Iraqi Insurgents Hacking Drone Video
A fully armed MQ-9 Reaper taxis down a runway in Southwest Asia. The Reaper's primary mission is as a persistent hunter-killer against emerging targets. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson)
Iranian-backed Shiite fighters in Iraq have been hacking the live video feeds from U.S. unmanned drones according to senior defense officials. The Wall Street Journal reports that the insurgents are using a Russian-made, off-the-shelf program called SkyGrabber to view the non-encrypted information coming from the drones.
Officials say that there have been no reports of insurgents interfering with the flights, and also assure that no harm has come to our troops and that no missions have been compromised as a result of the security breach.
“That may be true today, but may not be the case in future conflicts,” remarks Bill Roggio of LongWarJournal.
Roggio speculates:
Don’t be surprised if you read a story in the next few days or weeks saying that elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency have been monitoring US Predator and Reaper feeds, and relaying targeting information to al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. I have heard far too many stories about how senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders miraculously avoided attacks and left the target sites just minutes before the strikes. The officials repeatedly told me that they believed the anti-US elements in the ISI were tipping off the terrorist commanders before the strikes.
Many hours – even days – worth of recorded drone video feeds have been found on captured insurgent computers operating in Iraq, and sources say that feeds have also been intercepted by enemies operating in Afghanistan. According to WSJ‘s sources, the Pentagon has known of the encryption vulnerability since the Bosnia campaign during the 1990′s, but assumed that our enemies would not have the wherewithal to intercept the signals.
If the Pentagon is going to assume anything, they should be assuming that our enemies will compromise our communications, and design systems with that possibility in mind.
In: Military · Tagged with: al Qaeda, Bill Roggio, drones, Inter-Services Intelligence, Iraq, ISI, MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Pakistan, Taliban
Afghans want us to loosen ROE
In an article from the Asia Times, an Afghan father named Sharaf endorsed a loosening of the restrictive Rules of Engagement on U.S. troops: “I do not mind if I am killed, provided that the Americans get rid of the Taliban. Those tyrants have taken my son’s leg. They laid mines on the road. Don’t they see these roads are also used by civilians?”
In: Military · Tagged with: Afghanistan, Rules of Engagement, Taliban
Obama Prepared to Bail Out the Taliban
With Obama in the White House, even terrorists receive a Stimulus! Hooray!
Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse (from The Times)…
The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.
Didn’t we send troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban? Now the Obama administration is wanting to legitimize yet another terrorist group:
Apart from training more Afghan troops, the focus has shifted to accepting a political role for the Taliban, while also trying to weaken them by winning some over.
Once again, it is impossible to win over people who have a religious duty to eliminate our civilization through jihad. There is no middle ground, and they will only use our money against us. The even bigger problem I believe is that the Obama administration has to know this.
Here’s what passes for war strategy when community organizers and revolutionaries run the government:
Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165m a day the United States is spending fighting the war.
These “advocates” are so far off base this isn’t even worth analyzing. But I had been under the impression we sent troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda-associated movements - not to save money! I wonder why we didn’t just pay off the Wermacht in 1944 rather than invade Normandy.
At least someone has a clue:
Some experts disagree. Gilles Dorronsoro from the Carnegie Institute insisted: “You cannot break an insurgency that strong with money. It’s not a mercenary force — it’s a very powerful movement.”
The thing is that the Afghans know that the U.S. is about to cut and run just like every other civilization that has occupied Afghanistan throughout human history. The ones who take the money will be left high and dry when Obama decides enough is enough, but the Taliban are there to stay, and will remember who wasn’t willing to continue the jihad. All this would be is another collosal waste of taxpayer money, which the Taliban will end up appropriating anyways.
This is obviously a UK story because they actually found more than one person who isn’t in lockstep with the administration. Obama is getting caught up in his own words:
Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that the president has only himself to blame. “It was Obama who insisted in March and again last month that this was a ‘war of necessity’ and must be fully resourced rather than looking at what we really have at stake in Afghanistan.”
In: Geopolitics · Tagged with: Afghanistan, Obama administration, Taliban
On Winning War
This is a transcript of the Unto the Breach program. Click here for the audio.
From Oliver North’s most recent column:
He was standing at the counter when I entered the store. As he paid the clerk, he turned, and I noticed, in this order, his beard, his T-shirt, which had “Marines” emblazoned on the front, and his cane. His prosthetic foot still was masked by the counter when I said, “Semper fi, leatherneck.”
In case you didn’t know, Semper Fi is short for Semper Fidelis – the Marine Corps motto, which is Latin for “always faithful.” It guides Marines to remain faithful to the mission at hand, to each other, to the Corps and to country, no matter what. Marines have a bond that is different than any organization out there, they are more than a family. Whether you are eighteen years old fresh out of high school, or an eighty-something-year-old veteran of Iwo Jima, you are part of a brotherhood that lasts for life. That’s why there are no EX Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
He smiled and replied: “Semper fi to you, too, Colonel. You were embedded with my unit in Afghanistan last year.”
We spoke for a few minutes. He had been wounded by the favorite weapon of radical Islamic terror, an IED. He’s minus some of his body, a little less mobile, preparing to re-enter civilian life and permanently proud of having served his country. As he moved to leave, he said: “We did our part. Sure hope the crowd in Washington doesn’t screw it up.”
Now why would this veteran say that he hopes Washington “doesn’t screw it up?”
This Marine felt strongly enough about his country that he willingly risked his life in order to protect what it stood for. But what have we gained by this great man’s sacrifice? Perhaps he fears “the crowd in Washington” will “screw it up” because since World War Two, politicians have become an obstacle to our military, and have arguably played a bigger role in the outcomes of our conflicts than even the enemy forces we have fought.
While I feel that a check and balance on the military is absolutely necessary, our government has had it wrong when it comes to our nation’s conflicts since World War Two, but especially when it comes to the fight with Islamic supremacism.
In: Military, Politics · Tagged with: Afghanistan, Marines, Oliver North, Taliban, World War II
Senior Taliban commander killed in Helmand
Afghan troops have killed a senior Taliban commander in the battleground province of Helmand. The raid by members of the Afghanistan National Security Force killed Mullah Salam Noorzai.
Bill Roggio writes at Long War Journal:
Noorzai had a long history in the Taliban. He served as the IV Corps commander in Herat province for several years during the reign of the Taliban government until its fall in 2001. He “was instrumental in the reconstitution of the insurgent effort following the regime’s demise” and served as a senior commander in the northern and central regions of Helmand province.
The force also killed one Noorzai aide and captured another, and several weapons – including RPGs – were destroyed. The raid was aimed at a compound just north of the contested Now Zad district, where Roggio writes:
The Taliban have conducted infantry-styled assaults and built fortifications in the region, and have conducted complex ambushes, according to an after-action report from a US Marine officer that was obtained by The Long War Journal. The US Marines have established a combat outpost in Now Zad in an effort to drive out the Taliban.
Noorzai also was one of the few leaders who had strong links to insurgent leaders who were directing the insurgency from the safety of Pakistan. Noorzai also had ties to Abdullah Gullam Rasoul – the Taliban’s “spring offensive” commander in Southern Afghanistan. Rasoul was released from Guantanamo by the Bush Administration in 2007.
“The death of Mullah Salam Noorzai, the latest in a series of prominent senior insurgents and IED-facilitators, signals another serious blow to the insurgency,” said Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, Task Force Helmand.
No women or children were harmed in the operation, as ANSF and ISAF troops made safety a top priority.
In: Military · Tagged with: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban
Misplaced Anger
On August 21, NATO and Afghan ground forces in the western Afghanistan village of Nawabad called in an airstrike. The US casualty figures were listed as thirty killed, including their target, the high-ranking Taliban leader Mullah Siddiq. Five more were detained, and a cache of weapons and ammunition were discovered in the compound. Seven or eight houses were destroyed as a result, and several others were damaged.
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry spokesman, Gen. Mohammad Zaher Azimi, later added that five of the thirty were civilians. Then it got even more interesting when the Afghan Interior Ministry called the attack a “mistake.” The ministry claimed 76 killed, including 19 women and 50 children under 15.
Although the US military is launching an investigation, they are still standing behind their figures. US military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green said, “We stand by our account and our reports and what we know and I can’t reconcile why (the Interior Ministry) would have a different figure.”
In: Military, National Security · Tagged with: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban, UN
Senior al Qaeda Leader Killed in Pakistan?
Pakistani television is reporting that senior al Qaeda (AQ) Aleader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid has been killed in heavy fighting in the Bajaur tribal region. Pakistan has stepped up its attacks on the region bordering Afghanistan which has become a stronghold for AQ and Taliban terrorists.
Al-Yazid is the top AQ commander in Afghanistan, and also goes by the names Sheikh Saeed and Abu Saeed al-Masri. It is believed that he was the third-most senior leader in al-Qaeda behind Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
These reports are unconfirmed at this time, and it is unknown whether al-Yazid and al-Masri are the same individual.
In: National Security · Tagged with: Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Pakistan, Taliban
Operation Redwing
On June 27, 2005, a four-man Navy SEAL sniper watch team set out to conduct a mission in some of the harshest terrain on earth – about 10,000 feet above sea level in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. Their mission was to locate and gather intelligence on a certain high-ranking Taliban official with known ties to Osama bin-Laden. Once they had eyes on the target, a larger force would then attack, capturing or killing the target. According to their intelligence, the SEALs would be operating amongst as many as 200 enemy fighters.
Lieutenant Michael Murphy (29) of Patchogue, New York was the officer-in-charge. His men were Marcus Luttrell (30) of Willis, Texas, Matthew Axelson (29) of Cupertino, California, and Danny Dietz (25) of Littleton, Colorado.
The team was inserted at night by helicopter into the heavily-forested and mountainous terrain east of Asadabad, a village in the Afghanistan province of Kunar. Intelligence reported that a large group of armed men slipped through a pass in the mountains from Pakistan. The size of the force suggested that there was a valuable target in the area. This area was considered a “hornet’s nest,” a Taliban stronghold that Coalition Forces rarely ventured into. The inhabitants were goat herders and wood cutters, and the Taliban rewarded them for shooting U.S. forces or reporting on their locations. (more…)
In: Military, National Security · Tagged with: Afghanistan, Navy SEALs, Taliban
