Army War College officers visit Peters Library
Colonel Paul Cravey, an Army aviation officer, said it’s imperative for the Pentagon and Congress to continue to support unmanned aerial support systems, such as drones, to protect deployed soldiers.
Col. Frank Harrar, a special forces Green Beret, described his experiences dealing with insider attacks in Afghanistan.
Torture is torture, and evidence gained from its use is inadmissible in tribunal courts trying terrorists or civilian combatants, according to an Army Judge Advocate General.
“The Army has said, ‘we’re going to abide by Geneva Conventions.’ So, if someone was waterboarded for three hours and that person admits something, that can’t be used. The CIA’s attorneys have differed a little bit on that,” said Lieutenant Colonel Warren Wells.
The Army JAG was one of a seven-member military panel comprised mostly of officers from the Army War College. The officers gave short lectures Feb. 10 on the state of military affairs abroad, and the implications of a fighting force that’s mandated to be downsized from 550,000 to roughly 470,000 active duty personnel by 2020.
Col. Paul Cravey, an Army aviator, said it’s imperative that the Pentagon and Congress continue to support unmanned aerial drones on the battlefield.
“You may think of the CIA or Amazon when I say drone, but when I think of a drone, I think of something that saves soldiers’ lives,” Cravey said to the packed audience in Peters Township Public Library.
Cravey described the three basic size types of unmanned drones the Army deploys in battle: the Raven, Shadow and Grey Eagle.
“A Raven, the soldier throws this up like a paper airplane, can control it for two hours … The Shadow is our medium-sized drone. You need a slingshot device to launch it and a runway to land it. Both of these types are primarily for reconnaissance. And the Grey Eagle, this is our big one. It can fly 22 hours straight and can carry a payload of four hellfire missiles. (Both the Eagle and Shadow have) a broadcast intranet that can stream its camera feed to a battle network, so everyone can see what’s going on. Often we’ll have our Apache co-pilots controlling one of these units while in the cockpit,” he said.
Cravey said while the debate over the ethical use of drones continues, he’s for a force that’s backed by as much unmanned support as possible.
“From my foxhole, I want the most advanced, capable aerial support system behind me, and I bet a lot of families would, too,” he said. “It helps bring soldiers home safe instead of in flag-draped coffins.”
According to a report from The Guardian, a 13-year-old boy was among those killed in an airstrike from a U.S. drone in Yemen on Jan. 27.
Though a congressional mandate has the Army’s standing force downsizing, according to a 2013 structure realignment study commissioned by the Army, there would be “no significant impact” on the ability to defend the United States and its interests. Col. Chuck Worshim, an Army Acquisition officer, said the U.S. Missile Defense System is part of that security.
“Since the program started in the ’50s, we have not had a single missile attack on U.S. soil,” he said.
Worshim credited Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush with significant improvements to the program. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed Star Wars, was the first push to develop the “globally-effective and layered” system that now costs $8 billion each year to operate.
“It’s invisible protection and you don’t think about it. But that’s the point. This is an umbrella of protection that engages any ballistic missile at any point in their trajectory,” Worshim said.
There are 31 countries with ballistic missile stockpiles, according to databases with the Arms Control Association. Of those 31, the U.S., China and Russia are the only ones known to have intercontinental reach with their weapons.
While lobbing missiles thousands of miles away doesn’t pose a practical threat, according to the panel, staying close to potential enemies’ borders as well as our allies has been the point of global deployments to provide a heads-up when there’s a threat.
“We’re not going to kill or capture our way to victory in this new global fight against terrorism and protecting Western ideals,” said Col. Frank Harrar, a special forces Green Beret born and raised in Wheeling, W.Va.
“That’s why we have to engage overseas to help other countries better themselves in governance. It builds stronger partnerships. History shows we’re likely never to go to war alone,” he said.
One aspect of the coalition building, Harrar said, is each state’s National Guard partnering with a country.
“For the past 20 years, Pennsylvania’s National Guard has drilled with Lithuanian troops,” he said.
In his duties in security forces peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, Harrar offered insight to the morale-crippling incidents known as green-on-blue insider attacks.
“These are nothing new. They’ve been found to be part of guerrilla warfare even when we were in Vietnam. There’s a level of trust and risk you have to assess every time you’re in these situations. When we met with tribe leaders, maybe one or two of us were actually engaged with them; the rest were watching each others’ backs and the tribesmen’s movements,” Harrar said.
Col. Willie Nuckols, an Army calvaryman, also said his teams’ investigations in Afghanistan revealed an informative aspect about insurgents who would don Afghani police or army uniforms and kill U.S. allies.
“We found the insider attacks often happened with insurgents who were coming off of ‘deployments.’ We figured this out and had local tribes sort of intern them with Imams for two weeks and get a kind of decompression treatment that was spiritual and let them think about things.”
Col. Harrar said despite those clever approaches to deterring insider attacks, there needs to be a reality check for those deployed.
“I stick to (Marine Corps) Maj. Gen. James Mattis’s advice: ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,'” he said.