War Is Boring

The Diplomat: Drone Warfare Goes Local

David Axe — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:00:33 +0000

by DAVID AXE

In the more than 15 years since the U.S. Air Force flew the first modern drones in combat over the Balkans, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have become a staple of high-tech warfare.

The U.S. military is the world leader in robotic warfare, having flown armed and unarmed drones over Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and, most recently, Syria. China and other world powers are rapidly developing their own drone warplanes. Non-state groups possess UAVs, as well — most notably Hezbollah.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

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Happy Birthday, Danger Room

David Axe — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:37:17 +0000

Noah. Heh.

by DAVID AXE

Wired’s Danger Room is turning five. Go, celebrate.

Launched by Noah Shachtman and Sharon Weinberger in 2007, Danger Room has quickly become a standard-setting publication covering the intersection of war, technology and politics.

I’ve worked with Noah since 2006, back when he edited a much smaller blog for Military.com. I also worked for Sharon when she ran Defense Technology International. I’ve been on the Danger Room payroll off and on since the beginning.

Between the two of them, Noah and Sharon have put up with a lot of shenanigans on my part. I’m a reasonably good reporter and utterly fearless and ambitious, but those qualities come at a cost: I’m a nightmare to manage and edit. And left to my own devices, I’d just as soon set up permanent residence in a trench on some battlefield somewhere. That is, when I’m not writing widely-ignored articles about African rebels. All tendencies Noah and Sharon have tolerated.

Happy birthday, Danger Room. Here’s to another five. Please don’t fire me.

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Anti-Gay Push Thwarted for Oklahoma Guard

David Axe — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:34:44 +0000

Army photo.

by DAVID AXE

Oklahoma Rep. Mike Reynolds, a Republican, introduced a bill to reinstate the anti-gay Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy for Oklahoma Guardsmen — a move that House Speaker Kris Steele promptly killed.

I just got back from a month in Afghanistan, part which I spent alongside the Oklahoma Guard’s 45th Brigade in Laghman Province. The brigade has been hit hard — 100 casualties including more than a dozen deaths. Soldiers talked about the dangers posed by the weather and by the Taliban and their deadly, improvised bombs.

Guess what never came up in conversation? Homosexuality. Because on the battlefield, nobody cares if you’re gay.

Steele did the right thing. And shame on you, Reynolds.

Bye Bye Bullshit

David Axe — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:00:56 +0000

by ANDREW BALCOMBE

Marielle van Uitert is a conflict photographer who has worked in Afghanistan, Iraq and West Africa. She has made a book about her experiences in Afghanistan called Bye Bye Bullshit.

‘You Guys Got Some Serious Cojones’

David Axe — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:00:27 +0000

by DAVID AXE

In this video by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Charles Crail, watch a contractor-flown Caribou supply plane — flying low among the mountains — drop pallets on a remote outpost in Paktika province. At the end, listen to the soldier praise the pilots.

Offiziere.ch: Afghanistan’s Leadership Problem

David Axe — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:00:21 +0000

U.S. and Romanian Special Forces train Afghan Provincial Response Company, Laghman Province, Feb. 9, 2012. David Axe photo.

by DAVID AXE

Afghan security forces will take over as U.S.-led international troops gradually withdraw from Afghanistan through 2014. At least that’s the plan. Poor leadership could undermine Afghan efforts to secure their own country. “There’s a gross lack of leadership in Afghanistan,” says “Tom,” a U.S. Army Special Forces officer assigned to train Afghan police in Laghman province, east of Kabul.

Tom spoke on the condition we not print his real name.

It’s not clear why Afghanistan fails to produce good military leaders in the right quantity, although Tom offers some hints. He describes a culture infused with concept of insh’allah, Arabic for “if God wills it.” As long as God is calling the shots, men don’t have to.

Widespread cronyism and corruption, rooted in poor governance, poverty and a strong sense of family and tribal loyalty, can also prevent good leadership candidates from advancing through the ranks. For instance, a governor’s halfwit brother is more likely to attain a leadership position than a genuinely qualified man with no ties to high-ranking officials.

Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.

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Danger Room: U.S. Commandos in Afghanistan Face a New Battlefield: The Courtroom

David Axe — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:41:20 +0000

Qand trial. Army photo.

by DAVID AXE

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan — Coalition forces here have been hit hard in the past year. Bombings and gun battles have killed more than a dozen U.S. troops and wounded around 100 from Task Force Thunderbird, built around the Oklahoma National Guard’s 45th Infantry Brigade.

But arguably the biggest battle took place not in the hills of this rugged province east of Kabul, but in a courtroom in the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam. The dramatic events leading up to the January trial — and those that followed — are a window into a vitally important but largely unreported facet of the decade-long Afghanistan War.

Behind the scenes across the embattled country, a special breed of U.S. soldier is working closely with a new style of Afghan police to enforce law and order in Afghanistan’s lawless countryside. They’re trying to defeat the insurgency by treating it like a criminal problem rather than a military one. And they’re planned to be at it even after the International Security Assistance Force’s conventional troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

In that sense, the trial was a possible preview of the Afghanistan War, post-2014. If the Laghman case is any indication, the conflict will be increasingly characterized by risky police raids, delicate legal action and small numbers of highly trained U.S. troops quietly applying pressure at key moments to ensure the rule of law triumphs over chaos.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Danger Room: Can These Commandos Salvage the Afghan War?

David Axe — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:00:26 +0000

U.S. and Romanian Special Forces train Afghan Provincial Response Company, Laghman Province, Feb. 9, 2012. David Axe photo.

by DAVID AXE

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan — The American Special Forces officer was having what one colleague says was the worst day of his war tour. And that was before the Soviet-made anti-personnel mine packed with 700 ball bearings exploded at his feet.

A weapon like that can turn a man into “pink mist,” the officer says.

It was late September outside the town of Mehtar Lam, in this hilly province just east of Kabul. The officer from the Germany-based 10th Special Forces Group — let’s call him “Tom” — had been leading his patrol of U.S. commandos and Afghan police trainees on the long walk back to base following a disappointing encounter with Taliban fighters in which half of the trainees failed to fight back.

Tom glimpsed a mound of disturbed earth and, not thinking, approached it.

The mine concealed inside the mound was a dud, its main charge decayed by time and neglect. Only a precursor charge went off, resulting in a “pop” sound that sent the officer into a spasm of action. He gave a hand signal that sent his troops running for cover, in case the malfunctioned mine was just the first salvo in complex ambush. “God, please don’t let me fuck up,” he recalls thinking.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Danger Room: See For Yourself: The Pentagon’s $51 Billion ‘Black’ Budget

Robert Beckhusen — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:30:12 +0000

Photo via Flickr user Malakh Kelevra.

by ROBERT BECKHUSEN and NOAH SHACHTMAN

The military keeps a lot of little things secret. It could be the exact range of a jammer, sensitive missile data or the timing of a raid. But the larger context — that jammers and missiles exist, or that our forces conduct raids — is unclassified and even listed in the Pentagon’s budget for all to see.

These secrets are different. Their names are obscured by code words, or simply listed as “classified programs.” But with a little digging, we can get a (limited) sense of how much money is being spent on the U.S. government’s most secret military projects. In fact, you can take a look for yourself. We’ve put together this spreadsheet with the latest information. Feel free to add, subtract and edit it — kind of like a classified cash wiki.

This year, the military’s black budget appears to be a little over $51 billion, down from the $56 billion which held steady for the last two years, not including inflation. The reductions are also not really a surprise considering the cuts happening nearly everywhere else.

Because it’s not easy saying we have the complete number. The Pentagon likes to play a little hide and seek with its black budget. Projects with code names like the Navy’s “RETRACT JUNIPER” and “LINK PLUMERIA” are simple enough to find in the research development, testing and evaluation budget (.pdf). As are many of the Army’s “TRACTOR” projects: “TRACTOR NAIL,” “TRACTOR CAGE,” and so on. But then comes along a project like “TRACTOR DESK” hiding in one of the Army’s eight research budget documents, while others find their way to the operations and maintenance and procurement budgets.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

ARMY OF GOD, Part One

David Axe — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:33:20 +0000

Tim Hamilton art.

by DAVID AXE

Cartoon Movement has published the first installment of my Congo comic, ARMY OF GOD, with art by the incredible Tim Hamilton.

Future installments are monthly.

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Word Bubble 2/14/12

Robert Beckhusen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:51:39 +0000

by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

The crew quickly realized the danger that extreme heat just on the other side of the inner hull might cause the torpedoes to explode. Since the hydraulic systems for torpedo removal were not functioning, they risked their lives to manually remove the torpedoes from the first compartment. According to Novaia Gazeta, three torpedoes were removed in this way. Had the torpedoes exploded, dozens of crew and firefighters would have been killed. Depending on the number of torpedoes affected, the authors of the Kommersant article raise the possibility that the explosion could have destroyed the floating dock and the Admiral Kulakov and might have led to radioactive contamination from the nuclear missiles or the two nuclear reactors onboard. I have no way of judging how serious that threat was, but whether or not it was real, a torpedo explosion would have certainly led to panic not just in Roslyakovo but also in the nearby cities of Severomorsk and Murmansk, which have a total population of almost 400,000 people.

Via Rob Farley at Information Dissemination.

Atlantic Sentinel: Syria is Where ‘Responsibility to Protect’ Goes To Die

Robert Beckhusen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:11:13 +0000

by NICK OTTENS

Poor Susan Rice was exasperated last week. The American ambassador to the United Nations saw the first step toward international intervention in Syria go up in smoke over the weekend when China and Russia blocked a Security Council resolution that would have urged President Bashar al-Assad to resign.

The two veto wielding powers were quick to point out that Arab states and NATO last year exceeded their United Nations mandate to protect civilians in war-torn Libya by putting special forces on the ground and providing air cover for the rebels who were thus able to tear down the tyranny of Muammar Gaddafi.

Even if Western powers aren’t looking for another military intervention, they would like to see Assad go. Because it’s in the American and European interest to topple his regime, the “responsibility to protect” the Syrian demonstrators is invoked to legitimize international action.

The Chinese and the Russians are suspicious. As they see it, the West only raises humanitarian concerns when it suits its interests to be perfectly quiet about human rights abuses in allied Arab monarchies like Saudi Arabia.

The reality, as the conservative Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano put on RT’s Crosstalk Friday, is that “humanitarian interventions are really no different from any other foreign policy decision.” The responsibility to protect doctrine “can be used to go after your enemies,” he said and is “pretty vacuous and empty.” Because it is so ill-defined, he predicted that it would end up on “the ash heap of history” soon.

Read the rest at the Atlantic Sentinel.