PHOTOS: Airmen wielding a broadsword; Navy Seabees embark on building partner capacity missions throughout West Africa; and, last but not least, GEN Odierno disembarking from his plane on the tarmac of Site 26, Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, where he met with command staff and national-level elements.
TEARLINE
CNN is reporting the consular grounds and the crime scene contained in and around it is still not secured, some 15 days after a brutal assault that claimed the lives of the late Ambassador Stevens and at least 3 Americans. CNN also carried an exclusive (VIDEO), citing numerous sources who claim the FBI has not only not begun an investigation, but has yet to even visit the crime scene in Benghazi. Former human and technical intelligence collectors have had harsh words for the intelligence community’s performance pre- and post-Benghazi the past few days.
Come spring, U.S. soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, will begin deploying to parts of Africa under a pilot test with U.S. Africa Command.
Roughly two months into this important yet scarcely documented battle, Syria’s antigovernment fighters have succeeded in laying siege to the heavily fortified Abu ad Duhur Air Base. They have downed at least two of the base’s MIG attack jets. And this month they realized results few would have thought possible. Having seized ground near the base’s western edge, from where they can fire onto two runways, they have forced the Syrian Air Force to cease flights to and from this place. “We are facing aircraft and shooting down aircraft with captured weapons,” said Jamal Marouf, a commander credited by the fighters with downing the first MIG-21 here. “With these weapons we are preventing aircraft from landing or taking off.”
This is a significant setback for the government in the northern region, where rebels had already strengthened their position with homemade bombs, making roads too perilous for military vehicles to pass and restricting the military’s movements.
Nir Rosen has published a dispatch of his experiences and observations from deep inside Syria. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political and militant group, has ramped up its support for the Syrian government, sending in military advisers to aid in the bloody struggle against the opposition, U.S. and Lebanese government officials say. Hezbollah’s involvement is a clear indication that the uprising, now a year and a half old, is drawing in Syria’s neighbor and broadening a conflict that has the potential to destabilize the entire region. It also marks a worrying turn for the Syrian rebels, who already face one of the region’s most potent armies and now must contend as well with a disciplined and sophisticated militia.
President Boni Yayi of Republic of Benin has called on the international community to help eliminate the grave threat posed by Islamist militants in control of northern Mali. Yayi, who made the call on Tuesday during the 67th UN General Assembly’s General Debate, warned that the militants endangered stability in the West African region if not checked. Fighting between government forces and Tuareg rebels had broken out in northern Mali in January. “These terrorist movements engage in all sorts of trafficking in drugs, people and all calibre of arms. They are committing massive violations of the fundamental rights of citizens,” Yayi, who is also Chairman of the African Union (AU), said. He urged the international community to collaborate with the African Union in eliminating the threat to the peace and security of the sub-region and prevent large-scale humanitarian catastrophe.
ON THE FIGHT
The Army and Special Operations Command are starting a new strategic land power cell. The brand-new initiative, known only to a small group of planners thus far, is the brainchild of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno and will take shape over the next few months. The group, which will also include the Marines, is designed to fuse the military’s land cultures, from the conventional land power of “Big Army” to the people-oriented skills of Special Forces to technology and cyber efforts. By creating a group focused on integrating those pieces, military strategists believe they can make more effective use of land power — especially at a time when ground forces, after more than 10 years of war, are perceived to have fallen out of fashion in the hallways of the Pentagon. Ultimately, the effort could have implications for military doctrine, for the integration of conventional and specialized forces, and even for acquisition, according to an individual familiar with the nascent group. The group’s formation is bound to be controversial for the perception it will create at a time of a major budget crunch and the move to Asia – in effect, that the land forces are looking to lobby for more resources and influence. But the individual familiar with the group pushes back on the notion that this is anything more than the ground forces taking a strategic approach to working better together. Special Operations Command is moving aggressively to establish a presence in the national capital region to co-locate itself with policymakers and lawmakers, at the same time it recapitalizes its command and control elements in Florida.
The United States is “losing the cyber espionage war” against China, Russia and other countries, but even in the face of such a grave threat the country cannot agree on how to protect its precious intellectual seed capital from these predations, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee says.
“We are running out of time on this,” Rep. Mike Rogers, respected for working closely with his ranking member, said in a speech at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s (INSA) cyber conference. China is stealing intellectual property on a massive scale, as the head of both the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, has made clear with his estimates of such thefts topping $1 trillion. While China is not alone, U.S government officials have made clear that no country engages in cyber espionage as systematically, as thoroughly or as broadly as does the People’s Republic of China. “China is investing hugely in this technology,” Rogers notes.
An article in the New York Times confirms what others have been saying for months, that Iranian security officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the increasing number and sophistication of the clandestine efforts to impede or derail their nuclear program. As you will see from the article, the Iranians are alleging that someone (who they do not identify) has been systematically sabotaging computer hardware and other equipment that they have been covertly procuring from overseas for their nuclear program, as well as hacking their computer systems and killing their nuclear scientists and engineers.
SPEAKERS
Leading Authorities and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are hosting their next Association Lecture Series event on Thursday, September 27 featuring Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer. During his presentation, Meyer will share his heroic story and talk about his soon-to-be-released book Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War.
West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center has published “The Attack on the U.S. Consulate: Emerging Signs of Jihadist Sentiment in Libya”.
Michele Flournoy: Afghanistan Insider Attacks Are Sign Of ‘Taliban Desperation’.
TURNOVER
ASRC named Rachel Jackson vice president, strategic and aviation programs. Jackson will develop and implement strategic growth campaigns and work with ASRC industry partners. She previously served as director of transportation programs in Lockheed Martin.
Garnett R. Stowe Jr. has been named senior vice president and division group manager in CACI’s National Solutions Group. He will be responsible for national-level Defense Department and federal civilian sector intelligence programs. Before joining CACI, Stowe was a senior adviser and mentor to small businesses and provided consulting services focused primarily on intelligence and defense. Earlier, he was a vice president for Raytheon. and also served as a principal with Booz Allen.
CONTRACT WATCH
Less than a month removed from the blockbuster announcement from SAIC that it would split into two companies, landlords, developers and brokers in Northern Virginia — where the company has a mammoth Tysons Corner campus and many satellite offices — are still sorting through what the implications might be for doing business with the contracting giant.
The Justice Department is asking for more information about its planned acquisition of Herndon-based GeoEye. DigitalGlobe announced in July it plans to buy GeoEye in a deal valued at $900 million. Both companies take high-resolution satellite images of Earth and sell them to the federal government for security and other purposes.
Robert Caruso is a veteran of the United States Navy, and has worked for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Business Transformation Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
