May 17, 2003
CAMP DOHA, Kuwait – Coalition forces continue to assist in developing a safer and more secure environment in Iraq. Among recent developments:
MOSUL
Civil affairs personnel accompanied an ORHA Engineering Assessment Team to the Mosul Courthouse to assist in a top-to-bottom assessment of structural needs for the facility.
352d Civil Affairs Command is assisting I Marine Expeditionary Force to develop practical initiatives to expedite Liquid Propane Gas distribution in southern Iraq via railroad.
101st Airborne Assault soldiers delivered propane to 16 sites and conducted inspections of 20 farm combines in the Makhmur area.
AL AMARAH
Civil Military Cooperation personnel facilitated a meeting between the Iraqi engineers that resulted in the transportation and replacement of a damaged electrical tower, and restoration of power to the city today. Power is assessed at 40% of requirement, but exceeding pre-war levels.
United Kingdom fuel tankers are now traveling to Basra with support to provide regular supplies of fuel to Amarah residents.
UMM QASR
The Motor Vessel Rise has completely offloaded. Civil Affairs personnel coordinated with the town council for delivery of 1000 lbs of sugar.
Civil Affairs officials coordinated delivery of 500 gallons of machine lubricating oil from the port to the town’s electric generators.
Civil Affairs officials met with representative from Institute of Asian Culture and Development to coordinate logistical needs, and arrange for a team of 10 doctors that will see patients for a 5-day period starting May 15.
AD DINWANIYAH
Marine Civil Affairs personnel developed a public service announcement that addresses key issues such as education concerns, police hiring, and salary distribution.
7th Engineer Support Battalion participated in a humanitarian assistance visit to the teaching hospital , and Marine civil affairs representatives assisted 5th Marine Regiment medical staff in a process to identify reliable hospital employees.
Governance Support Team personnel: (1) met with the Water Department Technical Division to discuss the availability of chlorine for water treatment, assess resupply stocks, and to establish a process of periodic checks to ensure adequate supplies of chlorine are maintained; (2) met with Ministry of Agriculture officials to review the entire crop food production process from planting to final distribution, and provide detail to form the basis of a deliberate assessment.
AL HILLAH
Civil Affairs officials met with the Assistant Governor, and participated in a review of his plans for restructuring of the current governmental administration, which should provide the basis for effective civil governance in the foreseeable future..
Governance Support Team personnel met with members of the Human Rights Association and the leaders of four local tribes to discuss how the tribal leaders may be used as a constructive conduit to build cooperation, understanding, and trust between the transitional authority and the citizens of Hillah.
Civil Affairs personnel assisted electrical and glass contractors to assess needs and compile estimates for improvements to the two local fire stations.
The Marine Corps gave out awards to 9 Iraqi police officers at the center city substation for bravery displayed in the apprehension of two wanted men.
Governance Support Team personnel: (1) completed the twenty-dollar ORHA payment to all 318 Department of Agriculture, and 400 Department of Education employees; (2) hosted a meeting of World Food Program (WFP) personnel with Disaster Assistance Response Team, and ORHA representatives to discus bulk shipments of wheat, rice, and flour, and maximizing the productivity and security of WFP warehouses and silos.
TALLIL
The 3d Marine Air Wing Medevac'd an Iraqi boy with an urgent, penetrating eye injury from Tallil to an Army hospital at Kuwait International airport for immediate surgery. The father was permitted to accompany the boy.
BAGHDAD
The 308th Civil Affairs Brigade reported that the first Humanitarian Assistance supply flight from the US arrived today. A McDonnell- Douglas MD-11 of medical supplies completed a flight from Atlanta to Baghdad via Spain.
Virgin Airlines announced their intent to fly a major shipment of Medical Aid to Iraq, this time to Baghdad. They have been overwhelmed with offers of support following the publicity of their first flight to Basra.
V Corps Division engineers repaired 44 power lines yesterday and conducted assessments of 7 facilities.
The 18th Military Police provided 12 security teams to escort fuel trucks 17 fuel trucks from a fuel plant to various fuel distribution points within the City of Baghdad
KARBALA
Civil Affairs teams with the 7th Marine Regiment: (1) supervised the police department as they began the third iteration of the police-training program; (2) escorted a one-week supply (11 benzene gasoline trucks) into Karbala, (3) met with the Karbala judges and presented them the “Agreement to Disavow Party Affiliation” for signature denounce the Ba’ath Party, Saddam Hussein and his regime, and (4) loaned water-testing equipment to the water treatment plant so their fluid specialist could test the water system.
AS SAMAWAH
Marines are facilitating the plan s for large-scale sanitation and sewage rehabilitation projects for the city.
CA conducted the first day of payments of the $20.00 ORHA stipend for As Samawah.
AN NAJAF
Marines of the 7th Regiment met with a trucking company to negotiate a contract for 6 private trucks to supplement the 4 government trucks that deliver diesel fuel to the electricity-generating turbine. We continue to assess the natural gas supply.
AL KUT
Marines of the 23rd Regiment met with Directors of the Water and Sewer Departments of Wasit Governate and obtained 2,000,000 dinars to begin restoration of several water and sewer vehicles and pump stations.
Security Still Most Serious Concern for U.S. Forces in Iraq
By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2003 – Security is currently the most serious concern of U.S. forces in Iraq, and commanders are taking substantial steps to stem lawlessness, several American officials said today.
Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for maintaining the peace in and around Baghdad, said 90 percent of the problems his unit deals with stem from common criminals. The rest comes from attacks by forces loyal to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, he said in a video teleconference from Baghdad with reporters in the Pentagon.
Also, in a Baghdad news conference today, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the career diplomat President Bush sent to act as Iraq's civil administrator, noted that shortly before the war began, Hussein released more than 100,000 prisoners in a nationwide amnesty.
"Many of these people were political prisoners, but many of them were common, violent criminals," he said. "It's time the criminals were back in jail, and that's where we'll put them." He added that U.S. forces in Iraq have arrested 300 criminals in the past two days.
Coalition forces are working hard to give authority back to Iraqi police forces. About 7,000 Iraqi police officers have returned to work, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted during a Pentagon press conference today. "And that number should also increase in the days ahead," he said.
Regional commanders are also upping the number of American military police in Iraq. The number of MPs attached to the 3rd Infantry should double to nearly 4,000 soldiers "by the end of the month," Blount said. He mentioned that his MPs were conducting "a few" joint patrols with Baghdad police today.
Division troops are guarding more than 200 separate sites throughout Baghdad and are working diligently to remove weapons and ammunition from the city. Blount described the city as a "big weapons store."
To date, soldiers have removed more than 1,000 truckloads full of weapons, military equipment and ammunition, including more than 35 million rounds of ammunition. "(Baghdad) was scattered with arms and ammo in every school, every vacant lot, and hospitals and houses," he said.
Sixty to 70 truckloads full of weapons and ammunition leave Baghdad every day, and officials estimate it will take about two to three more weeks to finish the job, Blount said.
The general said he has high hopes for a new program he called "Task Force Neighborhood," in which soldiers choose a different Baghdad neighborhood to help out each day. "Every day a neighborhood section will get a full-court press of support that will include garbage pickup, medical assistance, ordnance cleanup, and anything else we can do in a day to help the neighborhoods," he said.
Soldiers hire about 20 to 30 day laborers in each neighborhood to "instill a sense of pride and responsibility" in the local citizens and "give some infusion of money into the neighborhood."
Blount said he hopes the program will help instill "good will between the Iraqi people that we're here trying to help and the American soldiers."
Intermittent power in many Baghdad neighborhoods and other parts of Iraq doesn't help the security situation. As power becomes more dependable in more areas, streetlights will stay on at night, which will help stem some crime problems, Blount said. He added that he hopes removing trash and war debris will help in the overall situation in the city.
During his briefing, Rumsfeld said that he tracks the situation on the ground in 27 metropolitan areas in Iraq. Many of those areas are now better off than they were before fighting began there, he said.
In particular, Bremer mentioned, water quality in Basra is "better than it has been in years," and more Iraqis have access to electricity than they did while Hussein was in power.
"In the next week I think you'll start hearing a much more positive story coming out in reference to security in Baghdad," Blount said.
Coalition forces are also aggressively dealing with holdouts from Hussein's regime. In Tikrit, Hussein's hometown, 4th Infantry Division forces today staged a raid on a Baath party safe house, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the press conference with Rumsfeld.
The general said the soldiers detained "maybe several dozen" people, possibly including a U.S. Central Command "most wanted" Iraqi official.
"We don't know yet," Myers said. "But we're trying to run that down."
Despite the problems, Bremer said, Iraq is "not a country in anarchy."
"People are going about their business. They are going about their lives," he said. "Saddam Hussein was in power for 20 years. His instruments and means of brutality and repression run deep into society and throughout it.
"We have an obligation to the Iraqi people now to build the new Iraq without those instruments."
Troops from the 3rd Infantry Division are working diligently to remove weapons and ammunition from the city. Maj. Gen. David Blount, division commander, described the city as a "big weapons store." Photo by Jim Garamone.
To date, soldiers have removed more than 1,000 truckloads full of weapons, military equipment and ammunition, including more than 35 million rounds of ammunition. "(Baghdad) was scattered with arms and ammo in every school, every vacant lot, and hospitals and houses," said Maj. Gen. David Blount, 3rd Infantry Division commander in a briefing from Baghdad today. Photo by Jim Garamone.
Fleet Battle Experiment Turns War-Fighting Theory Into Reality
Release Date: 5/13/2003 9:40:00 PM
By Journalist 1st Class Kurt Wesseling, Tandem Thrust 03 Joint Information Bureau Public Affairs
GUAM (NNS) -- After landing aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) at sea May 1, President George W. Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, the world for the first time witnessed how quickly U.S. force commanders could identify, target and engage enemy high-value leadership targets. What the president did not mention in his address is how U.S. military leaders have acquired the ability to act so swiftly when engaging such time-critical targets.
The rapidity with which U.S. forces are now able to attack military or terrorist targets anytime, anywhere, has not happened by accident. According to Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, Vice Adm. Robert F. Willard, the ability to attack quickly is, in part, the result of many lessons learned during the Navy Warfare Development Command’s (NWDC) 12-year series of fleet battle experiments.
The current experiment, Fleet Battle Experiment Kilo (FBE-K), is examining command and control objectives, as well as the Chief of Naval Operations’ Sea Shield and Sea Strike objectives. Fleet battle experiments are designed to examine innovative war fighting concepts in a sea-based environment. This year’s FBE-K took place concurrently with exercise Tandem Thrust '03 in the Western Pacific in and around the Mariana Islands.
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The director of NWDC’s Maritime Battle Center, Capt. Kevin Morrissey, is particularly enthused about the participation of Australian Defence forces in FBE-K. “This is the first time that Australian systems have been tied into U.S systems in a high-level simulation architecture,” Morrissey said.
Since Australia and the United States are working together in FBE-K, both American and Australian doctrine and technology will grow at the same pace, allowing for much improved future interoperability. Morrissey expects the unprecedented cooperation to result in, “an incredible improvement in the future war fighting capabilities of coalition partners.”
A key initiative of FBE-K is the testing of the joint fires network (JFN), formerly known as Navy fires network. JFN is a network-centric warfare family of sea, air, land and space-based intelligence gathering systems. JFN will eventually allow all U.S. military commanders and those of certain allied nations to share a common battlespace view. Regardless of whether a military decision maker is Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps or Army, they will have access to the same data.
According to Cmdr. John Covell, FBE-K director, the JFN initiative is essentially an effort intended to shorten the time it takes to identify a target and execute an attack on it.
JFN provides near real-time intelligence through the collection of data provided by imagery and other intelligence gathering sensors. During the experiment, computer generated or “virtual” intelligence gathering assets, such as virtual “Predator” unmanned aerial vehicles and virtual U-2 surveillance aircraft, are used to give the tests greater realism and save millions of dollars.
“The data feeds received from these sensors are fed into the JFN system aboard USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19),” said Covell. “From there, intelligence officers and petty officers are able to take the information they are receiving and turn it into something that can be targeted.”
Simply stated, JFN allows time-critical targets to be engaged by ships or aircraft quicker than ever before.
Willard credits the FBEs with helping to transform yesterday’s experimental war fighting initiatives and concepts into today’s remarkable reality. He said the steady improvements brought about by the FBEs are typically more evolutionary than revolutionary.
“In almost every FBE since 1991, there has been at least some small technology or process development initiative to try and advance our ability to turn quickly on a target that we want to strike immediately,” said Willard. “This current experiment, FBE-K, is no different. This one happened to be occurring as the war in Iraq is winding down, but nonetheless, we’re advancing it even farther with the focus on joint fires network.”
Because of the advancements made to JFN during fleet battle experiments, U.S. commanders no longer have to spend long periods of time waiting for the completion of the target acquisition cycle.
Snippy's Pic of the Week
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Colonel Gregory Cook, 615th Air Mobility Operations Group Commander, atop a tank during the sight-survey of an abandoned Iraqi Air Base, Apr. 25, 2003, in support of Iraqi Freedom. Operation Iraqi Freedom is the multi-national coalition effort to liberate the Iraqi people, eliminate weapons of mass destruction and to end the regime of Saddam Hussein. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman JoAnn S. Makinano)(Released)
