Tuesday, Apr 30th
Last update03:55:03 AM GMT
Military Glance
Stabbing a defenseless teenage captive to death. Picking off a school-age girl and an old man from a sniper’s roost. Indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine-gun fire.
Navy SEAL commandos from Team 7’s Alpha Platoon said they had seen their highly decorated platoon chief commit shocking acts in Iraq. And they had spoken up, repeatedly. But their frustration grew as months passed and they saw no sign of official action.
A group of American hackers who once worked for U.S. intelligence agencies helped the United Arab Emirates spy on a BBC host, the chairman of Al Jazeera and other prominent Arab media figures during a tense 2017 confrontation pitting the UAE and its allies against the Gulf state of Qatar.
The American operatives worked for Project Raven, a secret Emirati intelligence program that spied on dissidents, militants and political opponents of the UAE monarchy. A Reuters investigation in January revealed Project Raven’s existence and inner workings, including the fact that it surveilled a British activist and several unnamed U.S. journalists.
The Raven operatives — who included at least nine former employees of the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.S. military — found themselves thrust into the thick of a high-stakes dispute among America’s Gulf allies. The Americans’ role in the UAE-Qatar imbroglio highlights how former U.S. intelligence officials have become key players in the cyber wars of other nations, with little oversight from Washington.
The number of students reporting unwanted sexual contact totaled 747 during the 2017-18 academic year compared with 507 in 2015-16, according to anonymous surveys of cadets and midshipmen. Unwanted sexual contact ranges from groping to rape.
"We’re disheartened and disappointed that the things and the strategies that we’ve employed just really aren’t getting the results that we want," Nathan Galbreath, deputy director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, told USA TODAY on Thursday.
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Two Marines and a Navy corpsman are under investigation in the death of a Lockheed Martin contractor in northern Iraq.
The New York Times reported the American contractor was severely wounded in a scuffle on New Year’s Eve in Erbil, Iraq, and was transported to Landstuhl, Germany, where he was pronounced dead Friday.
The Daily Beast identified the Lockheed contractor as Rick Rodriguez, a former Green Beret with nearly twenty years of service in the Army.
“Lockheed Martin was saddened to learn of the loss of one of our employees, who was fatally injured while supporting Special Operations Forces within the Operation Inherent Resolve area of operations in a non-combat related incident,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the partial ban announced by the Pentagon, but never implemented, should not have been blocked by a district court while it was being challenged.
The three judges on the panel were appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
President Trump announced on Thursday that Defense Secretary James Mattis will retire "with distinction" at the end of February, soon after Mr. Trump announced he would order the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.
"During Jim's tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting equipment," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. "General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations. A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly. I greatly thank Jim for his service!"
News of Mattis' impending departure comes the day after Mr. Trump's sudden announcement about Syria, a decision he made without consulting security officials in his administration.
TVNL Comment: The last of the grown-ups in theTrump cabinet is leaving. This is either the end of Trump or the end of the nation. Both are probable.
A new security audit of the United States military’s network of ballistic missiles revealed numerous cybersecurity failings, including some vulnerabilities that have been untouched for 28 years, according to a report by the Department of Defense’s inspector general released Friday.
Among the long list of loopholes: a lack of data encryption, no antivirus programs, and no multifactor-authentication mechanisms.
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