Leavenworth Strategist

‘Empire Challenge’ Promotes Intelligence Sharing

By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9, 2010 – A demonstration project under way at 20 sites in the United States and overseas is helping to break down technological barriers to promote more interoperability and better intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data sharing among coalition partners in Afghanistan.

U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Empire Challenge 2010 kicked off two weeks ago and continues through Aug. 13, bringing together about 2,000 participants worldwide in a live, joint and coalition ISR interoperability demonstration, Air Force Col. George J. “Skip” Krakie told reporters today.

The annual exercise showcases emerging technologies and provides lessons learned to improve intelligence collection and analysis and test better ways to get it out to warfighters who need it.

This year’s demonstration, based on shortfalls identified by warfighters themselves, is focused on improving multinational interoperability and data sharing, explained Krakie, chief of Joint Forces Command’s ISR integration division...

Belgian Air Component participates in first Red Flag-Alaska

by Airman 1st Class Christopher Gross
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson

6/25/2010 - JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AFNS) -- Twenty-seven members from the Belgian Air Component participated in their first Red Flag-Alaska exercise here.

The BAC 15th Air Transport Wing 20th Squadron arrived here June 8, with two C-130 Hercules, and will be participating until June 25, when the exercise ends.

Red Flag-Alaska is a Pacific Air Forces-directed field training exercise for U.S. and coalition forces flown under simulated air combat conditions. It is conducted on the Joint Pacific Alaskan Range Complex, the largest air-ground training complex in the U.S.

The JPARC is one of the reasons the BAC is taking part in this exercise. They don't have as much space in Belgium to train. Here they are able to expand on their training while working with their coalition partners.

Exercises like this are helpful because they have a bigger playground to train and improve mission capabilities, BAC Lt. Teodor Speda said. Those participating in Red Flag-Alaska have more than 67,000 square miles to conduct training scenarios.

Disarmament process begins in northern Côte d’Ivoire, UN reports

16 June 2010 (UN News Service)– The disarmament and demobilization of 600 former combatants has begun in the northern, rebel-held town of Korhogo, the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) reports.

The soldiers from the Forces armées des Forces nouvelles (FAFN) who demobilized yesterday are part of a group of 1,200 ex-combatants who are expected to disarm and enter cantonment, and to join an integrated national army.

At a ceremony yesterday the Secretary-General’s Principal Deputy Special Representative in the West African country, Abou Moussa, said UNOCI would do its part to make the process a success, and encouraged all the participants to see it through. The process is being monitored by the UN mission and other parties...

Acting on the recommendation of the Secretary-General, the Security Council late last month extended the mandate of UNOCI and the French forces which are supporting it, for one month – “in order to give Côte d’Ivoire a chance to walk the final mile to the elections with the full support of the United Nations.”

Biggest peacekeeping force at crossroads in Congo

By MICHELLE FAUL (AP) – May 10, 2010

MBANDAKA, Congo — More than a decade and billions of dollars after U.N. peacekeepers deployed to Congo during a civil war, President Joseph Kabila wants them out.

The 20,000 peacekeepers tasked with guarding a country the size of Western Europe have been unable to protect civilians from a variety of rebel groups who kidnap children, rape women and decapitate enemies. Some of the peacekeepers themselves are even accused of sexual abuse, gold trading and corruption.

The United Nations isn't signing off on a date for leaving but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended they start with up to 2,000 troops leaving peaceful areas by June 30, which marks the 50th anniversary of Congo's independence from Belgium. Officials had planned to start in Equateur — a relatively peaceful corner of the country until a conflict erupted six months ago. Last month, more than 100 insurgents there overwhelmed a handful of U.N. peacekeepers guarding an airport.

Congolese officials say it was the latest evidence of the U.N. mission's failure to protect civilians...

NATO Member Troops Parade On Red Square

(RFE/RL) Troops from four NATO countries for the first time joined Russia's military parade in Moscow's Red Square to mark the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Soldiers from the United States, Britain, France, and Poland marched along with Russian troops as some two dozen world leaders looked on.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the heads of almost all the former Soviet republics were among the leaders that attended the event.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi cancelled their scheduled trips to Moscow in order to focus on the ongoing crisis surrounding the euro currency. There was no senior official from Britain to watch the parade, which was attended by 76 British soldiers from the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards.

With 10,000 Russian troops, hundreds of pieces of military hardware, including tanks and ballistic missiles, as well as a total of 127 military aircraft flying past, the 70-minute parade was the largest event of its kind since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In Tallinn, NATO Ministers Search For Solidarity

(RFE/RL) April 22, 2010 By Ahto Lobjakas

A two-day informal NATO foreign ministers' meeting that just kicked off in Tallinn, Estonia, will broadly focus on generating unity on some of the thornier issues facing the alliance.

Chief among these are burden sharing between the United States and the rest of the allies, the alliance's future goals and focus, and threat perception.

Within this context, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, Russia, and the operation in Afghanistan feature prominently on the meeting's agenda.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen identified maintaining and advancing solidarity as the main challenge before the alliance.

Speaking in Tallinn ahead of an alliance foreign ministers' meeting, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen indicated NATO's struggle for a mission and a role in the post-Cold War era has yet to be resolved.

"More than six decades after NATO's creation, solidarity remains the alliance's most precious asset," Rasmussen said. "But like all precious assets, it cannot be taken for granted."

UN troops unlikely to pull out from Congo

(Deutsche Welle)  Next month, France is due to present a draft of a new resolution on the UN mandate for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the UN Security Council. 

Many observers are already asking how the recent violence in Mbandaka in the northwestern province of Equateur, where rebels seized an airport and killed 13 people, will affect the future of the UN's involvement. With more than 20,000 troops, the UN mission (MONUC) is the largest and most expensive on the planet...

Chad, UN at Odds Over Peacekeeping Force

(VOA) Scott Stearns | Dakar31 March 2010

The United Nations and the government of Chad are to wrap up talks on extending a U.N. peacekeeping force in the African country. The two sides disagree over the future size of that force.

Chadian President Idriss Deby wants a rapid withdrawal of soldiers in the peacekeeping force known as MINURCAT.  His government says only several-hundred police officers from the force need stay to guard civilian personnel and facilities responsible for distributing relief supplies.

U.N. negotiators want as many as 1,000 troops to remain in Chad and the Central African Republic.  They are providing security for humanitarian assistance to as many as 250,000  Sudanese refugees and another 250,000 combined Chadian and Central African Republic civilians displaced by their own conflicts.

MINURCAT has already been extended through May 15.  U.N. officials say there has been progress on extending some civilian components of the force, including the training of legal staff.  But if these talks in Ndjamena do not produce a broader extension, most of the soldiers in the force will start drawing down in six weeks.

The U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Leroy, told the Security Council this month the full MINURCAT force is still needed.

UN plans to end DR Congo peacekeeping mission

(BBC) The UN has begun talks with Democratic Republic of Congo on withdrawing its peacekeeping mission - the biggest UN operation in the world.

UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said his officials would take a month to assess how the pullout of 20,500 personnel could be carried out.

The current mandate of the mission, known as Monuc, expires in May.

UN troops have a mixed record in DR Congo, with accusations of sex abuse, gold smuggling and running from rebels...

NATO: Nukes Still Needed For 'Credible Deterrence'

(RFL/RFE) March 12, 2010

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the reduction of nuclear arsenals has to be carried out in a balanced manner, but that atomic weapons were still needed for deterrence reasons.

At an international conference in Warsaw, Rasmussen said that nuclear weapons will continue to be "a major element of credible deterrence in the future."