camp Bullis, Texas prompted her to enroll in Army Ranger School.

After then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted a ban on women serving in ground combat roles in 2013, the Army opened the Ranger School to female applicants two years later. Two female West Point graduates, Captain Kristen Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver, were the first women to earn the coveted Ranger tab (shoulder patch). Now more than a dozen service women have completed Ranger school.

FRIDAY FOTO (September 20, 2019)

Friend’s Best Man.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Corporal Brendan Mullin)

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Justin Knight carries his patrol explosives detection dog, JoJo, over a patch of cacti during training at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California on September 10, 2019.

Go ahead, say it …. Awwwww.

By the way, as cute as this dog looks, JoJo is trained to threaten and/or bite an aggressor while on patrol, as this video shows. (We suggest you skip to :29 seconds to avoid the annoyingly loud introductory section.)

ARCTIC NATION: Homeland Security Priorities in the Arctic UPDATE

Falling Behind.

UPDATE: Adds 6 new paragraphs at the end, to detail testimony on how the United States is falling behind other Arctic nations in asserting its role and status as an Arctic power. 

The American people and their leaders need to wake up to the fact that the United States is an Arctic Nation before it loses control of its commercial, environmental and strategic  interests in the rapidly warming — and developing — region, a panel of experts told a congressional subcommittee Thursday (September 19)

The amphibious dock landing ship USS Comstock transits the Gulf of Alaska headed for Seward, Alaska during Arctic Expeditionary Capabilities Exercise 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Nicholas Burgains)

Changing climate reduces polar sea ice and opens up access to untapped natural resources as well as maritime trade routes across the top of the globe — including Alaskan waters. And many nations, including Russia and China, which have both identified increased presence in the Arctic as a strategic priority, are moving faster than the United States to take advantage of the changing situation.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic  holds 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas. Russia, one of five nations that border the Arctic Ocean, has seen a five-fold increase in commercial activity along its Northern Sea Route. It has invested heavily in building ice breaker ships, and at more than 50, has the largest ice breaker fleet in the world

Meanwhile, China — which recently declared itself a “near Arctic state,” even though it is located nearly 1,000 miles from the region — is moving to take advantage of the commercial opportunities in the Arctic’s warming waters. It, too has an ice breaker construction plan, and is investing strategically in economic activity like liquid natural gas drilling in Russia’s Yamal Peninsula. Beijing is planning a virtual “Polar Silk Road,” of deepwater ports in friendly nations to help cut shipping time from China to Europe by two weeks.

Sea ice still thinning.
(Photo courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory website)

No longer an “emerging issue,”  Mike Sfraga, director of the Polar Institute, told the House Homeland Security Committee’s Transportation and Maritime Security subcommittee “the Arctic has emerged.”  The Arctic “is no longer an isolated or remote region: rather it is a critical component of our global political, economic, social, physical and security landscape,” added Sfraga, who is also director of the Global Risk and Resilience Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

He was one of four panelists from Washington area think tanks that research Arctic issues — the RAND Corporation; the Arctic Institute and the Heritage Foundation — called to testify about Homeland Security priorities in the Arctic.

Russia has invested heavily in militarizing its Arctic territory — which contains half of the world’s Arctic region and half of the Arctic’s population, said Luke Coffey, director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Over the past decade Russia has built or re-activated 14 operational airfields in the Arctic along with 16 deep-water ports, he added.

Arctic Region (Source: CIA World Fact Book via wikipedia)

Meanwhile, the United States does not have a major deepwater port along 1,500 nautical miles of its Arctic coastline — from Dutch Harbor to Alaska’s North Slope. Without a viable string of ports in the U.S. Arctic commerce, search-and-rescue capabilities and national security interests will not be met, said Sfraga.

The U.S. Coast Guard has only two ice breakers, only one of which — the Polar Star — is a heavy ice breaker capable of dealing with Arctic ice. Congress has voted funding for an additional U.S. icebreaker, the Polar Security Cutter, but it won’t be available for years.

“How did this happen?” asked a stunned subcommittee member, Representative John Katko, a New York Republican. “How did we let our guard down to this extent?”

“It goes back to our lack of awareness of our role and our status as an Arctic power” in terms of the policy makers at the Defense Department, Homeland Security and NATO, said Coffey. He noted five of the eight Arctic nations are members of NATO but the latest NATO Strategic Concept, “which highlights all the challenges to the alliance, doesn’t even mention the Arctic.”

“The U.S. is often called the reluctant Arctic nation,” said Victoria Herrmann, president and managing director of the Arctic Institute. She noted the post of special representative to the Arctic region has been vacant for two years. “We do not promote ourselves as an Arctic nation. We are thousands of miles away from Alaska, and those voices just aren’t heard in these halls [of Congress],” she said.

*** *** ***

ARCTIC NATION is an occasional 4GWAR posting on the Far North. The U.S. “National Strategy for the Arctic Region” describes the United States as “an Arctic Nation with broad and fundamental interests” in the region. “Those interests include national security needs, protecting the environment, responsibly managing resources, considering the needs of indigenous communities, support for scientific research, and strengthening international cooperation on a wide range of issues.”

 

FRIDAY FOTO (September 13, 2019)

Wet Silk Training

(U.S. Army photo by Specialist Christopher Stevenson)

A soldier emerges through a parachute canopy during wet silk training at Fort Carson, Colorado on September 6, 2019.

Wet silk training? It sounds so … unmilitary. Here at 4GWAR Blog, we have to admit, we had never heard the term before. The Defense Department caption that came with this photo noted wet silk training is designed to prepare Army Special Operations personnel (Green Berets and Rangers) for airborne water jumps.

Here’s the thing, parachuting out of an airplane or high-flying helicopter is daunting enough, but landing in water can be scary — especially when you swim to the surface and come up under your soggy parachute. “When you are swimming under a wet parachute, it sticks to your face and your body, and it is a very uncomfortable feeling,” Sergeant 1st Class Michael Donahue, told the author of an Army Special Operations Command public affairs article in 2014. “It’s very uncomfortable if you have never done it before,” added Donahue, who, at the time, was coaching water survival training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Training is conducted in swimming pools with lots of safety personnel and equipment around, including flotation devices to keep the sodden training parachute afloat, which accounts for the weird swirling colors in today’s FRIFO.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: The National Security Threat in the Digital Revolution

NSA official says technology could upend U.S. national security infrastructure

 

An opinion piece on the New York Times website this week (September 10, 2019) sounds an alarm over the cyber threats posed by the digital revolution sweeping through all aspects of U.S. society.

Glenn S. Gerstell, general counsel of the National Security Agency (NSA), says it is “almost impossible to overstate the challenges” and “profound implications for our federal security agencies” that the general onrush of technology presents. The NSA leads the U.S. Government in cryptology, the study of codes — both creating and breaking them — which encompasses both signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (or cybersecurity) products and services. The agency also enables computer network operations for the United States and its allies.

Unlike previous transformational technologies like railroads, electricity, radio and airplanes — which took decades to reach widespread use — cell phones, the Internet and social media have spread and shaped society in a time frame without precedent, Gerstell writes in his lengthy article.

(U.S. Navy photo by Ensign Crysta Gonzalez)

One example of the many challenges he cites is understanding how adversaries might use artificial intelligence (AI) in the future, including data poisoning — feeding misinformation to AI systems to corrupt or defeat them, such as causing a driverless vehicle to ignore a stop sign.  What are the implications for future autonomous weapons such as drones or armed robots? What are the protocols by which they will be controlled?

The sheer amount of data generated by individual and commercial activities will require enormous investments by the United States and its allies to upgrade national security and surveillance systems — perhaps much more than the roughly $60 billion the United States already spends annually on the intelligence community, which includes the FBI, CIA and a dozen other civilian and military agencies.

But it will take more than money to cope with unprecedented technological change, adapt to a world of continuous cyber conflict, navigate concepts of privacy and power that comes with access to big data, and to counter the effects of malign use of the Internet, according to Gerstell.

*** *** ***

Top photo: Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Sarah Villegas, U.S. Navy.

 

 

 

 

 

FRIDAY FOTO (September 6, 2019)

Have Gun (You Know the Rest).

(U.S. Army photo by Specialist Angel Ruszkiewicz)

The lights are on, but someone’s definitely home. And they’re inside this M109A6 Paladin self-propelled gun, firing a 155mm howitzer round during training in Jordan on August 27, 2019. It’s all part of Eager Lion, a major U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) exercise that aims to integrate forces in a multilateral environment, operate in realistic terrain and strengthen military-to-military relationships with Middle East partners.

Part tank and part artillery piece, the 78,000-pound Paladin first entered Army service in 1963. An extensive upgrade is underway.

SHAKO: Labor Day 2019

Getting the Job Done.

As we’ve said in past Labor Day posts, 4GWAR likes to pause and take a look at some of the jobs people do in the military that don’t get a lot of attention. Not everybody in the service hits the beach, fires a missile, flies a plane or jumps out of one. So here is a short look at the less glamorous — but still important — jobs that keep the U.S. military ready and able to meet the next challenge — whatever and wherever it is.

(U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Ericka Woolever)

Air Force Senior Airman Pauline Gonzalvo tightens a screw on an F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft at Aviano Air Base, Italy, August 28, 2019.

(U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Mercedee Wilds)

An Idaho National Guard member helps repair and build roads for the Shoshone-Paiute Native American Tribes at the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Idaho, on August 22, 2019. Idaho guardsmen performed the work as part of Innovate Readiness Training, an effort to provide joint training opportunities that benefit local communities.

(U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class James K. Lee)

Marine Corps musicians perform during an awards event at the Pentagon on August 23, 2019.

(U.S. Army photo by Patrick Buffett)

Army Private Nactuce Miller sings the national anthem for the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade Drill and Ceremony Competition at Fort Lee, Virginia on August 17, 2019.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Corporal Drake Nickels)

Firefighters with Camp Pendleton Fire Department (CPFD) initiate prescribed burns at  Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California on June 12, 2019. The CPFD encounters several wildfires each year. Prescribed burns are one of the many methods used to mitigate the unwanted spread of wildfires at the base.

(U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Sam Jenkins)

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Brittney Vice takes apart a pressure reducing valve for inspection aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia on August 15, 2019.

(U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Nathan T. Beard)

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carl Miller carries sandbags in preparation for Hurricane Dorian in Jacksonville, Florida, August 29, 2019.

(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Mozer Da Cunha)

Air Force Senior Airman Samora Dorsey, left, and Colonel Rod Simpson work on a B-5 maintenance platform, used to reach high overhead maintenance job like working on a wing-mounted engine, at Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait on August 15, 2019.

(U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Dustin R. Williams)

Fireman Alexandra Wellman checks the engine room while underway on a 47-foot motor life boat off Ocean City, Maryland, on August 8, 2019. Coast Guard Station Ocean City has two of the 47-footers for off-shore search and rescue and security patrols.