Quotes of the Day:
“They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women.”
- D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
"Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time."
- Alvin Toffler
How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?
- Andrew Sullivan
1. Past as Prelude? Envisioning the Future of Special Operations
2. Hundreds Seeking Evacuation From Afghanistan Forced to Leave Safehouses
3. Every US citizen who wants out of Afghanistan offered departure, State Department says
4. Cyber Marines could be empowered to act boldly under commandant’s future force vision
5. Why America Needs to Rethink the Taiwan Narrative
6. Do cyber spies dream of electric shadows?
7. How America can defend Taiwan by Elbridge Colby
8. ABC News Documentary ‘3212 Un-Redacted’ Counters Pentagon’s Narrative Of Deadly Ambush On Special Forces’ Anti-Terror Operation In Africa
9. Perspective | An Air Force sergeant killed himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The note he left is heartbreaking.
10. Poll: Veterans Say US Left Afghanistan Without Honor, and They Want to Talk About It
11. Top Haqqani Network leader named Taliban governor of Logar | FDD's Long War Journal
12. Let’s Get to Know Space Force, Trump’s Most Misunderstood Creation
13. FDD | A New Threat to Iron Dome
14. FDD | Canada must increase pressure on Iran
15. FDD | Biden Administration Hesitates to Condemn Iranian Terrorism in Iraq
16. PFLP Boasts About its Ties to Iran | FDD's Long War Journal
1. Past as Prelude? Envisioning the Future of Special Operations
Important article from Kevin Bilms of the office of ASD SO/LIC. We have to debunk the direct action only narrative.
I made a similar argument in 1995 in my first master's thesis titled: Special Forces Missions; A Return to the Roots for a Vision of the Future. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA299300.pdf. Like Kevin, we can see the future of Special Forces (and SOF writ large) missions by learning about our past. I was heavily influenced by Mark Boyatt and his writing on UW and "through, with, and by" at the time and recommended that Special Forces build on its Unconventional Warfare roots and have a wartime mission of unconventional warfare and a peacetime mission of unconventional operations which would be the doctrinal basis for the full range of title 10 activities that belonged to SOF.
Past as Prelude? Envisioning the Future of Special Operations
It is indicative of the current zeitgeist that Washington’s strategists quote Sun Tzu and sprinkle the ancient philosopher’s axioms in conversations and PowerPoints across town. For policymakers seeking to win without fighting with the People’s Republic of China or other competitors, they should also note the popular Chinese proverb that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now.
To sow the seeds that sprout the roots of victory far from a future battlefield, policymakers should embrace the methodical, indirect, and asymmetric approach to problem solving that historically characterized United States Special Operations Forces activities. The ability to operate with a small footprint and low-visibility, invest time and resources to foster interagency and foreign partnerships, develop deep cultural expertise, and rapidly adapt emerging technologies are vital in today’s environment—both to enhance deterrence and challenge adversaries’ coercion through gray-zone aggression.[1] By incorporating chapters of special operations’ past, today’s special operators can position themselves to provide outsized impact for the United States in the future.
World War II Origins
Today’s special operations community traces its lineage to the Office of Strategic Services, an organization established in 1942 to conduct influence operations, intelligence collection, and subversion behind enemy lines to support U.S Armed Forces. The forerunners of today’s operators maximized disruption of the Axis war effort through a well-planned economy-of-force campaign that seized the initiative and targeted enemy morale via psychological warfare, support to resistance elements, and maritime demolition.[2]
War correspondents and personnel of the Office of Strategic Services, leaving from the Railhead, Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia, enroute overseas. (National Archives at College Park, Wikimedia Commons)
Then and now, special operators were high-quality, trained for purpose, and deployed to provide asymmetric advantages across all domains.[3] Today’s World War II predecessors pioneered population-centric approaches through unconventional warfare, building relationships among local populations to innovate and improvise with all available means.[4] With enabling support from special operators, motivated citizens determined to resist oppression used their everyday skills and social structures to sabotage Nazi occupation and retake their territory, allowing conventional forces to focus on other contested theatres while bolstering Allied morale.[5]
Persistent engagement enabled the United States to exert influence and relevance in contested territories amidst a maelstrom of propaganda meant to discourage resistance and accept capitulation. Allied special operators demonstrated skill in using information and narrative to shape emotions and inspire unified action.
At the most basic level, this non-traditional approach afforded a wider range of military options for decision makers, an attribute that special operators continue to bring to today’s challenges through their low-profile and partner-enabling focus.[6] Persistent engagement enabled the United States to exert influence and relevance in contested territories amidst a maelstrom of propaganda meant to discourage resistance and accept capitulation. Allied special operators demonstrated skill in using information and narrative to shape emotions and inspire unified action. Collectively, these represent small investments to help partners and allies prepare before conflict and maintain the will to resist, which raise the costs of coercive aggression and align U.S. military investments with foreign policy priorities in key regions.
Cold War Competition Force
It was clear following World War II, as the Iron Curtain redrew the political landscape and a long-term political struggle emerged, that special operations would remain essential in hostile environments. Recognizing the different dynamics between peacetime competition and declared war, parts of today’s special operations enterprise were created as a type of “competition force” to apply strategic reconnaissance and non-traditional partnerships as low-visibility ways to maintain access and understand the local environment.[7]
Special operators demonstrated value in working through committed partners as a supplement for traditional deterrence operations in the process.
The notion of a competition force emphasizes the role of special operators as a close-in force, engaging in the same terrain as its competitors to achieve discrete effects more nimbly than a conventional weapons platform. A steady diet of training and living side-by-side European partners and South Vietnam’s Civilian Irregular Defense Force in the 1950s and 1960s helped Army Special Forces gain invaluable cultural expertise, exquisite understanding of the operating environment, and build interpersonal rapport. Taken together, these benefits from the human environment represent what modern business leaders and strategists have termed “strategic empathy,” and provide the needed nuance for decision making amidst amorphous political conditions.[8] Special operators demonstrated value in working through committed partners as a supplement for traditional deterrence operations in the process. In the event of a crisis, these forces were postured to provide reliable facts from the ground; prepare for localized, guerrilla war; exemplify America’s commitment to its allies; and enable conventional forces entering into combat.
Applied to today’s long-term contest, the role of special operators as military diplomats helps to preserve U.S. credibility with vulnerable allies and partners. Special operations forces’ global networks and non-kinetic capabilities can reassure allies and create challenges for competitors without detracting from the joint force’s overall readiness or lethality. This is especially true today, when indirect approaches that lay the groundwork for solutions from interagency or international partners—for example, in the financial realm with the Department of Treasury—could yield substantial effects in today’s interconnected landscape. The use of special operations deployments represents an asymmetric application of military power to preserve American influence and enhance its legitimacy as others seek to erode America’s strengths.
Operation Eagle Claw and Its Aftermath
Operation Eagle Claw, the failed operation in April 1980 to recover American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, was a sobering wakeup call which demonstrated that even with enormous talent across special operators in the different military branches, shortcomings in special operations equipment, techniques, and interoperability could doom high-risk missions.[9] Even with a highly effective toolset, the proverbial tip of the spear needed guidance and oversight to remain prepared, fully optimized, adequately prioritized by the military branches, and aligned with political objectives.
Operation Eagle Claw-Tabas, 25 April 1980. ( Wikimedia)
It took an act of Congress to right the ship. Senators Sam Nunn and William Cohen were visionaries by prescribing solutions for the U.S. military to address indirect aggression and build unity across the different uniformed services by creating U.S. Special Operations Command and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations & Low-Intensity Conflict—anticipating that the country would face more asymmetric threats.[10] The senators understood that the enemy also gets a vote in challenging the United States, and that military planners could not occupy themselves only with the unambiguous, head-on military contests preferable for them.
The setbacks of the 1980s and the reforms later that decade set the stage for special operators in the 1990s to gain valuable experience operating in gray-zone environments in the Balkans.[11] Special operators were relied upon to deliver discrete non-kinetic effects via psychological operations and civil affairs alongside NATO allies while avoiding escalation into conflict. These experiences demonstrated the special operators’ ability to operate subtly and with a small footprint in politically sensitive environments alongside interagency partners to support broader political objectives. Unfortunately, their exploits were overshadowed by the tragic loss of operators in Somalia, which reduced policymaker willingness to invest in conflicts with blurred front lines.[12]
The War on Terror
The events of September 11, 2001 and the ensuing War on Terror caused a relentless tempo for the special operations enterprise to execute a mission that was not its sole focus. However, the pivot shows how special operators can become whatever the nation needs them to be. Special operators were in Afghanistan as part of Task Force Dagger by October 2001, and building off longstanding relationships forged over years working alongside Afghan resistance in the 1980s, special operators and intelligence counterparts joined forces to overthrow a hostile government before winter.[13] Their unconventional warfare campaign exemplified the outsized strategic impact that special operations forces could provide in an economy-of-force effort with less financial, materiel, and personnel costs than a conventional force would encounter—a model that Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines used as the preponderance of resources flowed to forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.[14]
As special operators doubled down on kinetically targeting terrorists, recruitment and selection emphasized lethal direct action at the expense of other skillsets and competencies applicable for competition with state actors.
Over the next 20 years, U.S. Special Operations Forces transformed into the world’s premier direct action counterterrorism force and galvanized interagency support towards a common purpose. These forces were the vanguard of the nation’s counterterrorism successes and shouldered tremendous sacrifices in blood and treasure. Although their constant pressure reduced terrorism to a manageable threat, the 20-year pursuit may have inadvertently caused many to overlook the wide range of special operations missions that represent special operators’ future value proposition.[15]
San Diego, CA, United States. 2 February 2021 Naval Special Warfare Group ONE (Petty Officer 1st Class Paolo Bayas/U.S. Navy)
Pressures from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq caused special operators to make changes inimical to their traditions as the wars continued.[16] The introduction of conventional forces to fight an unconventional war shortly after the Taliban regime fell was essentially an attempt to provide a quantitative solution to a qualitative problem, and special operators increasingly specialized in the highest risk operations that conventional forces could not undertake.[17] This emphasis caused the quiet professional to become a visible figure conducting direct action and kicking down doors on the silver screen.[18] These changes pigeonholed military formations that specialized in subtle, indirect, and asymmetric action to provide immediate gratification through measurable figures while overlooking strategic impact.[19]
…special operators became subject to a narrative that direct action was their sole role, and some believed they adopted a culture which supported that assertion.
As special operators doubled down on kinetically targeting terrorists, recruitment and selection emphasized lethal direct action at the expense of other skillsets and competencies applicable for competition with state actors. Psychological operations, civil affairs, and more subtle aspects of unconventional warfare and support to resistance— missions that traditionally distinguished the role of special operators to understand and shape the environment—were at risk of neglect due to misunderstanding their purpose.[20] By conflating these missions as supporting acts to now-unpopular missions such as counterinsurgency or stabilization, special operators became subject to a narrative that direct action was their sole role, and some believed they adopted a culture which supported that assertion.[21]
The convergence of these trends with the growing attention to strategic competition presents opportunities for the special operations community to rediscover its historic strengths and breathe new life into them. Doing so would refocus all special operations units to demonstrate how their specialized skills keep opponents unbalanced both inside and outside of conflict.[22] To be effective, special operators must emphasize their proven ability to work seamlessly across cultures, with foreign partners as well as within embassy settings.[23] By building trust across government, it will be easier to generate buy-in for pivoting to a strategic landscape where special operators remain in high demand even as counterterrorism requirements decrease and the military is not the lead U.S. organization.
Past as Prologue?
What does the future hold? If Mark Twain was correct, history never repeats, but it often rhymes. It stands to reason that as global conditions point to steady competition, the United States will need a force capable of understanding local conditions, building relationships with an array of partners, combating disinformation through truthful narratives, fostering resilience, raising costs of aggression, and selectively imposing costs through a variety of creative means. The solution to today’s challenges cannot only be material or technological in nature—there is no deus ex machina for human-centric competition. Special operations forces could fill the void as a competitive force once more, and campaign to provide outsized benefits in support of the nation’s priorities. A winning posture requires an irregular element that conventional forces alone are unsuited to provide.[24]
Past examples demonstrate that indirect and asymmetric strategies associated with irregular warfare provide significant value in steady-state campaigning where the struggle for influence and perceptions of legitimacy occurs below the threshold of war.[25] Special operations forces instinctively “think globally, act locally” and work with local actors on shared challenges, which indirectly provides an outsized return on investment towards achieving strategic policy objectives. The proficiency that special operators have in conducting irregular warfare offers opportunities for conventional forces to rethink influence activities in their own steady-state campaigning to maintain a position of continued advantage.[26]
This time, inspiration should come from the past and incorporate innovations from today’s recent experiences, adapt for emerging domains including cyber and space, and tailor an approach for the contests looming over the horizon.
Adapting and transforming for today’s challenges requires special operations forces to embrace their problem solving tradition through indirect approaches to uncover game-changing advantages. This time, inspiration should come from the past and incorporate innovations from today’s recent experiences, adapt for emerging domains including cyber and space, and tailor an approach for the contests looming over the horizon. The result may look less like an incremental evolution of the past 20 years. Instead, these changes portend a counter-revolution that brings special operations back to basics by combining the best of today’s tactical ingenuity with a strategic focus evident in special operators’ past deployments.[27] By looking to the past and infusing present-day innovations, U.S. Special Operations Forces can remain the indispensable provider of asymmetric advantages far from the battlefield to grow America's roots of victory.
Kevin Bilms is a career Department of Defense civilian serving in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and a Non-Resident Fellow of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a joint forum between the United States Military Academy’s Modern War Institute and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: SSG Alvin J. Rouly taught a Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) trainee how to use a M79 grenade launcher. Camp Trai Trung Sup, Republic of Vietnam, 1967. (U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographer)
Notes:
[2] de Wit, Daniel. “Fake News for the Resistance: The OSS and the Nexus of Psychological Warfare and Resistance Operations in World War II.” Journal of Advanced Military Studies. Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2021). USMCU Press. https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/2_de%20Wit.pdf#page=2.
[17] Rothstein, Hy S. “Less is More: The Problematic Future of Irregular Warfare in an Era of Collapsing States.” Third World Quarterly (Vol. 28, No. 2). Taylor & Francis, Ltd. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4017700?seq=1.
2. Hundreds Seeking Evacuation From Afghanistan Forced to Leave Safehouses
A troubling and tragic situation.
Buried lede: there are serving members of the US government and military volunteering their time and expertise and contacts to try to evacuate at-risk Afghans.
Excerpts:
Task Force Argo said that it had waited weeks for a response from the State Department and that it had run out of money to house the people hoping to fly out.
“It’s astronomical,” said the spokeswoman, who also holds a position with the U.S. government. “We are just volunteers.”
The State Department said it has concerns about the accuracy of volunteer groups’ passenger manifests because it lacks personnel on the ground to vet the lists.
...
Another volunteer group helping to charter flights out of Afghanistan, led by the U.S. development firm Sayara International, said it also has been unable to get approval from the State Department for its passenger manifests.
The department has said that Afghans who worked for U.S. contractors, U.S. media or projects funded by the U.S. may apply for refugee status if they can get to a third country. For many such Afghans, the volunteer groups offer the only hope of leaving the country to do so.
The State Department said it is working alongside a humanitarian partner on the ground to secure seats on flights for those eligible for evacuation. Only American citizens, legal permanent residents and immediate family members are able to get seats, with very limited exceptions.
That leaves behind tens of thousands of Afghans who have applied for visas based on their work for the U.S. and the risks they face under the Taliban government, according to advocates, veteran groups and lawmakers.
Hundreds Seeking Evacuation From Afghanistan Forced to Leave Safehouses
Volunteer group housing Afghans said it couldn’t gain approval to fly them out of the country
Since the last U.S. forces left Afghanistan at the end of August, charter flights operated by volunteer groups have offered vulnerable Afghans one of the few routes out of the country.
Task Force Argo was one of the biggest volunteer groups, made up of current and former U.S. government officials, veterans and others working to charter evacuation flights out of Afghanistan. The group’s leaders said it has three flights ready to leave but nowhere to land the planes because the U.S. government hadn’t approved the passenger manifests or otherwise cleared the departures.
The group said it had raised nearly $2 million from veterans and other private donors and gets no U.S. government money. Donations streamed in during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul but have fallen off since media coverage of the issue has diminished.
A spokeswoman said that several countries already hosting Afghans temporarily—Albania, Kosovo, Rwanda and Uganda—had offered to receive the passengers but only with the U.S. government’s approval.
Task Force Argo said that it had waited weeks for a response from the State Department and that it had run out of money to house the people hoping to fly out.
“It’s astronomical,” said the spokeswoman, who also holds a position with the U.S. government. “We are just volunteers.”
The State Department said it has concerns about the accuracy of volunteer groups’ passenger manifests because it lacks personnel on the ground to vet the lists.
A spokesman for the department said that in the past, some passengers on private flights had turned out to be ineligible for relocation to the U.S., “despite the best efforts of the private organizations supporting these charters.”
“This puts the individual travelers at risk with no plan for relocation to the United States; damages the bilateral relationship of the United States with the destination countries; and makes it more difficult for the U.S. government to rely on those partner countries to assist in future relocations out of Afghanistan,” the spokesman said.
Task Force Argo said that it has helped more than 2,000 people leave Afghanistan at no cost to evacuees, including Americans, residents and visa holders. Most are in the United Arab Emirates, awaiting transfer to the U.S. or other countries, depending on their eligibility.
Another volunteer group helping to charter flights out of Afghanistan, led by the U.S. development firm Sayara International, said it also has been unable to get approval from the State Department for its passenger manifests.
The department has said that Afghans who worked for U.S. contractors, U.S. media or projects funded by the U.S. may apply for refugee status if they can get to a third country. For many such Afghans, the volunteer groups offer the only hope of leaving the country to do so.
The State Department said it is working alongside a humanitarian partner on the ground to secure seats on flights for those eligible for evacuation. Only American citizens, legal permanent residents and immediate family members are able to get seats, with very limited exceptions.
That leaves behind tens of thousands of Afghans who have applied for visas based on their work for the U.S. and the risks they face under the Taliban government, according to advocates, veteran groups and lawmakers.
Since the Taliban seized power in August, isolated reports have emerged of reprisal killings and efforts to hunt down enemies, but widespread massacres that were feared in the West haven't happened.
The Taliban leadership has said that the movement respects women’s rights, within what it sees as the correct framework of Islam. The government, intent on wooing the international community and gaining recognition from foreign capitals, hasn’t formally changed laws to significantly curb women’s freedoms.
In practice, however, women’s rights have deteriorated sharply, women and human-rights groups have said, in part because the Taliban’s central leadership exercises limited authority over individual members, who enforce their own views of what they consider proper Islamic behavior and traditional norms.
3. Every US citizen who wants out of Afghanistan offered departure, State Department says
Every US citizen who wants out of Afghanistan offered departure, State Department says
The State Department has arranged a means out of Afghanistan for the last remaining U.S. citizens who are seeking help departing, a senior State Department official told ABC News.
It is an important milestone for the State Department, nearly three months after President Joe Biden ended the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and the unprecedented, chaotic evacuation operation.
But the situation on the ground has shifted rapidly and repeatedly, making this "milestone" a moving target.
Some Americans who requested assistance have not yet departed, and hundreds of others remain in the country who could change their minds and seek a way out, especially because many of those who are staying are doing so only because extended family members who are Afghans have not been able to get out.
"This mission will continue. These numbers are nothing more than a snapshot on any given day. It's not that we're closing up shop, but we are marking an important milestone," the senior State Department official said.
Hoshang Hashimi/AFP via Getty Images
Passengers board a Qatar Air aircraft bound to Doha at Kabul airport on Nov. 4, 2021.
In total, 385 U.S. citizens have departed Afghanistan with U.S. government help, per the State Department, but that number didn't include a flight that departed Thursday for Doha, Qatar.
There will be more flights in the coming days, according to the senior official, with fewer than 80 U.S. citizens still in the country and seeking help.
The total number in the coming days could be about 450 U.S. citizens who departed with U.S. government help in total -- roughly four times as many as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said remained in the immediate aftermath of Biden's Aug. 31 withdrawal.
The agency has previously defended that difference by saying the situation on the ground was constantly shifting.
"The number fluctuates as people change their minds about leaving, or as some U.S. citizens choose to go back, as many have family members in Afghanistan they do not want to leave behind, and we've seen that -- so the number is very fluid," a State Department spokesperson told ABC News Tuesday.
U.S. Army
Evacuees from Afghanistan gather as they await safe passage to Germany after completing out-processing at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar, Aug. 23, 2021.
Some lawmakers and advocacy groups have said the number is even higher, with Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., saying last month the administration "has shamelessly and repeatedly lied about the number of Americans trapped behind Taliban lines."
The senior State Department official dismissed some of that "bad-faith" criticism as "tinged with politics and partisanship" and repeated the administration's commitment to giving all U.S. citizens who want out of Afghanistan a way out.
Many Americans who were left behind by the massive evacuation operation in August have also expressed anger and outrage about what they describe as abandonment.
"How can you leave a U.S. citizen with the background that I have, that can be hunted at any time? How can you leave them there?" said Prince Wafa, a 30-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan. After serving with U.S. forces for four years and securing a special immigrant visa, Wafa has been living in San Diego, but returned to Afghanistan this summer to help his wife get out.
While Wafa was unable to get a seat on an evacuation flight out before troops left, approximately 6,000 American citizens were evacuated, according to the State Department, out of nearly 124,000 people in total.
Courtesy Prince Wafa
Prince Wafa and his wife take a selfie in Doha, Qatar, on Nov. 1, 2021.
The administration still hopes to pick up the pace of flights out of Afghanistan in the coming weeks, especially with help from the Qatari government, which has been arranging chartered Qatari Airways flights. On Friday, Blinken will meet his counterpart, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, for a strategic dialogue where the issue will be among many discussed, the senior official said.
For months now, there have been negotiations among the Qatari and Turkish governments, the Taliban's interim government and private firms about reopening Kabul's international airport. But hope for a swift reopening seems to have faded, in particular because of damage to the airport during the August evacuations and concerns over airport security.
The senior official declined to say how close the parties may be beyond that they were "not there yet" and the agency was "still working closely with our partners" on that goal.
But so far, the Taliban itself has not been an issue, according to the senior official.
"The Taliban have been uneven in some areas, but when it comes to safe passage and allowing those who wish to leave the country to leave, I think they have by and large adhered to that commitment, and I think the milestone we achieved yesterday is a testament to that," the senior State Department official said.
Anne Levasseur/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images
This video frame grab taken from AFPTV footage shows passengers and ground staff standing in front of a counter of Qatar Airways flight to Doha at the airport in Kabul on Oct. 20, 2021.
In a joint statement Thursday, delegations from the U.S., Russia, China and Pakistan said they "welcomed the Taliban's continued commitment to allow for the safe passage of all who wish to travel to and from Afghanistan." The diplomats met with senior Taliban leaders on the sidelines of their summit in Islamabad Thursday, according to their statement.
While hundreds of Americans and other foreigners have gotten out, there's been intense criticism about the many Afghans left behind and still seeking departure, especially those who worked for the U.S. military or diplomatic missions and whose lives are now at risk.
"The U.S. military and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan may have ended in August, but the U.S. government's obligation did not," said Sunil Varghese, policy director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, on an advocacy call on Tuesday. "The Biden administration must provide immediate, realistic pathways to safety for these communities."
The senior State Department official declined to say how many Afghan partners the administration has helped evacuate. But they said thanks to the work of nongovernmental partners like veterans groups, a couple thousand have been able to fly out on chartered flights, including some on those arranged by the Qatari government where the U.S. has facilitated seats.
"Even if we reach a point where every American who has raised his or her hand and is ready to leave has departed, our efforts to assist others, that will continue," the senior official added.
4. Cyber Marines could be empowered to act boldly under commandant’s future force vision
Can we get the right balance between bold action and risk averseness?
Cyber Marines could be empowered to act boldly under commandant’s future force vision
WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Marine Corps continues to reshape the force through the commandant’s Force Design 2030 effort and the recently released Talent Management 2030 plan, cyber and information warfare Marines in the future may be further empowered to use their digital skills to create operational advantages for kinetic forces, one official said.
The Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group (MIG) formation was fielded four years ago and has already made progress in training fellow Marines on how to operate amid cyber threats as well as showing MEF commanders how to blend a range of kinetic and non-kinetic options, Col. Brian Russell, who commands the II MEF Information Group, said Nov. 10 during a discussion as part of C4ISRNET’s CyberCon.
But those Marines’ talents could still be further unleashed.
“As our commandant redesigns our force to be a stand-in force, forward-deployed, persistently engaged in the information environment, I think our forces can provide a measure of access to the entire joint force to get into networks and get into systems in support of the combatant commanders’ objectives,” Russell said.
He painted a picture of what those operations could look like, citing a recent essay Commandant Gen. David Berger wrote on his vision of a stand-in force, or one that can live and operate in and around enemy territory and win the daily reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance battle.
In his essay, published this month in Proceedings magazine, Berger wrote: “In a 21st-century reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance battle, an adaptive adversary will try to change signatures and adjust sensors to defeat the collection efforts of the United States and its partners, and to overcome their deception efforts.
“Marines on the front lines may have to write computer code to adjust the software on sensors and systems in real time,” he continued. “The examples are many, but the implications are clear. Developing future Marines who will operate as SIF demands as much focused attention as any other aspect of the stand-in concept — perhaps more.”
In combination with the recent talent management plan that emphasizes retaining high-performing Marines over recruiting fresh new ones every four years, creating a more mature and experienced force, Russell said the commandant’s plans are particularly well suited for MIG Marines.
“I have a good number of Marines that love to code in their off time. And so when the commandant comes out in his vision for the stand-in force in [Proceedings] this month and says Marines on the frontline will have to reprogram their software in their systems on the fly to achieve operational outcomes, this is all about how we enable the creative brilliance we already have in the formation,” he said.
“The best thing I can do as a commander in support of retention is to give them mission: let them operate in the cyber domain, let them perform those influence functions, let them do what they came in to do. And that’s the best retention setup we’ve got,” Russell continued.
U.S. Marines assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group are taught how to jam frequencies using the MODI II electronic warfare system during a communications field testing exercise at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California, Apr. 22, 2021. The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate the capability and compatibility of commercial equipment with tactical assets in austere environments. (Cpl. Thomas Spencer/US Marine Corps)
Russell added that the MIG Marines have come a long way in the last four years in getting comfortable with their non-kinetic mission areas within the force’s portfolio. But he said developing more maturity and experience in the force would only make these MIG Marines more comfortable in taking bold actions to reshape the operating environment to their favor: influencing the local population, taking out an enemy network, disrupting the enemy’s kill chain and more.
“We need a more mature Marine going forward as part of this talent management plan to be able to make those decisions very quickly, the decisions that modify terrain” and help the force win, he said. The ultimate goal is to pair the “more mature, experienced, trained individual” with the right authorities and the right technology to make a difference.
Russell said it’s taken a mindset change to get as far as the Marine Corps has in embracing the warfighting functions resident within the MIG, including communications, intelligence, fires, cyber, psychological operations, communication strategy and more.
“Whether you like it or not, or realize it or not, all of our Marines are involved in this information environment, and we need to prepare them for that reality. We do that through training,” he said. “I have my own cyber force inside the MEF Information Group, very similar to a cyber protection team, that trains against our Marine forces when we are out training, trying to get into our networks we’re using to command and control, just to give that sense to everyone that this is a very real threat we operate against each and every time we deploy.”
He likened some of the cyber training to a Combat Hunter training program ground forces use.
“It teaches Marines how to baseline their environment: if you think, Marines are out on patrol, they’re understanding what’s in the village and what appears out of the normal, and to identify what’s out of the normal and then go investigate it or report it up,” Russell said. “Apply that to just the cybersecurity perspective. How do you know your network is doing what it should be, a baseline? Do you understand what normal looks like? And when something abnormal happens, you better go investigate that, you better report it up.”
U.S. Marines with 8th Communications Battalion, II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group guide a AN/TRC-170 Tropospheric Scatter Microwave Radio Terminal into position, at Camp Davis, North Carolina, April 13, 2021. The AN/TRC-170 allows communication between forward deployed forces without use of satellites. (Lance Cpl. Kyle Jia/US Marine Corps)
In addition to training regular forces on how to operate in the information environment, Russell said the MIG is constantly experimenting with new formations that can help operational commanders understand and employ a blend of kinetic and non-kinetic options on the battlefield. For example, in one event he took a firepower control team and added in communication strategy, psychological operations and electronic warfare Marines to see how they could work together and enable the operational commander’s objectives.
“My cyber Marines, my network administrators, my application developers, they’re all [analogous to] cyber engineers, modifying the terrain to the time of need, just like you have a normal engineer bulldozing terrain to build a road or whatever it is. These information Marines are cyber engineers in some sense, we just need to enable them to modify that terrain to the operational advantage,” Russell said.
Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, with a focus on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs, and budgets. She has reported from four geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s filing stories from a ship. Megan is a University of Maryland alumna.
5. Why America Needs to Rethink the Taiwan Narrative
Excerpt:
These advantages highlight the leading benefit of ambiguity. It’s true that this policy limits China’s ability to assess U.S. intentions, but, more importantly, it preserves America’s freedom of maneuver when engaging with allies and partners about a Taiwan conflict scenario. America’s competitive advantage in any cross-strait contingency will come from how effectively it can build an international coalition that is willing to impose political and economic costs on Beijing that outweigh any gains from a Chinese attack on Taiwan. It is easier for the U.S. to build this consensus now if potential partners do not think they are joining an inevitable march to war.
Why America Needs to Rethink the Taiwan Narrative
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President Biden’s October remarks about protecting Taiwan have re-ignited debate over American defense planning in the Taiwan Strait. This comes after other lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also recently suggested that the U.S. abandon strategic ambiguity as well. Proponents of this approach contend that the benefits of strategic clarity outweigh its risks and offers America the best opportunity to deter China and reassure Taiwan. Unfortunately, this logic relies on misguided assumptions about current U.S. policy and is aided by outdated arguments intended to support strategic ambiguity. Furthermore, this conversation pays too little attention to Chinese deterrence theory. A more thorough review of the evidence invoked in this debate and Chinese deterrence practice highlights why strategic ambiguity must remain the strategy of choice for U.S. policymakers in the years to come.
Current U.S. defense policy towards Taiwan is governed by the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which stipulates that America will provide Taiwan with defensive arms and maintain the “capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion” that threatens Taiwan. This opaque commitment has come under increased scrutiny as Beijing ramps up its campaign of coercion against Taiwan. Criticism of TRA’s vague defense promise has coalesced around three broad narratives.
First, some subsume their critique of ambiguity in a broader bureaucratic narrative directed at the shortcomings of a status quo biased foreign policy establishment. In turn, this leaves policymakers with entrenched positions that remain unresponsive to changing conditions in the Taiwan Strait. A second related school of thought focuses on structural theories, which rely on inevitable outcomes, such as China’s commitment to modernize its armed forces and potentially exploit a qualitative and quantitative “window of superiority” in military capability. Both schools of thought, however, fail to demonstrate how abandoning ambiguity better serves U.S. interests.
America’s weakened position and influence in the cross-strait balance reflects, in part, its inability to effectively deter Chinese behavior in the grey zone. Clarity would force Washington to answer questions it should avoid right now, such as what it might do for each act of aggression and how it would escalate should Beijing not change its behavior. America cannot afford to lock itself into policy responses it may not wish to pursue. One would be hard pressed to see how a clearer deterrent commitment would lead China to pursue less provocative behavior that many might cite as reason to abandon strategic ambiguity.
Relatedly, the structural critique forces China into an inevitable bellicose future. This has all the qualities of a security dilemma, wherein Beijing’s modernization efforts erode the relative security of America and its partners in the region. In this context, such thinking seemingly oversimplifies the complex interactions among states with significant military capabilities. It also underappreciates how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will not want to risk its legitimacy by entering a military conflict it may not necessarily win. Little unclassified evidence currently exists, which suggests a cross-strait conflict guarantees a victory for the CCP.
The events driven narrative contends that certain developments will drive the CCP to initiate a conflict against Taiwan, so the U.S. must make clear its commitment should such contingencies arise. Some advocates of strategic clarity argue that Taiwan's position as a thriving democracy and economic ties to the U.S. means it should receive similar treatment as other U.S. security partners. While this school of thought falls short of supporting Taiwan's full cessation from mainland China, it does seemingly support a state of de facto independence that is anathema to Beijing. This could lead the CCP to initiate a conflict such policy seeks to avoid or endorse a course of action that the U.S. does not want Taiwan to pursue.
Together, bureaucratic, structural theories, and events driven narratives fail to connect how clarity would advance America's deterrent position in the cross-strait balance while also revealing a cardinal misreading of Beijing's and Washington's commitment to resolving the issue on their terms. All of these paradigms accept to some degree the premise that if America more clearly communicated the nature of its deterrent commitment, then China would change its behavior. This assumption belies a bias for a Western deterrent model that does not reflect how Beijing pursues deterrence.
China’s deterrent model focuses on dissuading an opponent from taking an unwelcome action and persuading an opponent what ought to be done. In other words, Chinese deterrence also requires the object of its deterrent action to preference Beijing’s political interests at the expense of the target. In contrast, America’s deterrent model focuses on passively influencing other states’ intentions to prevent future challenges to the prevailing status quo. This important difference suggests that clearer deterrent messaging alone will not cause Beijing to change its approach to Taiwan or help the U.S. alter the cross-strait balance.
Prevailing arguments that support strategic ambiguity also deserve reconsideration if one wants to better understand the pitfalls of strategic clarity. Notably, concerns about abrogating the “One China Policy” often receive attention when discussing the issue. While the U.S. should not take any action that changes this policy, polling data in Taiwan suggests that it may someday violate this norm on its own accord. Similarly, proponents of strategic ambiguity often argue that it provides cover for a U.S. military that may prove unable to succeed in a conflict against China’s quantitatively superior forces. Undoubtedly, China’s military modernization efforts pose serious challenges to U.S. and partner militaries, and that America needs to better prioritize defense spending to confront this threat. Yet, a quantitative assessment alone cannot determine the military balance. American platforms are still superior to their Chinese counterparts, and U.S. forces have more experience conducting joint operations. Furthermore, the U.S. has access to a larger collection of allies and partners as well as enjoys more clout in a variety of international organizations that could complicate Beijing’s international freedom of action following any invasion of Taiwan.
These advantages highlight the leading benefit of ambiguity. It’s true that this policy limits China’s ability to assess U.S. intentions, but, more importantly, it preserves America’s freedom of maneuver when engaging with allies and partners about a Taiwan conflict scenario. America’s competitive advantage in any cross-strait contingency will come from how effectively it can build an international coalition that is willing to impose political and economic costs on Beijing that outweigh any gains from a Chinese attack on Taiwan. It is easier for the U.S. to build this consensus now if potential partners do not think they are joining an inevitable march to war.
Adam Taylor is a defense policy staffer for a Member of Congress and previously served as an aviation command and control officer in the Marine Corps for four years. He received his M.A. in international relations from American University’s School of International Service and writes on issues related to future force design, U.S. defense policy in the Asia-Pacific, the defense budget, and American foreign policy. The opinions expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect the opinions of any Member of Congress or the United States Marine Corps.
6. Do cyber spies dream of electric shadows?
Excerpts:
The key takeaway is that knowledge of human behaviour combined with technical expertise is still essential to understanding the limitations of technologies and how they can be applied in HUMINT tradecraft. As described by former MI6 head Alex Younger, fourth-generation espionage will require ‘fusing … traditional human skills with accelerated innovation’.
In general, intelligence agencies could creatively use technology and consider tools and media that are not necessarily technical or were designed for other purposes.
Do cyber spies dream of electric shadows? | The Strategist
Alice sits at a bar with Bob, a travel consultant she has been seeing socially since she met him a few weeks ago in the lobby of the building where she works as a network administrator. Her company develops IT systems for the military. Bob isn’t actually a consultant but a foreign intelligence officer who has been influencing Alice to sell state secrets. He is facing away from the closed-circuit TV camera above the counter, but he’s oblivious to the fact that his movements have been tracked via facial recognition ever since he arrived in the country. Bob’s true identity was revealed in a ransacked personnel database and the microphone on his smartphone was hacked through a zero-day vulnerability to record Alice breaking the law.
While this story is fictional, it highlights how pervasive surveillance, online personal data and new technologies such as trackable devices are making it harder for states to collect intelligence from human sources (commonly referred to as human intelligence, or HUMINT), which includes a range of activities whose core purpose is to recruit an individual to ‘spy’.
In this new era, espionage will pit tech against tech to avoid detection and create more plausibly deniable covers. Covert communications will likely become more sophisticated to avoid detection, but HUMINT collection agencies could further collaborate with their technical counterparts to take full advantage of other emerging technologies to protect their intelligence officers and agents on the ground.
Cyberspace is changing spycraft, and national security agencies are being urged to adopt machine learning and open-source data to bolster their analytical capabilities. Human intelligence and networks of informants, however, will remain necessary for acquiring some secrets, assisting cyber operations by placing USB drives in air-gapped computers, for example, and providing insights into the thinking of decision-makers in target countries. To establish trust between officers and their informants, interpersonal and face-to-face meetings may be unavoidable while virtual reality and other digital technologies mature.
In countries like Russia and China, some experts have argued that traditional HUMINT tradecraft has become obsolete due to the use of facial recognition, biometric scanning and internet-connected devices that leave ‘digital dust’ for counterintelligence officers to detect. This has followed a New York Times report claiming a top-secret CIA cable revealed that dozens of informants working for the US had been compromised or killed in these increasingly difficult operating environments.
However, technological advances haven’t been fully utilised yet and present an opportunity for HUMINT collection agencies like the CIA, MI6 and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service to work with the NSA, GCHQ and Australian Signals Directorate to develop new HUMINT tradecraft. For example, new covert communication techniques could take advantage of anonymising technologies that are already challenging counterintelligence in open democracies.
Last month, an undercover FBI operation resulted in the arrest of Jonathan Toebbe, a US Navy engineer, for attempting to sell classified nuclear submarine technology to a foreign government. Toebbe employed a range of tools to protect his identity and encrypt his communications. ProtonMail, an end-to-end encryption mail service, was used over the Tor Network via publicly available wi-fi to hide his affiliated IP addresses. He also asked to be paid in Monero, a cryptocurrency that is harder to trace than Bitcoin but not impossible.
This case shows that anonymising technology can be used to avoid interception, but poor tradecraft might still result in detection. Even if Toebbe had been less trusting of his purported foreign handlers, these tools would have only delayed his eventual discovery. He would have had difficulty using and laundering the cryptocurrency, stolen information can be eventually traced back to the few users who had access to the original documents, and specific surveillance of Toebbe’s devices may have revealed suspicious activity.
The key takeaway is that knowledge of human behaviour combined with technical expertise is still essential to understanding the limitations of technologies and how they can be applied in HUMINT tradecraft. As described by former MI6 head Alex Younger, fourth-generation espionage will require ‘fusing … traditional human skills with accelerated innovation’.
In general, intelligence agencies could creatively use technology and consider tools and media that are not necessarily technical or were designed for other purposes.
For example, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank affiliated with China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, published a report on the national security implications of the so-called metaverse (元宇宙). It recognised that this new model is likely to be the next generation of the internet and will become an integral part of a country’s political discourse and social culture. Without stating it explicitly, the report suggests that Chinese intelligence officers may be already thinking about how virtual and augmented realities could be used for recruitment or influence activities. Chinese intelligence services have previously exploited social media platforms like LinkedIn for similar espionage purposes and used traditional avenues like political organisations to carry out influence campaigns under plausibly deniable fronts.
Other technologies such as generative adversarial networks, or GANs, a class of artificial intelligence models that are designed to avoid detection by other AI models, could be used to mask covert activity among normal activities. They are already used in deep fakes and, combined with language models, like GPT-3, could be trained to automate the process of creating misleading digital personal data, spoof mobile metadata for operatives or create fake informant or employee entries as honeypots to taint personal databases that might be hacked.
For HUMINT collection agencies in the West, emerging technologies are an opportunity to support operations in increasingly difficult environments. To develop new tradecraft, HUMINT agencies could team up with technical agencies and recruit new talent for the next generation of cyber-enabled spies.
7. How America can defend Taiwan by Elbridge Colby
WOW! I guess Mr. Colby wants us to go all in on Taiwan and Asia. But as he notes this will leave vacuums in other regions where CHina is already effectively operating. Perhaps that is part of China's strategy - manipulate us to focus on Taiwan while it exploits other regions. Afterall, China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
Excerpt:
But meeting this standard of defense will be a tall order. To be able to effectively defend Taiwan — and by extension its other Asian allies — the US will have to drastically reduce its military commitments in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. There simply isn’t enough military capacity to defend Taiwan and other allies in Asia from China while simultaneously fielding a major presence elsewhere. This will leave a vacuum in these regions, which are important but pale in significance compared with Asia.
How America can defend Taiwan - The Spectator World
Elbridge Colby
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/america-defend-taiwan-elbridge-colby/
How would America respond if China attacked Taiwan? The pressure to defend the island would be compelling, if not overwhelming. Washington nominally maintains a “strategic ambiguity” towards the defense of Taiwan, but the two countries are linked in many ways and the Biden administration recently reiterated its “rock solid” commitment to the island.
Beijing clearly wants to subordinate self-governing Taiwan. American credibility, meanwhile, is connected to its protection. The island is also militarily significant. Its fall would seriously undermine the defense of Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and open up the central Pacific to the Chinese military.
Beijing knows heavy sanctions and harassment are unlikely to force Taiwan to give up its freedom. A quick and decisive air and sea invasion would, though. And while China has spent the past 25 years allocating resources to getting ready to take the island, the US has unwisely focused on other things. Taiwan and Japan have also neglected their defenses. As a result, in the event of an invasion, coming to the island’s aid would be extremely difficult. But it is still feasible.
In defending Taiwan, Washington’s goal would not be to comprehensively defeat China, but rather to defeat the invasion — to deny China its goal of subordination. America, Taiwan and any other partners willing to enter the fray would need to concentrate on stopping the invasion, putting every available hindrance in the way of China’s armada and aircraft. Think sea mines and anti-ship and anti-air missiles launched from various platforms on land, at sea and in the air. The defenders would also need to eliminate or eject any Chinese forces that managed to land.
If the resistance to invasion succeeded, China would face a choice: either try to escalate the war in ways that would very likely backfire, or to accept a limited defeat.
But meeting this standard of defense will be a tall order. To be able to effectively defend Taiwan — and by extension its other Asian allies — the US will have to drastically reduce its military commitments in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. There simply isn’t enough military capacity to defend Taiwan and other allies in Asia from China while simultaneously fielding a major presence elsewhere. This will leave a vacuum in these regions, which are important but pale in significance compared with Asia.
What does this mean for American allies, such as Britain? The US would of course expect support from the UK in the event of an attack on Taiwan. But Britain’s military capability in the Far East would be thin at most. Given that the UK’s strength lies in Europe and the Middle East, it would be best off taking a leading role in helping to build a stronger European defense of NATO. In a war over Taiwan, the UK could help address Chinese forces in other theaters, perhaps alongside India’s efforts. But together with other western European countries, it would need to concentrate on ensuring that Russia and Iran did not see an opportunity to exploit America’s focus on Taiwan.
We have left the post-Cold War world and are now fully immersed in an era of new great-power rivalry. The best way to avoid the horrors of a war in these circumstances is to consider carefully how to deter conflict — and, if necessary, to prevail in it.
8. ABC News Documentary ‘3212 Un-Redacted’ Counters Pentagon’s Narrative Of Deadly Ambush On Special Forces’ Anti-Terror Operation In Africa
As an aside, what I did not catch is "3212" is the SFODA designation. I am still stuck in the past with the 3 number designation. I am going to watch this over the weekend.
ABC News Documentary ‘3212 Un-Redacted’ Counters Pentagon’s Narrative Of Deadly Ambush On Special Forces’ Anti-Terror Operation In Africa
When ABC News producer and investigative reporter James Gordon Meek first heard about the deadly terrorist ambush of a U.S. Special Forces team in Niger on Oct. 4, 2017, he said that he and others at the network quickly were met with the Pentagon’s shifting version of events.
“When this happened, we could not get two people to tell us the same story,” Meek told Deadline. “We couldn’t even get people to tell us whether there were 10 or 11 Americans that were ambushed or there were 50.”
As they pursued the story and interviewed family members of the fallen soldiers, they eventually saw a much larger project beyond breaking news updates or a more in-depth news magazine piece. Instead, they created a feature-length documentary, debuting on Hulu on Thursday, Veteran’s Day. View a clip here.
The documentary shows what happened as the unit was caught in a surprise ISIS attack in outside the Saharan village of Tongo Tongo. Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, Sgt. La David Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright were killed, along with five Nigerien soldiers.
The project also follows the family members as they go public in questioning the military’s version of events, pointing to contradictions in initial information they were given.
Their doubts turned into dismay after the Pentagon released a highly redacted report on the ambush that accused the team of going on a rogue mission to capture and kill an ISIS sub commander. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, then leader of the African command, said that 10-man team was “not indicative” other special operations forces on the continent.
The documentary, however, shows that the leader of the Green Beret unit, Capt. Michael Perozeni, actually pushed back when the unit, on a mission to meet with tribal leaders, was instead directed to go after the ISIS leader . Family members, meanwhile, were enraged by Waldhauser’s comments, and point to video footage of the team members as they courageously tried to fight off the ambush.
Meek and the production’s crew gathered at the Motion Picture Association for a screening this week — the first at the D.C. venue since the start of the Covid pandemic — and were joined by family members and others featured in the project.
Among them was Debbie Gannon, the mother of Jeremiah Johnson, who said that she didn’t have any hesitation about participating.
“I want it out there. I want my son and the other boys to be remembered,” she said. “And I want it out there so people know the truth about these boys, not the lies that were spread.”
The documentary suggests that the official Pentagon investigation blamed the unit on the ground to protect more senior level officers who were responsible. Gannon said that hopes that the project will perhaps lead to another investigation “because they investigated themselves, and they are not going to find fault with themselves.”
As the story unfolded and was covered in an array of daily reports, Meek, senior Pentagon reporter Luis Martinez others found that “even basic questions we just couldn’t get the answers to, and people were giving us just wildly different stuff.”
Meek said that in the spring of 2018, his high school school teacher contacted him and said that he had met a family who didn’t think the Army “was being straight with them” about what happened in Tongo Tongo. Meek was put in touch with family members, and he and Martinez found “a confusing vortex of conflicting information. As an investigative reported, that’s a red flag.”
On the first anniversary of the deadly attack, Meek and the crew traveled to Niger and also started interviewing the families for a segment. As they watched the rushes, “everybody was just so floored” by what Gannon and other family members were saying about what happened and their own experience dealing with devastating loss, Meek said. Cindy Galli, ABC News executive producer of investigative projects, along with producer Jenna Millman and senior executive producer Chris Vlasto went to then ABC News president James Goldston to urge him to do more with the footage.
They “just said this is too good to be like just some 17 minute broadcast story, Why don’t you try more? And we’ve never made a film. And he [Goldston] just said, ‘Let’s do this. This is a good idea,'” Meek said.
3212 Un-Redacted features footage of the ambush, including clips from Jeremiah Johnson’s helmet camera that were seized by ISIS terrorists and then edited into a propaganda video posted online.
That footage shows how, even years later, more light is being shed on what happened. A fuller, 45-minute version of the helmet camera footage was eventually recovered by French officials, but it has not been publicly released. It was, however, shown to family members, and Meek went with them to see it in October.
What it shows, Meek said, is Jeremiah Johnson “being shot again and again and again, reloading his weapon firing, calling out targets to Dustin Wright and saying, ‘Seven o’clock. There’s a target at seven o’clock.’ Dustin on the ground. Crawling to Dustin even though he had been shot through the ankle. Any one of us would have been curled up in a ball crying to our mothers, but not Jeremiah. Not Dustin. Not Bryan. Not La David. They fought to the last round, and in fact on the video, you can hear Jeremiah’s last breath.”
The footage also showed that the unit was not equipped to embark on a mission to try to capture an ISIS leader. Meek sees that as contradicting the claim that the unit set out without authorization to undertake such a risky endeavor.
Jeremiah Johnson was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star with Valor, but Gannon wonders why he did not receive a Silver Star, as others in the unit received, or Medal of Honor.
She said that she decided to attend the viewing of the 45-minute video “for personal reasons. I needed to watch it, and I wanted to watch it to the end.” She said she could not get through the entire video, but “I’ve learned a lot more.” She described the graphic footage of watching her son being struck by bullets and then getting back up again.
“I was told from one of the other parents that did watch it that he was still moving after seven shots to his body,” Gannon said. “He is still shooting and is still telling Dustin where the shots were coming from. I watched it through the third shot, and he was still shooting, and he was trying to get to Dustin. I think he deserves more than a Silver Star.” She said that Jeremiah’s father is pursuing a higher honor.
Gannon had been talking to Meek as part of his reporting, but said that she “never expected it to end in a documentary. I just wanted the truth. I wanted somebody held accountable so that they wouldn’t do it to other families, and held accountable to what they did. They took away four sons. I wanted to know who it was that took my boy from me.”
Among those also interviewed as Major Alan Van Saun, the company commander, who was reprimanded, even though he was not in Africa at the time of the ambush but in Fort Bragg, SC, to be with his wife as she gave birth to their second child. Meek said that he talked to many more unnamed sources in intelligence, military and law enforcement who “knew the story being told to the families and the public was not true. They really went out of their way in many cases to help me.”
Pentagon officials have not commented to ABC News. A spokesperson did not return a request for comment to Deadline. Meek did interview Waldhauser outside a congressional hearing, and he denied that his comments about the investigation were meant to disparage the fallen soldiers.
The project also illuminates the U.S. engagement in Africa, which has gotten far less attention that the U.S. missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
What the unit was establishing partnerships in Nigeriens to wage counterinsurgency and ultimately prevent attacks on U.S. interests, he said.
“Having good relationships in places where Islamic militancy, or amy kind of extremism are growing, is a good thing, as long as you don’t make it look like an occupation. It’s a good thing to build those relationships. It’s called counterterrorism.”
The documentary also captured the experiences of Gold Star families, months and years after TV satellite trucks have left and the news cycle has gone on to other stories.
“Here are four lives, of great heroes, who really wanted to serve their nation and continue living and serving their nation, and they should be here, as Bryan Black’s dad said. Had the captain been listened to, they would be.”
3212 Un-Redacted, directed by Brian Epstein and produced by Meek, Epstein and Andrew Fredericks (who also edited), debuts on Hulu on Thursday, and will be shown on ABC News Live.
9. Perspective | An Air Force sergeant killed himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The note he left is heartbreaking.
Another terrible tragedy. We must look out for and help each other.
Excerpt:
“Nobody ever knows who is struggling or [waging] wars the eye cannot see. What does chronic depression even look like?” Santiago wrote in his note, which he double-posted on Instagram and Facebook, along with a slide show of him as a baby, with family, in Bali, at games, at work. “At times I think my close friends just tolerate me. Moreover, I feel truly alone. I always have. For a long time (years) I’ve known I would take my own life.”
Perspective | An Air Force sergeant killed himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The note he left is heartbreaking.
Kenneth Omar Santiago’s perfect smile dazzles on social media as he poses in his Air Force uniforms — flight suits to mess dress.
He accepts military awards, travels to far-off places, salsa dances and swims with sharks to oohs and aahs from friends in Lowell, Mass., his hometown.
“He’s got it all,” more than one commented.
Before Veterans Day, he posted a 1,116 word message, his longest yet.
Then, in a green T-shirt with an American flag emblazoned across his chest, the 31-year-old walked to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and shot himself.
Statistics tell us at least 16 other members of the military community also took their lives that Monday night and every night — the average daily toll — leading up to Veterans Day, when the nation thanks veterans for their service with a free 10-piece order of boneless chicken wings or a free doughnut.
At 7:09 p.m., minutes after he posted the note, his friends began responding:
“Kenny, you are loved. Do not do this!!”
“Hey, you are not alone!! Rob is trying to call you now.”
“Santi for the love of god don’t do this.”
“Call his unit.”
“Call the cops!”
“Command post is tracking.”
But by then, two nurses visiting the memorial at night were trying to give him CPR. A medevac helicopter flew in minutes later, landing next to the Reflecting Pool to take Santiago to the hospital. He was pronounced dead hours later, 1 a.m. on Tuesday Nov. 9, police said.
Naveed Shah reposted a video of that helicopter landing when he saw it on social media.
It made Shah, an Army veteran and political director of the veteran’s group Common Defense, furious.
“In the past decade that I have spent in veterans advocacy, much has been done about the veterans suicide epidemic with few results,” Shah said. “Santiago’s death in this hallowed place, at this time of reverence for veterans, perhaps should provide pause for government officials and elected leaders in Washington to consider the impact 20 years of wars have had on our armed forces.”
And when we tell them to go get help, help is hard to find. There’s a “severe occupational staffing shortage” in more than half of the psychiatric facilities veterans are sent to, according to the September Inspector General’s report on the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The struggle to get treatment has always been there for veterans. Take an equally public suicide eight years ago across the National Mall, at the other end of the cross that makes America’s most iconic space. Vietnam War veteran John Constantino saluted the white dome of the Capitol and immolated himself. At the time, his family attorney said it was the result of “a long battle with mental illness.”
Constantino’s death was public, laden with symbolism, just like Santiago’s.
“Nobody ever knows who is struggling or [waging] wars the eye cannot see. What does chronic depression even look like?” Santiago wrote in his note, which he double-posted on Instagram and Facebook, along with a slide show of him as a baby, with family, in Bali, at games, at work. “At times I think my close friends just tolerate me. Moreover, I feel truly alone. I always have. For a long time (years) I’ve known I would take my own life.”
His friends told me they wish he could’ve shared this when he was alive.
“In the military, he had to always have this front, he had to always appear strong,” said Sarah Kanellas, one of his childhood friends from Lowell, Mass. Her partner is in the military, and she knows that no matter what military officials say, there’s a stigma.
“You know how in basic training they break them down so they can build them back up? I get it, I know why they have to do that,” Kanellas said. “But they need to make mental health part of the building back up.”
And this week in his Veterans Day statement, Austin said: “We are working so hard to provide the best medical and mental health care possible for those whose military service has concluded. We must prove capable of treating the wounds we see, as well as the ones we cannot see.”
But that message hasn’t trickled down to the troops.
Santiago had a high-level security clearance in his new role as an Air Force flight attendant for the nation’s biggest VIPs, stationed at Joint Base Andrews, where he was president of a base council and mentor to many.
“He was so driven, so hard-working,” said Edisson Naranjo-Mejia, 31, one of Santiago’s closest friends. “But he always had this shell. And he had it for three reasons.”
He was male, in the military and Latino, which are three cultures that look down on vulnerability, Naranjo-Mejia said.
“He always wondered: ‘Will they take my security clearance away? If I talk to someone, will I lose my career?’ ” he said.
Naranjo-Mejia said he decided to make fighting that fear, breaking the stigma, broadcasting Santiago’s struggle and forcing conversations part of his friend’s legacy.
“Why would Kenny put a suicide note on social media? Why would he kill himself in the most public area in the country?”
He decided that Santiago did it that way to say what he couldn’t say when he was alive.
“It’s okay for a man to cry,” Naranjo-Mejia said. “It’s okay for a man to be depressed.”
It’s primarily a culture problem, said Navy veteran Grant Khanbalinov, whose motto is “It’s okay to not be okay.”
“In the service we are supposed to be fighters and suck it up, and embrace the suck,” Khanbalinov said. He didn’t know Santiago, but in his own struggles in the Navy and in his advocacy work today, he knew many like him. “If we seek help we are scrutinized for it, people start to talk, you’re looked down upon.”
Kanellas, the childhood friend, wondered if the military could treat mental health like physical health. Could counseling sessions be as mandatory as weigh-ins?
“When they join, service members write a blank check to the United States government payable with their lives,” said Shah, of Common Defense. “Offering them anything less in return for their years of service and sacrifice is unpatriotic.”
In his final post, Santiago worried about his legacy.
“On my way out, I can’t help to wonder if I ever made a difference in the world,” he wrote.
That’s up to us.
If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255). You can also text a crisis counselor by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Read more Petula Dvorak:
10. Poll: Veterans Say US Left Afghanistan Without Honor, and They Want to Talk About It
Poll: Veterans Say US Left Afghanistan Without Honor, and They Want to Talk About It
70 percent of Americans surveyed said they have “never” or “rarely” talked to a veteran about the war.
The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has left a majority of veterans with a lingering sense that America did not leave that war with honor, according to a new poll.
“Veterans are feeling an intense array of emotions regarding the end of the war, including humiliation, betrayal, anger, disappointment, and sadness,” and 70 percent of those polled do not feel like the U.S. departed Afghanistan with honor, the non-profit research group More in Common US reported Wednesday.
Among Americans in general, 57 percent reported they did not feel the United States left Afghanistan with honor, the survey found.
More in Common US had already been looking into how veterans and non-veterans relate to each other when the Taliban began their swift final push across Afghanistan last summer.
“We started to reach out to our partners in the veteran space to say, ‘We think this is a really important moment to try and understand how our veterans process this, how the average American processes this,” said Dan Vallone, executive director of More in Common US and a former Army captain who served in Afghanistan in 2010. “Is it going to further divide the country, or is it an opportunity to come together?’”
So the organization hired a polling firm to ask. From Sept. 29 to Oct. 13, YouGov surveyed 2,537 Americans: 537 veterans, including 103 who served in Afghanistan, and another 2,000 who were a representative sample of the general U.S. population and who never served in uniform.
Their survey found that more veterans than non-veterans reported occasional feelings of alienation.
“59 percent of veterans”—and 76 percent of the Afghanistan veterans—“say they sometimes feel like a stranger in their own country. Only 41 percent of Americans in general feel that way,” the report found.
That sense of alienation is something More in Common is trying to address, Vallone said.
While the poll showed continued high interest in getting veterans help when needed, such as through mental health services or employment opportunities, what popped to the organization was the 82 percent of veterans who expressed interest in creating opportunities to help “veterans and civilians better understand each others’ backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.”
Only 52 percent of veterans said it would be important to them to have their community hold “parades or other community events to thank and acknowledge those who served in Afghanistan.”
But so far, few are talking across that military-civilian divide, the poll found. Seventy percent of the 2,000 Americans in general said they had either “rarely” or “never” talked to an Afghanistan veteran about the war. And Afghanistan veterans reported being more comfortable sharing war stories with other vets, although they were in support of creating connections with non-veterans.
“I think they feel a desire to make sense of this all with people who didn't serve,” Vallone said. “To have the sense that this war had meaning beyond the military, that it was a national endeavor, that we went to war as a country because of reasons that the whole country was involved in...Those kinds of conversations have to involve folks who didn't serve.”
11. Top Haqqani Network leader named Taliban governor of Logar | FDD's Long War Journal
Excerpts:
More than eight years after his capture by U.S. forces, Khan was freed by the Afghan government in Nov. 2019 along with two other senior Haqqani Network leaders: Anas Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s brother and a key leader, and Qari Abdul Rasheed Omari, who served as the Taliban’s military commander in southeastern Afghanistan. Both Anas and Omar were detained in Oct. 2014 while traveling in the Persian Gulf.
The three Haqqani leaders were freed in exchange for American University of Afghanistan professors Kevin King and Timothy Weeks, who were kidnapped by the Haqqani Network in Kabul in Aug. 2016.
Khan is one of several key Haqqani Network leaders to be appointed to top level posts in the Taliban’s new government. In addition to Sirajuddin, who is the minister of interior, Khalil al Rahman Haqqani is the minister of refugees, Mullah Taj Mir Jawad is the first deputy of intelligence, and Mohammad Nabi Omari, who is the governor of Khost.
Top Haqqani Network leader named Taliban governor of Logar | FDD's Long War Journal
The Taliban appointed a top leader of the Haqqani Network, who was previously in U.S. custody, to serve as the group’s governor of the eastern province of Logar.
Haji Mali Khan was appointed by the Taliban to govern Logar on Nov. 7. Khan is an uncle of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s current Minister of Interior and deputy emir who also leads the Al Qaeda and Pakistan-linked Haqqani network. Sirajuddin Haqqani is arguably the most powerful and influential Taliban leader and has also been described by the United Nations Sanction and Monitoring Team as “an Al Qaeda Leader.”
Khan is also the brother-in-law of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the deceased founder and patriarch of the Haqqani Network who helped Osama bin Laden return to Afghanistan in 1996 and was a key figure in cementing Al Qaeda and Taliban ties.
Khan was captured by the U.S. military in Sept. 2011 during a raid in the district of Musa Khel, a Haqqani Network stronghold in Khost province. After his capture, the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, then NATO’s command in Afghanistan, described Khan as “one of the highest ranking members of the Haqqani Network and a revered elder of the Haqqani clan.”
Khan “worked directly under Siraj Haqqani,” who at the time of his capture was the the operational commander of the Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network as well as the head of the Taliban’s Miramshah Shura, of the group’s key regional commands, ISAF noted in 2011.
Jalaluddin Haqqani “consistently placed Mali Khan in positions of high importance,” ISAF said, which also described him as a “top commander in Afghanistan.” Khan “managed bases and had oversight of operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.” In the year before he was captured, Khan established bases for Haqqani Network fighters in the Mangal tribal areas of Paktia province. He also facilitated the movement of Taliban and allied jihadist forces from Pakistan to Afghanistan, financed terrorist operations, and served as a logistics coordinator.
One of Khan’s duties included acting as an “an emissary between the late Baitullah Mehsud and senior leaders within the Haqqani leadership.” Baitullah led the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan before he was killed in a U.S. Predator airstrike in Aug. 2009. Baitullah received advice and direction from Al Qaeda when forming the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan.
More than eight years after his capture by U.S. forces, Khan was freed by the Afghan government in Nov. 2019 along with two other senior Haqqani Network leaders: Anas Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s brother and a key leader, and Qari Abdul Rasheed Omari, who served as the Taliban’s military commander in southeastern Afghanistan. Both Anas and Omar were detained in Oct. 2014 while traveling in the Persian Gulf.
The three Haqqani leaders were freed in exchange for American University of Afghanistan professors Kevin King and Timothy Weeks, who were kidnapped by the Haqqani Network in Kabul in Aug. 2016.
Khan is one of several key Haqqani Network leaders to be appointed to top level posts in the Taliban’s new government. In addition to Sirajuddin, who is the minister of interior, Khalil al Rahman Haqqani is the minister of refugees, Mullah Taj Mir Jawad is the first deputy of intelligence, and Mohammad Nabi Omari, who is the governor of Khost.
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.
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12. Let’s Get to Know Space Force, Trump’s Most Misunderstood Creation
Let’s Get to Know Space Force, Trump’s Most Misunderstood Creation
President Donald Trump stands in the Oval Office during the presentation of the United States Space Force flag on May 15, 2020. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock
Perhaps there was no way for the U.S. military to create a service focused on space without eliciting giggles and incredulity, as Americans have been fed a steady diet of militaristic science fiction for decades. But it didn’t help that Space Force was established by President Donald Trump, who is known for his childish whims. When he proclaimed in 2018 that “space is a war-fighting domain,” it felt like there was a nonzero chance he was picturing U.S. troops blasting their way across the surface of Mars. To make matters worse, some of Space Force’s own messaging has been legitimately funny (unlike, I’ve been reliably informed, the Netflix comedy series of the same name). For example, you won’t find a tweet from @USArmy asking you to stop and think about what desert power means to you.
— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) August 10, 2020
While Washington has accepted that the new military branch is here to stay and moved on to debating whether the next defense authorization bill should establish a Space National Guard, confusion lingers among the public. Is Space Force just some thing Trump made up? Does it have a serious mission? And if so, is it still okay to laugh when U.S. officials make it sound like they’re LARPing Starfleet? Read on for answers to all these questions and more.
What exactly is Space Force?
U.S. Space Force is the sixth independent branch of the U.S. military. It is organized under the Department of the Air Force, similar to how the Marine Corps is organized under the Department of the Navy.
Space Force’s mission is basically to protect U.S. interests in space from potential adversaries. That may sound like it could entail defending the International Space Station from Cylon infiltration, but the reality is more boring and practical; think preventing China from blowing up U.S. satellites and stopping Russia from jamming GPS signals. As Space Force explains on its website, its focus is defending space-based systems we’re already using here on Earth, not seeking out new life and new civilizations (which is still NASA’s job):
Unfettered access to space is vital to national defense. Space systems are woven into the fabric of our way of life. Space affects almost every part of our daily lives and is fundamental to our economic system. For example, satellites not only power the GPS technology that we use daily, but allow us to surf the web and call our friends, enable first responders to communicate with each other in times of crisis, time-stamp transactions in the world financial market, and even allow us to use credit cards at gas pumps.
For years, the Air Force has been tasked with “supporting and maintaining satellites for GPS, missile warning and nuclear command and control, as well as paying United Launch Alliance and SpaceX to launch national security satellites,” as the L.A. Times noted. Army and Navy have their own smaller space operations. While President Trump promoted Space Force as a visionary idea that would spread his America First ethos throughout the cosmos, it is essentially a rebrand and a reorganization, with some existing military space operations being consolidated under the new branch.
Did Trump come up with Space Force himself?
No, but the former president likes to pretend that he did. Trump publicly proposed the creation of a new branch of the military in an apparent ad-lib while addressing marines in San Diego in 2018.
“I was saying it the other day — ’cause we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space — I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force,’” he told the crowd, sparking some laughter. “And I was not really serious. And then I said, ‘What a great idea. Maybe we’ll have to do that.’”
But the idea of a space-focused military service had actually been kicking around in Washington for decades, as The Atlantic explained earlier this year:
The concept emerged in the 1990s as the United States began relying on satellites during ground combat, and in 2001, a commission chaired by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld considered the suggestion. A pair of lawmakers in the House resurrected the idea of a space corps a few years ago, but it didn’t take off until Trump glommed on, and then it was all hands on deck.
So it is true that without Trump’s enthusiasm for the project, Space Force wouldn’t exist in its current form. In June 2018, he directed the Pentagon to start planning for the new branch, declaring, “We must have American dominance in space.” Months later, Vice-President Mike Pence joked to staffers working on the project, “He only asks me about the Space Force every week.” The branch was officially established by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which Trump signed into law on December 20, 2019.
Is the Space Force logo really from Star Trek?
The Space Force logo is a prime example of how Trump undermined the legitimacy of the service before it even really got started. In August 2018, when the Pentagon was still working on proposals for how the new branch might function, the Trump reelection campaign invited supporters to vote on its logo.
The Trump campaign wants people to vote on a new logo for @realDonaldTrump's proposed #SpaceForce and they want you to buy a new "line of gear." Setting aside questions about the appropriateness of all this, keep in mind there may never be a Space Force. pic.twitter.com/TNoX285knV
— Justin Fishel (@JustinFishelABC) August 9, 2018
As The Atlantic noted at the time, these designs were a Trumpian exercise in misleading branding, particularly “Mars Awaits,” as space exploration is still NASA’s domain. Plus, once people voted in the poll, they were invited to give to Trump’s campaign, possibly leaving donors with the false impression that they were paying for the opportunity to help select the new logo.
Sure enough, when Space Force unveiled its official seal in January 2020, it was not one of the options presented to Trump supporters. But the seal generated a new controversy, as it looked suspiciously like the Star Trek insignia. “Ahem. We are expecting some royalties from this …” original series cast member George Takei joked on Twitter.
— Axios (@axios) January 24, 2020
Space Force stuck with the design but seemed a little defensive when it rolled out the official logo several months later, noting that the delta shape has been used in space-organization logos as far back as 1961 … five years before Star Trek debuted.
— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) July 22, 2020
What are Space Force members called?
You might guess that after the Star Trek debacle, Space Force officials would think a bit more carefully about whether its branding overlapped with any massively popular sci-fi franchises. But the folks behind this famously incomprehensible tweet are nothing if not bold.
Can you imagine your loved ones coming down from the attic with your medals, achievements and honors asking about the time you shaped the strategic environment?
— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) August 12, 2020
So after an exhaustive quest to find the perfect name for members of Space Force, they settled on “Guardians.”
Today, after a yearlong process that produced hundreds of submissions and research involving space professionals and members of the general public, we can finally share with you the name by which we will be known: Guardians. pic.twitter.com/Tmlff4LKW6
— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) December 18, 2020
“Can we sue this dork?” tweeted James Gunn, director of the film Guardians of the Galaxy, in response to Vice-President Pence’s announcement of the new name — though clearly, it had nothing to do with the 2014 Marvel blockbuster. Space Force officials said they drew inspiration from the motto of the service’s predecessor, Air Force Space Command: “Guardians of the High Frontier.” And it says right there in the announcement, not at all self-consciously, that “guardians” is “a name chosen by space professionals for space professionals.”
What do the Space Force uniforms look like?
Most people seem to think they look like the uniforms from Battlestar Galactica, but there were some who found the ensemble more reminiscent of Starship Troopers.
— Edward Hardy (@EdwardTHardy) September 21, 2021
The uniforms may be unoriginal, but they could be far worse. Time magazine reported that Trump once told top military officials that First Lady Melania Trump “should help design Space Force uniforms because of her impeccable fashion sense.” We’re lucky they don’t have “I really don’t care about space, do u?” scrawled across the back.
Why didn’t Biden put a stop to Space Force?
Even when Space Force was in its embryonic stage, there was significant opposition to the idea among some members of Congress and top military officials, who argued that consolidation could disrupt existing space operations. Then Trump politicized the new branch by touting it as one of his signature achievements at rallies and making it part of his personal brand by selling unofficial Space Force merch on his website.
A man wearing a Space Force shirt and a MAGA hat documents the scene at a Trump campaign rally on October 26, 2018, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images
But while the service was seen largely as a silly Trump vanity project in some corners of the internet, President Joe Biden could not easily heed pleas to abolish the Space Force. As Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation and a former space operations officer for the Air Force, told Defense News, one does not simply dismantle a whole military branch. It would require action by Congress and massive reorganization within the military.
“It’s just not worth it,” Weeden said. “At this point, we have spent thousands and thousands of hours and years of effort to create this new bureaucracy in the hope that it will address these challenges. At this point, we have no choice but to see that through. To now go back and spend even more time undoing all this stuff would be even worse.”
Two weeks after Biden took office, his administration made it clear that Space Force isn’t going anywhere … after yet another controversy. When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked if a decision had been made on “keeping, or keeping the scope of, Space Force,” she was dismissive, saying, “Wow, Space Force. It’s the plane of today,” referencing earlier questions about Air Force One’s paint job.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2021
Following a round of outrage from conservative lawmakers and pundits who accused Psaki of disrespecting the troops, Psaki tweeted, “We look forward to the continuing work of Space Force and invite the members of the team to come visit us in the briefing room anytime to share an update on their important work.”
House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers told Defense News that he knew the service’s future was never in doubt, but he was upset that Psaki hadn’t apologized.
“It’s a very serious branch taking on a very serious national security threat, so her ignorance on the topic disturbed me, and then her flippant attitude disturbed me. But what more disturbed me was, today, after she had been informed that it was a serious branch of the military dealing with a serious threat, she couldn’t bring herself to say: ‘I made a mistake,’” Rogers said. “I was glad to see her acknowledge what I already knew, and the administration has said before — that is, they’re fully supportive of the Space Force and [know] its worth.”
Can I join Space Force?
Space Force initially consisted of former Air Force Space Command personnel, then over the next year, units from other parts of the Air Force transferred in. As of September 2021, there were 6,490 active-duty Guardians, including 86 Air Force Academy graduates who commissioned directly into Space Force. (The Air Force has more than 325,000 active-duty personnel, but Space Force is intentionally small.) Demand for jobs is high; chief of Space Force operations General John W. “Jay” Raymond said that the 400 positions open for transfers from other services drew 3,700 applications. In a recent poll of first-year Air Force Academy cadets about what they’d like to do as officers, Space Force came in second to pilot, Politico reported.
Though competition for Space Force jobs is already tough, the service is still trying to attract talented recruits. Unsurprisingly, these efforts have been a hokey and misleading at times: Space Force’s first recruiting video concluded, “Maybe your purpose on this planet isn’t on this planet.”
To be clear, if you join Space Force, you will almost certainly remain on this planet; rather than blasting off in one of the multiple space shuttles featured in the video, you’ll probably be sitting in front of a computer on Earth, maintaining the satellite shown at the end. But that’s still an important and pretty cool job.
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13. FDD | A New Threat to Iron Dome
Excerpts:
As my colleague Tony Badran has repeatedly noted, the problem is not the LAF’s capabilities. The problem is the LAF’s collusion. In one telling example, Israel in 2019 exposed a Hezbollah PGM facility in eastern Lebanon. The site was a short drive away from a LAF base where the United States has delivered equipment, including ScanEagle reconnaissance drones. The base also hosts the US- and UK-funded Land Border Training Center, designed to help the LAF secure Lebanon’s porous border. Hezbollah, with Iran’s assistance, built a PGM facility next door.
The other actor in Lebanon that should be halting the PGM program is the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). It was first created in the 1970s to halt terrorist activity in the country. UNIFIL’s mandate expanded greatly in 2006 after the war between Hezbollah and Israel. Nonetheless, the organization has utterly failed to halt the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon, even in the limited territory defined in its mandate. It barely pretends to try. No steps have been taken to strengthen its capabilities or to redefine its mandate more aggressively. In short, UNIFIL epitomizes the failure of the UN system. Some Israeli officials still defend the organization, primarily because it affords the IDF opportunities to engage directly with their Lebanese counterparts. The value of that, particularly as Lebanon unravels, is questionable.
FDD | A New Threat to Iron Dome
Precision guided munitions will make Israel’s self-defense more challenging and more expensive.
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · November 10, 2021
On November 3, occasional Dispatch contributor Jonathan Schanzer released a new book titled Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press). The following is a slightly modified excerpt from Chapter 14, “Northern Exposure,” which addresses Israel’s threat from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In decades past, Israel was blessed with ill-equipped enemies. More recently, the efforts of Iranian proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have been mitigated by Iron Dome. The missile defense system’s success rate is well known, but it has been boosted by the fact that Israel’s foes have been firing unguided, or “dumb,” rockets. Without GPS or target-acquisition capabilities, many of these rockets miss their intended targets. When Iron Dome’s radar detects a rocket and the battle management and weapon control system determine that the projectile is not going to strike a target of value, operators decline to expend a valuable interceptor, permitting the rocket to fall harmlessly into an uninhabited space.
With precision guided munitions (PGMs), however, Iran’s proxies could potentially evade Iron Dome while striking within five to ten yards of their intended targets. The regime in Iran thus began working overtime in 2013 to stand up a program to enable its proxies to convert their dumb rockets into smart ones. In a 2018 interview with Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Aerospace Force commander, General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, recounted how in 2009 he presented the Iranian leadership with a plan to modernize the country’s missile program. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei overruled his entire plan and ordered him to focus solely on the development of PGMs. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has since boasted about the importance of this project to his organization and to the broader “Axis of Resistance.”
The PGM project remains a top priority for the regime. Even after the January 2020 assassination of IRGC-Quds Force commander Major General Qassim Soleimani, who was widely known to be a champion of the project, PGM development was believed to have continued under deputy Quds Force commander Mohammed Hijazi until he died, reportedly of natural causes, in 2021.
Whole PGMs are difficult to transfer now that Israel is fully aware of the Iranian project. Hezbollah has therefore worked to convert unguided rockets (what some Israeli officials have described to me as “statistical” rockets) into PGMs. The process is both simple and complicated. It is simple because all it takes are tail fins, a circuit board, and the right software. One former Israeli official estimated that an entire PGM-making kit might cost $15,000 per munition. However, the process is also complicated because dismantling a rocket, retrofitting it with precision-guided technology, and then reassembling it is dangerous and requires knowledge and infrastructure that Iran’s low-tech proxies generally lacked.
With Iran’s help, Hezbollah has worked to bridge that gap. That explains why the Israelis have struck so many targets in Syria in recent years. They have been patrolling the smuggling routes from Iran to Syria to Lebanon to halt the transfer of PGMs, PGM parts, or other related technology.
Israel has also targeted PGMs inside Lebanon. In August 2019, an Israeli drone strike reportedly targeted a solid fuel production facility in Lebanon, setting back Hezbollah’s PGM production by an estimated one year. It was the first time the Israel Defense Force (IDF) had operated inside Lebanon in several years, marking a dramatic break from the unspoken rules of the game—that Israel could freely strike PGMs in Syria, but Lebanon was off-limits. The following year, the IDF exposed three new PGM sites in Lebanon. Hezbollah denied the reports, but on a tour the group granted to journalists at one of the sites, it inadvertently revealed machinery that was used to manufacture the weapons.
Iran’s PGM efforts have continued despite Israel’s intelligence dominance and increasingly aggressive operations to counter the program. Both sides understand that when enough PGMs reach the hands of Israel’s enemies, the effect will indeed be game-changing. It is for this reason that IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi identified the PGM threat to Israel as second only to Iran’s nuclear program.
The PGM threat to Israel is manifold. First, PGM accuracy will force Israel to use far more Iron Dome interceptors than it currently deploys. This is because the number of errant launches will plummet, forcing Israel to try to neutralize nearly every projectile that is launched. Each Tamir interceptor costs roughly $100,000. Thus, defending Israel could become much more expensive. Moreover, Iron Dome could eventually run out of interceptors if tens of thousands of rockets are fired during a prolonged conflict.
More worrying, with enough PGMs fired at the same target, Iran’s proxies may be able to outmaneuver, outsmart, or overwhelm Israel’s missile defenses. Some rockets will inevitably get through. In the future, if the intended target is the chemical plant in Haifa, the Kiriya (Israel’s defense headquarters) in Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion International Airport, the Dimona nuclear facility, or a Tel Aviv high-rise office building, the results could be catastrophic. As Jacob Nagel told me during one of our many conversations during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, “with enough PGMs, the impact on certain targets could be close to the impact of a nuclear weapon.”
Currently, the Israelis believe that Hezbollah is the only Iranian proxy group on its borders that possesses Iranian PGMs. Most officials will not say how many PGMs Hezbollah has. Initially, Israelis were saying “dozens,” but I have heard “several hundred” in my not-for-attribution conversations. Those numbers will grow as Hezbollah continues to work feverishly on this project. During the next war, PGMs will be interspersed among the thousands of unguided rockets fired into Israel, making them even harder to identify and pick off.
Targeting PGMs will become even more complicated for Israel in the future. The regime in Iran is not only working assiduously to obscure their transportation and assembly. Tehran is also devising ways to store them under homes, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, refugee camps, and other heavily populated civilian infrastructure. In other words, Hezbollah, like Hamas, is using the illegal tactic of human shields. When the time comes, the decision to strike these weapons on the ground will be excruciating for the IDF. Just as Hezbollah and its Iranian backers have planned it, every strike will create immense public-relations pressure for Israel as images of injured or dead civilians fill the television screens and Twitter feeds of news consumers worldwide.
Theoretically, there are two actors in Lebanon who could avert this crisis. The reality is that neither will. The first is the American-funded Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Though Lebanon is thoroughly dominated by Hezbollah, the United States continues to look to the LAF as a counterbalance to the Iranian proxy—and it is still not entirely clear what that means. The United Nations also embraces this odd logic, with dangerous consequences. In 2006, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701, calling on Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Yet for years, the LAF has looked the other way while Iran smuggled PGMs and PGM parts into Lebanon. The LAF also was somehow unaware that Hezbollah spent an estimated two years digging a massive system of subterranean cross-border attack tunnels into Israel.
As my colleague Tony Badran has repeatedly noted, the problem is not the LAF’s capabilities. The problem is the LAF’s collusion. In one telling example, Israel in 2019 exposed a Hezbollah PGM facility in eastern Lebanon. The site was a short drive away from a LAF base where the United States has delivered equipment, including ScanEagle reconnaissance drones. The base also hosts the US- and UK-funded Land Border Training Center, designed to help the LAF secure Lebanon’s porous border. Hezbollah, with Iran’s assistance, built a PGM facility next door.
The other actor in Lebanon that should be halting the PGM program is the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). It was first created in the 1970s to halt terrorist activity in the country. UNIFIL’s mandate expanded greatly in 2006 after the war between Hezbollah and Israel. Nonetheless, the organization has utterly failed to halt the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon, even in the limited territory defined in its mandate. It barely pretends to try. No steps have been taken to strengthen its capabilities or to redefine its mandate more aggressively. In short, UNIFIL epitomizes the failure of the UN system. Some Israeli officials still defend the organization, primarily because it affords the IDF opportunities to engage directly with their Lebanese counterparts. The value of that, particularly as Lebanon unravels, is questionable.
Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of the new book Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press). Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · November 10, 2021
14. FDD | Canada must increase pressure on Iran
FDD | Canada must increase pressure on Iran
There is a hesitation on the part of Canada's current leaders to exact meaningful consequences on Tehran
fdd.org · by Tzvi Kahn Research Fellow · November 10, 2021
Canada should regard Ershadi’s statement as a badge of honour. Ottawa, after all, has long spearheaded the appointment of a special rapporteur. Since 2003, Canada has served as the lead sponsor of an annual resolution at the UN General Assembly criticizing Iran for its human rights abuses.
Yet this commendable record is undermined by a corresponding hesitation on the part of Canada’s current leaders to exact meaningful consequences on Tehran. Notwithstanding Ottawa’s work at the UN and Iran’s irate response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has adopted a conciliatory posture toward Iran, apparently fearing that significant pressure on the regime would undermine prospects for rapprochement.
Ottawa’s aspiration, however, remains unlikely to reach fruition so long as an Islamist dictatorship rules Iran. Instead of wielding mere rhetoric against the clerical regime, Ottawa should take concrete action opposing the theocracy. In so doing, Ottawa would be on the right side of history, sending a message of solidarity to Iran’s long-suffering victims throughout the Middle East.
First and foremost, Ottawa should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the paramilitary group responsible for Iran’s regional aggression and domestic repression — as a terrorist organization. Iran certainly deserves the penalty: Tehran continues to sponsor terrorist and proxy groups in its near-abroad, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Yemen’s Houthis, to name a few.
Canada should also impose sanctions on key Iranian human rights abusers, starting with Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who played a key role in Tehran’s 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners. The Islamist regime’s cabinet includes 12 officials previously sanctioned by the United States or its partners for their support of Iran’s nuclear program, backing of terrorist groups, or human rights abuses. Canada, a leading proponent of human rights around the world, should follow suit.
Finally, as Alireza Nader, my colleague at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has suggested , Ottawa should act to halt illicit or malign Iranian conduct on Canadian soil. In particular, Trudeau should stop Canada-based Iranian influence networks that seek to promote Tehran’s revolutionary ideology.
The prime minister should also work to stymie Tehran-backed money-laundering schemes spearheaded in Canada. Likewise, Ottawa should bar current and former regime officials from entering the country.
These steps would complement Canada’s efforts at the UN, demonstrating that Ottawa possesses the will to challenge Iran’s policies however it can. Tehran, of course, will likely respond with anger. However, the regime’s indignation merely points to the validity and importance of Canadian pressure.
It won’t be enough to reform the regime, but a resolute Canadian posture will at least give the theocracy one less country to exploit for its own malign ends.
Tzvi Kahn is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan, Washington, D.C.-based research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow him on Twitter @TzviKahn.
fdd.org · by Tzvi Kahn Research Fellow · November 10, 2021
15. FDD | Biden Administration Hesitates to Condemn Iranian Terrorism in Iraq
Conclusion:
If Washington and the West stand behind the anti-Iran coalition, it might be able to overcome Tehran and disband its troublemaking militias.
FDD | Biden Administration Hesitates to Condemn Iranian Terrorism in Iraq
If Washington and the West stand behind the anti-Iran coalition, it might be able to overcome Tehran and disband its troublemaking militias.
fdd.org · by Hussain Abdul-Hussain Research Fellow · November 10, 2021
Of all the armies and militias in the Middle East, the one that uses explosive drones in its attacks the most is the IRGC and its proxy militias. Hence Iran’s fingerprints on the failed attempt to eliminate Kadhimi were too obvious to hide.
Tehran denounced the attack, but its real message for Iraqis was that a bloodbath awaits those who insist on forming a government that reflects the results of the October election.
Voters delivered a humiliating defeat last month for Iran’s Iraqi Shiite militias, whose bloc shrank from forty-eight to nineteen seats in Iraq’s 329-member parliament. Nationalist and anti-Tehran parties surged, but no coalition won a majority; Forming a government would be challenging even in the absence of Iranian threats.
Kadhimi did not run for election and has no bloc or constituency of his own, which makes the attempt to kill him an odd choice for Iran, at least at first glance. But it is exactly Kadhimi’s non-partisanship that has won him—and by extension the October 10 elections—immense credibility. That makes him a stumbling block in the way of Tehran’s efforts to annul the results.
Iran’s methods in Iraq come straight out of its playbook for Lebanon, where Tehran employed Hezbollah to reverse the verdict at the polls. An anti-Iran coalition prevailed in Lebanon in 2005 and 2009, but Hezbollah militias that operate outside the law repeatedly shut down the government. Facing coercion, the Lebanese Parliament approved Hezbollah’s preferred candidate for president as well as changes to electoral law that eventually allowed the party to prevail in the 2018 election.
Behind a democratic façade, Hezbollah now calls the shots in Beirut. Over the past few weeks, for example, the party has forced Lebanon’s cabinet to suspend its meetings because the cabinet will not dismiss the judge investigating a massive explosion last year at the Beirut Port.
Tehran’s proxies in Iraq are also trying to shut down the state. In early November, militias held a sit-in in Baghdad in protest of the election results. When their protest went unnoticed, protesters affiliated with the militias tried to swarm the Green Zone, a heavily protected area that houses the residences of top Iraqi officials and the U.S. Embassy.
Facing an advancing mob, security forces opened fire and killed at least one individual. The mob retreated, but Iran escalated by ordering the attempt on Kadhimi’s life.
Iran and its proxies are now trying to deflect blame for the failed assassination attempt. Saeed Khatibzadeh, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, condemned the attack and warned of “security conspiracies.” Qais al-Khazaali, chief of the pro-Iran militia Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, said that because no one was killed, a committee should be formed to investigate the attack and make sure that it was not an accidental explosion.
Khazaali, like Khatibzadeh, also warned of a foreign conspiracy to start a civil war.
Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the only one of Iran’s allies whose bloc performed well in the October elections, taking thirty seats, reiterated the claim that “the enemies of Iraq” were trying to start a civil war.
Instead of promising to help Baghdad bring the perpetrators to justice, the Biden administration only offered assistance in investigating the attack. This signal of a tame response will likely persuade Iran that it has nothing to lose by ordering its militias to engage in more violence. Tehran’s goal will be to annul the results of the election, if not officially, at least practically through the formation of a militia-friendly cabinet.
Iraq is not a lost cause, however, and has advantages compared to Lebanon. First of all, it is simply much bigger and would be harder for Iran to digest. The Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, and independents who did well in last month’s elections recognize the severity of the problem and vowed to disband the militias. Most importantly, this multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian coalition enjoys the full support of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite religious authority in the world, based in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf.
If Washington and the West stand behind the anti-Iran coalition, it might be able to overcome Tehran and disband its troublemaking militias.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. He Tweets @hahussain.
fdd.org · by Hussain Abdul-Hussain Research Fellow · November 10, 2021
16. PFLP Boasts About its Ties to Iran | FDD's Long War Journal
Excerpts:
It is difficult to say to what extent Iran has supported the PFLP militarily and financially. The group has purposely been ambiguous about what it exactly receives in terms of funding and arms from Iran. However, it’s likely larger groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad receive the lion share of military guidance, weapons and funding from the assistance Iran has allocated for the ‘Palestinian Resistance.’
Despite what it may or may not receive in military and financial support, the PFLP has made no qualms about showing its support and allegiance to the Islamic Republic and other members of the ‘Resistance Axis.’ After the May 2021 Gaza-Israel conflict, the PFLP held a military parade where its fighters showed their support for Iran and the IRGC by displaying pictures of former Quds Force Lieutenant-General Qasem Soleimani.
PFLP Boasts About its Ties to Iran | FDD's Long War Journal
In a recent interview, Abu Jamal, a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, stated the group and the ‘Palestinian Resistance’ benefited from Iranian support in its war against Israel.
“We and the Islamic Republic fought the Zionist enemy in Lebanon and we also fought them in Gaza and the West Bank with the support of the Islamic Republic (sic),” Jamal stated.
Furthermore, Jamal lauded the relationship the group had with Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by referring to them as ‘blood brothers’ and ‘comrades’ that shared a ‘common destiny’ in defeating Israel.
It’s unclear when Iran began supporting the group. However, in 2013, Iran reportedly resumed military and financial support to the group after leaders from both sides held several meetings in Tehran, Beirut and Damascus under the auspices of Hezbollah.
Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PFLP, and Popular Resistance Committees have boasted about their relationship with Iran including military support they have received. After the May conflict in Gaza, the aforementioned groups praised Iran and Hezbollah for their military support during the eleven days of fighting. Additionally, smaller Palestinian factions have benefited from some Iranian aid including the now defunct Harakat al-Sabireen.
The close relationship between Iran and the PFLP was also on display when a PFLP delegation met with President Ibrahim Raisi after his swearing in ceremony in Aug. As expected, Raisi affirmed the Islamic Republic’s continued support for the ‘Palestinian Resistance’ and the ‘liberation of Palestine.’
It is difficult to say to what extent Iran has supported the PFLP militarily and financially. The group has purposely been ambiguous about what it exactly receives in terms of funding and arms from Iran. However, it’s likely larger groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad receive the lion share of military guidance, weapons and funding from the assistance Iran has allocated for the ‘Palestinian Resistance.’
Despite what it may or may not receive in military and financial support, the PFLP has made no qualms about showing its support and allegiance to the Islamic Republic and other members of the ‘Resistance Axis.’ After the May 2021 Gaza-Israel conflict, the PFLP held a military parade where its fighters showed their support for Iran and the IRGC by displaying pictures of former Quds Force Lieutenant-General Qasem Soleimani.
Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
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17.
V/R
David Maxwell
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Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
