Commentary by Senior Master Sgt. Mike Hammond
NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan/438th Air Expeditionary Wing
7/29/2014 - KABUL, Afghanistan -- (The
following piece is a commentary; as such, all the viewpoints, opinions,
and characterizations are my own as the author. And they are from the
heart!)
Having just arrived in Kabul this past week, I will say it has been an
eventful and busy time already! This phase of my deployment started as I
sat in a plane on the runway at Bagram Air Base last Thursday morning.
We were just about to take off when the pilots got some news that there
was action up at Kabul and the airport was shut down for at least a
while. Back in the terminal, my fellow passengers and I looked online to
get the news and saw there was an attack here. Besides hoping everyone
was ok, my distant second place thought was, "Great! Another night in
the transient tent at Bagram!" Don't judge me -- we all know how awesome
that experience is, right??
Fast forward a day and I arrived here in Kabul. Obviously, I knew I was
going to hit the ground running by helping tell the story of what
happened here and how this base was attacked and yet suffered no
casualties. What I didn't know was that, within just a few days of my
arrival, I would have the honor and privilege of hearing some of the
most inspiring and satisfying stories I've heard during a long career in
public affairs in which I've conducted thousands of interviews.
Simply put, and to the point: the U.S. Air Force Security Forces
Defenders, who are here to advise and train with our Afghan hosts while
also defending the rest of us who advise and train, are AMAZING. Yes,
AMAZING!
You may or may not already know the story. If not, in a nutshell, it
goes like this. On July 17, a small group of Defenders, just a few dozen
that morning, were the first to notice and respond to a pre-dawn
surprise attack by an as-yet undetermined number of militants --
probably in the range of 5-12 men. These attackers came well armed. They
brought along many rocket propelled grenades, plenty of ammunition for
small arms fire, suicide vests, and even a vehicle-borne IED. You get
the picture; they weren't coming out to the base to deliver donuts and
coffee to the troops. They set up in, and on top of, a nearby building
and opened fire!
What they may not have counted on was being noticed almost immediately
by this group of Air Force Defenders, who were guarding the tiny FOB
OQAB on the grounds of Kabul International Airport. So as the bad guys
set up and began their attack, they appeared to focus mainly on the
Afghan military base nearby and the airfield itself. Imagine their
surprise and "delight," when they began getting lit up from the flank.
Security Forces Airmen at FOB OQAB reacted extremely quickly after the
bad guys' opening volley. Some were standing watch already. Others were
in bed asleep. One of them was just beginning to chat with his wife back
home here on Facebook! But when they all heard the indirect fire and
then the small arms fire, every one of them -- no matter what they HAD
been doing -- geared up and headed to the fight. Most of the off duty
ones ended up fighting in shorts and t-shirts under their protective
gear.
We're talking gym shorts, T-shirts, A-shirts, shoes but no socks, shoes
with one sock -- even a pair of cowboy boots and blue jeans. Whatever
they'd been wearing in bed or in their rooms was what they came out to
fight in. Because every second counts when the lead is flying.
Suppressive fire, they all knew, could save lives.
Fast forward a whopping 4-plus hours later, the first two of which were
full of blistering exchanges of lead and explosives, and there was no
one left in, on, or around that building to continue the fight. Those
bad guys have fought their last fight. Between the Air Force Security
Forces, their friends that spit hot lead, and their friends from the
Afghan security forces (who performed the final clearing of that attack
position to effectively end the battle), the bad guys didn't stand a
chance. Add in the fact that operations center controllers were watching
their every move, helping request close air support, and keeping
everyone on the same page? Forget about it! Game over. And best of all,
back on our side of the fenceline there were no serious injuries
whatsoever. In a 4-hour battle where more than 20 incoming RPGs were
fired. Wow!
Now that you have the cliff notes version of what happened, I'll get to
my main point (finally!). It is simply this. After just two days of
interviewing approximately half (at this point) of the Defenders who
participated in the battle, I am prouder to be in the Air Force than I
ever have been in over 19 years of service! And I hope by sharing a
little of what I learned from them, that you might be too. And if you're
not in uniform, maybe you'll be that much prouder of the folks here who
are.
What I learned was the way they value their training. I heard stories of
many individuals from several bases who performed smoothly as one team
when it counted -- and became family. Most of all, I learned that from
the youngest or newest Airman to the more battle hardened and seasoned
NCOs and officers, there was a treasure trove of intriguing and
impressive perspective within each.
I met an Airman who had a choice, while responding, to go to a tower
that was safely out of range OR one of the two towers closest to the
enemy. His mind told him to stay safe. Self preservation is a heck of a
great instinct, usually. But he went, in a split second decision, to
where the action was hottest. He thought there was no way he should try
to stay safe, when his job was to fight and protect. And so he did!
I also met a guy who "got stuck" going to that tower that was further
away and was upset about it momentarily. But he quickly found a way to
help through spotting and communicating to the ones doing the shooting.
I met an NCO who really didn't much want to talk to me about his role,
not only because he wanted the focus to be on his troops -- but because,
to him, it's just about doing the job. The first time I spoke to him,
he simply said, "I was there." Trust me, he was a whole lot more than
just there. But here's a guy who's been there before, done that, and
earned the T-shirt. Nothing special. (He and I disagree on that last
part, but he can keep the shirt!)
Another Airman couldn't believe the audacity of the enemy to try and
attack us directly, since they have in the past usually "just" lob
mortars from a distance. And rather than being scared (well, just a
little, she later admitted) she said (and I quote!) "I actually was
happy. I knew I was going to get to do what I came into the Air Force to
do!" Now, that may be true. And all of us in uniform signed up on a
contract that included everything up to and including the last full
measure. But running to the sound of the guns, actually HAPPY to fulfill
one's promise to the nation... just two years into her service...
OUT-freakin-STANDING!
Oh, there are more. Trust me. More than I have time or room to write in
this particular note for Talk About It Tuesday. But I will most
certainly be getting the stories out there about the numerous brave and
squared away defenders young (and not so young) who were tested in a
fire usually reserved for special forces, Marines, and Soldiers. They
came out squeaky clean, having proved themselves and validated their
training when it mattered the most. What a story... but more
importantly, what AMAZING folks!
If Security Forces has been underappreciated by some folks in the past
(slow gate entry, a ticket on base, the pass and ID line, etc.!), I
assure you, these Defenders, at this tiny FOB, are Rock Stars right
about now!
And with that, I close this Talk About It Tuesday -- my first -- by
saying that I look forward to continuing to serve and sleep, as a
well-known Colonel in a great movie once said, "under the very blanket
of freedom (they) provide!"
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Shields talks antiterrorism
Commentary by Army Maj. Gen. Michael Shields
U.S. Army Alaska commanding general
7/31/2014 - JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- The protection of our Soldiers, civilian and family members is my greatest concern. The Department of the Army designated August as Antiterrorism Awareness Month.
During this time, the Army promotes its antiterrorism awareness program, iWATCH, which is designed to educate Soldiers, family members and civilians throughout the community about the importance of reporting suspicious activity or behavior to military police or local law enforcement.
I am directing USARAK to focus efforts on the following themes for this year's antiterrorism awareness. This focus will guide commanders and managers on high pay-off tasks that directly support the Army's Antiterrorism Awareness Program:
"If you see something, say something."
To report suspicious activity on JBER, call the Military Police desk at 907 384-0823.
People, training and equipment are the most basic ingredients of mission success. Our people are our most precious resource. I also believe the glue that bonds people, training and equipment together consists of leadership, teamwork and discipline.
U.S. Army Alaska commanding general
7/31/2014 - JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- The protection of our Soldiers, civilian and family members is my greatest concern. The Department of the Army designated August as Antiterrorism Awareness Month.
During this time, the Army promotes its antiterrorism awareness program, iWATCH, which is designed to educate Soldiers, family members and civilians throughout the community about the importance of reporting suspicious activity or behavior to military police or local law enforcement.
I am directing USARAK to focus efforts on the following themes for this year's antiterrorism awareness. This focus will guide commanders and managers on high pay-off tasks that directly support the Army's Antiterrorism Awareness Program:
- Recognize and report suspicious activities - including implementation of Army iWATCH and eGuardian threat reporting.
- Antiterrorism exercises.
- Antiterrorism measures in contracting.
- Reinforce our communities to practice positive operations security.
"If you see something, say something."
To report suspicious activity on JBER, call the Military Police desk at 907 384-0823.
People, training and equipment are the most basic ingredients of mission success. Our people are our most precious resource. I also believe the glue that bonds people, training and equipment together consists of leadership, teamwork and discipline.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
U.S. Continues to Help Iraq in Face of Extremist Threat
By Jim Garamone
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2014 – While Pentagon officials
continue reviewing assessments of the situation in Iraq, operations to aid the
Iraqi government against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant continue,
Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said today.
“This notion that we've done nothing is just false,” Kirby
said during a Pentagon news conference.
The United States has 715 American troops in Iraq defending
U.S. property and citizens and providing security assistance and some advice
through the joint operations centers in Erbil and Baghdad, the admiral noted.
“And, oh, by the way,” he added, we’re still flying an intensified program of intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance flights, manned and unmanned, over the country,
information from which is being shared with Iraqi security forces as
appropriate.”
And Iraq is the benefactor of one of the highest foreign
military sales programs the United States has with any country, Kirby said.
“I take deep issue with this notion that the United States,
and the United States military in particular, is not moving fast enough or
doing enough,” he said.
That said, Kirby told reporters, this is an issue the Iraqi
government must handle. He said the government missed an opportunity in 2011 to
build an inclusive, multi-ethnic government in which all Iraqis feel included.
The military mirrors these failings, he said. In 2011, the
Iraqi military was ready to handle the threats facing it, but the way the
government organized, manned, trained and equipped its army lessened its
effectiveness, the press secretary said.
“We’ve seen some of those units fold under pressure because
of either lack of will or lack of leadership --not all of them -- and we’re
seeing them … continue to stiffen themselves around Baghdad,” he noted.
Iraqi security forces are retaking some territory, and
maintain control, Kirby said. “But ultimately, this is an Iraqi issue to deal with,”
the admiral said. “This is a fight the Iraqi security forces have got to make.
It’s their country. It’s a threat to their people. And we’ve made it clear that
we're willing to work towards helping them, but ultimately, this is … their
fight.”
Monday, July 28, 2014
DoD Official: Global, National Efforts Tackle WMD Threat
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, July 28, 2014 – A panel of experts discussed the
specter of terrorists armed with nuclear, biological, chemical or other weapons
of mass destruction, or WMD, during a July 25 panel discussion at the Aspen
Security Forum in Colorado, examining perhaps one of the world’s most dreaded
national-security threat scenarios.
Among the panelists was Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary
of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, who noted
that materials for bioweapons are widely dispersed.
“We focus in our office on the scene between the traditional
counterproliferation community that looks at five or six countries around the
world with state nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs, and the
counterterrorism community, which looks at people and networks and is very
effective at that,” Weber explained.
“Then there's this thing in the middle … called WMD
terrorism,” he added. “This is when nonstate actors acquire a WMD capability
and use it, and we know they have intent to use it.”
The materials -- what Weber called the supply side for WMD
terrorism around the world -- are available in every country, he said.
Such pathogens are available “not just in those few state
biological weapons laboratories or biodefense laboratories, but in public
health labs and animal health laboratories,” Weber said, adding that the
technologies for turning the materials into weapons of mass destruction are
increasingly available and the information about how to do it also is “out
there.”
With the advent of industrial microbiology, he said, the
ways to turn pathogens into even more dangerous materials is becoming more
accessible and cheaper over time.
“This is why we have to get ahead of it,” Weber added, and
that can be done “by preventing access to the starter cultures.”
In the U.S. experience with anthrax attacks, the assistant
secretary said, the FBI said a defense scientist working alone grew and
weaponized the anthrax. Twenty-two people were infected, and five of them died.
Many more were exposed to the spores.
“He … intentionally chose a primitive delivery means and
wrote a letter saying, ‘You've been exposed to anthrax. Take penicillin.’ And
we put over 10,000 people on antibiotics and saved a lot of lives,” Weber said.
In a 1995 case in Japan, the Aum Shinrikyo cult carried out
two sarin attacks in the Tokyo metro system, one in 1994 and one in 1995. But
the same cult launched multiple anthrax attacks, Weber said.
“Those failed because they had obtained a virulent strain
from a veterinary department of a university in Japan,” he added. “Had they
obtained the right strain, it would have been successful and we would have
known about the attack, because people would have been killed.”
When allied troops when into Afghanistan, the assistant
secretary said, “we found that al-Qaida had an anthrax facility in Kandahar,
but they had not yet obtained the starter culture, so we were able to intervene
in time in that case.”
And over the past several months at the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, employees have been exposed to pathogens
through mishandling of and then exposure to highly pathogenic avian flu, and
last month, live anthrax bacteria.
Also this month, at the National Institutes of Health, Food
and Drug Administration, technicians discovered old vials of pathogens that
included smallpox and flu virus.
“On the issue of biosecurity and the recent lapses, nobody
was harmed, so in a sense, it was a good wake-up call,” Weber said. “But I
agree with [CDC Director Dr.] Tom Frieden that we must reduce the number of
laboratories that have these dangerous pathogens.”
The assistant secretary said he’s been in many such
laboratories worldwide where scientists work on agents that cause anthrax,
plague and other dangerous diseases. “They're public health labs, they're
veterinary labs, and security is not always high on their minds,” he said. “So
we as a global community need to do better.”
Several programs address such biosecurity issues globally,
Weber added.
The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program
consolidates and secures dangerous pathogens around the world, he said, “and
recently I visited the Lugar Center for Public Health in Tblisi, Georgia, that
was built by the Department of Defense in partnership with Georgia.”
In that center, all of the dangerous pathogen collections
from throughout the country had been consolidated into one safe, secure
laboratory in Georgia, “and I think that’s a good model,” Weber said.
But, the assistant secretary added, “we're only as safe and
secure as the weakest link around the world in this area, so we have to build
awareness [and] work across governments. We can't leave this only to health
ministries or agriculture ministries. We have to involve security and law
enforcement institutions.”
To eliminate the need in public and animal health
laboratories to store and use dangerous pathogens and cultures for diagnostic
purposes, Weber explained, “we can replace that with better, faster molecular
diagnostics, like the [polymerase chain reaction] that don’t require culturing.
They can get a good rapid diagnosis without having to culture virus or
bacteria.”
Another important effort is the Global Health Security
Agenda, an international effort to help boost the global capacity to prevent,
detect and respond to disease outbreaks, he said. The program has grown to more
than 40 countries and includes participation by the World Health Organization
and the World Organization for Animal Health.
“The Global Health Security Agenda is a shot in the arm for
this global effort and it will improve the global system for keeping these most
dangerous pathogens out of the hands of terrorists,” Weber said, “because
that's the best way we can prevent bioterrorism from happening.”
In the meantime, there’s work to be done at home, he said.
“The counterterrorism community is very tactical, very
focused on going after terrorists today. The traditional counter-WMD community
is very focused on countries like Iran, Syria and other countries with
programs,” he explained. “In the intel community, we have the National
Counterterrorism Center and the National Counterproliferation Center.”
NCTC has increased the staffing for WMD terrorism, he added,
“but I worry about the connecting-the-dot issue between these two communities,
and we're developing new methods.”
Weber said what’s needed is to map what he calls the WMD
terrorism supply network.
“These are legitimate people, but when a known bad guy from
[the clan-based Somali insurgent and terrorist group] al-Shabaab shows up at a
lab in Entebbe looking for anthrax,” Weber said, “we need a red flag go up.
We're doing a lot to fuse these communities to map the network.”
The assistant secretary took time to applaud the work of
U.S. Special Operations Command in this area.
“They’re taking capabilities developed over the past 12-plus
years of a global counterterrorism effort and applying them to this problem of
weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “And with just a little tweaking,
there's a lot of capability we can bring to this fight.”
Such an effort must be a sustained one, Weber added.
“It really is the national security challenge of the 21st century,”
he said. “And we need to make sure that we never have a situation like the one
where the 911 Commission determined that there was a failure of imagination --
that we didn't connect the dots -- because the stakes are too high.”
Navy Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a
sailor who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Yeshabel Villotcarrasco, 23, of
Parma, Ohio, died as a result of a non-hostile incident June 19 aboard USS
James E. Williams (DDG-95) while the ship was underway in the Red Sea.
For further information related to this release, contact
U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa public affairs office at
011-39-081-568-3223 or after-hours at 011-39-349-009-4773.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a
soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Pfc. Donnell A. Hamilton, Jr., 20, of Kenosha, Wisconsin,
died July 24, at Brooke Army Medical Center, Joint Base San Antonio, Texas,
from an illness sustained in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.
He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment,
2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
For more information, media may contact Fort Hood public
affairs office at 254-287-9993 or 254-449-4023.
Army Casualties
The Department of Defense announced today the death of two
soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
They died July 24, in Mirugol Kalay, Kandahar Province,
Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when the enemy attacked their vehicle with an
improvised explosive device. These soldiers were assigned 1st Battalion, 12th
Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division,
Fort Carson, Colo.
Killed were:
Staff Sgt. Benjamin G. Prange, 30, of Hickman, Neb.; and
Pfc. Keith M. Williams, 19, of Visalia, Calif.
For more information the media may contact the Fort Carson
public affairs office during duty hours at 719-526-4143/7525 or after duty
hours at 719-526-5500.
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