U.S. builds up military bases in Italy for African ops

Three P-3C Orion aircraft belonging to the Tridents of Patrol Squadron Two Six (VP-26) stand ready on a rain soaked airfield on board Naval Air Station Sigonella. in Sigonella, Sicily on Jan. 15, 2006. The U.S. Marines are being moved to the Naval Air Station at Sigonella on Sicily, which will eventually have a force of 1,000 Marines with its main focus Libya, 100 miles across the Med.

 

The U.S. deployment of 200 Marines to a naval base in Sicily for possible operations in Libya, a short hop across the Mediterranean, underlines how the Americans have been building a network of bases in Italy as launch pads for military interventions in Africa and the Mideast.

 

The signs are that 20 years after the American military's first, and costly, encounter with Muslim militants in Mogadishu, Somalia, U.S. operations in Africa are growing as the Islamist threat expands.

 

Another key factor is U.S. President Barack Obama's switch in his counter-terror strategy from drone strikes against al-Qaida to pinpoint raids by small Special Forces teams, as seen in Somalia and Libya Oct. 5.

These were triggered by Islamist violence in both countries, including the Sept. 21 seizure of the Westgate shopping mall inl Nairobi, capital of Kenya, by fighters of Somalia's al-Qaida affiliate, al-Shabaab, that left at least 67 people dead.

 

The U.S. SEAL Team 6 seaborne raid on the Somali coastal town of Barawe to capture al-Shabaab mastermind Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir,a Kenyan of Somalia origin, ran into heavier than expected resistance and had to be aborted.

 

But the U.S. Army's Delta Force had more success in its raid on Tripoli when they grabbed longtime al-Qaida fugitive Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, aka Abu Anas al-Libi, indicted by a U.S. court in 2000 for the August 1988 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 224 people.

 

These raids reflect a U.S. move away from the kind of risk-averse operations the Americans have been mounting with missile-firing drones to on-the-ground raids against high-value targets.

 

The abhorrence of risk stemmed largely from of the psychological fallout over the October 1993 operation in Mogadishu to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid that went badly wrong and led to the downing of two U.S. helicopters and the deaths of 18 Rangers and Special Forces troopers.

U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Africa in June-July was widely seen as evidence of the White House's broader foreign policy objectives which have included an expansion of U.S. military operations across Africa.

 

Many of these involve small-scale "secret wars" against Islamists, mainly linked to al-Qaida and often carried out under the aegis of the U.S. Africa Command established in 2007.

 

"Both the number and complexity of U.S. military operations in Africa will continue to grow in the medium term," observed Oxford Analytica.

 

"Given the relatively high impact contribution they make to Washington's strategic goals, such military operations will also increasingly encroach on domains traditionally associated with development and diplomacy.

 

"However, they will also increasingly commit the United States to an 'intervention-led' foreign policy in Africa."

 

Although Africom and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command claim they have a small footprint in Africa, over the last year or so they've been increasingly active in building up a U.S. military presence -- and especially reach -- across the continent.

       

The United States has only one official base in Africa, the counter-terrorism facility at Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti, East Africa, where Special Forces, strike jets and armed unmanned aerial vehicles are based.

 

But small units are deployed across Africa. Meantime, the Americans have established a network of bases in Italy, involving a significant manpower shift southward from the old Cold War bastion of Germany.

 

The Marines moved to Italy from Spain this month are the vanguard of a larger force dubbed Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response.

 

It was established after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

 

According to U.S. security specialist David Vine, the Pentagon has spent around $2 billion -- and that's just construction costs -- "shifting its European center of gravity south from Germany" and transforming Italy "into a launching pad for future wars in Africa, the Middle East and beyond."

The U.S. Marines are being moved to the Naval Air Station at Sigonella on Sicily, which will eventually have a force of 1,000 Marines with its main focus Libya, 100 miles across the Med.

 

Vines estimates there are now 13,000 U.S. troops in Italy at Sigonella and some 50 other facilities like Vicenza, a former Italian air force base near Venice, with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), a rapid response force.

A Marine Corps 1st: Women take infantry course

It was 10 a.m., and the Marines trudging along the road bordered by thick Virginia woods had been up for seven hours already.

Their uniforms were soaked with sweat, and their faces showed signs of the pain in their muscles. Their day was far from over.

The demanding training was a typical first day in the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course except for one thing: For the first time, two women were part of the class.

“The women are expected to do everything that the men do,” says Marine Col. Todd Desgrosseilliers, who commands the organization responsible for basic Marine officer and infantry training. “We haven’t changed anything.”

Women have been steadily moving into many ranks previously barred to them, living at forward bases, flying combat aircraft and serving on submarine crews. Women remained barred from the infantry and other combat-arms specialties, but for the first time are being allowed to enter the Marines infantry officer training.

Allowing the women to volunteer for the course is part of an “experiment” to determine how they perform in the rigorous regimen of physical and psychological stress that Marine infantry officer candidates are put through.

The Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course is a course in which about 25 percent of men don’t make the cut or voluntarily drop out.

Critics say the move is taking gender equality too far. They worry that some efforts to accommodate women could lead to changing standards and ultimately hurt military readiness.

“In the end, when all is said and done, what they should be focusing on is combat effectiveness,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R.-Calif., a member of the Armed Services Committee. “Does it make us better at literally killing the enemy? That’s what their job is going to be.”

The Marine Corps say its experiment is an attempt to collect data for the Pentagon as it considers expanding the number of positions available to women in the military. The infantry is the most elemental and personal form of warfare, and remains off-limits to women, for now.

David Barno, a retired three-star Army general now a senior adviser at the Center for a New American Security, says the infantry is a brutal form of warfare and any lifting of the ban should be considered carefully.

Infantrymen engage in close-in fighting, sometimes “with knives, rocks and shovels,” Barno says. “I don’t rule that out, but I think we should take a hard look at that.”

The Marine Corps has rarely allowed journalists to view the Infantry Officer Course. The candidates, nearly all newly minted second lieutenants who have recently completed the basic officer course, are dropped into the woods well before dawn. They must navigate through darkened woods using maps and compasses.

Carrying packs and rifles, the prospects never stop moving throughout the day. They are given the briefest of instructions and are rebuffed if they ask instructors for further guidance. They don’t even know the requirements for passing the course.

“We’re not just trying to see who is the most enduring or the toughest,” Gen. James Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, told USA Today. “They have to be able to make decisions under stress and duress.”

Infantry officers carry an average of about 70 pounds of gear on their body in combat and can march for miles. That weight can nearly double that when Marines are carrying crew-served weapons, such as mortars and heavy machine guns.

Marine Capt. Brian Perkins kept a close watch over a group of exhausted Marine lieutenants struggling through a series of pull-ups.

“She’s just another student to me,” Perkins said, referring to one of the women as she sweated through exercises.

Men who graduate from the Marine Infantry Officer Course will go on to command rifle platoons. Women who pass the course will go on to other specialties.

More than 280,000 women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in the infantry.

“Sometimes we forget that even in Iraq and Afghanistan there have been many situations where Marines are fighting with their bare hands against the enemy,” said Maj. Scott Cuomo, director of the Infantry Officer Course. “In a battle in Najaf, I was 50 feet from a Marine infantryman killing the enemy with his knife.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has ordered the services to update him next month on how women performed in the new jobs and on efforts to develop “gender-neutral physical standards” with an aim toward opening still more positions to women.

Developing gender-neutral standards raises the question of whether they would be made less strenuous.

Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women’s Law center, says the Marines should re-evaluate the standards before putting women through the course.

They’re going at this backwards,” Campbell says.

Not all women in the military agree. A female Marine officer with two combat tours wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette that the physical demands of infantry fighting were harmful to women.

“ ‘We as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females,” Capt. Katie Petronio wrote.

One of the two women that started the 13-week course did not make it past the first day, which tests combat endurance. Neither did 27 of the 109 men.

The Marine Corps did not release the names of the candidates. They did release a statement from the 24-year-old woman who passed: She said she saw the training as an “incredible opportunity” for women.

“It’s about the balance between mental and physical toughness,” Perkins said of those who have what it takes to be infantry officers. “You can see it in their eyes.”

Semper Fidelis In Libya

There are a lot of angry people inside the U.S. State Department over the circumstances under which two diplomats and two State Department security personnel (former SEALS) were killed during a September 11th attack on a State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya. The main complaint in the State Department is why senior State Department officials allowed such meager security in an area known to be swarming with Islamic terrorist groups that the Libyan government that was unable to control. While some media outlets have made much of the fact that there were no U.S. Marine Corps security guards in Libya, there were few State Department security personnel accompanying the American ambassador while he was in Benghazi. The State Department had plenty of security personnel available, but had apparently created ROE (Rules of Engagement) for Libya that relied on Libyans to provide security and to keep American security personnel to a minimum. Many State Department personnel who had served in the Middle East believed this was a major error, but they were ignored.

For nearly a century, the State Department has had a security force, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (BDS), in addition to U.S. Marine Corps guards. The State Department even has about a hundred of their 1,500 BDS personnel trained to carry out commando type missions (the Mobile Security Deployment, or MSD). Members of MSD are trained to deal with kidnapping or terrorist threats at embassies. Most members are former military, and receive an additional six months training at a special State Department facility in Virginia. The skills they acquire are special operations type things, including how to drive a car in a combat situation. The MSD agents are mainly used to analyze dangerous situations, come up with a security plan, and carry out direct action (commando type stuff) if needed. Mainly, the MSD is a defensive organization, trained and equipped to protect diplomatic personnel under the most trying circumstances. That involves knowing how to evacuate an embassy under attack, usually with the help of U.S. Marines or SOCOM operatives.

The BDS also perform intelligence and investigative missions at American embassies. But mainly, they are security experts, doing what needs to be done, to keep the embassies safe, even if that means running a small army of foreign and American contractors. This worked well in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many State Department diplomats and support personnel who have served in the Middle East know why.

In Libya, the State Department decided it was preferable to scale back the American security and rely on the locals. This is not a new problem. The most spectacular State Department military blunder occurred in 1983 when State Department pressure led to the reduction in security around a building U.S. Marines were using in Beirut, Lebanon. This allowed a suicide truck bomb to get close to a building used by the marines as a barracks and the explosion left 241 Americans dead. The marines vowed never to let that happen again but the State Department did not change its ideas about security.  

Elite Marine Corps units to field new pistols

The Marine Corps’ elite special operations and reconnaissance units will field thousands of new .45-caliber pistols over the next four years, military acquisition officials confirmed Thursday.

The service awarded a $22.5 million contract to Colt Defense for its M1911A1 Rail Guns. The deal was finalized Wednesday night, according to Barb Hamby, a spokeswoman for Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va. Precise details are expected to be released Thursday evening, but there is widespread speculation the order will total some 4,000 firearms.

The pistols will be manufactured at Colt’s plant in West Hartford, Conn., and delivered to the Marine Corps by 2017, Hamby said.

Designated the M45 Close Quarter Battle Pistol by the service, Colt’s Rail Gun takes a tried and true platform used since World War I and outfits it with a rail at the front of the receiver that can be used to mount the flashlights, lasers and infrared devices preferred by today’s special operations forces. While fundamentally unchanged since its inception, the weapon does use the company’s newer series 80 firing system, developed during the 1980s to increase safety by adding a firing pin block that prevents the discharge of a live cartridge if the gun is dropped or banged.

The weapon Colt submitted for this contract competition includes a dual recoil spring assembly, meant to reduce recoil. It was furnished in a desert tan color and featured a Cercoat finish designed to reduce reflection and prevent corrosion. The pistol also features more stainless steel parts, which should help it withstand the harsh environments where special operations and reconnaissance Marines operate — particularly in and around saltwater.

It’s not immediately clear whether Colt’s final prototype also includes all these flourishes.

While standard operating forces throughout the U.S. military use the NATO-standard Beretta M9 pistol, elite military and law enforcement units, including Marine special operations and force recon, have continued to use the 1911. While it requires more maintenance and care than many modern semi-automatic pistols, it is revered for its accuracy and performance in the hands of skilled shooters. Its .45-caliber rounds also pack a heavier punch than the 9mm NATO rounds used in the M9.

Other company’s that competed for the contract included Springfield Armory out of Geneseo, Ill., and Karl Lippard Designs of Colorado Springs, Colo.

Veterans push Marines to break with UFC

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos can expect to receive a letter from some unhappy veterans calling on the Marine Corps to sever its ties with the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The veterans committee of a union group, Unite Here, is not happy about the money the Corps has spent on sponsorship and partnered recruiting videos with the UFC. But they’re not stopping with just the Corps. They’re supporting a full ban on military spending on professional sports.

The group has compiled a video montage highlighting what it perceives as the UFC’s bad behavior. The video shows footage of fighters making sexually charged comments toward female reporters, sometimes even touching them inappropriately while doing so. The video can be viewed at UnfitForTheCorps.org.

“There’s a huge effort at the highest level of command in the Navy and Marine Corps to promote a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault within the ranks of the armed forces,” Pat Lamborn, director of recruiting and training with the union group, told Marine Corps Times. “We hold champion basketball and football players accountable because they’re public figures. Marines are also held accountable for their behavior, so why aren’t these guys?”

Marine Corps Recruiting Command has teamed up over the past three years with the UFC on commercials highlighting the warrior spirit connection between the two organizations. UFC viewers are the MCRC’s target audience for potential enlisted and officer recruit prospects.

The issues presented by the union group about a handful of competitors and leaders are an area of concern that has been addressed with the UFC, said Maj. John Caldwell, an MCRC spokesman.

“We are monitoring the issue and continuously evaluate the effectiveness of our advertising and lead generation partnerships,” he said. “If corrective action is not implemented, we reserve the option to respond accordingly.”

The union represents 250,000 workers in the hotel, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, distribution, laundry and airport industries. It plans to deliver 5,000 petitions to recruiting stations in seven cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington. And it’s not the first time the group has criticized those tied to the UFC.

The owners of the UFC, brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, own Station Casinos in Las Vegas. Unite Here has about 60,000 members based there, according to Lamborn. The group’s Vegas affiliate, Culinary Workers Union Local 226, has blasted the brothers for the anti-union management of their casinos.

In 2010, the culinary workers group filed 201 charges against the casinos after they said workers’ attempts to unionize were squelched. Most of the charges were dismissed following a seven-month trial that ended in May 2011, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The union group had tried for 15 years, without success, to organize 13,000 Station employees, the Review-Journal reported.

The call to cut the funding also coincides with the Army’s recent decision to end its decade-long sponsorship of NASCAR following pressure from lawmakers to stop defense spending on sports sponsorship.

The UFC could not be reached immediately for comment.

No charges for military in prostitution scandal

Seven Army soldiers and two Marines have received administrative punishments, but are not facing criminal charges, for their part in the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia this year, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said that one Air Force member has been reprimanded but cleared of any violations of the Military Code of Justice. And final decisions are pending on two Navy sailors, whose cases remain under legal review.

U.S. Southern Command, headed by Gen. Douglas Fraser, conducted the investigation into the military members' involvement in the April incident, which brought shame to the elite presidential protection force and unearthed revelations of other episodes of misconduct within the Secret Service.

The military service members, all enlisted personnel, were assigned to support the Secret Service in preparations for a visit to the coastal resort of Cartagena by President Barack Obama. All of the military had behind-the-scenes roles and were not directly involved in presidential security.

The U.S. officials spoke about the investigation on condition of anonymity because the results have not been released. Military officials were expected to brief Congress members on the matter.

Of the nine who were given administrative punishments, three have asked for courts martial, which would provide them with a public trial to contest the decision, U.S. Southern Command said in a statement. Military members have the right to turn down administrative punishments and instead seek trial.

A dozen Secret Service officers, agents and supervisors were implicated in the Colombia scandal. Eight have been forced out of the agency, three were cleared of serious misconduct and at least two employees are fighting to get their jobs back.

The misconduct became public after a dispute over payment between a Secret Service agent and a prostitute at a Cartagena hotel on April 12. The Secret Service was in Cartagena for a Latin American summit before Obama's arrival.

All the alleged activities took place before Obama arrived in Cartagena for meetings with 33 other regional leaders, but the scandal overshadowed his visit.

In the military, nonjudicial or administrative punishments can take a wide variety of forms, from docking service members' pay or confining them to quarters to assigning them additional duties for a certain length of time. In some cases, administrative punishments can be career-ending, or delay or prevent promotions.

Written reprimands often are letters placed in service member's files and would suggest a less serious offense. Initial reports suggested that some of the military members violated their curfew, but no other details were released.

Defense officials have said that Fraser was chosen to handle the investigation and hand out the punishments because the incident happened in his command area and that it would ensure that the discipline was equal across the services.

The military usually does not publicly disclose details of administrative punishments.