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This Week in the Blackwater Tactical Weekly…
Afghanistan–Pakistan Developments
Homeland Security–First Responder
From Our Friends at Total Intelligence Solutions If you are having trouble viewing this please Click Here |
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| QUOTE OF THE WEEK |
“I like Leon [Panetta]. The guy knows how the political process works. He’s not going to get caught in some of the same kinds of traps.”” –Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) |
| WEEKLY SECURITY DEVELOPMENTS |
Federal Government: Blackwater Saves Taxpayers MoneyABC NewsThe government's use of private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has been blasted as costly to the image of the U.S., and to the country's bottom line, because a company like Blackwater can charge as much as $1222 a day for a hired gun. But a new government report says they may actually have saved U.S. taxpayers money. The State Department saves roughly $900 million a year using private firms to protect American diplomats in Iraq rather than relying on U.S. government employees, according to a recently published review by the non partisan Government Accounting Office. |
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| U.S. DEFENSE NEWS |
Army Revamps Troops' TrainingWashington TimesAt 5 a.m. on the Army's largest training base, soldiers grunt through the kinds of stretches, body twists and bent-leg raises that might be seen in an "ab blaster" class at a suburban gym. Adapting to battlefield experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army is revamping its basic training regimen for the first time in three decades by nixing five-mile runs and bayonet drills in favor of zigzag sprints and honing core muscles. Trainers hope the switch will better prepare soldiers physically for the pace of combat, with its sudden dashes and rolling gunbattles. They also want to toughen recruits who are often more familiar with Facebook than fistfights. Full StoryDrones Are Lynchpin of Obama's War on TerrorSpiegel OnlineWhat is the cost of rendering a terrorist harmless once and for all by killing him? During the course of 14 months, the CIA used unmanned and heavily armed small aircraft known as drones to stage 15 strikes against the presumed locations of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. On Aug. 5, 2009, on the 16th try, the drones finally managed to kill Baitullah Mehsud. On that day, a Predator drone was hovering about three kilometers (2 miles) above the house of Mehsud's father-in-law, somewhere in the Pakistani province of South Waziristan. The drone's infrared camera sent remarkably sharp images in real time to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The images showed the Taliban leader sitting on the roof of his house, in the company of his wife, his uncle and a doctor. Full StoryThe Osprey: She is High Maintenance, but Marines Love Her AnywayNational Defense MagazineMarine Corps officials have raved about the MV-22 Osprey’s recent contributions to operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti. Commanders like the tilt-rotor aircraft’s advanced features and performance. The Osprey, however, is as high maintenance as it gets. MV-22 maintenance squadrons in Iraq have faced reliability and maintainability challenges “stemming from an immature supply chain not always responsive to the demand for repair parts and aircraft and engine parts lasting only a fraction of their projected service life,” stated a Government Accountability Office report. Full StoryArmy on a Fast Track to Build its Own High-Tech Air ForceNational Defense MagazineThe Army soon will begin deploying larger quantities of remotely piloted surveillance aircraft — the high-tech kind that so far only have been operated by the U.S. Air Force. The scope and pace of the Army’s unmanned aircraft buildup has been described by one official as a “California gold rush.” The centerpieces of the Army’s unmanned warplane fleet will be the Shadow and Sky Warrior aircraft. It plans to acquire more than 300 of these two variants during the next five years. Nearly a hundred aircraft already are in the inventory. Full StoryUnited States Company Accused of Illegally Exporting Military TechnologyAssociated PressA U.S. company is accused of illegally exporting defense technology used by the U.S. military to South Korea, China, Russia and Turkey, federal prosecutors said. Rocky Mountain Instrument Co., based in Colorado, said it is working toward a plea agreement with prosecutors and that it has been cooperating with investigators for more than two years. Prosecutors allege that RMI, which manufactures optics components, exported prisms and technical data for optics used in military applications to the four countries from April 1, 2005, to Oct. 11, 2007. They say RMI did so without permission from the U.S. Department of State. Full Story |
| INTERNATIONAL MILITARY NEWS |
Global Insights: China's Military Buildup Stokes Regional Arms RaceWorld Politics ReviewChina's Southeast Asian neighbors are engaging in a sustained military buildup, with their imports of major conventional weapons systems almost doubling in volume in the five-year period from 2005 to 2009, compared to the 2000-2004 period. Although some of these imports may have replaced obsolete weapons or matched purchases by other Southeast Asian countries, China's massive military buildup is an important factor driving the region's defense modernization efforts. Full StoryNetanyahu and Ahmadinejad Best of Enemies?ReutersAs adversaries go, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are oddly well-suited. The hardline Israeli prime minister and the fiery Iranian president seem to feed each other rhetorical ammunition to whip up fears that bolster them in domestic politics and beyond. Between them, they are stubbornly testing the limits of U.S. power in the Middle East and undermining the "new beginning" in relations between America and Muslims that President Barack Obama proposed in an eloquent Cairo speech nine months ago. Venezuela Receives Chinese Planes Armed with MissilesSifyVenezuelan President Hugo Chavez has formally taken the delivery of the first four airplanes out of 18 purchased from China for military training purposes, which, however, came armed with machine guns, air-to-ground missiles, bombs and rockets. Chavez said Saturday during the televised ceremony at a military base in the northwestern state of Lara, which he attended wearing the uniform of commander in chief of the Bolivarian armed forces, that the arrival of the aircraft made 'March 13 a historic day for the Bolivarian anti-imperialist air force'. Full Story |
| AFGHANISTAN–PAKISTAN DEVELOPMENTS |
General McChrystal Consolidates Control of Special Forces in AfghanistanThe Washington IndependentBuried on page B-2 of an annex in Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Aug. 30 strategic assessment of the Afghanistan war is a vague promise about how he will run it. “Draft C2 guidance for command and control of special operations forces will be issued soon,” McChrystal writes. That forthcoming order will “direct the realignment of all SOF” to his command. As a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, McChrystal has deep experience with the autonomy that special forces can enjoy on a battlefield, answering to their own chain of command. Taliban Fight in Marjah With Fear CampaignAssociated PressA month after losing control of their southern base in Marjah, the Taliban have begun to fight back, launching a campaign of assassination and intimidation to frighten people from supporting the U.S. and its Afghan allies. At least one alleged government sympathizer has been beheaded. There are rumors that others have been killed. Afghans in the town that U.S., Afghan and NATO troops captured in a three-week assault that began Feb. 13 awake to letters posted on their doors warning against helping the troops. Full StoryRoadside Bombs in Afghanistan Are Crude but DeadlyAOL NewsEven as roadside bomb attacks are decreasing in Iraq, U.S. and NATO forces are facing more of the crude bombs in Afghanistan as a resurgent Taliban has made them its weapon of choice, says a senior military official. The number of the bombs, or improvised explosive devices, which are often planted alongside roads to target military convoys, has dropped steadily in Iraq over the past several years as the country has become more stable. But that's not the case in Afghanistan. Full StoryGeneral McChrystal Lays Out Campaign for KandaharArmy TimesEfforts to lay political and security groundwork in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar have already begun, even as the U.S.-led coalition continues efforts to pacify Marjah, the U.S. general leading the effort said Wednesday. Both goals are key to the Obama administration’s campaign to secure Afghanistan and establish credible governance. The campaign to remove the Taliban from Kandahar won’t take the form of last month’s D-day-style military movement into Marjah, to the east in neighboring Helmand province, but will be a gradual buildup that employs both military force and political maneuvers, said Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, during a satellite-linked meeting with Pentagon reporters. Full StoryInto the Hornet's Nest: Preparation for the Kandahar OffensivenForeign PolicyAt the Taliban's doorstep: Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, is the spiritual homeland of the Taliban -- and one of the bloodiest arenas of the coalition's war. Since 2001, 237 coalition soldiers have been killed in action there, a death toll second only to the 421 killed in Helmand. Grim milestones have taken place in Kandahar, including the 2002 assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan's first suicide bombings in 2005. Now, military officials have named it the next battleground in defeating the Taliban, following the conclusion of the recent coalition operation in Marjah. Above, a U.S. soldier wades through an opium field on March 15 in Howz-e-Madad. Full Story |
| HOMELAND SECURITY–FIRST RESPONDER |
Homegrown Terrorists Hint at New RealityAssociated PressOne was a drywall contractor and father, another a petite woman who cared for the elderly, another a U.S. military officer. The most alarming thing about a string of recently arrested terror suspects is that they are all Americans. Over the past week, a Pennsylvania woman, accused in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist, and a radicalized New Jersey man held by authorities in Yemen have become the latest cases among more than a dozen Americans captured or identified by the U.S. government and its allies over the past two years for actively supporting jihad, or holy war. Full StoryWhat America Needs to Know About EMPsForeign PolicyIn her article "The Boogeyman Bomb," Sharon Weinberger makes several allegations about the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, and a congressional commission set up to investigate it, that require correction. By way of background, a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude will produce an electromagnetic pulse that can damage and destroy electronic systems over vast regions of the Earth's surface. A single nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the United States would project an EMP field over the entire country, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. Mother Nature can also pose an EMP threat by means of a solar flare that causes a geomagnetic storm. Yemen-American Imam Calls for US Muslim RevoltWashington PostA Yemeni-American Muslim preacher known for his ties to extremists operating in the U.S. called on American Muslims in a new audio message to turn against their government because of its actions against Muslims around the world. Anwar al-Awlaki's latest message, excerpts of which were aired on CNN Wednesday, described his own radicalization after U.S. operations against Muslims and called on those in the U.S. to follow his path. Budget Cut for Fence on U.S.-Mexico BorderNew York TimesCiting a plague of “cost overruns and missed deadlines,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that she would cut millions of dollars intended for a high-tech “virtual fence” along the Mexican border that has produced little more than headaches for the federal government. Ms. Napolitano said her department would divert about $50 million in federal stimulus money intended for the project to other technological needs on the border, including laptops, radios, thermal-imaging devices and cameras requested by border guards. |
| FROM OUR FRIENDS AT TOTAL INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS |
Mexico: US Consulate Targeted in Drug WarHighlights
On March 14, 2010 gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband in the border town of Ciudad Juárez. Gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee, wounding their two children in the process, in what appeared to be coordinated assaults on American officials and their families. The deaths came during a particularly bloody weekend after nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence, including attacks in the popular resort town of Acapulco. Both United States (US) and Mexican authorities have expressed outrage over the murder and have vowed to work together to bring the criminals to justice. The killings may be related to a decision last month between the US and Mexican authorities to work more closely along the border. As greater interdiction is formed between the two neighbors, we remain concerned that Mexican cartels may equally ramp up measures of intimidation and narco-terrorism against innocent civilians in Juarez and elsewhere. Full ReportThe preceding article is part of subscription service created byTotal Intelligence Solutions (TIS). For additional information, please contact Brad Slade at bslade@totalintel.com. |
| BUMPER STICKER |
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| FRANKS REVIEW |
Tactical Equipment EvaluationProtocol UniformsI recently received for wear testing two sets of Protocol uniforms from Triumvirate Enterprises. The uniforms would be best described as contemporary utility blue BDUs. As I also recently repeated Active Shooter Instructor School (voluntarily just because it’s always different) I felt it might be the perfect opportunity to test out the uniforms. I wasn’t disappointed and wanted to pass along the info about the uniforms and their fit / features for those of you who might be in the market or making recommendations. The rest of the review http://www.newamericantruth.com/reviews/clothing/triunis.htmRecreational Equipment ReviewCamelBak Urban Assault PackI actually reviewed the prototype for this pack awhile back and was quite impressed by CamelBak’s focus on what I came to view as a practical backpack for the businessman or student. The production models have been out for awhile now and I got one a couple weeks ago with a request for a new review since some things had changed. During the testing time frame the pack has been used as a “tactical briefcase”, book bag for my son, travel bag for my daughter and gear bag during some training I attended. Ultimately I think it’s best for the business / educational environment, but some of the “tactical” design features are what really makes it excel wherever you take it. The rest of the review: http://www.newamericantruth.com/reviews/other/cbuap2.htm |
| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
ISSUES, METHODS, SOLUTIONSSometimes I am tempted to think I have lived here in this world too long. I have lived long enough to see and hear things that sound UnAmerican. In those times I calmly begin to meditate upon the things I know of the activities of the past. When I begin to compare these times and times past I find I do not need to feel I have been here too long… I find that although I might rather have lived in a different time, I am here and this is my time. Full article can be seen at: http://www.ustraining.com/new/btw/chaplain/032210chaplain.htm |
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The Blackwater Tactical Weekly is a free weekly e–publication. The Mission of the Blackwater Tactical Weekly is to provide readers with valuable information from diverse sources regarding tactical, strategic, and geo–political security issues. Editor–in–Chief - N Conley (btw@ustraining.com) Questions regarding US Training (252) 435–2035 To subscribe to the Blackwater Tactical Weekly, Click Here To view an archived edition of the Blackwater Tactical Weekly, Click Here |
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