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EX-DEA AGENT: How I got Mexican drug cartels to trust me
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Why the US military's M1 Abrams tank is still the king of the battlefield
For over 30 years, the M1 Abrams tank has been a staple of the US military's arsenal. It continues to be an unstoppable force on the battlefield.
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US Army special forces accepts its first female candidates
Washington (AFP) - Two women will soon be the first female soldiers to undergo training to become members of the Green Berets, the US Army's special forces, the military said Monday.
"They are the first two women who have been selected for special forces assessment" following the elimination of the ban on women in combat roles, said Major Melody Faulkenberry, a spokeswoman for the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
She did not give additional details about the candidates.
President Barack Obama's administration decided in 2013 that all combat positions should be open to women by 2016, including the infantry and special operations forces.
The Marines had requested some exemptions, but these were overruled by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
Two female Marines were assigned to frontline infantry roles in May, though it will take some time before they are placed in their new roles.
Rules stipulate that a female "leadership cadre" needs to be established in their units at least three months beforehand.
Although women warriors have frequently found themselves in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, they had previously been barred from joining frontline combat roles.
Currently, women account for 15.6 percent of the 1.34 million active duty personnel in the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force.
SEE ALSO: Witness the moment US soldiers find themselves in close-quarters combat
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These were the best military photos of the past month
A selection of military photos that you might have missed this month.
SEE ALSO: The world in photos this week
Officer Candidate School (OCS) candidates are picked up by their sergeant instructors aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, July 8, 2016.
An officer candidate conducts the Combat Course at Quantico, Virginia, July 13, 2016.
A New Zealand Army soldier drags a 'wounded' enemy soldier to safety as part of Exercise Hamel, South Australia, July 9, 2016.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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ARMY RANGER: The difference between covert and clandestine operations
Former Army Ranger Jack Murphy reveals the difference between covert and clandestine operations and how it relates to the raid that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden.
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The Marines are testing a robot armed with a machine gun
The Marine Corps is actively testing a robotic system outfitted with sensors and cameras that can be armed with an M240 machine gun. It's meant to keep Marines safe, but can do a lot more.
There's also another big brother to this robotic system that's even bigger and can be equipped with a powerful minigun.
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How I was one of the first women to earn an Army Ranger tab
As one of the first women to attend and pass Ranger School, Maj. Lisa Jaster explains how she physically and mentally prepared.
For me, going to Ranger School was never about integrating the military. It was never a quest for fame. It didn’t start off as a desire to change the perception of women in the military. I really just wanted the same opportunities that my male peers were given automatically.
The secondary mission of an engineer is to fight as infantry. I am an engineer. Going to Ranger School was an opportunity to build my repertoire and become the best possible version of me. I want to be someone who others look up to and that means constantly being more and doing more. I want to be a good soldier, not a good female soldier.
The debates about women in combat arms are long and energized. Many of them start and end with physical differences between men and women focusing on raw strength and percentage of lean body mass. Since Ranger School is advertised as the Army’s premier leadership school, I wanted to go to improve my military leadership skills.
But Ranger School started off as an infantry school and maintains high physical fitness standards. Once I did some research and understood what those standards were, I didn’t see any reason that I should be denied access. I knew men with tabs that I could smoke in most physical contests. Guys that I beat in the gym and on the track attended and graduated. So in my mind, the issue of strength was a non-issue. But I needed to be ready, because failing physically meant that we’d never progress the conversation past the physical differences between genders.
After the birth of our second child in 2012, I signed up for IronMan Texas. I was having problems fitting strength training in with my endurance workouts, and my husband had been harassing me for years to try high-intensity interval training. So, I met with Vanessa Goebel, owner of CrossFit Memorial Houston, and explained my personal and fitness goals to her over coffee.
I was quickly convinced that I would benefit from CrossFit. I signed up right then and there and started attending class three days a week in addition to my IronMan training. I fell in love with CrossFit and moved away from endurance training after the race. My body loved it too. I was leaner than ever before and loved being part of a community that valued healthy eating, heavy weights, and hard sweat sessions.
Soon after that, with a bit of coercion from both my son and my husband, I began training Brazilian jiu jitsu. I would train at CrossFit Memorial Houston for 90 or more minutes following programming from CrossFit Invictus and then head straight to jiu jitsu for an hour. Between the demanding CrossFit workouts and grappling with men daily, I was evolving for the better.
In September 2014, the possibility of one integrated Ranger School class was brought to my attention. Although it took me awhile to cozy up to the concept of attending — also my husband’s idea — I finally decided I wanted to do it for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. I just wanted to be the best I could be at my job regardless of my gender or age. My training only required slight tweaks to get ready for the school.
I still predominantly followed Invictus programming, adding a weight vest to many of the runs and low-impact movements such as box step-ups. I substituted dead hang chin-ups whenever kipping pull-ups appeared in the workouts and added ruck walks/runs a few nights a week. The strength requirements for Ranger School were never a concern.
Ruck marching and upper body exercises were definitely not a deficit. But being strong and running fast are not always conducive to one another. Under normal circumstances I can easily run five miles in under 40 minutes, but I needed to make sure I could do it when I was stressed, tired, and hungry. Therefore, the majority of physical training changes were focused on the run.
I included my family in physical and tactical training, which included ruck running to my daughter’s daycare and then letting her ride in or on my rucksack on the march home all while using a range finder to estimate distances to the next vehicle, sign, or intersection. When I would come home from the office, my husband would hand me my weight vest and I’d wear it all evening to get used to standing under load.
I cut back on movements that weren’t going to help me pass the course, such as muscle-ups and other gymnastics-based skills. And I continued to roll in the dojo four days a week. Learning to push past my limits in both CrossFit and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu helped prepare me mentally as well as physically for the challenges that waited.
Strength and fitness have been a big part of my life for a long time. I could not have succeeded if I first started training when I heard about the opportunity in September. Ranger School is too demanding for that. Not only is passing the graded fitness events required, you have to be able to think and function afterward as well.
Being totally consumed by the physical hardships of the course doesn’t leave much capacity to deal with all the other aspects. Successfully humping a ruck to the top of a mountain is inconsequential if you can’t problem solve effectively or be a good teammate once you get there.
If I could advise the 2014 version of myself, the woman who signed up for this task, I would tell her that being fit is important and it’s the only way to get through the front door at Ranger School. But fitness will not be the only factor in your success. If you want to push past barriers and be part of the small percentage of soldiers who wear the coveted Ranger Tab, then you need to know your tactics, know yourself, and understand why you are pushing yourself so hard.
Proving that women can handle the physical rigors merely started the conversation — it didn’t end it. I succeeded in deleting the adjective by being one of the 41% who pass Ranger School. I wasn’t capable for a femalesoldier. Ask the other 59%, I was just capable.
SEE ALSO: US admiral: This overlooked region will be the next front line against ISIS
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ARMY RANGER: This mistake blew the secrecy of the bin Laden raid
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A forgotten 'city under the ice' holds a government secret that could poison the Atlantic
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How the US could take on and beat another country's military with only the Army
The US military most certainly has the capability to project force almost anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice. The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are on constant alert for the order to break through another nation’s defenses and start aggressively installing a democracy.
Sure, the services usually work together to win wars. But what if a single branch were tasked to do the entire job on its own?
From destroying enemy air defenses to amphibious assaults, the Army could go it alone. Here’s how.
SEE ALSO: 'Air superiority is not an American birthright' — the US Air Force is in crisis
The air war
The air war is one of the areas where the Army would struggle most, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker. First, the Army has led an invasion force in support of the Air Force before. Apache helicopters fired some of the first shots of Desert Storm when they conducted a 200-mile, low altitude raid against Iraqi air defense sites.
The Army hit radar stations with Hellfire missiles, air defense guns with flechette rockets, and surviving personnel and equipment with 30mm grenades on the first night of the liberation of Kuwait. The raid opened a 20-mile gap in Iraq’s air defenses for Air Force jets to fly through.
In an all-Army war, the first flight of Apaches could punch the hole in the air defenses and a second flight could fly through the gap to begin hitting targets in the country.
The biggest complication would be missions against enemy jets. Even if the Army purchased air-to-air weapons systems for the Apaches, they lack the range and speed of Air Force fighters. While they’re capable of going toe-to-toe against enemy jets and winning, their relatively low mobility would make it challenging to be everywhere at once.
The Apache commanders would have to coordinate carefully with ground forces and other air assets to ensure they were providing anti-air at the right locations and times. To make up for the shortfall, Avenger, Patriot, and Stinger missile units would need to be stationed as far forward as possible so that their surface-to-air missiles would be able to fight off enemy fighters and attack aircraft going after friendly troops.
Amphibious assualts
The US Army does not specialize in amphibious operations, but it has conducted a few of the largest landings in history, including the D-Day landings.
The Army has three types of boats that can land supplies and forces ashore without needing help from the Navy. The Army crews on these boats are capable enough that the Navy considers them to be roughly equal to their own craft and doctrine calls for them to assist the Navy in joint amphibious assaults.
The star of an Army amphibious landing would be the Landing Craft Utility 2000, a boat capable of sailing 6,500 nautical miles and delivering 350 tons, the equivalent of five armed Abrams tanks and their crews.
The Army also rocks the Landing Craft, Mechanized 8 which can carry as much cargo as a C-17 and deliver it to an unimproved beach or damaged dock.
Finally, each of the Army’s eight Logistic Support Vessels can carry up to 24 M1 tanks at a time, almost enough to deliver an entire armored cavalry troop in a single lift.
Of course, soldiers would struggle against fierce beach defenders without the Marine Corps’ Harriers or Cobras flying in support. The Army would have to rely on paratroopers dropped from Chinooks and attacks by Apaches and special operations Blackhawks to reduce enemy defenses during a beach landing.
Logistics
The Army is a master of long-term logistics, but an Army that couldn’t get help from the Merchant Marine, Navy, and Air Force would need to be extremely careful with how it dealt with its supply and transportation needs.
While helicopters and trucks could theoretically deliver everything the Army needs in a fight, they can’t always do it quickly. A unit whose ammunition dump is hit by enemy fire needs more rounds immediately, not the next time a convoy is coming by.
To get supplies to soldiers quickly without Air Force C-130s and C-17s, the Army would need to earmark dozens of Chinooks and Blackhawks for surging personnel and supplies based on who needs it most.
This additional strain on those airframes would also increase their maintenance needs, taking them away from other missions. Logistics, if not properly planned and prioritized, would be one of the key potential failure points that commanders would have to watch.
So the Army, theoretically, could fight an entire enemy country on its own, using its own assets to conduct missions that the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps typically handle today. Still, the Army will probably keep leaning on the other branches for help. After all, the Air Force has the best chow halls.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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The US Army is sending Apache attack helicopters to fight ISIS in Iraq
The Defense Department announced in April that the US Army would send 200 additional troops to Iraq to support the Iraqi army's effort to retake the city of Mosul, which is currently occupied by ISIS.
In addition to the troops, the Army dispatched Apache attack helicopters to fight ISIS militants.
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Former Delta Force officer says the elite military unit taught him why it's so important to 'manage your boss'
Over more than 20 years in the US Army as a Ranger and then a Delta Force operator, Dalton Fury learned that the best leaders not only manage their subordinates, but also manage their superiors.
Fury is the pseudonym he uses for both his nonfiction and fiction writing, since his time in the highly secretive Delta Force has required him to conceal his true identity.
In an emailed list of leadership lessons sent to Business Insider, Fury explained that his time as a Delta Force commander taught him whether he was in a situation that fit nicely into the mission plan or one that fell far outside of it, "managing the boss on target is equally important."
If his superior lost confidence in him in the middle of a mission, then the ensuing hasty decisions could result in not only a botched mission, but the deaths of Fury and his men as well.
The key then, whether it's in a highly confidential military operation in the Middle East or a conference-room meeting between a company and its client, is the existence of trust between yourself and your boss. It's a trust that isn't only built by previously demonstrating your competence, but by working through how to tackle possible snafus with your superior before a weighty task.
Fury notes that in the 2011 Navy SEAL mission that eliminated Osama bin Laden, the plan almost immediately went off course when one of the team's helicopters crashed while attempting to land. The reason the mission ended successfully, Fury argues, is that the SEAL team had assured their superiors they knew how to handle any aspect of their plan going badly by working through contingencies, like the response to the possibility of a botched helicopter landing.
He says the same concept applies in the office.
"Develop and work through your contingencies well ahead of time," Fury writes. "When they are needed, before someone hastily calls to abort or retreat, remind your boss that you have already anticipated the problem and are prepared for it. If he wants to remain on the [helicopter] during the assault, or in the employee lounge, that's fine. But on target, or on task, you're driving until you need something from your boss."
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Britain's army is investing $1 billion in insect-sized drones, laser firearms, and virtual-reality goggles
The British military is looking to embrace future technologies with open arms, as it’s planning to invest some 800 million pounds ($1.03 billion) in speculative technologies including insect-sized drones, laser firearms, and virtual reality goggles.
Students and industry participants will be allowed to pitch their ideas to the new Innovation and Research Insights Unit (IRIS) which will be responsible for doling out the development fund.
The idea with this new division appears to be to experiment and take more risks with what sort of technology the military approves for testing and ultimately usage.
“This new approach will help to keep Britain safe while supporting our economy with our brightest brains keeping us ahead of our adversaries,” said defense secretary Michael Fallon.
Some of the specific technologies that the U.K. is said to be looking to explore include micro-drones that could be used to investigate incident zones like chemical spills and natural disasters, as well as sensors which utilize gravity to provide maps of underground structures (as per Ars), which could have a big impact when hunting for hidden enemies.
Virtual reality technology for calling in simulated air strikes is also being considered, as is laser weaponry. We aren’t quite talking Covenant plasma rifles, but more like the high-intensity laser weapons that have been used elsewhere to disrupt aircraft and missiles.
To give this some context, the U.S. has allocated $4.61 billion for drone-related spending in the FY17 budget proposal, so considering this investment is to take place over the next 10 years, the British spending is far smaller. However, considering the overall military budget of the U.K. is also 12 times less than that of the U.S., $1.03 billion in investment in future technologies is nothing to sniff at.
The budget will be allocated as and when the new IRIS initiative decides, and will extend to investment in infrastructure, challenges, demonstrations and communications platforms to aid development. This will take place as part of the Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) accelerator program, which the MoD is currently seeking feedback on. Members of industry, academic institutions and the general public are all encouraged to provide their thoughts.
If you’d like to provide your input to the MoD, you can sign up here.
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The 5 questions a former Delta Force officer asked himself to evaluate his skill as a leader
As a special operations leader, whether a commissioned officer or sergeant, you've paid your dues.
You've been assessed against the best our military has to offer, undergone countless and exhausting mental, physical, and psychological tests, and have been knighted as a guy our nation has absolute confidence in. You're the sh-- and it's indisputable.
Not so fast. In Delta Force, there is a saying that clings to you no matter how talented, committed, or mean you might think you are: "Selection is an ongoing process."
Simply put, rank or tenure garners no privilege. You either perform to the high standard required on a daily basis or they will find someone else who will.
Along the way, while you are doing your best to keep up with the extraordinary men and women you are so humbled to stand the ranks with, it's a good idea to look in the mirror. Formal written performance evaluations are few and far between, and in elite units public "attaboys"— even within the ranks — are as rare as the times you bag an elusive High Value Target.
So how can you evaluate your performance as a leader when it's not obvious?
In over 20 years in the Army, I found five non-intuitive steps to do just that. They required focused thought and felt at times more grueling and challenging than the toughest obstacle course. You'll find they can also be applied far from the battlefield.
Do your team members go the extra mile for you?
As a commissioned officer, you have dozens of subordinates, and in Delta Force, we call them "mates." It's up to the officer to recite the oath for a mate that wants to stay in the fight, and this re-enlistment process is the ultimate show of loyalty and trust.
These moments, where a mate elected to continue to serve his country and raised his right hand as I provided the oath of re-enlistment near an American flag, are among my most treasured memories.
I've re-enlisted mates in situations that asked major sacrifices of them, from re-enlisting one during an operation near the banks of the Drina River with Serbia in the background, to re-enlisting one in Afghanistan in an area surrounded by land mines left over from the Soviet War, to re-enlisting another just a few minutes before loading the helicopter for a night raid.
I can't think of a greater honor.
Do you recognize their accomplishments?
Stay in the military long enough and you are bound to have a chest full of medals. There's nothing wrong with that, since you earned them, but more importantly, how many have you awarded to your mates?
You need to promote the successes of your mates within the organization and stand up for them when someone outside of your team tries to unfairly downgrade an award. I tried to shoot for a 10:1 ratio of award I gave to those I humbly received.
Can you adjust your subordinates' attitudes?
In special operations, you're leading a bunch of wild horses mostly with Type A personalities, and at least in Delta Force, these operators are expected to have their own opinions. There are times then, of course, when one of your mates gets out of line.
Sure, nobody is perfect, and most offenders deserve a second chance, but everyone will be watching how you handle these internal challenges.
If you expect to be treated as a leader and not merely a manager, then you must possess the moral courage to confront your mates who have stepped out of bounds and correct their poor behavior.
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An Army general explains the worst thing an enemy could do to America
A.J. Tata, author of Three Minutes to Midnight, is a retired general in the US Army. He explains what kind of enemy attack would do the most damage to America.
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A Top Gun school graduate explains what the movie got wrong
Retired Air Force Colonel JV Venable, author of Breaking the Trust Barrier, flew nearly 100 combat missions over Iraq in the F-16. He is a graduate of the elite Air Force Fighter Weapons School, also known as Top Gun. Colonel Venable explains what the movie got wrong.
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The United States Army isn't playing enough video games
The United States Army has a problem: Its soldiers aren’t playing enough video games.
That, at any rate, is one conclusion you might draw from a recent Government Accountability Office report that examines the Army’s numerous—and often quite expensive—virtual training devices. Discussing that report in Motherboard, Richard Beckhusen concludes “the Army simply has too many games.”
In some cases, that’s because the Army hasn’t properly integrated those systems into its constantly changing training regimes. In others, it may be because these pricey platforms simply don’t meet real needs in the first place.
As the GAO report defines it, “virtual training devices are those devices that involve a simulator, a simulation, or a computer-generated battlefield.” As such, a medical dummy probably wouldn’t count, but a VR simulation of field surgery might. In theory, these systems seek to re-create “conditions that are not possible to achieve in live training,” either because it would be expensive to do so (heavy weaponry munitions don’t come cheap) or because it’s hard to reproduce varied field conditions on demand.
Fittingly, then, many of the systems that GAO examines simulate vehicle operations, while others help soldiers familiarize themselves with unit tactics and operational protocols.
The proliferation of training simulations in the military might seem to be of a piece with the general shift toward gamification in civilian settings—and the concomitant expectation that learning a new job or skill should be fun. While such ideas may simmer in the background here, few of the systems discussed in the GAO report seem like they’d be that enjoyable to play. For more than a decade, the military has used the game America’s Army for recruitment, attempting to give players a feel for the actual demands of service. Such militainment isn’t really on the table in the GAO report, however. Indeed, while words like “funding” and “function” crop up repeatedly throughout, mere “fun” is nowhere to be found.
It’s hard to say how much use the Army is actually getting out of its virtual training devices, partly because it didn’t keep strong records of actual engagement.
Nevertheless, the GAO report’s inventory of Army-operated systems suggests that usage is limited at best: In 2015, trainees logged a mere 435 hours of time with the Army’s 18 units of one bulky-looking system designed to help develop “driving and operating skills in simulated weather, urban operations, and complex virtual terrain.”
Given that the $12 million system cost $744,405 to maintain in that year alone (and that there were 33,332 hours of available simulator time), that seems like a relatively poor return on investment.
Other training devices performed better: A $216 million system that “replicates live weapons training events” plopped soldiers in front of its simulated screens for more than 300,000 hours lin 2015. Similarly, Virtual Battlespace II—which seeks to improve skills like “cultural awareness, language, [and] explosive device recognition”—appears to have performed reasonably well, racking up 18,673 user hours.
This moderate success, however, arguably squares with a point that Beckhusen extracts from the report: Many of the army’s “games” may be too realistic for their own good. “It’s unnecessary to strap soldiers into an immobile vehicle and make them scan a wrap-around screen if they can accomplish the same basic tasks with a mouse and keyboard,” Beckhusen argues.
One commenter on Slashdot suggests that this is hardly a new problem, writing, “[B]ack in the early 90s we’d go to the M-1 simulator and run through that. Then go back to the barracks and play M1 Tank platoon on my Amiga 500. It was a running joke I had my own simulator in my room.”
The Army’s bulkier simulators presumably offer things that more commercial modern games—never mind Amiga titles!—can’t, but more conventionally gamelike programs may still offer advantages. As Beckhusen notes, for example, Virtual Battlespace “scales better” than many of the more sophisticated systems designed to train users on a particular vehicle or scenario.
Significantly, they may also be more cost effective: The Army spent about $8 million on the flexibly designed Virtual Battlespace, but put almost 10 times that number into its Conduct of Fire Trainer for M2/M3 Bradley vehicles, which includes a sophisticated-looking cockpit full of real knobs, buttons, and sensors.
Obviously, neither dollars spent nor training hours accumulated translate directly into true usefulness with these systems. In fact, many of these amounts likely seem like rounding errors relative to the military’s massive annual budget. Nevertheless, the report still suggests that the Army needs to more fully integrate those games into its training schemes—evaluating both their potential efficacy before developing them and investigating their effectiveness once they’ve been deployed.
SEE ALSO: Here's why thermal imaging can't stop the F-22 or the F-35
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These were the best military photos of the past month
A selection of military photos that you might have missed this month.
SEE ALSO: These images show the US-South Korean exercise North Korea threatened with a nuclear strike
A US Marine fires a M240 machine gun as another Marine guides his fire through his night vision optics at the Marine Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, August 18, 2016.
A US airman jumps out of a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, 12,000 feet above the Malmsheim Drop Zone, Stuttgart, Germany, August 17, 2016.
US Marines watch the illumination from artillery during a live-fire exercise, August 18, 2016, at Bradshaw Field Training Area, Northern Territory, Australia.
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