US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

delft said:

The Senate wants to give the executive the right to declare a US citizen an enemy combatant, deprive him of his citizenship and lock him up for the rest of his life without due process. This is clearly contrary to the letter as well as the spirit of the US Constitution. If Iran were to do something similar the US would scream bloody murder for depriving someone of his human rights.

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Reading from the proposed law]
(b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under this section is any person as follows:

(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.

(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

...and they then follow that up with this:

(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

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Iran says it downed unmanned U.S. spy plane

By Ali Akbar Dareini - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Dec 4, 2011 10:57:53 EST

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s armed forces have shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along the country’s eastern border, the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday.

An unidentified military official quoted in the report warned of a strong and crushing response to any violations of the country’s airspace by American drone aircraft.

“An advanced RQ-170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran’s armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran’s armed forces,” IRNA quoted the official as saying.

No further details were published.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said in a statement the aircraft may be an American drone that its operators lost contact with last week while it was flying a mission over neighboring western Afghanistan.

Iran is locked in a dispute with the U.S. and its allies over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran denies the accusations, saying its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that it seeks to generate electricity and produce isotopes to treat medical patients.

The type of aircraft Iran says it downed, an RQ-170 Sentinel, is made by Lockheed Martin and was reportedly used to keep watch on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan as the raid that killed him was taking place earlier this year.

The surveillance aircraft is equipped with stealth technology, but the U.S. Air Force has not made public any specifics about the drone.

Iran said in January that two pilotless spy planes it had shot down over its airspace were operated by the United States and offered to put them on public display. In July, Iranian military officials showed Russian experts several U.S. drones they said were shot down in recent years.

Also in July, Iranian lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that was trying to gather information on an underground uranium enrichment site.

Dafsari said the pilotless plane was flying over the Fordo facility near the holy city of Qom in central Iran but the Guard denied the report, saying its air defenses had only hit a test target.

Iran publicly confirmed for the first time in Feb. 2005 that the United States has been flying surveillance drones over its airspace to spy on its nuclear and military facilities.

The Islamic Republic holds frequent military drills, primarily to assert an ability to defend against a potential U.S. or Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Tehran has focused part of its military strategy on producing drones for reconnaissance and attacking purposes.

Iran announced three years ago it had built an unmanned aircraft with a range of more than 600 miles, far enough to reach Israel.

Ahmadinejad unveiled Iran’s first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft in August 2010, calling it an “ambassador of death” to Iran’s enemies.

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Experts: Iran’s capture of drone not worrisome

The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Dec 5, 2011 17:00:23 EST

WASHINGTON — U.S. military officials say they are concerned that a stealthy surveillance drone crashed in Iran and could give Tehran the opportunity to glean information about the classified program.

But experts said Monday that even if the Iranians found parts of the unmanned spy plane, they will likely get little from it. And since it probably fell from a high altitude, there may be very few large pieces to examine.

The RQ-170 Sentinel has been used in Afghanistan for several years.

U.S. said that the military lost control of one of the stealthy drones while it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan. The official IRNA news agency said that Iran’s armed forces shot it down. U.S. officials have rejected that claim.

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The Secret War: Africa ops may be just starting

By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer Army times
Posted : Monday Dec 5, 2011 11:36:03 EST

There was clearly something suspicious about the two western-looking “civilians” and their interpreter who the Ethiopian security forces were questioning.

For a start, they were in Ethiopia’s bandit country — near the town of Fiq in the Ogaden region that borders Somalia. Secondly, they claimed to be working for the Red Cross, but a quick check of their persons turned up sidearms, which the Red Cross forbids its personnel from carrying. By the time the “civilians” admitted they were U.S. military personnel, the damage had been done. They were on their way to an Ethiopian jail, and an international incident was brewing.

The Ogaden incident, which occurred between March 2007 and March 2008 (sources were unable or unwilling to be more specific), infuriated not only the Ethiopian government but also U.S. intelligence, military and diplomatic leaders in the region.
The Secret War

Read all stories in the six-part series

The episode was one of several irritants in U.S.-Ethiopian relations after Ethiopia’s December 2006 invasion of Somalia. Others included revelations in the U.S. press about AC-130 gunship missions being flown out of Ethiopia and a general reluctance on the Ethiopians’ part to cooperate too closely with U.S. forces in Somalia. Nonetheless, U.S. and Ethiopian special operations forces continued to work together in very small numbers until Ethiopia withdrew from Somalia in January 2009.

The U.S. military personnel whom the Ethiopians took prisoner in the Ogaden were human intelligence soldiers working for Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa’s intelligence directorate. They were authorized “to go out beyond the wire,” said retired Marine Maj. Gen. Timothy Ghormley, the U.S. Central Command chief of staff at the time, who had previously commanded CJTF-HOA, based in Djibouti.

They were not supposed to be undercover, according to Ghormley.

“They’re completely overt,” he said. “They’re supposed to identify themselves as U.S. service members.”

But a senior intelligence official, also familiar with the episode, used different terminology.

“It was a clandestine operation,” the official said. The troops weren’t in uniform, “but … if they were detained they would be able to say, ‘We’re members of the U.S. military,’ so somebody could get them the hell out of there.”

The soldiers’ first mistake was venturing into an area they’d been expressly forbidden from entering, Ghormley said. “They went where they’re not supposed to, they went up near Fiq, and going up into the Fiq area was probably not the brightest thing in the world to do,” he said.

“We said, ‘Don’t go into those regions until we can verify the security and safety,’” said a State Department official. “And they ignored it completely. They put themselves at risk.”

The soldiers risked capture by ethnic Somali guerrillas who “don’t like Americans,” the official said. “They would have killed them.”

But the soldiers’ biggest error was to tell Ethiopian troops who confronted them they were members of a Red Cross team, Ghormley said.

“The colossal mistake they made — the final mistake they made — was concocting a cover story,” he said. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, from what I understand.”

The pretense didn’t last long.

“The Ethiopians found pistols on them,” instantly invalidating the cover story, Ghormley said. “With that, they were determined to be hostile, and when they finally did tell the Ethiopians who they were and what they were, the Ethiopians were just kind of ticked off. So they decided they would bring them in.”

The soldiers were detained for “roughly” 10 days, the senior intelligence official said.

Ghormley disagreed.

“They were probably held 48 hours, maybe, not much longer than that,” he said.

Nevertheless, high-level diplomatic and military pressure was required to get the men released, sources said.

“It took the ambassador, it took the CENTCOM commander [Adm. William Fallon], it took the State Department to get involved,” the intelligence official said.

“An incident occurred in which a couple of guys were detained,” said Fallon, who retired in 2008. “They were using poor judgment to go to a place they shouldn’t have been, [which was] not authorized and not sanctioned and not smart.”

“The Ethiopians were good about it,” but the fiasco had long-term consequences, the intelligence official said.

The soldiers had been carrying a lot of information about U.S. intelligence operations in the region that was instantly compromised.

“All their documentation, papers, notepads, military stuff were collected [by the Ethiopians],” the State Department official said.

“It was like amateur hour, this team that got rolled up,” the intelligence official said. “There was information that they had that they should not have been carrying … It gave away techniques and procedures that we couldn’t afford to do, because we knew at that time that al-Qaida was building up its capability in Somalia and that was why we were trying damn hard to get into Somalia with really sensitive collection.”

The incident “put a spotlight on everything” U.S. intelligence was doing in the Horn, the official said. “It became a big deal and it actually hurt us, I would say, for a couple of years … around the region.”

Military intelligence operations now had to be coordinated through the CIA.

“That coordination just dried up,” the official said.

Fallon disputed that interpretation.

“It was certainly not helpful, and it caused a lot of anxiety. But at the end of the day, there was no major damage done,” he said.

(Hilary Renner, spokeswoman for the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, and Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, each declined to comment on the episode. The Ethiopian Embassy in Wash

ington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.)
Recent strides

Ethiopia’s withdrawal from Somalia ended neither the war in that country nor the U.S.’s role in it.

Although the Ethiopian invasion had quickly ousted the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu, a hard-line Islamist faction called al-Shabaab (the Youth) soon emerged to battle the Ethiopians, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government and the African Union peacekeeping force that replaced the Ethiopians.

Since then, and particularly during the past six months, the pace of U.S. operations appears, if anything, to have accelerated as an increasing number of actors are drawn into the war in Somalia.

• On Sept. 14, 2009, a U.S. special operations helicopter raid killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaida in East Africa figure.

• On April 19, 2011, the U.S. captured Somali national and al-Shabaab member Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, 25, as he crossed the Gulf of Aden on a ship to Yemen from Somalia. The U.S. held Warsame, who allegedly has links to Yemen’s al-Qaida branch, for two months on a Navy ship before flying him to the U.S.

• On June 7, TFG forces killed Harun Fazul, the most-wanted al-Qaida figure in East Africa, when he mistook their roadblock in Mogadishu for an al-Shabaab position.

• On June 23, U.S. drones struck al-Shabaab targets near Kismayo.

• On July 6, there were reports of airstrikes in Lower Juba, the southernmost region of Somalia, according to the website SomaliaReport.com.

• In early August, under increasing military pressure from the TFG forces backed up by 9,000 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, al-Shabaab announced its withdrawal from Mogadishu.

• On Sept. 15, there were more airstrikes on an al-Shabaab training camp in Taabta in Lower Juba, according to SomaliaReport.com.

• On Sept. 21, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is building a “ring of secret drone bases” including facilities in Ethiopia, the Seychelles and “the Arabian Peninsula.”

• On Sept. 23, airstrikes hit al-Shabaab’s main camp at the Kismayo airport.

• On Oct. 4, an al-Shabaab truck bomb killed an estimated 65 people in Mogadishu.

In mid-October, Kenya’s military began a substantial incursion into southern Somalia, which has since bogged down short of the port of Kismayo. By late November, there were reports that Ethiopia had again sent forces into Somalia in support of the Kenyan invasion. The New York Times quoted U.S. officials Oct. 21 saying the Kenyan action had taken them by surprise and there were no U.S. military advisers with the Kenyan force. Even if that is the case, U.S. officials say the secret war in the Horn of Africa is by no means over.
Mixed success

Looking back, U.S. officials are divided over what they achieved in the Horn in the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Successes were rare in the early years of the campaign against al-Qaida in East Africa. The only al-Qaida fighters known to have been killed between 2001 and 2005 were a bodyguard who blew himself up to enable Harun Fazul to escape Kenyan security forces in 2003 and another “minor player” who died of wounds received when Kenyan police seized him, said an intelligence source with long experience in the Horn.

During that period, warlords paid by the CIA helped render “seven or eight” al-Qaida figures out of Somalia, the source said. But although the U.S. focus was on rendering, rather than killing, members of al-Qaida in East Africa, this presented its own challenges.

“The big problem was, what do you do with one of these guys” once he had been captured, a senior military official said. That was “the $100,000 question.”

The U.S. was reluctant to put its captives on trial.

“All the evidence [against the al-Qaida figures] is intelligence,” the official said. “So unless you want to give it up … we have a problem with [that] based on sources and methods.”

Normal procedure was for the warlords to capture the targets, who were then transferred to Djibouti, processed and sent on from there, according to the intelligence source. As for their ultimate destinations, “the only ones I knew were sent to the ‘Salt Pit’ in Afghanistan,” the source said. The “Salt Pit” is the name of a CIA clandestine prison — sometimes referred to as a “black site” — north of Kabul.

Most sources Army Times interviewed said Operation Black Hawk — the CIA-led campaign against al-Qaida in East Africa — had a direct impact on the terrorist network’s efforts in the Horn. Black Hawk was a success, said the intelligence source with long experience in the Horn, because the al-Qaida cell “was certainly degraded, perhaps eviscerated.” In addition, the source said, “we believed we were able to foil several [al-Qaida] operations” along the lines of another embassy bombing or a plane attack.

However, even as he focused tightly on the manhunt and the renditions, John Bennett, the CIA’s station chief in Nairobi in the 2002-03 time frame and now the head of the Agency’s National Clandestine Service, had his doubts about that approach, the intelligence source said.

“Bennett always felt that [by focusing on rendition] you weren’t getting at the larger problem,” the source said.

Always interested in getting at how al-Qaida was targeting U.S. interests in the region, Bennett wanted to go after al-Qaida’s network and finances, the source added. (Bennett declined an interview request.)

“We rarely stepped back to ask, ‘What does this thing really look like, and so what?’” the source said. “Not because we didn’t think about it but because we went after what we knew.”
Combat complications

U.S. efforts were complicated by the fact that there were “two proponent agencies” for the war on al-Qaida in the Horn — U.S. Special Operations Command (higher headquarters for Joint Special Operations Command, whose elite operators were heavily involved in the Horn) and the CIA — according to the intelligence source. This created friction between the CIA and JSOC during the early years of the campaign, the source said. The Horn was what the source described as “a Title 50 environment,” meaning it was not considered a combat theater. (Title 50 is the section of the U.S. Code dealing with covert intelligence issues, while Title 10 deals with the armed services, including clandestine military operations.)

Operating out of a sovereign nation — Kenya — in a Title 50 environment meant “we had to let the Kenyans in on anything short of a covert operation,” leaving some JSOC “shooters” eager for more aggressive action “very frustrated,” the source said.

“Nairobi is a good example of JSOC wanting to come in and conduct operations — let’s say a Little Bird [helicopter] strike against a target in the tri-border area of Somalia-Ethiopia-Kenya,” the source said. “More than one [JSOC] O-6 came through Nairobi and said, ‘We can do whatever we damn please.’” The source noted that “at the time SOCOM and JSOC were accustomed to working in Title 10 environments” such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where the rules governing combat action were much looser.
Assessing the threat

No U.S. military personnel have died in combat in the Horn since 9/11, which the senior intelligence official described as “amazing.” But despite the low cost in American blood, some special operators question whether the U.S. effort there has been worth the risk.

“I never thought any of the African targets were important,” said a special operations officer. “They don’t show a direct threat to the homeland. They don’t have the ability to project.”

He dismissed the argument that Somali immigrants to the U.S. who have returned to fight for al-Shabaab represent a threat to the homeland.

“Can you show me intelligence that shows that that network is posing a direct threat to the United States or its allies?” he asked, emphasizing that he was referring to a current threat, not past attacks such as al-Qaida’s 1998 bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

The senior intelligence official’s take was very different.

“The scale of the problem in Somalia was huge,” the official said. “We’re talking a large number of al-Qaida, a couple of training camps over the years that have trained, in the case of two examples, a couple of hundred people who are now out there. Some probably left the continent and returned to Europe, some may have returned to Afghanistan and some may have returned to Iraq, and some may just still be in Somalia fighting.”

Although there are terrorist training camps in Somalia, the special ops officer acknowledged, “there are training camps all over the place. But what was the threat tied to our homeland or our allies?”

“Somalia definitely has a cell [of al-Qaida] but the connectivity to the rest of al-Qaida is really specious, it’s very frail,” said a special mission unit veteran.

The diaries of senior Arab al-Qaida members such as Ramzy Binalshib and Abu Zubaydah express clear racism toward black people that would complicate any attempt at close cooperation between the Arab-dominated group and its African franchise, he said.

“What they [i.e. the targets in Africa] did enable us to do was see the network, because they had to communicate, so that’s always good,” the special ops officer said. “It made us understand the network, that’s the biggest success story. And it’s another example of how we can work quietly with others.”

“We managed to strengthen bilateral relations in the region with numerous countries,” agreed the intel source with long experience in the Horn.

But the recent flurry of airstrikes in Somalia, combined with senior leader comments, suggests that there is much work yet to do.

In a March 1 hearing, Marine Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “…we see [al-Qaida] links going down into Somalia with al-Shabaab.”

“There’s been a lot of very challenging things done there and, sadly, we’re going to have to do,” said the senior intelligence official. But although the CIA and JSOC continue to be active in Somalia — a recent article in The Nation outlined close links between CIA and the TFG’s intelligence agency — the military has no permanent presence in the country, the intelligence official said.

After expanding for most of the past seven years, JSOC’s presence in the Horn “is steady — it’s definitely plateaued,” the senior intelligence official said. In fact, the official said, it’s probably dropped a bit” because a couple of “the key targets” have been killed.

There are no JSOC personnel in Somaliland, Sudan or Eritrea and only a very small intelligence team in Ethiopia, the official said. “On a given day in Kenya, you probably have a couple of dozen guys — that’s about it,” the official said. “Enough to do, if required … a high-value capture-or-kill mission. And then we certainly have the ability to move guys pretty damn quickly to there.”

But despite JSOC’s acute interest in Somalia, there is a limit to what the command can achieve there, said a Defense Department official. “JSOC is not going to be the deciding force in whatever happens in Somalia,” the official said. “They can’t kill them all. They can’t capture them all.”

When it comes to Somalia and Yemen, “we’d like to be doing much more in both those places,” the senior military official said. “The State Department came down hard and said we don’t want a third front in an Islamic [country] … Our State Department doesn’t want us to have campaign plans in these two countries.

“It’s a tale of frustration, tears and woe — of what we wanted to do and what we thought we’d be allowed to versus what we’ve been able to do.”

In the meantime, said the senior intelligence official, “Somalia remains a huge problem.”

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C-27J battle splits Air Force, Guard

By Marcus Weisgerber - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 5, 2011 7:26:45 EST

An interservice battle fueled by disagreements over the purchase and operation of small, fixed-wing cargo planes has divided the Air Force from its own National Guard component and the Army.

The debate between the parties over the future of the C-27J cargo aircraft, built by L-3 Communications and Alenia, has intensified in recent weeks in advance of the Pentagon finalizing its 2013 budget proposal, which is expected to determine the fate of the program.

An Air Force recommendation to cancel the once-joint program in its draft 2013 funding plan has turned into a hotly contested issue this budget season.

At a Deputy’s Management Action Group meeting last month, Pentagon officials questioned the Air Force’s decision to cancel the C-27J program, but no funding decisions were made, according to military sources.

The panel — chaired by Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter — posed questions to Air Force officials, which the service is due to answer.

Certain lawmakers have voiced opposition to canceling the program, including the entire Connecticut congressional delegation, which wrote Carter, urging him to “reject any recommendation to terminate the program or reduce the current [Air National Guard] beddown plan.”

The Connecticut Air National Guard has been slated to receive some of the planes, but the Air Force has yet to purchase the aircraft for the wing.

Other Air National Guard units are already flying the C-27J, and two aircraft are currently deployed in Afghanistan.

Air and Army Guard officials said the C-27J is the best aircraft for delivering critical supplies and troops to hard-to-reach places on the battlefield. As the Pentagon’s budget shrinks over the next decade, the officials said the twin-engine C-27J can conduct the so-called direct-support mission at a fraction of the cost of the quad-engine C-130.

The C-27J is cheaper to fly than the C-130J and the CH-47 Chinook, according to a senior Air National Guard official. Flying one cargo pallet or 10 soldiers in a C-130J costs about $7,100 per hour, while the C-27J can accomplish the same mission for $2,100 per hour.

“It’s not to say that the C-130J cannot accomplish the same mission as the C-27J; however, the C-27J is a much more cost-effective, ‘right-sized’ platform moving forward in the current budget environment, and also gives the Army the greatest amount of flexibility in fixed-wing airlift,” the official said.

While the CH-47 Chinook helicopters can accomplish the same mission, it is not the best use of them, according to a former Army commander.

“We flew some of our CH-47s on routes that should have been fixed-wing routes at a cost in lost combat assault sorties and extended use of the CH-47,” the former Army division commander in Afghanistan said.

Since the August deployment of two C-27J aircraft to Afghanistan, the 179th Air Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard has “removed the burden” of forward operating base resupply from the CH-47 fleet, the official said.

The 179th’s C-27Js have flown more than 900 sorties, moving more than 6,900 people and almost 400 tons of time-sensitive, mission-critical cargo. Even though the C-27J became an Air Force program, the Army’s requirement to have organic, direct support airlift did not change.

The Air Force intended to buy 38 C-27Js. National Guard wings in Ohio, Maryland, Michigan and Mississippi are supposed to split the first batch of aircraft. Other aircraft are supposed to go to wings in Connecticut, North Dakota and Montana, but they have not been funded.

If the Air Force cancels the program, the Army would likely move to take it back, according to numerous military sources.

Army Aviation officials in October briefed Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, calling for him to insist that the Air Force continue conducting direct support missions of critical Army supplies or transfer C-27J procurement money and the mission back to the Army, according to a service official.

The one-time Joint Cargo Aircraft program was turned over to the Air Force in 2009. At the time, Gen. George Casey, then-Army chief of staff, and Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief, struck a deal in which the Air Force would receive the C-27J aircraft but would fly under Army parameters.

Now under a substantial budget crunch, Air Force leaders have proposed eliminating the aircraft from the service’s inventory and conducting the mission with C-130s.

Staff writer Kate Brannen contributed to this report.

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Senate to Navy: Study keeping frigates

By Sam Fellman - Staff writer Navy times
Posted : Sunday Dec 4, 2011 8:43:47 EST

The Senate has called for the Navy to study whether to move more destroyers to Mayport, Fla., to offset the scrapping of frigates, which is winnowing the number of ships homeported there, or to consider frigate life extensions as a means of reducing the damage to Mayport’s shipyard and repair industry.

The study was included as part of the $662 billion defense authorization bill, which passed the Senate on Dec. 1 and now heads into conference committee with the House. The specific Mayport amendment was introduced by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

The Navy plans to decommission four ships in 2012. Three of those, all frigates, are homeported in Mayport: the Boone, Stephen W. Groves and John L. Hall. Their decommissioning would leave Mayport with 16 ships.

In the amendment, Nelson asked the Navy to consider extending the service lives of frigates “in light of continued delays in deliveries of the littoral combat ship.” He also asked the Navy to weigh stationing more ships in Mayport or sending them to Mayport for maintenance.

There are no littoral combat ships based in Mayport; those ships won’t start to arrive until 2016, according to a congressional aide. All 11 frigates homeported in Mayport are slated to be scrapped by then.

This gap could force the Mayport ship repair industry into cutbacks and layoffs, a possibility that concerns Nelson.

“Senator Nelson has been pressing the Navy for some time for a plan,” said his spokesman, Bryan Gulley. “How are you going to address the possibility that the repair industry there could be harmed?”

He said the senator’s amendment aims to “simply require the Navy to take a look at whether there are any options and what are the feasibility of these options.”

Mayport has been steadily losing ships and sailors over the past decade. Five years ago, 22 ships and 13,272 sailors were stationed there, including the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, which was decommissioned in 2007. The Navy plans to move a carrier to Mayport in the future, but has not said which one.

About 9,000 sailors are stationed in Mayport, according to Naval Station Mayport spokesman Bill Austin.

Navy officials have said in the past that Mayport was a likely East Coast LCS base.

“No final homeporting decision has been made, pending the completion of the environmental assessment” in mid-2012, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Alana Garas said. She said no decision had been made about the number of LCS ships to be homeported in Mayport and was unable to provide an estimate.

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Jeff Head said:

Delft, this is a typical (from the right and left) over reraction and mischaricterization of what the law actually says.

It says that it applies only in the cases of those individuals proven to have been affiliated with and involved in the attacks on the US in September of 2001, and also any who are activley involved with and affiliated with Al Quida or the Taliban, and involved in planning attacks on the United States.

It also states that detention for US citizens is not a requirement, but leaves open to being done depending on the severity of the attack.

Finally, in the US Constitution, it says directly that Habeus Coprpus can be suspended in the event of civil insurrection or rebellion. Someone activly fighting the US with Al Quida or the Taliban is in a state of rebellion so falls under that mantle.

I believe before this legislation is complete (House and Senate and President signature) that some actual judicial involvement will be (and should be) added requiring enough evidence to get a judge to sign off on it. Right now the Military has to present the evidence to the Executive branch who signs off on it...like Lincoln did in the Civil War.

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These are tense days in the defense industry. The Pentagon has been told to reduce its budget by $450 billion over the next decade, and Congress could make even deeper cuts to control federal spending.

But there are pockets of growth, including the market for unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. Northrop Grumman’s Rancho Bernardo operation is a leader in the field, designing such aircraft as the Global Hawk, Fire Scout and the X-47B.

We recently discussed the state of the market with Jim Zortman, the former commander of Naval Air Forces for the Pacific Fleet. He’s now site manager of Northrop’s Unmanned Systems Development Center.

Q: Northrop has about 150 openings for new jobs in its local UAV program. Is this a short-term expansion, or do you expect sustained growth with UAVs?

A: We are meeting the needs of our customers by properly staffing positions where we need work to be done. Since 2008, we have added more than 800 jobs to our unmanned systems programs in San Diego and have been involved developing these systems for 60 years, with over 100,000 delivered to our customers. Northrop Grumman is very focused on growth of our key capabilities, with unmanned systems being one of those areas. According to the market research firm The Teal Group, spending will almost double over the next decade, from current worldwide UAV expenditures of $5.9 billion annually to $11.3 billion, totaling just over $94 billion in the next 10 years.

Q: The Pentagon has said the defense budget will be cut $350 million to $450 million over the next decade. What is the potential impact on Northrop locally if Congress orders deeper cuts? Is the UAV program “recession proof”?

A: Nothing is going to be recession proof, but we do know that the Department of Defense has said that demand for unmanned systems and the capabilities they bring to our military will only increase. With Northrop Grumman’s long history of unmanned systems development, we believe that we’re well positioned to be a leader in this marketplace. Additionally, we are looking actively at how to work more closely with local governments and industry in San Diego to foster and grow business for unmanned systems development so that the region continues to be a leader in this market. Last year, both Northrop Grumman and General Atomics accounted for 50 percent of the world’s unmanned systems market.

Q: The Navy operates a great variety of aircraft. But they’ve been piloted by humans. Will it be difficult to break through this legacy to gain wide acceptance of unmanned “robo-helicopters,” like Fire Scout?

A: We believe that many of the unmanned systems we develop for the U.S. Navy are complementary of manned aircraft. In the case of Fire Scout, the system is paired with SH-60 helicopter aircrews and maintainers to do the long-range and extended missions that can’t be accomplished with aircraft that are limited in range or endurance by the physical limits of people in them. Unmanned systems aren’t meant to replace a person but to allow the Navy to accomplish missions where human endurance becomes a limiting factor. Some of those are the dull, dirty and dangerous missions where having a person in the aircraft cockpit isn’t the right solution.

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The U.S. Navy and its shipbuilding partners have incorporated lessons learned from the first two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in the design and construction of the follow-on ships. “I think the lead ships are pretty good,” says Rear Adm. Jim Murdoch, the Program Executive Officer for LCS (PEO LCS). “I think LCS 3 and 4 will be better.”

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Pre-Commissioning Unit Mississippi (SSN 782) sponsor Ms. Allison Stiller christened the ninth Virginia-class submarine during a ceremony at General Dynamics Electric Boat, Dec. 3. During her remarks, Stiller mentioned today marked the 38th christening that she has attended, but emphasized how special the day was for her. "All of the christenings have been special, but this will be the most special one that I will be a part of," said Stiller. "The ship may be made of steel and fiber and the finest technology, but the crew is what is most important."

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