NATO Russia Missile Defence Confidence deteriorating -----Defense News

BRUSSELS — NATO has made little progress on missile defense cooperation with Russia, possibly jeopardizing a planned summit in May, said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“Maybe we won’t clarify the situation until a few weeks before the [Chicago] summit,” Rasmussen said Jan. 26 at his monthly press conference.

A summit with Russia is scheduled to take place just before the NATO summit May 20-21.

“If there is no deal, there will probably be no [NATO-Russia] summit,” Rasmussen added.

Asked what he expected to come out of the NATO summit in terms of smart defense, Rasmussen said he hoped NATO would “adopt a political declaration” containing “a political commitment to a number of specific projects.”

It was “premature” to talk about them today, he said, adding that missile defense was “an excellent example of smart defense” with a number of allies providing input, such as hosting radar facilities.

He cited air policing as another example.

“At some stage, we’ll have to decide on a long-term arrangement for air policing in the Baltic countries,” he said. He cited it as a good example “because a number of allies do it on behalf of the Baltic countries so that the Baltic countries can focus on deployable armed forces for international operations.”

In summary, he described smart defense as “a combination of a number of concrete multinational projects and a long-term political vision of how to do business in the future.”

Looking ahead to the Chicago summit, he said, “We must renew our commitment to the vital trans-Atlantic bond” as it is “the best security investment we ever made.”

Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities are an area that NATO is looking into in terms of its smart defense project. According to a NATO official, it is “no coincidence” that NATO officials have been invited to the U.S.’s Schriever space and cyber defense war games in the last week of April, before the Chicago summit.

As to the growing concerns over the Strait of Hormuz, Rasmussen said individual allies are involved in the Iran question but that “NATO as an organization is not.” He urged Iran’s leadership “to live up to its international commitments, including stopping its [uranium] enrichment program and ensuring free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Referring to his 2011 annual report, Rasmussen said NATO had weakened the insurgency, strengthened Afghan forces and brought enemy attacks down by 9 percent; had conducted a “highly effective operation protecting the civilian population” in Libya; and captured 24 pirate ships off Somalia (half the figure for 2010).

Asked about Libya, he said, “NATO is not present in Libya and has no intention to return.”

U.S. Navy rescues third Iranian crew

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy announced Jan. 18 it led a rescue operation to assist the crew of an Iranian fishing vessel in distress in the Gulf of Oman, the third in 10 days in an area marked by tension between Washington and Tehran.

A Seahawk helicopter from the guided-missile destroyer Dewey spotted an Iranian fishing boat sinking early Jan. 18, while two other vessels tried to tow it to safety, according to a Navy press release.

One sailor remained onboard the sinking boat, called the Al Mamsoor, while two other crew members took refuge on the vessels that came to help.

The helicopter stayed overhead while the Dewey joined the rescue operation.

“Once we talked with their captain, it was clear that they needed food and water,” said Navy Lt. Jason Dawson, the leader of the rescue team.

The Al Mamsoor crew had fought flooding for three days before abandoning their vessel, the Navy said.

The rescue team gave the crew about 150 pounds of food, water and other supplies before returning to the Dewey.

On Jan. 7, Navy destroyer rescued 13 Iranian fishermen who were being held hostage by Somali pirates. The guided-missile destroyer Kidd made the rescue after one of the kidnapped fishermen revealed in a radio communication that pirates held his vessel’s crew captive.

The destroyer is one of the U.S. warships the Iranian government has warned to stay out of the Strait of Hormuz, which is used by ships that carry about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

On Jan. 11, the U.S. Navy rescued six Iranian merchant marines from a sinking cargo ship in the Persian Gulf.

Despite Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, Washington has pledged to maintain its warships in the area. The Dewey is a carrier escort ship that Tehran has threatened with reprisals.

The Iranian government threatened to close the Strait in retaliation for economic sanctions by Western nations against Tehran’s suspect nuclear program.

NATO Warship Assists Iranian Vessel

BRUSSELS - A NATO warship went to the rescue this weekend of an Iranian-flagged vessel whose engine broke down just days after its rescue from pirates by another NATO ship, the alliance said Jan. 16.

An Italian ship, the ITS Grecale, offered the five Iranian and nine Pakistani crew food and water and worked through the night to fix the engine, but to no avail, NATO said in a statement.

"The engine was too badly damaged to repair at sea," the statement said.

"NATO offered to transfer the crew to the closest port, but they chose to stay with their vessel," it added. The ITS Grecale "is remaining in the area to monitor the situation, ready to provide further assistance if required."

The ship had been released from suspected Somali pirates on Jan. 7 by a Danish warship, the HDMS Absalon.

That operation came days after a U.S. warship, the USS Carney, intercepted the Indian-flagged dhow Al-Qashmi off the southwestern coast of Oman and freed its 20 Indian crew members.

The weekend assistance comes amid heightened tensions between the international community and Tehran.

Britain Captures 13 Suspected Pirates off Somalia

LONDON - Britain's navy confirmed that it had captured 13 suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia on Jan. 13 in a NATO-led operation with U.S. forces.

Royal Marines boarded a dhow and captured the 13 men on board after they failed to heed warnings issued by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessel Fort Victoria and the USS Carney.

Victoria deployed a Lynx helicopter with Royal Marine snipers who provided further warnings to the suspects, but the dhow refused to stop.

Marines launched from the Victoria in speedboats and captured the craft, discovering a cache of weapons on board.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond called the operation a "clear demonstration of Britain's ability to tackle piracy that threatens our interests."

Separately, 15 Georgian sailors released by Somali pirates after more than a year in captivity returned home Jan. 13 to an emotional welcome from their families.

Russia Vows Review After Villager Finds 79 AK47s

MOSCOW - A villager in provincial Russia has caused a national scandal after finding 79 Kalashnikov assault rifles in crates that he bought to use as firewood, Russian media reported on Jan. 13.

A truck driver was supposed to take the crates for disposal from the factory in the central city of Izhevsk where Kalashnikovs are manufactured, but he thought they were empty and sold them to the unnamed villager.

The man who had hoped to use the wood as fuel for his stove called the police, and an investigation was launched amid concerns about security at the nationally renowned Izhmash arms factory, local police said.

"Probably there are weapons in other boxes as well. We must check how weapons were stored and utilized and whether anything else is missing," a police spokesman said according to news agency ITAR-TASS.

The case caused Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to express exasperation on his Twitter feed.

"A pensioner has found dozens of Kalashnikov rifles. Oh my!" Rogozin wrote.

He said that he would travel to Izhevsk later this month to hold talks at the Izhmash weapons plant.

The Kalashnikov AK47 and its more modern versions are the weapons of choice for dozens of armies and guerrilla groups around the world.

More than 100 million Kalashnikovs have been sold worldwide and they are widely used by fighters in conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

The designer of the AK47, Mikhail Kalashnikov, was given the prestigious 'Hero of Russia' award in 2009, and there is a museum in Izhevsk entirely devoted to his life and work.

Germany Hands Over Anti-Piracy Mission Command

BONN, Germany - Spain is the new lead nation of maritime task force 465 on an anti-piracy mission in the waters around the Horn of Africa. German flotilla Adm. Thomas Jugel handed the command of the European Union's flotilla Atalanta over on Dec. 6 to Spanish Capt. Jorge Manso.

Jugel had been commanding the task force of six ships and eight helicopters from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and France for the past four months.

In a report issued by the German military, he spoke about the decline in the number of successful pirate raids from 50 in 2010 to 20 so far in 2011. According to the German admiral, more and more ships are passing the area registered and preferably in a convoys. In addition, the EU warships in May were granted a more offensive mandate to tackle the situation.

German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière, who visited the troops in Djibouti for the occasion, said he regarded the operation so far as a success. However, he warned that the military mission only fights the symptoms. A final solution requires that constitutional structures be established in Somalia, and the pirate masterminds had to be found and their cash flows cut off, he said.

Just a few days before the change in command, the German parliament voted to extend the country's participation in Atalanta for one more year. In the coming month, the German Navy will take part with about 500 troops, one frigate and a P3-C Orion maritime patrol aircraft. The upper limit of the mandate is 1,400 troops.

EU May Use Brussels HQ for Horn of Africa Ops

BRUSSELS - EU foreign affairs ministers are considering using a civil-military headquarters in Brussels for small-scale operations off the Horn of Africa.

In conclusions to their meeting here Dec. 1, they say they have agreed "to accelerate planning for the activation of an EU Civil-Military Operations Centre for Horn of Africa operations, at the latest by the next Foreign Affairs Council."

The next EU affairs meeting is scheduled for late January. Currently EU operations have their HQs in individual member states.

According to an EU ministers statement, "When the nature of the operation does not require a national HQ, the Council stands ready to activate on an ad-hoc basis the Operations Centre in accordance with its terms of reference for a specific Common and Security Defence Policy [CSDP] Operation."

The decision appears to signal a U-turn in the U.K.'s stance on the issue. Back in the summer, Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign and security policy, proposed an EU HQ for planning and carrying out EU military and civil missions abroad. In July, U.K. Foreign Affairs Minister William Hague said, "the U.K. will block any such move now and in the future."

The EU is currently running two operations in the Horn of Africa - the Atalanta counterpiracy mission and the EU training mission in Somalia. The Brussels' operations center may be used for any new, small-scale contributions to the Horn of Africa, such as building regional maritime capacity, said an official from the EU's Military Staff.

Where the EU has an existing command structure, such as Atalanta at the Northwood HQ in the U.K., an official from the EU Military Staff said "there is no intention of changing a working system on conduct.

"For Atalanta in particular, they are extremely well-placed in Northwood - allowing synergies with the NATO counterpiracy operation - and the scale of the command is far outside of the capacity of the Brussels' operations center," he added.

"We need to help regions [off the Horn of Africa] conduct counterpiracy themselves," Lt. Gen. Ton Van Osch, director-general of the European Union Military Staff, told Defense News in an interview. "A new line of EU action is to help countries develop their own coast guards and navies. Here, the EU military could do the training as part of a civilian mission if the political and security committee decided on a mission."

In the interview, Van Osch gives his views on various issues, including pooling and sharing proposals relating to air-to-air refueling and smart munitions.

On pooling and sharing, ministers recalled "the need to develop cooperation on military capabilities on a longer term and more systematic basis," and stressed the need "to further examine the impact of reduced defense spending on capabilities, including its possible impact on key industrial and technological capacities to be maintained and developed in Europe."

The ministers also encouraged further coordination between the European Defence Agency and the European Commission, "in particular in the field of Research and Technology, in particular regarding the new European Framework Programme for Research and Technology (Horizon 2020)."

They also recalled the commitment of the EU defense chiefs to establish or widen collaborative pooling and sharing projects by mid-2012, urged member states to take on the role of lead nation for concrete projects, and "will assess the progress made in April 2012."

They also stressed "the need to further analyze and address the constraints related to the availability, usability and deployability of existing military capabilities in CSDP operations and missions."

In addition, they bemoaned the fact that, in the first semester of 2012, "only one [EU] battlegroup will be on stand-by" and called for "efforts in order to remedy such shortfalls in the future."

Seychelles Invites China to Set Up Anti-Piracy Base

VICTORIA - The Seychelles invited Beijing to set up a military base on the archipelago to beef up the fight against piracy there, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Paul Adam said.

The declaration came Dec. 2 as Gen. Liang Guanglie is making the first-ever visit by a Chinese defense minister to the Indian Ocean island state.

"We have invited the Chinese government to set up a military presence on Mahe to fight the pirate attacks that the Seychelles face on a regular basis," Adam said.

"For the time being China is studying this possibility because she has economic interests in the region and Beijing is also involved in the fight against piracy," he explained.

Liang, who arrived in Victoria on Dec. 1 with a 40-strongdelegation, had been invited in October by Seychelles President James Michel, when he was on a visit to China.

"Together, we need to increase our surveillance capacity in the Indian Ocean ... as Seychelles has a strategic position between Asia and Africa," Michel said in statement, adding that China had given its army two light aircraft.

The two countries signed a military cooperation agreement in 2004 that has enabled some 50 Seychelles soldiers to be trained in China. They renewed their agreement Dec. 2, with China to provide further training and equipment.

If the Chinese military base goes ahead, "it won't be the first foreign military presence here because the Americans already have a small drone base here that they use in the fight against piracy," Adam said.

After warships started deploying in the Gulf of Aden in 2008 to thwart attacks on vessels, Somali pirates enlarged their field of operations into the Indian Ocean, including towards the Seychelles.

With 115 islands scattered over an area of 540,000 square miles, a population of 85,000 and an army of just 500, the archipelago has been asking for foreign assistance.

Liang flew in from the Ugandan capital Kampala, where, according to Ugandan government sources, he promised $2.3 million in military aid, including support to troops in the African Union force in Somalia.

The Seychelles president also welcomed "Russian support in the fight against piracy" after he met Dec. 2 with Sergey Kryukov, Russia's top foreign ministry official for Africa.

Piracy has flourished off war-torn Somalia, outwitting international efforts - including constant patrols by warships and tough sentencing of the pirates they capture.

Libya Arms Threaten to Infiltrate Africa Conflicts

U.N.ITED NATIONS - Moammar Gadhafi's arms stockpiles could remain a threat long after his death, as some are feared to have been sent to Darfur rebels, al-Qaida in North Africa and other militants further afield.
There is "very serious concern" that weapons, ranging from shoulder-fired missiles to machine guns and ammunition, may have crossed Libya's borders into neighboring countries, U.N. envoy to Libya Ian Martin said.

Assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns were all taken from Gadhafi armories and supply depots by the rebels who ousted him. Much has already passed across Libya's poroU.S. borders, diplomats and experts say.
One western intelligence report has spoken of truckloads of guns passing through Sudan's war-stricken Darfur region en route to groups in the restive South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.
"We cannot exclude the possibility that some weapons have crossed into Darfur from Libya," Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, Sudan's U.N. envoy, told AFP.
Other African states have expressed similar concerns.
"What is sure is that the arms have gone into Chad, Mali and Niger," Mauritania's Foreign Minister Hamadi Ould Hamadi told AFP at the U.N. headquarters in New York.
Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou held talks with the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) leaders about the arms on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month.
Issoufou said the weapons are "spread across the Sahel-Sahara region and could fall into the hands of terrorists."
Gadhafi's son Saadi, three generals and a former security services chief are among 32 associates of the slain dictator who have taken refuge in Niger.
Military chiefs and diplomats from Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and European nations France, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain held their own recent meeting on the arms, a diplomatic source told AFP.
The talks focused on how al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) could get the Libya arms. European governments are worried that the machine guns and missiles could be used on their own territory.
The weapons, particularly shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down aircraft, are a key concern of the U.N. mission in Libya.
"We are doing our best to facilitate the securing of chemical weapons stocks, of nuclear material, of MANPADs and of other ammunition," Martin said, using the military term for the missiles.
"Although the chemical weapons and nuclear material appear to be secure, there is very serious concern that a lot of other weaponry has gone missing and may have already crossed borders. So we are trying to assist efforts to address that within Libya," the U.N. envoy added.
Britain has expressed concern about reports of weapons entering Sudan, and the United States is working with Libya's interim leaders to secure the stockpiles.
"Since the beginning of the crisis, we have been actively engaged with our allies and partners to support Libya's effort to secure all conventional weapons stockpiles including recovery, control and disposal of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles," White House spokesman Jay Carney said recently.
U.S. contractor specialists are working with the new Libyan leadership to secure weapons stockpiles, he added.
But there are estimates that Gadhafi's forces had up to 20,000 MANPAD missiles.
"The fallout from these stockpiles could last for years in Africa," said one African diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity while attending disarmament talks at the United Nations.
"There are far fewer arms in Somalia, but the Islamists are already supplying groups in Yemen, Ethiopia and countries in the region. All around Libya there are groups who will take advantage of Gadhafi's downfall."

Demands to Grow for U.N. Peacekeepers, Says Outgoing Chief

U.N.ITED NATIONS - Growing international instability and economic crisis are placing greater demands on U.N. peacekeeping even as it tries to wind down operations, the outgoing head of the 120,000-strong global force said.
Alain Le Roy highlighted the "overwhelming good" that U.N. peacekeepers have brought to troublespots from Haiti to Ivory Coast, East Timor and Sudan, while also acknowledging some bad and ugly cases.

"I think there will be more instability in the world," he said. "We are not the ones asking for an increased number of troops - never."
Conflicting pressures on the U.N. missions were evident during an interview with Le Roy from the New York office he leaves this week.
On one side of the building was a demonstration by Sudanese calling for U.N. intervention in the troubled state of South Kordofan. On the other, Haitians demanded an end to the U.N. "occupation force" in their impoverished nation.
The United Nations wants to close its operation in East Timor next year and start drawing down forces in Liberia, Ivory Coast and Haiti.
But it has also just started two new missions with 4,200 Ethiopian troops heading for Sudan's troubled Abyei region and 7,000 to go to the new country of South Sudan.
"There are other countries where we might be called," the French diplomat added. Planning is already underway for an observer force for Libya, if a ceasefire is ever agreed.
However "the trend is clearly that European defense budgets are globally decreasing," Le Roy said, so their ability to help in faraway conflict zones will become limited.
The United States also relies on U.N. power.
"Ask President Barack Obama," said Le Roy. "He is very happy because we bring stability to so many countries where he cannot go. If we left the Congo, who else would go there? If we left the Sudan, who would be there to protect the population?"
The U.N. Security Council is adding to the demands with its growing calls for U.N. forces to better protect civilian populations.
"No army force in the world is trained to protect civilians. They are trained to make war, to be warriors. To protect civilians is a very specific task," said Le Roy "The Security Council says in one sentence in its mandate that you have to protect civilians under threat.
"That simple sentence raises a lot of expectations amongst the populations and the countries concerned," he continued.
So the U.N. is pressuring the 120 countries that contribute to the 15 peacekeeping missions around the world to change their training and ethics.
U.N. forces must be more "robust," the Security Council has ordered. That needs numbers, skills and equipment, according to the U.N. under-secretary-general.
That is why attack helicopters were needed in Ivory Coast this year to destroy weapons being used by Laurent Gbagbo, the president who refused to stand down after losing an election.
U.N. forces are also forced to get tougher in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Le Roy said.
Pressure has also mounted for the U.N. to overcome what Le Roy acknowledges were three major peacekeeping failures of the 1990s - at Srebenica in Bosnia, the Rwanda genocide and in Somalia - when troops could not or would not act.
"There were three big tragedies, three failures and since then we have changed tremendously," he said.
"We have reformed a lot to become more professional. It cannot be compared even to how we were five years ago."
Le Roy has had to tell U.N. commanders they must stay at their post on threatened bases, even when they were at risk.
"For me, there cannot be the Srebenica syndrome. This was the case in the Ivory Coast, Sudan. In Darfur, there were times when peacekeepers were threatened," he said.
"If I accept evacuation, the whole credibility of peacekeeping would be lost. Each time I said no. In each case it was not easy."
The U.N. has also had to confront cases of rape by peacekeepers.
According to U.N. figures, alleged attacks have dropped from 127 in 2007 to 84 last year, and Le Roy dismissed the perpetrators as "black sheep."
"Every army in the world has black sheep. We have 84 cases for 120,000 peacekeepers. That is 84 cases too many. But we have improved," Le Roy said, demanding credit for the good work done ending strife in Liberia and East Timor hailed by the countries' leaders.
"Perhaps some people in Haiti would like us to go. But who brought stability to Haiti? It was our operation. Who avoided the chaos after the earthquake? The peacekeepers," Le Roy said. "In Haiti, we declared war on the gangs in Cite Soleil.
"There may be some politicians who say we want to be a sovereign nation, but the populations at risk never say 'we want you to leave.'"

Iran deploys submarines in Red Sea

An Iranian Navy submarine

Iran's Navy submarines have reportedly been deployed in the Red Sea to conduct maritime surveillance operations and also identify warships of other countries.

The military submarines entered the Red Sea waters on Tuesday and are sailing alongside the warships of Iran's Navy 14th fleet, Fars News Agency reported.

The report added that the fleet entered the Gulf of Aden region in May and has now entered the Red Sea in the continuation of its mission.

The deployment of Iranian military submarines in the Red Sea is the first such operation by Iran's Navy in distant waters.

Iran has deployed warships further afield, as far as the Red Sea, to combat Somali pirates.

Rampant piracy off the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia has made the waters among the most dangerous in terms of pirate activities.

The Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, is the quickest route for more than 20,000 vessels traveling annually between Asia, Europe and the Americas.

However, attacks by heavily armed Somali pirates on speedboats have prompted some of the world's largest shipping firms to switch routes from the Suez Canal and reroute cargo vessels around southern Africa, leading to climbing shipping costs.

A Triumph for JSOC

When a U.S. Navy SEAL forced his way into Osama bin Laden's bedroom and put two bullets into the al-Qaida leader, it marked the culmination of a manhunt that stretched back to the 1990s, and a vindication for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
Born from the ashes of Operation Eagle Claw, the disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue 53 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Iran, JSOC is part of three-decade effort to ensure that when the nation called again, the military's most elite units would be up to the task.
In the years that followed, the Defense Department stood up several organizations, filling capability gaps exposed by the failure at Desert One. JSOC was among the first, starting up in December 1980 as a two-star command designed to command and control Delta Force and other elite units in the conduct of counterterrorism missions. It later added operations to counter weapons of mass destruction to its mission profile, with regular exercises aimed at neutralizing the nuclear forces of a country such as Libya. It would ultimately become, arguably, the pre-eminent three-star command in the U.S. military.
The command had some early successes, notably the rescue of American Kurt Muse from Panama's Modelo prison during Operation Just Cause in December 1989.
But it suffered a setback in October 1993 in the Somali capital of Mogadishu when a daylight operation to capture leaders of the Habr Gadir clan was thrown off course by the downing of an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.
In the ensuing battle, the JSOC task force killed hundreds of Somali militiamen, but 19 U.S. troops also died, the vast majority of them members of the task force.
The JSOC commander at the time, and the man who ran the U.S. side of the battle, was Army Maj. Gen. Bill Garrison. The commander of the Delta troops in the battle was William "Jerry" Boykin, a Delta Force officer on the hostage rescue mission who would go on to retire as a three-star general. Boykin called Garrison the leader who began turning JSOC into the formidable force it is today.
"Bill Garrison did a great deal to improve the headquarters by getting beyond a strict focus on just the operator in the Rangers or the SEALs or Delta or anything like that," Boykin said. "He established a strong ethos of 'Everybody's a team and you all contribute to the success or the failure of this organization, so even if you're not in the battlespace, necessarily, your contribution is equal.'"

Turning Point

But JSOC's star truly began to rise when then-Maj. Gen. Stan McChrystal took command in 2003, said one recently retired SEAL officer.
"Look at JSOC from 1980 to 2003, and there was a series of progressions that was on a very similar path … and then look what happened starting in 2003 to today, how radically different it is," the SEAL officer said. "Look at the level of respect it gets in the interagency. Look at the level of respect it gets in the conventional forces."
Before McChrystal, who spent much of his career in the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, "we were really good at what we did [in JSOC], but we were pirates and totally disorganized," the retired SEAL officer said. "McChrystal took the Ranger discipline, applied it systematically to the organization and then completely changed the way the organization works within the government, within the Defense Department and then within the greater interagency."
McChrystal's vision and force of personality molded JSOC, its component units - and, crucially, its partners in the intelligence community - into a force that took its ability to conduct precision raids to an industrial scale.
This allowed creation of multiple task forces across Iraq, who conducted raids nightly to destroy Abu Musab Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq network, and finally killing Zarqawi himself in a June 2006 airstrike.
Under McChrystal, who led the command until 2008, JSOC became a global actor with small elements deployed to many countries outside the combat theaters. In 2006, it was elevated to a three-star command.
McChrystal "came up with a way to command and control his forces so that with a limited number, he could service efforts in truly a global game," said retired Army Capt. Wade Ishimoto, who was on the ground at Desert One as Delta's acting intelligence officer and is now an adjunct faculty member at the Joint Special Operations University at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.
Special operations sources said Vice Adm. Bill McRaven, the SEAL who commands JSOC, has continued to improve the organization.
As the Iraq war winds down, the Afghan campaign has heated up, and JSOC's task forces appear to be returning to the operational tempo of Iraq in 2006 and 2007. It is the main force going up against the Haqqani network, which U.S. commanders consider the most dangerous Afghan insurgent group.
"McRaven's going to get the credit [for the bin Laden mission], and he deserves it because he's continued the legacy," said the recently retired SEAL officer. "But make no mistake, this house was built by Stan."
Ishimoto paid tribute to McRaven, but said that others beyond the past two JSOC leaders played key roles, including Boykin, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush, and McChrystal's intelligence chief at JSOC, now-Maj. Gen. Mike Flynn of the Army.
"We had a good cast of the right people in the right places at the right time to make this kind of progress," Ishimoto said.

The Special Operators

The Obama administration has not identified the units that took part in the mission to kill bin Laden.
But the stealth MH-60 Black Hawks that carried the SEALs to the compound were almost certainly flown by crews from the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), another unit created in the 1980s. The unit went by a series of different names in the 1980s before acquiring the 160th SOAR(A) moniker in 1990.
The SEALs who killed bin Laden, his son and two male couriers - as well as, accidentally, a woman in the compound - came from another unit formed to fill a capability gap identified after Operation Eagle Claw: Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU, popularly known as SEAL Team 6.
"DEVGRU was created specifically as a result of [Eagle Claw]," Boykin said. "It was created to give this new joint command a maritime capability."
Multiple sources in the special operations community said the operators who conducted the bin Laden mission were drawn from DEVGRU's Red Squadron, chosen because it was ready at DEVGRU's Dam Neck, Va., headquarters and available for tasking.
"It was Red Squadron," said the recently retired SEAL officer. "They were not on alert and they weren't deployed."
Each squadron has about 50 operators, "of which they picked about half … for this thing," he added.
The selection of DEVGRU to conduct the bin Laden mission has irked some in Delta, who are miffed that their organization - traditionally considered the pre-eminent special mission unit for direct action operations on land - was overlooked.
"The infighting between the tribes is at an all-time high," said a field-grade Army special operations officer. "People [in Delta] are livid."
Some Delta personnel think that because SEALs command both JSOC and U.S. Special Operations Command - Adm. Eric Olson in the latter case - that was a critical factor behind DEVGRU's selection for the mission, the field-grade Army special operations officer said.
But other sources said a bigger factor was likely the fact that DEVGRU has worked nonstop in the Afghanistan theater since 2001, while Delta spent much of that time focused on Iraq.

Solution for Piracy 'Scourge' Remains Elusive

The international maritime community has worked together on a number of issues to beat back the threat from Somali-based pirates, a U.S. State Department official said March 30, yet the number of attacks continues to rise.
"We are intensely reviewing our anti-piracy efforts," Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary for political-military affairs, told a Washington audience. "We are looking into many possible courses of action."

Shapiro ticked off several areas where the U.S. is searching for new or expanded actions.
"We must get a handle on the prosecution problem," he said. "The United States is now willing to consider pursuing some creative and innovative ways to go beyond ordinary national prosecutions, and enhance our ability to prosecute and incarcerate pirates in a timely and cost-effective manner."
In international forums, the U.S. is suggesting the creation of a "specialized piracy court or chamber" - in one or more regional states -to bring accused pirates to trial, Shapiro said, and is exploring ways "to expand incarceration capacity in the region."
The "lack of prison capacity is perhaps the most common reason nations decline to prosecute," he added, while the idea of a piracy court has been put forward in the Security Council at the United Nations.
A key focus, he said, is "to start targeting the higher financiers who are responsible" for the pirate gangs. "That is something we are going to make a priority."
"There are a lot of lessons to be learned from in the organized crime example that we think are applicable to pirates," Shapiro told a reporter after his address, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "The goal is to move the necessary resources and lessons learned to attack the people who are benefiting from this."
Shapiro noted the effectiveness of privately hired armed guards on board merchant ships in deterring the pirates. "Not a single ship employing armed guards has been successfully pirated," he said.
Ships declining to comply with recommended security measures are particularly at risk, Shapiro said. "About 20 percent of ships off the Horn of Africa are not taking proper security actions. These 20 percent account for the overwhelming number of pirated ships."
Ransom payments encourage pirates to continue their activities, Shapiro said. "We continue to urge against paying ransom," he said, noting it only "makes piracy an increasingly lucrative proposition."

Gates Warns Against Iraq, Afghanistan-Style Wars

WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY, New York - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Feb. 25 against committing the military to big land wars in Asia or the Middle East, saying anyone proposing otherwise "should have his head examined."
Gates offered the blunt advice - hard won after a decade of bitter conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq - in what he said would be his last speech to cadets at the U.S. Army's premier school for training future officers.

"The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq - invading, pacifying, and administering a large third world country - may be low," Gates said.
"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said.
Douglas MacArthur, the World War II hero of the Pacific campaign, made the comment at a meeting with then-president John F. Kennedy in 1961 regarding U.S. military intervention in mainland Asia.
Gates, a former CIA director, replaced Donald Rumsfeld in the defense job in 2006 as Iraq was spiraling into civil war and the U.S. military appeared to be facing a historic failure.
The change in leadership and a new strategy executed by Gen. David Petraeus helped salvage the situation, and U.S. forces now appear on schedule to leave the country at the end of this year.
But nearly 100,000 U.S. troops are still deeply engaged in another difficult conflict in Afghanistan, once again under Petraeus' command, with no exit seen before 2014.
Gates said he was not suggesting that the U.S. Army "will - or should - turn into a Victorian nation-building constabulary designed to chase guerrillas, build schools or sip tea.
"But as the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely, the Army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations," he said.
Future U.S. military interventions abroad will likely take the form of "swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations," which Gates said "is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions."
Gates is set to leave his job this year, and his presentation was a farewell speech to the West Point students.
"We can't know with absolute certainty what the future of warfare will hold," Gates said, "but we do know it will be exceedingly complex, unpredictable, and - as they say in the staff colleges - unstructured."
The United States also has a poor track record at predicting the next conflict, Gates said.
"We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more - we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged," he said.
Gates praised the Army's "ability to learn and adapt," which in recent years "allowed us to pull Iraq back from the brink of chaos in 2007 and, over the past year, to roll back the Taliban from their strongholds in Afghanistan."

Pirates seized record 1,181 hostages in 2010 - report

Somali pirates are now operating further offshore, the IMB says

Pirates took a record 1,181 hostages in 2010, despite increased patrolling of the seas, a maritime watchdog has said.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said 53 ships were hijacked worldwide - 49 of them off Somalia's coast - and eight sailors were killed.
The IMB described as "alarming" the continued increase in hostage-taking incidents - the highest number since the centre began monitoring in 1991.
Overall, there were 445 pirate attacks last year - a 10% rise from 2009.
Last week, a separate study found maritime piracy costs the global economy between $7bn (£4.4bn) and $12bn (£7.6bn) a year.
Measures 'undermined' "These figures for the number of hostages and vessels taken are the highest we have ever seen," said Pottengal Mukundan, the head of the IMB's Piracy Reporting Centre.
In the seas off Somalia, the IMB said, heavily-armed pirates were often overpowering fishing or merchant vessels and then using them as bases for further attacks.
The Somali attacks accounted for 1,016 hostages seized last year. Somali pirates are currently holding 31 ships with more than 700 crew on board.
Although naval patrols - launched in 2009 in the Gulf of Aden - have foiled a number of attacks, Somali pirates are now operating farther offshore.
"All measures taken at sea to limit the activities of the pirates are undermined because of a lack of responsible authority back in Somalia," the IMB said.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991.
However, the IMB noted that in the Gulf of Aden itself incidents more than halved to 53 due to the presence of foreign navies.
Elsewhere, violent attacks increased in the South China Sea and waters off Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nigeria.
Last week, a report by US think-tank One Earth Future said that piracy cost the international community up to $12bn each year.
The study calculated the amount from the costs of ransom, security equipment and the impact on trade.
It said the majority of costs came from piracy off Somalia.