THREATWATCH
U.S. and British military planners have finalized plans to seize and render-safe chemical and other weapons inside Syria in the event Assad is killed, the regime falls, or both.
U.S. and Afghan troops have captured several members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or the IMU. The IMU has long partnered with extremists throughout Afghanistan.
U.S. Special Operations Forces and the Afghan Partner Unit, along with the Afghan Local Police, have been ordered to withdraw from Wardak, an area bordering Karzai’s residence in Kabul.
Marine Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, has begun outlining its plans to revert to a more maritime-centric role post-Afghanistan, shifting focus away from supporting village stability operations:
“With Afghanistan and everything, everyone has been kind of in a landlocked area for a while,” Clark said in a Feb. 13 interview here at MARSOC headquarters. “What we’re trying to get ourselves prepared for is getting back to being a maritime SOF component. We think that’s the niche and the value that we bring to the SOF community, and to the geographic combatant commander and to our service, the Marine Corps.”
The move isn’t the only one coming for the command, which celebrates its seventh anniversary this month. MARSOC also is preparing to realign its three special operations battalions regionally and develop a career path for its special operations officers, Clark said. One battalion each will be focused on operations in U.S. Central Command, U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Africa Command, with the transition occurring based on world events, including the drawdown in Afghanistan.
ON THE FORCE
The military is under fire for using goats and other livestock to simulate combat wounds that humans would endure on the battlefield in a good-natured effort to provide the most realistic training opportunities as possible.
The Marine Corps is dominating the top ranks of the U.S. military establishment and leadership positions — and no one has taken more notice to that fact than the Corps itself.
In Foreign Affairs, Steve Coll asks the one trillion dollar question: what is al-Qa’ida, exactly?
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
The author of a book chronicling the rise and use of private security contractors suggests in a Huffington Post piece that the most lucrative era is yet to come.
ON TECH
Drones as journalists? If journalism courses at the Universities of Nebraska and Missouri have their way, that’ll be the wave of the future.
Micro aerial vehicles: they’re here.
ON SECRECY – OR LACK THEREOF
As Press Secretary, turns out Robert Gibbs was forbidden from confirming or even alluding to the existence of what is an inherently covert action program.
The Psychological Operations Regimental Association is now officially official.
The State Department has released their Background Brief on Syria and U.S. support for non-lethal aid.
A senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed yesterday in the country’s Kurdish north.
CONTRACT WATCH
Ballston, a haven to countless defense contractors and once home to Blackwater Worldwide’s Terrorism Research Center, is getting pedestrian-friendly.
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.
