National Defense Briefs – November 11, 2013

By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
November 11, 2013

Part-four of the series, NATIONAL DEFENSE BRIEFS. Each week we are bringing to readers of LowcountryBizSC.com updates aimed at informing all with timely military and homeland-security news briefs, trends, definitions, and short commentaries. Defense issues are inextricably connected to business. In that, we present the National Defense Briefs that matter.

•    We begin this week’s NATIONAL DEFENSE BRIEFS remembering, honoring, and asking for God’s blessings and favor upon those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – whether deployed, stateside, active, Reserve, retired, or former – this Veterans’ Day, Nov. 11, 2013 (also recognizing that Nov. 10 was the 238th birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps). Though war is the corruption – in the extreme – of international relations; the American soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine has proven time-and-again to be the incorruptible pillar of the great American experiment. This is exampled by what we’ve all witnessed as regards the American military’s immediate and overwhelming response to aid the victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. No nation in the history of the world has ever produced such a capable and willing force for good.

•    Testifying before subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives, Oct. 29, Lisa Curtis – senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation – said, The global terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan remains a core U.S. national security concern as a multitude of different extremist groups with varying degrees of ties to Al Qaeda operate in and from Pakistan. While the U.S. has made progress … Failing to make additional progress in rooting out terrorism from Pakistan could set the stage for future attacks on the U.S. homeland. Perhaps the strongest argument for continuing to pursue some level of engagement with Pakistan, despite its lack of cooperation against some terrorist groups, is to help it avoid facing the nightmare scenario of its nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.

•    Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP] is considered by the U.S. to be the most dangerous offshoot of the terror organization in the world, reports FOX News. Experts contend AQAP is the most dangerous AQ offshoot to North America based on attempted attacks in the U.S. by AQAP terrorists. This, despite both Yemeni security forces having disrupted AQAP operations in – and having overrun – AQAP’s southern Yemen strongholds in the summer of 2012, and several U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes against AQAP targets since Aug. 2013.

•    The newly established Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) held its first panel-presentation, Sept. 16, at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Led by Roger Aronoff, editor of Accuracy in Media, the group includes Adm. James Ace Lyons, U.S. Navy (Ret.); Gen. Tom McInerney, U.S. Air Force (Ret.); Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, U.S. Army (Ret.); Lt. Col. Allen West, U.S. Army (Ret.), several retired U.S. Marine Corps and Navy SEAL officers, and retired and former CIA officers Wayne Simmons, Kevin Shipp, and Clare Lopez.

•    The mission of the CCB is to investigate and shed light on the truth of what happened in Benghazi (Libya), Sept. 11, 2012. This investigation, according to Lopez, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, Includes inquiry into the security failures that led to that attack, the failure to attempt a military rescue – even though it is known that Special Forces were in Tripoli at the time but were ordered not to go to Benghazi – and the attempted cover-up that deliberately sought to obscure the role of al-Qa’eda jihadis in the attack.

•    U.S. Navy Captain James A. Kirk (no relation to the fictional Capt. James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise) has been tapped to skipper the new USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), the Navy’s new space-age-looking (yes, pun intended) destroyer slated for delivery in 2014. The Zumwalt will be the Navy’s largest destroyer and is designed for littoral operations and land attack. According to BusinessInsider, The similarities between the two end at the name. … [James] T.’s was for exploration and humanitarian missions, [James] A.’s primarily for combat and area denial. The Zumwalt stands as the tip of the spear in Naval offensive operations. Its technology allows it to mitigate minefields, target submarines, and assault shores with a barrage of low altitude radar-evading missiles, [Naval] guns, and one day maybe even a magnetic railgun.

 

– W. Thomas Smith Jr. is a military analyst and partner with
NATIONAL DEFENSE CONSULTANTS, LLC. Visit him at http://uswriter.com.