Published: 12/11/2012

In a meeting with Kuwait’s amir in Kuwait City today, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta expressed strong confidence in the longstanding U.S.-Kuwaiti defense relationship and in the ability of both countries to work together to address common security challenges in the Gulf region and beyond.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said in a statement that in the meeting with Amir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah, Panetta underscored the importance the U.S. defense strategy places on the Middle East, and commended the emir for Kuwait's leadership role in fostering peace and security in the region.

The secretary and the amir also discussed the crisis in Syria, the problem of cyber threats, and Kuwait's recently completed parliamentary elections and ongoing commitment to the rule of law, Little added.

Panetta’s first official visit to Kuwait is also the first for a U.S. defense secretary in five years.
 

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Published: 12/11/2012

On his first official visit to Kuwait, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today that the nation is an important partner with a longstanding U.S. bilateral defense partnership.

More than 13,500 U.S. forces serve in Kuwait, the secretary told reporters traveling with him. The last visit to Kuwait by a U.S. defense secretary was almost five years ago, he added.

Kuwait is strategically located at the head of the Persian Gulf between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The United States and Kuwait “share a history of cooperation that goes back to the first Gulf War,” Panetta said, “and I look forward to discussing with the government of Kuwait how can we enhance that partnership in the face of regional security challenges in the area.”

Together, U.S. and Kuwaiti troops conduct security cooperation activities and are involved in joint exercises and training, the secretary said.

“Our presence in Kuwait and throughout the Gulf helps enhance the capabilities of partner nations, deters aggression and helps ensure that we’re better able to respond to crises in the region,” Panetta added.

The new U.S. defense strategy makes clear the United States will maintain a force presence in the Middle East, he said, and the department is maintaining a very strong and flexible presence there.

With nearly 50,000 U.S. troops in the region, the United States is in a position to be able to respond to any contingency that arises there, the secretary said.

“Kuwait,” he added, “plays a critical role in our ability to do that.”

Panetta said one of the main reasons for the trip is to visit troops during the holiday season, “and to express on behalf of the nation our best wishes for the holidays to all of them.”

It’s a tough time of year to be away from loved ones, he added.

“Since 9/11, so many have spent so many holidays away from home, the secretary said. “I want them to hear directly from me how much I appreciate their dedication, their commitment, their sacrifice and their willingness to put their lives on the line to keep our country safe so far away from their families.

“Our hope,” he added, “is that ultimately, one day soon, they can be home with their families for Christmas.”
 

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Published: 12/11/2012

The Department of Defense today announced five grants from the Office of Economic Adjustment, including an $18.3 million grant to the Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration to improve access to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

The department also announced a $35,247,240 grant to Geary County Unified School District Number 475 to replace Fort Riley Middle School at Fort Riley, Kan.; a $18,070,606 grant to Vernon Parish School Board to replace South Fort Polk Elementary School at Fort Polk, La.; and a $57,161,689 grant to Sierra Sands Unified School District to replace Murray Middle School and to expand Burroughs High School at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif.

The grant to Maryland will manage a $23.1 million project consisting of $18.3 million in grant funds and other funding of $4.8 million, to construct the Maryland Route 185-Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road/Kensington Parkway intersection improvement project. The project improves transportation access to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Geary County Unified School District Number 475 in Junction City, Kan., will manage a $41,961,000 project, consisting of $35,247,240 in grant funds and $6,713,760 in non-federal funds, to demolish the existing Fort Riley Middle School and replace it with a new 720-student school serving grades six through eight.

Vernon Parish School District in Leesville, La., will manage a $21,144,931 project, consisting of $18,070,606 grant funds and non-federal funds of $3,074,325, to replace the existing South Fort Polk Elementary School with a new 875-student school serving grades one through four.

Sierra Sands Unified School District in Ridgecrest, Calif., will manage a $39,542,838 project, consisting of $31,634,270 grant funds and non-federal funds of $7,908,568, to demolish the existing Murray Middle School and to replace it with a new 610-student school serving grades six through eight. The district will also manage a $31,909,274 project, consisting of $25,527,419 grant funds and $6,381,855 in non-federal funds, to renovate and expand the existing 1,461-student Burroughs High School serving grades nine through twelve. Both schools are located at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif.
 

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Published: 12/11/2012

A tractor-trailer loaded with military ammunition destined for Fort Bragg, N.C., skidded off an icy road, spewing its cargo on the remote roadway as the truck slid down an embankment and out of sight.

The only “eyes” on scene, beyond the driver’s, were electronic signals. Beamed from the vehicle, they alerted an analyst at the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command headquarters here that the trailer had separated from the truck.

The analyst contacted the trucking company to hail the vehicle. Five minutes later, getting no response, he called the police. They arrived at the scene to investigate, calling an ambulance to transport the driver to the hospital and securing the ammunition until federal authorities arrived.

It was all in a day’s work for the Defense Transportation Tracking System, which monitors all commercial carriers transporting arms, ammunition, explosives or other sensitive material within the United States for the Defense Department.

First created by the Navy in 1989 after an accident in Denver involving a commercial motor carrier transporting torpedoes, the system was expanded to track all sensitive DOD shipments from their point of origin until they reach their designation, Daniel Bradley, the program manager, told American Forces Press Service.

The system got an upgrade two years ago, incorporating the Intelligent Road/Rail Information Server, to better track DOD cargo during transport.

The goal, Bradley explained, is to maintain public safety and keep DOD shipments secure.

“The beauty of what DTTS does is, we don’t just track something from A to B and see that it got there,” he said. “We provide a response to things that require a response, and we get the right people engaged in things when we need it.”

Analysts at SDDC’s 24/7 operations center monitor satellite signals emitted from the vehicles to track 150 to 300 shipments every day, and about 60,000 to 80,000 shipments a year, he said. They keep a watch on the vehicles’ positions to ensure they match information filed in the command database.

Tracking satellite messages the driver sends during the transit, they look for “oddities” that might signal a problem, Bradley said. That way, when the unexpected happens -- an unscheduled or prolonged stop, an open trailer door en transit, a breakdown, accident, or panic alert from the driver -- they’re ready to spring to action, he said.

When an incident does occur, Bradley said his team’s goal is to get the proper authorities involved and ultimately, get delayed shipments back on schedule and headed to their destination.

“They’re safest and most secure when they are on the road, moving, so we do everything we can to get them back on the road moving again,” he said. “That’s where it’s the safest for the public and best for the equipment itself.”
 

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Published: 12/10/2012

Though overseas and absentee voting assistance programs for last month’s election were the best they have ever been, Federal Voting Assistance Program officials plan to keep moving forward to improve, the program’s acting director said here today.

“That by no means should indicate that we can sit on our laurels and say, ‘Wow, we did a great job. We’re done.’ Absolutely not,” Pamela S. Mitchell said during a panel discussion at the Newseum. “Right now we’re busy assessing the lessons learned from this election cycle,” Mitchell said. “We will use those to improve our program as we move forward.”

The decision to vote is a personal one, Mitchell said, and FVAP concentrates on facilitating those who choose to exercise their right to vote.

“First of all, we promote awareness of the right to vote,” Mitchell said. Though that might sound strange, she added, not everyone understands their voting rights.

FVAP also provides tools, resources and information for service members, family members and overseas U.S. citizens can exercise their right to vote no matter where they are in the world, Mitchell said.

For the 2012 election, FVAP took a multi-pronged approach to voter education, she said. “We have an information-rich Web portal -- FVAP.gov -- which has just tremendous tools available for everyone,” she explained. Voters could visit the website to ask questions of trained voting assistance personnel via live chat, request and print federal write-in absentee ballots and get assistance in registering to vote, Mitchell said.

FVAP also operated a call center and trained voting assistance officers at the installation and unit level who were stationed around the world, she said. The program executed a social media campaign in an effort to reach younger voters -- even holding its first-ever Twitter town hall, she noted.

Much of this outreach is done in partnership with the services and other state and federal agencies, Mitchell said. “There isn’t any way that FVAP operating independently could provide the outreach needed and the tools and information needed to facilitate voting by those around the world,” she said. For example, the services published voting information on leave and earning statements, she said, and provided voting awareness training to recruits.

“I strongly believe … that voter assistance is the best it’s ever been,” she said. “I think some of [the] metrics coming out of the election show that our resources were very popular.”

Since November 2011, more than 21 million visitors came to the FVAP website, she said, and about 10 million of those visits were in September and October 2012. More than 1.2 million people sought assistance from voting assistance officers, and the call center handled more than 54,000 requests for assistance, she continued.

“Interestingly, in the days leading up to the election, they were handling some 1,000 requests a day,” Mitchell said.

The pace of technological development makes it difficult to predict how voting will happen in the future, she said, but that future may include online voting. The idea stirs strong opinions, Mitchell said, but “where we sit today at FVAP is not advocating in either direction, but rather advocating that we continue the discussion.”

Ensuring that the online voting process is secure is one problem that remains unsolved, she said. “One of the hard things to think about is how do you sever identity from the anonymity of the vote so that we maintain the anonymity of the vote? Or, the other side of that discussion is do we let folks choose whether or not to give up the anonymous vote?”

For now, though, FVAP maintains voting security through a close partnership with the Justice Department, Mitchell said. “When we become aware of anything, we provide that information to them,” she said. “Compliance is their domain,” she added, noting that the Justice Department has been “very responsive to anything that we’ve passed on to them.”

The panel discussion, “To Serve and Vote: Military and Overseas Voting,” was part of a two-day forum on voting in America that concludes tomorrow. The forum is sponsored by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
 

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Published: 12/10/2012

Two years before U.S. and coalition forces withdraw, Afghans are now safer and the country is moving away from the Taliban, said a senior defense official who briefed reporters on the just-released Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan.

The key point from the report -- which covers the period of April through September and was delivered to Congress today -- is that populated areas in Afghanistan are more secure, the official told reporters at the Pentagon.

It notes that the Taliban “strove to take back territory in the past six months, [but] they were not able to do so,” the official said. “The territory we’ve taken, we’ve held.”

Afghan forces have increased in size and capability, and are doing the heavy lifting, the official said. “The Afghans are the ones carrying out the operations in Afghanistan,” he added. “They’re the ones who are leading the operations or are carrying them out independently.”

The official noted that Afghan-led operations can be very complex with thousands of soldiers and police taking part. In a couple of cases this year, operations included tens of thousands of soldiers and police.

But Pakistan, the official said, remains a huge problem because it provides a safe haven for Taliban insurgents who use the federally administered tribal areas along the Afghanistan border as a sanctuary and as a place to plan more strikes.

Still, the official noted, U.S. relations with Pakistan have improved. Pakistan agreed to re-open supply lines in and out of Afghanistan, which it had ordered closed for months following a coalition airstrike a year ago that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. There have since been meetings among Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. officials.

Cross-border shelling remains a problem, but the three entities are working together to trap terrorists on both sides of the border, the official said.

The coalition role also is shifting to security force assistance. “Battalions being deployed by the U.S. and other countries are shifting the size and character of what the foreign military presence is doing in Afghanistan,” he said.

Afghanistan is on track to take over the security lead by next summer, ahead of the end of the NATO mission at the end of 2014, the official added.
 

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Published: 12/10/2012

A system being implemented at U.S. Transportation Command is making permanent-change-of-station moves more convenient, while reducing lost and damaged shipments and saving the government money.

The Defense Personal Property System, introduced in 2009 as a pilot program at 17 installations, now supports 90 percent of all military moves, Jill Smith, personal property division chief at Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, told American Forces Press Service.

The Web-based system automates many of the steps involved in military moves: pre-move counseling, scheduling, tracking, invoicing and claims filing for household goods shipments.

“The beauty of DPS is that customers can do all this from the comfort of their own homes. They can do it early in the morning or at 11 o’clock at night, whatever works best for them,” Smith said. “Plus, all the information they might want – whether it’s about gypsy moths or weight allowances, or just tips about how they can have a smoother move – is right at their fingertips, a click away, and available 24/7.”

DPS also gives customers the opportunity to track their shipments online. If their shipment is lost or damaged, they can file a claim online and settle directly with the moving company.

Moves not yet covered by DPS – generally those involving long-term storage or moves within an overseas theater – will be included as new features are added to make the system fully operational by September 2017, Smith said.

Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, Transcom’s Army component, processes about 600,000 personal property moves each year for soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, Defense Department civilian employees and their families, Smith reported. About one-third of these moves take place during the summer, and almost 70,000 include privately owned vehicle shipments.

Collectively, they cost the Defense Department about $2.2 billion a year, Smith said. But with DPS, she projects between $117 million and $136 million in annual savings – while providing customers with better service.

That’s because rather than relying on “low-bid” transportation providers to conduct military moves, DPS provides “best value” services. This, Smith explained, factors in not just cost, but also variables such as timeliness, reliability, the incidence of lost or damaged shipments and ease in providing reimbursement for claims.

“We want to provide carriers that are not only qualified, but fully capable of making sure that they protect the members’ household goods, provide a great quality move and communicate with that customer,” she said. “The bottom line for us is that we want to do business with carriers that pick up the household goods on time and deliver them on time, with no or the least amount of damage – whether [that carrier] happens to be cheaper or a little bit more expensive.”

Those determinations are based directly on customer satisfaction surveys that help ensure the best movers get singled out for DOD business. “We rely on these surveys because [customers] get to evaluate the [transportation service provider’s] performance, and that ties directly into the best-value score,” Smith said. “The higher the customer satisfaction, the higher the score and the more opportunity that [carrier] gets to participate in future traffic.”

As an additional incentive for moving companies to apply extra care while handling DOD shipments, carriers are now required to pay full replacement value for anything lost or broken. Before that change was introduced about five years ago, transportation carriers paid a depreciated value on all claims.

The result has been a dramatic reduction in claims.

“If they break your $500 china, that means they have to replace or repair it. So carriers have a tendency to be more careful,” Smith said. “That is a good thing, because it helps make service members feel a little bit more comfortable about turning over their prized possessions, knowing that the carriers are going to be held responsible for it.”

Smith said she’s looking forward to the complete rollout of DPS and the convenience it will provide DOD customers throughout the move process.

“This will be a brand new era,” she said. “Customers will have a centralized one-stop shop that gives them all the tools they need to plan and manage their moves, that provides them best-value service and uses their feedback to ensure other service members will, too.”
 

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Published: 12/9/2012

President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta today paid tribute to the special operations service member killed in the rescue of an American in eastern Afghanistan yesterday.

The Taliban abducted the man Dec. 5 near the Sarobi district of Afghanistan’s Kabul province. His name is being withheld.

Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, the NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, ordered the rescue when intelligence indicated the man was in imminent danger of injury or death. ISAF officials said it was a joint U.S.-Afghan rescue.

An American special operator was killed during the rescue mission.

Obama said the rescue was characteristic of the extraordinary courage, skill and patriotism that U.S. troops show every day. “Tragically, we lost one of our special operators in this effort,” the president said in a written statement. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, just as we must always honor our troops and military families. He gave his life for his fellow Americans, and he and his teammates remind us once more of the selfless service that allows our nation to stay strong, safe and free.”

Panetta also issued a statement commending the U.S special operations team for the rescue and extending his condolences to the family, teammates and friends of the fallen warrior.

“The special operators who conducted this raid knew they were putting their lives on the line to free a fellow American from the enemy’s grip,” Panetta said. “They put the safety of another American ahead of their own, as so many of our brave warriors do every day and every night.

“In this fallen hero, and all of our special operators,” he continued, “Americans see the highest ideals of citizenship, sacrifice and service upheld. The torch of freedom burns brighter because of them.”
 

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Published: 12/10/2012

The surge in Afghanistan succeeded in diminishing enemy capability and improving security, especially in the country’s most populous areas, according to a Pentagon report delivered to Congress and made public today.

The Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan says the number of attacks is down, and that while the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies can launch a few flashy attacks, the terror group’s capabilities have waned.

Most security metrics have improved, the report says. It compares the first year of the surge – 2010 – with April through September of this year, noting that enemy-initiated attacks have declined by 12 percent. Detonations of improvised explosive devices declined 9 percent. The percentage of civilian casualties caused by NATO forces declined 28 percent. Direct- fire attacks have dropped by 9 percent, and indirect-fire attacks are down by 24 percent.
However, civilian casualties caused by enemy attacks are up 11 percent, according to the Pentagon report.

The report’s findings point to progress with the Afghan national security forces, which will take over security operations when U.S. and coalition forces leave at the end of 2014.

“The ANSF has grown by 88,464 personnel, and has dramatically increased its capabilities,” the report states. “The areas of the country influenced by the insurgents and the ability of the insurgency to attack the population have been significantly diminished.”

The report to Congress highlights the improvement in security of populated areas. “Security dramatically improved in most of Afghanistan’s five most populous districts, with [enemy-initiated attacks] in the first nine months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011 dropping 22 percent in Kabul, 62 percent in Kandahar, 13 percent in Herat, 88 percent in Mazar-e-Sharif, and rising 2 percent in Kunduz,” the report says.

Insurgent attacks are taking place away from these populated centers, the report says, noting that the majority of Afghanistan’s 405 districts now experience very low levels of enemy attacks. Eighty percent of attacks occur in districts encompassing only 20 percent of the population, and nearly half of all attacks in Afghanistan occur in just 17 districts that contain only 5 percent of the population, the report states.

The Taliban’s ability to attack Afghans is diminished, particularly in Kandahar, the group’s operational and ideological base.

Overall, the report paints a picture of mixed progress toward security and stability, with the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border remaining a hot zone. “Pakistani-based sanctuary for insurgents, such as the Haqqani Taliban Network in North Waziristan, as well as the financial and operational support that insurgents receive from various sources, keeps the security situation along the border with Pakistan in Regional Command East volatile,” the report says.

While enemy attacks in the region declined slightly, eastern Afghanistan accounted for almost a third of all insurgent attacks throughout the country.

The insurgency and al-Qaida continue to face U.S. counterterrorism pressure within the safe havens, the report says, and the relationship with Pakistan has begun to get better. “U.S. relations with Pakistan have begun to improve following the re-opening of Pakistani ground lines of communication, and there has been nascent improvement with respect to cross-border cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

In fact, the report continues, there has been some cooperation on both sides of the border in coordinating counterterror offensives.

“The Taliban-led insurgency remains adaptive and determined, and retains the capability to emplace substantial numbers of IEDs and to conduct isolated high-profile attacks,” the report says. “The insurgency also retains a significant regenerative capacity.”

As ISAF and Afghan forces erode Taliban efforts, insurgents have increasingly resorted to asymmetric tactics in an attempt to regain territory and influence, including assassinations, kidnappings, intimidation tactics, encouraging insider attacks and strategic messaging campaigns, the report states.
 

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