National Defense Briefs
February 4, 2016
By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
NATIONAL DEFENSE BRIEFS is a series produced by National Defense Consultants, LLC, aimed at informing readers with timely military and homeland security news updates, trends, definitions, and short commentaries. Defense issues are inextricably connected to business. In that, LowcountrybizSC.com and National Defense Consultants presents the “National Defense Briefs” that matter.
• A month after ordering the Marine Corps to gender-integrate its legendary recruit training (boot camp), Sec. of the Navy Ray Mabus has rescinded that order. Mabus’ reversal was indeed the right decision (a decision fully grasped by anyone who has ever served in elite infantry or special operations forces), though hardly enough to slow the cultural degradation taking place within the Corps – and all military services – over the previous two years. And the initial order to integrate training was in itself damaging. According to Marine Corps Times, “Male and female Marine recruits are likely to continue training separately at boot camp, but the service will look at ways for further gender integration.”
• Col. Steven B. Vitali, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) – former senior advisor to the 201st Afghan National Army (ANA) Corps – said last month, “The Sec. of the Navy disregards studies, science, and logic in order to use my Marine Corps as a social experiment.” This week, two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Gen. Robert Neller and Gen. Mark Milley – conceded that if all military occupational specialties are being opened to women, then all draft-age females should be required to register for selective service.
• ISIS has declared Iraq and Syria (where its biggest combatant-footprint is at present) to be “’provinces,’ or wilayat, for its self-declared ‘caliphate,'” according to Foreign Policy magazine. The terrorist army has also declared nine other countries – Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Russia – as provinces. FP adds, “That list could grow: U.S. officials and analysts fear the group will soon plant its flag in new locations, including Tunisia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Somalia.” [read http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/02/mapping-the-spread-of-the-isis-plague/]
• As we have reported, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (also ISIS), the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and the Islamic State (IS). Many Arab-speaking people refer to ISIS as Daesh, an acronym for Al Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (the Arabic translation of the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham).
• U.S. Navy SEAL Senior Chief Edward Byers, a member of SEAL Team Six, will receive the Medal of Honor for actions during a raid to rescue an American hostage held in a Taliban compound in Afghanistan in late 2012. The Medal of Honor – often (somewhat erroneously) referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor – is America’s highest military award for combat valor.
• F-15 Eagles flown by California Air National Guard pilots will patrol the airspace above Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara this Sunday.
W. Thomas Smith Jr. – a former U.S. Marine rifleman – is a military analyst and partner with NATIONAL DEFENSE CONSULTANTS, LLC. Visit him at http://uswriter.com.
