Category: US Military

It will be interesting to see how this plays out:

President Donald Trump, who repeatedly insisted during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border, is privately pushing the U.S. military to fund construction of his signature project.

Trump has told advisers that he was spurned in a large spending bill last week when lawmakers appropriated only $1.6 billion for the border wall. He has suggested to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and congressional leaders that the Pentagon could fund the sprawling project, citing a “national security” risk.

After floating the notion to several advisers last week, Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that the military should pay for the wall, according to three people familiar with the meeting last Wednesday in the White House residence. Ryan offered little reaction to the idea, these people said, but senior Capitol Hill officials later said it was an unlikely prospect.

Trump’s pursuit of defense dollars to finance the U.S.-Mexico border wall underscores his determination to fulfill a campaign promise and build the barrier despite resistance in the Republican-led Congress. The administration’s last-minute negotiations with lawmakers to secure billions more for the wall failed, and Trump grudgingly signed the spending bill Friday after a short-lived veto threat.  [Chicago Tribune]

You can read more at the link.

Here is what the PACOM commander says Kim Jong-un will do if the US military pulls out of Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would do a “victory dance” if the United States pulled its troops from South Korea, a top U.S. military commander said Thursday.

Adm. Harry Harris, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, was offering his assessment of how Kim would respond in the event the U.S. succumbed to the North’s longstanding demand to remove its 28,000 troops from the South.  [Yonhap]

I think it depends on the context of the pull out.  If the US unilaterally pulls out of the US-ROK alliance due to a split with the South Korean government, Kim Jong-un would of course do a “victory dance”.

However, if the US pulls out after an intrusive international inspection program verifies the end of their nuclear program, reduction in forces along the DMZ, elimination of ICBMs, and other measures then he likely would not.  We will see what the upcoming talks lead.  It should be another interesting year for those of us who follow events on the Korean peninsula.

As is often the case, in an effort to save money increased costs were pushed on to servicemembers and their families:

The Defense Commissary Agency has saved tens of millions of dollars shipping produce to the Pacific since 2015. However, a recent inspector general report says the agency failed to provide effective oversight of its new contracts, leaving customers paying significantly more for fresh fruits and vegetables.

In the past, DeCA subsidized contractors’ produce shipments to commissaries in Japan and South Korea, costing the agency about $114.6 million from 2013 to 2015, the IG report said. When contracts were renegotiated in 2015, DeCA stopped paying for shipping, instead aiming to purchase more locally grown produce and having suppliers foot those costs.

Since then, DeCA has saved about $38 million per year.

After the deal was made, prices for fresh produce climbed at Pacific commissaries, according to the report. Between November 2015 and April 2017, customers in mainland Japan paid 20.9 percent more for produce. Over the same period, Okinawa customers saw an increase of 23.6 percent while those in South Korea paid 31.5 percent more.

The report’s findings were based on a review of prices for 239 unique fresh produce items in mainland Japan, 237 on Okinawa and 231 in South Korea.

The 2015 contract’s aim was to keep the quality and cost of produce on base comparable to what they were before the contract, but the IG report says those expectations were not met. It blamed DeCA for the price hike, saying the agency’s “market research did not adequately evaluate the feasibility of obtaining fresh produce items from in-country for DeCA commissaries in the Pacific theater.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Maybe this is an example of a scale down of the exercise from an aircraft carrier to an amphibious assault ship?:

The U.S. military plans to send a key amphibious assault ship, used for a detachment of F-35B vertical landing stealth fighter jets, to a combined exercise with South Korea in April, a defense source here said Monday.

The allies’ Marines are scheduled to start the Ssangyong (double dragon) exercise here early next month in connection with the Foal Eagle training. They have yet to announce an exact schedule.

Among U.S. assets to take part in the Ssangyong drill are the USS Wasp, the Navy’s 40,500-ton multipurpose amphibious assault ship.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

There is a reason why Fitbits are not allowed in sensitive US military facilities and it appears they should not be used at secret US bases either:

An interactive map posted on the internet that shows the whereabouts of people who use fitness devices such as Fitbit also reveals highly sensitive information about the location and activities of troops at U.S. military bases, in what appears to be a major security oversight.

The Global Heat Map, published by the GPS tracking company Strava, uses satellite information to map the location and movements of subscribers to the company’s fitness service over a two-year period, by illuminating areas of activity.

Strava says it has 27 million users around the world, including people who own widely available fitness devices such as Fitbit, Jawbone and Vitofit, as well as people who directly subscribe to its mobile phone application. The map is not live — rather it shows a pattern of accumulated activity between 2015 and September last year.

Most parts of the United States and Europe, where millions of people use some form of fitness tracker, show up on the map as a blaze of light, because there is so much activity.

In war zones and deserts such as Iraq and Syria, the heat map becomes almost entirely dark — except for a few scattered pinpricks of activity. Zooming in on those brings into focus the locations and outlines of known U.S. military bases, as well as of other unknown and potentially sensitive sites — presumably because U.S. troops and other personnel are using fitness trackers as they move around.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but in most cases using a Fitbit to run around Yongsan Garrison is not going to provide valuable intelligence information.  However, if there is a bunch of Fitbit activity noticeable in an isolated area of Africa for example, it may be a tip off there is a secret US military base there.  That is what is driving the concern.

U.S. moves ships, bombers toward Korea ahead of Winter Olympics https://t.co/PNbRj1vJLj

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) January 15, 2018

Chanel A says Red Cloud was seen in last week of December & when this program aired on Jan 3rd, was apparently still there. This is supposedly the picture taken of Red Cloud while docked in Busan. That's Busan alright: that bridge is Busandaegyo Bridge that connects to Youngdogu. pic.twitter.com/tF5so6JM13

— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) January 7, 2018

After reading this article I was surprised to learn that these companies that use your DNA to trace your ancestry release this information to outside groups for their own initiatives:

At 68, retired Army Capt. Walter Rettberg thought he was done having children. Then he decided to trace his family tree with a DNA-testing kit and found Matthew.

Matthew Suh was a baby in South Korea when he was adopted nearly 40 years ago by an American couple. He grew up longing to find his biological mother but never thought about searching for his father because it seemed an impossible task.

All he knew was that his father had been an American soldier serving in South Korea.

Enter 325 Kamra, a U.S. nonprofit that’s building a DNA database to help South Korean adoptees find their birth parents, including U.S. military veterans.

In many cases, troops rotating through the country didn’t know the women they had sex with became pregnant, so the group is offering free DNA kits to all vets and their descendants.

“So many of them have been stationed here for a long time,” said Maria Savage, director of the group’s South Korea operation that launched this year. “So if they remember any encounters that they had then that’s enough for us.”

The DNA will help even if the vets didn’t father children, because it might lead to another relative who did, she said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

I never thought I would see the face of Gregory McQueen gracing the pages of the Stars & Stripes ever again after his conviction for trying to be a pimp at Ft. Hood, but I was wrong:

On paper, Gregory McQueen must have seemed like a great candidate to become a foster-care parent in Texas.

A married man and Army veteran, McQueen had served as battalion representative on a task force to prevent sexual harassment at Fort Hood in central Texas.

But some important information didn’t show up in a state background check before a foster-care agency hired McQueen and his wife last March to care for abused and neglected children

Two years ago, former Army 1st Sgt. McQueen pleaded guilty to more than a dozen military charges for attempting to run a prostitution ring in Fort Hood. As part of the plea deal he was demoted to private, sentenced to 24 months in prison, was stripped of his retirement pay and received a dishonorable discharge.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I would hope the Defense Department is aggressively pursuing the updating of national databases because clearly people like McQueen should not be a foster parent.  With that said what kind of background checks are being done when a simple Google search would have exposed McQueen’s background that was highly publicized?

Here is the latest silver bullet people are thinking may solve the North Korean ballistic missile problem:

The U.S. has microwave weapons that proponents believe could stop North Korea from launching missiles by frying their electronics.

The weapons were discussed at an August White House meeting related to North Korea, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge.

The microwave weapons, known as CHAMPs, are fitted into an air-launched cruise missile and delivered from B-52 bombers. With a range of 700 miles, they can fly into enemy airspace at low altitude and emit sharp pulses of microwave energy to disable electronic systems.

“These high-powered microwave signals are very effective at disrupting and possibly disabling electronic circuits,” said Mary Lou Robinson, who heads development of the weapons at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, in an exclusive interview with NBC News.  [NBC News]

You can read more at the link, but I recommend everyone not get excited and think a magic solution to stopping North Korea’s ballistic missiles has been found.