Pakistan Undercutting Themselves on OBL

The BBC has an interesting report on a Pakistani doctor who provided intel in the OBL raid.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is "very concerned" about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year.

Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed. A Pakistan panel says he should be tried for treason.

Mr Panetta told the CBS TV network the arrest had been "a real mistake".

Dr Afridi provided "very helpful" information for the raid, he added.

He was arrested shortly after the operation, carried out by US special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on 2 May last year.

Pakistan was deeply embarrassed by the raid, and condemned it as a violation of sovereignty.

Tried for treason, eh? "Treason" is usually reserved for those who take up arms against the state, or are directly involved in actively damaging the state. If Pakistan is saying that giving up info in OBL is treason, then are they saying he was somehow a representative of the state of Pakistan? And if that's their argument, why aren't we bombing the shit out of them?

By: Brant

Random Friday Wargaming: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Getting a little goofy this week... Flying Buffalo's Weapons of Mass Destruction is a stand-alone expansion for their infamous Nuclear War.





There's no CSW forum out there, but you can pick up your own copy over at Flying Buffalo's site.

Master links/images from Boardgamegeek.com; message boards linked to Consimworld. Other links to the actual game pages...


By: Brant

UK In Action: Household Cavalry

Soldiers from the Royal Household Cavalry Regiment man a check point on a busy stretch of road in Helmand Province Afghanistan. One soldier waits to stop on coming traffic while he is covered by members of his unit in a Jackal, Mobility Weapon-Mounted Installation Kit. This image was a winner in the Army's Photographic Competition 2011.

img from UK MoD

By: Widow 6-7

GameTalk - Insurgents and Guerillas

How do you model the propaganda value of a tactical defeat? How can you leverage tactical/operational actions to influence your reinforcement schedule for the next 10 turns? What are some systems that tie insurgent recruiting to game-board actions and propaganda/political victories to actions on the battlefield?


Your thoughts below!

By: Brant

US Raid in Somalia Rescues 2 Hostages

A night time raid in Somalia has successfully freed 2 hostages.

U.S. Special Forces troops flew into Somalia on a nighttime helicopter raid early Wednesday, freed an American and a Danish hostage and killed nine of the kidnappers in a mission that President Barack Obama said he personally authorized.
The Danish Refugee Council confirmed that the two aid workers, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, were freed and "are on their way to be reunited with their families."
The raiders came in very quickly, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf qat for much of the evening, a pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told The Associated Press by phone. Hussein said he was not present at the site but had spoken with other pirates who were, and that they told him nine pirates had been killed in the raid and three were missing.
A second pirate who gave his name as Ahmed Hashi said two helicopters attacked at about 2 a.m. about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Somali town of Adado where the hostages were being held.

Woot!

UPDATE:
Here's Secretary Panetta's statement on the raid.

Last night U.S. Special Operations Forces conducted, by order of the President of the United States, a successful mission in Somalia to rescue two individuals taken hostage on October 25, 2011. Ms. Jessica Buchanan, an American citizen employed by the Danish Demining Group, and her Danish colleague, Mr. Poul Thisted, were kidnapped at gunpoint by criminal suspects near Galcayo, Somalia.

Ms. Buchanan and Mr. Thisted have been transported to a safe location where we will evaluate their health and make arrangements for them to return home.

This successful hostage rescue, undertaken in a hostile environment, is a testament to the superb skills of courageous service members who risked their lives to save others. I applaud their efforts, and I am pleased that Ms. Buchanan and Mr. Thisted were not harmed during the operation. This mission demonstrates our military's commitment to the safety of our fellow citizens wherever they may be around the world.

I am grateful to report that there was no loss of life or injuries to our personnel.

I express my deepest gratitude to all the military and civilian men and women who supported this operation. This was a team effort and required close coordination, especially between the Department of Defense and our colleagues in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are heroes and continue to inspire all of us by their bravery and service to our nation.

By: Brant

Covert UK Ops on the Ground in Libya

Mark Urban (no known relation to Keith) has a great article about the UK's covert actions on the ground during the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

The first significant involvement of British forces inside Libya was a rescue mission mounted just a couple of weeks after the rising against Gaddafi broke out. On 3 March, Royal Air Force C130 aircraft were sent to a desert airstrip at Zilla in the south of the country to rescue expatriate oil workers. Many had been threatened by gunmen and bandits.

This airlift of 150 foreigners, including about 20 Britons, to Valletta airport in Malta went smoothly, despite one of the aircraft being hit by ground fire soon after taking off.

Accompanying the flights were about two dozen men from C Squadron of the Special Boat Service (SBS), who helped secure the landing zone. It was a short-term and discreet intervention that saved the workers from risk of abduction or murder, and caused little debate in Whitehall.

OK, so not bad. But after another debacle (read the article - amazing these guys dorked up that bad) the straightjacket went on the ROE.

When half a dozen British officers arrived at a seaside hotel in Benghazi at the beginning of April, they were unarmed and their role was strictly limited. They had been told to help the NTC set up a nascent defence ministry, located in a commandeered factory on the outskirts of the city.

The first and most basic task of the advisory team was to get the various bands of Libyan fighters roaring around in armed pick-up trucks under some sort of central co-ordination. As reporters had discovered, most of these men had little idea of what they were doing, and soon panicked if they thought Col Gaddafi's forces were attacking or outflanking them.

There were a number of legal issues preventing them giving more help. Some Whitehall lawyers argued that any type of presence on the ground was problematic. Legal doubts were raised about arming the NTC or targeting Col Gaddafi.

Once the air operation was put on a proper Nato footing, these issues became even more vexed, insiders say, with the alliance saying it would not accept men on the ground "directing air strikes" in a way that some newspapers, even in late spring, were speculating was already happening.

The British government's desire to achieve the overthrow of Gaddafi while accommodating the legal sensitivities registered by various Whitehall departments led to some frustration among those who were meant to make the policy work.

This is the kind of news story you can see growing into a complete book, and an interesting one at that.

By: Brant

Sound Off! 4X Gaming

4X games can be incredibly addictive. What are your favorites? Sound of below!

By: Brant

Dealing With Shit in Afghanistan

Literally.

oh, and a follow-up


By: Brant

UK In Action: Tomahawk Away!

Royal Navy Attack submarine HMS Astute fires a Tomahawk cruise missile during a testing mission near the USA. The Royal Navy’s newest submarine has blasted Tomahawk missiles far across the North American skies, as part of its first test firing mission. Pictures show the Tomahawk weapons, which rocketed from HMS Astute at up to 550 miles per hour (885kph) across the Gulf of Mexico. The 5.5-metre-long cruise missile weighs 1,300kg and has a range of more than 1,000 miles.

img from UK MoD

By: Widow 6-7

Monday Video: Armored Saint

OK, this week's video takes a bit of explanation... I was listening to Armored Saint's "Dropping Like Flies" in the car and thinking "this would be an awesome tune for a military video". In fact, it was such a great idea that I couldn't believe no one had come up with it already, so I started looking through YouTube to see if one was already out there. I couldn't find anything tagged with "Dropping Like Flies" but I found a bunch of other Armored Saint tunes. With the band now stuck in my head, I felt like I just had to put up a Monday Video with them as the music bed, but I couldn't find a good, blood-pumping, adrenaline-inducing, dick-stiffening video, so we had to settle for this one.

They're basically asking the Obama administration if they can deliver on their promise to bring the troops home. I find it odd that they're using a song about blowjobs to do it, but what the heck, I'm sure someone will make a snarky comment about it.

As always, this is not an endorsement of the political sentiments of the video - it's just trying to get a good song/video combo, and being disappointed with the video options for the songs stuck in my head this week.



If anyone knows a good military video with an Armored Saint soundtrack, please post it below! And don't forget to nominate you're own Monday Videos in the comments, too.


By: Brant

US To Iran: Suck It

Iran's big talk about US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf turned out to be just that: big talk. We sailed the USS Abraham Lincoln right up their ass.

Amid heightened tensions with Iran, an American aircraft carrier has sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. The Navy says it's a routine maneuver.
Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost said the USS Abraham Lincoln entered the Gulf on Sunday without incident to conduct scheduled maritime security operations. Derrick-Frost is a spokeswoman for the Navy's 5th Fleet, based in the Gulf state of Bahrain.
U.S. warships frequently operate in the Gulf. But when the carrier USS John Stennis departed the Gulf in late December, Iranian officials warned the U.S. not to return.

By: Brant

10 Myths About Afghanistan....

The Guardian newspaper has an interesting list of 10 myths about Afghanistan. Here are the top 5.

1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times
2. The Soviet invasion led to a civil war and western aid for the Afghan resistance
3. The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahideen
4. The CIA's supply of Stinger missiles to the mujahideen forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan
5. After the Soviets withdrew, the west walked away

Go check out the article for the other five, and the explanations of all ten. Some of them will make you go "hmmmm".

By: Brant

Random Friday Wargaming: Downtown: The Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972

For this Friday's wargame, we're bringing you Lee Brimmicombe-Wood's Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972. A highly-acclaimed air game, Downtown has no shortage of fans out there.



The ConsimWorld Forum is bloody huge, too.

You can try to order a copy, just not from GMT, where they're sold out.
Anyone out there got some thoughts they'd like to share on this one?

Master links/images from Boardgamegeek.com; message boards linked to Consimworld. Other links to the actual game pages...


By: Brant

Next Afghanistan Unit Announced

The DoD has identified the next army units headed to Afghanistan

The Department of Defense today identified three major units to deploy as part of the upcoming rotation of forces operating in Afghanistan. The scheduled rotation will begin in Spring 2012.

This announcement involves one division headquarters totaling approximately 1,000 personnel and two brigade combat teams totaling approximately 5,800 personnel.

Headquarters units:
-- 3rd Infantry Division HQ, Fort Stewart, Ga.
Brigade Combat Teams:
-- 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82d Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C. (to deploy as a partial BCT).
-- 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82d Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
DoD will continue to announce major deployments as they are approved.

By: Brant

Are Israelis Making Iranian Nukies Go "Boom"?

According to The Daily Beast, the Israelis have "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" (not) admitted to killing Iranian nuclear scientists.

Six weeks ago in Washington, on the sidelines of a major U.S.-Israeli meeting known as the “strategic dialogue,” Israeli Mossad officers were quietly and obliquely bragging about the string of explosions in Iran. “They would say things like, ‘It’s not the best time to be working on Iranian missile design,’” one U.S. intelligence official at the December parley told The Daily Beast.

Those comments were a reference to a string of explosions at a missile-testing site outside Tehran on November 12. The explosions killed Maj. Gen. Hassan Moqqadam, the head of the country’s missile program. But the manner in which the message was delivered—informally and on the sidelines of an official discussion—also speaks to how Israel appears to seek to create the impression of responsibility for acts of violence and sabotage inside Iran without quite taking formal responsibility.

What do you think?

poll by twiigs.com

By: Brant

UK In Action: Night Flight

Pictured is 215 Flight's Lynx helicopter from 815 Squadron attached to Type 23 frigate HMS Monmouth conducting a night time ground run in Plymouth Sound. The Flight will be embarked during her work up phase and also the forthcoming Deployment.

img from UK MoD

By: Widow 6-7

Looming US Naval Cuts

As the Army tries to figure out how to reduce their footprint, the Navy is also making plans to scale back their force.

...Navy leaders claimed the reduction will not degrade the sailing branch’s ability to influence world events and deter rivals. At roughly 3 million tons displacement combined, today’s Navy is by far the largest in the world, exceeding the tonnage of the next dozen navies, combined. The Navy maintains around 2/3 of its forces in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

Adm. Mark Ferguson, the Navy’s second-ranking officer, signaled a possible shift away from the 313-ship plan in a recent speech. He said a new shipbuilding plan could take three years to finalize.

Following up on Ferguson’s comments, Navy Undersecretary Robert Work said that even a slightly smaller fleet would still contain a preponderance of large, sophisticated warships capable of worldwide operations. “We [will] span the globe,” Work said, according to AOL Defense reporter Carlo Munoz.

By: Brant

Strategic Gaming Roundtable, NDU 1/18

Stay tuned for the liveblog of today's NDU strategic wargaming roundtable.

Looks like we're starting now, after some tech connection issues.
Covering some admin bits:
- next roundtable will be Monday 19 March.
- Connections in late July

First presentation will be Bill Simpson from MCWL: Multi-Sided Gaming or Getting a Handle on Chaos

It grew out of a project on MAGTF Strategic Communication.
Game purpose: "to understand and apply the USMC Strategic Communication Concept across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war."

How to coordinate non/kinetic actions along the same message through the staff processes?
"How do you properly replicate the myriad interactions, assess the impacts, and adjudicate the outcomes?"
Had to be very simple b/c while there was time to train adjudicators/staff, there was not time to train the players.
Built off of Marine Corps Planning Process CoA wargaming paradigm.
Worked at multiple MAGTF levels: MEU, MEB, MEF

Process flow was a 17-step slide, and I'm not going to try to capture it all here. If I can snag it later, I will.

One of the first adjudications was situational awareness, and they let the players sort out (using their professional military judgment) who knew what at any given point in time. If the players couldn't agree, then the umpires stepped in to adjudicate. Kept the process flowing...


Follow the jump for the "more" - trying to get the length of this post on the main page under control

GameTalk - Divine Intervention

What role can/should the "holy shit" moment play on the virtual battlefield? How do you account for the 'magic bullet' or the horseshoe that loses a nail or the perfect timing of the lunar eclipse? How many of these can/do you build into a game when a pre-set number of possible divine intervention moments would need to be developed for inclusion in the box/code/script?


Your thoughts below!

By: Brant

The Army's Struggle for Doctrinal Relevance

The Army is having trouble envisioning how they fit into the country's long-term strategic plan. Really? You can't envision anywhere you'd need to fight? Or nowhere that you can politically admit to cough*Pakistan*cough?

"We're looking with a bit of envy at AirSea Battle," said one junior officer, Maj. David Williams, in a frank presentation to a panel of generals – all outranking him by at least three paygrades – on January 12th. And, Maj. Williams went on, many officers are "nostalgic" for AirSea Battle's inspiration, the Army's "AirLand Battle" concept published in 1982 to defeat the Soviet Union in Central Europe. Both visions offer the clarity of "a specific threat, a specific location, a simple narrative" to present "to the American Congress and the American people," Williams went on. By contrast, "if you take the national security priorities recently released...there's a bunch of things out there," he said. "We need to pick one, [and] the most important thing is focusing on the hybrid threats."

Hybrid is the buzzword for adversaries combining the tactics of guerrillas with the firepower of a state. Israel's humiliation by Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 is the prime example of a hybrid war, but there are aspects of the phenomenon in America's own experience from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the most influential advocates of the theory, RAND scholar and Army veteran David Johnson, argued at the conference that the U.S. could learn from the Israelis, who after 2006 focused on the hybrid threat – with significant success, as shown by their improved performance against Hamas in Gaza in 2008 – while remaining flexible enough to "build up" to a major state-on-state conflict or "build down" to irregular warfare.

From a public relations perspective, hybrid war gives the Army a scenario sufficiently scary and sufficiently probable to justify its budget. For internal audience, the attraction is a single, unifying mission that allows the Army to simultaneously draw on its decade of experience in counterinsurgency and revitalize its skills for larger-scale combat. One outspoken officer at the conference, Col. Wayne Grigsby of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, advised the generals to drop the current doctrine's array of tasks in favor of a single Army "core competency" in "joint combined arms fire and maneuver" – i.e. fighting – while deemphasizing counterinsurgency-focused functions such as "wide area security."

But the top brass weren't so sure. "Decisionmakers don't want large-scale land campaigns today for a variety of reasons," said Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner, the Army's chief of intelligence (G-2). "They're going to come looking for you because you can offer them solutions they don't otherwise have, [and] no decision maker wants to have just a single option." Instead, Zahner said, the Army's pitch to policymakers bent on budget cuts should be pragmatic: "Listen folks, you may not want us, but we're the guys who are going to give us a whole range of new options when Plan A doesn't come out the way you anticipated."

By: Brant