SEALS to offer swiming lessons

The Hampton Roads Pilot has an article about a new US Navy SEAL program to teach prospective trainees how to swim.

New UK Counter-insurgency Manual

The Times has an article about the UK's new Counter-insurgency Manual. The article seems to focus on on the tactic of paying Afghans more than the Taliban does.

Military Historians in Afghanistan

The Toronto Star has an article about military historians who work for the Canadian Department of National Defence. In addition to working in the archives, the historians travel to operations in places like Afghanistan to make sure that war diaries and other records are properly maintained and collected.

City folk and country folk best at detecting IEDs

The Boston Globe reports that soldiers from rural areas (especially hunters) and ones from inner cities are best at detecting IEDs.

Military researchers have found that two groups of personnel were particularly good at spotting anomalies: those with hunting backgrounds, who traipsed the woods as youth in search of a deer or turkey; and those who grew up in urban circumstances where it is often important to know which gang controls which block.

Navy considers swapping crews in Arctic

The Free Press has an article that says the Canadian Navy is considering swapping out crews mid-mission for ships on arctic patrols. The Canadian Coast Guard already does this.

CF anti-NBC special ops unit

The Legion magazine has a somewhat sensational article about the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit. This is the special forces unit that responds to nuclear, biological and chemical incidents on behalf of the Canadian Forces.

As I say the article is a bit sensationalistic but it does contain some interesting bits of information.

For example, one of the unit's member says that she is the first woman in Canada's special forces and that she has only been a member for two years.

Master Corporal M. is one of the decontamination specialists. Her boss introduces her as the first female operator in Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, but for this two-year veteran of the unit, labels of any kind aren’t really to her taste.

CF take out Taliban mortar team

The Stars and Stripes has an article about Canadian soldiers attacking a Taliban mortar team in Afghanistan. The article is a perfect example of the sort of thing one never sees in Canadian news.

US helicopter medics in Afghanistan

Danger Room has an article about US Air Force airborne medics in Afghanistan.

Each of these pararescue jumpers, or PJs, was not only trained as a kind of airborne emergency medical technician, stabilizing patients and offering basic trauma care. They could also perform battlefield surgery — inserting chest tubes, removing fluid from around the heart, even performing amputations, if need be. And they could do all that after parachuting into hostile territory to rescue a downed pilot, or scuba diving into murky waters, or squeezing underneath a wrecked vehicle, or rappelling from the helicopter into a free-fire zone. That’s what the sliding bar along the ceiling of the Black Hawk’s cabin was for.

Honesty Traces

Danger Room has an article about using GPS records of military vehicle movements to create what is called an honesty trace to determine vulnerabilities to IED attacks.

Windsor Naval Reserve Division thinking of moving

The Windsor Star reports that HMCS Hunter, the local Naval Reserve Division, is considering moving house.

The Department of National Defence is negotiating with the Windsor Port Authority to lease the former Mill Cove Marina lands at the foot of Mill Street to build a new headquarters for the local naval reserve division.

CF drops donkey experiment in Afghanistan

The Halifax Chronicle Herald reports that the Canadian Forces have called off an experiment to use donkeys as, well, beasts of burden in Afghanistan.

The hope was the donkey,, which can survive with little water and carry nearly 160 kilograms of gear, would be able to help.

But the animal didn’t live up to the billing that has made it popular with United States and British soldiers, who use pack animals to support special operations in the mountains.

The Americans studied the use of camels, dogs and mules — but the donkey came out tops in the ratings.

New German Rules of Engagement

The Times has an article about changes to the German Army's rules of engagement in Afghanistan. The changes reduce the amount of red tape that prevents German soldiers from taking action.

The seven-page pocket guide to combat tucked into the breast pocket of every German soldier offers such instructions as: “Before opening fire you are expected to declare loudly, in English, ‘United Nations — stop, or I will fire,” followed by a version in Pashtu — Melgaero Mellatuna- Dreesch, ka ne se dasee kawum!”

The alert must also be issued in Dari, and the booklet, devised by a committee in some faraway ministerial office, adds: “If the situation allows, the warning should be repeated.” The joke going round Nato mess tents poses the question: “How can you identify a German soldier? He is the corpse clutching a pocket guide.”

US Women in Combat

The New York Times has an article about women in combat in the US Armed Forces.

The Marine Corps, which is overwhelmingly male and designed for combat, recently opened two more categories of intelligence jobs to women, recognizing the value of their work in Iraq and Afghanistan. In gradually admitting women to combat, the United States will be catching up to the rest of the world. More than a dozen countries allow women in some or all ground combat occupations. Among those pushing boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited women for the infantry and sent them to Afghanistan.

Special Ops Submarines launch robots

Danger Room has an article about the various robots - flying, floating and diving- that are launched by US Navy special operations submarines.

Cdn Navy bans beards at sea

The Canadian Navy is banning beards at sea. Sailors will still be able to wear them on shore assignments.

“I know this decision may be difficult to accept, but it was not made lightly,” says Command Chief Petty Officer Robert Cleroux. “It was absolutely necessary for operational reasons. Facial hair, beards in particular, prevent a proper face-to-face-piece seal when wearing respiratory protection systems. When the argument boils down to safety versus tradition, the safety of our sailors must remain paramount in all of our decisions.”

US Special Forces to get high tech uniforms

Danger Room has an article about US Special Forces adopting some of the technology developed in the cancelled Land Warrior.

The remnants of the Land Warrior project were offloaded on the “Manchu” soldiers of the 4/9 infantry battalion in Iraq, who stripped down the package and sharpened its features. It worked so well, an entire Army brigade was equipped with the ensembles, and just shipped off to Afghanistan. Then the Pentagon approved a request by a special forces commander at Ft. Bragg, N.C. to get the improved Land Warrior, called the Ground Soldier Ensemble, tested and ready to outfit a brigade in Iraq by 2010.

Older recruits in US Army

The New York Times has an update on older recruits since the US Army raised it maximum enlistment age to 42.

The Army recruits about 80,000 soldiers a year, and the older recruits are having an impact even on basic training, Army officers say. At classes here, as many as one in seven soldiers are over 35, and many drill sergeants now look to the older soldiers as mentors, or proxy disciplinarians.

Staff Sgt. Arron Barnes, Fort Sill’s drill sergeant of the year in 2009, said the older recruits tended to bring technical skills and maturity, were easier to instruct and were often more committed than teenage soldiers.

CF Doctor / Diver retires after 40 years

The Ottawa Citizen has an article about Commander David Carpenter who is retiring from the Canadian Navy after 40 years service.

He wears the badge of a navy diver. The navy doesn't hand them out to people who learn from books. He was 34 when he decided to add hyperbaric medicine to his list of specialties. He went to diving school in Esquimalt, B.C. The waters of the North Pacific are bitterly cold and every day at diving school started with a swim of about a kilometre. They wore wetsuits and if any man failed to finish the course in 20 minutes, everybody had to work in the cold water without gloves for the rest of the day.

Dr. Carpenter decided he would never be the reason for his much younger classmates losing their gloves, and he kept that promise to himself.

SAS have parachuted in Iraq

The Telegraph reports that the SAS have used parachutes on operations in Iraq.

On at least a dozen occasions SAS soldiers using BT80 parachutes jumped from the back of a Hercules aircraft at around 15,000ft. After steering for several miles, they landed silently close to insurgent strongholds on an area the size of a football pitch.

The troops of up 12 men then quietly made their way on foot either to begin an operation or set up a covert observation post where they would mount electronic devices linked to voice and facial recognition software to spy on insurgents.

Canada's eye on the Atlantic

The Halifax Chronicle Herald has an article about the operations room in Halifax that monitors Canada's east coast.

They work "24-7" out of secure Halifax offices and one day may ward off something as massive as a terrorist attack or as minor as a small oil leak from a visiting ship.