On This Day In The Navy:1915: The first Navy ships, the battleships USS Ohio, USS Missouri, and USS Wisconsin transit the Panama Canal, steaming from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

TOP STORIES:1. After Brief Lull In Gaza Crisis, Airstrikes Resume (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Jodi Rudoren

JERUSALEM – After a brief, one-sided cease-fire, Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip resumed on Tuesday the all-too-familiar rhythm of their latest battle: Over 100 rockets sent Israelis scrambling for shelter, Israeli airstrikes pounded tunnels and rocket launchers, and diplomats wrung their hands.

2. Chinese Hackers Extending Reach To Smaller U.S. Agencies, Officials Say (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Michael S. Schmidt

WASHINGTON – After years of cyberattacks on the networks of high-profile government targets like the Pentagon, Chinese hackers appear to have turned their attention to far more obscure federal agencies.

3. Deal To End Afghan Election Crisis In Trouble Already John Kerry’s deal to end Afghanistan’s election crisis is in trouble already(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Erin Cunningham

KABUL – Just days after Secretary of State John F. Kerry brokered an end to Afghanistan’s election crisis, the deal has run into trouble because of disagreements among the two rival presidential candidates.

CNO:4. U.S. Admiral In China For Top-Level Navy Talks (AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE 15 JUL 14)

BEIJING – The chief of the U.S. Navy met his Chinese counterpart Tuesday for talks aimed at improving cooperation between their fleets following concerns over regional territorial disputes and potential armed conflict.

5. U.S. Navy Chief Visits China U.S. Navy Adm. Jonathan Greenert is in China to meet with PLAN Commander in Chief Adm. Wu Shengli.(THE DIPLOMAT 16 JUL 14) ... Ankit Panda

Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of operations of the U.S. Navy, is currently in China consulting with his counterpart on increasing naval cooperation between the navies of the United States and China. Greenert met Adm. Wu Shengli, commander in chief of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), on Tuesday. The two focused their discussions on expanding cooperation and communication between the navies of China and the United States amid growing tensions in the East and South China Seas. According to Agence Frances-Presse, Wu welcomed Greenert “with a red-carpet ceremony and an honor guard at his headquarters in Beijing.”

MIDEAST:6. Israel’s Vow To Continue Fight Puts U.S. In Tough Position (WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Anne Gearan

Israel’s pledge to intensify its military operation in the Gaza Strip could hasten the moment when the Obama administration will be forced to decide whether to use its leverage to corral its closest ally in the Middle East.

CHINFO NEWS CLIPSWednesday, July 16, 2014

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7. Iraqi Parliament Breaks Deadlock To Elect Speaker Election Marks Small Step Toward Resolving Leadership Impasse(WALL STREET JOURNAL 16 JUL 14) ... Matt Bradley

BAGHDAD – Iraq's parliament elected a new speaker on Tuesday, a first step toward forming a government that lawmakers say can take decisive action to quell a militant uprising.

8. Top Marine Commander: Iraq Chaos Shows Costs Of U.S. Withdrawal (THE COMPLEX (FOREIGN POLICY) 15 JUL 14) ... Kate Brannen

Stepping into an intensifying political debate, the head of the Marine Corps said the United States doesn't have the luxury of isolationism and said Iraq's deterioration may have been prevented if Washington had maintained a larger U.S. presence there.

9. Kerry Cites ‘Progress’ In Iran Talks But Says ‘Very Real Gaps’ Remain (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Michael R. Gordon and David E. Sanger

VIENNA – After three days of intensive talks with his Iranian counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that “tangible progress” had been made in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, and that he would return to Washington to consult with President Obama over whether to extend a Sunday deadline for a final agreement.

ASIA – PACIFIC:10. China Moves Oil Rig From Contested Waters Move Could Provide Opening for Beijing and Hanoi to Repair Relations(WALL STREET JOURNAL 16 JUL 14) ... Brian Spegele

BEIJING – China is moving a drilling rig out of South China Sea waters claimed by both China and Vietnam, easing a two-month standoff that sparked deadly riots in Vietnam and tense encounters between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels.

11. FOCUS: Abe's Security Move Gives Food For Thought On Bilateral Alliance (KYODO 15 JUL 14) ... Noriyuki Suzuki

TOKYO – For university student Yui Iwamuro, the U.S. Camp Zama near Tokyo is the closest she has got to anything military. She is one of many young students and adults who consider war, or the prospect of Japan going to war, as something distant, improbable and unrealistic in the 21st century.

12. S. Korea, U.S. Kick Off Joint Naval Exercise (YONHAP NEWS AGENCY (S.KOREA) 16 JUL 14)

SEOUL – South Korea launched its five-day joint naval exercise with the United States in the country's southwestern sea on Wednesday amid North Korea's continued calls to withdraw from what it calls provocative action.

13. Norway A Hit At RIMPAC Naval Strike Missile strikes target ship with one try(DEFENSE NEWS 15 JUL 14) ... Christopher P. Cavas

WASHINGTON – It’s a long voyage from the land of the midnight sun to the middle of the Pacific, and one not often made by Norway’s Navy. But if you’re going to come all that way, it’s important to make a splash. And the crew of the Aegis frigate Fridtjof Nansen – the first Norwegian ship to take part in the huge Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises – did just that when they fired a single surface-to-surface missile and scored a dramatic hit on an old target ship.

14. Typhoon Kills 10 In Philippines, Shuts Manila, Prompts Mass Evacuations (REUTERS 16 JUL 14) ... Rosemarie Francisco and Manuel Mogato

MANILA – A typhoon killed at least 10 people as it churned across the Philippines and shut down the capital, cutting power and prompting the evacuation of almost more than 370,000 people, rescue officials said on Wednesday.

AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN:15. Pakistanis Detail Gains Against Militants (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Salman Masood

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – One month into a military offensive to seize control of the tribal district of North Waziristan, the Pakistani military said Tuesday that it had extended its operation to the militant stronghold of Mir Ali, resulting in gunfights between soldiers and Islamist fighters that left casualties on both sides.

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16. Extremists Make Inroads In Pakistan’s Diverse South (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Saba Imtiaz and Declan Walsh

MIRPURKHAS, Pakistan – In a country roiled by violent strife, the southern province of Sindh, celebrated as the “land of Sufis,” has long prized its reputation as a Pakistani bastion of tolerance and diversity.

EUROPE:17. Border Tensions Rise Between Ukraine And Russia (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... David M. Herszenhorn and Sabrina Tavernise

KIEV, Ukraine – Ukraine and Russia traded increasingly bitter accusations of cross-border hostilities on Tuesday, deepening a shadowy war of real attacks or orchestrated sabotage that increasingly threatens to draw the two countries into direct conflict.

AFRICA:18. Libya Airport Is Crippled In Fighting By Militias (NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Osama Al-Fitory and Kareem Fahim

TRIPOLI, Libya – The halls of this city’s international airport have been emptied of passengers and converted into a barracks for fighters, with a kitchen and a field hospital. Smoke rose from the building on Tuesday, while beyond it, on the airfield, mortar shells crashed into the tarmac.

AMERICAS:19. Pentagon Expands Training Of Mexican Military (USA TODAY 15 JUL 14) ... Jim Michaels

WASHINGTON – The United States is quietly expanding its training of Mexico's armed forces, helping to reverse decades of mistrust that made Mexico's military reluctant to cooperate with its northern neighbor.

CONGRESS / BUDGET:20. U.S. Senate Panel Proposes Keeping A-10, 11 Aircraft Carriers With $547.9B Defense Bill (DEFENSE NEWS 15 JUL 14) ... John T. Bennett

WASHINGTON – A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday approved nearly $550 billion in military spending as part of a bill that would keep alive weapon systems the Pentagon wanted to retire.

21. USS George Washington Refueling Delayed, But Funding Looks Good Work expected to start in March 2017 at Newport News Shipbuilding(NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS 15 JUL 14) ... Hugh Lessig

Back in March, the Pentagon said it wanted a stronger signal from Congress on refueling the aircraft carrier USS George Washington. If not, the Navy would move to retire the ship.

22. HASC Readiness Chair Hoping For Renewed Focus On Sequestration After Midterms (NATIONAL DEFENSE 15 JUL 14) ... Valerie Insinna

The chairman of the House Armed Service Committee’s subcommittee on readiness said he was optimistic that Congress will be able to protect defense funding and prevent sequestration in 2016.

AVIATION:23. It's Official: F-35 Not Flying To Farnborough (DEFENSE NEWS 15 JUL 14) ... Aaron Mehta and Marcus Weisgerber

LONDON/WASHINGTON – The F-35 joint strike fighter will not be flying at the Farnborough International Airshow, to the disappointment of attendees, program supporters and partnered militaries.

24. USMC’s Amos Expects F-35B Will Stay On Track For IOC (SEAPOWER 15 JUL 14) ... Otto Kreisher

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon announced July 15 that the F-35 Lightning II fleet could return to flight on a highly restricted basis after a three-week grounding, but the Marine Corps commandant said he still was “very optimistic” about the future of the fighter that is intended to replace all of the Marines’ fixed-wing tactical aircraft.

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25. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Carrier Prepares For JSF Flights (DEFENSETECH.ORG 15 JUL 14) ... Mike Hoffman

FARNBOROUGH, England – Preparations are underway for the first F-35 test flight aboard the United Kingdom’s new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier slated for 2018, BAE Systems officials said Tuesday at the Farnborough International Airshow.

26. U.S. Navy And Boeing Praise P-8A (FLIGHTGLOBAL (UK) 15 JUL 14) ... Jon Hemmerdingerfa

RNBOROUGH – Though Boeing’s P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft remains years away from reaching full operational capability, it is already proving its mettle on deployments with the U.S. Navy, according to programme officials.

MARINE CORPS:27. Marine Corps Looking At Options In Amphibious Connectors (SEAPOWER 15 JUL 14) ... Richard R. Burgess

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Marine Corps is assessing a variety of alternatives in moving Marines and their equipment and supplies ashore from ships, a capability needed in the full spectrum of warfare.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE:28. DoD: New POW/MIA Accounting Agency To Open In January (STARS AND STRIPES 15 JUL 14) ... Travis J. Tritten

WASHINGTON – Defense Department officials testified Tuesday that the new agency to replace the troubled POW/MIA accounting community in charge of recovering and repatriating the remains of troops killed in past conflicts will be stood up on Jan. 1.

PERSONNEL:29. Senate Panel Proposes Ending Tobacco Discounts (NAVY TIMES 15 JUL 14) ... Leo Shane III

Smokers could lose their discount on tobacco products sold at military exchanges under a provision unveiled in the Senate on Tuesday.

30. The Changing Face Of The Military (POLITICO 15 JUL 14) ... Philip Ewing

To get a sense of how much the military has changed under President Barack Obama, consider this: Within a week, his defense secretary did a couple of things that would have been impossible not so long ago.

31. Marines’ ‘Lion Of Fallujah’ Died While Working For CIA Legendary Marine Maj. Zembiec, the ‘Lion of Fallujah,’ died in the service of the CIA(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Thomas Gibbons-Neff

In the foyer of the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters, there is a marble wall covered in stars. They are carved divots that represent those who have fallen in the service of the CIA. Below them, jutting out from the polished rock, is a black book entombed in a case of glass and steel. The book is a guide to the stars, giving the names of some of those who died and withholding the names of others.

INFRASTRUCTURE / INSTALLATIONS:32. Navy Nurse Refuses To Force-Feed Guantánamo Captive (MIAMI HERALD 15 JUL 14) ... Carol Rosenberg

In the first known rebellion against Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties.”

COMMENTARY:33. Obama’s Foreign Policy Inertia (WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... David Ignatius

When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says that the Islamic State that has taken root in Iraq and Syria poses a “deadly” threat and that he has “extreme, extreme concern” about its bomb-makers, that sounds like an emergency. Yet the Obama administration hasn’t settled on a coordinated, aggressive response that might prevent this inferno from spreading.

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34. When Should The U.S. Use Force? U.S. needs a discussion on when, not whether, to use force(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Robert Kagan

Was the Iraq war the greatest strategic error in recent decades, as some pundits have suggested recently? The simple answer is no. That honor belongs to the failure to take action against al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001. And if one wants to go back a few decades further, it was the failure to stop Hitler in Europe and to deter war with Japan, failures that dwarf both Iraq and Vietnam in terms of their tragic consequences and the cost in lives and treasure.

35. Friendless In The Middle East As Israel ducks rockets and Gaza burns, America is looking on helplessly.(POLITICO MAGAZINE 15 JUL 14) ... Jonathan Schanzer

One week after the start of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge,” also known as Hamas’ “10th of Ramadan War,” Washington is looking on helplessly. President Barack Obama offered to mediate a ceasefire last week, but the move fell on deaf ears – on both sides. Secretary of State John Kerry then made plans to visit to Cairo on Monday in a bid for calm. Egypt soon announced a ceasefire, which was to have taken hold this morning at 9 a.m. The Israelis agreed to the terms, but Hamas balked, claiming it was never even consulted. Rockets continue to fly out of Gaza, and Israeli warships continue to pound targets in the Hamas-controlled enclave.

36. Nothing Pacific About It: Japan Pushes Back On China (REUTERS BLOG 15 JUL 14) ... Nicholas Wapshott

China is on the march. Or, to be precise, China has made a strong push, militarily and otherwise, into seas nearby, setting off alarms among its neighbors. Now Japan has pushed back, announcing it will “reinterpret” its pacifist constitution so it can be more militarily aggressive in responding to China’s persistent territorial expansionism.

37. Putin's Double Game In Ukraine The Russian leader is reaching out to his foes with one hand, and striking them with the other.(THE ATLANTIC 15 JUL 14) ... David Rohde

As fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine, signs are emerging that Russian President Vladimir Putin has adopted a twin strategy: pledge his willingness to support a negotiated settlement, but continue funneling arms to separatist rebels.

38. 5 Things To Know About Navy 3D Printing (NAVY LIVE BLOG 15 JUL 14) ... Vice Adm. Phillip Cullom

Last month, I had the chance to drop in by video-teleconference on a workshop in Dam Neck, Va., connecting Sailors with the Navy’s current 3D-printing efforts, demonstrating the use of 3D printers in hands-on tutorials, and exploring the potential of 3D-printing capabilities to solve Navy problems. I was excited to hear creative new ideas brought forward from the waterfront, matched by a high level of enthusiasm for improving the Navy.

39. A New Era In Naval Warfare Information dominance will be vital in future conflicts.(PROCEEDINGS MAGAZINE JULY 2014) ... Vice Adm. Ted N. Branch

Our Navy’s forward presence protects the interconnected global system of trade and reinforces the security of the U.S. economy. Our engagement around the world reassures allies, builds trust with partners and friends, and prevents and deters wars. We are the foundation of the nation’s “away game,” endowed with operational agility, possessed with innovative resourcefulness, and armed with credible combat power to be used where it matters, when it matters. Sustaining our global primacy requires that we dominate the battlespace on, above, and below the surface of the sea, as well as outer space. However, successfully commanding, controlling, and fighting our forces in these areas requires dominance in the information domain, to include the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace.

40. Should The Government’s Main Personnel System Retire At 65? Is the federal personnel system too old to do the job?(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Joe Davidson

The government’s primary personnel system will be 65 years old in October.

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TOP STORIES:1. After Brief Lull In Gaza Crisis, Airstrikes Resume(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Jodi Rudoren

JERUSALEM – After a brief, one-sided cease-fire, Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip resumed on Tuesday the all-too-familiar rhythm of their latest battle: Over 100 rockets sent Israelis scrambling for shelter, Israeli airstrikes pounded tunnels and rocket launchers, and diplomats wrung their hands.

But Egypt’s failed effort to halt the hostilities did help clarify crucial differences from previous go-rounds that experts say make a resolution much more complicated to achieve. A simple return to the status quo, a “quiet for quiet” deal, no longer seems sufficient.

Not for Hamas, the isolated Islamist faction that dominates Gaza and is desperate for economic relief for the coastal territory’s 1.7 million residents. And not for Israel, where there are growing calls for an international effort to disarm the Gaza militants or for Israel’s military to seize control of the area.

Even Egypt’s reclaiming of its traditional role as broker showed how much things had changed, with the new leadership in Cairo ending up closer to Israel’s position than to that of Hamas. Israel embraced Egypt’s proposal, which demanded few concessions of it, while Hamas seemed stunned by terms that did not meet any of its demands and refused to hold its fire.

“The world is radically different from the 2012 conflict,” said Nathan Thrall, an author of an International Crisis Group report on the situation released Monday, referring to the last intense cross-border exchange. “This thing is much harder to resolve.”

“Egypt helped its ally, Israel, achieve a face-saving unilateral cease-fire – that’s what happened,” Mr. Thrall said. “We had an Israeli unilateral cease-fire to which Hamas never agreed, and Egypt helped Israel market it.”

The lopsided battle claimed its first Israeli casualty Tuesday night, when Dror Khenin, 37, was killed by mortar fire while distributing food to soldiers near the entrance to Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry said four people there were killed on Tuesday, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 189 over eight days. Two died in the southern town of Rafah, one near Gaza’s eastern boundary with Israel, and one – a 24-year-old farmer, Ismail Fatouh, who was killed while working his land – in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

The hostilities, which began July 7 after weeks of rising tension, are the third intense flare-up between Israel and Hamas in six years. They followed the abductions and murders of three Israeli teenagers hitchhiking in the occupied West Bank, for which Israel blamed Hamas, and of a 16-year-old Palestinian, in what the authorities say was a revenge attack by extremist Jews.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority was set to meet on Wednesday in Cairo with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. Secretary of State John Kerry, who had planned to go to Cairo on Tuesday, instead returned to Washington. He told reporters he was “prepared to fly back to the region tomorrow if I have to” and urged “all parties to support this cease-fire.”

Israel had little to lose by initially approving Egypt’s proposal at 9 a.m. Tuesday, with top ministers apparently concluding that they would be rewarded with either calm or international legitimacy for intensified attacks. It resumed its aerial campaign six hours later with over 30 strikes after barrages from Gaza. Before midnight, it used recorded phone messages to warn as many as 100,000 Gaza residents to evacuate their homes before bombings.

The rocket fire from Gaza was steady throughout the day, pummeling southern Israel and causing sirens to sound as far north as Haifa, in the populous seaside suburb of Rishon LeZion, around Jerusalem and in the West Bank. By nightfall, the rockets and mortar rounds from Gaza totaled 125. The Israeli military said 20 had been intercepted by the country’s Iron Dome defense system.

“Anyone who tries to hurt the citizens of Israel will be hurt by Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said from Tel Aviv as he convened his inner cabinet for its second session of the day. “When there is no cease-fire, our answer is fire.”

“It would have been preferable to resolve this in a diplomatic way,” he said, “and this is what we tried to accomplish when we acceded to the cease-fire proposal today, but Hamas has left us with no alternative but to expand the campaign.”

Mr. Netanyahu fired his deputy defense minister, Danny Danon, a member of his Likud Party who was among several right-wingers to criticize the cease-fire plan. A more serious internal challenge remains in Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, who voted against the cease-fire and called for a full reoccupation of Gaza.

“This is now the third military operation, and the question now needs to be, ‘How can we prevent the fourth operation from taking place?’“ Mr. Lieberman said at a news conference. “It is clear to me that you can eliminate the terrorism infrastructure only when you deal with it from the ground.”

Hamas, weakened and divided between its military and political leaders and between those in Gaza and abroad, produced no clear response to the cease-fire proposal. The plan ignored demands it had been making for days: the release of arrested Hamas operatives, the reopening of the crossing from Gaza into Egypt, the reduction of Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods, and the payment of salaries for Hamas-appointed government employees.

Mousa Abu Marzook, a Hamas leader based in Cairo, wrote on Twitter that the group had “not issued an official position” on the plan. But Hamas’s military wing said on Twitter that the rocket fire was “translating in practice its refusal to a cease-fire,” adding, “We will continue to bomb until our conditions are met.”

Experts said Hamas had engaged little with Egyptian leaders before Egypt unveiled its proposal Monday night, and had tried in vain to get Turkey or Qatar to intervene on its behalf.

“The siege strangled Hamas and strangled Gaza and its people, so Hamas wants to tell the people: ‘Hey, look! We

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caused the siege, and now we cause its lifting,’“ said Akram Atallah, a Gaza-based analyst. But, Mr. Atallah noted, Hamas “can’t make unified decisions” because “the military leaders are unreachable and they have disappeared, so the movement cannot meet as the Israeli cabinet does.”

The Egyptian plan called for immediate calm, with talks over further terms to begin within 48 hours. “This is aimed at stopping the killing of the Palestinians,” said Ambassador Badr Abdelatty, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “That is the only objective.”

What it was not intended to do, according to diplomats and analysts, was provide any face-saving measures to Hamas, which has been one of Egypt’s principal opponents since Mr. Sisi led the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last year. The proposal took as a template the 2012 cease-fire, brokered partly by Mr. Morsi, but it overlooked or ignored the fact that Hamas leaders had trusted Mr. Morsi to make good on the agreement’s ambiguous terms.

Some analysts said that Egypt had laid a trap for Hamas and that Mr. Sisi saw a confluence of interests with Israel in battering a mutual enemy. The Egyptians “probably knew that

the Israelis are not willing to deal any concessions,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt analyst at the Century Foundation in New York. “If you know that both sides are going to be intransigent, you can’t be a broker.”

Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser in Israel, was one of several Israeli and Palestinian analysts who said they still thought a cease-fire – most likely based on Egypt’s plan – could take hold as soon as Wednesday.

“They will do it, actually, because they don’t have any other choice,” said Mr. Eiland, who urged international support for “a sort of Marshall Plan for Gaza” in which major economic investment would be offered in exchange for full demilitarization. “Israel can say the following: ‘As far as we’re concerned, we are ready to have a very big carrot beside a very big stick.’“

Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim in Cairo; Fares Akram in Gaza; Rina Castelnuovo in Ashdod, Israel; Sebnem Arsu in Istanbul; Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck in Jerusalem; and Michael R. Gordon in Vienna.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/middleeast/after-brief-lull-in-gaza-crisis-airstrikes-resume.html

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2. Chinese Hackers Extending Reach To Smaller U.S. Agencies, Officials Say(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Michael S. Schmidt

WASHINGTON – After years of cyberattacks on the networks of high-profile government targets like the Pentagon, Chinese hackers appear to have turned their attention to far more obscure federal agencies.

Law enforcement and cybersecurity analysts in March detected intrusions on the computer networks of the Government Printing Office and the Government Accountability Office, senior American officials said this week.

The printing office catalogs and publishes information for the White House, Congress and many federal departments and agencies. It also prints passports for the State Department. The accountability office, known as the congressional watchdog, investigates federal spending and the effectiveness of government programs.

The attacks occurred around the same time Chinese hackers breached the networks of the Office of Personnel Management, which houses the personal information of all federal employees and more detailed information on tens of thousands of employees who have applied for top-secret security clearances.

Some of those networks were so out of date that the hackers seemed confused about how to navigate them, officials said. But the intrusions puzzled American officials because hackers have usually targeted offices that have far more classified information.

It is not clear whether the hackers were operating on behalf of the Chinese government. But the sophisticated nature of the attacks has led some American officials to believe that the government, which often conducts cyberattacks through the military or proxies, played a role.

Shawn Henry, an executive at the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike and a former top FBI cybersecurity official, said the attacks were “indicative of a state-run intelligence agency” because that is one of the few groups that would want such information.

Mr. Henry said that foreign intelligence agencies spent a fair amount of time trying to break into heavily protected networks with troves of secret information. But hackers will also open the doors of obscure agencies just to see what they may have.

“Along the way you’re going to shake a lot of doorknobs,” he said. “You may not spend a lot of time in that place, but if the door is unlocked, why not look in?”

Government networks are attacked nearly every day, but the intruders are rarely successful. The breaches in March were significant enough that FBI agents in Washington have opened an investigation into the attacks, which the agents say they believe are connected.

James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that it made sense for foreign hackers to target the networks of the accountability office and the personnel office, but that the printing office was curious.

“GAO looks at military, intelligence and economic programs, and you would want to see the information they have that hasn’t been made public, like their notes,” he said. “OPM has all the information on security clearances, and who is applying for them.”

“But was GPO a mistake?” Mr. Lewis said. “Is it just them not understanding how things work or not understanding what it stands for? They could have found a way in, and these were the agencies that came up. This is some guy sitting in an office in China who doesn’t have a sophisticated understanding of how the U.S. government works and doesn’t have a lot of direction.”

The attacks occurred at a time when cybersecurity disputes between the United States and China have grown more contentious, with each side accusing the other of unethical, if not criminal, behavior.

In May, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment that charged five hackers who worked for the People’s

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Liberation Army with stealing corporate secrets, in an attempt to deter the Chinese from attacks on American corporations.

The Chinese have countered by saying that the Obama administration was hypocritical. Citing disclosures from Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, China said the NSA had gone deep into the computer systems of Huawei, a Chinese company that makes computer network equipment, and had spied on Chinese military and political leaders.

The accountability office and the printing office said in statements that the hackers had not able been to get their hands on any personal identification information.

But the accountability office said that it had been forced to remove several servers that had been infected in the attacks, and that it had taken “additional steps to strengthen the security” of its system. With help from the Department of Homeland Security and outside specialists, the agency said it analyzed “the extent of the malware” that was embedded during the attacks and eradicated it.

The agency said in the statement that it had scanned all of its servers and work stations and had found no evidence “that any audit records, federal agency records or personally identifiable information” had been removed.

“In fact,” it added, “servers with information on our audit work and report drafts did not have malware, and classified and other sensitive data work stations are not connected to our network.”

The accountability office played down the significance of the attack on its system, saying “this effort to gain access” was not surprising because federal agencies reported 9,883 malware attacks in the 2013 fiscal year.

Mr. Lewis said he believed that the office’s release of the figure on the number of malware attacks on federal agencies was one of the first times the federal government had disclosed such information. That number is difficult to assess, he said, because it is unclear how many of those attacks resulted in intrusions.

The accountability office declined to say how often it sustained such attacks, and cybersecurity experts said that only some malware attacks led to an FBI investigation.

“We’re not going to get into a history of how many times we have or have not been attacked,” said Charles Young, a spokesman for the agency.

The printing office said only that it had recently been “notified of a potential intrusion of our network,” adding that it had “responded immediately to mitigate risks and ensure the security of our systems.”

Because labor is inexpensive in China, there are many hackers. They often break into whatever they can and move on to their next target if they do not find anything that interests them.

“Everyone moans about the NSA, but people don’t realize the Chinese are doing the same things to us,” Mr. Lewis said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/asia/chinese-hackers-extend-reach-in-us-government.html

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3. Deal To End Afghan Election Crisis In Trouble AlreadyJohn Kerry’s deal to end Afghanistan’s election crisis is in trouble already(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Erin Cunningham

KABUL – Just days after Secretary of State John F. Kerry brokered an end to Afghanistan’s election crisis, the deal has run into trouble because of disagreements among the two rival presidential candidates.

The agreement was intended to resolve a weeks-long impasse that had threatened to split the country. But implementation of the deal has been held up by confusion over whether Afghan or international institutions will lead the inspection of the 8.1 million votes cast in a June 14 runoff that was marred by fraud.

The electoral dispute has raised alarm that conditions could deteriorate further in a country already battling a resilient insurgency. Highlighting the country’s fragility, a suicide bomber driving a truck packed with explosives killed at least 45 people in a crowded market in the southeastern province of Paktika on Tuesday, a spokesman for the provincial governor said. The Afghan Defense Ministry said 89 people had been killed. The conflicting death toll reports could not immediately be reconciled.

The White House had dispatched Kerry to Kabul last week to forestall possible violence after candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s threats to declare his own government. An ambitious deal to recount the votes and form a national unity government was clinched in marathon talks that ended Saturday.

But on Monday, the audit of the ballots, meant to begin within 24 hours of the announcement of the accord, was postponed indefinitely to addresstechnical disputes,

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) said. Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they expected the vote counting to begin Wednesday or Thursday.

The campaign of former foreign minister Abdullah – who last month accused the IEC of helping rig the vote – said it was promised that international bodies would take charge of the audit.

The team of the opposing candidate – former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani – says no such stipulation was included in the deal. According to Afghan law, the IEC is required to carry out the audit. The United Nations can play only a supervisory role, Ghani’s campaign says.

“There was an agreement in the discussions that there would be an international audit, not an Afghan-led audit,” said Mohammad Mohaqiq, one of Abdullah’s two vice-presidential candidates and a former warlord who commands strong support among Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazara community. “If the IEC is in charge of this audit, then all of these efforts will translate into nothing – a zero.”

It was not clear Tuesday why the two sides had such differing accounts of what the agreement involved.

But a senior U.S. official said Monday that although the IEC “technically conducts the audit, it’s being done under the auspices of and the supervision by the U.N.”

“Obviously something of this complexity is still being worked out,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. “There will be many,

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many moving parts of this over a period of at least another month.”

On Tuesday, a senior State Department official said that “all parties continue to meet together” to discuss the process. “We’ve seen nothing to indicate that there’s any walk-back from commitment” to the deal, the official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But that such a high level of uncertainty over the process has cropped up so soon after negotiations underscores the polarized nature of Afghanistan’s political landscape.

The first round of elections was held April 5. Abdullah won the most votes but fell short of the majority needed to take the presidency. In the second round, elections officials said, Ghani secured 56 percent of the votes, according to a preliminary count. But authorities acknowledged that the results were tarnished by vote tampering.

The new president’s inauguration was initially scheduled for Aug. 2. But the United Nations requested that President Hamid Karzai postpone the date to allow for the audit and negotiations over a national unity government to take place.

Should the rift over the audit process remain unresolved, it could endanger one of the central goals of the accord: the formation of a consensus government that would eventually choose a prime minister, transitioning Afghanistan from a presidential to a parliamentary system of government.

Right now, Karzai possesses extensive powers. The new political framework would immediately create a chief executive post subordinate to the president, Mohaqiq said. The

chief executive position would be a prototype for the prime minister job. The hope is that a parliamentary system would ease ethnically based grievances by enshrining a more even distribution of power, U.S. officials said.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing in Paktika. But Afghan forces are struggling against a Taliban-led insurgency that has killed a growing number of the country’s soldiers and civilians. According to a U.N. report released last week, civilian casualties here rose by 24 percent during the first half of the year.

Foreign troops under the command of the International Security Assistance Force are scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014, a rapidly approaching deadline that has Afghans and international observers worried that the country could face increasing Taliban advances or the kind of ethnic bloodshed that tore Afghanistan apart in the 1990s.

Abdullah, of mixed Tajik and Pashtun heritage, enjoys the backing of the country’s Tajik community in the north and west. Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun, is popular among Pashtun populations in the east and south.

The United States is eager to leave behind a more stable Afghanistan, having invested hundreds of billions of dollars since 2001, when U.S. troops invaded to topple the Taliban government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/war-zones/kerry-brokered-plan-to-end-afghanistan-election-crisis-has-stalled/2014/07/15/441a13ba-29c1-40be-b659-0dec25a78090_story.html

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CNO:4. U.S. Admiral In China For Top-Level Navy Talks(AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE 15 JUL 14)

BEIJING – The chief of the U.S. Navy met his Chinese counterpart Tuesday for talks aimed at improving cooperation between their fleets following concerns over regional territorial disputes and potential armed conflict.

Adm. Wu Shengli, commander in chief of China’s navy, welcomed Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. chief of naval operations, with a red-carpet ceremony and an honor guard at his headquarters in Beijing.

They did not speak to reporters but a U.S. Navy official said the visit was meant to “look at ways to increase the cooperation between our navies.”

It was the two men’s “fourth interaction” over about the past year, he said, adding: “It obviously improves our understanding of each other also.”

Greenert’s trip is set to last until Friday and will include a visit to China’s sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.

Tensions are mounting over maritime disputes in the East China Sea between Beijing and Tokyo, as well as in the South China Sea between Beijing and Hanoi, Manila and others.

The official, who demanded anonymity, said it was “hard to say” if specific instances of regional tensions would come up in the talks.

“Those things exist but the intent of these meetings is to look at ways that we can work better together so we can improve the understanding between our navies,” the official said.

“And once we have those understandings maybe we can then solve some of these other complex issues.”

China’s neighbors are increasingly worried that Beijing’s maritime disputes will lead to military hostilities, a U.S. research group said in findings released Monday.

“This year in all 11 Asian nations polled, roughly half or more say they are concerned that territorial disputes between China and its neighbors will lead to a military conflict,” according to a broad study conducted in 44 countries by the Pew Research Center.

Even in China itself, the study showed that 62 percent of the public worried that territorial disputes between China and nearby countries could spur fighting.

Greenert’s visit is also part of efforts to intensify dialogue between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

U.S. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno visited China in February and said Beijing and Tokyo must enhance communication to avoid “miscalculations” over the East China Sea.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Chinese President Xi Jinping in a telephone conversation on Monday that he was determined to constructively manage growing differences between their two nations.

Points of contention include trade, cyber espionage and U.S. support for security allies Japan and the Philippines.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140715/DEFREG03/307150025

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5. U.S. Navy Chief Visits ChinaU.S. Navy Adm. Jonathan Greenert is in China to meet with PLAN Commander in Chief Adm. Wu Shengli.(THE DIPLOMAT 16 JUL 14) ... Ankit Panda

Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of operations of the U.S. Navy, is currently in China consulting with his counterpart on increasing naval cooperation between the navies of the United States and China. Greenert met Adm. Wu Shengli, commander in chief of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), on Tuesday. The two focused their discussions on expanding cooperation and communication between the navies of China and the United States amid growing tensions in the East and South China Seas. According to Agence Frances-Presse, Wu welcomed Greenert “with a red-carpet ceremony and an honor guard at his headquarters in Beijing.”

Greenert’s trip to Beijing comes amid a spate of military-to-military interactions between the United States and China in the past year. Additionally, it comes in the wake of the sixth annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Mil-to-mil ties between the United States and the People’s Republic of China have been somewhat strained by growing tensions in the region. Representative from the two countries traded accusations at the Shangri-La Conference in Singapore earlier this year. Furthermore, a December incident where a U.S Ticoderoga-class guided missile destroyer, the USS Cowpens, was involved in a minor confrontation with Chinese vessels escorting China’s new aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, sowed additional mistrust between the two navies.

Naval cooperation between the U.S. and China is still a mixed picture though. While the two countries continue to have their differences over Asia’s maritime commons, China’s

Navy was invited to participate in the U.S.-led RIMPAC exercise, the world’s largest multilateral naval exercise.

Greenert’s trip to China represents his “fourth interaction” with Adm. Wu, according to an anonymous U.S. official who spoke to AFP about the trip. The same official emphasized the importance of these visits in terms of helping to build a personal rapport between the two naval chiefs. According to the AFP report, Greenert will tour the Liaoning – a gesture of transparency by the Chinese Navy. When U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited China earlier this year, he too was given a tour of the repurposed Ukrainian carrier.

Although few details about this meeting are public, it is likely that it will have a limited impact on strategic issues, and instead focus on establishing better and clearer communication mechanisms between the two navies to prevent any misunderstandings at sea. It is highly unlikely that Greenert will discuss naval cooperation in the context of China’s various disputes with countries in the region, U.S. allies and non-allies alike. It is possible that the two will discuss the U.S. position on Japan’s recent collective self-defense interpretation. When U.S. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno visited China earlier this year, he emphasized the need for Tokyo and Beijing to better communicate to prevent “miscalculations.” Japan’s recent constitutional reinterpretation has caused concern in China and Greenert may emphasize this same point.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/us-navy-chief-visits-china/

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MIDEAST:6. Israel’s Vow To Continue Fight Puts U.S. In Tough Position(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Anne Gearan

Israel’s pledge to intensify its military operation in the Gaza Strip could hasten the moment when the Obama administration will be forced to decide whether to use its leverage to corral its closest ally in the Middle East.

Israeli officials, in a series of television interviews, statements and social-media venues, said Tuesday that Hamas’s rejection of a cease-fire offer validated the force it has used over eight days of conflict and made legitimate their argument for a wider military effort.

The Obama administration appeared to accept that rationale, blaming the armed Islamist movement in Gaza for missing an opportunity to end the eight-day aerial assault and avoid a ground invasion. But if the recent past is any guide, the administration will soon be under pressure from European and Arab allies to call on Israel to end the military operation.

Doing so now would be diplomatically delicate for the administration. Hamas rejected the Egyptian-negotiated cease-fire offer and continued to fire rockets into Israel on Tuesday, claiming the first Israeli life in the most recent conflict.

But a broader Israeli operation and an attendant spike in Palestinian casualties could quickly add pressure on the

Obama administration to demand an end to the assault, whether heeded or not by an Israeli government with a historically uneasy relationship with President Obama.

Already, Palestinian health officials say, 194 people in Gaza have been killed and 1,400 wounded in the Israeli assault, designed to suppress Hamas rocket fire into a widening perimeter of Israeli towns and cities. The Gaza death toll has surpassed the level of 2012, when Israel and Hamas last exchanged intensive fire. That conflict ended after eight days, with a direct diplomatic intervention by Washington.

This time, the administration has been careful not to criticize Israel or publicly suggest a deadline to end the military action.

“We don’t have somebody on the other side who’s willing to stop firing,” Ron Dermer, the country’s ambassador to Washington, said in an interview.

In rejecting the truce offer, Hamas said it had never been consulted on the terms, which it considered unacceptable. The rejection, though, was a sign of the group’s independence from traditional Arab power brokers, particularly Egypt,

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whose new secular government has virtually no influence over the Islamist organization.

It is not clear whether any country or group holds enough influence with the militants to effect a truce, as politics and alliances across the Middle East are shuffled by civil war and popular protest.

“I don’t know what will happen if Hamas decides in 10 minutes or an hour or in a day to actually completely cease fire,” Dermer said. In the meantime, “we have to take the action in order to defend ourselves.”

Israel says its bombing campaign is defensive and not aimed at displacing the Hamas leadership in Gaza or eliminating its stockpiles of weapons.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the goal should still be a cease-fire, but they did not set any terms.

“I cannot condemn strongly enough the actions of Hamas in so brazenly firing rockets in multiple numbers in the face of a goodwill effort to offer a cease-fire in which Egypt and Israel have joined together,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said before the truce fell apart.

Palestinian officials urged other countries to press Israel to stop the campaign and end its economic blockade of Gaza.

“You can’t lay siege to people and then start bombing them and attacking them,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee.

Hamas leaders have shown no inclination to pull back daily rocket attacks launched toward Israeli cities. The militant group has little incentive to negotiate now, and may fear that talks with Israel could weaken its hold on Gaza. The movement seized full control of the small territory in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew occupying forces.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest placed the onus on Hamas and other armed groups to accept Egypt’s offer and stop cross-border attacks.

“All eyes now turn to Hamas and the groups in Palestinian-held territories who are firing rockets,” he said. “The question for them is whether or not they are going to abide by the cease-fire agreement that was put forward by the Egyptians.”

But, Earnest noted, “what we would ask the Israelis to do is to exhibit some concern for the safety and welfare of

innocent civilians who are at risk of being caught in the crossfire.”

Cairo’s new military-backed government has renounced a close relationship with Hamas and cooperated with Israel to seal off tunnels that supply weapons, food and goods to Gaza. The effect is to support Israel’s blockade of the militant-governed Palestinian Arab territory, although Egypt is officially cool to the Jewish state.

Egypt’s offer did not meet well-known Hamas demands, including the reopening of a key border crossing. But U.S. officials called the offer a “live option” that could be the basis for a longer-term agreement to stop rocket attacks.

Kerry repeated a U.S. offer to help end the cross-border attacks and foster negotiations, although Israel has shown no sign that it wants that direct intervention.

Kerry scrapped tentative plans to travel to Arab states that might hold influence with the Hamas militants this week, opting to return to Washington after several days of negotiations in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program.

Qatar, which funds several Islamist militant groups, may be best placed to pressure Hamas to scale back rocket attacks and accept a cease-fire. But Qatari officials have said little about the conflict, and left the diplomatic gesture to Egypt.

Former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi helped broker a cease-fire in 2012, alongside hurried shuttle diplomacy by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then, Clinton urged Israel to curtail its offensive and the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi used his Islamist credentials and connections to Hamas to rein in the militants.

Morsi was deposed in a military coup last year, and Egypt immediately began cutting ties to Hamas and Gaza, which borders Egypt. Iran also has withdrawn much of its longtime support and weapons help for Hamas, and former protectors in Syria are consumed with fighting a civil war.

Kerry has not been invited to Israel for a replay of the 2012 shuttle mission, although State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday that he would be willing to try.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/israels-vow-to-strengthen-attacks-against-hamas-in-gaza-puts-us-in-tough-position/2014/07/15/5949da9a-0c50-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html

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7. Iraqi Parliament Breaks Deadlock To Elect SpeakerElection Marks Small Step Toward Resolving Leadership Impasse(WALL STREET JOURNAL 16 JUL 14) ... Matt Bradley

BAGHDAD – Iraq's parliament elected a new speaker on Tuesday, a first step toward forming a government that lawmakers say can take decisive action to quell a militant uprising.

Delegates elected Salim al-Jabouri, a moderate Sunni Islamist, and chose a Shiite and a Kurd as the two deputy speakers, part of an effort to establish an ethno-sectarian leadership balance.

The development came as Iraq's army launched a fresh offensive to retake the town of Dhuluiya, about 43 miles north of Baghdad, two days after Sunni Islamist insurgents who have carved off large segments of the country seized it.

The security crisis has been exacerbated by an impasse over forming a new government. The negotiations have

snagged over Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's bid to stay in power despite pressure to step aside from political leaders in Iraq – even some within his own Shiite sect – as well as some foreign diplomats and religious leaders.

Critics accuse Mr. Maliki of sowing the seeds of the current crisis by marginalizing the country's Sunni minority, driving support for Sunni insurgents.

Mr. Jabouri's election marked a small step toward breaking the deadlock over a broader deal to fill the other two vital government posts – president and prime minister. By custom, a Sunni holds the position of parliamentary speaker, a Kurd is president and a Shiite is prime minister.

Such standoffs have dragged on for many months in the past. But the successful vote showed that Iraq's newly elected

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legislature is feeling pressure to move forward. The deal sets in motion a constitutionally mandated timeline by which lawmakers have 30 days to elect a president who then has 15 days to pick a prime minister.

It is far from certain that the selection of a new leadership would resolve the crisis. But a functioning government, particularly one without Mr. Maliki, might persuade Sunni leaders to reject the insurgency by a group that calls itself the Islamic State.

Parliament elected Haider al-Abadi, a member of Mr. Maliki's Shiite-dominated Dawa Party, and Aram Sheikh Mohammad, who ran unopposed with the Kurdish Gorran Party, as the two deputy speakers.

Tuesday's session was a departure from the new parliament's first two meetings over the past two weeks. The legislature's first sitting on July 8 quickly descended into loud bickering followed by a walkout of Kurdish and Sunni Arab deputies that ended the body's quorum.

But by gambling to elect a leadership in a public forum rather than waiting to complete lengthy negotiations in private, Iraq's politicians started the clock on a process they may not be able to complete on time, said Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

The National Alliance – the coalition of Shiite political parties who are charged with selecting a prime minister – is rife with divisions in its ranks that were visible during Tuesday's session.

"The National Alliance is not as united as we would like," said Aboud Al Essawi, a lawmaker from Mr. Maliki's State of Law Coalition. "Some blocks are undecided."

Though the National Alliance had agreed on Monday night to elect Mr. Abadi as the first deputy, delegates from the Al Ahrar bloc, which represents a group led by the populist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, stunned the parliament by also nominating Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite lawmaker aligned with the Iran-backed Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Though Mr. Abadi prevailed, Mr. Chalabi's nomination amounted to a show of strength that might allow him to challenge Mr. Maliki in a coming race for the premiership.

Mr. Maliki has repeatedly stated that he won't leave office while pointing to the plurality of votes he managed to win in

the parliamentary elections in late April. If parliament manages to rout Mr. Maliki without a deal, the two-term prime minister might decide to stand his ground, Mr. Mardini said.

"It could either force a transition of power or backfire and lead to a constitutional crisis," he said.

It isn't clear whether there would be any repercussions for not complying with the deadline. The Constitutional Court, which has jurisdiction over such issues, has little legal recourse to challenge the more powerful parliament.

Meanwhile, Iraq's military has struggled to recover territory seized last month by the Islamic State.

In the latest military offensive against the highly contested town of Dhuluiya, 17 fighters from the group were killed in two early-morning Iraqi military airstrikes that targeted the Ansar Mosque and the Zawra School, said local security officials.

Security forces have been fighting for Dhuluiya since insurgents seized large parts of the town in a brazen ground attack on Saturday. Since then, Iraqi troops have managed to hold about 60% of the town and its immediate surroundings, said military officials and witnesses.

The fighting in Dhuluiya has become a point of anxiety for Iraqi officials, who for weeks had successfully blocked the Islamist State militants from marching further south beyond Tikrit.

But the Saturday assault by insurgents carrying machine guns and mortars showed that the fighters were able to make an end-run around the army's northernmost headquarters in Samarra, putting them well within range of the capital of Baghdad.

The head of the Samarra Operations Command, Sabah Al Fatlawi, said on Tuesday that Iraq's military had cleared Dhuluiya of Islamic State fighters.

Iraq's army has routinely made premature statements of victory, and it was still unclear on Tuesday evening whether the government had actually retaken Dhuluiya.

Ali A. Nabhan contributed to the article.http://online.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-parliament-breaks-

deadlock-to-elect-speaker-1405426884

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8. Top Marine Commander: Iraq Chaos Shows Costs Of U.S. Withdrawal(THE COMPLEX (FOREIGN POLICY) 15 JUL 14) ... Kate Brannen

Stepping into an intensifying political debate, the head of the Marine Corps said the United States doesn't have the luxury of isolationism and said Iraq's deterioration may have been prevented if Washington had maintained a larger U.S. presence there.

The comments from Gen. James Amos, the outgoing commandant of the Marine Corps., come amid sharp divides over who bears responsibility for the takeover of much of Iraq by Islamist militants and whether the United States should pull back from its leadership role on the world stage.

Republican critics of Barack Obama's administration argue that the White House's decision to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 cleared the way for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a hard-line Shiite, to consolidate power and drive the country's Sunni minority into the arms of militants from the Islamic State, formerly known

as ISIS, which has conquered broad swaths of central Iraq. The critics also argue that removing all U.S. forces allowed the Iraqi military's fighting capabilities to wither so significantly than many troops abandoned their posts and fled when ISIS militants attacked, leaving the armed group with large caches of advanced and U.S.-provided weaponry.

At the same time, the Republican Party itself has been riven by a fierce internal debate about whether the United States should maintain the type of muscular foreign policy that has characterized the party for decades or adopt a less interventionist approach. The dispute has pitted two presumed 2016 presidential candidates against each other, with Texas Gov. Rick Perry deriding Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the prime proponent of a more cautious foreign policy, as an isolationist whose views pose dangerous risks to U.S. national security.

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Paul, in turn, has said that Perry's approach would leave the United States enmeshed in long, messy wars like Afghanistan.

Amos, who is scheduled to retire this fall, offered strong views on both debates. On Iraq, Amos said he believes that the ISIS takeover of central Iraq – and the growing political fissures between Maliki and the country's embattled Sunni minority – may have been avoided if the United States hadn't completely withdrawn from the country in 2011.

"I have a hard time believing that had we been there, and worked with the government, and worked with parliament, and worked with the minister of defense, the minister of interior, I don't think we'd be in the same shape we're in today," Amos said during an event at the Brookings Institution.

Amos also had strong words for those who want the United States to pull back from its commitments and responsibilities around the globe.

"We may think we're done with all of these nasty, thorny, tacky little things that are going on around the world – and I'd argue that if you're in that nation, it's not a tacky, little thing for you. We may think we're done with them, but they're not done with us," Amos said.

He said ISIS's capture of Anbar province, a former insurgent stronghold that had been cleared by U.S. Marines at great cost, was painful for him both personally and professionally.

"It breaks our hearts," Amos said, while quickly rattling off statistics showing what the war in Iraq cost the Marine Corps: 852 killed with another 8,500 injured.

He said that when the Marines left Anbar in 2010, handing operations over to the U.S. Army, they felt good about what they'd accomplished there.

"They believed that they'd made a difference," Amos said.Now, the Islamic State controls Fallujah and parts of

Ramadi, both cities where the Marine Corps spent years fighting and bleeding.

Marines are now in the midst of their withdrawal from Afghanistan's Helmand province, which holds a similar importance to them as Anbar did in Iraq, and it remains uncertain whether the Afghan security forces will be able to hold off Taliban attacks.

Amos said he is confident in the Afghan security forces' ability to fend off the Taliban, but he warned that Afghanistan could collapse like Iraq if the United States pulls out "lock, stock, and barrel."

"There's no question that [the Afghan security forces] would not be able to hold," Amos said.

Still, Amos said he's optimistic about Afghanistan because the administration has agreed to keep 9,800 U.S. troops there until the end of 2015. In May, Obama announced that half of those troops will remain in Afghanistan until 2016. Beyond that, a small military presence will remain at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

"I think now that the president has made the decision to leave 9,800, that there will be continued support for those great warriors and leaders," Amos said about the Afghan security forces.

The four-star rarely shies away from expressing his opinion, even when it contradicts the official White House or Pentagon position. When the Obama administration was pushing to repeal "don't ask don't tell," which forbade gays from serving openly in the military, Amos warned that doing so could have detrimental effects on the Marines' ability to fight. He later embraced the policy change and said his previous concerns were unfounded.

This year, the Pentagon recommended scaling back funding for military commissaries, reducing the average shopper's savings from 30 percent to 10 percent. The Joint Chiefs have defended the proposal on Capitol Hill, but Amos won't get behind it. At Brookings on Tuesday, Amos reiterated his opposition to the idea.

http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/15/amos_afghanistan_iraq

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9. Kerry Cites ‘Progress’ In Iran Talks But Says ‘Very Real Gaps’ Remain(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Michael R. Gordon and David E. Sanger

VIENNA – After three days of intensive talks with his Iranian counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that “tangible progress” had been made in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, and that he would return to Washington to consult with President Obama over whether to extend a Sunday deadline for a final agreement.

Mr. Kerry said that “very real gaps” remained, but his tone – and his acknowledgment that Iran had complied with all of its commitments under a temporary agreement that took effect in January – left little doubt he wanted to extend the talks by weeks or months. “That’s where we’re headed, I think,” one of his top advisers said.

At his own news conference, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, embraced the idea of extending talks beyond the deadline. “As we stand now, we have made enough headway to be able to tell our political bosses that this is a process worth continuing,” he said. “This is my recommendation. I am sure Secretary Kerry will make the same recommendation.”

When the talks began six months ago, it was generally assumed that if an accord to roll back Iran’s nuclear program was to be reached, the compromises would be negotiated at the 11th hour.

But as the July 20 deadline approaches, an accord is not yet in hand. The temporary agreement allows for an extension of the talks for up to six months, but some in Mr. Obama’s negotiating team have suggested that a shorter extension might be more fruitful.

At a brief news conference here, Mr. Kerry said, “I am returning to Washington today to consult with President Obama and with leaders in Congress over coming days about the prospects for a comprehensive agreement as well as a path forward if we do not achieve one by the 20th of July, including the question of whether or not more time is warranted.”

It was an indication of the complexity of the talks and Mr. Kerry’s negotiating style that immediately after the news conference he met with Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy

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chief for the European Union, followed by another meeting with Mr. Zarif, his fourth in three days.

Mr. Kerry declined to comment on the proposal that Mr. Zarif outlined in an interview with The New York Times for what would amount to an extension of the current short-term agreement for a number of years. Under Mr. Zarif’s proposal, Iran would not have to dismantle any of its existing centrifuges, but would use a combination of technologies and inspection to provide assurances they could not produce weapons-grade material.

American officials were clearly annoyed that Mr. Zarif had discussed details of his proposals, and Mr. Kerry said that he would not negotiate in public.

“The real negotiation is not going to be done in the public eye,” he said. “These are tough negotiations.”

American officials are concerned about several major elements of Mr. Zarif’s proposal. While it would essentially freeze Iran’s capacity to produce enriched uranium for several years, Iran would be free to keep up research and development of highly sophisticated centrifuges, and put them in place after the agreement would expire. Mr. Zarif wants a short agreement of three to seven years. The United States and its allies insist on limitations on Iran for at least a decade, preferably longer.

There has been some speculation that Mr. Zarif’s hints of flexibility, and the progress Mr. Kerry reported on Tuesday, will be enough to provide a basis for continuing the nuclear talks past July 20, which can be done if both sides agree.

The Iranian proposal, however, runs counter to the goal that Mr. Kerry and others laid out last year: a lasting solution that would eliminate the possibility that Iran could have a “threshold” nuclear capability, one it could exercise with one last push for a bomb. The whole negotiation is about adding substantially to the time it would take Iran to produce a nuclear device if it reneged on the agreement.

Gary Samore, a former senior official on the staff of Mr. Obama’s National Security Council, and president of an advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran, said that Mr. Zarif’s proposal was “not enough for a deal but enough for an extension of the negotiations.”

Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear monitor, said in an interview that Mr. Zarif’s proposal would not add to the time Iran would need to break out of an accord and produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

“What Zarif suggests is actually to maintain a status quo,” Mr. Heinonen said. “Thus I do not see that this proposal opens any avenues for a deal.”

David Albright, a nuclear expert who has been highly critical of Iran, also said that the proposal indicated that broad gaps remained between the two sides. The interview with Mr. Zarif, Mr. Albright said, indicated that “the Iranians have returned to earth but are not yet in the ballpark of reasonable offers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/middleeast/kerry-cites-progress-in-iran-talks-while-gaps-remain.html

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ASIA – PACIFIC:10. China Moves Oil Rig From Contested WatersMove Could Provide Opening for Beijing and Hanoi to Repair Relations(WALL STREET JOURNAL 16 JUL 14) ... Brian Spegele

BEIJING – China is moving a drilling rig out of South China Sea waters claimed by both China and Vietnam, easing a two-month standoff that sparked deadly riots in Vietnam and tense encounters between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels.

The move could provide an opening for Beijing and Hanoi to repair relations and comes as the U.S. steps up criticism of China's efforts to enforce its claims to the strategically important sea. But China's government said its companies still had the right to explore the contested waters, raising the possibility that tensions could flare again.

China Oilfield Services Ltd. , a unit of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp., said its deep-water HYSY 981 drilling rig had completed exploration and drilling operations off Triton Island, or Zhongjian Island in Chinese. The island is part of the Paracel Islands chain, which is claimed by both China and Vietnam.

A Vietnam coast guard official confirmed that the oil rig began moving Tuesday night local time. Rear Adm. Ngo Ngoc Thu, vice commander of the Vietnam coast guard, said the Chinese vessels that had been accompanying the rig were also moving. He said Vietnam was keeping its vessels at the site and watching the oil rig's movement.

Chinese officials had previously said the rig's work would be completed by August. A spokeswoman for China Oilfield

Services, or COSL, confirmed drilling work had been completed ahead of schedule and said the rig's new intended location, near China's southern island of Hainan, isn't in an area of dispute with other nations.

China's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Chinese companies were within their rights to undertake work around the Paracel Islands. It said it opposed interference by Vietnam and had taken "necessary measures to safeguard the safety of operations" by COSL.

Vietnam protested Chinese drilling in the area after it began in early May and had sent coast-guard vessels to confront the rig. Dozens of Chinese and Vietnamese maritime vessels had amassed near the disputed rig, with each side claiming its ships had been violently rammed by the other's.

The rig's deployment there drew criticism from Washington, which has called it provocative. The episode touched off anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam in May, in which five people were killed and hundreds of factories owned by Chinese and other foreign companies were looted and burned.

China National Petroleum Corp., the country's largest oil company by production, controls the disputed exploration area, and said it would evaluate data collected during drilling to consider its next phase of work. It said the rig had found signs of oil and natural gas in the disputed waters.

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The rig's presence there was viewed by security analysts as part of a recent pattern of Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. U.S. officials have pressed China over what they see as unilateral moves that upset regional stability. China rejects what it views as U.S. meddling.

Disputes between China and its neighbors over the South China Sea and East China Sea have emerged as one of the greatest threats to regional peace and prosperity, particularly as China looks to assert greater control over its immediate periphery.

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea as its historical waters, an assertion that brings it into increasing conflict with some of its neighbors, such as Vietnam and the Philippines. In addition to China, parts of the sea are claimed in part by five other governments.

The South China Sea is home to critical shipping channels and is believed to hold sizable oil-and-gas reserves, exploration of which has been hampered by competing claims. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the sea

holds around 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet in proved and probable reserves.

The rig's withdrawal coincides with a visit by Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, to China this week for talks with his counterpart, Chinese navy chief Admiral Wu Shengli.

One of the topics high on their agenda is the implementation of a new code on unplanned encounters at sea that was agreed to by 21 Pacific naval powers, including China, in April. U.S. naval officials have said they hoped all members of the group would observe the code in all places, including waters where China's maritime claims are contested by its neighbors.

But the code isn't legally binding, and Chinese officials have suggested that Chinese ships won't necessarily observe it in what Beijing sees as its territorial waters.

Vu Trong Khanh in Hanoi and Jeremy Page in Beijing contributed to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/chinas-cosl-moves-oil-rig-from-contested-waters-1405472611

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11. FOCUS: Abe's Security Move Gives Food For Thought On Bilateral Alliance(KYODO 15 JUL 14) ... Noriyuki Suzuki

TOKYO – For university student Yui Iwamuro, the U.S. Camp Zama near Tokyo is the closest she has got to anything military. She is one of many young students and adults who consider war, or the prospect of Japan going to war, as something distant, improbable and unrealistic in the 21st century.

But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's move toward expanding the role of Japan's armed forces has caused her to think again about Japan's postwar history and pacifist Constitution, which has defined its security posture with a heavy U.S. military presence.

"I've no idea what it means to exercise the right to collective self-defense, but my feeling is something is changing so I need to know what it is that's changing," she said before the Cabinet approved a Constitutional reinterpretation on July 1 in a major policy change in the postwar era.

Alarmed by the speed at which Japan is moving ahead with its remodeling of its security policy, she is now trying to discover what "the right to collective self-defense" means for herself and Japan.

Abe has said that what he aims to do is not to wage war, or allow the Self-Defense Forces to be sent overseas for combat, but to bolster deterrence to deal with security threats.

That deterrence, Abe said, can be obtained by strengthening the U.S.-Japan security alliance – an arrangement which has enabled Japan to adopt an "exclusively defense-oriented policy" under the war-renouncing Constitution.

Over the years, the presence of U.S. military bases and facilities has continued to serve as a reminder of World War II but also a symbol of the postwar pacifism that has kept Japan away from collective self-defense.

"I'm confident that history will say our judgment (on collective self-defense) was right," Abe said Monday during a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee.

While trying to make the SDF a more equal partner with foreign militaries, the Abe administration has made it a priority to ease the burden on Okinawa Prefecture of hosting the bulk of U.S. military bases and training in Japan. Tokyo seeks to complete the long-stalled relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station in the prefecture.

The U.S. military started Tuesday transferring its KC-130 aerial refueling tankers from Okinawa to the Marine Corps' Iwakuni air base in Yamaguchi Prefecture, located about 300 kilometers away from South Korea's Busan and considered strategically vital due to its proximity to the Korean peninsula.

Coupled with the U.S. "pivot" strategy toward Asia, the base, which has traditionally been shared by the U.S. Marines and the Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force, is set to become one of the biggest U.S. Marine bases in Northeast Asia.

Local residents who have a military base near their houses say Okinawa's excessive burden needs to be cut. But they also feel they are somehow bearing the brunt and worry about an increased military presence in their communities in the years ahead, as Abe pushes for collective self-defense.

"Iwakuni continues to be the alternative site to Okinawa in terms of burden-sharing," said Jungen Tamura, a city assembly member of Iwakuni. "If Japan is going to use collective self-defense, Iwakuni will likely take on greater importance as a hub."

Based on a bilateral agreement reached in 1996 to relocate the Futenma base and transfer the refueling tankers, Iwakuni is now expected to have 15 KC-130s by the end of August. A total of 59 carrier-based aircraft will also move to Iwakuni from the U.S. Naval Atsugi Air Facility in Kanagawa by around 2017.

Japan is also bolstering its own defense capabilities. Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Tokyo may purchase additional F-35 stealth fighter jets on top of 42 already planned. Japan is also considering buying MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft whose repeated accidents and crashes overseas have raised safety concerns.

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"It's essential for Japan to bolster its defense capabilities, especially increasing the effectiveness of the Japan-U.S. security regime, and improving the deterrence of the alliance," Onodera said Friday after talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Washington.

Such urgency is not necessarily shared by all Japanese, especially those who see the term "the right to collective self-defense" as synonymous with war. Government officials say more clarification may be needed.

Iwamuro, a 19-year-old sophomore, thinks Japan should first prioritize diplomacy without resorting to force based on Article 9, which has become a part of national identity in the postwar era. But some experts see those in their 20s and 30s as more "responsive" to emerging security threats than the older generation which has vivid memories of World War II.

North Korea's repeated missile launches in recent weeks, a nationalistic bent in South Korea, and an aggressive China at sea and in the skies could give such young students some justification for supporting Abe's push for the overhaul, according to some experts.

"Young people are often described as turning more patriotic, conservative, or tilting to the right, but the story is

different. I don't think that is the case," said Hiroshi Hirano, a professor of political psychology at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.

"They are responding to the emergence of threats and feeling the need to protect themselves, but I'm not so sure if it is to protect their country per se."

The real work has just begun to change Japan's security architecture, with the pacifist credo under Article 9 weighed against the need for a stronger Japan.

Kenji Isezaki, a professor specializing in peace-building and conflict prevention at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, says the SDF takes pride in their "complementary" role to the U.S. military within the limits of Article 9.

"If we are to maintain the bilateral deterrence, we need to think about Okinawa," Isezaki told university students at a gathering in late June.

"I'm sure Japan and the United States can negotiate and change the status of forces agreement (on U.S. military operations) because doing that will help reduce the psychological burden on the people of Okinawa," Isezaki added.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2014/07/302260.html

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12. S. Korea, U.S. Kick Off Joint Naval Exercise(YONHAP NEWS AGENCY (S.KOREA) 16 JUL 14)

SEOUL – South Korea launched its five-day joint naval exercise with the United States in the country's southwestern sea on Wednesday amid North Korea's continued calls to withdraw from what it calls provocative action.

The five-day exercise will involve two South Korean Navy Aegis ships as well as the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, two American cruisers and one U.S. Aegis ship, a Seoul military official said, adding that the areas of the training are north of Jeju Island as well as waters southwest of Mokpo.

During the exercise, South Korean and U.S. Marines will also be conducting joint drills in the East Sea, the official said.

The joint naval exercises came as scheduled despite the North's repeated threats and appeals for withdrawal.

The 97,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier, dubbed as a floating air base, arrived in the biggest South Korean port city of Busan last week to participate in the annual exercise as well as a trilateral marine drill involving South Korea and Japan later this month.

The North has repeatedly protested the plan to deploy the USS George Washington, calling it a "grave unpardonable provocation" and urging Seoul to make the "right choice."

Ahead of the arrival of the U.S. aircraft carrier, the North also issued a "special proposal,’ urging the two Koreas to stop inter-Korean military hostilities, including the joint naval exercise.

Seoul dismissed the North Korean proposal, citing lack of sincerity.

Following the five-day exercise, the U.S. ship will be deployed in a trilateral South Korea-U.S.-Japan search and rescue exercise in waters south of Jeju Island for two days starting on July 21, according to the military.

Three more U.S. ships, as well as two South Korean ships and one Japanese ship, will be deployed to the trilateral drill, along with three airplanes from each of the three nations.

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2014/07/16/45/0301000000AEN20140716006500315F.html

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13. Norway A Hit At RIMPACNaval Strike Missile strikes target ship with one try(DEFENSE NEWS 15 JUL 14) ... Christopher P. Cavas

WASHINGTON – It’s a long voyage from the land of the midnight sun to the middle of the Pacific, and one not often made by Norway’s Navy. But if you’re going to come all that way, it’s important to make a splash. And the crew of the Aegis frigate Fridtjof Nansen – the first Norwegian ship to take part in the huge Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises – did just that when they fired a single surface-to-surface missile and scored a dramatic hit on an old target ship.

“It was a very successful shot. The missile performed exactly as programmed and expected,” Cmdr. Per Rostad, the ship’s commanding officer, said in an interview Saturday.

Speaking via satellite phone while his ship was underway near Hawaii, Rostad would not provide details of specific features demonstrated in the July 10 live fire exercise, when the Fridtjof Nansen launched a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) at the decommissioned U.S. Navy amphibious ship Ogden.

“But the missile system has a number of features that make it unique on the market and we were able to demonstrate

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those features,” Rostad said. “We also demonstrated some agility.”

Developed by Kongsberg, the NSM is designed to be highly maneuverable, and features an autonomous target recognition capability that allows it to recognize ships of a particular class or design, and even to target specific areas of a ship based on its silhouette.

“The key takeaway from the NSM exercise,” Rostad said, “is the missile was demonstrated to work just as well in a tropical climate as in an arctic climate.”

Only a single NSM was fired during the exercises, Rostad said, although the Fridtjof Nansen also launched two Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles, the ship’s primary surface-to-air weapon.

The frigates of the Fridtjof Nansen class are the only warships to carry the SPY-1F radar, a lightweight version of the bigger SPY-1D sensor fitted on other Aegis ships. The combat system was not modified for the RIMPAC exercises, Rostad said. “It was not upgraded for any specifics in the Pacific.”

But the Nansen does have one key feature that made it the ship of choice to come to Hawaii – an enhanced cooling system, one not yet installed on the ship Rostad and his crew originally deployed on.

“My crew was on the Helge Ingstad,” Rostad explained, on deployment to the Mediterranean. They swapped ships in mid-May to sail the Fridtjof Nansen to Hawaii. “When water temperatures reach 30 degrees Celsius it’s better to use Nansen,” he said, but he noted improved cooling systems are being installed on all five ships of the class.

Rostad’s crew has had an interesting cruise. In mid-November, just before deploying, they fought a fire aboard the ferry Britannia Seaways off the Norwegian coast. In the Med, they were assigned to escort missions for ships carrying Syrian chemical weapons to Cyprus. After transferring to the Nansen, they took the ship through the Panama Canal to San Diego, where they joined a group sail of U.S. and Chilean warships out to Hawaii.

Underscoring the importance of Norway’s participation, Navy chief Rear Adm. Lars Saunes and defense minister Ine Eriksen Søreide came out to Pearl Harbor for the exercises.

“It’s a message there as well,” Rostad said of his high-level support. “It is not normal to have both [officials] come to an exercise.”

The cruise, Rostad said, reflects “a desire in Norway to show that we take the alliance with the U.S. seriously. We wish to show we are willing to deploy a ship to the Pacific to enhance the alliance with America – that is very important for Norway.”

The opportunity to train in such a large-scale exercise, with ships and forces from so many different countries, simply doesn’t exist in Europe, Rostad said. “To generate the impact of training like in RIMPAC, you can’t do it in Europe anymore. As a war fighter it’s important to train in this environment with these resources.”

Rostad was effusive in his praise for the support Norway has received on the cruise.

“The support we’ve receive from the U.S. Navy has been absolutely first class,” the commander said. “All the services have been excellent. The cooperation we have with the U.S. Navy is absolutely magnificent and we’re thankful for that.”

Rostad and his crew will get back to Norway before the ship. Another crew is flying out to Hawaii, and will take over the Fridtjof Nansen in early August. The crew will then fly home, while the ship returns through the Panama Canal.

Norway and Kongsberg continue to seek customers for the NSM. Different versions can be launched by ships, aircraft and ground forces, and the company recently announced it was developing a submarine-launched variant. It is already in service with the Norwegian armed forces and Polish coastal artillery.

The variant fired in RIMPAC was a four-meter-long, sub-sonic, low-flying anti-ship missile, weighing about 400 kilograms and capable of ranges up to 150 kilometers.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140715/DEFREG02/307150031

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14. Typhoon Kills 10 In Philippines, Shuts Manila, Prompts Mass Evacuations(REUTERS 16 JUL 14) ... Rosemarie Francisco and Manuel Mogato

MANILA – A typhoon killed at least 10 people as it churned across the Philippines and shut down the capital, cutting power and prompting the evacuation of almost more than 370,000 people, rescue officials said on Wednesday.

The eye of Typhoon Rammasun, the strongest storm to hit the country this year, passed to the south of Manila on Wednesday after cutting a path across the main island of Luzon, toppling trees and power lines and causing electrocutions and widespread blackouts.

Government offices, financial markets and schools closed for the day.

Major roads across Luzon were blocked by debris, fallen trees, electricity poles and tin roofs ripped off village houses. The storm uprooted trees in the capital where palm trees lining major arteries were bent over by the wind as broken hoardings bounced down the streets.

Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross, said there was minimal damage in the capital but staff were trying to rescue people trapped by fallen debris in

Batangas City to the south where two people were electrocuted. "We have not received reports of major flooding in Metro Manila because the typhoon did not bring rain, but the winds were strong," he said.

The number of evacuated people had reached more than 370,000, mostly in the eastern province of Albay, the first to be hit by the typhoon, the disaster agency said. They were taken to schools, gymnasiums and town halls converted into shelters.

At least four southeastern provinces on Luzon declared, or were about to declare, a state of calamity, allowing the local governments to tap emergency relief funds.

The storm brought storm surges to Manila Bay and prompted disaster officials to evacuate slum-dwellers on the capital's outskirts. More surges were expected as the storm headed west.

More than half of Luzon was without power supply, Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla told reporters, adding that he could not say when it would be back up.

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Manila Electric Company, the country's biggest power utility exclusively supplying to the capital, said around 86 percent of its customers were without electricity.

Parts of the Philippines are still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan, one of the biggest cyclones known to have made landfall anywhere. It killed more than 6,100 people last November in the central provinces, many in tsunami-like sea surges, and left millions homeless.

Gaining StrengthTropical Storm Risk, which monitors cyclones, labeled

Rammasun a category-two storm on a scale of one to five as it headed west into the South China Sea. Super typhoon Haiyan was category five. But it predicted Rammasun would gain in strength to a category-three storm within a couple of days once it was back out at sea, picking up energy from the warm waters as it headed for the Chinese island of Hainan.

Rhea Catada, who works for Oxfam in Tacloban, which suffered the brunt of Haiyan, said thousands of people in tents and coastal villages had been evacuated to higher ground.

"They are scared because their experiences during Haiyan last year are still fresh," she said. "Now they are evacuating voluntarily and leaving behind their belongings."

Social Work Secretary Dinky Soliman said 5,335 families, or nearly 27,000 people, had been "affected" by the

storm in Tacloban. Some had returned to the Astrodome, where thousands sought shelter and dozens drowned during storm surges in the November disaster.

A 25-year-old woman was killed when she was hit by a falling electricity pole as Rammasun hit the east coast on Tuesday, the Philippine disaster agency said. A pregnant woman was killed when a house wall collapsed in Lucena City in Quezon province south of the capital.

Nearly 400 flights were grounded during a four-hour closure of Manila airport. Two airliners suffered minor damage when gusts blew them into nearby obstacles, airport officials said.

Train services in the capital remained suspended because of the lack of power. Ferry services were to resume later in the day, including to the holiday island of Boracay where 300 tourists were stranded.

Schools, public offices and financial markets will reopen on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Karen Lema and Erik dela Cruz; Writing by Nick Macfie)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-philippines-typhoon-idUSKBN0FL07520140716

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AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN:15. Pakistanis Detail Gains Against Militants(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Salman Masood

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – One month into a military offensive to seize control of the tribal district of North Waziristan, the Pakistani military said Tuesday that it had extended its operation to the militant stronghold of Mir Ali, resulting in gunfights between soldiers and Islamist fighters that left casualties on both sides.

In a briefing to reporters in the eastern city of Lahore, Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, a military spokesman, said that at least five soldiers, including an army captain, and 11 militants had been killed in battles around Mir Ali, the second-largest town in North Waziristan.

Separately, a security official in Peshawar speaking on the condition of anonymity said that five soldiers and several militants were killed in fighting in Boya, 20 miles west of Mir Ali. “The militants’ bodies are still lying there,” he said. It was not clear whether he was referring to the same episode as the military spokesman.

General Bajwa said the military had moved ground forces toward the town after establishing complete control over Miram Shah, the district capital. “Right now, the process of clearing explosives and I.E.D.’s from the town is going on,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

The capture of Miram Shah, now a deserted town, is a boost for the military operation in North Waziristan, which started June 15. Miram Shah had become a headquarters for the global jihadist movement, where militants commanders could train suicide bombers, run extortion and kidnapping rings, and plot attacks in Pakistan and the West. Mir Ali is the next largest hub of jihadist activity in the district, and has hosted many fighters from Uzbekistan, who have allied with the Pakistani Taliban.

But military experts warned that most militants appeared to have fled North Waziristan’s urban areas in advance of the army assault by hiding among the flood of civilians who have left for neighboring districts. Pakistani officials said the number of displaced residents had exceeded 900,000, making it Pakistan’s biggest conflict-induced crisis in years.

And experts warned that the army might face heavier fighting if it pursued the militants into the surrounding mountains.

The military says that 447 militants and 28 soldiers have been killed so far in the operation, but its claims are difficult to verify given that journalists are barred from the zone of operations.

Separately, the local news media reported Tuesday that the military had captured Adnan Rashid, a senior Taliban commander who, they said, had been arrested from a hide-out in the Shakai district of South Waziristan.

No immediate official confirmation of the arrest was available. If confirmed, Mr. Rashid would be the first high-ranking Taliban commander apprehended in the operation. He was initially jailed for his apparent role in an assassination attempt against the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

In 2012, he was freed alongside dozens of other militants when the Taliban orchestrated a jailbreak, and later that year made headlines when he wrote a letter to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl and women’s education activist, accusing her of provoking the Taliban attack that nearly killed her.

Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad, Declan Walsh from London, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/asia/pakistanis-detail-gains-against-militants.html

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16. Extremists Make Inroads In Pakistan’s Diverse South(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Saba Imtiaz and Declan Walsh

MIRPURKHAS, Pakistan – In a country roiled by violent strife, the southern province of Sindh, celebrated as the “land of Sufis,” has long prized its reputation as a Pakistani bastion of tolerance and diversity.

Glittering Sufi shrines dot the banks of the river Indus as it wends through the province. The faithful sing and dance at exuberant religious festivals. Hindu traders, members of a sizable minority, thrive in the major towns.

But as Islamist groups have expanded across Pakistan in tandem with the growing strength of the Taliban insurgency, so, too, are they making deep inroads into Sindh. Although banned by the state, such groups are systematically exploiting weaknesses in Pakistan’s education system and legal code as part of a campaign to persecute minorities and spread their radical brand of Sunni Islam.

The growth of the fundamentalist groups, many with links to armed factions, has been alarmingly rapid in Sindh and has brought violence in its wake, according to police officials, politicians and activists. In recent months, Hindu temples have been defaced, Shiite Muslims have been assaulted and Christians have been charged with blasphemy.

A central factor in the expansion of such groups is a network of religious seminaries, often with funding from opaque sources, that provides them with a toehold in poor communities. “If there were three seminaries in a city before, now there are tens of seminaries in just one neighborhood,” said Asad Chandio, news editor of the Sindhi-language newspaper Awami Awaz.

In May, a threatening crowd in Mirpurkhas, a small city in central Sindh, surrounded four members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who had set up a stall near the railway station. The mob accused the four of blasphemy because they were selling books that contained images of God and Moses. The crowd’s leader was a member of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, a sectarian group that is ostensibly banned by the government, but that is now openly operating, and growing, across Sindh.

Fearing crowd violence, police officers led the four to a nearby police station where they were charged with blasphemy – potentially a capital offense. They were taken away in an armored vehicle, and are now in hiding as they await trial.

Locals said they were struggling to understand how, or why, the incident had taken place. “There are so many communities here, and we have all lived peacefully,” said Francis Khokhar, the lawyer for the four accused.

The Sunni supremacist ideology propagated by Pakistani sectarian groups is similar to the one that is proving so potent in the Middle East, where the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is flourishing. In Pakistan, such groups do not pose a direct threat to the state yet. But their growth in Sindh is a sobering reminder that a future threat to Pakistani stability could stem from the provincial towns as much as the distant tribal belt, where the Pakistani military is trying to disrupt havens for the Taliban and other militants.

The provincial government in Sindh, concerned about what one government official called the “mushroom growth” of extremist seminaries, is trying to decide what to do.

“Our seminaries have become a source of trouble,” Niaz Abbasi, the home secretary of Sindh, said in an interview.

Despite its open-minded image, Sindhi society has always had a fringe of Islamist extremists, particularly within Karachi, the provincial capital, which has seen an increase in violent attacks in recent years. What has alarmed experts, however, is the spread of fundamentalist groups deep inside the province.

Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, the group behind the blasphemy charges in Mirpurkhas, sprang from a small town in Punjab Province about 30 years ago, capitalizing on local sectarian and political divides. Once known as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, it has grown into Pakistan’s dominant vehicle for Sunni sectarianism, trafficking in hatred against Shiites to win popular and political support.

It has been banned several times – first, in its incarnation as Sipah-e-Sahaba, and in 2012 in its present guise. Still, that did not stop its leader, Maulana Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, from running for Parliament last year. This year, an election tribunal disqualified the winner and gave the seat to Mr. Ludhianvi. The case is in litigation now.

The group also has longstanding ties to the ruthless militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, whose militants have killed hundreds of Shiites in Baluchistan and Karachi in the past two years. Malik Ishaq, the leader of Lashkar, is also a vice president of Ahle Sunnat.

Now Ahle Sunnat is on a recruitment drive in Sindh. While it was traditionally centered in Karachi and Khairpur district, about 200 miles to the north, it now has signed up 50,000 members across Sindh, about half of them outside Karachi, said a spokesman, Umar Muavia. A key to its success is an expanding network of 4,000 religious seminaries that offer free classes and food to students from impoverished families.

“We give them a religious education,” said Hammad Muavia, a spokesman for the group in the Khairpur district. “We feed and house them, and provide them a bursary that goes to their families. We even pay for their medical expenses. We take better care of the students than even their own parents.”

In part, Ahle Sunnat is exploiting the chronic weakness of Pakistan’s education system: Over 3,000 state-run schools in Sindh are not functioning, and those in operation frequently offer a dismal quality of schooling. Less clear are its sources of income. The group says it raises funds from local businessmen and the community, but critics say it is principally funded by Saudi Arabia.

“Yes, sometimes if there are clerics from Saudi Arabia visiting Pakistan, they contribute to us,” said Mr. Muavia, the Khairpur spokesman. “But there is no relationship with the Saudi government.”

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The link between madrasas and militancy is often debated by experts; some point out that Pakistan’s most famous jihadi commanders have been educated not at madrasas but at state-run schools. What is clear, though, is that the madrasas offer groups like Ahle Sunnat a toehold from which to project themselves into the community and expose more Pakistanis to sermons that sometimes veer explicitly into incitement of violence against Shiites and other minorities.

The group is also using the contentious blasphemy law to cow its enemies. Mr. Chandio, the newspaper editor, said his newspaper received threats from Ahle Sunnat after he published photos of the group’s activists attacking a police van during a blasphemy case.

Mr. Muavia, the Ahle Sunnat spokesman in Khairpur, said he had filed several blasphemy cases, but, to his disappointment, the police had rejected them. “The Pakistani government is outraged when blasphemous acts against Prophet Muhammad take place abroad, but does nothing when they happen at home,” he complained.

Other Sunni groups are also expanding in Sindh. Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity that the United States recently designated as a front for the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, has a network of seminaries and carries out relief work during natural disasters. Its leader, Hafiz Saeed, regularly tours Karachi and other major cities in Sindh, evidently unbothered by a $10 million American bounty for his arrest.

Also expanding is Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a conservative politician from northwestern Pakistan. The group held two of the largest political rallies in the province in recent years.

Since March, the police have recorded 12 attacks on Hindu and Sikh temples across the province, said Iqbal Mehmood, who until recently served as the provincial police chief. Separately, Hindu leaders have accused Muslim groups of trying to forcibly convert Hindu girls to Islam.

Across Pakistan, Shiites have been subjected to “an alarming and unprecedented escalation in sectarian violence,” Human Rights Watch recently noted in a report on attacks on ethnic Hazara Shiites in western Baluchistan Province, which adjoins Sindh.

Some officials say the groups have flourished in part thanks to the turning of a blind eye by provincial politicians – mostly from the Pakistan Peoples Party that has dominated Sindh’s politics for decades – and the tacit support of the military and its powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.

During the 1990s, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi “enjoyed a close relationship” with the military and ISI because it was assisting with the fight in Indian-controlled Kashmir, said the recent Human Rights Watch report. For its part, the military denies that it is supporting militant groups.

“These groups don’t come up naturally; they are provided backing by the state,” said Mr. Chandio, the newspaper editor. “They can protest anywhere, and close down a city if they want. But when they hold rallies in support of the army and the ISI, they’ve proven who supports them.”

Saba Imtiaz reported from Mirpurkhas, and Declan Walsh from London.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/asia/militants-in-pakistan-make-inroads-in-the-diverse-and-tolerant-south.html

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EUROPE:17. Border Tensions Rise Between Ukraine And Russia(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... David M. Herszenhorn and Sabrina Tavernise

KIEV, Ukraine – Ukraine and Russia traded increasingly bitter accusations of cross-border hostilities on Tuesday, deepening a shadowy war of real attacks or orchestrated sabotage that increasingly threatens to draw the two countries into direct conflict.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian military officials said they suspected Russia of carrying out an airstrike that destroyed a four-story apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne, about 12 miles from border, killing at least 11 civilians. Pro-Russian separatists, in turn, said the Ukrainian military had carried out the bombing.

The announcement by Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office that it was collecting evidence of a Russian role in the airstrike came a day after the government in Kiev said it believed Russia was responsible for the downing of a military transport plane in Luhansk. A day before that, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned of potentially “irreversible consequences” after one man was killed and two other people were wounded when mortar fire hit the town of Donetsk on the Russian side of the border.

Officially, the Kremlin has denied arming, financing or directing the insurrection in eastern Ukraine, but its active support of the rebellion has been openly acknowledged in recent days. Separatist leaders have complained about the low

quality and advanced age of the weapons provided by Russia and a lack of more proactive assistance as they have come under heavier attack by the Ukrainian military.

On Tuesday, apparent new evidence of Russian military aid appeared on the roads of eastern Ukraine as convoys of tanks and smaller vehicles drove west through rebel-controlled territory toward Donetsk. Shortly after 10 a.m., a column of eight tanks, four large armored personnel carriers, and an assortment of smaller civilian cars and minivans wound its way through the small town of Vuglegirsk.

Rebels reclined on the top of the tanks, as if on couches. A kiosk owner watched as they passed. “I’m just sick of it all,” said the owner, who would give only her first name, Larisa, out of concern for her safety.

She saved her harshest words for Ukraine’s government. “They are killing their own people,” she said. “We won’t forgive them that.”

A half-hour later, a column of four tanks rolled down the same road, past a brilliant field of sunflowers. Behind were trucks and civilian cars, including a new-looking Volkswagen minivan, with a blue light on top.

The continued supply of arms and equipment has riled officials in Kiev, including President Petro O. Poroshenko,

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who has urged the West to impose more painful economic sanctions against Russia.

Anatoliy Matios, a deputy general prosecutor, said at a news conference in Kiev that the Ukrainian government intended to show evidence of Russia’s involvement in the bombing of the residential building in Snizhne.“It will be proven according to international standards that a neighboring state used military equipment and ammunition,” Mr. Matios said.

While separatists blamed the government for the airstrike, Ukrainian officials insisted that all military flights had been suspended on Monday after the downing of the military transport plane in a rocket attack. Russia on Tuesday denied that the rocket that destroyed the plane had been fired from its side of the border.

As the cross-border recriminations added new animosity to the fight, the death toll continued to mount from the separatist insurrection in eastern Ukraine and the Ukrainian military’s effort to quash the rebellion.

At least six more Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 13 wounded in overnight fighting throughout the east, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The self-declared separatist Luhansk People’s Republic said that 15 civilians had been killed and more than 60 wounded in bombardments and other fighting throughout the region. That did not include the 11 civilians killed in the airstrike in Snizhne.

Mr. Lysenko called the attack in Snizhne “a cynical and bloody provocation in order to discredit the Ukrainian military.”

Ukrainian officials have said that the downed cargo plane was flying at a high-enough altitude that destroying it required a sophisticated surface-to-air missile provided by Russia. They also said it appeared that the missile had been fired from the Russian side of the border.

Russia denied that accusation on Tuesday, saying that the plane was shot down too far from the border to have involved a Russian missile.

A senior Western official, who declined to be identified because he was discussing intelligence reports, said that the information on the downing of the Ukrainian plane was inconclusive.

The official said that the initial conclusion of some government analysts was that the aircraft had probably been destroyed by a Russian surface-to-air missile and not a shoulder-fired antiaircraft system. The official also said that the missile had probably been fired from the Russian side of the border, an assertion that was impossible to verify.

Western officials have generally been quick to support the Ukrainian version of events, and have repeatedly chastised the Kremlin for not doing enough to stop the flow of weapons and fighters across the border.

On Monday, the White House summoned European Union ambassadors to push for restrictions on the Russian financial sector and to show them intelligence documenting Russian support for separatists, Bloomberg News reported. European Union leaders are scheduled to meet Wednesday to consider action.

If European allies do not go along, American officials said Mr. Obama might decide to go ahead with sanctions on his own, an approach he has tried to avoid for fear of allowing Russia to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.

David M. Herszenhorn reported from Kiev, and Sabrina Tavernise from Luhansk, Ukraine. Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Vienna, and Peter Baker from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/europe/ukraine-russia-tensions-rise-over-attacks.html

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AFRICA:18. Libya Airport Is Crippled In Fighting By Militias(NEW YORK TIMES 16 JUL 14) ... Osama Al-Fitory and Kareem Fahim

TRIPOLI, Libya – The halls of this city’s international airport have been emptied of passengers and converted into a barracks for fighters, with a kitchen and a field hospital. Smoke rose from the building on Tuesday, while beyond it, on the airfield, mortar shells crashed into the tarmac.

Three days of pitched battles between feuding militias have left most of the airport’s commercial airplanes, runways and even the tower badly damaged, all but stranding Libyans as their country slides further into turmoil.

The country has been plagued by violence for much of the time since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s fall in 2011, as the central government has tried in vain to wrest authority from the powerful militias that control territory and vital installations like the airport.

But the latest dark turn, marked by the demoralizing destruction of the airport but also by furious, deadly battles in Libya’s two largest cities, has stirred new distress among Libya’s international allies and forced the government to contemplate outside intervention.

In an emergency declaration on Monday ordering a stop to the fighting – an order that the militias ignored – the government said it had “studied the strategy of a possible request for international forces to establish the state’s capacity and safeguard citizens and resources of the state, in order to limit chaos.”

It may have been intended as a threat to the armed groups, and there was no sign of any outside actor rushing to help the Libyans. Rather, the country’s friends seemed to be running the other way.

On Monday, the United Nations announced the withdrawal of its mission to Libya because of safety concerns that grew more urgent after the closing of the airport, saying it could not continue its work “while at the same time ensuring the security and safety of its staff as well as their freedom of movement.”

Speaking in Vienna, Secretary of State John Kerry said in a news conference that the United States was “deeply concerned about the level of violence” in Libya. “It is

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dangerous, and it must stop,” Mr. Kerry said, while pointing to the efforts of international envoys, including from the United States and Britain, to foster dialogue among Libya’s quarreling sides. Those efforts have faltered so far.

At the Tripoli airport, no quick end to the fighting was in sight. Fighters from the western mountain city of Zintan took control of the airport in 2011, after the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi, when the militias involved in the revolt embarked on a mad dash for spoils.

Hundreds of Zintani fighters were in the airport on Tuesday, defending their turf. In the passenger terminal, some cooked dinner, preparing to break the Ramadan fast. On the airfield, the fighters used tanks, mortar shells and antiaircraft guns against their enemies: rival fighters, including from the coastal city of Misurata, who had taken up positions in a village next to the airport.

Rockets had torn through airplane hangars, destroying whatever had been inside. The wing of a plane, pierced by bullets, left fuel dripping on the ground. The fighters from

Misurata lobbed mortar rounds back, over the walls of the airport grounds.

The violence had links to a battle on the other side of the country, in the eastern city of Benghazi, where a general named Khalifa Hifter has declared that fighters loyal to him constitute the national army, with a mission to vanquish Libya’s Islamist militias and politicians. The fighting at the airport also seems to reflect the unsettled politics in Libya, where recent elections were expected to return fewer Islamist lawmakers to Parliament.

The fighters from Zintan said their alliance with Mr. Hifter was the reason they were being attacked. A commander, Mahmoud al-Wakwak, said at least 14 of his men had been killed. With his fellow Libyans grounded because of their fighting, he was unapologetic. “We will not let them take the airport,” he said.

Merna Thomas contributed reporting from Cairo.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/africa/libya-

airport-is-crippled-in-fighting-by-militias.htmlReturn to Index

AMERICAS:19. Pentagon Expands Training Of Mexican Military(USA TODAY 15 JUL 14) ... Jim Michaels

WASHINGTON – The United States is quietly expanding its training of Mexico's armed forces, helping to reverse decades of mistrust that made Mexico's military reluctant to cooperate with its northern neighbor.

The amount the Pentagon spent on training Mexico's armed forces, though small, increased to more than $15 million last year, up from about $3 million in 2009, according to U.S. Northern Command, which oversees U.S. military contacts with Mexico.

The training comes as Mexico's armed forces have been drawn deeper into the country's war on drugs and organized crime.

"For decades, Mexico's military tried to remain autonomous from the U.S. military," said David Shirk, a fellow at the Wilson Center.

U.S. military officials are reluctant to discuss the relationship openly because of sensitivities in Mexico about appearing dependent on American help. In a statement, the Pentagon said the U.S. military participated in 150 "engagements" with Mexican troops on both sides of the border, "sharing training opportunities with more than 3,000 Mexican soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines."

The statement said the Pentagon's "interactions" with Mexico's military have expanded over the past three years. Mexican government officials declined to speak on the record about the training.

The Mexican navy and marine corps have been particularly receptive, allowing the United States to expand its training with Mexico's armed forces and build trust.

"Our security agencies have focused heavily on cooperation with the navy and marines," said George Grayson, a professor at William and Mary who has written a book about Mexican drug cartels.

By contrast, the army is a more "insular" institution less willing to cooperate with foreign military forces, Shirk said.

"The navy has earned a tremendous amount of trust from American authorities," Shirk said.

The army is more susceptible to corruption, since its soldiers have been deployed throughout the country in fixed locations, where there are more opportunities to be bribed. They have direct contact with drugs through eradication efforts.

The Mexican marines are used only for targeted raids and are more insulated from bribes or intimidation, Shirk said.

Grayson said the navy and marines were used for one of the first times when they launched a raid in 2009 that killed Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the leader of a major cartel in Cuernavaca.

The forces used in the raid received extensive training from the United States, according to a classified U.S. Embassy message that was released by WikiLeaks.

The U.S. government initially provided intelligence to the army on the whereabouts of Beltrán Leyva but was reluctant to act, the message said.

"Its success puts the Army ... in the difficult position of explaining why it has been reluctant to act on good intelligence and conduct operations against high-level targets," the embassy cable said, according to WikiLeaks.

The success of that raid led to a heavier reliance on the Mexican navy and marines. Of 22 raids on top-level traffickers from 2006 through 2012, seven were conducted by the navy and marines, according to Grayson.

The army was responsible for eight raids during that time, even though it is a much larger force. The federal police conducted eight raids.

Grayson said Mexico's navy is more willing to use modern intelligence methods, such as surveillance drones, to target kingpins. It is learning many of the techniques from Americans.

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The U.S. military has provided a range of training for Mexican forces, ranging from small-unit tactics to helicopter maintenance.

The military training is part of a larger program to support Mexico's war on drugs. The cornerstone of that is the Merida initiative, a $2.1 billion program started in 2007. The program

has provided equipment and training for Mexico's judiciary and law enforcement agencies.

That program has opened the door to military contacts, Shirk said. "That really was a watershed moment," he said.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/15/mexico-drugs-us-military/12535271/

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CONGRESS / BUDGET:20. U.S. Senate Panel Proposes Keeping A-10, 11 Aircraft Carriers With $547.9B Defense Bill(DEFENSE NEWS 15 JUL 14) ... John T. Bennett

WASHINGTON – A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday approved nearly $550 billion in military spending as part of a bill that would keep alive weapon systems the Pentagon wanted to retire.

The chamber’s Appropriations Defense subcommittee unanimously approved legislation that would give the Pentagon $489.6 billion in base spending and $58.3 billion in war funding. It would block a long list of weapon system retirement proposals or Pentagon plans to not purchase systems next year to save money.

In short, the proposed $547.9 billion total figure is yet another victory for the U.S. defense sector, which has long warned it will see a financial hit due to sequestration.

Notably, the legislation, which will be marked up by the full committee on Thursday, would provide millions not requested by the White House to refuel the USS George Washington aircraft carrier.

The other three defense committees did the same, meaning America almost certainly will maintain 11 carrier battle groups.

The bill would block the Air Force’s plans to retire the A-10 attack plane fleet by shifting $338 million from lower-priority items.

The subcommittee was able to keep alive the George Washington and A-10 while still adding funds for other programs by proposing “517 specific cuts to programs” and redirecting “some of the approximately $11.7 billion in savings to higher priorities,” according to a subcommittee summary document.

The House Appropriations Committee largely used the same strategy of shifting funds to higher-profile programs in proposing to block planned Pentagonweapon retirements.

One of those higher priorities was the Navy’s E/A-18G Growler electronic warfare fleet.

The Senate subcommittee added $1.3 billion for a dozen of the Boeing-made planes, more than in the other three 2015 defense bills. Boeing is based in SAC-D Democratic Chairman Richard Durbin’s home state of Illinois.

“I’ve seen it,” he said when asked why he added so much for the jets. A House-Senate conference committee will have to decide how many Growlers the Navy could buy next year when it hammers out a compromise 2015 defense spending bill.

Army vehicles also received additional funding. The SAC-D’s legislation moves to “[stabilize] the ground vehicle industrial base by adding $75 billion for the Improved Recovery Vehicle, $37 million for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, $120 million for the Abrams tank, and $61 million

for the Stryker vehicle production and development,” states the summary.

Other priorities that got plussed-up included AWACS aircraft, for which the panel would provide $31 million next year to keep all 31 of the planes flying.

SAC-D also proposed fully funding the troubled F-35 fighter program and buying all 34 of the Lockheed Martin-made fighters requested by the White House. There was no mention during the subcommittee mark up of a recent engine fire that led defense officials to ground the entire F-35 fleet.

Durbin quoted senior Pentagon officials’ warnings about cuts to U.S. military research and development spending.

“God forbid if that’s the verdict,” Durbin said, saying the U.S. should spend 5 percent of its total defense spending on R&D to keep pace with China. The bill adds millions to achieve Durbin’s goal.

Durbin said the bill contains $1.9 billion for the new counterterrorism partnership fund sought by President Barack Obama. Obama requested $5 billion.

The proposed new CT funding would help the United States work with partners in combating the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The SAC-D bill also would double funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense program, which has been credited in recent days with intercepting missiles fired by Hamas. The bill would provide $351 million for Iron Dome in 2015 and $621.6 million for missile defense work with Israel overall.

The subcommittee’s bill would provide billions for Navy shipbuilding programs. Durbin warned against cutting shipbuilding programs because that sector’s workers would find employment elsewhere.

“We want to make sure we do what we can to protect this industrial base” by ensuring workers remain at shipbuilding firms to do work to “protect the country,” Durbin said.

Panel member Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the legislation “fully funds” the DDG-1000 and DDG-51 destroyer programs.

It would partially fund LPD-28 transport ships in 2015. And the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program would get $80 million “for long-lead parts to purchase the final ship of the block buy next year, at this year’s pricing,” according to the summary.

It would provide $125 million not requested by the Obama administration to allow for “real competition” on military satellite launches, Durbin said, adding the move was a direct result of Space-X officials’ testimony before the panel.

The legislation also would provide funds to develop a new liquid-fuel engine, which Durbin said would eventually

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ease the U.S. military’s “dependence” on a Russian launch firm.

Whether or not the bill ever reaches the Senate floor is very murky. The chamber remains locked in a bitter partisan fight over process and amendments.

Last week, sources told CongressWatch the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees have yet to begin discussing what’s known as “pre-conferencing.”

That is Capitol Hill jargon for the practice – used before on recent defense bills – of a conference committee meeting in secret to write a compromise version of a bill that can quickly pass both chambers, typically with no amendments.

Hill sources have said for months a “pre-conferenced” defense bill is highly possible this year.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140715/CONGRESSWATCH/307150020

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21. USS George Washington Refueling Delayed, But Funding Looks GoodWork expected to start in March 2017 at Newport News Shipbuilding(NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS 15 JUL 14) ... Hugh Lessig

Back in March, the Pentagon said it wanted a stronger signal from Congress on refueling the aircraft carrier USS George Washington. If not, the Navy would move to retire the ship.

Based on what happened Tuesday, consider the signal sent, Virginia's two senators said.

A Senate panel set aside $848 million in the 2015 defense budget bill so Newport News Shipbuilding can proceed with the project, which will eventually mean billions of dollars in shipyard work and thousands of sailors coming to downtown Newport News. The implications go further: More than 680 contractors in 39 states, including companies in Hampton Roads, can work on a carrier refueling, according to the Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition.

The House of Representatives has already approved funding. The full Senate Appropriations Committee now will consider the budget measure on Thursday. Passage is expected.

But this lengthy debate has cost time: The refueling was expected to begin in September 2016. Start of work is now planned for March 2017, pending approval of future years funding, according a statement Tuesday from Naval Sea Systems Command. The work on Washington is expected to last 44 months and cost $4.7 billion, NAVSEA said.

That could cause headaches down the road for the Newport News shipyard, which plans carrier refuelings on a "heel to toe" schedule: When one finishes, another comes in to take its place. After Washington, the shipyard is scheduled to refuel the USS John C. Stennis. It wasn't clear Tuesday whether this would affect work on the Stennis.

The Washington's future has been cloudy since March, when the Defense Department rolled out its 2015 budget. Navy leaders said they wanted to keep the George Washington in the fleet, but they would propose removing it from service if deep budget cuts returned in 2016.

That sparked a protest from the Virginia congressional delegation and concern from officials at Newport News shipyard. Neither Sen. Tim Kaine nor Sen. Mark R. Warner was ready to declare a final victory Tuesday, but both expressed confidence that the project will get back on track.

"It ain't over 'til it's over, but this is excellent news for Hampton Roads and Virginia," Warner said

Kaine said all key committees in the House and Senate have now endorsed the project.

"The legislature has just sent the executive branch the clearest signal possible," he said.

Tuesday's signal came courtesy of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who is chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He spoke of the importance of keeping the George Washington in the fleet, not only because of national security, but because it preserved work for defense contractors.

Durbin, who has toured Newport News Shipbuilding at Kaine's invitation, said the U.S. must have a "thoughtful continuance" of production of ships, tanks and aircraft in the post-9/11 era. If not, skilled defense workers will seek other jobs.

In a floor speech Tuesday, he said, "As we withdraw from these two wars, what will happen to these men and women? Will they disappear into the work force? If they do, recreating their ability to build and defend the United States isn't easy, and it's more expensive."

The Navy has been edging toward freeing up the money in the past weeks, as momentum has built in Congress. Last week, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Sean Stackley said the service was "making every effort" to re-budget funds for the refueling, known formally as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul, or RCOH.

The $848 million falls well short of the projected total $4.7 billion cost. However, both Warner and Kaine said it would be difficult for the Navy to cease work on such a large project once it started.

"There will be money needed in fiscal years '16 and '17," Kaine said. "But if you spend this much money, ($848 million) you're not going to stop the refueling in midstream."

Warner said Congress still needs to strike a comprehensive budget deal so those deep, automatic spending cuts under sequestration don't return.

"I think we always need to guard against the stupidity of sequestration," he said.

http://www.dailypress.com/business/ports/dp-nws-george-washington-refueling-20140715,0,5840841.story

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22. HASC Readiness Chair Hoping For Renewed Focus On Sequestration After Midterms(NATIONAL DEFENSE 15 JUL 14) ... Valerie Insinna

The chairman of the House Armed Service Committee’s subcommittee on readiness said he was optimistic that

Congress will be able to protect defense funding and prevent sequestration in 2016.

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Key to this effort will explaining the importance of military spending to Republican budget hawks and the new representatives who will take office after midterm elections this November, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., told reporters July 15.

“What I’ve been doing is getting members out and saying, ‘Look at what your military does,’” he said. After five Republicans on the readiness work group toured an aircraft carrier this weekend, they better understood the need for continued funding for the defense budget, he said.

"The Department of Defense has given and given and given," he said. If sequestration is included, the cuts would come about $1.3 trillion. "There's no other place in the budget that has [gotten] anywhere close to putting those dollars on the table,” he said.

Developing a defense budget should be a strategy driven process in which Congress appropriates funding based on the threat environment, but that isn’t happening, Wittman said. Instead, the spending caps of the Budget Control Act and Bipartisan Budget Act are dictating defense budget levels.

“We say, 'Hey, here's the budget number, and let's fit a strategy to that budget,’” he said. “The [Quadrennial Defense Review] essentially does that.'

Overseas contingency operations funding – a temporary defense fund primarily for operations in Afghanistan – continues to be a source of confusion for many members of Congress, Wittman said. The Obama administration requested $58.6 billion in OCO funding for fiscal year 2015. As the United States’ partial withdrawal from Afghanistan grows nearer, lawmakers need to figure out how to migrate OCO funds into the base budget.

“We're trying to get folks to understand that a significant amount of those dollars actually go to things that are enduring missions” that will still be necessary to fund after the United States leaves Afghanistan, he said. “If you're going to do anti-piracy, which is one of those historical naval missions ... OCO dollars go to fund that.” Once that mechanism disappears, however, the government will have to find money for those missions in the base budget.

One encouraging sign is that there seems to be a growing interest in the defense budget, he said. A congressional briefing held last week on OCO funding attracted about 50 staffers.

The midterm election will likely prevent the House and Senate from approving a defense budget before the end of the fiscal year, Whittman predicted. In that case, a short-term continuing resolution will probably be passed to keep the federal government funded until the new Congress can put together an omnibus budget bill, he said.

Still, Congress is better positioned to pass a budget in fiscal 2015, unlike previous years, where it relied on continuing resolutions for funding through an entire fiscal year, he said. “On the House side, we're now through the sixth ... of the appropriations bills, so we're a lot further along than we have been at any time in the recent past.”

As soon as Congress climbs over that hurdle, it will have to contend with the fiscal year 2016 budget. "Next year, we're going to have some really, really vigorous debates and tough decisions to make, especially if sequester looms,” he said. New representatives will have to quickly be brought up to speed on many national defense issues, including the possible impacts of sequester.

"With those budget caps, you're going to have to battle for dollars within those budget caps or come up with ways to gain revenue or savings elsewhere," he said.

In order to reap the savings needed to support readiness, military officials have proposed retiring entire aircraft fleets and cutting its number of cruisers and possibly an aircraft carrier.

Wittman agreed that Congress needs to make tough decisions about those platforms, but said there must be a balance between saving money and retaining capability. For instance, he supports the retirement of the A-10 Warthog, which will eventually be replaced by the F-35 joint strike fighter. However, Wittman maintains that there are no other Navy ships that can fill the roles of cruisers and aircraft carriers.

“With all the things that we want to do and need to do around the world, you need presence, and the way you establish that presence and the ability to project power is through this naval force,” he said.

Wittman also opposes enacting another round of base realignment and closures. Actual cost savings from the 2005 BRAC aren’t expected until at least 2018, so if the services want to close installations, they need to prove that they can save money in a timely manner, he said.

“We’re still determining ... the end strength of our military. ... We’re still doing an overseas base assessment to figure out what should our basing overseas be. So this really is a situation of doing things in a logical progression,” he said.

“In this year’s [National Defense Authorization Act], we did put language in there for each of the service branches to note where they had excess capacity or excess capitalization and then how they would propose liquidating that excess capitalization and then save that money within a six year window,” he said.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=7c996cd7-cbb4-4018-baf8-8825eada7aa2&ID=1557

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AVIATION:23. It's Official: F-35 Not Flying To Farnborough(DEFENSE NEWS 15 JUL 14) ... Aaron Mehta and Marcus Weisgerber

LONDON/WASHINGTON – The F-35 joint strike fighter will not be flying at the Farnborough International Airshow, to the disappointment of attendees, program supporters and partnered militaries.

It was a whirlwind day of emotion for the program on Tuesday, talk of which has dominated both Farnborough and last week’s Royal International Air Tattoo despite the jets having missed their planned international debut.

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Early Tuesday morning, word surfaced that the Pentagon had ended a July 3 grounding order for the fleet, the result of an ongoing investigation into the cause of a June 23 fire on an Air Force F-35A model. However, the aircraft are limited to a speed of .9 Mach, 18 degrees of angle of attack, -1 to +3 G-forces and a “half-a-stick-deflection for rolls,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.

After three hours of flight time, the front fan section of each engine must undergo an inspection with a borescope, Kirby said.

“When we operate aircraft, we look at many factors, to include operational risk, the weather, ground time, maintenance issues,” Kirby said. “All these factors were weighed appropriately in making this difficult decision.”

For a few hours, it looked as though the plane would make it to Farnborough around the end of the week. But later on Tuesday, U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Jim Amos made the decision not to send the U.S. F-35B aircraft to Europe, Kirby said.

“While we’re disappointed we’re not going to participate in the air show, we remain fully committed to the program itself and look forward to future opportunities to showcase its capabilities to allies and partners,” Kirby said.

Safety has been the key concern for U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel throughout the process, a point he emphasized when visiting the F-35 schoolhouse at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida last week.

“Nobody in senior leadership wanted to rush to do this for the sake of the air show,” Kirby said.

Kirby said the Pentagon remains fully committed to the multibillion-dollar F-35 program.

“We haven’t seen anything that points to a systemic issue across the fleet, with respect to the engine,” he said.

Matthew Bates, spokesman for engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, said the company respects the decision to keep the plane from flying at Farnborough. “We have worked closely with the DoD and the services to return the fleet to flight,” he wrote in a statement.

A statement from prime contractor Lockheed Martin echoed the sentiment.

“While we were looking forward to the F-35 demonstration at Farnborough, we understand and support the DoD and UK MoD’s decision,” Lockheed spokeswoman Laura Siebert wrote in a statement.

The question of whether the fifth-generation jet will arrive and perform for the crowd has been the single biggest topic at the show, with even executives from rival companies expressing hope they would get to see the fighter in person.

The role of partner nations, particularly the UK, has made the F-35 historically unique among defense programs. It has also led to intense interest from many nations that have supported, or may support in the future, the joint strike fighter.

It has also made it extremely complicated. In addition to three different U.S. services, the jet has eight partner nations spread around the globe. That is an unprecedented model, and one Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall said could work for future programs – if used in the right situation.

“The critical feature making that possible now is the importance of the system of warfighting for everyone who is on the program. If you have that, if you have a strong commitment, if you have a requirement that is very attractive to people in terms of the weapon systems concept, then you can make it work.

“I think for your average program you need to be pretty careful about this before you start on this path, because it’s much harder to manage and hold everybody together in this kind of arrangement.”

Reflecting generally on the program, Kendall called the jet “an interesting case study,” adding that in 1994, he thought the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy could “never” get commonality with each other.

And while the fact the jet will not be at Farnborough is unquestionably a blow to the PR campaign for the jet, Kendall remains optimistic about the future of the program.

“If you compound that problem by bringing in eight partners, it would not have been a recipe or success, I would have thought at the beginning, but we’ve done it,” he said. “It is a real credit to all our partners and services that they were able to work together and everybody has stuck with this program.

“Everybody has remained committed to it. I think that’s frankly because of the quality of the product more than anything else. I think it is becoming a success story. It will be a success story.”

Marcus Weisgerber in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140715/SHOWSCOUT15/307150028

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24. USMC’s Amos Expects F-35B Will Stay On Track For IOC(SEAPOWER 15 JUL 14) ... Otto Kreisher

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon announced July 15 that the F-35 Lightning II fleet could return to flight on a highly restricted basis after a three-week grounding, but the Marine Corps commandant said he still was “very optimistic” about the future of the fighter that is intended to replace all of the Marines’ fixed-wing tactical aircraft.

Speaking at a Brookings Institution forum prior to the Pentagon announcement, Gen James F. Amos said he expected the grounding would have no impact on the first F-35B squadron, now in training at Yuma, Ariz., achieving its initial operational capability (IOC) as scheduled in late summer 2015.

RADM John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the Air Force and Navy airworthiness authorities had cleared the F-35s for flight, but made resumption of flight status dependent on a rigorous engine inspection regime and restricted flight operations.

And, Kirby told a Pentagon briefing, the fifth-generation fighter will not make its high-profile debut at the prestigious Farnborough Air Show in England. He said that decision was made by Amos.

The short-takeoff, vertical-landing F-35B model that the Marines are getting had been scheduled to go to Farnborough because the British are buying the same model.

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“While we’re disappointed that we’re not going to be able to participate in the air show, we remain fully committed to the program itself and look forward to future opportunities to showcase its capabilities to allies and partners,” Kirby said.

But the fact that Naval Air Systems Command and the Air Force required mandatory engine inspections after every three hours in the air made a flight across the Atlantic “problematic,” he said.

Kirby said the F-35s also would be have to fly within a restricted flight envelop until the root cause of the June 23 engine fire in an Air Force F-35A was determined. That probably would mean less aggressive flight maneuvers and use of engine power.

During his Brookings appearance, Amos said program officials had conduced detailed inspection of all of the Pratt & Whitney engines in the three F-35 variants and had determined the problem with the F-35A’s engine was a “one off.”

Kirby likewise said the inspections revealed “no systemic problem” with the F-35 engines.

Amos, the first aviator to serve as commandant, has kept a close watch on the F-35B program during his four-year tour because the aircraft is essential to the future of Marine Corps aviation. It is set to replace the Corps’ F/A-18s, AV-8Bs and EA-6Bs, all of which are at or over their original service life limits.

Amos said the Marines have constructed their future years budget plans based on the assumption that sequestration would continue to restrict their funding. That means the Corps would

cut its end strength from the recent high of 202,000 to 175,000, which would force it to keep its operational forces on a punishing pace of 10 months at home for every six-month deployment, when the time needed to allow Marines enough time at home to train and rest was 18 months.

Amos said they were maintaining current readiness and operational tempo by cutting funds from base upkeep and other support programs. He predicted the Marines would be able to sustain that until about 2017. At that point, he said, his successor – expected to be Gen Joseph Dunford, the current overall commander in Afghanistan – would have to make some tough decisions to restrict Marine deployments and operations.

In response to a question from the audience, Amos justified the requests for a slowdown in the current rapid rate of increase in the total cost of military compensation, noting that pay and benefits now consumes 63 percent of his total budget, but is expected to hit 67 percent within five years.

He rejected the argument that slowing the rate of pay raises and asking military retirees still working to pay a bit more for their Tricare health plans was “breaking faith” with the troops. Instead, he said, it was a choice of providing slightly less in compensation or “breaking the force” because compensation cost would prevent funding readiness and equipment.

http://www.seapowermagazine.org/stories/20140715-amosbrookings.html

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25. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Carrier Prepares For JSF Flights(DEFENSETECH.ORG 15 JUL 14) ... Mike Hoffman

FARNBOROUGH, England – Preparations are underway for the first F-35 test flight aboard the United Kingdom’s new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier slated for 2018, BAE Systems officials said Tuesday at the Farnborough International Airshow.

BAE Systems engineers and UK Ministry of Defence officials are working with simulation technologies in order to ensure the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter will successfully take-off and land aboard the British Royal Navy’s newly christened HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier. The ship was christened July 4, 2014.

U.S. and British officials had planned for the F-35 to execute a fly over of the Queen Elizabeth on the day of its christening to be the F-35s first ever international flight before the grounding of the Joint Strike Fighter fleet canceled those plans.

“Overall, this ship has been designed with the F-35 in mind from day one,” said David Atkinson, BAE Systems, Team JSF.

Slated to enter service in 2020, the 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth is the largest warship ever built by the UK. It will be the first in a series of two planned Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, ships being engineered to house and sustain as many as 36 JSF aircraft, BAE officials said.

While not quite the size of an U.S. Navy Nimitz or Ford-class aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth-class ships will be 280-meters long and carry a crew of 671. The ship will house a total of 40 aircraft including Joint Strike Fighters and Chinook and Merlin helicopters. The first helicopter trial

flights from the carrier deck are slated for 2017, Atkinson said.

The ship is being built by a BAE Systems-led team including Babcock and Thales. Some estimates put the prince of the Queen Elizabeth at $5 billion U.S. dollars.

The design, configuration and deck space of the ship have all been engineered to accommodate the F-35B Short Take-Off-and-Landing, or STOVL, variant of the JSF – the same variant of the aircraft planned for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Simulations replicating the glide slope of the aircraft, configuration and lighting on the ship and the wind, water and ship speed are all part of the preparatory calculus.

“We’ve used a highly accurate F-35 flight simulator, a very accurate model of the ship including the way it moves through the waves to develop all the things we need to do in the aircraft and on the ship to conduct that maneuver successfully,” Atkinson said.

Also, unlike U.S. carriers, the Queen Elizabeth class ships have no catapult technology or arresting gear to help fighter jets land.

“We’ve been developing this concept of shipboard rolling vertical landing to enhance the bring back of the F-35B. The Queen Elizabeth Class flight deck is big enough to allow us to do a forward rolling vertical landing on the flight deck and stop using the brake,” Atkinson added.

Atkinson explained how the F-35B STOVL aircraft will have the option to hover and perform a vertical landing or perform the shipboard rolling vertical landing, or SRVL, depending upon mission requirements or operational need.

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“The performance of the aircraft is affected by the airspeed. It is all about the matching of the wind on the deck relative to the flight speed of the aircraft. You will always have your vertical landing capability. SRVL is a quick maneuver where the aircraft does not have to hover,” Atkinson added.

Performing the SRVL will allow the F-35B to travel with an additional few thousand pounds of payload such as extra fuel or weaponry, he said.

The Queen Elizabeth carriers plan to place a trained F-35B pilot in the ship’s control room area in order to facilitate successful communication with approaching JSF aircraft, Atkinson said. A landing signal officer will be placed at a special work station on board the carrier.

“From the earliest stages, a lot of attention has been paid to the human-machine interface and precisely what is needed in order to make that flight control work in the most efficient possible way,” he said.

“The landing signal officer will be a fully qualified F-35 pilot with additional training to be the subject matter expert on the F-35.”

Since there is no arresting gear, the SRVL landing will need to succeed in achieving the correct speed, decent and glide slope while approaching the deck of the carrier so as to be able to come to a complete stop by merely using brakes.

The success of this effort will be assisted by a velocity vector placed into the helmet mounted display of the F-35 which will help the pilot know when it is time to catch a final decent down onto the ship’s deck, Atkinson explained.

Visual landing aids in the form of different colored lights are built into the tram lines on the carrier deck to help pilots land as well, Atkinson said.

http://defensetech.org/2014/07/15/britains-queen-elizabeth-carrier-prepares-for-jsf-flights/

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26. U.S. Navy And Boeing Praise P-8A(FLIGHTGLOBAL (UK) 15 JUL 14) ... Jon Hemmerdingerfa

RNBOROUGH – Though Boeing’s P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft remains years away from reaching full operational capability, it is already proving its mettle on deployments with the U.S. Navy, according to programme officials.

Capt. Scott Dillon, the service's programme manager for marine patrol and reconnaissance, speaking at a Farnborough briefing, said the fleet of 14 P-8As are performing “exceptionally on deployment” and matching the capability of the service's to-be-retired Lockheed P-3 Orions.

Concern about the P-8A’s ability to operate at low altitude over the ocean has proved unfounded, Dillon says, noting that head-up displays provide improved situational awareness for pilots.

Despite positive feedback, the programme has not been without hiccups or criticism. Though officials note the programme still calls for Boeing to build 117 aircraft, the USN’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal limits the service to ordering eight aircraft, not 16, next year.

Export deals are also being pursued, however. So far, India has ordered eight P-8Is and Australia has approved orders for eight aircraft with a further four options.

Fred Smith, business development director at Boeing, says more countries are being courted. “We are looking forward to garnering many international orders in the near future,” he says.

Initial aircraft have small-area ASW systems similar to those carried by older P-3s, but lack broad-area acoustic search systems carried by new examples, according to a U.S. Department of Defense report. As a result, the report says, the P-8A’s initial “ASW search capabilities provide only a small fraction of what is needed.”

Officials point out that the P-8A roadmap calls for “incrementally” improving the platform.

By fiscal year 2016, aircraft will receive automated identification systems, high-altitude ASW weapons capabilities and multi-static active coherent acoustics, which will provide limited broad-area search ability. Further ASW upgrades and sensor and software improvements are planned for fiscal year 2021, says the navy.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/farnborough-us-navy-and-boeing-praise-p-8a-401564/

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MARINE CORPS:27. Marine Corps Looking At Options In Amphibious Connectors(SEAPOWER 15 JUL 14) ... Richard R. Burgess

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Marine Corps is assessing a variety of alternatives in moving Marines and their equipment and supplies ashore from ships, a capability needed in the full spectrum of warfare.

“We’re in a state of flux right now,” said BGen William F. Mullen III, director, Capabilities Development Directorate, Combat Development and Integration, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, in a July 15 discussion with Dr. Maren Leed, who holds the Harold Brown Chair in Defense

Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Mullen said the Marine Corps needs capabilities for “disaster relief all the way to the high end [opposed amphibious landing], which we believe we won’t do but have to have the capability to do. If we don’t have the capability to do that, it limits your options.”

The only current connector with the capability to make opposed landing is the AAV7 Amphibious Assault Vehicle, first fielded in 1972. The utility landing craft (LCU), landing

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craft air cushion (LCAC) and its replacement, the LCAC 100-class ship-to-shore connector (SSC), and the Joint High-Speed Vessel (JHSV) are not designed to make opposed landings.

Mullen said some of the LCUs in service are 54 years old, and the Navy has just begun to develop a next-generation LCU.

The Marine Corps is developing the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) as a replacement for the AAV7. The service plans to procure a limited quantity at first “and then see what works,” Mullen said, noting that the service would incorporate needed improvements for subsequent production.

The ACV would be “designed more to operate as an MRAP [Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle]than a tracked vehicle,” Mullen said.

The Corps also is looking at a craft called the Ultra-Heavy Amphibious Connector, a vessel that can carry two-thirds of the load of an LCU at the speed of an LCAC. Also under

consideration is the late-1980s concept HAVIC-15, the High-Speed Assault Vessel and Interdiction Craft, a sled designed to carry an armored vehicle ashore, after which the vehicle leaves the sled on the beach as it proceeds inland.

Mullen said the Corps is looking at an in-stream launch capability of the SSC from the well deck of an amphibious warfare ship. Such a capability would not be able to be incorporated in the SSC until the 10th production example, because of the advanced stage of its development.

Another concept being considered is fitting a ramp on the JHSVs to allow them to launch ACVs into the water.

Mullen stressed that the Marine Corps still needed all of the gray-hull amphibious warfare ships, with 38 required, 33 acceptable, but only 29 available.

http://www.seapowermagazine.org/stories/20140715-connector.html

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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE:28. DoD: New POW/MIA Accounting Agency To Open In January(STARS AND STRIPES 15 JUL 14) ... Travis J. Tritten

WASHINGTON – Defense Department officials testified Tuesday that the new agency to replace the troubled POW/MIA accounting community in charge of recovering and repatriating the remains of troops killed in past conflicts will be stood up on Jan. 1.

The agency will consolidate the work of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office and the Joint Personnel Accounting Command as ordered by the secretary of defense in February, said Michael Lumpkin, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Lumpkin testified before the House Armed Services’ military personnel subcommittee, which for years has pressed for reform and in 2009 helped pass a congressional mandate that the DoD recover at minimum of 200 remains annually beginning next year.

On Tuesday, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., chairman of the House subcommittee, said he was pleased that the DoD is moving ahead with the changes.

“What a positive report – that is very unusual in Congress,” he said.

The DoD efforts to recover 83,000 Americans still missing from past conflicts have so far fallen far below the goal set by Congress and been dogged by incompetence and dysfunction, including claims agencies ignored leads, arguing against identifying remains in government custody, desecrated and mishandled of remains, and failed to keep critical records.

An interim inspector general report, obtained last week by ProPublica, outlined some of the problems:

a remarkably low number of identifications each year – just 60 in 2013

no standard operating procedures, or central database of the missing

leadership and management problems resulting in a hostile and dysfunctional work environment

no acknowledgment that as many as 50,000 missing at sea are unlikely to be recovered

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the overall and consolidation in February and called maximizing the number of identifications a top priority for the DoD.

Lumpkin said the new central agency will open at the start of 2015 but will not be fully operational until January 2016.

“Throughout this process, operations to account for the missing and to keep their families informed will continue,” he said.

Jamie Morin, director of DoD Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, said JPAC and DPMO as well as the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory, which handles forensic work, will continue on recovery efforts until the new agency is completely operational in 2016.

“We are building something up while we are shrinking something down to ensure that this is seamless,” Morin said.

Plans for the new agency call for:

Oversight by a newly created DoD policy under secretary who’s central task will be the recovery effort

A medical examiner in charge of all identification and scientific operations

Centralized data base and case management system containing all POW/MIA case information

Lumpkin said the department will also try to improve the way it treats the families of those still missing in action.

“From a business perspective, who is the customer here? We haven’t focused on the families as much as we could,” he said. “I think that is the underlying piece we all agreed upon.”

http://www.stripes.com/news/dod-new-pow-mia-accounting-agency-to-open-in-january-1.293574

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PERSONNEL:29. Senate Panel Proposes Ending Tobacco Discounts(NAVY TIMES 15 JUL 14) ... Leo Shane III

Smokers could lose their discount on tobacco products sold at military exchanges under a provision unveiled in the Senate on Tuesday.

Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee chairman Rep. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, called the move a common-sense decision to give troops less incentive to use tobacco.

“There’s no reason that deadly tobacco products should be subsidized,” Durbin said, arguing that lower prices on the products lead to higher use, which in turn “leads to addiction, health problems, and in some cases death.”

The budget bill provision would dump the tobacco discount and force military exchanges to sell the items at full price.

DoD policy calls for limiting discounts on tobacco products sold in both military exchanges and commissaries to no more than 5 percent below “the most competitive commercial price in the local community.” That effectively means the military discount can be much larger when compared to “average” off-base prices.

The Navy ended discounts on tobacco products sold on Navy and Marine Corps bases in 2012. But Durbin said tobacco discounts at some installations in the other services run as high as 20 percent below local civilian stores. A 2013 National Institutes of Health study found military discounts of as high as 73 percent in some locations.

Critics say that’s one reason why troops smoke and use chewing tobacco at dramatically higher rates than civilians.

About 25 percent of troops smoke cigarettes, compared to about 20 percent of civilians, and about 13 percent use smokeless tobacco products, compared to 3 percent of civilians.

Military officials have launched a number of anti-tobacco initiatives in recent years, citing the long-term health costs to frequent users. Durbin cited DoD estimates that say tobacco-related illnesses drain $1.6 billion annually from military health care accounts.

Earlier this year, an analysis from the Kansas-based Institute for Biobehavioral Health Research found that the discounted tobacco products at military bases send a contradictory message to troops and undermine those anti-smoking programs.

Navy officials have discussed dropping all tobacco product sales from service exchanges, commissaries and ship stores. That move prompted pushback from several House lawmakers, who argued that all service members should have access to the products if they’re legal and available to civilians.

Those same House lawmakers would have to sign off on dropping the tobacco discount before the change could become law. The appropriations bill is expected to move through the Senate this month, but likely won’t be finalized until late 2014.

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140715/NEWS05/307150060

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30. The Changing Face Of The Military(POLITICO 15 JUL 14) ... Philip Ewing

To get a sense of how much the military has changed under President Barack Obama, consider this: Within a week, his defense secretary did a couple of things that would have been impossible not so long ago.

On July 4, Chuck Hagel dialed up a small number of troops around the world to wish them a happy Independence Day. One call was to Senior Airman Ashley Walton, a drone sensor operator stationed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The Defense Department described her this way in its announcement:

“Ashley was recently named one of the Henry E. 'Red' Erwin Outstanding Career Enlisted Aviators of the year,” it said. “She and her wife, Mackenzie, live in Northern California.”

The next week, Hagel flew down to the Navy’s submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia, to meet with the members of the first group of women serving aboard its nuclear submarines. Defense officials were eager to point out their addition to the ballistic and guided-missile subs has sparked neither scandal nor headlines.

“There’s no news here,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus likes to say – as he did this month when he recognized Vice Chief

of Naval Operations Adm. Michelle Howard, the Navy’s first woman to pin on four stars.

These women are not quota placements, the Pentagon insists, or sympathy cases. They’re taking their places based on merit, just as men would, now that some barriers have been removed.

“I qualified the same as my male counterparts and do the same job,” Navy Lt. Marquette Leveque said in an official DoD TV report. “As long as I do that, it’s been equal all the way around.”

Leveque is one of three women assigned to the nuclear ballistic missile submarine USS Wyoming and among 26 overall posted to three ships based at Kings Bay. The Navy also has 35 female officers posted to its West Coast ballistic missile sub base in Bangor, Washington.

There are still more milestones ahead, officials say. Female officers will join the crews of the smaller Virginia-class fast attack submarines for the first time in October, based at Groton, Connecticut. The Navy has also established a “task force” to determine how it will add enlisted women to submarine crews.

Meanwhile, the Air Force has opened up virtually every job it can to women, says Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee

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James – the second woman to hold her job and the only woman among the three military secretaries. Along the way, James has become something of an in-demand speaker inside the defense and aerospace world, such as delivering the opening keynote address at this spring’s Women In Aerospace forum outside Washington.

It all adds up to a sea change, defense officials say, inside what was one of the most infamous and intransigent boys’ clubs in America.

“It’s a priority of mine. It’s a priority of the president’s,” Hagel told sailors at Kings Bay. “In all of our leaders in our institution – quality people always make a difference. And if you don’t have quality people, you won’t have the kind of leadership, institutions you require; you won’t have the confidence that the men and women who serve this country must have in their leaders. You won’t have confidence in each other.”

For Pentagon skeptics in Congress and elsewhere, however, the military still has much further to go.

One of the biggest ongoing issues is sexual assault, a problem that for now has rotated off Washington’s front burner but will reappear with the next scandal or the next time the Pentagon must make another of its regular reports about sexual assault. Obama gave the military services about a year to get control of the problem and supported them as they successfully repulsed an attempt in Congress to change the way units must handle sexual assault allegations.

But the White House has made clear that cracking down on sexual violence will remain a top priority. And if Hagel and the military brass can’t show progress in a report they owe Obama this December, that could create another uneasy standoff between the president and his commanders.

Another area in which advocates want progress is integrating women into front-line units. Greg Jacob, a former Marine officer who now serves as policy director for the Service Women’s Action Network, acknowledged the services are moving ahead – but without much rhyme, reason or transparency.

“I liken it to the Pentagon asking for a pasta dinner,” Jacob said. “Hagel says, ‘I want you to cook me a pasta dinner,’ so the Air Force makes lasagna; the Army makes spaghetti; and the Marines make mac and cheese. They’re all pasta dinners – but they look different. They taste different. And maybe, I don’t even like mac and cheese.”

The worst cook of the group is the Marine Corps, Jacob says. It has been the least transparent about its efforts to add women to front-line units, he said, and he questioned the overall approach that it has followed.

The Army, for example, hasn’t yet decided whether women will join the crews of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Jacob said. But female soldiers are becoming qualified to repair them. The Marines, however, want to decide about the combat jobs before the close support jobs, and that could mean final decisions will take longer.

Another question mark is Special Operations Command, which could have a major say about whether – or how women – would join special operations units such as the 75th Ranger Regiment or the Navy SEALs. Jacob said SOCOM wants to defer to the military services, which “own” the units, but service leaders have said they have authorization from SOCOM to integrate them. It’s a classic Pentagon conundrum.

Some of the progress on service equality should take the form of legislation, backers say. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), for example, is sponsoring a bill that she says would right an enduring wrong associated with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on open service by gays and lesbians. About 14,000 service members were discharged under that policy from 1993 to 2010, she says, but they only received half their separation pay.

Her bill would restore the other half, plus interest, for troops who’d served six years or more.

“First, we unjustly kicked them out of the military and then, they received just half of their separation pay,” Speier said in a statement. “It’s deplorable that this discrimination has been allowed to continue.”

https://www.politicopro.com/story/defense/?id=36231Return to Index

31. Marines’ ‘Lion Of Fallujah’ Died While Working For CIALegendary Marine Maj. Zembiec, the ‘Lion of Fallujah,’ died in the service of the CIA(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Thomas Gibbons-Neff

In the foyer of the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters, there is a marble wall covered in stars. They are carved divots that represent those who have fallen in the service of the CIA. Below them, jutting out from the polished rock, is a black book entombed in a case of glass and steel. The book is a guide to the stars, giving the names of some of those who died and withholding the names of others.

On the pages of the CIA’s Book of Honor are 111 hand-drawn stars organized by the years those officers died. For 2007, there is a single, anonymous star.

It belongs to Marine Maj. Douglas Alexander Zembiec.Long thought to be an active-duty Marine when he was

killed in Baghdad, Zembiec was actually serving with the CIA’s paramilitary arm. While the CIA would not comment on whether Zembiec worked for the agency, former U.S. intelligence officials said in interviews that he died in an alley in Sadr City on May 11, 2007, as a member of the Special Activities Division’s Ground Branch.

It was the final chapter in the life of a Marine known to many as the Lion of Fallujah but whose story, until now, has never been fully told. He is one of the few Americans to be simultaneously honored by the military and the CIA for his actions. But because he was working covertly, his role was never acknowledged publicly.

Family members and former intelligence officials say Zembiec was working with a small team of Iraqis on a “snatch and grab” operation targeting insurgents for capture. Just moments after warning his men that an ambush was imminent, he was shot in the head by an enemy insurgent; he died instantly.

In the ensuing gun battle, the Iraqis serving beside Zembiec radioed back, “Five wounded, one martyred,” according to battle reports.

Top military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, lauded Zembiec’s actions on the night he was killed, and the military dedicated a helicopter landing zone to him at

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Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport in 2008. It included a white sign with Zembiec’s name, his awards and the emblem of the Marine Corps.

Markedly absent: the crest of the CIA.Zembiec, who was 34, is credited with saving 25 men on

the night of his death, and for his heroism, he was later awarded the Silver Star.

“He was something else,” his wife, Pam Zembiec, said in an interview at her home in Maryland. “Sometimes I thought he was born in the wrong time, like he should have been born with the Spartans.”

‘They Fought Like Lions’Zembiec was a warrior, and an outspoken one at that,

heralding a firefight during the battle of Fallujah in 2004 as “the greatest day of my life.”

Among his Marines he was known for his humility and fearlessness. He was the company commander for Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, and during the first battle of Fallujah he led from the front, rallying his men and directing fire even after being wounded. His Purple Heart would be one of 78 citations for the 139 Marines of Echo Company during that deployment.

Zembiec was also awarded the Bronze Star for valor for rushing into the middle of a machine-gun-raked street to get the attention of an Abrams tank supporting Echo Company. Abrams are equipped with small radios on the rear to allow infantrymen to talk to the tank crew while behind the safety of 60 tons of steel, but for whatever reason the radio, or “grunt phone,” wasn’t working, so Zembiec scaled the tank while bullets ricocheted off its hull.

After he knocked on one of the hatches repeatedly, the crew of the tank finally opened up. Zembiec then loaded a magazine of illuminated tracer rounds and began shooting from the top of the tank to mark the building from which his Marines were being shot.

The tank swung its turret and without warning fired its massive 120mm gun. The blast threw Zembiec into the air and onto the street below.

“He deserved five Bronze Stars, not one,” retired Sgt. Maj. Williams Skiles said. Skiles served as Zembiec’s company first sergeant and right-hand man during the battle of Fallujah. In a going-away plaque given to Skiles, Zembiec called him “the metal-weld” that kept the company together.

For all Zembiec’s accolades, he was always more comfortable talking about his Marines’ deeds rather than his own.

“My men fought like lions and killed many insurgents. The valor and courage of the Marines was magnificent,” Zembiec wrote in a letter to his wife during the battle. “The Marines fought with such ferocity that any Marine who went before us would have been proud.”

It was his frequent references to his Marines as lions that earned him the nickname the Lion of Fallujah.

Zembiec was born in Hawaii and raised in Albuquerque. His father, Donald Zembiec, is a retired special agent for the FBI, and his mother, Jo Ann Zembiec, once a third-grade teacher, now volunteers as the master gardener for the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial Rose Garden, as well as with other veterans nonprofit groups.

Zembiec attended the U.S. Naval Academy, where he quickly rose to prominence for his prowess on the wrestling

mat. He graduated in 1995 as an all-American athlete and Marine officer. Years later, Zembiec would sometimes return to the academy to teach the midshipmen on the wrestling team “a thing or two.”

His wife included his letters in her recently published book, “Selfless Beyond Service: A Story About the Husband, Son and Father Behind the Lion of Fallujah.”

“He wrote those letters because he wanted his Marines to know how much he loved them,” Pam said.

And his Marines loved him back.Shortly after Zembiec’s return from Iraq, he and his father

were driving separately onto Camp Pendleton, in California. When his father pulled up to the gate, the Marine on duty looked into the vehicle and asked, “Are you Captain Zembiec’s father?”

In an interview at his home in New Mexico, Donald Zembiec said he nodded.

“I was with him in Fallujah,” the Marine continued. “And if we had to go back in there, I’d follow him in with a spoon.”

After a short stint at the Marines’ Special Operations Training Group at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in 2005, Douglas Zembiec decided to apply for a coveted slot in the Ground Branch of the CIA’s Special Activities Division.

The position is extremely competitive, and the CIA accepts only one Marine Special Operations officer every few years.

“He went for this with all of his guts and glory,” his wife said. “I’ve never seen this man stressed in my life until he started interviewing for this. He was pacing, and he couldn’t sleep.”

His parents saw the move to the CIA as a strategic one in order to stay in a combat-related role and avoid a staff position, something most Marines of Zembiec’s rank are forced into at a similar point in their careers.

“He wanted to be at the tip of the spear,” Jo Ann Zembiec said.

He was accepted into the program and was sent to the agency from the Marines for a two-year assignment.

Shortly afterward, he deployed to Afghanistan. His work with the CIA was the first experience Pam Zembiec had as a military spouse after they married in April 2005.

“The three months gone, three months back seemed like a cake ride for me,” Pam said, referring to the length of her husband’s deployments with the agency.

Because of the secrecy of the Ground Branch’s operations, Zembiec rarely talked about the job, and Pam followed suit, letting the unknown form a layer of normalcy as she raised their newborn daughter, Fallyn, and their Labrador retriever, Valhalla, outside Annapolis.

“I wouldn’t have been able to focus on our life if I would have known,” Pam said. “Because he didn’t tell me anything, I never for a second worried about him. I never thought he was in any kind of danger. He was smart, he knew what he was doing. He was trained.”

“I always expected someone to come to the door and tell me that Doug had been in a motorcycle accident,” his mother said. “I never thought he would be killed in combat.”

In March 2007, Doug Zembiec volunteered to deploy again, this time to Iraq, where he was able to call Pam almost every day.

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“The last thing Doug said to me on the phone – I’ll never forget it,” Pam said. “‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I have to tell you something before I hang up. Babe, you should see what we’re doing with the Iraqi people and what we’re doing to help them. Things are getting better over here.’

“He was elated; he was crazy about his job.”That was the morning of May 11, 2007.‘I Was Very Angry’Four people came to Pam’s door that night. One of them

was Col. John Ripley, a mentor to Doug Zembiec, a family friend and a Marine legend.

“When the guys came to tell me that night ... I was very angry,” Pam Zembiec said. “At the time I wanted to blame someone, and I blamed [the fact] that he wasn’t with his Marines.”

Zembiec’s job with the CIA meant that he was working with other Special Operations types and Iraqis, not the Marines with whom he had fought during his earlier deployment to Fallujah.

“I saw a lot of tough guys crying in that house,” said Elliot Ackerman, a friend who was in Marine Special Operations training when Zembiec was killed. “They cried for Doug, but because of where we were in the war I think they cried for themselves, too.”

The last time Ackerman saw Zembiec was in the winter of 2007; his friend had driven through the night from D.C. to North Carolina so they could do dive training together. They stayed up into the early hours of the morning, catching up, until it was time to do the dive. Before they left, Ackerman offered Zembiec breakfast because he hadn’t eaten in the past 12 hours.

“And all he wanted was a glass of milk,” Ackerman said. “A big glass of milk.”

It took years for Pam’s anger to subside; she felt she had been forced to remain silent about her husband’s involvement – even as movies like “Zero Dark Thirty” trumpeted the CIA’s operation to kill Osama bin Laden. The film also referenced the Ground Branch.

“I’m kind of irritated: Why did I have to lie about Doug, and why he was killed, when the whole world knows about Ground Branch?” his wife asked. “It’s time to say, ‘Hey, this is what he was doing when he was killed – he was in charge of an elite group.’“

Todd Ebitz, a CIA spokesman, said, “Consistent with long-standing practice, we do not comment on who may or may not have been honored anonymously with a star on the agency’s Memorial Wall.”

Weeks after his death and his burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Pam and the rest of Doug Zembiec’s family were invited to a private ceremony in then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden’s office on the seventh floor of headquarters in Langley. Hayden quietly thanked them for Zembiec’s service. In attendance were some of the men who were serving with him when he was killed, along with Shannon Spann, the wife of Johnny Spann, a former Marine and the first American killed in Afghanistan, in November 2001. Spann, like Zembiec, was in the CIA’s Special Activities Division.

Later, the CIA’s next director, Leon E. Panetta, presented Pam Zembiec with the anonymous star that was subsequently chiseled into the Memorial Wall and inscribed into the Book of Honor.

Today, she has come to terms with her husband’s death and her feelings toward the agency. She said she plans to return to CIA headquarters in three years to mark the 10th anniversary of his death at his star.

“It’s nobody’s fault,” she said. “Doug chose this path. He died doing what he loved, and he made a difference. And that’s what matters.”

Adam Goldman, Julie Tate and Greg Miller contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iconic-marine-maj-zembiec-the-lion-of-fallujah-died-in-the-service-of-the-cia/2014/07/15/71501d2c-0b77-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html

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INFRASTRUCTURE / INSTALLATIONS:32. Navy Nurse Refuses To Force-Feed Guantánamo Captive(MIAMI HERALD 15 JUL 14) ... Carol Rosenberg

In the first known rebellion against Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties.”

A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.”

“There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.”

Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical

corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July – and disappeared from detention center duty.

Crider called the male nurse the first known U.S. military conscience objector of the 18-month-long hunger strike in the prison camps, and said his dissent took “real courage ... none of us should underestimate how hard that has been.”

Dhiab, 43, is challenging Guantánamo force-feeding policy in federal court. A Syrian who was cleared for transfer from Guantánamo in 2010 but who can’t be repatriated because of unrest in his homeland, has been an on-again, off-again hunger striker to protest his indefinite detention.

He’s also one of six detainees that Uruguayan diplomats interviewed at Guantánamo in February and agreed to resettle, according to a U.S. government official, pending U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s approval.

The Herald has not been able to determine the nurse’s name or home base. Crider said Dhiab described the nurse as a

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perhaps 40-year-old Latino who turned up on the cellblocks in April or May, with the rank of a “captain” – suggesting he has two bars on his uniform.

Guantánamo medical staff come from the Navy, and wear different battle dress that distinguishes them from Army guards on the 2,200-member staff – meaning the nurse is likely a Navy lieutenant.

Last year, civilian doctors decried as unethical the Guantánamo military medical staff’s practice of force-feeding mentally competent hunger strikers in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine – and urged a medical mutiny.

Guantánamo currently has 149 detainees, an unknown number of them on hunger strike under a blackout imposed by U.S. Southern Command in December after nine months of daily disclosure. The prison has a 147-member medical staff, “of which 83 are responsible for direct detainee care,” Gresback said.

Asked how many prisoners were on hunger strike and tube fed Monday and Tuesday, he replied that it’s “policy to not address the number of detainees who choose to engage in non-religious fasting or those who would require enteral feeding.”

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist who visits the prison frequently and considers Guantánamo force-feeding policy to be unethical, said he had no first-hand knowledge of the episode but, based on his talks with Pentagon policymakers, the nurse should suffer no professional setback for having refused to do force-feedings.

Medical staff are allowed to refuse by invoking medical ethics, he said, and should not be treated as insubordinate. Instead, the nurse should be allowed to continue providing health care to detainees, just not enteral feeds.

“They have said to us directly that if a provider objects for ethical reasons or other reasons they would not be ordered to participate – and they would not suffer any adverse consequences,” said Xenakis.

At Southcom, the prison’s higher headquarters, Army Col. Greg Julian said the naval officer who objected to the forced feedings would not be made available for an interview. He also said there had been a previous episode at the prison of a military member who disagreed with a medical order for a detainee that was “dealt with administratively,” but that episode did not involve a hunger-strike tube-feeding.

Crider said Dhiab described how he came to witness the nurse’s evolution toward refusing to tube feed across two or three months of treatment the prisoner called “very compassionate.”

“Initially, he did carry out his orders and participate in the tube feedings,” Crider said he told her in a July 10 telephone

call. “Once he saw with his own eyes that what he was told was contrary to what was actually taking place here, he decided he could not do it anymore.”

Crider said Dhiab quoted the nurse as announcing, “I have come to the decision that I refuse to participate in this criminal act.”

The Pentagon calls its Guantánamo tube feeding practice humane and designed to prevent a prisoner from starving to death. Defense lawyers say their clients consider it torture.

A federal judge, Gladys Kessler, agreed recently. In May she ordered the Pentagon to stop force-feeding Dhiab but reversed herself days later. She’s said she’ll hold a hearing on the issue later this summer, including a bid by news organizations to get copies of prison videos of detainees being tackled and shackled and taken from their cells to tube feedings.

As explained to visiting reporters, who don’t see tube-feedings, a Navy medical team uses a calculus of meals missed and weight lost to decide when to recommend a once or twice a day tube feeding of a can of Ensure or other nutritional supplement. The camps commander, a Navy admiral who is not a doctor, approves each feeding and orders guards to deliver a specific shackled hunger striker to medical staff.

Guards shackle him into a restraint chair and a nurse inserts a tube up his nose, down the back of his throat and into his stomach for nasogastric feeding. A sailor trained as a medic then manages the feeding.

Before flat-out refusing, Dhiab told Crider, the nurse at times waived a doctor’s order to do a tube feeding:

“Here, whenever a person has a fever or is sick, the typical force-feeding crew were still very rough with you,” the lawyer quoted the detainee as saying. “However, when he came to the block and saw that the person had a fever or was sick, he would say, ‘OK, because you are sick, you are not able to receive force-feeding’ and left them alone for that day.”

Crider said that the officer should be allowed to tell his story to Kessler despite any nondisclosure agreements detention center staff are obliged to sign.

“If he wants to give that evidence he should be allowed to give it,” she said.

At the height of the hunger strike last summer more than 100 detainees were refusing to eat, according to the U.S. military. At one point a record 46 prisoners were designated for tube feedings. That figure dropped to 11 then rose to 15 before the prison pulled the plug on daily transparency.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/15/4237720/navy-nurse-refuses-to-force-feed.html

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COMMENTARY:33. Obama’s Foreign Policy Inertia(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... David Ignatius

When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says that the Islamic State that has taken root in Iraq and Syria poses a “deadly” threat and that he has “extreme, extreme concern” about its bomb-makers, that sounds like an emergency. Yet the Obama administration hasn’t settled on a coordinated,

aggressive response that might prevent this inferno from spreading.

The delay in framing a credible plan for stopping the Islamic State is part of a larger worry about President Obama’s foreign policy. Even when this White House has

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good basic strategies, there is too often a lack of follow-through to coordinate the tools of national power. There is no prize for good intentions here. Performance is what matters. That’s as true of the United States’ relations with traditional allies, such as Germany and Saudi Arabia, as it is of combating adversaries.

A case study of this implementation problem was the administration’s proposal last month for $500 million for the U.S. military to train and equip a stabilization force that could check the extremists in liberated areas of Syria. This is a good idea, with the personal blessing of Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joints chiefs of staff, who had been skeptical about some other proposals for U.S. involvement in Syria. After months of hesitation, the White House backed it.

But after the program was pitched on Capitol Hill, the administration agreed with congressional critics that there still were too many loose ends, and it went back to the drawing board for more work on how the rebels would be recruited, trained and deployed.

A retooled Syria program may be back by September, but, sorry, folks, it’s too late in the game for such missteps and delay. When the nation is facing what the attorney general agreed is a “clear and present danger,” the president must mobilize the U.S. government. He needs to decide on a strategy and implement it. And he should communicate his plans clearly to the country.

Some of the angst about Obama is overdone. As with the famous quip about Richard Wagner’s music, Obama’s foreign policy is sometimes “better than it sounds.” Obama’s response to Russian aggression in Ukraine has been steady and generally successful. His decision to seek a unity government in Iraq before launching U.S. airstrikes has been correct. Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s success last weekend in brokering a unity government in Afghanistan was also significant.

My colleague Fred Hiatt rightly noted this week that Obama needs a stronger “team of rivals” that can challenge his ideas in foreign policy. But what he really needs is clarity and impact. That means a national security orchestra that can

follow a well-written score, and a conductor who keeps the beat.

In foreign policy, the conductor is the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice. She is the chief implementation officer. She needs to help Obama improve performance in the remainder of his second term, with this team or a different one. It won’t be enough for Obama to give a good strategy speech every few months, as he did at West Point in late May. The White House needs to communicate its plans and directions every day, in a hundred subtle ways. Rice was attacked so viciously in the Benghazi, Libya, uproar that she has kept her head down, to a fault. To succeed, she needs a higher profile, and a firmer hand.

A case in point is the U.S. relationship with Germany, the United States’ most important ally in Europe. We’ve known for a year that Germans are anguished about revelations of National Security Agency and CIA spying. You may think, as I do, that these reactions are overwrought, but that’s all the more reason for U.S. intelligence activities to be managed effectively from the White House.

Rice has met with her German counterpart to try to heal the breach. Talks broke down because the United States wouldn’t offer the no-spy pact the Germans wanted, and Germany was wary of the enhanced intelligence cooperation the United States proposed. The unfortunate result: The Germans last week jumped on some murky CIA operations and decided to expel the station chief – the first time I recall that happening with a NATO ally.

You can sympathize with the White House’s situation in a chaotic world that simultaneously craves and resents U.S. leadership. But when core U.S. national security interests are involved – as in combating the Islamic State or maintaining the strongest possible alliance with Germany – the White House must break through whatever resistance or inertia it encounters. The rest is excuses.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-obamas-foreign-policy-inertia/2014/07/15/937a9198-0c5d-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html

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34. When Should The U.S. Use Force?U.S. needs a discussion on when, not whether, to use force(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Robert Kagan

Was the Iraq war the greatest strategic error in recent decades, as some pundits have suggested recently? The simple answer is no. That honor belongs to the failure to take action against al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001. And if one wants to go back a few decades further, it was the failure to stop Hitler in Europe and to deter war with Japan, failures that dwarf both Iraq and Vietnam in terms of their tragic consequences and the cost in lives and treasure.

Therein lies the conundrum. One kind of error can come from doing too much, from using force too quickly, extravagantly or, as is usually the case, ineptly. The other can come from doing too little, from not using sufficient force quickly enough to remove or deter a threat before it strikes or from hoping that there is an alternative to force until it is too late to act effectively. Nor should it be surprising that the first kind of error often leads to the second. The lesson of 9/11 for

many who lived through it was that passivity in the face of threats was dangerous. This thinking surely informed the George W. Bush administration’s actions on Iraq, and it informed the support given those actions by 77 members of the Senate, including a majority of Democrats, when they authorized the use of force in October 2002. Then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. expressed the common view at the time that Saddam Hussein, if left “unfettered,” posed an “inevitable threat” and the only question was whether “we address it now or do we wait a year or two or three.” Similarly, the lessons learned after U.S. global passivity in the 1930s produced the global activism, sometimes to excess, of the Cold War era.

It is possible to argue, as historians and analysts have, that in both cases the pendulum swung too far, that excessive complacency led to excessive paranoia and activism. This is among the central critiques that George Kennan and others have leveled against the United States over the years, a

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tendency to swing wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other.

The question now is whether the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, whether the response to what many perceive as the profligate use of force is going to be to abjure force altogether.

Some might argue that the United States should return to a more traditional approach to the use of force, perhaps presuming that the past decade was abnormal. In fact, however, for more than a century the United States has employed force as a tool of foreign policy rather frequently.

Depending on how one chooses to count, the United States has undertaken roughly 26 armed interventions since 1898 across the Western Hemisphere, Asia, Europe and the greater Middle East: from Cuba and the Philippines in the 1890s to the Persian Gulf, Haiti and the Balkans a century later to Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s. If one includes the dispatch of smaller numbers of troops, as well as naval and air operations such as President Ronald Reagan’s bombing of Moammar Gaddafi, President Bill Clinton’s four-day air campaign against Iraq in 1998 or President Obama’s action in Libya, the number is at least six times higher. This does not include covert operations of the kind that President Dwight Eisenhower ordered against Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala and Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran or threatening nuclear attack against recalcitrant nations, another favorite tool of Eisenhower’s. Counting only the larger interventions, with “boots on the ground,” there has been one intervention on average every 4½ years since 1898. Overall, the United States has been engaged in combat somewhere in the world in 52 out of the past 116 years, or roughly 45 percent of the time. Since the end of the Cold War, the rate of U.S. interventions has been higher, with an intervention roughly once every three years, and U.S. troops intervening or engaged in combat in 19 out of 25 years, or more than 75 percent of the time, since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Nor has it mattered whether administrations have been Republican or Democratic, or whether presidents have been alleged “liberal internationalists” such as Clinton or alleged “realists” such as George H.W. Bush, who ordered three military interventions in his four years in office.

Should the United States return to that norm or depart from it? One can easily point to the cases in which military force has failed to achieve its objectives and where it probably would have been better not used. But in other cases, the use of force has been effective, sometimes more so than it seemed at the time. When the Korean War ended, few Americans considered it a success, but the marvelous economic and political vitality of South Korea today and its role as a key ally of the United States stem from that “Forgotten War.” In my view, the willingness of the United States to use force and to threaten to use force to defend its interests and the liberal world order has been an essential and unavoidable part of sustaining that world order since the end of World War II. It is also an essential part of effective diplomacy. As George Shultz observed while secretary of state, “Power and diplomacy always go together. ... The hard reality is that diplomacy not backed by strength is ineffectual.”

The question today is finding the right balance between when to use force and when not to. We can safely assume the answer lies somewhere between always and never. Perhaps we can move away from the current faux-Manichaean struggle between straw men and caricatures and return to a reasoned discussion of when force is the right tool.

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-kagan-us-needs-a-discussion-on-when-not-whether-to-use-force/2014/07/15/f8bcf116-0b65-11e4-8341-b8072b1e7348_story.html

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35. Friendless In The Middle EastAs Israel ducks rockets and Gaza burns, America is looking on helplessly.(POLITICO MAGAZINE 15 JUL 14) ... Jonathan Schanzer

One week after the start of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge,” also known as Hamas’ “10th of Ramadan War,” Washington is looking on helplessly. President Barack Obama offered to mediate a ceasefire last week, but the move fell on deaf ears – on both sides. Secretary of State John Kerry then made plans to visit to Cairo on Monday in a bid for calm. Egypt soon announced a ceasefire, which was to have taken hold this morning at 9 a.m. The Israelis agreed to the terms, but Hamas balked, claiming it was never even consulted. Rockets continue to fly out of Gaza, and Israeli warships continue to pound targets in the Hamas-controlled enclave.

American diplomacy may have failed thus far, but Washington is still crucial to this conflict in at least one respect. Iron Dome, a missile defense system developed and funded with U.S. assistance, has reportedly intercepted some 90 percent of the Hamas rockets hurtling toward Israeli population centers. The system is 100 percent responsible for the fact that there have been zero Israeli fatalities since this conflict erupted – so far – despite the more than 400 rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups into Israeli airspace.

Iron Dome has allowed the Israelis to go on offense, in what has been largely been seen as a one-sided war.

The Israelis are deeply grateful to America for this remarkable technology. But, meeting with several senior Israeli officials last week, I was also struck by their equally strong desire to establish deterrence in a region that grows more dangerous by the day, and where U.S. influence is waning commensurately.

And it’s not just Israel, either. Call it a “pivot,” call it a “rebalancing” – by now, every leader in the region knows full well that the United States is trying to extricate itself from the Middle East. They know that the current Gaza conflict, the ongoing Syria slaughter and other regional upheavals are a collective nuisance to this administration, which has conspicuously failed to craft a consistent or coherent Middle East foreign policy after six years of turmoil.

U.S. credibility took a nose dive after President Obama’s Syria “red line” reversal last September – and it plummeted further in May as Kerry’s ill-timed attempt to broker a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israelis predictably

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collapsed. It doesn’t help that Egypt, the traditional American broker of calm between Hamas and the Israelis, has failed at its first attempt to do Washington’s bidding. But it’s also no surprise. Egypt has been drifting from Washington’s orbit ever since the administration cut funding after last year’s coup that heralded the rise of army strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

To be fair, it’s unlikely that even Sisi’s predecessor, Mohammed Morsi, the ousted Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader who brokered the last ceasefire with Hamas in November 2012 thanks to his longstanding ties with the group, could talk sense to Hamas right now. As Jordanian officials confirmed to me last week, Hamas is now fractured. It has at least four power centers: Gaza Strip, West Bank, external leadership and military leadership. Dealing with one, unified Hamas that was strident and intransigent was difficult enough. The splintering of Hamas makes it that much harder to negotiate.

Still, few countries in the region are prepared to cut Washington much slack. There is a growing climate of fear stemming from the U.S.-led negotiations with Iran over its illicit nuclear program. As one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official put it to me, “the fear is that the Iranians are going to pretend to give up their nuclear program, and the U.S. is going to pretend to believe them.”

The talks, taking place now in Vienna, have unquestionably helped Iran emerge from isolation after years of international sanctions. But the six world powers (known as the P5+1) are so eager to get a nuclear deal done that they have largely ignored Tehran’s other bad behavior. The long-range rockets Hamas is firing into Israel? They are Iranian made, engineered or smuggled. The Assad regime’s slaughter of Syrians? That’s aided and abetted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and their Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

Despite this, and to the chagrin of the region’s leaders, Washington de-escalated sanctions pressure in 2013, then offered up $7 billion in sanctions relief to Iran simply for freezing its nuclear program for six months. This helped spark a modest economic recovery in Iran after a rather severe

recession, thereby enhancing Iran’s leverage at the negotiating table. And there could be even more sanctions relief in store if the nuclear negotiations are extended. Meanwhile, some administration officials are reportedly tempted to cooperate with Tehran, a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984, to blunt the march of the Sunni terrorist group known as the Islamic State (alternately known as ISIL and ISIS) across Iraq.

Amidst this turmoil and moral ambiguity, some U.S. allies are now openly challenging Washington’s policies in the region. Qatar and Turkey, for example, have emerged as stalwart champions of Hamas in recent years. The head of Hamas’ politburo has been shuttling back and forth between the two countries this week, seeking guidance after years of seeking (and receiving) cash. These two countries have also been unabashedly supportive of several jihadi groups now active in Syria. Qatar, meanwhile, recently negotiated on behalf of the Taliban in the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap. And Turkey helped Iran evade sanctions to the tune of at least $13 billion, and perhaps more if you believe Turkish news reports that a Turkish-Iranian network did another $100 billion in illicit business transactions.

Such activities have rendered Turkey and Qatar frenemies of the United States – neither friends nor enemies. But Washington is still eager to keep them. Why? Because the White House has less and less leverage in the Middle East, and it has even fewer real friends. The absence of a strong U.S. proxy in the region to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is perhaps the most recent example of this trend.

What does this all mean? In the short term, the Gaza war may stretch on longer than anyone expected, fanning the flames of a region already burning. In the longer term, this conflict, regardless of duration, will fuel the perception that the United States has lost control of this strategically important region.

Jonathan Schanzer is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/friendless-in-the-middle-east-108920.html

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36. Nothing Pacific About It: Japan Pushes Back On China(REUTERS BLOG 15 JUL 14) ... Nicholas Wapshott

China is on the march. Or, to be precise, China has made a strong push, militarily and otherwise, into seas nearby, setting off alarms among its neighbors. Now Japan has pushed back, announcing it will “reinterpret” its pacifist constitution so it can be more militarily aggressive in responding to China’s persistent territorial expansionism.

Japan’s actions, however, have also raised alarms. A century ago, Japan set out on a destructive path of conquest, and many still remember firsthand the brutality with which Japanese troops occupied the region – from Korea and the Philippines, through Manchuria and China, Vietnam and Thailand, all the way to Singapore. Though China is now threatening peace, the memory of Japan’s savage adventurism adds to the general unease.

If Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is to persuade countries nearby that his intentions are honorable, there are actions he can take to show that Tokyo has learned the lessons of the past and truly reformed. If he does not, his latest political maneuver is likely to set his neighbors’ nerves on

edge, adding to the prospect of warfare between two or more of the nations on the East and South China Seas.

You may have seen the photo of Chinese vessels pouring thousands of tons of sand onto a reef in the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. It is perhaps the most startling evidence of how aggressively China is pursuing the resources it needs to maintain its extraordinary rate of economic growth. The creation of a new island out of a coral reef, on which it can build a strategically important air strip, shows how determined Beijing is to grab the land and raw materials it feels entitled to, whatever international law may say.

It is no surprise that the Philippines, which disputes ownership of the Scarborough Shoal,welcomes Abe’s abandonment of 60 years of pacifism. But other neighbors view Tokyo’s change of heart as more sinister. The South and North Koreans, at loggerheads since the end of the Korean War in 1953, share bitter memories of the Japanese occupation. They are less convinced that Abe’s first step toward a return to militarism is necessary.

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For anyone with a sense of history, the Chinese encroachment into waters traditionally administered by the Vietnamese is revealing. In this dispute over marine drilling rights, the Vietnamese communist government, which fought the mighty United States to a humiliating defeat, is now looking to Washington – not Tokyo – to serve as an honest broker with its domineering ideological comrades to the north.

The shadow of World War Two still lingers across the small nations whose populations were ravaged and natural resources viciously snatched by the imperial Japanese government. Even as China expands, a suspicion of Japanese motives survives.

How Japan confronts its ugly past is the key to whether its neighbors see it as a friend or rival.

For the South Koreans, there is no more potent issue than the plight of the “comfort women,” mostly teenage girls forced into prostitution to service Japan’s occupying troops. South Korean demands an apology and reparations for the women, now in their 80s or older. Japan’s grudging half-apologies and failure to come to a settlement remains a stumbling block to the restoration of warm relations.

A similar cause of anguish and alarm is the continued visits by successive Japanese prime ministers to the Yasukuni shrine, which contains the remains of war criminals. These regular acts of obeisance to long-discredited warriors is widely interpreted as an act of defiance that keeps alive the militaristic spirit of the World War Two imperial government. (It would be as if German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid an annual visit to the graves of Nazi leaders.)

Again, there has been considerable international pressure on the Japanese to put this matter to rest. Yet Abe and his predecessors continue to keep it alive.

The Far East is at a turning point. It is accepted today that the United States cannot impose democracy on others. But the history of postwar Japan confounds such a pessimistic notion.

General Douglas MacArthur’s crowning achievement was as the Allied consul in postwar Tokyo, when he persuaded the

defeated emperor and the political leadership that, to convince Japan’s neighbors it had reformed, it should adopt a pacifist constitution. The wording was such that, like the U.S. Constitution, it has proved difficult to amend. It is telling that Abe, who may have wanted to alter the constitution, has instead “reinterpreted” its pacifist strictures.

Nearly 70 years after President Harry S. Truman ordered the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought the bloody war with Japan to an abrupt end, new circumstances have made the old pacifism seem dangerous. Though the Japanese now have a large military, which under the constitution must only be used for self-defense, they have until now been inhibited from using it to come to the aid of an ally, like the United States, if called upon.

Like so much in Japan, the change is largely symbolic. A majority of Japanese continue to believethe old pacifist constitution should be obeyed exactly as before. But the menacing actions of the Chinese in the waters around Japan, including dangerous clashes between Chinese and Japanese vessels, suggest that the pacifism imposed on Japan is now itself a threat to peace.

Yet if Japan is to be a help in heading off Chinese aggression and regain its influence in the region, it must put its past behind. That means coming to a generous and just settlement of all outstanding reparations issues and apologizing profusely for past errors. It also means conspicuously abandoning adoration of ancestors whose behavior does not warrant devotion.

Only in that way can Japan take up its new role as a defender of international order and peace.

Nicholas Wapshott is the International Editor of Newsweek. He previously served as New York bureau chief of The Times of London and editor of the Saturday Times of London.

http://blogs.reuters.com/nicholas-wapshott/2014/07/15/nothing-pacific-about-it-japan-pushes-back-on-china/

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37. Putin's Double Game In UkraineThe Russian leader is reaching out to his foes with one hand, and striking them with the other.(THE ATLANTIC 15 JUL 14) ... David Rohde

As fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine, signs are emerging that Russian President Vladimir Putin has adopted a twin strategy: pledge his willingness to support a negotiated settlement, but continue funneling arms to separatist rebels.

"Putin in the last several weeks has been playing a dual game," said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and Brookings Institution senior fellow. "There have been things that suggest that Russia wants to help solve this diplomatically. ... But you’ve continued to see evidence that Russians weapons are flowing into Ukraine."

Three weeks ago, after months of bellicose rhetoric, Putin had Russia's parliament revoke his authority to use Russian military force in Ukraine. Then on Thursday, Putin issued a joint call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The cause of Putin's apparent change in tone is the focus of debate in Washington. Obama administration officials credit American and European sanctions with slowing both Russia's economy and Putin’s efforts to sow chaos in eastern

Ukraine. But former U.S. diplomats contend that while two rounds of sanctions have helped, they're not the key factor in blunting Moscow’s designs. The successes of Ukraine's new government and failures of its separatists are the primary cause. "That’s first and foremost because of what the Ukrainians are doing," said Michael McFaul, who until February served as the Obama administration’s ambassador to Moscow and point man on Russia.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, elected in May, has done a surprisingly good job of turning Ukraine's military into a more effective fighting force. Ukraine has received $20 million in American military aid, as well as intelligence and advice. But it is the new government's vetting of troops, decisiveness, and willingness to take casualties that have given its military an edge.

At the same time, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have done a poor job of generating popular support. Instead of sparking a pro-Russian popular uprising, they have alienated much of the population in eastern Ukraine.

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"Separatists have worn out their welcome,” Pifer said. "The population is tired of this."

On Monday, Poroshenko accused Russian military officers of fighting alongside separatists. A missile that downed a Ukrainian transport plane carrying eight people near the border was probably fired from Russia, Ukrainian officials said. And on Friday, Ukrainian officials said a Grad missile attack that killed 23 Ukrainian soldiers showed that Russian arms are flowing to rebels as well. Russian officials deny supplying or aiding the rebels.

The situation remains volatile. Poroshenko and Putin could be drawn into a dangerous tit-for-tat cycle as the fighting intensifies. Tensions rose on Sunday when Russian officials threatened Ukraine with "irreversible consequences" after a Russian citizen was killed by a shell fired across the border from Ukraine. Kiev said the accusation that its forces had fired across the border was nonsense and suggested the attack could have been the work of rebels trying to provoke Moscow to intervene on their behalf. The rebels denied they were responsible.

Poroshenko’s strong performance since taking office has been a key factor in blunting Moscow, said Eugene Rumer, who served as the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2010 to January 2014. While offering to hold peace talks, Poroshenko has mounted decisive military action against the separatists, Rumer added. At the same time, Poroshenko has taken a softer line against Putin himself. "I was pleasantly surprised when he spoke out against further sanctions against Russia," said Rumer, now a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "He was statesmanlike. He was signaling to the Russians that he’s willing to make a deal. And that is significant."

Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center, cautioned that time may be on Putin's side. He said Washington had a long history of focusing intently on any anti-Moscow uprising, typically known as a "color revolution," and then quickly shifting its attention elsewhere. "The bigger challenge is not going back to our bad old habit,

which is to get very, very excited after color revolutions happen," Rojansky said, "and then completely forget that these countries exist." Putin knows that, he added, and is playing a long game to Washington’s short game.

Thomas Graham, who was the National Security Council’s senior director for Russia under President George W. Bush, argued that Putin has never wanted to invade and annex eastern Ukraine. Instead, his goal has been to maintain influence over Ukraine’s government. "I thought all along that the goal really was to have leverage on the government in Kiev," Graham said. "And to ensure at a minimum that it’s not hostile and it’s not moving quickly toward Europe."

Pifer, the former ambassador to Ukraine, said there is a danger Poroshenko will be too aggressive militarily. Ukrainian forces re-took Slovyansk, a city of roughly 130,000, earlier this month. But Pifer argued that regaining control of Donetsk – an industrial city of 900,000 where separatists are digging in for a last stand – would be far more difficult. Any military operation that kills large numbers of civilians – or separatists – could shift public opinion against the Ukrainian government. "It’s also important that Poroshenko not overplay his hand," Pifer said. "You don’t want a military operation that turns the population against you."

Putin’s embrace of Russian nationalism has created domestic political concerns for him as well, said Andrew Weiss, a Carnegie Endowment expert and former Clinton administration National Security Council official. After unleashing ultra-nationalist Russian groups in eastern Ukraine, Putin is now being accused by right-wing politicians in Moscow of abandoning the separatists.

"If they get slaughtered or routed," said Weiss, "there will be a lot of pressure on the Russian government to react."

David Rohde is an investigative reporter for Reuters and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he is a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/putins-double-game-in-ukraine/374429/

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38. 5 Things To Know About Navy 3D Printing(NAVY LIVE BLOG 15 JUL 14) ... Vice Adm. Phillip Cullom

Last month, I had the chance to drop in by video-teleconference on a workshop in Dam Neck, Va., connecting Sailors with the Navy’s current 3D-printing efforts, demonstrating the use of 3D printers in hands-on tutorials, and exploring the potential of 3D-printing capabilities to solve Navy problems. I was excited to hear creative new ideas brought forward from the waterfront, matched by a high level of enthusiasm for improving the Navy.

While in many ways this was the Navy’s first Maker event, it was not the Navy’s first involvement with additive manufacturing, as 3D printing is also known. The Navy has roughly 70 additive manufacturing projects underway at dozens of different locations, and has supported research into 3D printing for more than 20 years. Earlier this year, the Chief of Naval Operations designated me as the lead on coordinating the Navy’s additive manufacturing efforts, and we’re in the process of developing the Navy’s additive manufacturing vision and strategy. Although many challenges remain, the

Navy’s efforts continue to expand as the technology matures and begins the early stages of transforming Navy logistics and maintenance capabilities.

We in the Navy have a proud tradition of using our hands and ingenuity to apply new technology to overcome challenges, the essence of today’s Maker Movement. There will be many more Navy Maker events such as last month’s workshop – I hope to see you at one! In the meantime, if you have ideas for useful items that could be printed, send an email to PTF@navy.mil. Sailors and members of DoD can also stay up to date on our efforts, learn about 3D-printing opportunities and join the additive manufacturing conversation via the CAC-enabled additive manufacturing MilSuite site.

If you’re new to 3D printing, or wonder why the Navy is interested in this technology, consider these five things additive manufacturing is doing for the Navy.

Navy Additive Manufacturing’s Efforts Are...1. Saving Money and Time

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Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s Rapid Prototype Lab is saving the Navy thousands of dollars on the Gerald R. Ford-class of aircraft carriers. Instead of traditional wood or metal mockups of ship alterations, which help to prevent expensive rework, the lab prints much cheaper plastic polymer models – in hours, rather than days or weeks. Now all four Navy shipyards have 3D printers working on similar, and other, ways to benefit the Navy.

2. InnovativeThe Navy’s Fleet Readiness Center Southeast took

advantage of the ability to work with more complicated designs and unique material properties to develop an enhanced hydraulic intake manifold for the V-22 Osprey. This manifold is 70 percent lighter, improves fluid flow, and has fewer leak points than its traditionally manufactured counterpart.

3. CustomizableWalter Reed National Military Medical Center uses

additive manufacturing processes to meet a range of medical needs and delivers personalized patient care. Taking advantage of the ease of customizing 3D-printed parts,

WRNNMC produces items including tailor-made cranial plate implants, medical tooling, and surgical guides.

4. Overcoming ObsolescenceThe circuit card clip for J-6000 Tactical Support System

Servers, installed onboard Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines and Ohio-class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines is no longer produced by its original manufacturer. Naval Undersea Warfare Center-Keyport used additive manufacturing to create a supply of replacement parts to keep the Fleet ready.

5. Demonstrating the Potential to Increase Fleet Readiness Even Further

The CNO’s Rapid Innovation Cell Print the Fleet project installed a 3D printer aboard USS Essex this year, demonstrating the ability to develop and print a variety of shipboard items, from oil reservoir caps and deck drain covers to training aids and tools.

Vice Adm. Phillip Cullom is Chief of Fleet Readiness and Logistics

http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2014/07/15/5-things-to-know-about-navy-3d-printing/

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39. A New Era In Naval WarfareInformation dominance will be vital in future conflicts.(PROCEEDINGS MAGAZINE JULY 2014) ... Vice Adm. Ted N. Branch

Our Navy’s forward presence protects the interconnected global system of trade and reinforces the security of the U.S. economy. Our engagement around the world reassures allies, builds trust with partners and friends, and prevents and deters wars. We are the foundation of the nation’s “away game,” endowed with operational agility, possessed with innovative resourcefulness, and armed with credible combat power to be used where it matters, when it matters. Sustaining our global primacy requires that we dominate the battlespace on, above, and below the surface of the sea, as well as outer space. However, successfully commanding, controlling, and fighting our forces in these areas requires dominance in the information domain, to include the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace.

The name we’ve given to this concept – information dominance – is still new and unfamiliar to some, but it’s indispensable to Fleet operations, so much so that we’ve adopted it as a distinct warfare discipline. Formerly perceived by many as a collection of support activities performed by specialized restricted line officers, information dominance is increasingly recognized by Fleet operators as a critical force multiplier. It’s no longer just an adjunct to warfighting. It is warfighting.

Alpha and OmegaImagine a hypothetical scenario in which U.S. naval

forces respond when the country of Omega, long envious of Alpha’s energy resources, attempts to overrun Alpha’s defenses and seize its oil fields. Due to our array of unmanned systems, multi-intelligence sensor and processing capacity, and robust cyber capabilities, the U.S. fleet detects Omega’s intentions early and quickly succeeds in attaining dominance of the information battlespace without Omega’s knowledge.

Leveraging operational surprise through mastery of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), the U.S. forces arrive on station before Omega can launch its initial assault into Alpha.

The U.S. commander is equipped with a penetrating knowledge of Omega’s force disposition, intentions, capabilities, and vulnerabilities. Our fleet’s unexpected arrival causes Omega to pause momentarily, providing time for U.S. forces to finalize their preparation of the battlespace and conduct offensive operations in cyberspace and the EMS.

U.S. oceanographers possess unmatched knowledge of the physical battlespace, including expected weather conditions, currents, sea-states, and tides. The U.S. commander knows where Omega’s assets are likely to operate and when and where they cannot operate. This insight allows the U.S. commander to position his or her forces and deploy intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) resources. He also knows the effect of the physical environment on propagation and ducting, enabling the U.S. Fleet’s Information Technology and Information Warfare professionals to tailor the friendly communications posture and electronic-warfare support measures most effectively. The U.S. commander sees the EMS from Omega’s perspective, as well as his own, allowing the luxury of maneuvering freely and rapidly through the spectrum and take offensive actions to Omega’s disadvantage.

U.S. intelligence capability has given our forces keen insight into Omega leadership’s mission objectives, intent, C4ISR systems, and fine-grain targeting data on Omega’s submarines, minefields, and missile launchers. This allows the U.S. fleet to evade detection and targeting during the critical early stages of the confrontation. Similarly, our knowledge of Omega network capabilities and force disposition allows us to implement preplanned responses that negate and defeat Omega’s offensive efforts in cyberspace.

Through a combination of kinetic strikes and network degradation, U.S. forces are able to diminish Omega’s command and control and destroy its limited maritime-patrol/over-the-horizon targeting assets, as well as

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its antiship ballistic- and cruise-missile capability. As a consequence, the confidence of Omega’s leadership is shaken by a lack of situational awareness, degraded command and control over its forces, and distrust of its sensors and warfighting capabilities, especially its non-kinetic assets. At this point, the Omega commander is overwhelmingly disadvantaged, unable to execute the planned invasion of Alpha, or strike a symbolic blow against the U.S. Fleet.

This obviously simplified scenario illuminates the operations that information dominance delivers.

What It IsOur formal definition of information dominance is the

operational advantage gained from fully integrating the Navy’s information functions, capabilities, and resources to optimize decision making and maximize warfighting effects. In other words, it means delivering decision-quality information where it matters and when it matters. It fosters freedom of maneuver in all domains, and integrates our fires, which may be projected through the network (or cyberspace or the electromagnetic spectrum) for soft kill, or delivered through the physical environment for hard kill. To make these capabilities possible, we will master the information domain, just as we’ve mastered the air, surface, undersea, and space domains. Accordingly, information dominance focuses on:

Robust and agile command and control (C2) in all operating environments

Superior knowledge of the battlespace, both the physical environment as well as threat capability, disposition, and intent

Projecting power through the integration of kinetic and non-kinetic effects

We refer to these three elements, or pillars, as assured C2, battlespace awareness, and integrated fires. Through them, information dominance creates decision superiority, provides asymmetric advantage, and enhances the lethality of our deployed forces with non-kinetic options. By design, the pillars correspond to the Chief of Naval Operations’ three tenets:

Warfighting First: With assured C2 and enhanced battlespace awareness, commanders are able to definitively assess threats and determine their most efficient and effective courses of action using the range of kinetic weapons and non-kinetic effects available to them.

Operate Forward: Ensuring freedom of maneuver in cyberspace and the EM spectrum, and assuring the ability to direct operations and coordinate actions in contested environments is paramount for successful operations forward. Our evolving ISR assets combined with our established meteorology and oceanography capabilities contribute to battlespace awareness by delivering information on the threat and physical environments, ensuring effective Fleet operations. Reliable connectivity to the global information grid allows us to operate forward. What’s more, the global disposition of our forces

contributes essential information (e.g., intelligence, weather, etc.) for dissemination to forces forward.

Be Ready: Maintaining a continuously refreshed awareness of the operating environment, including threat capabilities and intentions, allows us to be predictive, enabling our ability to prepare and coordinate well in advance of forward operations.

The critical element of the information dominance definition is integration. Blending the attributes of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, oceanography, meteorology, networks, cyber, electronic warfare (EW), etc. allows for better planning, smarter decisions, and earlier results. Aligning the related restricted-line communities of Naval Oceanography, Information Warfare, Information Professional, Intelligence, and the Space Cadre into the Information Dominance Corps has likewise advanced our concept and capability development, and improved data and system interoperability. To borrow a cliché, in the case of Navy information dominance the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Comprehending it, however, requires a slightly deeper dive into the three pillars.

Assured Command and ControlAssured C2 makes the issuing of orders to distributed

forces and the coordination of maneuver and fires across the warfighting domains (air, land, sea, space, cyberspace, and the EMS) possible. It provides the ability to monitor the status of our forces and assess the effectiveness of our fires. It is indispensable to forward operations and securely networks our forces in all threat environments.

Practically every major system in the Fleet is “networked” to some degree, including most combat, communications, engineering, and position, navigation, and timing capabilities. Cyberspace extends that network across joint and Navy business and industrial-control systems. While this connectivity provides unprecedented speed, agility, and precision, it also opens attack vectors for determined adversaries. Therefore, assuring our C2 requires a robust, protected, resilient, and reliable information infrastructure afloat, ashore, and overseas.

Maintaining a protected transport infrastructure securely links our forces ashore and afloat in permissive, contested, and denied C2 environments. Another key component is resilient networks that withstand the barrage of attacks we see today and expect to grow. We are increasing the integration and interoperability of the sea and shore segments of our enterprise architecture through technologies such as cloud computing. Moreover, we are aligning with the DOD’s Joint Information environment and the Intelligence community’s Information-Technology enterprise frameworks to enhance interoperability and expand our ability to share and receive information from joint and national partners. Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) provides for the safety of navigation, targeting, and C2 across our platforms and systems.

In his seminal 2012 Proceedings article “Imminent Domain,” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert observed that “[a] culture of electromagnetic silencing and understanding of electronic signatures will have to permeate our efforts if we are to command the EM-cyber environment.” Toward the objective of mastering the EM environment, the emerging Real-Time Spectrum-Operations

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system will allow us to monitor the spectrum continuously, identify conflicts, determine solutions, and differentiate between unintentional interference and intentional jamming. As current prototypes evolve, we’ll leverage this knowledge to create effects and “hide in plain sight.”

In a nutshell, the assured C2 pillar touches almost everything we do, afloat and ashore. It complements the battlespace awareness and integrated fires pillars and provides the communications we require in the most demanding conditions. We are progressing down this path with our Next-Generation enterprise network, Consolidated Afloat network enterprise system, Automated Digital network system, and Navy Multiband Terminal programs.

Battlespace AwarenessThis is knowledge of the operating environment that

allows the warfighter to find, penetrate, and predict the enemy’s operations by making better decisions faster. It gives us home-field advantage at the away games. It requires a superior understanding of the battlespace, to include the physical environment, cyberspace, the EM spectrum, and the threat. It also requires immediate and continuous access to essential information that updates the operational picture, facilitating prediction and decisive action. The warfighting advantage created by battlespace awareness comprises functions and payloads that are interoperable and capable of rapid upgrade relative to the threat. Battlespace awareness capabilities therefore require advanced means to sense, collect, process, exploit, and disseminate information in real time.

In the case of sensing and collecting, we leverage manned and unmanned, fixed, mobile, and distributed systems, and we coordinate across the force through a seamless communication architecture. Our manned capabilities include the EP-3 aircraft, surveillance towed-array vessels, and fixed surveillance systems. Unmanned systems, such as our MQ-4C Triton Unmanned Aircraft System, MQ-8B/C Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, and Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System, are key components because of their persistence and the reduced risk to our manned platforms and crews. Their increasing numbers and missions ultimately give us more options and greater operational flexibility. By stressing payloads over platforms, we are able to quickly leverage standard interfaces and common control systems, which also permit rapid technology upgrades, allowing us to pace the threat.

In processing, exploiting, and disseminating, our path to superior decisions starts with ensuring that data derived from our own sensors, as well as from joint and national sources, are delivered to deployed commanders when needed. This requires sophisticated tools that pull multiple sources of data with common standards into a single picture, process high volumes of information, and save thousands of man hours both afloat and ashore at Maritime Operations Centers (MOC), Maritime Intelligence Operations Centers, the Naval Oceanographic Office, and the Office of Naval Intelligence, among others.

To further develop battlespace awareness, we are expanding the Pacific Fleet’s Intelligence Federation model Navy-wide. The federation optimizes intelligence manning, collection, and communication assets. It will leverage the full range of information dominance capabilities, supplementing

Navy regional expertise with the capabilities and assets of the combatant commands, combat support agencies, the intelligence community, and our allied partners. As these initiatives mature, we see the MOC becoming the essential platform for sustained battlespace awareness.

With a long-term focus on a critical physical aspect of battlespace awareness and emphasis on the Arctic, the Oceanographer of the Navy, Rear Admiral Jonathan White, led the recent update of the Navy Arctic Roadmap to ensure our readiness for potential contingencies in the polar north. Similarly, Rear Admiral White’s office is preparing for the future effects of climate change, conducting vulnerability assessments of Navy coastal infrastructure and supporting DOD strategic planning with respect to potential impacts on the global security environment.

Integrated FiresThis is the ability to project power across the kill chain. It

blends non-kinetic effects with traditional kinetic weapons in order to fully exploit and, when necessary, attack adversary vulnerabilities. To be successful, it requires two mutually supporting functions:

Disrupting/Denying/Defeating Red Fires. That is, preventing the adversary from initiating kinetic and non-kinetic operations of his own by disrupting his C4ISR and targeting ability.

Enhancing Blue Fires, which requires dynamic collaboration across missions, domains, and with other services. This coordination permits the exploitation of the EMS as a weapon and the integration of targeting and fire-control capabilities for increased weapon range, effectiveness, and lethality. It includes the evolving electronic-warfare and offensive cyber weapons that complement our air, surface, and subsurface kinetic weapons.

We are making major investments in the Fleet’s ability to maneuver freely and fight in the EM environment. Central to this investment is the concept of EM Maneuver Warfare or EMW, which anticipates future conflicts in the battlespace created where cyber and the EM spectrum converge. Core to EMW is a complete awareness of our EM signature and others’ in real time; the ability to manipulate our EM signature to control what others can detect, maximize our ability to defeat jamming and deception, and guarantee our use of the spectrum when needed; and use of EM and cyber capabilities as non-kinetic fires to inhibit adversary C4ISR, targeting, and combat capabilities. Successful EMW requires the seamless integration of the communications, command-and-control, signals intelligence, spectrum management, electronic warfare, and cyberspace disciplines to permit our freedom of action across the spectrum.

The Information Dominance CorpsThe 2010 consolidation of the OCEANO, Information

Warfare, Information Professional, Intelligence, and Space Cadre officer communities – together with their enlisted, reserve, and civilian counterparts – established a professional and technically diverse corps that is rapidly coalescing into a formidable warfighting force. They aren’t the only sailors executing information dominance as a warfare discipline, but they are its principal practitioners, and they bring extremely valuable skills and specialized knowledge to the fight.

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Moreover, they are taking on leadership roles at the highest levels, as exemplified most recently by Admiral Mike Rogers’ confirmation as Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, and Director, National Security Agency/Central Security Service; as well as Vice Admiral Jan Tighe’s command of Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. 10th Fleet.

Considering the exponential rate of change in technology and its corresponding impact on both our own and our adversaries’ capabilities, the unique talents and abilities within the Information Dominance Corps are increasingly critical. While we have made concerted efforts to protect and strengthen the IDC’s deep technical expertise in its traditional skill areas, we are mindful that broadening the experience of our members yields more capable information-dominance leaders. As a consequence, we’re inserting common core training relevant to the broader information-dominance mission at set points in the IDC career path. Beginning with accessions and again at mid-career and senior points, we are bringing IDC members together with their peers to expand their interdisciplinary knowledge, build personal relationships, and engender an esprit de corps unique to this mission. Additionally, we’re actively managing career paths and cross-detailing IDC leaders to broaden their experience and perspective. This mostly involves commissioned officers now, but will include senior enlisted and civilians as we define the process. The intended effect is a deliberate transformation of the IDC from a multidisciplinary group to a fully functional inter-disciplinary corps.

Information dominance is much bigger than the IDC, but the corps’ leaders are the ones who understand it best. They are fully integrated with the Fleet and are gaining recognition as warfighters in their own right. From its beginnings in 2010, the corps has quickly matured, aggressively adapting to its warfighting mission. It has greater operational relevance and more warfighting credibility than ever before. Most important, IDC members are increasingly accepted as legitimate warfighters by traditional operators.

The Information Dominance Type CommandFinally, we are establishing Navy Information Dominance

Forces, an integrated type command dedicated to the discipline. With an initial operational capability of 1 October

2014, this new type command will subsume the existing Navy Cyber Forces command and integrate many of the man, train, and equip elements of Fleet Cyber Command, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Navy Oceanography and Meteorology Command. It will initially be led by a two-star IDC flag officer who will report to the Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, right alongside the existing platform type commands.

The establishment of this command is another step in information dominance’s maturation since its 2010 birth. It’s the logical next phase in the discipline’s evolution and, as we know from our experience with the platform type commands, it’s consistent with the Navy’s time-tested approach to institutionalizing other warfare areas. As it did with the advent of naval aviation, submarines, and nuclear power, the Navy is adapting to the technology of the age and maintaining its warfighting advantage.

The type command will integrate the man, train, and equip aspects of information dominance across the Fleet, coordinating closely with the platform type commands, the numbered fleets, systems commands, and strike groups to ensure information dominance is fully considered throughout the readiness kill chain. Given the network’s universality within the larger shore-based Navy, the type command will eventually extend its man, train, and equip reach beyond the Fleet to facilitate information dominance readiness Navy-wide. It’s an enormous undertaking – one that we must embrace with vigor.

Information dominance is a reality. Senior leaders across the Navy, including the CNO as well as Admirals William Gortney and Harry Harris, consider it essential to our sustained forward presence, credible combat power, and global influence. We are at the dawn of a new era in naval warfare, and information dominance is central to our continued prominence in an increasingly asymmetric and dangerous world. It is the way of the future for Information Age warfare.

Vice Admiral Branch is Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance (N2/N6).

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-07/new-era-naval-warfare

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40. Should The Government’s Main Personnel System Retire At 65?Is the federal personnel system too old to do the job?(WASHINGTON POST 16 JUL 14) ... Joe Davidson

The government’s primary personnel system will be 65 years old in October.

Is it too old to get the job done?A House federal workforce subcommittee hearing

Tuesday asked the question this way: “Is the Federal Government’s General Schedule (GS) a Viable Personnel System for the Future?”

Most, including Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta, agreed the current system is ripe for examination.

The answer to the question, however, is not a simple yes or no. But when the question is before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which includes the workforce panel, don’t be surprised if the issue becomes sharp and partisan.

Majority Republicans dominated the questions at Tuesday’s hearing. They left no doubt they think the current system should be retired, if not shot like some would a lame horse.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the full committee, used his short appearance at the session to lament the “double layer”of civil service and union protections, which means “that, in fact, we fire or demote or eliminate less underperformers and outright bad workers than you would if you had only one, but not both of those systems in place.”

The subcommittee’s chairman, Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), directly linked the “antiquated system” to “an inefficient and unaccountable federal government.”

“More than 99 percent of General Schedule workers are given a 3 percent raise based primarily on the passage of

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time,” he said. “It’s hard to see the fairness in the current system and bureaucratic culture it fosters that allows workers who simply show up and stick around for years to get raises,” while not rewarding outstanding employees.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office is much more nuanced, technical and desert dry. Personnel issues, or what GAO calls “strategic human capital management,” have been on GAO’s high-risk list since 2001. The matter is high risk because “critical skills gaps” in the government “can erode the capacity of federal agencies and threaten their ability to cost-effectively carry out their missions.”

Robert Goldenkoff, GAO’s director of strategic issues, offered another question that framed much of the discussion: How can Uncle Sam “update the entire federal compensation system to be more market-based and performance-oriented?”

That inevitably led to a discussion of “pay for performance,” a central element in the Defense Department’s discarded National Security Personnel System (NSPS).

Patricia Niehaus, president of the Federal Managers Association, provided an insightful examination of NSPS pros and cons.

“Under NSPS, an employee’s pay raise, promotion, demotion or dismissal was much less inhibited than current General Schedule rules permit,” she said.

Yet, NSPS flaws demonstrated the difference in theory and practice. With NSPS, “implementation failed to follow design,” she added.

Discrimination was not in the NSPS design, but was part of its practice.

“It paid very well to be white and male,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (Mass.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee. “It didn’t work so well for a lot of other folks.”

Actually, a 2008 report by the Federal Times showed that “white employees received higher average performance ratings, salary increases and bonuses” than others, but “women received larger total payouts overall than did their

male counterparts even though they both received the same performance ratings on average.”

Though there was much talk about hot button “pay for performance” plans, that term is “a distraction,” said John Palguta, a vice president of the Partnership for Public Service. The good government group recently issued a report on civil service reform.

The real issue, said Palguta, who was not at the hearing, is “the government’s inability to pay what folks outside the government are paying for scarce talent.” That’s particularly true, he said, at incoming professional levels and for highly skilled employees.

J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, defended current pay classification systems and General Schedule flexibility, which others say is lacking.

“The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA) already established a market-based system that provides regional, market-based pay differentials,” he said after the hearing. “Yet, Congress has never funded it. So if the intent is to have market pay rather than a NSPS type of discretion that leads to discrimination against women and minorities, then all Congress needs to do is fund FEPCA.”

Also at the hearing was Donald Devine, OPM director during the Reagan administration. He began his testimony by offering another question: “What is somebody who was OPM director 30 years ago doing here?”

Good question. Providing positive feedback to Republican questions that amounted to pointed criticisms of the federal workforce seemed to be his main role.

But Devine also provided an accurate characterization of civil service reform discussions.

“This is boring stuff,” he said. “But it is critical stuff.”http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/

federal_government/is-the-federal-personnel-system-too-old-to-do-the-job/2014/07/15/ff89ef30-0c46-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html

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