Tag: US military

It should be no surprise that Saudi Arabia is the country paying the most for U.S. military personnel to work for them:

Foreign governments have long advanced their interests in Washington by paying Americans as lobbyists, lawyers, political consultants, think tank analysts and public relations advisers. But the hiring of retired U.S. military personnel for their expertise and political clout has accelerated over the past decade as oil-rich gulf monarchies have splurged on defense spending and strengthened their security partnerships with the Pentagon.

Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.

To shed light on the matter, The Post sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After a two-year legal battle, The Post obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents, including case files for about 450 retired soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

Washington Post

You can read more at the link, but the article did not mention any retired military officials working with South Korea or Japan. It appears to all be governments from the Middle East, Turkey, and Russia. The fact that Korea and Japan has USFK and USFJ probably means they don’t need to hire outside experts like these other countries are doing.

The U.S. is using a standing play from its North Korean provocation playbook by sailing in a U.S. aircraft carrier into the East Sea. This time they are doing it shortly after it already completed an exercise there:

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is redeploying to South Korea’s eastern coast less than a week after it concluded trilateral naval drills with South Korean and Japanese warships.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff in a press release Wednesday said the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group would be entering international waters in the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on the same day due to “highly unusual” timing of North Korea’s activities.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The Pentagon’s independent commission has released what the names of Army bases named after Confederate generals will now be:

The Army will now have bases named after women and African Americans if Congress and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approve the recommendations offered Tuesday by an independent commission assigned to make the selections. 

Congress mandated last year that an appointed Naming Commission come up with potential new names for nine Army installations that now honor Confederate generals from the Civil War. 

The nine bases are all in former Confederate states and were named during the 1910s and 1940s amid the South’s Jim Crow era.

Stars & Stripes

Here is what the new names are:

— Fort Bragg, N.C., to Fort Liberty

— Fort Polk, La., to Fort Johnson after Sgt. William Henry Johnson

— Fort Benning, Ga., to Fort Moore for Lt. Gen. Hal and Julia Moore

— Fort Gordon, Ga., to Fort Eisenhower for former President Dwight Eisenhower

— Fort A.P. Hill, Va., to Fort Walker after Dr. Mary Walker

— Fort Hood, Texas, to Fort Cavazos after Gen. Richard Cavazos

— Fort Pickett, Va., to Fort Barfoot for Tech. Sgt. Van T. Barfoot

— Fort Rucker, Ala., to Fort Novosel after Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael J. Novosel, Sr

— Fort Lee, Va., to Fort Gregg-Adams after Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams

It will definitely take some time to get used to these new names, but after a decade most people will likely forget what the old names were. My favorites on this list are probably Fort Moore and Fort Eisenhower. Both are definitely worthy of a base named after them. Fort Johnson is another good one because any other military hero is better than having a base named after Polk who was an extremely poor leader during the Civil War.

As I have long said, when DOD instituted the Blended Retirement System a few years ago, it was the first step to eventually doing away with the fixed military retirement system. This latest report will be used to further justify moving military retirement totally to a Thrift Savings Plan model:

Military leaders will need to make some difficult choices on pay and benefits in coming years if they want to maintain funding needed to keep up force readiness and end strength, a panel of defense experts said on Tuesday.

“We need to focus [military] benefits on those currently serving, but the problem is most of the benefits now have shifted to those no longer serving,” said Arnold Punaro, former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“There are 2.4 million retirees [receiving benefits] compared to 1.3 million active -duty troops getting them … The deferred piece of military spending has to be dealt with.”

Purnaro’s comments came at a roundtable event on military challenges organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Other panelists echoed his concerns about personnel costs continuing to rise within the Defense Department even as the services’ end strengths have declined. Earlier this fall, CSIS released a report noting that the number of active-duty troops fell by more than 64 percent from 1952 to 2016, but total DOD personnel spending rose by 110 percent over the same period.

Army Times

You can read more at the link.

Does anyone think it is a coincidence that with the drawdowns in Iraq an Afghanistan that the CSIS is advocating for cutting troop benefits to pay for more equipment from the defense contractors that lavishly donate to CSIS?:

To counter ever-rising personnel costs in the ranks, defense officials should consider radical changes to troops’ compensation packages like replacing annual pay raises with more targeted bonuses and mandating 25 years of service for full retirement benefits, according to a new budget analysis released this week.

“While today’s U.S. military is near its smallest size since the end of World War II in terms of active duty end strength, personnel costs are at a historic high,” wrote Seamus Daniels, associate director for Defense Budget Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Military Times

You can read more at the link.

The video made by a Marine Lieutenant Colonel criticizing U.S. military generals over their failures in Afghanistan went viral over the weekend. Lt. Col. Scheller has now resigned his commission. I wonder if he has political ambitions?:

The Marine officer who filmed a viral video calling out senior military and civilian leaders for failures in Afghanistan resigned his commission “effective immediately” in a new 10-minute video Sunday threatening to “bring the whole [expletive] system down.”

Lt. Col. Stu Scheller was dismissed Friday from command of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C., over the original video. In the new one, he claims he is not currently under investigation and that he likely would be allowed to ride out his remaining three years until retirement if he chose to stay silent.

“I don’t think that’s the path I’m on,” he says in the video, shot inside an “abandoned school bus” in eastern North Carolina. “I’m resigning my commission as a United States Marine, effective now … [and] I am forfeiting my retirement, all entitlements. I don’t want a single dollar.”

He suggests that senior military generals would need the roughly $2 million he’d expect to receive in retirement and his other benefits more than he would once he’s through with them.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It sounds like this guy should be doing something else other than working for the Pentagon:

The headline hardly stood out on the website of the hyper-nationalistic Chinese newspaper.

“Why US will lose a war with China over Taiwan island,” announced the April 27 op-ed in the Global Times, which also referred to Taiwan’s democratically elected leaders as “renegade secessionists” and called U.S. Congress interest “corrupt.”

What was unusual about the article was its author.

Franz Gayl isn’t just an American. He is a celebrated whistleblower — whose conduct was praised by then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. — and a retired Marine major working at the Pentagon.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The anti-religion group MRFF has found another cause to attack the military with:

A religious freedom and diversity group is demanding that a naval air station in Japan remove a Bible from a POW-MIA table on base. 

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter Friday to Naval Air Facility Atsugi’s commander, Capt. John Montagnet, after receiving 15 complaints about the table from personnel at the installation, group founder Michael Weinstein told Stars and Stripes in a phone call Monday. (…..)

Over the past five years, the MRFF’s petitions resulted in the removal of Bibles from POW-MIA tables at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; four Veterans’ Administration offices in Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio; and an allergy clinic at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but if someone wants their religion represented on the table I am sure no one would have a problem with another book added to the table. I wonder if this group’s ultimate goal is to go after military chaplains and try to get them removed?

Anyway if any is wondering why the MRFF’s founder Michael Weinstein is so adamant about attacking the military all you have to do is follow the money.

Thanks to a ROK Head tip for this article about how the accuser of President Trump’s nominee as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has made prior unsubstantiated claims to advance her career:

Hyten, who leads the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), was nominated in April by President Donald Trump to be vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The nomination was delayed by an investigation of the claims but was approved last week in the Senate Armed Services Committee by a vote of 20-7. The entire Senate will vote on the nomination in the weeks to come.

The Air Force investigation found no merit to the dozens of unsubstantiated claims made by Col. Kathryn Spletstoser in the last couple of years, as well as a history of unsubstantiated claims levied against supervisors. Colleagues of Spletstoser say she had anger issues, bullied subordinates, and had an incredibly foul mouth. They say she’s lying. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who has vocally opposed Hyten “given the disturbing allegations” against him, did not show up to the Senate Executive Session in which the Air Force investigation findings were confidentially revealed and discussed.

Spletstoser levied dozens of allegations against several supervisors following the loss of her job in 2018, but she had made unsubstantiated allegations previously as well. For instance, two years after a good, but not great, performance review in 2007 that she believed had kept her from being selected for battalion command, Spletstoser appealed and claimed the man who gave her the review had sexually harassed her throughout her tour of duty in Iraq.

The Federalist

You can read more about the unsubstantiated allegations she has made in the past to advance in her career. Of course the usual liberal suspects were out promoting her story and trashing General Hyten’s reputation. However, this is what is really disturbing is that COL Spletstoser claims that during one of the assault that General Hyten ejaculated on her yoga pants. However, DNA testing found no evidence it was General Hyten’s DNA:

While the reputation-damaging details were salacious, the Air Force had already investigated the claim and found it completely lacking. The U.S. Army Criminal Identification Laboratory tested the pants Spletstoser had provided. She said she was wearing the pants during the incident and the stain on the outside was Hyten’s semen.

However, testing excluded Hyten as a source of the DNA material detected on the pants. However, Spletstoser was one of the contributors to the DNA material on the pants. These facts didn’t make it into the New York Times report.

The journalism malpractice by the New York Times is not surprising, but I have to wonder if Spletstoser can be charged with planting evidence?

This is like the Brett Kavanaugh situation all over again. However, since the Vice Chairman position does not have the political consequences compared to a Supreme Court judge, I don’t expect the usual suspects to go all out and destroy General Hyten like they did Kavanaugh. That means he will likely get confirmed by the full Senate, but people that make false claims should be held accountable because of the reputations they destroy and most importantly how it creates suspicion of legitimate claims.

This only makes sense that the U.S. should start deploying ballistic missiles when the North Koreans, Russians, and Chinese are doing the same thing:

With the new Pentagon chief’s signal that Washington plans to consult with its allies on the placement of intermediate-range missiles in Asia, Seoul is again put in a difficult position, concerned that its relations with Beijing and Pyongyang could be complicated if South Korea is chosen as the deployment site.  

However, the Korean Ministry of National Defense said on Monday that it has not yet held any official discussions with the United States on the placement of intermediate-range missiles in Korea, nor is it considering such deployment at the moment.  

Ahead of a visit to Seoul this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper was asked by reporters Saturday if the Pentagon was considering deploying ground-based intermediate-range missiles in Asia, to which he responded, “Yes. I would like to. But let’s be clear, I’m talking about conventional weapons.”  

Washington was previously unable to pursue ground-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers because of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, an arms control pact with Russia dating back to 1987, which the United States withdrew from last Friday.  

“Right now, we don’t have plans to build nuclear-tipped INF-range weapons,” said Esper. As to the timeline, he said, “I would prefer months … But these things tend to take longer than you expect.”  

The move is expected to prompt protests by Russia, China and North Korea, and analysts fear the start of a new arms race. Experts have pointed out that the first U.S. intermediate missile deployments are likely to counter China, rather than Russia.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I would be surprised if South Korea is chosen as a location unless the peace talks with North Korea collapse and lead to another provocation cycle. Deploying ballistic missiles to South Korea would be a great deterrent option to execute in response to a future provocation cycle.