U.S. Air Force – Career Detail – Pararescue

https://www.airforce.com/careers/detail/pararescue

David Goggings Motivation

 

Coronavirus,is it a bioweapon?

Is been a long time since i posted something on this blog,and i was surprised to see that i still get views on it. I hope that you found some useful information on here. As you probably already know,the world is facing a pandemic on a scale unseen in the last 100 years. Covid-19 is a new type of virus that belongs to the coronaviruses family and has caused the death  of 159747 people at the time of writing. There has been some speculations that this is a virus made in a lab and somehow it got loose and started to infect people.  When early reports of what would later become known as COVID-19 spread through the city of Wuhan in late 2019, a shared trait among many of the first patients was that they had been to the Huanan seafood market, a live animal market theorized to be the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak. Wuhan — a city of over 11 million — also has at least two infectious-disease research labs. One, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is apparently less than a mile from the Huanan market. The other, the State Key Laboratory of Virology (sometimes referred to as the Wuhan Institute of Virology), is a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory certified to handle the world’s most deadly pathogens. This higher security lab is located about 7 miles from the Huanan market.

While the higher security lab in Wuhan has worked with coronaviruses, it does not appear that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention — the one close to the market — had published any research on the topic prior to the pandemic. Both labs, however, have studied viral samples sourced from bats. Virology research work often involves bats, a proposed source of the novel coronavirus’ transfer from animal to human, because they harbor a uniquely large reservoir of viruses compared to other mammals. Research on coronaviruses is an important focus of China’s scientific efforts ever since the 2002 SARS epidemic, which was also caused by a coronavirus.

The proximity of these labs to the Huanan seafood market and these labs’ history with at least tangentially related infectious disease research are the only factual elements to the “created-in-a-lab” theory that are undisputed, rather than speculative or rooted in false scientific claims. For example, it is factual to state that the Chinese government hid, downplayed, and misrepresented to its citizens and the world the threat posed by the novel coronavirus. It is speculative, however, to assert, as U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton did, that these actions were done to cover up a leak from a lab.

Several evidentiary gaps exist between the observation of virology labs close or somewhat close to a market where early COVID-19 cases were identified and the conclusion that the Chinese government is covering up for the fact that they accidentally released an engineered viral agent from one of these labs. In conspiracy theory circles, these gaps have been filled with extremely flawed or bogus science, the incorrect interpretation of existing science, or both. Not only do these arguments — discussed in detail below — lack merit on their own, factual scientific studies concerning the origin of SARS-CoV-2 actually provide the strongest refutation to date of the claim the virus was “created in a lab.”

Did a ‘Scientific Study’ Conclude the Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab?

A February 2020 document erroneously described by several media outlets as a “scientific study” provides the supposedly science-based evidence of a virus escaping from a lab.

This paper, such as it is, merely highlights the close distance between the seafood market and the labs and falsely claimed to have identified instances in which viral agents had escaped from Wuhan biological laboratories in the past. With those two elements, half of them factual, the authors come to the sweeping conclusion that “somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,” and “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” While SARS viruses have escaped from a Beijing lab on at least four occasions, no such event has been documented in Wuhan.

The purported instances of pathogens leaking from Wuhan laboratories, according to this “study,” came from a Chinese news report (that we believe, based on the similarity of the research described and people involved, to be reproduced here) that profiled a Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention researcher named Tian Junhua. In 2012 and 2013, he captured and sampled nearly 10,000 bats in an effort to decode the evolutionary history of the hantavirus. In two instances, this researcher properly self-quarantined either after being bitten or urinated on by a potentially infected bat, he told reporters. These events, according to the 2013 study his research produced, occurred in the field and have nothing to do with either lab’s ability to contain infective agents. The paper also asserts without evidence that infectious waste was merely tossed out of the lab closer to the market as regular trash.

In sum, this paper — which was first posted on and later deleted from the academic social networking website ResearchGate — adds nothing but misinformation to the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus and is not a real scientific study.

Does the Novel Coronavirus Contain HIV-Related Genes?

Another line of pseudoscientific reasoning concerns claims that the virus is just too perfectly built to infect humans to be a virus of natural origin. A big talking point in this space stems from a paper that was later retracted by the authors themselves. On Feb. 2, a team of Indian researchers released a non-peer-reviewed preprint of a paper asserting to have found “uncanny” similarities between amino acid structures in SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. “The finding,” they argued, “is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature,” seemingly implying a level of human engineering behind the virus.

The paper was swiftly retracted by the authors, according to STAT News, with commenters noting the study’s rushed methods and likely coincidental, if not entirely incorrect, conclusion. A Feb. 14 paper, this one peer-reviewed, “demonstrated no evidence that the sequences of these four inserts are HIV-1 specific or the [SARS-CoV-2] viruses obtain these insertions from HIV-1.”

Speaking to Snopes by email, Robert Garry, an infectious disease expert at Tulane University who has published on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, told us by email that “the so-called HIV sequences are very short — nothing more than random chance.”

Such a reality has not stopped pseudoscientific internet personalities from incorporating these already discredited results into misinformed conspiracy theories while pushing vaccine skeptical content.

Is SARS-CoV-2 A ‘Chimera’ Virus Built from HIV, Flu, and SARS?

On March 8, 2020, (and again on March 22) — well after the aforementioned HIV paper was retracted and refuted — Joseph Mercola, an alternative medicine guru behind the website Mercola.com, published an “expert interview” with Francis Boyle, a lawyer with no formal training in virology. This interview managed to merge all of the previously described false scientific claims into one narrative that has been shared widely online. In that interview, Boyle asserted:

The COVID-19 virus is a chimera. It includes SARS, an already weaponized coronavirus, along with HIV genetic material and possibly flu virus.

There is this Biosafety Level 4 facility there in Wuhan. It’s the first in China, and it was specifically set up to deal with the coronavirus and SARS. SARS is basically a weaponized version of the coronavirus.

There have been leaks before of SARS out of this facility, and indeed the only reason for these BSL-4 facilities, based on my experience, is the research, development, testing and stockpiling of offensive biological weapons.

Boyle’s knowledge, he stated explicitly in this interview, does not come from having worked for the U.S. government, from having any sort of security clearance, or from having “access to any type of secret information.” It is unclear, then, what experience he is basing the false claim that “the only reason for these BSL-4 facilities …  is the research, development, testing and stockpiling of offensive biological weapons.”

“The purpose of the BSL-4 labs,” Garry told us, “is to design the countermeasures (diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines) to these pathogens.” He added that he knows “many American scientists that collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” and that it “does not have any offensive bioweapons development capability.” In response to the weapon stockpile claim, North Carolina State University epidemiology Professor Matt Koci told us “the idea that level 4 labs are only for weaponizing pathogens [and] that people go and find diseases then weaponize them … makes no sense.”

The remaining assertions appear to have their roots in the two previously debunked claims from above: No, Wuhan’s labs do not have documented cases of accidental SARS releases. No, HIV sequences are not a feature of SARS-CoV-2. Garry told us that “SARS-CoV-2 may well prove to be a recombinant virus” — i.e., one that has viral components sourced from viruses originating in multiple animals — “but this occurred in nature, not in the lab.” It is not, as has been suggested, some sort of creation built by mixing the most extreme parts of known human viruses together. “There is no evidence to support that claim,” Koci told us.

With those bogus scientific claims stripped away, we are left with the same circumstantial evidence present at the top of the story: A virology lab (which does not appear to have worked on coronaviruses) exists in close proximity to the proposed origin of the outbreak, and another, higher-security lab that has worked on coronaviruses is located miles away from the market.

Could science, alternatively, help to rule out the possibility SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab? Indeed, the actual peer-reviewed research on the deadly adaptations present in the virus are also the strongest argument yet against the notion that it has been engineered.

Scientific Reality: Genomic Data Undercut Claims of an Engineered Virus

Viruses, in general, are tiny fragments of DNA or RNA coated with protein that insert themselves into an organism’s cells. Once there, the virus consumes a cell’s resources and makes copies of itself. The cell dies and the newly created viral material is free to infect other cells. Though viruses do evolve via natural selection like living organisms, their inability to create their own energy through metabolism generally precludes them from being considered alive.

Coronaviruses are a class of “enveloped” RNA viruses. They protect themselves with an outer envelope of lipid material. Coronaviruses, in particular, have spikes that point out of this envelope of protection, a feature that can aid in the infection of cells.

Until the early 2000s, there was limited scientific interest in human coronaviruses, as they only seemed capable of creating mild cold symptoms. The 2002 SARS epidemic, caused by a coronavirus, flipped that conventional wisdom on its head. This particular coronavirus had a new adaptation: the ability for those pointy spikes to bind to a chemical in human blood called Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2). This adaptation, scientists argue, is what allowed the SARS coronavirus to jump from an animal to a human and cause disease.

The new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, also contains this adaptation, but an even stronger variant of it. As described by Ed Yong in The Atlantic, “the exact contours of SARS-CoV-2’s spikes allow it to stick far more strongly to ACE2 than SARS-classic did.” The novel coronavirus also has another adaptation that makes it good at infecting humans. Spike proteins are composed of two halves and activate only when a chemical “bridge” is broken. In SARS-CoV-2, Yong wrote, “the bridge that connects the two halves can be easily cut by an enzyme called furin, which is made by human cells and — crucially — is found across many tissues.” Not only do these spikes bind strongly to human cells, in other words, but the chemical required to initially activate those spikes happen to be prevalent throughout the human body.

These two adaptations are the features of the coronavirus that cause speculation about it being engineered to kill. The problem, according to a team of researchers who analyzed the genome of SARS-CoV-2 for a March 2020 paper in Nature Medicine, is that if someone wanted to design a virus using methods currently available to science, scientists would not have solved the problem the way nature apparently did, because scientists wouldn’t have predicted it to be a viable solution in the first place.

Over a decade of research following the first SARS outbreak has allowed scientists to develop computer models that predict, among other things, what human chemicals a theoretical coronavirus could bind to and how strong that bond would be. When researchers plug the new coronavirus into these models, they correctly predict it binds to ACE2, but incorrectly conclude it to be a weaker bond than SARS-1. In other words, if scientists wanted to create a deadly coronavirus as a weapon, the tools available to them would have suggested the SARS-CoV-2 model would be a waste of time. This, the study’s authors argue, is evidence that the spike adaptation is “most likely the result of natural selection.”

To that point, while the most similar known animal virus to SARS-CoV-2 is currently found in bats, similar coronaviruses also have been found in pangolins — a kind of anteater. While less similar as a whole, these pangolin viruses have similar spike genetics to the novel human coronavirus. This, they say, is further evidence of natural selection. “The pangolin viruses were sequenced after the COVID pandemic started,” explains Tulane’s Garry, who was an author on the Nature Medicine paper. “So yeah — this is a natural thing that no one in a lab would have or could [have] designed.” Such a reality undercuts claims of “chimera” viruses intentionally spliced together by humans, since humans didn’t know these specific spikes existed until after the pandemic began.

As for the second notable SARS-CoV-2 adaptation — the one that allows a chemical in human blood to activate the coronavirus spikes — this specific modification has not yet been found in nature. However, the authors noted, genetic “mutations, insertions, and deletions” do naturally occur in the portion of RNA that would create it. This, they argue, demonstrates that such an adaptation could, theoretically, “arise by a natural evolutionary process.”

In a commentary piece about this study, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote “this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19.” Though researchers do not yet have a clear idea of the exact origin or evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2, the authors of the Nature Medicine paper provide two potential scenarios, described here by Collins:

In the first scenario, as the new coronavirus evolved in its natural hosts, possibly bats or pangolins, its spike proteins mutated to bind to molecules similar in structure to the human ACE2 protein, thereby enabling it to infect human cells. This scenario seems to fit other recent outbreaks of coronavirus-caused disease in humans, such as SARS, which arose from cat-like civets; and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which arose from camels.

The second scenario is that the new coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing human disease. Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human-to-human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease.

Researchers do not yet know enough about the new coronavirus to determine which of those two scenarios is more likely, but scientists do know enough to conclude it to be extremely unlikely to have been engineered in a lab for any purpose, including bioweaponry.

 

US to send more troops to Middle East as Iran vows ‘retaliation’ after killing of top general

Tehran vowed to “retaliate” over a US airstrike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani. At least 3,000 more US troops will be deployed to the Middle East after the killing of a top Iranian commander.

• US forces have killed the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the deputy leader of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilization Units.
• Days earlier US President Donald Trump warned that Iran would “pay a very big price” after Shiite militia supporters stormed the US Embassy in Baghdad.
• Iranian officials have vowed retribution for Friday’s attack.
• The United States has urged its citizens to leave Iraq “immediately,” and the Netherlands has said the same for Dutch nationals. France urged its citizens in neighboring Iran to stay away from public gatherings while Germany advised its nationals not to make video or audio recordings of demonstrations as it may be interpreted as espionage.
• Both Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said Qassem Soleimani was planning to carry out more attacks on innocent victims.
• Some 3,000 US troops are being sent to the Middle East as a “precautionary” measure.
• In a telephone call with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sergey Lavrov said Washington’s actions against Soleimani violate international law and should be condemned. The foreign minister added that the Iranian general’s killing could have “severe consequences for the peace of stability in the region and doesn’t help resolve complicated problems in the Middle East.”

  The US is planning to deploy at least 3,000 additional troops to the Middle East after Iran’s promise of revenge

  00:17 Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi has told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that his country reserves a right to self-defense under international law after the US strike on Soleimani.

  The diplomat wrote in letters sent to the Security Council and Guterres that the killing “by any measure, is an obvious example of State terrorism and, as a criminal act, constitutes a gross violation of the fundamental principles of international law, including, in particular, those stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations.”

  He said the Security Council must “uphold its responsibilities and condemn this unlawful criminal act.”

  Read more: Iran’s military power: What you need to know

  00:04 Saudi Arabia, Iran’s top rival in the region, has stressed “the importance of self-restraint to ward off all acts that may lead to aggravating the situation with unbearable consequences.”

  In a statement, the Foreign Ministry called on the international community “to ensure the stability of such a vital region to the entire world.”

  23:56 Iraqi state TV is reporting that a new US airstrike has hit an Iran-back militia north of Baghdad. It did not name the group or provide details about any casualties.

  An army source cited by Reuters said strikes targeting vehicles carrying members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces — an umbrella grouping of Shiite militias supported by Tehran — had killed six people and critically wounded three others.

  23:42 White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien has told a press briefing that any Iranian retaliation in response to the killing of Qassem Soleimani would be a “very poor decision.”

  Speaking to reporters, he said the commander had been traveling around the Middle East planning attacks against American military personnel and diplomats when he was targeted in Friday’s strike. The adviser added that the Trump administration planned to give classified briefings to US lawmakers in the coming week.

• Read More: https://www.dw.com/en/us-to-send-more-troops-to-middle-east-as-iran-vows-retaliation-after-killing-of-top-general-as-it-happened/a-51874503

United States vs Iran

In terms of military comparison there is no doubt that United States has the most powerful army in the world.

After President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, many have been questioning how the country would fare up against the strongest military in the world. As Iran mourns the general’s death, officials from both countries have exchanged stark warnings, putting military forces and allies from both countries on high alert on Friday. According to Global Fire Power, a military ranking website, the US is ranked as having the world’s strongest military, while Iran falls behind in 14th place out of 137 countries considered in the annual review. However, Iran’s strong network of regional proxies and allies pose a great threat to US targets and are expected to play a major role in rising tensions between the two nations. The US president said he ordered the airstrike on Baghdad International Airport because Soleimani, 62, was ‘plotting to kill’ Americans residing in the country. Mr Trump accused Iran’s second most powerful commander of being responsible for a series of proxy wars across the Middle East, including ‘orchestrated’ militia attacks on US-coalition bases in Iraq.

He was also thought to have approved violent demonstrations at the American embassy in Baghdad earlier this week. Iran has already made it clear that the US will suffer severe consequences for the attack, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami threatening American troops in the Middle East. He warned it is ‘time to clear the region from these insidious beasts’, adding: ‘I am telling Americans, especially Trump, we will take a revenge that will change their daylight into a nighttime darkness.’ Iran suffers major military disadvantages in comparison to the US, having been forced to rely on domestic production of weaponry as it has been under a US arms embargo and UN arms restriction since 2006. However, its strength lies in its network of proxy forces led by the Quds Force, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – a branch of the country’s Armed Forces founded after the Iranian Revolution in 1979

Iran has an estimated 523,000 active personnel in the army, navy, air force and the IRGC. But with a population of more than 83,000,000 the country, it has the ability to draw on more manpower if necessary (47,324,105). Their defence budget comes in at $6.3 billion (£4.8 billion), which falls well behind the US’s $716 billion (£547.6 billion) Its land power consists of 8,577 combat tanks, rocket projectors, self-propelled artillery, armored fighting vehicles and towed artillery. Air power, including all air crafts and helicopters, stands at 512 assets, while it possesses 398 ships, submarines and mine warfare. The country currently has 12 operational missiles, which are mostly short-range and medium-range, while a number are in development, according to Missile Threat. However, a US Defense Department report says Iran’s missile forces are the largest in the Middle East.

A breakdown of the US’s military power The US is widely accepted as having the world’s strongest military. Its powers are considerably stronger than Iran’s with 1,281,900 active personnel and an extra 144,872,845 in available manpower. It has a staggering $716 billion (£547.6 billion) defence budget and although it has less missiles than Iran (seven) they are far more advanced, including the Trident D-5 and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), according to Missile Threat. It is understood that the US and Russia possess more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads and the two nations have almost equal numbers. The nation also has the largest air and naval force – the latter measured by tonnage – in the world. It boasts 48,422 combat tanks, rocket projectors, self-propelled artillery, armored fighting vehicles and towed artillery. In air power the US currently has 10,170 assets, and 415 in naval forces.

 

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/03/irans-military-compare-us-11997168/?ito=cbshare

 

 

UK CTSFO

In 2012 Scotland Yard has created an SAS-style unit of armed officers to counter the threat of a terrorist gun attack in Britain.

The 130 counter-terrorism specialist firearms officers (CTSFOs) who make up the elite unit have been equipped with new weapons and retrained in new tactics, such as fast-roping from helicopters and storming burning buildings to rescue hostages.

The unit has trained alongside the army’s special forces to respond to assaults such as the 2008 attacks in Mumbai and the 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi, which developed into a siege.

To become a CTSFO the applicant must already be an Authorised Firearms
Officer (AFO) and be trained to the College of Policing ARV Role Profile.
Eligibility for selection beyond being an ARV officer may have regional
variations but within the MPS a candidate will have been recommended by
their supervisors, undertake an two day assessment of existing
tactical/policing skills and meet shooting and physical testing standards. If the
candidate is successful at this stage they will placed on the CTSFO courses
where they will hone existing and learn new tactics to begin their transition to
their new operational role.

The numbers of CTSFOs are on the rise and their training makes them more capable of dealing with the sort of scenarios that were previously the sole domain of military special forces such as the SAS. Indeed, if a similar scenario to the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege happened today in London, it is probable that it would be SC&O19 CTSFOs who would intervene.

CTSFOs from police services around the country are linked together in a national CTSFO network. This organisation of interopable CTSFO teams has been established in order to provide a national-level counter terrorism response.

Ctsfo units have been trained to use the following weapons

Pistol – Glock 17

The 9mm Glock self-loading pistol is a proven, reliable and accurate handgun. It has a 17-round magazine and incorporates a trigger safety mechanism that negates the need for an external safety selector. It is the standard sidearm for all SCO19 Authorised Firearms Officers (AFO).

A SCO19 CTSFO takes aim with a Glock 17 self-loading pistol during a security drill ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.

photo by POA(Phot) Terry Seward © UK MOD / Crown Copyright 2012
used under open government licence

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MP5 Carbine

The Heckler and Koch (H&K) MP5 is ubiquitous amongst armed police units around the world. It is ergonomic, accurate and reliable. The MP5 is generally designated as a submachine gun (SMG) but in UK Police usage it is always referred to as a carbine. Unlike the versions used by the SAS/SBS, all MP5s used by British police are single fire / semi-automatic only (although rumours persist that SCO19 has access to fully-automatic MP5s). Hollow-point rounds are used to prevent over-penetration i.e. rounds passing through a target or wall and hitting a bystander. It is common for SCO19 MP5s to be augmented with torches attached to the fore grip.

The variants used by SCO19 include the MP5SFA3 (retractable stock) and MP5SFA2 (fixed stock). Pictures of SCO19 at the Stockwell shootings in July 2005, showed several officers brandishing MP5ks, a cut-down MP5 that can be carried concealed beneath clothing. There are also rumours that SCO19 has a number of semi-auto MP5SDs – the MP5 variant with an integral suppressor.

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H&K G36 Carbine

The 5.56×45 mm bullets fired by the G36 have more range and stopping power than the 9x19mm rounds in the Glock pistol or MP5 smg. They also stand a better chance of penetrating into a vehicle and so are often carried in ARVs for just such contingencies. As with their MP5s, SCO19 G36s are fitted with single-fire trigger groups. SCO19 have been pictured with both the G36K carbine and the even shorter G36C variant. It is understood that SCO19 will be phasing out the G36 in favour of the Sig 516 and MCX carbines (see below).

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Sig Sauer SG516

The Sig Sauer SG516 is a semi-automatic 5.56mm x 45mm gas-piston-operated rifle reportedly used by some ARV, TST and CTSFO units. Recent pictures of SCO19 SG 516s weilded by CTSFOs have shown the CQB variant, which features a 10 inch barrel. Variants with longer barrels (up to 18 inches) may be used by Rifle Officers.

Sig Sauer SG516 ‘Patrol’ variant

image by wikimedia commons user Rizuan | used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License

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MCX Carbine

Made by Sig Sauer, the MCX is a carbine chambered 5.56x45mm NATO. SCO19 officers have been spotted with MXC carbines featuring a 11.5 inch barrel, telescoping stock and red dot sight.

Sig Sauer MCX carbine.

more info: SCO19 Spotted With MCX Carbine
(Elite UK Forces report)

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H&K G3 Rifle

One more step up, in terms of firepower, from the G36 and SG 516, the 7.62x51mm HK G3 was a favourite weapon of the SAS and 14 Int in Northern Ireland. SCO19 employ a single-fire variant, the G3K, as a sniper and assault rifle. The G3K features a telescopic stock, folding bipod and 322mm barrel When used by SCO19 Rifle Officers in the marksman role, the telescopic stock is replaced by an ergonomic stock from a PSG1 and a Schmidt & Bender Flashdot scope is used.

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Shotgun – Benelli M3 Super 90

Loaded with 12-guage buck-shot or special tear gas or breaching rounds, the Beneill is a versatile weapon. The Benelli performs a similar role for SCO19 that the Remington 870 does for the SAS.

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X26 Taser

When non-lethal force is required, the X26 taser fires 2 short probes, on the ends of wires, into the suspect’s clothing or skin. High voltage electric impulses incapacitate the target by disrupting their central nervous system. The X26 has an effective range of 10 meters.

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HK69 Baton Gun

Since late 2002, SCO19 officers have been equipped with this ‘less lethal’ weapon. The HK is a 40mm riot gun that fires a plastic baton designed to stun and incapacitate a suspect, allowing for their arrest in cicumstances where more lethal weapons would otherwise have been required. The HK69 is aimed via red-dot sight and has an effective range of 25 meters.

 

Joe Rogan-Edward Snowden podcast

Pat Mac Range Theatrics!

21st Century Soldiers.

Most European countries face a similar security dilemma. The forces they have and which they maintain at considerable cost are not suitable to meet many of the threats that Europe faces today and is likely to face for the foreseeable future. This is a dilemma for both NATO members and Partner countries, which therefore have an interest in resolving it together.

Kosovo has brought the issue to a head. Although Europe has more than two million soldiers and fewer than two per cent of them are deployed in the Balkans, the peacekeeping operations have placed an enormous strain on national military systems. Despite high defence spending, Europe lacks certain basic military capabilities and cannot effectively deploy forces out of area without US support. Something is clearly wrong.

Media analysis of Europes security deficiencies has focused almost exclusively on the need to buy high-tech equipment to match US capabilities, or on the need for European intelligence gathering, a corps headquarters, improved command, control and communications, and large transport aircraft. But the situation is more complex. To understand the military requirements of the 21st century, it is important to examine the nature of the threat in Europe, and ways in which that threat can be met.

Though the possibility of a regional war remains, as in the Balkans, mass invasion and total war have ceased to be a threat to East or West. Instead, most threats to national security in Europe today are non-military. They may evolve out of economic problems, ethnic hostility, or insecure and inefficient borders, which allow illegal migration and smuggling. Or they may be related to organised crime and corruption, both of which have an international dimension and undermine the healthy development of democracy and the market economy. Moreover, the proliferation of military or dual technology, including weapons of mass destruction chemical and biological as well as nuclear and their means of delivery, and the revolution in information technology present special challenges.

Whereas ten years ago, national security was chiefly measured in military might, today that is only one of several units of measurement and, for most countries, one of the least immediate. Most of the above threats call not for a traditional military response but require investment in interior ministries, border and customs forces, and crisis management facilities. But as investment in internal security increases, the pressure on defence budgets becomes even greater. It can in some cases, therefore, be counter-productive to urge countries to spend more on soldiers, if what they really need is police, both for their own security and to contribute to international security operations.

Experience demonstrates that when soldiers are called on to meet a security challenge nowadays they have to be able to do more than merely fight. The peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo have shown that, in addition to the ability to fight, soldiers require a range of skills to fulfil a wide spectrum of stressful and demanding roles, from diplomat through policeman and arbitrator to first-aid worker, hospital manager and city administrator.

Two more points can be added. The first is that todays soldiers are likely to have to operate outside their home countries. The second is that new chal-lenges are likely to arise which are today unforeseen. Tomorrows armies will therefore require a much broader range of competence than their predecessors. Soldiers will have to be more flexible, better trained and better educated, and forces will have to be capable of rapid, decisive, and sustained deployment abroad. This requires changes in security thinking and it implies changes in overall security investment.

Changes in thinking are already underway. The realisation of the need to deploy European forces beyond the borders that they are committed to defend, without excessive dependence on US support, has spurred the development of the European Security and Defence Identity. This programme, which seeks to improve European military capabilities, is not just an issue of new equipment, new command, control and communication structures or logistics mechanisms. It is also a question of the skills and abilities of the soldiers, sailors and airmen themselves.

Examination of the state of Europes armed and security forces reveals a mismatch. At the end of the Cold War, most European countries had relatively large conscription-based armed forces designed to defend national territory. Neutral countries, such as Finland and Switzerland, had to maintain large force structures capable of independent operation to make their defence credible. NATO members, secure under the US nuclear umbrella, could afford to spend less and maintain smaller armies, and still have credible defence. Nevertheless, despite a growing tendency towards military and industrial integration and multinational military structures, each NATO member has largely maintained its own national chains of command, national procurement systems and balanced forces organised on national lines. This has meant that there has never been the economy of scale possible in a large national system, such as the United States, or in a system with a fully integrated and standardised structure, such as that which the Soviet Union enforced upon the Warsaw Pact.

In the past decade, most European countries have reduced their budgets and force structures considerably. But many have yet to change fundamentally their structure. Instead of large conscript armies for national defence, they now have smaller conscript armies. Moreover, for a combination of political and financial reasons, these armies have reduced capabilities. Conscription periods have been shortened. Equipment has not been upgraded. Munitions stocks have been allowed to fall. Training has been cut back. The armed forces of NATOs European members have become dependent on US force-multiplier technology.

Since the probability of conflict was deemed low, and deterrence depended on a visible political and military stance, it was more important for NATOs European members to maintain a show of military power, than to develop real combat performance. This resulted in procurement policies that emphasised force structure rather than capability. For example, it was more important to buy an aircraft than the systems that would make it effective. Rapid technological developments plus institutional pressures reinforced the logic of this process.

Three issues have, in particular, affected the countries of central and eastern Europe since 1990. Firstly, they have retained an excessively large administrative, command and military education structure, eating up a disproportionately large share of the defence budget. Secondly, these countries have lacked an effective, modern and transparent personnel system, retaining instead a version of what they had in Warsaw Pact times. This constitutes probably the single greatest institutional obstacle to reform as, without such a system, there is no mechanism for evaluating, rewarding, promoting or posting to key jobs those qualified to drive change and implement new plans.

Thirdly, these countries suffer from a lack of national governmental capacity for defence policy formulation, defence planning, and crisis management. This is because, as members of the Warsaw Pact or constituent elements of the Soviet Union, they were unable to develop national control over their armed forces. Such expertise takes many years to develop. Most countries in central and eastern Europe therefore need a fundamental change in their military cultures, if they are to build forces suitable for fulfilling the kind of tasks which, as Kosovo demonstrates, European security is likely to require in the next decade.

Many of the new military functions do not require classical soldiering skills, but could be better done by police. In some circumstances, therefore, a gendarmerie might be more appropriate than an army. Certainly, in Kosovo today the shortage is of this kind of police. When more soldiers are needed, it is communications and engineering troops or psychological operations officers, rather than infantry or artillery. Soldiers will always be needed, but not all those needed in such operations will be soldiers. It is clearly best to avoid overloading soldiers with civilian functions. Yet it is also clear that these functions and structures have to be ready for almost simultaneous deployment with the military in peacekeeping operations.

Many analysts, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, believe that a professional army is the solution to the security demands of the 21st century. This may be true for large, rich countries, particularly if they are separated from any possible enemy by water. But for small countries, and particularly for poorer countries, this poses serious problems of cost. This in turn means that countries capable of fielding large conscript armies might only be able to afford very small, well-equipped regular forces. Three factors contribute to the very high cost of regular forces, namely personnel, equipment and sustainability.

Personnel: Conscript soldiers are relatively cheap. They endure a low standard of living and need little by way of support, being unaccompanied by a wife or children. Moreover, they are always available for service, since they get little leave. Regular soldiers, by contrast, must be paid at competitive rates, provided with adequate housing and associated infrastructure for their families, lest they leave the army for better conditions elsewhere. Regular soldiers require reasonable leave periods and will be detached for training courses and the like during ser-vice, which will reduce availability.

The experience of the United States and the United Kingdom, which both have professional armies, shows a high turnover of regular soldiers. Moreover, most regular professional militaries employ individual rotation and replacement, that is, deploying soldiers on an individual basis. This is disruptive since personnel turnover is continuous and often exceeds 50 per cent per year. It also reduces small-unit cohesion and therefore compromises readiness. It is difficult to form units for an extended operation from personnel all of whom must have over nine months left before reassignment. By comparison many conscription-based militaries use unit rotation and replacement. This generates inter-changeable cohesive teams, platoons and companies. And it increases small-unit cohesion, resulting in relatively high readiness, once units are formed and trained.

Conscripts can therefore be good soldiers, if well trained and instructed. But while it is relatively easy to drill specific skills into conscripts, it is more difficult to train them to deal with a variety of situations, requiring a wide range of skills with the result that they are rarely versatile. Reservists, on the other hand, can bring support skills from civilian life. Their biggest shortcoming is maintaining combat skills. Afurther problem arises if force structures are reduced but remain conscript-based. Either the conscription term must be reduced or conscription must become selective. The former reduces effectiveness; the latter is socially divisive. The time is ripe to seek an alternative form of service, blending the advantages of both.

Equipment: For the past 30 years, as weapons and equipment have improved, their cost has risen much faster than inflation. Consequently, as forces modernise, if they retain the same size of force structure, the cost of equipment procurement as a percentage of the overall budget will double in real terms approximately every 18 years. If the percentage of GDP allocated to defence is constant, and if GDP does not grow annually in real terms by a considerable amount, then the costs of procurement will lead inevitably to a reduction in the size of the force structure. It is this, more than anything, which drives countries to conduct defence reviews. The politician who promises that leaner will be meaner and smaller equals better is in fact making virtue out of necessity.

Sustainability: To sustain modern armies on operations, experience shows that land forces require at least three times the manpower of the actual battalions making up the force structure deployed. Deploying 60,000 troops will, therefore, require a total operational force of some 200,000. In addition, an equal number is needed to staff the infrastructure to support the whole. Creating a modern regular army, therefore, requires at least five or six people for every one deployed in the field.

As forces need to become more flexible, versatile, and capable of being sustained abroad, their cost will increase and the size of force that can be afforded will decline. Indeed, the cost of maintaining such forces, which are likely to have to be used either for peacekeeping or regional wars, may prove greater than the cost of maintaining conscript forces during the Cold War.

It is possible to save money by careful defence spending. Countries often incur extra cost for political reasons, building their own aircraft instead of buying a cheaper foreign one, for example. However, the scope for such saving is limited. In the end, modern armies are expensive, and regular armies are much more expensive than conscript ones. All this presents the smaller countries of Europe with a particularly acute problem. If cost forces their armies to be reduced, they will rapidly reach a point when they cannot maintain high-tech forces because of the disproportionate cost on a small scale. They will likewise not be able to maintain balanced armies capable of all the functions required of a national defence force. The smaller the national force, the greater the proportion of the budget taken by the defence ministry and headquarter infrastructure.

Unwittingly, the desire of some countries to join NATO is adding to this problem. The demands of providing competent forces to NATO-led operations such as Kosovo push a nation towards developing small competent forces. However, these forces are so expensive that, to afford them, the country may have to switch scarce resources away from a force structure geared for national defence. The preparations for joining NATO may therefore reduce a countrys independent defence capability. In the absence of any guarantee of eventual membership, such a policy inevitably represents a gamble.

Some analysts argue that the armies of central and eastern Europe need a strong, reliable and competent cadre of non-commissioned officers (NCOs). In prac-tice, however, this is not easy to create. Armies reflect the social structure of their societies. France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, for example, have a strong tradition of middle management the factory foreman, the independent farmer, the shop manager, the small businessman. In civilian life these people have the independence, initiative and education to accept responsibility, which is carried into military service. Since this section of society is weak in central and eastern Europe because of the communist heritage, the material for the Western-style NCO is not necessarily available.

Over time, it should, nevertheless, be possible to develop this section of command. After all, both the British and German armies today base their NCO structure on training and education within the armed forces themselves. But this will have to be accompanied by a cultural evolution, so that the command structure is prepared to delegate authority down to the NCO level. Agood example to study here would be the Bundeswehr redefinition of East German Army officers posts as senior NCO posts.

The way in which governments assess the forces they need to meet the risks they face is problematic in central and eastern Europe since, in the communist system, such assessments were beyond their remit. Key decisions were usually taken in Moscow and relayed by the Party with the result that governmental expertise in this area was minimal. Moreover, even in the Soviet Union, civilians had so little knowledge of military matters that in effect the military decided everything. There was no real civilian governmental control of defence policy, and no civilian governmental capability in defence planning.

The consequences can be seen today in Russias new National Security Concept. This is a list of all possible threats prepared by each ministry or agency linked with security issues. It is a collegiate review of facts, but there is no prioritisation and no analysis of risk versus probability, with the result that it is of little use as a policy-planning document. Producing the kind of analysis necessary to make informed decisions requires an information system, which can draw on the widest possible range of sources, both open and secret. Western intelligence services do this well. But in many central and eastern European countries, the intelligence services still reflect the heritage of closed societies. Open information, a system to evaluate it, and politicians and civil servants educated to understand it, are essential today to enable intelligence to be used properly. It is not clear how long it will take many of the new democracies to develop this particular attribute of modern society.

The problems of defence reform for all European countries today are both great and urgent. For the countries of central and eastern Europe, with a Warsaw Pact or Soviet heritage, they are extreme, and the smaller the country, the more difficult they are to resolve. Indeed, so acute is the problem that the need to address more attention to it must be recognised at once.

Although there are no ready answers, the way forward will likely require increased transparency in defence planning and a joint approach. For most countries, difficult decisions will have to be made and issues which have to date been taboo, such as role specialisation for smaller countries that is dividing military tasks between countries will have to be considered. A partial solution might be regionalisation, with several countries pooling their militaries and each specialising in particular areas. The Benelux example could serve as a precedent. Whatever the strategies, the idea of security through alliance is the only sensible approach and all international institutions with a stake in these issues, NATO, the European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have an interest in collaboration

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How Navy SEALs Are Returning To Their Roots To Take On Russia And China

Editor’s Note: This article by Patricia Kime originally appeared on Military.com, a leading source of news for the military and veteran community.

Having spent 17 years conducting counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East, the Naval Special Warfare community is shifting its focus to threats from China, Russia, and aspiring adversaries.

Navy operations planners are including Navy SEALs in all aspects of planning and training, such as war games, exercises and tabletop scenarios, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran told reporters Jan. 16 at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference.

The shift began in 2013 when Rear Adm. Brian Losey, then-commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, began making “a concerted effort to talk to his teams about getting back to the ‘blue side,’ ” Moran said, referring to the Navy’s large fighting forces of ships, submarines, and aircraft.

That focus has continued since Losey retired in 2016, Moran added.

“[Losey] saw the ‘great power competition,’ he saw the threats of an emerging Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran,” Moran said. [SEALs] have a very specific and important role to play in all situations.”

Since the U.S. insertion into Afghanistan in 2001, special operations forces, including the SEALs, have focused on a specific selection of their skill sets, including small-scale strikes and offensive actions, counterinsurgency, hostage rescue, counterterrorism and countering weapons of mass destruction.

But these forces have other expertise that is relevant to both large-scale military conflicts as well as the type of posturing and competing for regional and global dominance that currently is happening, according to a 2017 report by David Broyles and Brody Blankenship, analysts at CNA, an Arlington, Virginia-based think tank that concentrates on the U.S. Navy.

Those skills include preparing an environment for operations, reconnaissance, unconventional operations, military information support operations and foreign humanitarian assistance, according to the report, The Role of Special Operations Forces in Global Competition.

“Special operations forces have a greater role to play in today’s global competition through a counteractive approach to adversary maneuvers,” Broyles and Blankenship wrote. “The United States has only recently recognized that adversaries are exploiting the U.S. view of ‘preparing for future war’ vice ‘competing in the here and now.’ ”

Moran agreed that Navy SEALs have a unique talent set that the “blue side” had largely forgotten.

“We’ve grown used to not having them in a lot of situations. … Wow, there are some great capabilities here that can set the conditions in the world for the kind of operations we are going to need in every single one of our campaigns,” he said.

A draft environmental assessment published by the Navy on Nov. 8 indicated that the SEALs are planning to increase training in Hawaii, asking to increase the number of exercises from the 110 events allowed now on non-federally owned land to as many as 330 training events on non-federal land or waterways and 265 training events on federal property.

The proposed training also would expand the area for conducting exercises to include Kauai, Lanai, Maui and Molokai, in addition to Oahu and Hawaii.

The training, in a location relatively near to and similar in climate to the South China Sea, where China continues to assert its dominance, is necessary to enhance the Navy Special Warfare Command’s traditional skill sets, including diving and swimming; operating with submersibles and unmanned aircraft systems; insertion and extraction; reconnaissance and parachuting; and rope suspension training activities, according to the report.

Moran said the SEALs’ return to their roots will bolster lethality of the Navy as a whole.

“As much as it’s their chance to re-blue, it’s our chance to reconnect from the blue side,” he said. “That will continue to grow, I think.”

This article originally appeared on Military.com