Few sto­ries break the heart like Shannon Meehan and Roger Thompson’s Iraq War mem­oir, Beyond Duty. Meehan, a 1st Cavalry Division tank com­man­der and VMI grad­u­ate, may as well have titled it “heavy lies the crown,” as Beyond Duty is the first book I’ve read that fully cap­tures the crush­ing bur­den of com­bat lead­er­ship.
Meehan and Thompson (a pro­fes­sor of English at VMI), started writ­ing the book after dis­as­ter struck — Meehan, freshly pro­moted to act­ing com­pany com­man­der dur­ing an offen­sive into insurgent-​​infest Baquba, called in an airstrike which killed a house full of Iraqi civil­ians. Beyond Duty details that fate­ful day in the pro­logue, the rest of the story’s arc rides wave after wave of hyper-​​realistic ten­sion ulti­mately lead­ing to Meehan’s antag­o­niz­ing deci­sion — send his men into the dragon’s mouth and pos­si­ble death, or safely negate a house full of unknown occup­ments with a pre­ci­sion guided airstrike.
I’ve read my share of Iraq and Afghanistan war mem­oirs, God knows there’s plenty of them out there. This, how­ever, is the first “under the hel­met” account of the ter­ri­fy­ing nature of MOUT oper­a­tions that I’ve read. Further, Beyond Duty forces the audi­ence to come to terms with the immense respon­si­bil­ity we place on kids who are often times fresh out of col­lege. The deci­sions Meehan faced were ter­ri­fy­ing, yet through those unfor­giv­ing expe­ri­ences, the light of this won­der­ful gen­er­a­tion of young men and women shone through. The tougher the fight became, the faster Meehan ascended into a strong, con­fi­dent leader. The great tragedy of Beyond Duty –and indeed it is a tragic tale– was that after an unin­ter­rupted record of deeply admirable and vir­tu­ous lead­er­ship, one bad deci­sion com­pletely unrav­eled Meehan’s con­fi­dence and demeanor. Indeed, the pain doesn’t stop after the wound has healed.
Read Beyond Duty. Understand what we ask of these young men and women, the angry seas we ask them to nav­i­gate, the ago­nies of com­bat, and the crush­ing bur­dens of lead­er­ship.
Shannon and Roger will be on the Ed Morrissey Show at 4pm EST, Thursday 24 September. WRKO Boston also has a must-​​listen inter­view up with Shannon and Roger, click through for the link.
Cross-​​posted at www​.op​-for​.com
–John Noonan

I’m about to board a plane headed back to DC, but I wanted to quickly intro­duce — with much excite­ment — our newest mem­ber of the Military​.com team.

Many of you know Jamie McIntyre from his days at CNN. He cov­ered the mil­i­tary for the net­work for 16 years and was a CNN plank owner until recently when he left the net­work to get an advanced degree in journalism.

After months of back and forth we snagged him and just yes­ter­day launched a cool new blog that he’ll run called The Line of Departure where he’ll bring to bear his vast expe­ri­ence and source base to ana­lyze the cur­rent debate on defense and strat­egy and also delve into the issues that sur­round the military’s rela­tion­ship with the pub­lic and the media.

Be sure to book­mark our new site and stay tuned for more from Jamie through­out Military​.com. We already crashed the site on Friday with his break­ing news story about Cami McCormack’s injury in Afghanistan, and that was before we offi­cially launched the site. Clearly a sign of things to come from our new teammate.

– Christian

As you all well know, I’ve been dog­ging Rep. John Murtha, the pow­er­ful chair­man of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense sub­com­mit­tee, pretty hard ever since his fly-​​off-​​the-​​handle accu­sa­tion of mur­der by a squad of Marines in Haditha back in mid-​​2006.

Well, I ner­vously attended a round­table inter­view this morn­ing in DC with Murtha and a group of the country’s top defense writ­ers — fig­ur­ing I might get the cold shoul­der from the Democratic Bull. But I was sur­prised to find that he was remark­ably can­did, brew­ing with news and even friendly. A far cry from the con­fronta­tional chair­man I’d pep­pered with ques­tions in the past. 

He said a lot of stuff on defense tech issues — info we’re going to build into longer sto­ries in the com­ing hours — but what I thought I’d do is give you all a data dump of the basics of what he said…a sort of tear out of the pages of my reporter’s note­book, if you will: 

Tanker — Murtha said he was strongly in favor of a split buy because he thought no mat­ter who “wins” a rec­om­pete, there will be yet another protest that will delay the field­ing and ham­per global reach efforts. He wants a pro­duc­tion through­put of three planes per month which he says even with the split buy, will save money in the long run because of the near crush­ing main­te­nance costs of keep­ing the KC-​​135s aloft. Murtha had just met with DefSec Gates the pre­vi­ous day, and though Gates has said pub­licly he’s against a split buy, Murtha said “I don’t know that he’s against it” hint­ing that the White House might be dri­ving that argu­ment and Gates might have some flex­i­bil­ity on the issue. 

Raptor — Lots here. First, Murtha is against the shut down of the F-​​22 line for what he says are purely national secu­rity issues. He says he’s going to try and find $3.2 bil­lion (my notes said $20B but i re-​​listened to the record­ing and he said $3.2B — not sure why I wrote $20B) to build 20 more next year and has asked Gates to pro­vide him with some national secu­rity threat esti­mates that would jus­tify NOT buy­ing more Raptors. Murtha says he’s con­cerned about a ris­ing China com­pet­ing for energy resources in the com­ing years and noted that “World War II started because we cut off Japan’s energy sup­ply” (though I gather some his­to­ri­ans would object to that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion). Murtha said he’s 50/​50 on whether he can get the money for more F-​​22s, but he said “Lockheed has given up” on get­ting the extra orders. 

Also, Murtha touched on the issue of an export ver­sion of the F-​​22 — prin­ci­pally to Japan who says only the F-​​22 can meet its range and speed require­ments for a new inter­cep­tor. Murtha said Sen. Daniel Inouye is work­ing with Japan to come up with the cash needed to “de-​​militarize” the F-​​22 (to remove the secret gad­gets and giz­mos from the US ver­sion) which he esti­mates will be around $300 mil­lion. Murtha thinks that’s way too opti­mistic and that gut­ting the F-​​22 for export will cost more along the lines of $1 billion. 

Murtha said he’s wor­ried about the high cost of main­tain­ing the Raptor as well — that it might be dif­fi­cult to bring that cost under con­trol and will con­tribute to major sticker shock among law­mak­ers (and a White House) who are look­ing for money to spend elsewhere. 

F-​​35 — Murtha said he was just as wor­ried about the long term costs of the F-​​35 and the delays in pro­duc­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal matu­rity with that pro­gram as he is with the tra­vails of the F-​​22. He said that even though the JSF is a pri­or­ity for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, his com­mit­tee may not give them the requested money for 2010. “I’m for the F-​​35. I’m for buy­ing the F-​​35. But I’m not nec­es­sar­ily for buy­ing it this year.“ 

EFV — Murtha was stunned when his staff learned that the EFV had an alu­minum under­body that would be warm but­ter to a mine or IED when ashore. He told the com­man­dant that the EFV pro­gram was “on the bub­ble” and that he’d bet­ter get con­trol of it and make good on the bil­lions invested in the pro­gram already. Murtha talked to Gates about the EFV as well at his meet­ing the pre­vi­ous day and revealed that Gates has his crit­i­cal eye on the pro­gram as well. “This has been going on for 25 years, this research, and it’s expen­sive as hell. You can’t keep spend­ing money on research and then come to us and say you’re just going to can­cel the pro­gram. That’s just not acceptable.”

(more…)

We’re going to host a live blog event today at 12:30pm EDT with Military​.com Editor Ward Carroll who will dis­cuss with Defense Tech and DoD Buzz read­ers the detailed 2010 Pentagon Budget rollout.

Make sure to watch the bud­get overview press con­fer­ence on the Pentagon Channel at 12:30pm and come back here to chat with Ward as defense offi­cials get into the weeds on what pro­grams will sur­vive the bud­get ax or fall vic­tim to DoD belt tightening.

The gumshoes from Military​.com, Defense Tech and DoD Buzz will be cov­er­ing the indi­vid­ual ser­vice bud­get roll­outs after the press con­fer­ence, so stay tuned for fur­ther details as they emerge.

– Christian

Defense Tech has learned that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is likely to name Amb. Ray Mabus to be the next Navy secretary.

As you know, Donald Winter resigned Friday, March 13, per his plan to give the Obama admin­is­tra­tion time to find a suc­ces­sor. As far as we know, no one else has bro­ken this story (cor­rec­tion: Inside the Navy broke it back in January), but I learned today from a well-​​placed source that Mabus has gone through most of the vet­ting needed before being named.

According to open source data, it looks like Mabus might have been a Harvard Law pro­toge of Obama’s. He was the Democratic gov­er­nor of Mississippi from ’88 to ’92 and was really inter­ested in becom­ing SecNav back when Clinton was elected. He lost out to John Dalton, a Little Rock, Ark., bank­ing mogul and Clinton confidant.

Instead, Mabus got picked to be ambas­sador to Saudi Arabia — but his quest for SecNav didn’t end there, my sources tell me. Mabus jumped on Obama’s band­wagon in the spring of 2007, help­ing solid­ify Mississippi for the Blue can­di­date. He was also an unpaid advi­sor to Obama on Middle East issues.

MSNBC reported in November that Mabus was in the hat for Education sec­re­tary, but as we know that didn’t happen.

No one in the Pentagon or the Hill was able to con­firm Mabus’s pick, but no one denied it either. Two tapped in sources con­firmed it with me.

– Christian

The Marine Corps aging heavy-​​lift heli­copters lack a high-​​hot capa­bil­ity, lim­it­ing where Marines can oper­ate in Afghanistans moun­tain­ous ter­rain. To pro­vide Marines fight­ing there with greater mobil­ity, the ser­vice will deploy a squadron of V-​​22 Osprey tilt-​​rotor air­craft to Afghanistan, said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway. By the end of the year, youre going to see Ospreys in Afghanistan. 

The Osprey, which had a rather trou­bled devel­op­ment period, has proven itself in com­bat con­di­tions in Iraq, where it has been oper­at­ing with the Marines for the past year. It has gone from a wounded duck to a poster child, in terms of what air­craft with that leap-​​ahead tech­nol­ogy can do, Conway said, and the Osprey will greatly expand the range of mis­sions the Marines can con­duct and ter­ri­tory where they can oper­ate in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has almost no road net­work and heli­copter, soon the Osprey, is really the only way to get around faster than a march­ing pace. 

One Osprey squadron is still in Iraq, but will be return­ing in a cou­ple of months. The next Osprey squadron to deploy will be going aboard ships with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, Conway said, to test the air­crafts abil­ity to han­dle salt and sea and give crews ship­board oper­at­ing expe­ri­ence. The Osprey was devel­oped to lift Marines from ships off­shore and rapidly carry them deep into con­tested ter­ri­tory. The squadron that fol­lows in the deploy­ment line up will then go to Afghanistan. 

Marine units have been sent to south­ern Afghanistan largely because they lack a heli­copter that can lift troops or cargo in what are called high-​​hot fly­ing con­di­tions. We couldnt han­dle the north, we couldnt do what the Army is doing today up in RC East because of the dra­matic ter­rain thats up there. Our (CH) –46 has seen age and ele­va­tion and tem­per­a­tures catch up with it, Conway said, speak­ing at a defense indus­try con­fer­ence in Washington on Wednesday. During the hot sum­mer months in Afghanistan the CH-​​46 could only carry 5 or 6 fully loaded Marines.

(more…)

Join us in about an hour for the next edi­tion of “The Weekly Buzz.” You can call in if you’d like and ask ques­tions about the week’s news cov­er­age from DoD Buzz, Defense Tech and Military​.com.

We’ll be dis­cussing the JLTV protest denials, the Afghanistan surge, DNI’s intel panel and Mattis’ new Corps struc­ture with DoD Buzz Editor Colin Clark and Military​.com con­trib­u­tor Greg Grant.

Hope you’ll join us…

– Christian

The pod­cast with secu­rity con­sul­tant and founder of The Combat Operator Jake Allen is ready for down­load below.

Some key points Jake made:

• A lot of the pirates are part-​​timers — fish­er­men not mak­ing enough money who see easy prey with bog slow ships.
• There need to be severe con­se­quences for this ilk — sink­ing pirate speed­boats and poten­tially killing maraud­ing bands will serve as a major deterrent.
• Piracy in the Gulf of Aden isn’t a huge finan­cial prob­lem — but it is one if you’re a sea­farer cap­tured by pirates.
• Shipping com­pa­nies should strongly con­sider trained, armed or unarmed secu­rity con­trac­tors to pro­tect ves­sels tran­sit­ing through the area — though this is not an inex­pen­sive proposition.
• Raiding pirate bas­tions with Marines or SEALs would yield tac­ti­cal suc­cess but cre­ate huge strate­gic prob­lems for the United States — a bad idea.

On the change from “Blackwater” to “Xe”:

• Changing the name is not enough — the com­pany needs to change its busi­ness model and con­cen­trate on new, more pos­i­tive ventures.
• The com­pany needs to be more decen­tral­ized — allow dif­fer­ent busi­nesses within Xe to act on their own…enough of just Erik Prince and Gary Jackson speak­ing for the enterprise.
• The global eco­nomic down­turn has begun to dry up busi­ness for PMCs.
• XE needs to take a hard look at all their busi­ness enti­ties and keep ones that can really fur­ther a more pos­i­tive brand.

Listen to the entire inter­view for more details…

– Christian

The Air Forces chief of staff was care­ful to with­hold his pro­fes­sional mil­i­tary advice until Defense Secretary Robert Gates gets it, but Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters this morn­ing that he would not dis­pute com­ments by the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs late last year that the ser­vice would get an addi­tional 60 F-​​22s, for a total of 243.

Schwartz then poured cold water on any hopes the Japanese and Australians might have of buy­ing F-​​22s, say­ing some of the tech­nolo­gies in the plane are just too sen­si­tive to export. However, he said it was a pos­si­bil­ity that allies could pay for planes that were mod­i­fied exten­sively enough to elim­i­nate the export con­cerns. Given how expen­sive that would be, Schwartz has prob­a­bly put the kibosh on export sales.

The Air Force chief of staff defended the deci­sion to scale back the long sacred Air Force require­ment of 381 F-​​22s, say­ing the ser­vice had per­formed hon­est and objec­tive analy­sis to deter­mine the new num­ber of planes. Ill be happy to defend the num­bers once they become avail­able, he told us, adding that the new fleet size offers mod­er­ate risk to the nation.

Of course, this doesnt nec­es­sar­ily mean that 60 is the exact num­ber every­one has decided on, but Schwartz didnt try to pour cold water on it either He did say the final deci­sion should be out very close to the con­gres­sion­ally man­dated date of March 1.

Asked about John Youngs com­ments last November that the F-​​22s mis­sion capa­ble rate was too low and expected enhance­ments too expen­sive for the coun­try to afford, Schwartz said the truth of the mat­ter is the F-​​22s rate is 60 per­cent includ­ing stealth issues and is in the mid– to high-​​70s with­out low observ­able issues. Looking at the sys­tem over­all, the F-​​22s reli­a­bil­ity is respectable, he said.

Read the rest of this story and more acqui­si­tion news at DoD Buzz.

– Colin Clark