Hagel: DOD will develop new ‘offset strategy’

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The Pentagon must develop a new “offset strategy” in order to stay ahead of rapidly advancing competitors, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said.

The new “Defense Innovation Initiative”, which Hagel unveiled at the Reagan Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif., on Saturday, is a multifaceted effort to develop “game changing” technologies and marry them with new operating concepts.

To address emerging threats, Hagel has ordered the establishment of a new Long-Range Research and Development Planning Program to help identify, develop, and field technological breakthroughs that can enhance American combat power.

Hagel said that the fields of robotics, unmanned systems, miniaturization, big data, and 3-D printing will be of particular interest.

The Defense Department chief said the program “will invite some of the brightest minds from inside and outside government to start with a clean sheet of paper and assess what technologies and systems DOD ought to develop” over the next 3 to 5 years and beyond.

But the Pentagon needs more than new technology, according to Hagel. Citing past DOD “offset” successes like the one that led to the development of stealth planes, smart bombs, and drones, he said “the critical innovation” is to combine groundbreaking systems with new strategic and operational concepts. He has ordered the department to beef up its wargaming and military education efforts to figure out the best way to fight with the new gear that DOD acquires.

Hagel has tapped his deputy, Bob Work, to shepherd the initiative and lead a new Advanced Capability and Deterrence Panel to guide it forward.

“The Defense Innovation Initiative will shape our programs, plans, and budgets. As the initiative matures over time, I expect its impact on DOD’s budget to scale up in tandem,” Hagel said.

The new innovation initiative was motivated by two trends: technological advances by potential enemies, and the onset of an era of budget constraints.

“While we spent over a decade focused on grinding stability operations [in Iraq and Afghanistan], countries like Russia and China have been heavily investing in military modernization programs to blunt our military’s technological edge,” Hagel said.

In recent years, U.S. officials have watched with particular concern as China has been developing new stealth aircraft, attack submarines, a variety of longer range and more accurate missiles, anti-satellite weapons, electronic warfare, and cyberattack capabilities.

At the same time, militant groups have also been acquiring more advanced weapons.

“America does not believe in sending our troops into a fair fight… But that is a credo we will not be able to honor if we do not take the initiative and address these mounting challenges now,” Hagel warned.

Money – or a lack thereof – is also part of the equation.

“Continued fiscal pressure will likely limit our military’s ability to long-term challenges by increasing the size of our force, or simply outspending potential adversaries on current systems,” Hagel said. “So to overcome challenges to our military superiority, we must change the way we innovate, operate, and do business.”

harper.jon@stripes.com Twitter: @JHarperStripes

Sherman's March at 150: 5 questions and answers

A turning point in the Civil War came 150 years ago this week, when Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman left the smoking ruins of Atlanta and launched his scorching March to the Sea. Here are five questions and answers about the commander whose name, even today, evokes admiration or hatred - and about his march, which hastened the war's end:

Why march to the sea?

The Civil War was in its third year in 1864, and casualties continued to mount. Sherman's capture of Atlanta in September helped President Abraham Lincoln win a second term on Nov. 8, ensuring that his fight to preserve the Union would continue. At the same time, the Confederacy showed no sign of giving up.

With the top Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, confronting Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Sherman proposed an arcing campaign, first southward across Georgia to Savannah, then through the Carolinas toward Virginia to aid Grant. His army would leave a trail of destruction. This plan, Sherman reasoned, would conquer land but also send the enemy a message.

"If we can march a well-appointed army right through his territory, it is a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power that (Confederate President Jefferson) Davis cannot resist," Sherman wrote to Grant.

"I can make this march and make Georgia howl."

Lincoln worried a misstep "might be fatal to his army." Davis promised as much, saying Sherman, alone in the heart of enemy territory, would be crushed.

But Grant trusted Sherman, who, after ordering men into many deadly assaults during the war, made clear that he'd rather accomplish conquest in a different way.

"Shock and awe. That's really what Sherman was talking about," historian John Marszalek, author of "Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order," said in an interview.

Who was William Tecumseh Sherman?

Going back to "Cump" Sherman's boyhood, when his father died virtually penniless and his mother sent him to be raised by another family, Marszalek said the warrior known for chaos was really guided by a lifelong quest for order. Central to this notion was restoration of Union and the rule of law.

Sherman, a West Point graduate, was superintendent of a military school in Louisiana when South Carolina seceded in 1861, setting the war in motion. He wept out loud when he heard the news, then took a commission in the U.S. Army, knowing he'd fight cadets he'd trained. Ironically, Sherman always considered himself friendly to the South.

At the same time, he came to believe the Southern population's continuing support for war had to be broken, along with the Confederate army.

Sherman's veteran troops had come to love his quirky, unkempt style, his intelligence that some felt verged on craziness, and his fighting spirit.

"I'd follow Uncle Billy to hell," one soldier said.

The March to the Sea took barely a month. Sherman telegraphed Lincoln on Dec. 22: "I beg to present to you as a Christmas-gift the City of Savannah."

Did Sherman destroy everything in his path?

No. But as part of a "war on the Confederate mind," his march left many feeling that way - to this day.

Without supply lines, his 62,000-member army needed to live off the land.

"Forage liberally," he famously ordered - and many troops took that as license to pillage.

One letter home describes the spoils that foragers returned to camp with one night: "Pumpkins, chickens, cabbages" for the evening meal, but also "a looking-glass, an Italian harp ..., a peacock, a rocking chair."

Much destruction was formally ordered. Whatever could benefit the enemy - cotton gins, barns, factories, Confederate leaders' homes - could be set ablaze. Teams assigned to wreck rail lines made bonfires of torn-up ties, heated rails red hot, then twisted them around trees: "Sherman's neckties." Sherman torched some towns that harbored snipers or guerrillas. The few battles along the march were quickly won by the unstoppable Union force.

Rumors of this onrushing whirlwind spread fearfully among those in Sherman's path. And who knew what that path was? Even Lincoln would say: "We know what hole he went in, but we don't know what hole he'll come out of."

And the deception echoes today. Historian Marszalek said he's often approached after talks.

"He burned my great-grandfather's barn," a listener will say.

"Where was that?" Marszalek will ask - and it will be nowhere near Sherman's path.

"He got into people's psyche. That's exactly what he wanted to do. And it's still very much there," Marszalek said.

Along Sherman's route today, a visitor will hear about total ruin - but then see signs beckoning tourists to an "antebellum trail" of unburned plantation houses.

Sherman claimed to have inflicted $100 million worth of physical damage, though historians call this figure a guess.

The psychic damage was incalculable.

How is Sherman's march remembered today?

Sherman remains a rare Civil War figure still readily remembered.

Many Southerners quote family stories about "the devil incarnate." Confederate-interest websites brand him a "war criminal" and worse.

But the passage of time has allowed a more nuanced view.

At a reenactment in Atlanta, David French, portraying one of Sherman's troops, said, "He took the chivalry out of war, and frankly it's why he won. He was really one of the first modern generals."

Many military historians agree, saying he influenced a broadened view of what's acceptable war-making.

Others say Sherman's harsh tactics were meant to bring the Civil War to an end.

In Milledgeville, Georgia, the first major stop on the march, a symposium on Sherman's complexities is planned this month - and later the community will hold a "Dinner with Uncle Billy," combining a meal with a drama based on accounts of all sides who were present during his occupation.

Historian Robert O'Connell, author of "Fierce Patriot," a 2014 biography of Sherman, said in an interview he senses the march is now "perceived as a cruel but necessary thing."

Why Tecumseh?

Naming his son after the American Indian leader made perfect sense to Sherman's father. Unwittingly prophetic, he explained, "Tecumseh was a great warrior."

---

Christopher Sullivan can be reached at features@ap.org

Sam Smith, the sad singer? Not really

NEW YORK — If you go to a Sam Smith concert, you’ll probably hear his stories of unrequited love and how he’s never been in a relationship.

But he says that void has been slowly filled — partly thanks to meeting men and going on dates — but mainly because of his devoted fans who have helped him top the charts with his album, push millions of singles and sell out stadiums like Madison Square Garden.

“I’m going on dates, here and there, meeting people,” Smith said in a recent interview. “I’m not lonely anymore because of that, but obviously I would like someone next to me while I sleep.”

He added with a laugh: “But I’m working on that.”

Smith has become the year’s breakthrough act thanks to his booming, soulful voice, playful demeanor and deep, honest lyrics that help break up the monotonous, dance heavy sound on pop radio.

“In the Lonely Hour,” his debut album released in June, has sold more than 772,969 units. His single “Stay With Me” peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold more than 3 million tracks; and other songs have built on his buzz, from another Top 10 hit and multi-platinum success, “Latch” with Disclosure, to the upbeat “La La La” with Naughty Boy to Smith’s newest single, “I’m Not the Only One,” which jumped to No. 11 in mid-November.

The 22-year-old has number of big-name fans — from Beyonce to Mary J. Blige, with whom he’s recorded. And he’s been getting calls to collaborate with others.

“I remember being ecstatic for having 200 Facebook likes. ...Now I take that completely for granted now that I have like a million. But I’m now thinking, ‘I really would like two million,’ " he said.

“In the Lonely Hour” features pop grooves and ballads about love lapses and loneliness. The lyrics are brave and straightforward — Smith tells one man to leave his lover for him on one song, and one another he’s open about being in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same. And “Stay With Me” opens with the line: “Guess it’s true, I’m not good at a one-night stand.”

“When I’m speaking about my insecurities ... that’s when my music is the best. And that doesn’t happen every day, so this writing process was quite dramatic and because I was trying to get these songs that were honest and brutal and real,” said Smith, who co-wrote each of the songs. “I’m not a naturally sad person, so I was writing for a year and I wasn’t sad every single day for a year, so that was tough.”

He said he believes the fans are resonating with his honesty.

“The whole world knows my business now, I’ve got nothing else to hide ... and I think that people are respecting that,” he said.

Smith grew up in a small village in Cambridgeshire, England, and he decided to pursue music after his singing teacher told him he was good. He said he worked with dodgy managers as a teen, leading to false record deals and disappointments. But he persevered, eventually meeting the right producers to help him craft songs that speak from the heart.

Smith said fans have told him intense stories about connecting to his music. He’s also wants to be a voice for young gay men and women who look up to him.

“It’s so, so deeply important to me to be a spokesperson,” Smith said. “I want to be, but not just for gay people, for straight people, for lesbians, transsexuals, anyone in the world. I want my music to relate to absolutely everyone.”

Sandy Alouete, VH1’s senior vice president of talent and music programming, calls Smith a true artist.

“There’s no gimmick. Watching him on TV or hearing him on the radio, it’s just a pure delivery in a pop world that tends to stray from that,” she said.

Alouete recalls attending a Smith show, and taking in the audience.

“Anyone and everyone was on their feet, singing along — older couples on date nights, parents with their kids, gay, straight, you name it,” she said. “That’s the artist he is and that just happens once in a blue moon.”

Online: samsmithworld.com

US says it has targeted Khorasan Group again in Syria with airstrike

AMMAN, Jordan — American warplanes have struck for a third time an al-Qaida-linked extremist faction operating in Syria, the U.S. military’s Central Command said Friday.

A single airstrike targeted the Khorasan group, CENTCOM said in a statement, referring to a network of senior al-Qaida operatives that U.S. officials have said is plotting terrorist attacks against targets in the West.

The Khorasan Group operates in coordination with the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, according to U.S. officials.

The raid was one of 20 conducted by the U.S.-led coalition between Wednesday and Friday, the military said. All but three of the attacks occurred near the north-central Syrian city of Kobani, where Kurdish militiamen have been fending off an assault by militants of the Islamic State group for weeks.

U.S. officials say the main goal of the air campaign is to destroy Islamic State, an al-Qaida offshoot that has overrun large swaths of territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq. However, in September and last week, warplanes also targeted Khorasan, whose existence was revealed by American officials last month as the bombing campaign in Iraq was extended to Syria.

In an apparent reference to the latest strike, Syrian activists reported that a drone aircraft launched two rockets in the Syrian town of Harem, close to the Turkish border in the northern province of Idlib, much of which is under rebel control. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike targeted an “agricultural center,” killing two men in the vicinity.

However, a pro-government Facebook page put the death toll at more than 20 and said the center had served as the local headquarters for the Nusra Front.

Like previous attacks on the Khorasan Group, U.S. officials said the latest strike did not specifically target Nusra, a Sunni Islamist group that is among the most powerful and radical rebel groups fighting the government of President Bashar Assad.

Syrian opposition activists said, however, that the true target of the strikes against Khorasan is the Nusra Front, which has considerable support in Syrian opposition zones.

The Nusra Front has long had a working relationship with elements of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army, a loosely organized rebel umbrella group. In recent weeks, however, Nusra fighters have reportedly been attacking Free Syrian Army positions in northern Syria.

Many opposition activists in Syria and elsewhere doubt the existence of Khorasan, contending that the targets being attacked are actually Nusra Front strongholds. Last week, as Central Command announced the second round of strikes on Khorasan positions, opposition activists said warplanes had hit the headquarters of the Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, another hard-line rebel group with al-Qaida links.

Outside experts who closely monitor opposition activity in Syria also say they had never heard of Khorasan until U.S. authorities in Washington began to cite the group as a threat.

The initial wave of airstrikes that U.S. officials said was aimed at Khorasan in September reportedly targeted its leadership, including Kuwaiti-born Muhsin Fadhli, thought to be a major al-Qaida operative.

Fadhli, implicated in a number of al-Qaida operations, was reported to have moved to Syria last year to set up cells of European extremists to execute terrorist strikes in Western countries.

But Fadhli’s death in the U.S. airstrikes in September in Syria was never confirmed. Whether he survived is not publicly known.

The Nusra Front, which first emerged publicly in Syria in early 2012 with a series of car bombings in government-controlled areas, later split with its onetime ally, the Islamic State, which became a bitter rival. Islamic State is now the dominant armed opposition faction in Syria.

The U.S. bombing campaign has fueled rumors of a potential rapprochement between the two extremist groups.

On Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted sources in Aleppo and Raqqah provinces saying the Nusra Front and other Islamist groups had sent emissaries to Islamic State to set up a cease-fire and begin negotiations. The Islamic State, however, reportedly refused the overtures.

Los Angeles Times special correspondent Bulos reported from Amman and Times staff writer McDonnell from Beirut.

©2014 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Incriminating statements can be used in AFN murder trial, judge rules

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — A military judge on Friday denied a motion to suppress statements an Air Force staff sergeant made to officials investigating the death of a Navy broadcast journalist, allowing the incriminating statements to be used in his murder court-martial.

Col. Donald Eller, the Air Force judge hearing the case, also denied a defense motion to move the trial of Air Force Staff Sgt. Sean Oliver from Germany to the United States, finding that pretrial publicity of court proceedings relating to the death of Petty Officer 2nd Class Dmitry Chepusov was not prejudicial to Oliver’s defense.

Eller heard two days of arguments earlier in the week on a range of motions, including a request from Oliver’s defense team to sever his pending court-martial for Chepusov’s 2013 death from a 2012 incident for which he faces additional charges.

Eller handed down rulings on many of the issues Friday, denying most of the defense’s requests.

Oliver is charged with premeditated murder in Chepusov’s death, as well as assault, making two false official statements and two counts of obstructing justice. He is also charged with aggravated assault likely to cause grievous bodily harm and obstruction of justice for a previous incident.

Chepusov and Oliver were co-workers at American Forces Network at Ramstein Air Base, where Oliver’s court-martial is expected to start in mid-January.

In one of its first motions Tuesday, Oliver’s defense had sought to suppress incriminating statements he made to Air Force investigators. Maj. Shane McCammon, Oliver’s senior defense attorney, argued that investigators used “unlawful inducement” and coercion to elicit those statements.

Investigators made Oliver aware of his right to a lawyer before and during questioning, at one point telling him, “You can ask for a lawyer any time you want,” Eller, who watched video of the interrogation, said. Additionally, Oliver had been represented briefly by a German attorney during his time in German custody; that lawyer told him not to make any statements, according to Eller.

Eller said Oliver “voluntarily chose to ignore the advice of his German lawyer” and was persuaded that Oliver’s incriminating statements were products of his own “free and voluntary will.”

Oliver’s attorneys also had asked to have the trial moved from Germany to the U.S., arguing that media coverage of the case — particularly by Stars and Stripes — would unfairly taint the jury pool. Stories printed in the newspaper and on its website included facts about the case that McCammon said would be inadmissible during the trial.

“Whether accurate or not, the reports are not inflammatory” or sensationalistic, Eller said in his ruling denying the change of venue. “While the court does harbor concerns about the prejudicial impact of reports” of some of the facts, the law doesn’t require complete ignorance on the part of panel members.

Anticipating continued media interest in the case, the court issued an order to prospective panel members in October to prevent them from reading about, listening to or watching coverage of the proceedings.

Eller granted Oliver five extra days of credit for alleged violations of rights while in pre-confinement at the Army confinement facility in Mannheim.

millham.matthew@stripes.com

Twitter: @mattmillham

Baumholder quarantine site ready for troops returning from Ebola mission

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The first group of U.S. troops scheduled to be isolated in Army barracks at Baumholder on returning from an Ebola-related mission in West Africa could arrive this weekend, Army officials said Friday.

Maj. Gen. John R. O’Connor, commander of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, the unit heading the monitoring mission in Germany, said he’s been in contact with local community leaders about the plan.

Those quarantined at Baumholder will spend 21 days living in a tightly controlled environment among a complex of buildings, surrounded by a fence, on the edge of Baumholder’s Smith Barracks. Twice-daily temperature checks are required to ensure soldiers remain symptom-free.

The quarantine barracks have been equipped with pool and foosball tables, fitness equipment, game consoles, flat-screen TVs, laptops with webcams, and books and magazine kits from the Army library system in Europe.

Military officials held a town hall Thursday at Smith Barracks to ease concerns and answer questions.

Soldiers being quarantined “are all determined to be low-risk,” Col. Shawn Wells, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz, told hundreds of soldiers and civilians. “That means that they’ve been setting up tents, they’ve been working in these labs, not making any contact” with Ebola patients.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last month ordered the quarantine for troops who spend time on the ground supporting U.S. humanitarian aid efforts in three hard-hit countries in West Africa, where the Ebola virus has killed more than 5,000 people.

The policy goes beyond guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has rejected a mandatory Ebola quarantine — recommending only voluntary isolation for those potentially exposed.

Baumholder is one of two U.S. military bases in Europe the Pentagon has designated as “controlled monitoring” sites for servicemembers returning from the West Africa mission. The other is Vicenza, Italy. Five stateside bases have also been designated as monitoring sites.

Those staying at Baumholder would be troops assigned only to Germany, O’Connor said.

Baumholder was chosen because of its proximity “to rapid transit, in this case an autobahn, and a medical facility,” O’Connor said, referring to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. “The same in Vicenza.”

The first contingent tentatively penciled in for Baumholder comprises about 30 to 40 soldiers with the 15th Engineer Battalion based in Grafenwöhr. O’Connor said the soldiers were deployed for about a month to Liberia, where they built just over a dozen Ebola treatment facilities.

While there, they lived in secure quarters and were not exposed to Ebola patients, he said.

“We’re really looking forward to our soldiers coming home,” he said. “They’re excited to get back and be with their families. We set the conditions for them to do that as quick as we can to ensure that they’re safe, their families are safe and the communities are safe.”

Family members will have to wait to hug their returning soldiers, however. They won’t be allowed inside the monitoring area, but they may be able to speak to a loved one through the fence and they’ll be able to drop off items for the center to hand off, officials said. All rooms have Internet access to enable soldiers to stay in touch with friends and family.

O’Connor said planning for the controlled monitoring area involved a range of organizations, including, the 21st TSC, the Air Force, garrisons, Installation Management Command, USO, volunteers and family readiness groups. The USO, for instance, donated a DVD library, coffee, playing cards and board games, among other items.

Six previously empty buildings on Smith Barracks make up the monitoring area: four will house the soldiers; one will serve as the operations center and one as a medical clinic.

Soldiers showing any symptoms associated with Ebola would immediately be taken to Landstuhl, officials said, where they would be tested — a procedure that takes from four to eight hours to get results, said Lt. Col. Luke Wiest, 21st TSC command surgeon. A patient testing positive would be evacuated to the United States for care, he said.

Soldiers in each of the four living areas will be sequestered by group to avoid possible cross-contamination, officials said. They’ll spend time outdoors with their group, and eat together in a tent facility inside the compound using disposable tableware.

Trash will be separated into four receptacles and not disposed of for at least 72 hours, the theoretical life span of the Ebola virus, Wiest said.

“There’s a strict audit trail for every soldier,” O’Connor said.

The fence is as much to keep people from wandering in as wandering out, said Col. Jeffrey Murray, commander of the 16th Sustainment Brigade, which is running the operation.

“A lot of people have asked that — is this prison?” Murray said at the town hall.

“Anyone who has signs or symptoms, their room is quarantined” until tests confirm whether the soldier has Ebola or some other illness, such as malaria, which is common in West Africa, or the flu, Col. Peter Kubas of the 30th Medical Brigade said at the town hall.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health of Rhineland Palatinate told Stars and Stripes that U.S. military officials contacted German health officials in early November and said they would work together to ensure the safety of the Americans and the citizens of Baumholder.

O’Connor said his team is “anxious to get these soldiers home in time for the holidays and get them processed through before Christmas.

“We’re very confident that we’ve done everything that we’ve been asked to do. We’re prepared to respond and agile enough to respond to any changes that come at us.”

At least one outside expert seems to agree.

“A World Health Organization doctor was in the area last week,” Kubas said at the town hall. “We were speaking with him, and he looked at us and he said, ‘What you guys are doing here is absolutely overkill.’ ”

Stars and Stripes reporter Marcus Klöckner contributed to this report.

svan.jennifer@stripes.com

millham.matthew@stripes.com

Air controller becomes just 3rd airman to earn 2nd Silver Star

WASHINGTON — As bullets cracked around his head, Air Force Master Sgt. Thomas Case stayed cool and directed pinpoint airstrikes on Taliban positions less than a stone’s throw away.

And with two foreign fighters coming at the commander of the Army unit to which Case was assigned as a joint terminal attack controller, he shielded the officer with his body and took them down with his rifle.

For his heroism fulfilling both the air and ground aspects of the JTAC’s job during a battle on July 16 and 17, 2009, Case on Tuesday became just the third airman to be awarded a second Silver Star medal. Case, who’s now part of the 18th Air Support Operations Group at Fort Bragg, N.C., received the honor in a ceremony at Pope Field.

As a staff sergeant in 2004, he was awarded his first Silver Star for an operation during the 2003 invasion of Iraq to seize and hold the Haditha dam. Over the course of several days, controlling up to 14 aircraft simultaneously, Case was responsible for over 300 enemy casualties, the destruction of dozens of enemy tanks, scores of artillery pieces and even a few enemy boats.

The 2009 battle in the Khost province of Afghanistan, for which he earned his second Silver Star, was an entirely different affair.

“It’s apples and oranges,” he said. “You go from fighting a conventional military force to fighting an insurgency.”

It was a nighttime operation deep in the Khost-Gardez Pass in eastern Afghanistan. A platoon of Rangers, accompanied by Case, climbed out of helicopters a few miles from a group of mountain camps where they hoped to capture or kill a specific Taliban combatant, as well as disrupt insurgent activities in the area.

The began a tough climb toward the objective, but went off course and soon came under heavy fire from a machine gun in a fighting position just 15 yards away.

“The enemy had the high ground,” Case said. “We didn’t have a lot of time or room to maneuver.”

According to the Air Force narrative of the incident, “Pinned down in the center of the platoon’s formation, Sergeant Case recognized they needed to employ close air support. With machine guns rounds impacting the ground and trees within two feet of him, Sergeant Case remained exposed to enemy fire so he could locate the enemy position.”

But then Case realized he couldn’t call in an airstrike from a AC-130 gunship orbiting overhead because his communications were down because wires on his radio had been damaged.

“Bullets were flying around. I’d love to be the guy able to say a round had sliced through his wires,” he said. “The truth is it actually got hung up. It was the deciduous forest there.”

He was able to partially piece his equipment back together amid the onslaught, and finally directed the gunships crew to destroy the enemy position with fire from its 25 mm cannon.

Case said he had few qualms about directing an airstrike so close to the platoon’s position.

“The ground force commander asked me what the hell I was doing,” he said. “I just said, ‘Sir, that’s the best crew up there.’ It was just incredible to see them put their bullets where they were supposed to go.”

After directing two danger close airstrikes, Case saw through his night-vision goggles that two insurgents were bounding down the hill toward him and the Army officer commanding the mission. Instinctively, his fighting sense switched from air to ground.

“As they closed within fifteen meters of their position, Sergeant Case literally placed himself between the enemy personnel and the ground force commander in order to protect him from their gunfire,” according to the Air Force narrative of the battle. “Employing his M-4 rifle and directing the ground force commander to take cover, he then killed both insurgents, both of whom turned out to be highly trained foreign fighters.”

Case continued shooting and continued directing airstrikes, and within about half an hour, he estimates, the Taliban in the area were dead or on the run, and the Rangers began securing control of the mountainous terrain around them.

Years later, Case and the Ranger commander, Capt. Carmen Bucci, maintain a strong bond. Bucci attended the medal ceremony Thursday.

Firing his weapon in a ground engagement was nothing new for Case, but in retrospect, he said the danger-close nature of the airstrikes he’d been forced to call in were unusual, and the tremendous noise of the big rounds slamming into the slope some fifty feet away are something that has stuck with him.

“With the proficiency of that crew, I’d do the same thing again,” he said. “I certainly hope I don’t have to, but I would.”

carroll.chris@stripes.com

Twitter: @ChrisCarroll_

Senate Republicans say defunding A-10 would be a boost for US enemies

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans vowed again Thursday to preserve funding for the A-10 fighter jet, describing an Air Force proposal to mothball all or part of its Warthog fleet as an ill-advised gift to U.S. foes around the world.

“I tell you who would like to retire the A-10: the enemies of this nation,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., during a Capitol Hill press conference that included Sens. John McCain and Kelly Ayotte.

Ayotte, R-N.H., has led the effort in the Senate to rescue the A-10, the “flying tank” beloved by U.S. ground troops for its reliability in providing close air support. Pentagon and Air Force officials initially sought to retire the entire fleet of 283 jets by 2019, claiming the move would save $4.2 billion and prevent further operational delays of the F-35 joint strike fighter jet.

In recent weeks, reacting to persistent criticism from Ayotte and other lawmakers, Air Force officials quietly floated a compromise plan to ground 72 jets by shutting down three A-10 squadrons.

On Thursday, Ayotte, whose husband flew combat missions in the A-10 while deployed to Iraq, had a two-word response to the idea of trimming the fleet. “It’s wrong,” she said.

The campaign to keep the A-10 flying has received bipartisan support in the House since the summer, when lawmakers, ignoring the wishes of the Air Force, voted to preserve the fleet.

But while the House passed a defense authorization bill months ago that would maintain funding levels for the jet, the measure remains mired in the Senate.

White House officials have suggested that President Barack Obama may veto a defense spending bill that requires the Air Force to sustain the A-10 program.

In emphasizing the need for the Warthog, McCain, R-Ariz., invoked the rise of Islamic State militants and Russian troops invading Ukraine. McCain, who is expected to become head of the Armed Forces Committee when Republicans take control of the Senate in January, blamed the Air Force for “misguided priorities” in attempting to ground the A-10.

The low-flying, slow-moving jet, developed in the early 1970s, has strong backing from the Tactical Air Control Party Association, which represents the military’s roughly 1,300 close air support experts.

Charlie Keebaugh, the group’s president, referred to the Warthog as a “game-changer” for U.S. combat troops. “Our guys on the ground need and deserve the A-10,” he said.

kuz.martin@stripes.com

Twitter: @MartinKuz

Obama, Suu Kyi meet as Myanmar icon shifts role

YANGON, Myanmar — When President Barack Obama meets with Myanmar's opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday, he will encounter a figure in the midst of an evolution he finds familiar: the shift from history-making trailblazer to establishment politician.

Four years after being released from house arrest, Suu Kyi is now a member of Myanmar's Parliament and has been pushing for changes to a constitutional provision that is blocking her path to the presidency. While Suu Kyi, 69, remains beloved by many in this long-isolated Southeast Asian nation, however, she's come under criticism for failing to take a tougher line against the country's former military leaders and for staying largely silent about the abuse of Muslim minorities that could jeopardize Myanmar's fitful move toward democracy.

"Mahatma Gandhi unequivocally denounced all forms of intolerance and so did Nelson Mandela," Jody Williams, a Nobel Prize-winning American human rights activist, said of two figures with whom Suu Kyi is often compared. "If she wants to lead the country, help it develop, she has to do the same."

Rights activists have suggested that Suu Kyi's caution reflects her fears of alienating military lawmakers who still control a quarter of the seats in Parliament. Obama administration officials agree that some of her decisions appear to be driven by political motivations, particularly her reluctance to address the plight of the Rohingya Muslims who are deeply disdained by most people in Myanmar.

Obama and Suu Kyi met briefly Thursday on the sidelines of a regional summit in Naypyitaw, the capital city that Myanmar's former military leaders secretly built in the middle of the jungle in the early 2000s. The city has the lush hotels and impressive public buildings of a modern capital, but its vast empty spaces and eerily empty multilane highways have led to its reputation as something of a ghost town.

On Friday, Obama flew to the city of Yangon to hold more substantial talks with Suu Kyi at the lakeside home where she spent much of her confinement.

The U.S. president has often spoken of his admiration for her, heralding the "unbreakable courage and determination" of his fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate during his first trip to Myanmar in 2012. The White House has also gone out of its way to promote Suu Kyi in its overtures to Myanmar, with Obama notably holding his news conference on this trip with the opposition leader, not the country's president, Thein Sein.

Obama's own compelling personal history includes none of the hardships endured by Suu Kyi, who was confined for more than two decades and whose father, the founder of the Burmese Independence Army, was assassinated. But Obama — whose election as America's first black president was seen as a precursor to broader political changes in Washington — shares with Suu Kyi the experience of having sky-high expectations deflated amid political realities.

That's been true for Obama both in the U.S., where his poll numbers have sagged and his party just suffered devastating defeats in midterm elections, as well as abroad. And his policy toward Myanmar in particular has been a tale of lofty goals proving difficult to reach.

Obama had broadly embraced Myanmar's move away from a half-century of military rule, suspending U.S. sanctions and rewarding the country with high-level visits from American officials. But Myanmar has stalled in fulfilling its promises of political and economic reforms, and in some cases has lost ground.

Still Obama, in a meeting Thursday with Myanmar's president, said the promise of democratization in the country is real.

"We recognize that change is hard and it doesn't always move in a straight line," Obama said after his meeting at Thein Sein's opulent palace. "But I am optimistic about the possibilities for Myanmar."

One of Myanmar's biggest tests comes during next year's election. Suu Kyi is unable to run for president because of a constitutional rule prohibiting anyone with strong allegiances to a foreign national from standing for the presidency. Suu Kyi's sons are British, as was her late husband.

Obama has been pressing Myanmar's leaders to amend the Constitution, but has been careful to not directly endorse Suu Kyi as the country's next president. And despite Obama's respect for Suu Kyi, officials say the president will press her to speak out on the persecution of the Rohingya.

"We believe that all leaders across the political spectrum can play a role in speaking out," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser. "Her voice is obviously critically important."

Separately, the White House announced Friday that it will work with Japan and Denmark to try to improve the labor environment in Myanmar, where poor conditions for workers have long been a concern.

For her part, Suu Kyi has also become increasingly critical of the Obama administration, suggesting that the U.S. has turned a blind eye to the reality of Myanmar's stalled reforms.

"We do think there have been times when the U.S. has been overly optimistic," she told reporters last week. "What significant reforms have been taken within the last 24 months? This is something the United States needs to think very seriously about as well."

Associated Press writers Robin McDowell and Josh Lederman in Naypyitaw and Aye Aye Win in Yangon contributed to this report.

Iraq force authorization reopens debate on war

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s decision to reverse course and seek a congressional authorization for the war against the Islamic State has so far served only to reignite criticism of his entire military strategy against the extremists.

On Thursday, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said any authorization that bars ground troops — Obama has insisted Americans will not wage ground combat — would be dead on arrival in Congress. “I will not support sending our military into harm’s way with their arms tied behind their backs,” said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif.

The day after the midterm elections, Obama appeared to change tack; saying he would welcome Congress’ input.

“I’m going to begin engaging Congress over a new authorization to use military force against ISIL,” he said. “The world needs to know we are united behind this effort and the men and women of our military deserve our clear and unified support.”

Meanwhile, about six competing authorization bills are now circulating on Capitol Hill and the White House has not yet told lawmakers what it expects from the new war authority, despite requests from congressional leaders. The lack of direction is making the process more difficult, said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who sponsored one of the bills.

“This works so much better when the president sends up the draft authorization,” Kaine said during a discussion at the Wilson Center in Washington. “Because if he doesn’t … then you have six different authorizations put in. I put one in with basic authorizations and limitations but there are five other authorizations floating around.”

Kaine has argued that Congress is abdicating its duty under the Constitution to declare war by not voting on the Obama administration’s air and proxy war. His bill would lay out rules for humanitarian operations, counter-terror operations against Islamic State leaders, and the training of regional forces as well as include a sunset clause that would require lawmakers to revisit the use of force after one year.

In lieu of a White House draft, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., is likely working on synthesizing various proposals into a “Frankenstein” bill, said Kaine, who sits on that committee.

Congress is under mounting pressure to weigh in on the new conflict and decide on parameters for Operation Inherent Resolve as the administration strategy evolves. This week alone, U.S. and coalition forces conducted 23 more air strikes in Iraq and Syria at a cost of about $8 million per day, a total of about $776 million since Aug. 8, to push back the Islamist radicals who have seized large swaths of those countries, according to the Department of Defense.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the military is now considering limited deployment of ground troops to fight alongside Iraqi forces — despite assurances from Obama it would not happen.

The administration is now basing its legal justification for the war on authorizations passed by Congress in 2001 after 9/11 and in 2002 about six months before the invasion of Iraq.

Last week, Obama met with congressional leaders and said the old authority for war is out of date.

“We now have a different type of enemy. The strategy is different … So it makes sense for us to make sure that the authorization from Congress reflects what we perceive to be not just our strategy over the next two or three months, but our strategy going forward,” Obama said.

The White House did not provide comment for this report.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor, said Wednesday that authorizations of war have almost always required the president to make the first move.

“If you look back at every single major authorization of force since World War II … they have only come about because the president insisted on it,” Goldsmith said.

More than 10 authorizations have occurred that way and it is likely an Obama draft would mean a quick response from Congress, he said.

“If he sent up a draft authorization tomorrow and said, ‘I want this in a month,’ that would get the job done,” Goldsmith said. “The question is going to be, if he does not make that move, if congress can do it on its own.”

tritten.travis@stripes.com

Twitter: @Travis_Tritten

What happened to US isolationism? 2 beheadings

Remember when pundits were worried that Americans had turned isolationist? As recently as August, polls showed big majorities opposed to military intervention in Iraq, Syria or anywhere else.

But it only took a couple of beheadings by Islamic State to turn a nation of war-weary noninterventionists into an angry, warlike tribe.

In a CBS News poll last month, a massive 71 percent of those surveyed said they supported continued air assaults against Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Even more notable, the number of people who supported sending U.S. troops to Iraq “to fight ISIS militants” (which sounds like ground combat, something President Barack Obama has said he won’t do) had increased to 47 percent, up from 39 percent in September. And a big majority said they believed U.S. ground troops were needed to defeat Islamic State in the field.

There are still a few holdouts, of course. Last week, when the president announced that he was doubling the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, Code Pink protested from the left, and former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, chimed in from the isolationist right.

But in the vast stretch of American politics in between, Obama’s decision was broadly accepted on its merits.

On the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., affirmed that the militants of Islamic State “have got to be defeated.” On the right, hawkish Republicans including Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, said Obama’s escalation was, if anything, too little and too late. Even Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the military action was “justified”; his only complaint was that Congress hadn’t authorized it.

And that suggests that if the president decides to put some U.S. forces into combat in the fight against Islamic State — now U.S. soldiers act solely as advisers — there is already considerable public support for such a move.

So what happened to all the isolationists?

It turns out that even though the public still yearns for fewer wars and less entanglement overseas, there’s at least one big exception: They want a robust response to terrorist attacks against Americans.

“Even when the public wants to withdraw from international engagement, if you hit us, there’s a Jacksonian reflex — we’re going to protect ourselves,” said Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center.

And even though Islamic State hasn’t mounted any attacks outside its home ground in the Middle East, the group’s rhetoric — along with its success in seizing territory and those horrifying videotaped beheadings — quickly convinced Americans that it poses a direct threat to the U.S.

In the CBS poll, 58 percent said they considered Islamic State a major threat to the security of the United States; 21 percent said they considered the group a minor threat.

“It’s not surprising that people are outraged by beheadings; that’s appropriate,” said John Mueller, of Ohio State, who has long argued that public concern about terrorism has been exaggerated. “But the fact that so may see ISIS as a major threat to the United States frankly amazes me.”

Americans have long had a warlike streak. When presidents have made the decision to go to war, even in cases in which the enemy seemed less threatening than Islamic State, the initial public response has traditionally been support — known to scholars as the “rally-’round-the-flag” effect. Such patriotism doesn’t always translate into support for the president, however, and it certainly hasn’t this time. Even as Obama has escalated U.S. action against Islamic State, his overall standing among voters has remained stuck around the 40 percent mark.

In the CBS poll, the number who said they believe Obama has a clear plan for dealing with Islamic State actually declined from 35 percent in September to 29 percent at the end of last month.

That could be in part a reflection of partisan feeling in the heat of a midterm election campaign. But it also reflects a harsh reality of post-Cold War politics: Presidents don’t get as much deference as they used to — even when they’re waging war.

“If you go back to the Cold War era, even Jimmy Carter got a big bounce in public support during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979,” Kohut said. “But that was a different time.”

Post-Cold War presidents, by contrast, have reaped little or no political gain from going to war — even when they were far more hawkish than Obama.

George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor, was blamed for the early fiascoes of his invasion of Iraq — a taint the popularity of his second-term “surge” strategy never erased.

His father, George H.W. Bush, won the Persian Gulf War against Iraq handily — and was turned out of office the following year.

There’s no reason to think things have changed. Obama will have to accept the cruel reality of post-Cold War politics: If the war goes badly, his standing will suffer. And even if it goes well, it won’t do him much good.

Doyle McManus is a Los Angeles Times columnist.

Hagel vows nuclear force overhaul, OKs 4-star for AF commander

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has concluded that problems in the nation's nuclear forces are rooted in a lack of investment, inattention by high-level leaders and sagging morale, and is ordering top-to-bottom changes, vowing to invest billions of dollars to fix the management of the world's most deadly weapons, two senior defense officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Hagel ordered two lengthy reviews of the nuclear force after a series of stories by the AP revealed numerous problems in management, morale, security and safety, leading to several firings, demotions and other disciplinary actions against a range of Air Force personnel from generals to airmen.

Hagel's moves, while not dramatic, are designed to get at the core of the problem, the officials said.

The senior defense officials discussed the reviews and Hagel's response to them on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be cited by name.

Hagel was expected to announce his decisions at a morning news conference Friday and then fly to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, home of a Minuteman 3 missile unit whose recent setbacks are emblematic of the trouble dogging the broader force.

The Air Force has been hit hardest by the problems, particularly its Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile force based in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The AP documented numerous missteps over the past two years, including misbehavior by ICBM force leaders, lapses in training, violations of security rules and exam cheating.

The Navy, which operates nuclear-armed submarines, had its own exam-cheating scandal this year and has suffered from a shortage of personnel.

Hagel's reviews concluded that the structure of U.S. nuclear forces is so incoherent that it cannot be properly managed in its current form, and that this problem explains why top-level officials often are unaware of trouble below them.

The reviews also found that a combination of problems amount to fundamental flaws, rather than random or period slip-ups that can easily be fixed, the defense officials said. They said the nuclear forces are currently meeting the demands of the mission but are finding it increasingly hard to cope.

To illustrate the degree of decay in the ICBM force, the review found that maintenance crews had access to only one tool set required to tighten bolts on the warhead end of the Minuteman 3 missile, and that this single tool set was being used by crews at all three ICBM bases. They had to share it via Federal Express delivery, the defense officials said. The crews now have one at each of the three bases.

When he ordered the two reviews in February, shortly after the Air Force announced it was investigating an exam-cheating ring at one ICBM base and a related drug investigation implicating missile crew members, Hagel was said to be flabbergasted that such misbehavior could be infecting the force.

"He said, 'What is going on here?'" one of the senior defense officials recalled.

Among his more significant moves, Hagel authorized the Air Force to put a four-star general in charge of its nuclear forces, the two senior defense officials said.

The top Air Force nuclear commander currently is a three-star. Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson is responsible not only for the 450 Minuteman ICBMs but also the nuclear bomber force. Hagel has concluded that a four-star would be able to exert more influence within the Air Force, the defense officials said.

Hagel also OK'd a proposal to upgrade the top nuclear force official at Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon from a two-star general to a three-star, the officials said.

The review's authors, retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch and retired Navy Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., found fault with one of the unique features of life in the nuclear forces. It is called the Personnel Reliability Program, designed to monitor the mental fitness of people to be entrusted with the world's deadliest weapons.

Over time, that program has devolved into a burdensome administrative exercise that detracts from the mission, the authors found, according to the senior defense officials. Hagel ordered that it be overhauled.

Hagel concluded that despite tight Pentagon budgets, billions of dollars more will be needed over the next five years to upgrade equipment. That will include a proposal to replace the Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopter fleet that is part of the security forces at ICBM bases. The Air Force declared them out of date years ago but put available resources into other priorities.

The defense officials said Hagel would propose an amount between $1 billion and $10 billion in additional investment. An exact amount had not yet been determined.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said Thursday that while he had not seen the Hagel reviews or heard what actions Hagel was ordering, he was skeptical that it would make much difference.

"Throwing money after problems may fix some technical issues but it is unlikely to resolve the dissolution that must come from sitting in a silo hole in the Midwest with missiles on high alert to respond to a nuclear attack that is unlikely to ever come," Kristensen said.

A cascade of embarrassments befell the Air Force over the past two years, beginning with an AP story in May 2013 revealing one missile officer's lament of "rot" inside the force. Another AP story in November disclosed that an independent assessment for the Air Force found signs of "burnout" and elevated levels of personal misconduct among missile launch crews and missile security forces.

The AP also disclosed last year that four ICBM launch officers were disciplined for violating security rules by opening the blast door to their underground command post while one crew member was asleep.

Just last week the AP disclosed that the Air Force fired two nuclear commanders and disciplined a third, providing evidence that leadership lapses are continuing even as top Air Force officials attempt to bring stability to the ICBM force.

The most senior officer to be relieved Nov. 3 was Col. Carl Jones, vice commander of the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force base in Wyoming. He had been investigated for inappropriate behavior, including alleged cruelty toward a subordinate.

Ex-Homeland Security official warns of more victims of massive USIS cyberbreach

WASHINGTON — A massive cyberbreach that compromised the private files of more than 25,000 Department of Homeland Security workers earlier this year also exposed data belonging to numerous workers at other federal agencies, a former senior DHS official said Thursday.

Christopher Cummiskey, who recently left his post as acting undersecretary for management at DHS, said Thursday that government investigators from several agencies are still identifying the precise numbers of those affected. He added the final tally could represent thousands more employees.

Cummiskey said that officials found similarities between the techniques used by intruders in the incident at U.S. Investigations Services LLC and during an earlier breach at the Office of Personnel Management that was later linked to Chinese hackers.

The USIS breach, which was reported by the company to government officials last June, was the first of a series of high-profile cyber intrusions in recent months that have alarmed congressional and computer security experts and raised calls for more government scrutiny and coordination. Late last month, hackers reportedly traced to Russia penetrated some White House computers. And a massive intrusion at the U.S. Post Office, reported just this week and also linked to China, compromised the data of as many as 800,000 postal workers.

Speaking at a cybersecurity forum at the Center for National Policy think tank in Washington, Cummiskey said government agencies need to share information about breaches as soon as they are notified. He said DHS contracting officials were slow in alerting other agency officials to the severity of the USIS breach after the company reported the incident last June.

Cummiskey said that the hackers who struck at USIS penetrated through the company-designed data management system, known as Orion. He said it took months before the company noticed the intrusion and that once hackers gained entry, they easily moved from DHS workers to other government agency employees. There were no firewalls separating the files belonging to each agency, Cummiskey said.

"Once they were in, the hackers were able to pack their bags with anything they wanted," Cummiskey said.

Cummiskey did not identify the other agencies that used the Orion system but a person familiar with USIS contracts said workers from at least one Department of Defense intelligence agency had private and financial data in that network. The person familiar with USIS contracts spoke anonymously because of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation into the breach.

A USIS spokeswoman declined to comment. The company previously said that the attack struck at a computer server run by an unidentified "third party." The company also said earlier that cyberstrikes often take months to detect and that USIS' computer systems had previously been reviewed and approved by OPM officials.

Cummiskey said that DHS' contract with USIS was faulty because it did specify rigorous computer security and data-management practices. He said investigators found that the compromised Orion system contained old background check reports that should have been deleted.

"There were too many old reports floating around," Cummiskey said.

Drone sightings up dramatically in US

WASHINGTON — More than a million small drone aircraft have been sold in the past few years, and a growing number of them are turning up in the skies near airports and airliners, posing a risk of collision. Reports of drone sightings near other planes, helicopters and airfields are reaching the government almost daily, say federal and industry officials.

It's a sharp increase from just two years ago when such reports were still unusual.

Many of the reports are filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by airline pilots. But other pilots, airport officials and local authorities often file reports as well, said the officials, who agreed to discuss the matter only on the condition that they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. Michael Toscano, president of a drone industry trade group, said FAA officials also have verified the increase to him.

While many of the reports are unconfirmed, raising the possibility that pilots may have mistaken a bird or another plane in the distance for a drone, the officials said other reports appear to be credible.

The reports underscore the difficulty the FAA faces trying to control drones, which could cause a crash if one collided with a plane or was sucked into an engine. Small drones usually aren't visible on radar to air traffic controllers, particularly if they're made of plastic or other composites.

The agency's near-total ban on their use has been ignored by operators ranging from real estate agents to farmers who use them to monitor crops. Rules to allow broader use of commercial drones are expected to be proposed before year's end.

"It should not be a matter of luck that keeps an airplane and a drone apart," said Rory Kay, a training captain at a major airline and a former Air Line Pilots Association safety committee chairman. "So far we've been lucky."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the "reckless operation of drones, whether near airports or anywhere else, is a serious threat to public safety."

"We shouldn't wait for a major disaster to take action to protect the airspace," she told the AP.

The FAA requires that drone and model aircraft operators keep flights to under 400 feet in altitude, keep the aircraft within sight of the operator and stay at least 5 miles away from an airport. Small drones are often indistinguishable from model aircraft, which have grown in sophistication.

Commercial operators and government officials from police to research scientists must obtain FAA certificates of authorization to fly drones. Exceptions are made for some government drones such as those the military flies in great swaths of airspace in reserved, remote areas. Customs and Border Protection flies high-altitude drones along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

Jim Williams, who heads the FAA drone office, caused a stir earlier this year when he told a drone industry conference that an airliner nearly collided with a drone over Tallahassee, Florida, in March. The pilot of the 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet reported the camouflage-painted drone was at an altitude of about 2,300 feet, 5 miles northeast of the airport. The FAA hasn't been able to find the drone or identify its operator.

Some other recent incidents:

—The pilots of a regional airliner flying at about 10,000 feet reported seeing at least one drone pass less than 500 feet above the plane, moving slowly to the south toward Allegheny County Airport near Pittsburgh. The drone was described as black and gray with a thin body, about 5 feet to 6 feet long.

—Air traffic controllers in Burbank, California, received a report from a helicopter pilot of a camera-equipped drone flying near the giant Hollywood sign.

—Controllers at central Florida's approach control facility received a report from the pilots of an Airbus A319 airliner that they had sighted a drone below the plane at about 11,000 feet and 15 miles west of Orlando. The drone was described as having a red vertical stabilizer and blue body. It wasn't picked up on radar.

—The pilots of a regional airliner reported spotting a drone 500 feet to 1,000 feet off the plane's right side during a landing approach to runway 4 of the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina. The drone was described as the size of a large bird.

The FAA seeks to follow up on some of the reports to educate operators about safety, the agency said in a statement, adding that some rogue operators have been threatened with fines.

Toscano, of the drone trade group, said that with more than a million small drones sold worldwide in the past few years it is inevitable that some will misuse them because they don't understand the safety risks or simply don't care.

"As unfortunate as it would be that we have an incident, it's not going to shut down the industry," Toscano said.

No shore leave at Subic Bay while murder case against Marine is pending

Sailors on ships docked at Subic Bay won’t get shore leave while authorities determine the fate of a Marine accused of a slaying there.

“In consideration of recent events in Olongapo City, the United States has temporarily restricted shore leave for… U.S. forces [visiting] the Subic Bay area,” according to an official at the U.S. Embassy in Manila.

Marine Pfc. Joseph Scott Pemberton, who has been in custody in the Philippines for almost a month, is suspected of involvement in the death of Jeffrey Laude, 26, a transgender person also known as Jennifer whose body was found Oct. 11 in a motel bathroom.

The death, which prompted protests from family members and anti-American activists, comes at a crucial time for U.S.-Filipino relations as the countries prepare to implement an agreement that will see thousands of U.S. troops rotate through bases in the Philippines over the next decade.

Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority chairman Robert Garcia told the AFP news agency earlier this month that nine U.S. Navy ships had canceled visits to the port. Ships were still scheduled to visit for emergency repairs, but crews wouldn’t be allowed ashore, he said.

Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet, said Thursday that no “announced visits” to the Philippines had been canceled.

“USNS Mary Sears has been at Subic Bay and just left, and the USNS Henson (an oceanic survey ship) just arrived yesterday,” he said.

Port visits are often not confirmed until a week or even a few days before a ship arrives, Marks said.

“…to say that all port visits have been canceled for the next two months is not accurate,” he said. “We just do not have any confirmed port visits to the Philippines right now. Of course port visits of U.S. Navy ships to the Philippines is a key part of the U.S.-Philippine alliance so we’re always looking for opportunities to get our ships there.”

The embassy official, who asked not to be identified, said many factors that go into arranging port calls and that schedules of a particular ship can change for a variety of reasons.

“The U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Pacific Command are working together to review each port call to ensure U.S. service members still have an opportunity to visit the Philippines and experience the food, culture and strong historic ties between our two countries,” the official said.

robson.seth@stripes.com; Twitter: @SethRobson1

North Korea likely unable to reach US with nuke yet, experts say

How far along North Korea has come in miniaturizing nuclear warheads for use on intercontinental missiles depends on the target, experts say.

North Korea has been testing a medium-range intercontinental missile that could reach South Korea or Japan since the late 1980s, said Joel S. Wit, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s U.S.-Korea Institute in Washington, D.C.

The country would have to be “pretty incompetent” to have not developed a warhead design for that missile type after so many years, he said.

Miniaturizing sufficiently for a long-range missile that could reach the U.S. is a different story.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who would say [North Korea] could [put one] on top of an ICBM — or at least no one I know,” Wit said. “It doesn’t exist in North Korea.”

Such a nuclear missile would require far more testing than North Korea has done. After several failed attempts, the country in late 2012 successfully launched its three-stage Unha-3 rocket, deploying a satellite in space that failed to work.

But as ballistic missile expert Michael Elleman noted in an analysis last year for the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, based in Washington, D.C., the technological requirements differ between a satellite rocket launch and a ballistic missile launch — particularly the need for a functional re-entry vehicle to keep the warhead from burning up while descending from space.

“Although space launch activities offer an opportunity to accumulate experience and generate data that could aid efforts to develop long-range ballistic missiles, the results have limited application to ballistic missiles,” Elleman wrote.

“Only a fraction of the overall missile development issues can be addressed when testing the system as a satellite launcher. Other requirements, most notably re-entry technologies and operational flexibility requirements, cannot be adequately addressed by satellite launches. A proven satellite launch vehicle would still need to be flight-tested as a ballistic missile a half-dozen or more times before it would be combat ready. For these reasons and others, the universal trend has been to convert ballistic missiles into space launchers, not the opposite, as evidenced by the Soviet, U.S., and Chinese experiences.”

Dr. William Wieninger, an expert on weapons of mass destruction at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, said the presumption is that North Korea will eventually develop a bomb about the size of the one used by the U.S. on Hiroshima in World War II, which would be small enough to mount on a rocket.

“The rocket would almost certainly have a very low accuracy,” he said. “A Hiroshima-sized warhead on a very inaccurate rocket is essentially a weapon of terror. It has very little military significance because they really can’t expect to hit what they’re shooting at.”

Historically, nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles have been a means of defense relying on threat of use. During the Cold War, NATO was able to leverage its conventional military force in Europe against a much larger Soviet military because NATO’s nuclear weapons assured mutual destruction.

Analysts generally agree that even though North Korea behaves erratically at times, it’s a rational regime that understands risk.

“The main reason that North Korea would not seriously consider using a nuclear weapon against the U.S. or South Korea is because they understand the consequences,” said Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association. “It would be the end of their regime. If there’s one thing that Kim Jong Un and his clique is interested in, it’s preserving their regime.”

An extensive 2012 analysis of North Korea’s nuclear missile threat by Markus Schiller with the Rand Corp. characterized the program as a “bluff.”

The program is a “paper tiger,” Schiller wrote, that “largely appears to be a political tool to gain strategic leverage, fortify the regime’s domestic power, and deter other countries … from military action.”

olson.wyatt@stripes.com

Twitter: @WyattWOlson

DOD dials back number of troops to fight Ebola

WASHINGTON — Fewer U.S. troops are needed in West Africa to combat an Ebola outbreak than previously thought, dropping the planned deployment by about 1,000 servicemembers, the general in charge of the operation said Wednesday.

There are now 2,200 troops, some from each service branch, in Liberia, expected to top out just short of 3,000 in mid-December, said Army Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Operation United Assistance.

The Pentagon had planned to send about 4,000 troops to Africa to combat the largest Ebola outbreak in history. The outbreak may now be waning in Liberia, but Ebola continues to kill there and elsewhere, with a death toll that recently topped 5,000, according to the World Health Organization.

American troops are deploying primarily to help with engineering and logistical demands, functions which U.S. officials discovered Liberians were better able to handle than expected, Volesky told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

“What we found working with [the U.S. Agency for International Development] and the government of Liberia was that there was a lot of capacity here that we didn’t know about before, and so that enabled us to reduce the forces that we thought we originally had to bring,” he said.

USAID had already identified and begun working with capable local contractors able to help construct treatment facilities, Volesky said. Liberian troops, meanwhile, did most of the work building the first of up to 17 Ebola treatment units planned for completion by the end of the year, he said.

So far no U.S. troops nor Defense Department civilians have shown any signs of infection, which Volesky said was a result of effective training in personal protection from the virus both before and during the deployment. Commanders are keeping close watch over their troops, he said.

You won’t see soldiers roaming all over Liberia; we’ve got it very controlled,” he said. “They go places where there’s a mission, and we just make sure that we’re following all those protocols.”

U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah R. Malac said that while the total number of cases is still rising, Ebola infection rates in the country have dropped significantly. Just 45 people throughout the country became infected Tuesday, compared to about 100 daily contracting the virus in Monrovia alone at the height of the outbreak, she said.

President Barack Obama’s decision to send the U.S. military sparked an influx of international nongovernmental organizations willing to help fight the disease, she said during the Wednesday teleconference.

“The presence of the U.S. military and the capacity that they bring to the table has been a real confidence builder for all of these NGO partners who are now stepping forward in response to help us with this effort,” Malac said.

carroll.chris@stripes.com

Twitter: @ChrisCarroll_

Concert for Valor: Massive show shines spotlight on veterans' issues

WASHINGTON — Thousands of troops and veterans gathered in the capital Tuesday night for a mega-concert in honor of Veterans Day, with servicemembers and performers sharing the same message: The spirit of the Concert for Valor must endure long after the music fades away.

A roar swept across The National Mall as acts such as Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Eminem and Metallica took to the stage for hundreds of thousands of revelers, with troops and veterans up front in a special section close to the stage.

RELATED: Full Stars and Stripes coverage of veterans

The concert was organized by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who recently co-wrote a book “For Love of Country,” which highlights the economic benefits returning veterans can bring to the country. It comes as hundreds of thousands of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan transition to civilian life and a national health care scandal has engulfed the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Army 2nd Lt. Maggie Smith, who attended with her husband and daughter, hopes it's the beginning of a better understanding that veterans are not charity cases — they are ready to step into leadership positions in civilian life.

"We're kind of trying to change the narrative about veterans," she said.

The music was interspersed with personal stories from troops, including Army Lt. Col. Kellie McCoy, who served three tours in Iraq, earning a Bronze Star for valor for her actions during an ambush in Fallujah.

“I hope that the lessons people hear today and stories they hear resonate long after Veterans Day passes,” McCoy said. “Every single soldier has a story that’s very much like mine, and I would ask every American to take personal interest in getting to know the veterans in their community.”

Having a large civilian audience for the event allows the public, which has limited interaction with the all-volunteer military, to gain some understanding, said Bill Rausch, political director for the veterans advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“For those that are here, they can see firsthand that we’re not broken and we’re just like them,” he said.

Comedian John Oliver, whose wife is an Iraq veteran, said with so few Americans serving, it’s easy to be disconnected from the military.

“There’s nothing easier than saying thank you to a vet in an airport,” he said. “It just can’t stop there.”

Of course, the troops in attendance also just wanted to see some great live music.

Air Force Master Sgt. Chad Cornelius was one of a handful of troops who won a lottery to be on stage to head bang with Metallica. It’s a nice swan song to his career — he’s retiring in three days.

“It’s going to be awesome and it’s a dream come true because I am such a big Metallica fan,” he said.

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Rich Viñas, 35, gave up his usual Veterans Day barbecue to attend the show with his wife and three children. He was looking forward to The Boss — Springsteen — while his oldest daughter was excited about Rihanna.

“It’s something different and something for the whole family to enjoy,” he said.

Getting to be close to the stage was a thrill for Air Force Lt. Col. Jerime Reid.

“To be up front, up close and personal is an honor for us,” he said. “More important is just the outpouring of support for veterans on a day like this — my dad’s a Vietnam veteran, and he didn’t experience anything like this when he came back from Vietnam.”

The Stars and Stripes' Meredith Tibbetts (@mjtibbs) contributed to this report.

druzin.heath@stripes.com

Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

New wall at USS Arizona Memorial dedicated on Veterans Day

USS ARIZONA MEMORIAL, Hawaii — The members of AMVETS consider themselves “keepers of the wall” for this principal World War II memorial in Pearl Harbor. And on Veterans Day, they showed everyone what that means.

That veterans’ service organization, along with the nonprofit Pacific Historic Parks, raised $350,000 to rebuild the marble wall of names listing the 1,177 sailors who died on the Arizona during the Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack by the Japanese.

“We stand here today to rededicate this wall of remembrance on this Veterans Day here at Pearl Harbor knowing that collectively we have made a difference,” said John Mitchell, Jr., a past national commander who provided a brief keynote address for the ceremony.

The memorial’s Shrine Room is built over the sunken remains of the Arizona in the harbor and is accessible to visitors only by boat. The wall of names was last constructed in 1984, but weather and saltwater spray had badly eroded it.

“The Shrine Room wall represents the completion of the visitors’ expectations when they come to Pearl Harbor,” said Paul DePrey, superintendent with the National Park Service, which oversees the Arizona memorial, during the ceremony.

“When they get to see the names on the wall, that’s the most important part of their visit. They get a full impression of the tremendous sacrifices memorialized in this monument, and to care for this structure is one of the most meaningful aspects of this site for many rangers, for the volunteers and our partners.”

The Arizona sank after a massive explosion of its forward ammunition during the 1941 attack, and it burned for two days. Most of the bodies of sailors killed on the ship remained entombed in the ship, and it was designated a national memorial in 1962.

“Twelve hundred of our shipmates rest silently below, but a day doesn’t go by where their spirit doesn’t ring very loud in all of our hearts, especially we sailors here in Pearl Harbor,” Rear Adm. Rick Williams, commander of Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, told the ceremony.

“We do march to their drumbeat. We do get inspired by this very important memorial.”

The Shrine Room wall was built with about 140 marble panels mined in a Vermont quarry.

The new wall is the second of three phases of upgrades for the memorial. The first phase replaced skylights, railing, doors and exterior paint. The final phase will replace the terrazzo flooring.

“It’s kind of a once-in-a-career opportunity to be involved in something like this,” DePrey said after the ceremony. “The last time it was done was 30 years ago. Personally, it’s very meaningful for me to be involved in this project.”

He acknowledged that it was a big funding project for AMVETS to undertake.

“But they really pulled it together and were able to help us out in getting this taken care of,” he said. “The preservation of the wall and the memorial is an ongoing effort, but that’s part of the reason we’re here. If it was easy, then someone else would have done it.”

Mitchell said this was the largest project ever taken on by an AMVET national commander.

“To raise that amount of money in a relatively small group is amazing to me,” he said. “It was a joy to do.”

olson.wyatt@stripes.com

Russia's nuclear deal with Iran creates concern in West

WASHINGTON — Russia signed a nuclear deal with Iran on Tuesday that prompted anxiety in the West because it appeared to open the way for Tehran to potentially supply domestically produced fuel for its own nuclear reactors.

Officials of Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear company, said they had agreed to build two more reactor units at the Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr, Iran.

In a separate agreement, the two countries said they might later build two more units at Bushehr and four more elsewhere in the country.

Russian officials said the civilian reactors would be operated under supervision of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, a step aimed at reassuring the West that nuclear materials couldn’t be diverted for a military program.

Russia would supply the fuel for the reactors, as it does for the existing reactors.

But Rosatom raised concern by adding, in its announcement, that it intended to discuss with Tehran “the feasibility of fabricating fuel rods in Iran, which will be used at these power units.”

Although fuel rods are not components in weapons, the fabrication process could undermine the decade-old international effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear infrastructure and someday gaining the capacity to build a bomb.

A negotiating group of six world powers is now trying to meet a Nov. 24 deadline to forge a comprehensive deal with Tehran that would ease international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program to prevent it from gaining weapons capability.

Two sides wrapped up three days of talks Tuesday in Muscat, Oman. The final scheduled round of negotiations resumes next week in Vienna between Iran and the fire permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group risk consulting firm, said he believed the Rosatom reactor deal was not intended to disrupt the negotiations, but to prod Iran and the six nations toward an agreement.

By raising the possibility of Iranian fuel production, the Russians were telling the United States and its European allies “you guys better be flexible (in the negotiations) or we might allow Iran to get into the game of supplying its own nuclear fuel needs.”

He said the reactor deals were also an incentive for Iran to cooperate in a broader nuclear agreement, because it would give the government a major expansion of its civil nuclear capability — a prize to crow about.

“The message to Iran is, ‘We know you need a victory narrative if you agree to a deal. Here’s part of it,’” Kupchan said.

U.S. officials didn’t comment immediately on the reactor deal. But one Western official, who asked to remain unidentified, citing the sensitivity of the diplomacy, said. “We hope Russia will move as they often do on deals with Iran — slowly.”

Russia has a record of moving cautiously with Iran, including on the Bushehr reactors.

©2014 Tribune Co. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

US, China announce ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions

BEIJING — Creating an opening for a larger international agreement, China and the United States on Wednesday announced new targets for greenhouse gas emissions that are intended to help curb global climate change.

As part of the arrangement, announced by the White House, the United States would cut net greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels in the next 11 years.

At the same time, President Xi Jinping of China agreed that China for the first time would set a date when its emissions would hit a peak, after which it would begin cutting its use of fossil fuels. According to the White House, China will aim to peak its carbon dioxide emissions “around 2030,” with the intention of trying to hit that target sooner. At the same time, China would work to increase the non-fossil fuel share of its energy use to 20 percent by 2030.

China and the United States account for more than one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Today’s joint announcement, the culmination of months of bilateral dialogue, highlights the critical role the two countries must play in addressing climate change,” the White House said.

The agreement, the White House said, “will also inject momentum into the global climate negotiations” in advance of a meeting in Paris next year aimed at producing an international agreement on emissions reductions.

Unable to get congressional approval to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Obama in his first term used Environmental Protection Agency authority to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources. That plan has helped the administration in negotiations with China, which previously had said that developed countries should take the lead in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With Wednesday’s announcement, the United States agreed to step up efforts to reduce such emissions, although not as quickly as many scientists and environmentalists have called for.

According to the White House, the new U.S. goal will double the current pace of carbon pollution reduction — 1.2 percent per year on average — to 2.3 to 2.8 percent per year on average between 2020 and 2025. Administration officials say this “ambitious target” will keep the United States on a trajectory to reduce overall emissions about 80 percent by 2050.

In recent years, China has become the world’s largest investor in renewable energy and has taken other steps to reduce industrial emissions, in part because of public unrest over severe air pollution.

The announced agreement will speed China’s development of renewable energy sources by 2030. According to the White House, the pact will require China to deploy an additional 800 to 1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission capacity by 2030 — “more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to total current electricity generation capacity in the United States.”

Xi and President Barack Obama hold their final meeting Wednesday in the president’s three-day trip to China, which hosted this year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Separate from Wednesday’s China-U.S. agreement, the 20 countries of APEC agreed on several measures to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These include:

• A goal to double the share of renewable energy in APEC’s overall energy mix by 2030.


• A renewed commitment to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful energy consumption.”


• Steps to retrofit and protect energy infrastructure to natural disasters and climate change, a response to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.

APEC countries, which include China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Russia, account for 60 percent of global energy demand.

©2014 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

National Guard on call if Ferguson grand jury decision triggers violence

The National Guard will be ready to assist law enforcement in Missouri if unrest erupts after a grand jury announces whether to indict a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Gov. Jay Nixon announced Tuesday.

“Violence will not be tolerated,” Nixon said at a news conference with officials from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, St. Louis County police and St. Louis Metropolitan police. The governor said the agencies would form a unified command to deal with protests. “Residents and businesses of this region will be protected,” Nixon said.

The St. Louis area remains on edge as it awaits the grand jury decision on whether Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson should face charges in the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, 18. A decision is expected in the coming weeks. Wilson, who is white, shot the young black man six times in a confrontation on a street in Ferguson, according to a preliminary private autopsy.

More than 1,000 area police officers have received a total of more than 5,000 hours of training to deal with potential unrest, officials said Tuesday.

Nixon said that the rights of peaceful protesters would be respected but that officials would have no tolerance for violent agitation. “Our dual pillars here are safety and speech,” Nixon said in the televised news conference from St. Louis. The National Guard, he said, would be available “when we determine it is necessary to support local law enforcement.”

Nixon added: “The world is watching.”

St. Louis County police, along with the Missouri Highway Patrol and St. Louis Metropolitan police, have been holding daily “tactical meetings” since October in anticipation of the decision, St. Louis County Police Sgt. Brian Schellman told the Los Angeles Times.

“The community is on edge. … There is a large sense of anxiety out there. This is a little unprecedented,” St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told reporters in a televised news conference. Belmar added: “If you talk to chiefs around the country (as I have), they’re concerned and prepared for this to perhaps lap into their communities also.”

Belmar’s agency handled a significant amount of the crowd control efforts in August. The police’s “militarized” gear and tactics and stern treatment of demonstrators and reporters were criticized.

Belmar defended the agency’s response by saying that such gear was necessary for his officers’ protection and pointed out that no protesters lost their lives during August’s demonstrations, which were occasionally marred by looting and gunshots. “My goodness, could we be that fortunate moving forward?” Belmar said of the absence of fatalities.

The St. Louis County Police Department has spent about $120,000 to replenish equipment such as shields, batons, tear gas and flex handcuffs after weeks of unrest in the aftermath of the shooting depleted supplies and damaged equipment. (Phone calls and emails to the Highway Patrol and metropolitan police about any additional riot gear purchases were not immediately returned Tuesday.)

“Obviously we don’t want to use this equipment,” Schellman said. “But we have an obligation to preserve life and property. … As police, it’s our job to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.”

Community members are also preparing for protests that could turn violent by holding forums so people are aware of their rights and can get legal training. Hundreds of people in Ferguson were arrested during the August protests.

“We want activists to understand their boundaries of legal protests and know the risks associated with civil disobedience,” said Andy Stepanian, a spokesman with HandsUpUnited.org, a group that formed after Brown’s death. Stepanian said the group, in conjunction with the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union, has held about two dozen training sessions in the last month.

Several leaks surrounding the grand jury investigation have emerged in recent weeks, including some that indicate several witnesses offered testimony that supports Wilson’s account that he was defending himself from Brown. The U.S. Department of Justice condemned the disclosures as “irresponsible and highly troubling.” Moreover, the Justice Department is conducting its own civil rights investigation into the Ferguson Police Department.

If the grand jury does not indict Wilson, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch has vowed to release full transcripts and audio recordings of the proceedings.

©2014 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.