Your Duty: 2014-05-11

Saturday, May 17, 2014

US-Russia tension could affect space station, Air Force satellites

The escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine have reached a new altitude: space.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, the two super powers set aside their mistrust and agreed to build a massive orbiting outpost as a symbol of a new era of cooperation in space exploration. But now that partnership is under serious strain.

After Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin this week said his nation might no longer allow U.S. astronauts access to its launch vehicles and may use the International Space Station without American participation, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Thursday pressed NASA for answers about the how the U.S. could respond.

Since the retirement of the space shuttle, Russia has provided launches for U.S. astronauts, for $71 million each.

“Dropping out of ISS is a high-profile move on Russia’s part,” said Marco A. Caceres, space analyst for the aerospace research firm Teal Group Corp. of Fairfax, Va. “They’re pulling the rug out from under the Americans. It’s a move of national pride that plays well in Russia.”

Indeed, after railing against U.S. sanctions in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Rogozin, chief of the Russian space and defense sectors, suggested that “the U.S.A. ... bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline.”

Rogozin’s threat is too significant for the U.S. to ignore, said Loren B. Thompson, an aerospace and defense expert at the Lexington Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“The central assumptions of the Obama administration space policy are no longer valid,” he said.

The space station is just one example of how the mess in Ukraine is undermining aerospace trade between the two leaders in space travel. Russia has threatened to suspend exports of rocket engines, which are used to help launch U.S. Air Force satellites. And it has threatened to suspend cooperation on navigational systems that depend on outposts in Russia.

The U.S. helped fund the Russian program in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And when the shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry in 2003, killing seven, the Russians agreed to help ferry U.S. astronauts back and forth to space.

The $100-billion orbital outpost, often cited as the most expensive machine ever built, has a series of modules and power systems, some Russian, some American and others from a range of international partners. The U.S. hardware produces most of the station’s electricity, but the Russian propulsion system helps keep the station in orbit.

Now, that combination of hardware could cause a major headache. Under legal agreements, the U.S. has an upper hand in controlling the space station, but Rogozin said his nation could operate its modules independently of the U.S.

In a House hearing at the end of March, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the agency’s partner is not Russia itself, but rather the Russian space agency, a distinction that many analysts dismissed.

The House science committee sent a letter to Bolden on Thursday seeking an assessment of a Russian withdrawal from the space station program after 2020. While the partnership is not yet broken, the committee wants to know what options the U.S. has if Rogozin’s threats become reality.

The issue involves broad engineering and legal issues that may be new: Could the space station be separated into two parts? Who owns key systems? What would happen to life science research and how would such a breakdown in cooperation affect political support for human space flight?

When the U.S. and Russia agreed to build the station in 1993, neither country had the political will to build such an ambitious project by itself. For years the space station has been considered a symbol of how cooperation among nations may yield bigger results than any single effort.

But that was then.

“This is a step back toward the Cold War days,” Caceres said of the current climate. “It’s the beginning of a freeze on a great relationship that’s been forged over the last two decades.”

NASA ultimately wants private companies to take astronauts to the station by 2017, but that hardware is still in development.

Officials with NASA said they did not yet have a response to the committee’s letter but issued a statement, which said in part:

“NASA has not received any official notification from the government of Russia on any cessation or changes in our space cooperation at this point. Operations on the ISS continue on a normal basis with the safe return of the Expedition 39 crew May 13 and the expected launch of another crew in two weeks.”

Separately, Rogozin has said Russia intends to stop supplying the U.S. with rocket engines that are used in launching military satellites into orbit.

United Launch Alliance, a joint rocket venture of aerospace giants Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., uses a Russian-made engine on its Atlas V rocket.

The RD-180 engine provides the main thrust for the rocket, which launches the government’s pricey, school-bus-sized national security satellites for spying, weather forecasting, communications and other, experimental purposes.

In the wake of Russia’s seizure of Crimea, the Pentagon asked the Air Force to review United Launch Alliance’s use of the engine.

United Launch Alliance said it was not aware of any restrictions. But even if an embargo on selling the engines takes effect, the company says it has stockpiled a two-year supply. It also has another family of rockets, called Delta IV, which uses all U.S.-made rocket engines.

“We are hopeful that our two nations will engage in productive conversations over the coming months that will resolve the matter quickly,” Jessica Rye, a company spokeswoman, said.

Kiowa helicopter squadron at JBLM to be inactivated

The Army’s postwar downsizing will take another bite out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord this year, as a 400-soldier helicopter squadron will be shut down.

The plan to inactivate the Kiowa helicopters and crews of the 4th Attack Reconnaissance Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment became inevitable when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced in February a proposal to phase out the Army’s entire Kiowa fleet.

Lawmakers in the the U.S. House did not challenge Hagel’s proposal last week when they considered the 2015 defense budget, so the plan is moving forward.

JBLM’s Kiowa squadron is among the first in line to close down on a five-year schedule. The Kiowa, the smallest helicopter in the Army, is used for scouting and observation duty and light-attack combat missions.

Closing the unit affects about 400 local aviators currently deployed with the squadron on a nine-month mission in South Korea. They’ll come home this summer, take post-deployment leave and then either move on to new units or separate from the military.

Lt. Col. Joe Sowers, spokesman for JBLM’s 7th Infantry Division, said the Army has not announced whether it plans to send a replacement unit to JBLM’s 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, which oversees the Kiowa squadron.

Its inactivation will leave JBLM with about 120 helicopters, down from the current fleet of roughly 150.

The Army is shedding tens of thousands of soldiers from its Iraq War peak of 570,000 active-duty troops. About 519,000 active-duty soldiers are in uniform today. At the end of the drawdown, the Army is expected to have a force of less than 450,000.

JBLM’s main contribution to the cutbacks so far was the inactivation of a 4,500-soldier Stryker brigade in March. The Army sent Strykers from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division to Fort Carson in Colorado and its soldiers have joined other units or left the military.

The Army also closed a 400-soldier artillery battalion at JBLM last year. It’s unclear if other units are being eyed for inactivation.

About 45,000 soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines serve at JBLM. About 32,000 are active-duty soldiers.

The Kiowa squadron’s history at JBLM goes back to 2005 when the Army moved it to the South Sound from Louisiana.

It brought 48 helicopters, most of which were OH-58 Kiowa aircraft. The unit also had some UH-60 Blackhawk combat transport helicopters; it was an oversized squadron that the Army used to build up its aviation assets at JBLM.

In late 2011, the squadron provided a foothold for a significant expansion of helicopters at JBLM. The 16th Combat Aviation Brigade headquarters moved here, and more subordinate units followed, including one that the flies Apache attack helicopters.

The aviation brigade’s headquarters, along with its Blackhawk and Apache battalions, are currently deployed on a nine-month tour in Afghanistan.

The Kiowa squadron left for South Korea in October. At the time, the Army announced that it would leave the squadron’s aircraft there and replace them at JBLM.

The replacement plan changed with the new Pentagon budget proposal. The Defense Department preferred shifting the Kiowas’ reconnaissance missions to unmanned aircraft and Apache helicopters rather than refurbish the fleet.

JBLM’s Kiowas will be turned over to U.S. Forces Korea.

The squadron has established a legacy of sacrifice since arriving at the base south of Tacoma.

In 2007, it deployed to Iraq and lost five soldiers in two helicopter accidents.

In 2011, four of its pilots died in a nighttime collision over JBLM when one helicopter crew flew into a training area occupied by another crew.

Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno visited the Kiowa squadron in South Korea in late February.

“In these very complex times, it is important that you are there every day for each other,” he told them, according to an Army press release.

Obama and Congress move to address VA firestorm

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and Congress are moving quickly to respond to a growing political firestorm over allegations of treatment delays and falsified records at veterans' hospitals nationwide.

The top official for veterans' health care resigned Friday, and House Republicans scheduled a vote for Wednesday on legislation that would give Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki greater authority to fire or demote senior executives and administrators at the agency and its 152 medical centers.

The actions came as federal investigators visited a VA hospital in suburban Chicago to look into an allegation that secret lists were used to conceal long patient wait times for appointments. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., meanwhile, called for an investigation into reports that schedulers at a VA medical center in Albuquerque were ordered to falsify patient appointment records.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the Veterans Affairs Department is suffering from "a systemic, cultural problem" that cannot be solved with piecemeal responses, such as the resignation of a top official.

"What's needed is a total refocusing of the VA on its core mission of serving veterans — stretching from its top political leadership all the way through to its career civil servants," McCain said Saturday in the weekly Republican radio and Internet address.

Citing news reports that VA managers received performance bonuses even as internal audits revealed lengthy wait times for health care, McCain said top VA officials too often have been "motivated by all the wrong incentives and rewards."

McCain, a Vietnam veteran, said Congress must give VA administrators greater ability to hire and fire those charged with caring for veterans, as well as give veterans greater flexibility in how they get quality care in a timely manner.

Reports of long waits for appointments and processing benefit applications have plagued the VA for years. Officials have shortened benefits backlogs, but allegations of preventable deaths that may be linked to delays at the Phoenix VA hospital have triggered an election-year uproar. A former clinic director said up to 40 veterans died while awaiting treatment at the Phoenix VA hospital, even as hospital staff kept a secret appointment list to mask the delays.

A VA nurse in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was put on leave for allegedly telling employees to falsify appointment records. A VA investigation in December found that staffers at a Fort Collins, Colorado, clinic were trained to make it appear as if veterans got appointments within 14 days, as VA guidelines suggest.

Problems also have been reported in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Florida and others.

Amid a growing outcry, the administration and Congress took steps to reassure the public that problems are being addressed.

Robert Petzel, the VA's undersecretary for health care, had been scheduled to retire this year but instead stepped down Friday. Petzel had said he would remain until the Senate confirmed a replacement, but a department official said Shinseki asked Petzel to leave immediately.

Republicans denounced the move as a hollow gesture. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, called the announcement "the pinnacle of disingenuous political doublespeak." Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Shinseki's "reticence to hold fellow bureaucrats at the VA accountable is exactly why we need new leadership that is willing to take swift action to ensure we are living up to our promises to our nation's heroes."

Cornyn is among a handful of Republicans who have called for Shinseki to resign. The American Legion, one of the nation's largest veterans groups, also has called for Shinseki's resignation and called Petzel's departure "a continuation of business as usual."

The White House said President Barack Obama supports Shinseki's decision to remove Petzel and that Obama is "committed to doing all we can to ensure our veterans have access to timely, quality health care."

Petzel's resignation came a day after he and Shinseki were grilled at a four-hour hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, where lawmakers and veteran groups expressed exasperation at long-standing problems.

In his position, Petzel oversaw what officials say is the largest health care delivery system in the U.S. The VA operates 1,700 hospitals, clinics and other facilities around the country, serving about 6.5 million veterans and other beneficiaries each year.

Miller, who wrote the legislation that the House will take up next week, said Congress must act, because the VA is "apparently unwilling to take substantive actions to hold any of its leaders accountable."

Shinseki on Thursday told senators he was "mad as hell" about allegations of severe problems and that he was looking for quick results from a nationwide audit. He has rejected calls for him to resign.

___

Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

Vietnam, China play tense game of cat and mouse in South China Sea

ABOARD VIETNAMESE COAST GUARD SHIP 4033 — Each day, the Vietnamese ships tried to get close to the rig. And each day, they were driven back by the much larger Chinese ships.

But before they sped away, laboring engines spewing black smoke, the Vietnamese delivered a message: "Attention! Attention! We are warning you about your provocative act," blasted out via a recording from a loudspeaker in Vietnamese, Chinese and English. "We demand you respect Vietnam's sovereignty. Please immediately halt your activities and leave Vietnamese waters."

Occasionally colliding with or firing water cannons at each other, Vietnamese and Chinese ships have been shadow boxing in a sun-dazzled patch of the South China Sea since May 1, when Beijing parked a hulking, $1 billion deep sea oil rig, drawing a furious response from Vietnam.

Vietnam, 10 times smaller than its northern neighbor and dependent on it economically, needs all the help it can get in the dispute. Its leaders think international opinion is on their side. This week, they invited foreign journalists to get a closer look at the standoff, the most serious escalation between the countries in years over their overlapping claims.

Vietnam is determined to defend what it regards as its sovereign territory against China, which insists that most of the South China Sea —€” including the Paracel Islands it took from U.S.-backed South Vietnam in 1974 —€” belongs to it. But Hanoi lacks options in dealing with Beijing, as China uses it burgeoning economic and military might to press its claims in the seas.

Vietnam has accused Chinese vessels of deliberately and dangerously ramming its ships. TV footage recorded last week from a Vietnamese ship showed a Chinese vessel smashing into the stern of the Vietnamese ship then backing up and ramming it again, damaging its side. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday released three photographs purportedly showing a Vietnamese vessel ramming a Chinese maritime ship. The media onboard this week did not witness any ramming.

"It is not that we want to be in confrontation with the Chinese, but it's our duty to carry out daily patrols in Vietnamese territory," said Col. Le Trung Thanh, the skipper of the Vietnamese coast guard ship 4033. "We want to get close to the rig to persuade them that their actions are illegal and they must leave Vietnam's water unconditionally."

That seems unlikely, however many patrol boats Hanoi sends to the area, or pleads its case to the world. For China, a withdrawal would signal weakness.

Beijing has said it plans to keep the rig until August. While most analysts think neither side has any interest in an armed conflict, the longer the confrontation lasts, the greater the risk of an unplanned incident that could lead to a shooting match.

China has set up a 10-kilometer (6.21-mile) exclusion zone around the rig, which was visible on the horizon. On occasion, Chinese surveillance planes flew over the Vietnamese vessels. Both sides have deployed dozens of vessels, mostly coast guard and fisheries protection fleets. At least one of the Chinese ships had cannons, which were uncovered.

In 1974, China ousted the South Vietnam navy from the Paracel Islands, close to where the rig is currently deployed, killing 75 South Vietnamese sailors. The two countries fought a brief but bloody border war in 1979. In 1988, 64 Vietnamese sailors were killed in another skirmish in the nearby Spratly Islands, where territorial spats between China and the Philippines have recently heated up.

As the latest standoff plays out on high seas, Hanoi's Communist government has been struggling to contain rising popular anger against China, never far from the surface in Vietnam. Protesters this week vandalized foreign-owned factories and killed at least one Chinese national, further inflaming the situation.

Beijing has accused Hanoi of not doing enough to stop the violence. On Friday, it criticized Vietnam for organizing the media trip.

"It is clear that the aim of the Vietnamese side is to escalate the situation and create tension, or in other words, to generate media hype and put up a show in front of the international audience," said Ouyang Yujing, the director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Ocean and Boundary Affairs.

Vietnam's Communist Party has been trying to leverage its links with the party in China to quietly resolve their differences, mindful of the economic importance of good relations. Just last month, one of the coast guard ships stationed close to the rig took part in joint fishery patrols with Chinese vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, said Vietnam's coast guard Col. Dinh Quoc Ruan.

Unlike in the Paracels, the two countries settled their maritime border in the Gulf of Tonkin in 2000.

Crew members boarded each other's boats to share fruit with each other and take photos, Ruan said.

"I'm not surprised when the Chinese switched from being friends to being opposed so quickly," he said. "Being friends with China is not so easy."

Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Jack Chang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Long road to graduation pays off for Navy vet, who is also an Army wife

NATCHITOCHES, LA. — Ashley Leurs received a special gift recently — one she worked 10 years to earn.

Leurs, 35, crossed the stage to receive her bachelor's degree from Northwestern State University on May 9 after a decade of classes, three universities, countless moves, four births and her husband's three deployments. She was one of 806 students awarded degrees this spring at Northwestern State.

A veteran of the Navy and now an Army wife, Leurs began her educational career in 2004. She took classes through the University of Maryland while her family was stationed in Germany.

The New Orleans native transitioned to other schools when they moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Polk, Louisiana; and Fort Hood, Texas, where she, her husband and children live now. She connected with Northwestern State through its satellite campus while at Fort Polk, starting classes in 2009.

She completed her bachelor's in general studies with a concentration in social sciences through the university's online program from Killeen, Texas. Commencement was her second time to step foot on the Natchitoches campus.

Her husband, Jack, is in training in Wisconsin this month and wasn't able to attend graduation, but she still had a cheering section in Prather Coliseum.

"I'm just overwhelmed and so very proud of her," said her mother, Sue Dick. "It's been a long road."

A large portion of that cheering section comprised Leur's six children ages 2 through 12.

When she started school she and Jack had two kids. With a growing family, several moves and Jack's three tours in Iraq, Leurs had her share of challenges in completing her degree. The biggest one was finding the time.

"Time is the hardest thing, trying to balance time, especially with him being gone," she said.

But she never really thought about quitting, she said. She was driven to finish for herself and for her family.

"Finishing (is the best part) — finishing to show the kids," Leurs said. "They need to know ...you can't give up."

The lesson isn't lost on them.

"I think this is really awesome for her," said her oldest, Madison, 12. "I'm very proud of her. She worked very hard, and now she's here."

Christian, 11, understood how much graduation meant to his mom.

"I think it's a really big accomplishment," he said. "I never would be able to do it — six kids (and school)."

She also learned a lot from navigating online classes. She said communication could be an issue, depending on the professors and where they might be located, emphasizing a need for self-discipline and persistence.

"You have to be able to navigate and teach yourself," Leurs said. "That's challenging and rewarding. But it's good for when you go into a job. If something seems impossible, you just have to figure it out."

Leurs, a teacher's aide at a Killeen elementary school, isn't done with school just yet.

She'll start a teacher certification program in Texas this summer and hopes to teach elementary school for a few years before pursuing a master's degree in counseling.

GOP leaders to block military immigration measure

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders intervened Friday to prevent a vote on immigration legislation, dealing a severe blow to election-year efforts to overhaul the dysfunctional system.

The move came after a Republican congressman from California announced plans to try to force a vote next week, over strong conservative opposition, on his measure creating a path to citizenship for immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children and serve in the military.

Rep. Jeff Denham labeled his bill the ENLIST Act and said he would seek a vote as an amendment to the popular annual defense bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

In response, Doug Heye, spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said: "No proposed ENLIST amendments to NDAA will be made in order."

Heye said no stand-alone vote on the measure would be permitted, either.

It was the latest setback for President Barack Obama's efforts to move comprehensive immigration legislation through Congress to boost border security, remake legal worker programs and offer legal status to the estimated 11.5 million people now living here illegally. The Senate passed an immigration bill last year, but it's been stalled in the GOP-led House.

Denham's measure was widely popular and seen as perhaps the likeliest area for compromise.

But in recent weeks prominent conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, announced their opposition. Heritage Action, the group's political arm, announced it would include the vote in its ratings on lawmakers and called Denham's legislation "deplorable."

Cantor himself, who previously had supported offering a path to citizenship for immigrants brought illegally as children, faces a primary challenge in Virginia June 10 from a tea party opponent who has criticized the majority leader for not being conservative enough and accused him of supporting amnesty for immigrants living here illegally.

Dave Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, is a long-shot to unseat Cantor, but his campaign has won attention and support from conservative leaders such as radio host Laura Ingraham, partly because of his attacks against Cantor over immigration.

Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner and other House GOP leaders have insisted they want to advance immigration legislation, though they've rejected the Senate's comprehensive bill. Chances have always looked slim, but the White House and outside advocates saw a window for action over the next several months, before Congress' August recess and November midterm elections.

Friday's developments seemed to all but rule out anything happening on the issue this year in the House, if even Denham's limited measure could not advance. Despite a wide coalition of business, labor, religious groups, farmers and others pushing for an immigration overhaul, many individual Republican House members who represent largely white districts have been unmoved.

Asked Friday if Boehner disagreed with Cantor's decision, Boehner's spokesman, Michael Steel, said he did not.

Denham's office had no immediate reaction to Cantor's announcement. But in an interview beforehand, Denham, who has a competitive race in his heavily Latino district in central California, said he would keep pushing his legislation regardless of what leadership did.

"I am prepared for a long-term fight on this," he said.

Denham's bill would allow immigrants who were brought to this country on or before Dec. 31, 2011, and were younger than 15 years old to become legal, permanent residents — the first step toward citizenship — through honorable service in the military.

It was co-sponsored by 50 House members, 26 Democrats and 24 Republicans, but an outspoken minority was opposed. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., had warned that "all hell will break loose" if Denham tried to promote the measure.

The Senate could still revive the issue if the Senate Armed Services Committee includes the ENLIST Act in its own version of the defense policy bill, something Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the panel chairman, has indicated was possible.

Top VA health official steps down over care scandals

WASHINGTON — Dr. Robert Petzel, Undersecretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs, has resigned amid a firestorm over allegations of fraudulent wait lists for care and a host of other problems at the VA.

According to a statement put out by the VA, Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said the following:

“Today, I accepted the resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“As we know from the veteran community, most veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA health care, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care.

“I am committed to strengthening veterans’ trust and confidence in their VA healthcare system. I thank Dr. Petzel for his four decades of service to veterans.”

Petzel, who was the top health official at the department, oversaw an annual medical care budget of over $54 billion, along with 277,000 staff members, according to his official VA biography. The Veterans Health Administration operates more than 1,700 healthcare locations, including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and counseling centers. More than 8 million veterans are enrolled in the system, according to VA.

But Petzel had announced in September that he would retire this year, perhaps blunting the effect of this announcement.

The VA said at the time that Petzel would be retiring “as planned, following a four-year tenure,” but would remain in the job until the Senate confirms a successor.

The White House announced May 1 that it intended to nominate Jeffrey Murawsky, director of the VA’s Illinois-based Great Lakes Health Care System, as the new undersecretary for health.

“Today’s announcement from VA regarding Undersecretary for Health Robert Petzel’s ‘resignation’ is the pinnacle of disingenuous political doublespeak,” according to a statement from Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “Petzel was already scheduled to retire in 2014 and President Obama has already announced his intention to nominate Petzel’s replacement, so characterizing this as a ‘resignation’ just doesn’t pass the smell test. ... the VA has resorted to what it does best: splitting semantic hairs to create the illusion of accountability and progress. After yesterday’s out-of-touch performance from Sec. Shinseki, I was disappointed. Today, I am even more disillusioned.”

On Thursday, senators on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee grilled Shinseki and Petzel, saying about 50 federal reports in recent years warned of problems long before a health care scandal involving allegedly falsified records in at least 10 states. In Arizona, whistleblower reports surfaced in late April that a Phoenix VA hospital kept a secret list concealing long waits for health treatment while 40 veterans died.

At the hearing, Petzel called those scheduling methods “intolerable.” But he told senators he wasn’t sure whether VA employees who engage in such practices should be fired or disciplined in some other way.

And there are other problems; The family of a veteran who died while being treated for lung cancer and after contracting Legionnaire’s disease filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System.

According to the lawsuit, Clark E. Compston, a Marine Corps veteran who died Nov. 14, 2011, was being treated at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh when he was exposed to Legionnaire’s disease on or about Sept. 28, 2011.

Miller referenced a number of problems at VA hospitals during a September hearing and noted that Petzel “downplayed the problems by referring to them as ‘kerfuffles.’”

Earlier this year, Miller introduced the VA Management Accountability Act of 2014, legislation that would give Shinseki and future VA secretaries authority to fire or demote Senior Executive Service or equivalent employees based on performance.

The American Legion had demanded the resignation of Shinseki amid allegations that medical treatment delays have caused the deaths of scores of veterans, along with Petzel and Allison Hickey, another top lieutenant.

Republican Rep. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who last week called for Shinseki’s resignation, said in a Friday news release that Petzel wasn’t the only one who should be held accountable.

“It is important to note that Undersecretary Petzel was the only VA witness at the Senate VA Committee hearing who admitted knowledge of IG reports — he should not shoulder the blame for VA’s failures,” Moran said. “Rather than the VA focusing on damage control, action should be taken immediately to change the bureaucratic culture of mediocrity at the VA and ensure the highest quality and most timely care for our nation’s heroes.”

Stars and Stripes reporter Chris Carroll contributed to this report.

dickson.pat@stripes.com

Twitter: @stripesDCchief

Friday, May 16, 2014

Russia's 'wake-up call' has West pondering once-unlikely scenarios

WASHINGTON — When Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and other NATO defense ministers meet in Brussels in early June, their summit will be dominated by questions that would have seemed surreal just a few months ago.

— How should Western leaders respond to military aggression by Moscow in Ukraine?

— With defense budgets flat or declining in most of NATO’s 28 member countries and U.S. forces in Europe at their lowest levels in decades, is the trans-Atlantic alliance adequately prepared to defend its vast territory?

— In the most extreme scenario, are the United States and its European allies strong enough to go to war against Russia?

As unlikely as that prospect appears to defense officials and analysts inside and outside governments on both sides of the Atlantic, the fact that it’s even a topic of discussion has shaken the strategic foundations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Even the notion of establishing a Western military position closer to Russia is under discussion. The topic might be on the agenda when the leaders of the NATO nations meet in September.

“Maybe we should say, ‘Thank you, President Putin, for reminding us that there is still a need to have an active and vibrant NATO,’ ” former German Deputy Foreign Minister Wolfgang Ischinger told Hagel and other European leaders, speaking of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a national security forum this month at Washington’s Wilson Center, an influential foreign policy group, Ischinger said Putin “gave us a pretty good wake-up call.”

The crisis has also exposed some splits in the Western alliance, particularly over what the U.S. complains is a gap in military spending between itself and its allies.

There is, however, broad agreement that even as deadly clashes between Ukrainians and pro-Russia militias spread beyond the Crimea region, which the Kremlin annexed in March, the former Soviet republic is simply not central enough to Western security interests to warrant direct military confrontation with Moscow.

“NATO is not going to intervene militarily to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity, nor is NATO prepared for such a contingency,” Riccardo Alcaro, an expert on trans-Atlantic politics and security at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told McClatchy. “There is really no desire in either the United States but particularly in Western Europe to wage war against Russia over Ukraine.”

The only scenario in which NATO would even consider military intervention, Alcaro said, would be if there were “massive bloodshed for an extended period of time” in Ukraine.

In unusually blunt terms for such high-stakes disputes, senior NATO official Jamie Shea reminded other Western analysts that Ukraine doesn’t belong to the alliance and thus isn’t owed the territorial protections promised all members by Article 5 of its 1949 founding treaty.

“We have to be clear when it comes to NATO,” Shea, the alliance’s deputy assistant secretary-general for emerging security challenges, said at the Wilson Center forum. “The collective security guarantee applies to NATO members. Ukraine is not a NATO member.”

At the same time, there is consensus that NATO would respond forcefully to Russian intervention in members such as Poland or the Baltic nations on its western frontier.

Kathleen Hicks, who left a senior Pentagon post last July, said that for the first time, Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the commander of U.S. troops and NATO allied forces in Europe, was weighing the possibility of stationing some of them closer to Russia than the current small contingents in Bulgaria and Romania.

“It has long been NATO’s stance that permanently positioning forces so far east is too provocative,” said Hicks, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Now there is some possibility that you could actually see some shifting of forces.”

Indeed, on May 7, Breedlove tweeted: “Changes to troop locations will be made at the political level to address the new paradigm in the wake of the Russian-Ukraine crisis.”

Interviews with a dozen defense experts revealed divisions over how well-primed the trans-Atlantic alliance is for any sort of direct military action against Russia.

“We’ve been caught flatfooted in Europe, and we don’t have sufficient forces there to secure our interests,” Dakota Wood, senior defense research analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, said. “It highlights the damaging effects of not investing in defense.”

But even with military funding cuts on both sides of the Atlantic, Alcaro said NATO forces would defeat Russian troops in any direct conflict, calling them “a shadow of what they were during the Soviet time.”

“But this is only speculative,” he cautioned. “No one wants that scenario to become real. There is absolutely no appetite for war with Russia.”

Wood, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who served in the Balkans, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, derided as “meaningless” the military moves the United States made last month in response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The Pentagon dispatched 600 troops from Germany and Italy for exercises in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

“You’re talking about less than a battalion spread across four countries to engage in some training,” he said. “They go to a firing range and shoot some rounds downrange.”

Hicks countered that deployments and exercises such as the U.S. moves provide “eyes and ears on the ground,” and pave the way for any follow-up action that might become necessary.

Poland has already asked the alliance to set up permanent bases on its territory, a request that, for now, the alliance has rejected.

“This is really a very serious situation,” former Polish Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said at the Wilson Center forum. “A threat to peace in Europe is back after two decades when we believed that finally we got into a safe place on the Earth. I think that the democratic West so far has not reacted in … an effective way. That is risky tactics, because if we do not stop that aggressive (Russian) policy at any stage, then we can face a much more difficult situation.”

Stephen Long, an international affairs assistant professor at the University of Richmond, described Putin’s strategy as a low-risk way of flexing Russian muscle. He said Putin faced no serious opposition from Ukraine, European defense spending had decreased and the United States was dealing with a host of other issues, including the economy, closing the book on Afghanistan and redirecting its military and foreign policy gaze toward Asia.

“He sensed that the moment had come,” Long said, “and Ukraine was the easiest target.”

Amid the debate, Hagel has made it clear that Europe can’t continue to ride on America’s military coattails. While the U.S. still spends about 4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, most NATO members have fallen below the 2 percent threshold that U.S. leaders say should be the minimum amount.

“Today, America’s GDP is smaller than the combined GDPs of our 27 NATO allies,” the Pentagon chief said earlier this month. “But America’s defense spending is three times our allies’ combined defense spending. Over time, this lopsided burden threatens NATO’s integrity, cohesion and capability, and ultimately both European and trans-Atlantic security.”

Alcaro, the Brookings expert and a native of Spain, said when the U.S. called for help, Europe responded, though Washington was never satisfied with how much.

“The Europeans have kept thousands of troops in certain faraway countries such as Afghanistan for 12, 13 years in the face of mounting popular opposition,” he said. “The main reason for the European presence in Afghanistan is the desire of Europeans to show solidarity and give substance to our bond with the United States.”

Poland, one of the few alliance members that have increased defense spending in recent years, wants other partners to follow suit.

Olga Oliker, an analyst with the nonpartisan RAND Corp. policy group in Santa Monica, California, said there was a broad division within NATO between its Western members, most of which were relatively affluent, and its Eastern members, who were either part of the Soviet Union or under the Kremlin’s thumb in the days of the Warsaw Pact.

“In the wake of the Ukraine crisis,” she said, “there are a lot of folks in Central and Eastern Europe who are kind of saying, ‘We told you so. This is what’s important. Let’s refocus.’ ”

Why the military can't get enough of Amphibious Ready Groups

ABOARD THE USS GUNSTON HALL IN GULF OF ADEN — During a visit to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in 1993, then-President Bill Clinton said “when word of crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident the first question that comes to everyone’s lips is: ‘where is the nearest carrier?’"

Twenty-one years later, that question may be slightly modified to include “where is the nearest Amphibious Ready Group?”

GRAPHIC | The number of U.S. Navy Amphibious assault ships

While the sight of cranes moving equipment, or the well deck slowly filling up with water, aboard an amphibious dock-landing ship may not be as thrilling as catapults hurtling jets across a bustling flight deck, amphibious ready groups — known as ARGs — are playing a critical role in modern-day operations.

In 2011, the Kearsarge ARG supported NATO-led operations to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya, and last year the same ARG was parked off the coast of Egypt to potentially respond to deepening political unrest there. It also was on-call to respond to the escalating civil war in Syria.

One of the ARG’s ships, the transport dock ship USS San Antonio, was even in the headlines for its role in the capture of suspected terrorist Abu Anas al-Libi in Libya during a nighttime U.S. special operations raid in October.

The résumé for the ARGs modern-day operational contributions is long, and it includes plenty of humanitarian assistance missions as well.

“There is more focus on the ARG, and I think it’s because people are starting to realize all the benefits the ARG gives our forces,” said Capt. Timothy Kuehhas, commander of the USS Gunston Hall, which is part of the Bataan ARG currently deployed to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet area of responsibility.

But the right people might not be realizing the ARGs’ value just yet. High-ranking officials from both the Navy and Marine Corps are deeply concerned about the future of the amphibious ship fleet.

“The Marine Corps’ requirement has been pretty steady, we need 38 amphibs,” said Brig. Gen. Gregg Olson, commander of Task Force 51/59 and in charge of the amphibious forces deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet, in an interview with Stars and Stripes in Bahrain.

It’s essentially a supply-and-demand problem — and there aren’t enough amphibious ships to meet the global requirements, Navy officials said.

In March, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert informed the Senate Armed Services Committee the Navy has 29 operational amphibious ships. Greenert told the committee the requirement is 38, but that the Navy could manage with 33 such vessels.

Either way, he expressed his concern that the Navy is wearing out the existing amphibious ships. But under the current budget constraints, having 33 amphibious ships may not be possible until at least 2018, according to a Defense Department report last month on the “Estimated Impacts of Sequestration-Level Funding.”

The 'Swiss Army knife of joint forces'

An ARG is usually made up of three amphibious ships; an amphibious assault ship, an amphibious transport dock, and a dock-landing ship. It deploys with an embarked Marine expeditionary unit comprising of about 2,200 Marines.

Its purpose is to give the U.S. military a crisis-response capability that can be tailored for a wide range of situations, from disaster relief to combat.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos calls it the “Swiss Army knife of the joint force.”

An ARG essentially gives the top brass a moving base that can either work together as a whole or split apart to handle multiple situations at once throughout a region. Each ship has similar capabilities, but also some unique ones.

While the Gunston Hall can sail into shallower coastal waters and use its well deck to send Marines ashore via 15 embarked amphibious assault vehicles and two landing craft, a bigger ARG ship like the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan has a flight deck capable of launching a variety of helicopters and aircraft, including the MV-22 Osprey, AV-8B Harrier attack aircraft, CH-53E Sea Stallion helicopters.

Olson explained that the goal of the ARG is to provide combatant commanders with the right force able to cope with a multitude of missions.

Sometimes the mission requires air assets, sometimes it requires a ship off the coast capable of doing an amphibious landing, and sometimes a combination of both, said Olson, who oversees the ARG and MEU when it operates in 5th Fleet.

“Together, it makes us a very formidable force,” Kuehhas said.

On this particular day, his crew was busy sending Marines and support equipment onto a beach in Djibouti as part of the initial leg of an exercise lasting several weeks, while the other ships in the ARG, the Bataan and the amphibious transport dock USS Mesa Verde, were operating elsewhere.

An ARG also works in international waters, allowing it to navigate to the shores of any crisis while being free from the constraints of complicated host-nation agreements or lack of infrastructure issues that might impair the Army or Air Force’s ability to operate in a foreign nation.

“We have the whole ocean as our highway and every beach is a potential landing area.” Kuehhas said.

Until a decision is made on the future of ARGs, the Marine Corps and the Navy are experimenting with alternatives in light of not having enough.

“The Marines and the Navy are working closely together to find ways to be creative,” said Olson, mentioning the Navy’s new Mobile Landing Platform, and the Military Sealift Command’s Maritime Prepositioning Ship as examples of ships that can help augment the amphibious fleet.

“We are going to take all of these capabilities and put them together to project power ashore,” he said.

However, those ships are not designed to do the kind of “joint forcible entry” that amphibious ships can achieve. Nonetheless, officials say they are capable of doing some “lower-end kind of things” normally done by the amphibious ships — to take stress off the Navy’s amphibious fleet.

Olson said, “In the meantime, we’re going to get every iota of service life out of these amphibs, because we know how to use them, the sailors know to sail them, and we know how to fight in them.”

The Navy always maintains an ARG operating in the Middle East, and one constantly in the Western Pacific.

Top Navy and Marine Corps officials have also expressed the desire to have an ARG continuously on station in the southern part of the Asian-Pacific, and another one in the Mediterranean Sea.

simoes.hendrick@stripes.com

Twitter: @hendricksimoes

V-22's crash tied to pressure to succeed, top Marine says

WASHINGTON — The V-22 Osprey's deadliest accident stemmed partly from "undeniably intense" pressure to show progress for the new tilt-rotor aircraft, according to the U.S. Marine Corps commandant.

"As I reflect on the mishap I cannot ignore the charged atmosphere into which the pilots flew that night, carrying on their shoulders a critically important program," Gen. James Amos wrote two lawmakers in a look back at the crash in 2000 that killed 19 Marines. "I believe they were eager to vindicate a revolutionary technology."

Although the accident happened more than 13 years ago, the lessons cited in the December letter, obtained by Bloomberg News under the Freedom of Information Act, may apply to similar pressures the military is under today to prove the value of new weapons such as Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter and the Navy's littoral combat ship in a time of defense budget cuts.

"I remember well the aches and pains of the V-22 program," Amos said at a Rand Corp. conference in January, when asked to compare the V-22 with the Marine version of the F-35 that the service is trying to declare ready for combat as soon as July 2015. "We are not going to repeat those" issues, said Amos, who was assistant deputy commandant for aviation and involved in overseeing the V-22 in 2000.

The Osprey can take off and land like a helicopter, and its propellers tilt forward so it can fly like an airplane. After early years of setbacks and accidents, the aircraft built by Boeing and Textron's Bell Helicopter unit served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has appropriated $41.5 billion toward a $55 billion program to build 460 of the V-22s.

The letter from Amos was addressed to Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Steny Hoyer, D-Md. They've championed the cause of the widows of the two pilots who died in the 2000 crash. The women, who live in the lawmakers' districts, have long fought the notion that their husbands were at fault.

"Among the greatest misfortunes" after the crash "was the characterization — not by the Marine Corps but by others — that pilot error was solely to blame for the mishap," Amos said in his letter, although he stopped short of saying it played no role.

One of the widows, Connie Gruber, who lives in North Carolina, said in an email that she'd seen the letter from Amos and didn't want to comment.

"But I trust you will be respectful of my husband and his comrades," she said. The other widow, Trish Brow, who lives in Maryland, had no immediate comment.

Sarah Howard, a spokesman for Jones, said he had no comment. Hoyer spokeswoman Katie Grant said in an email that she didn't have the letter.

The April 8, 2000, night flight test that turned deadly was part of a series of combat evaluations needed before a decision planned for that December to move to full production of the V-22, with an estimated value of as much as $20 billion to the contractors.

"The pressure to succeed that night hung heavily in the air, touching everyone associated with the program," Amos wrote.

Instead, the decision was delayed almost five years after the April crash was followed within months by a negative report on the V-22's reliability by the Pentagon's top weapons tester, and then by another crash, this one attributed to flawed hydraulics, that killed four Marines.

Although the Marine Corps has never directly blamed the pilots for the April 2000 crash, it cited "human factors." Jones has pressed the service for years to say the pilots weren't at fault.

The Marine Corps' explanation in 2000 "failed to adequately account for the many intangibles contributing to the outcome," Amos said.

The pilots, Lt. Col. John Brow, 39, and his co- pilot, Maj. Brooks Gruber, 34, were among the most experienced V-22 pilots in the Marines, the head of Marine aviation said after the accident. Brow had flown about 97 hours and an additional 94 hours in a Osprey simulator. Gruber had flown about 86 hours, and 121 more in a simulator.

"They were superb aviators, among the finest in our Corps," Amos said. "Notwithstanding their talent and skill," the Osprey, "like all new aircraft, contained certain unexplored capabilities and limitations at the time of the mishap."

The crash during a night exercise in Marana, Arizona, was pegged to an aerodynamic condition that the pilots weren't fully informed about, according to several reviews by the Marine Corps and other agencies.

The program "did not significantly recognize the potential safety threat" that a condition called a "vortex ring state" poses to a tilt-rotor aircraft, Amos said, and "as the pilots attempted to stay in position" during landing "the aircraft subsequently entered VRS and crashed."

The condition occurs when an Osprey's or a helicopter's rotor blades lose lift as it's descending. Rather than correcting the condition, adding power makes it worse.

In the 2000 crash, the V-22 descended more than 1,000 feet per minute instead of the permitted maximum of 800 feet per minute, according to investigators.

"The test program did not fully define it, and the engineering and safety program failed to forecast the characteristic" and "clearly communicate" to fliers "the potential safety issue," Amos said.

Lt. Col. David Nevers, a spokesman for Amos, said in an e-mailed statement that the commandant's letter came after "considerable reflection over many months and careful re- examination of the many factors that led to the tragedy."

"Gen. Amos drew on his experience as a pilot, his long history with the V-22 program, and the advantage of time to offer his own perspective," Nevers said.