Category Archives: Department of Defense

U.S. Backed Targets Struck by Russia in Syria

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The United States was in theater first, and while most world leaders are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Vladimir Putin chose not to advise the United States. In fact, a 3-star Russian general based in the new Iraq intelligence cells walked into the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and told the U.S. to get out of Syrian airspace and Russian bombing was commencing in a hour. Putin is fully backing Bashir al Assad against all Western requirements that he leave power as was agreed in 2012.

Be it known, there are more than 100,000 anti-Assad fighters in Syria…Russia could be busy while the Pentagon has no positive choices at this point due to air power confliction in Syria.

This was estimated by the United States but zero courtesy or war rules were followed by Russia. The next question is what will the Saudis do from this point forward?

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The Interpreter: Which rebel groups control the areas which were hit today in Homs?

ISW: The groups that control the Talbisa-Rastan rebel pocket north of Homs are: al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham (HASI), and other FSA-affiliated rebel brigades. Unfortunately, we don’t have fidelity on what groups exactly were impacted by the airstrikes today.

Interpreter: Does ISIS have a presence in Homs? Your latest map says no, but some people are pushing back on that because a Daily Mail article published in August showed ISIS reportedly throwing a gay man off a roof in Homs.

ISW:  There is ISIS in Homs Province, not in Homs City which is regime-held (with the exception of one neighborhood). The ISIS presence in Homs is primarily in the eastern countryside. For instance, Palmyra (Tadmur) is in Homs Province.

The Daily Mail article is likely referring to an event that happened in one of the ISIS-held villages in the eastern countryside of the province. There are, however, ISIS ‘sympathetic’ elements (i.e. similar in ideology but not officially ISIS) in rebel-held in the areas of Homs and Hama provinces that were hit today with airstrikes. These groups are minimal and are usually rooted out by other rebel brigades in the area.

Interpreter:  Any idea which rebel unit was hit today in Al Lataminah, Hama province? The “FSA” commander told Reuters that his unit was hit, and he had recently received anti-tank missiles from a “foreign power.” Any idea what, specifically, they are referencing?

ISW: Tajama’a al-Izza was hit in Al Lataminah. They are an FSA-affiliated TOW anti-tank missile recipient that is active in the provinces of Hama, Idlib, and Aleppo. The TOW missile recipients active in northern Syria are believed to receive these anti-tank missiles from the Turkish Military Operations Command (MOC).

Interpreter:  It looks like a member of Tahrir Homs was killed today. Do you know anything about this man or the unit? Do you know the group’s ideological leanings?

ISW: Yes, the airstrikes killed Lyad al-Deek of Tahrir Homs today. Harakat Tahrir Homs is technically a Free Syrian Army affiliate, however in 2015 the once “moderate” Free Syrian Army is largely nominal and is not a good indicator of a rebel group’s ideological leanings. Tahrir Homs, like a lot of the battle hardened opposition remaining in Homs, is an Islamist brigade that is a military ally of Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. The relationship between Nusra and Tahrir Homs with regards to governance was thought of as “uneasy” when Nusra first started to assert itself (and it’s strict version of Shari’a) in Homs, however they have likely grown closer as time has gone on and probably are currently participating in joint rebel governance structures together.

Russian airstrikes on the Rebel-held Rastan & Talbisah, the largest populated cities in Northern #Homs

North Homs

Russian Actions Intensify Syrian Civil War, Carter Says

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON September 30, 2015 — Russian actions are intensifying the instability in Syria and making the civil war there more vicious, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said here today.

During a Pentagon news conference, Carter said the Russian position of supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its desire to take on extremist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant represent a contradiction.

“Fighting ISIL without pursuing a parallel political transition only risks escalating the civil war in Syria – and with it, the very extremism and instability that Moscow claims to be concerned about and aspire to fighting,” he said. “So that approach is tantamount … to pouring gasoline on the fire.”

The secretary restated the American position, saying that a lasting defeat of ISIL and its terrorist allies can be achieved only in parallel with a political transition in Syria. “We will continue to insist on the importance of simultaneously pursuing these two objectives,” he said. “And I would hope Russia would join us in pursuing these objectives.”

Conversation With Russian Defense Minister

Carter spoke with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu last week, when Russia’s intent to launch strikes in Syria became apparent. “During my phone call with Minister Shoigu, I also told him I was prepared to send a DoD team to meet with Russian defense counterparts, at a location that we agreed upon, to ensure that we avoid any inadvertent incidents over Syrian air space,” he said.

But Russian aircraft struck targets around Homs, Syria, this morning. A Russian officer notified personnel in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad of the strikes an hour before they launched. No coalition aircraft were in the region at the time, and Carter said he doubts any ISIL terrorists were in the area struck.

Russian and coalition officers will meet in the next few days to “deconflict” air operations. The meeting will allow a flow of information between coalition forces and Russian elements to maintain the safety of U.S. personnel in the region, Carter said.

The meeting also will be an opportunity to ensure that any additional Russian actions do not interfere with the coalition’s efforts to degrade and defeat ISIL, he added.

Mission Against ISIL Will Continue

The secretary stressed that the more-than-60-nation coalition is battling ISIL “across the physical, virtual and ideological battle space,” conducting more than 7,100 air strikes at ISIL’s operational core and logistics arm. “The coalition will continue to fly missions over Iraq and Syria as planned, as we did today, in support of our international mission to degrade and destroy ISIL,” he said.

Carter said the U.S. talks with the Russians over Syria do not indicate a lessening of America’s strong condemnation of Russian aggression in Ukraine, nor do they change U.S. sanctions and security support in response to those destabilizing actions.

“On that subject, the facts remain: If Russia wants to end its international isolation and be considered a global power, it must stop its aggression in eastern Ukraine and its occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, and live up to its commitments under the Minsk agreement,” he said.

Gen. Allen Quit, Russia Demands U.S. Aircraft Leave Syria

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CNN:

Russian airstrikes in Syria could happen at any time, a U.S. official with knowledge of the latest intelligence told CNN this week.

 “They could start at any moment,” the official said. “They are ready.”

After several days of Russian familiarization flights, there is no reason they could not begin, the official added. And Russian drones have been collecting potential targeting information in their flights. But the U.S. doesn’t know what the Russians have in mind and when they will make a decision on airstrikes.

Four Russian Su-34 Fullback fighter jets are now at the Latakia air base in Syria, and more than 600 Russian troops are in place.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Tuesday that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter directed his staff to “open lines of communication with Russia on de-confliction.”

The timing of these discussions is to be worked out in the coming days. The purpose of the discussions is “to ensure the safety of coalition air crews,” he said.

Cook added that the two nations have common ground when it comes to fighting ISIS, also known as ISIL, with Carter making clear that “the goal should be to take the fight to ISIL and not to defend the Assad regime.”

The Russia government unanimously voted to authorize Russia troops in Syria, meanwhile, Putin tells the United States to remove all fighter aircraft out of Syria and the region. Never in the history of the United States has our country taken orders from a foreign power much less Russia. It is proven under Barack Obama the United States has taken a back seat to Iran in Iraq and now Russia in Syria.

France has launched airstrikes and Bashir al Assad stays in power. At the behest and orders by the White House, the Pentagon has been sent back to the locker room.

How does this begin and end?

FNC: EXCLUSIVE: Russian officials have demanded that American warplanes exit Syrian airspace immediately, a senior U.S. official told Fox News early Wendesday.

The official told Fox News that Russian diplomats sent an official demarche ordering U.S. planes out of Syria, adding that Russian fighter jets were now flying over Syrian territory. U.S. military sources told Fox News that U.S. planes would not comply with the Russian demand.

“There is nothing to indicate that we are changing operations over Syria,” a senior defense official said.

“We have had every indication in recent weeks that (the Russians) were going to do something given the build-up,” another defense official added.

The move by Moscow marks a major escalation in ongoing tensions between the two countries over military action in the war-torn country and comes moments after Russian lawmakers formally approved a request from the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, to authorize the use of troops in Syria.

The Russian demand also mirrors one made by Turkey this past July, when Ankara asked U.S. planes to fly only in airspace south of Mosul, Iraq. In that case, 24 Turkish jets bombed Kurdish positions, catching the U.S. off guard.

More on this…

Can Putin succeed where White House has not in ISIS fight?
Warm-water port key to Putin’s interest in Syria?
President Obama attempts to save face on Syrian conflict
The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, discussed Putin’s request for the authorization behind the closed doors. Sergei Ivanov, chief of Putin’s administration, said in televised remarks that the parliament voted unanimously to approve the request.

Ivanov said the authorization is necessary “not in order to achieve some foreign policy goals” but “in order to defend Russia’s national interests.”

Putin is obligated to request parliamentary approval for any use of Russian troops abroad, according to the Russian constitution. The last time he did so was before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

Putin’s request comes after his bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, where the two were discussing Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria.

A U.S. official told Fox News Monday the two leaders agreed to discuss political transition in Syria but were at odds over the role that Assad should play in resolving the civil conflict. The official said Obama reiterated to Putin that he does not believe there is a path to stability in Syria with Assad in power. Putin has said the world needs to support Assad because his military has the best chance to defeat ISIS militants.

Putin said the meeting, which lasted a little over 90 minutes, was “very constructive, business-like and frank”.

“We are thinking about it, and we don’t exclude anything.” Putin told reporters at the time

The Kremlin reported that Putin hosted a meeting of the Russian security council at his residence Tuesday night outside of Moscow, saying that they were discussing terrorism and extremism.

On Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called on Russia to make a real contribution to the fight against ISIS, telling reporters at the United Nations that Moscow “is against the terrorists, it’s not abnormal to launch strikes against them.”

“The international community has hit (ISIS). France has hit (ISIS), Bashar al-Assad very little, and the Russians not at all. So one has to look at who does what,” Fabius added.

Russia has been a staunch supporter of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s bloody civil war, and multiple reports have previously indicated that Russian troops are aiding Assad’s forces. Israel’s defense minister also said earlier this month that Russian troops are in Syria to help Assad fight the ISIS terror group.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Russia’s Foreign Ministry told the news agency Interfax that a recently established operations center in Baghdad would help coordinate air strikes and ground troops in Syria. Fox News first reported last week that the center had been set up by Russian, Syrian and Iranian military commanders with the goal of working with Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting ISIS.

Over the weekend, the Iraqi government announced that it would begin sharing “security and intelligence” information with Russia, Syria and Iran to help combat ISIS.

Meanwhile, intelligence sources told Fox News Friday that Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani met with Russian military commanders in Baghdad September 22. Fox News reported earlier this month that Soleimani met Putin in Moscow over the summer to discuss a joint military plan in Syria.

“The Russians are no longer advising, but co-leading the war in Syria,” one intelligence official said at the time.

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

WH has Task Force Terror Report, No Strategy

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Not since the Bush Administration and the 9/11 Commission Report has there been a task force or congressional study group that has investigated and evaluated a new domestic threat report. In March of 2015, a bi-partisan committee in Congress was established with 10 members to study domestic Islamic soldiers and sympathizers. The report is chilling and further it has declared the White House has no strategy, so the committee crafted 32 recommendations. The full report is here.

The report studied individual cases where they were provided access to files by the FBI as countless other cases are still under investigation. Minnesota, California, New York and New Jersey were the 4 top listed states that had the majority of travelers leaving the United States to join Islamic State or other in kind terror groups. Up to at least 250 are known at this time.

The United States has failed to stop the flow back and forth and further allied intelligence agencies and countries are not advanced enough or have authorization to fully cooperate with the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has largely failed to stop more than 250 Americans who have traveled overseas since 2011 to join or try to join terrorist groups, including the Islamic State group, a new congressional study concluded on Tuesday. It did not provide details on the several dozen who have sneaked back into the United States without being arrested or monitored.

“The findings are concerning; we are losing in this struggle to keep Americans from the battlefield,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Tuesday after his committee released the 65-page report.

The report said the Obama administration lacked a strategy to prevent such travel abroad, identify all who try to return to commit terror attacks, or cope with new recruitment practices and technology that allow extremists to communicate securely.

“Of the hundreds of Americans who have sought to travel to the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, authorities have only interdicted a fraction of them,” the report said. “Several dozen have also managed to make it back into America.” It noted that several people were identified and arrested this year trying to return to the United States.

In other cases, authorities are monitoring people who have returned form the region, said McCaul, R-Texas.

Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., who helped author the report, said radicalization of Americans over the Internet “poses probably the biggest problem” for U.S. law enforcement and others trying to detect and combat efforts by international terrorist organization to recruit U.S. citizens to join the fight overseas.

The report said of particular concern were western Europeans who travel to Iraq or Syria and would be permitted to fly to the U.S. without applying for a visa.

“American returnees are not the only threat to the United States,” it said.

Katko said the committee will work to draft several pieces of legislation based on the report’s 32 recommendations.

After the release of the committee report, the State Department announced that 10 people and five groups were declared Specially Designated Global Terrorists. People in the U.S. are generally prohibited from doing business with those given that designation.

Islamic State Plans Nuclear Tsunami

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By L. Todd Wood – – Monday, September 28, 2015

WashingtonTimes: Nuclear annihilation across the globe. This is what a German reporter who successfully embedded with the Islamic State says the terror group is planning. Jurgen Todenhofer released his findings in a book titled “Inside IS – Ten Days in the Islamic State,” reports the UK’s Daily Express.

“The terrorists plan on killing several hundred million people. The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS. ISIS intends to get its hands on nuclear weapons,” says Todenhofer, calling the group a “nuclear tsunami preparing the largest religious cleansing in history.”

“They now control land greater in size than the United Kingdom and are supported by an almost ecstatic enthusiasm the like of which I’ve never encountered before in a war zone. Every day hundreds of willing fighters from all over the world come. They are the most brutal and most dangerous enemy I have ever seen in my life. I don’t see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop IS. I came back very pessimistic.”

With the ink not yet dry on the “Iran nuclear deal,” Middle Eastern states opposed to Persian domination of the region now are actively pursuing a nuclear weapons capability of their own. President Obama’s deal could literally mean an arms race that could lead to nuclear devastation as Saudi Arabia and others look to get the bomb as well to counter Iran. With more countries obtaining nukes, the greater the possibility terrorists could obtain a weapon, which could be used to attack Israel or the West.

There is more….

ISIS Crucify Christians In Syria, Insider Reveals Group’s Plan To Kill Millions

ISIS’ stranglehold on the Middle East continues to get tighter and tighter after it was revealed that their members had murdered Christians by crucifying them.

The Daily Express, who have compared the atrocities being committed by the Islamic State against Christians to the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, have reported that the group’s members have forced people in the north east of Syria and in the west of Iraq to either convert to Islam, be exiled, pay a huge rate of tax just because of their beliefs, or be executed.

It’s been alleged that Christians in the regions that are being controlled by ISIS have also been beheaded, raped, as well as crucified. Shocking and gory images of these horrifying acts have even been released, but they are too graphic to be uploaded here.

Patrick Sookhdeo, who is the head of the Barnabus Fund, a charity that has already helped to save the lives of dozens of Syrian Christians, has detailed the events that are currently taking place in Syria.

“It’s like going back 1,000 years seeing the barbarity that Christians are having to live under,” he declared. “I think we are dealing with a group which makes Nazism pale in comparison and I think they have lost all respect for human life.”

Sookhdeo continued his strong diatribe by stating, “Crucifying these people is sending a message and they are using forms of killing which they believe have been sanctioned by Sharia law. For them what they are doing is perfectly normal and they don’t see a problem with it. It is that religious justification which is so appalling.”

It’s believed that since the Islamic State started their reign of terror in the region in 2011, Syria’s 1.1 million Christians have dwindled down to just 400,000 people.

Sookhdeo and his charity have already found homes for 158 Syrian Christians, who have now taken up residence in Poland. However he insists that more needs to be done.

Meanwhile, 75-year-old German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer has detailed how that the Islamic State plan on murdering millions of people as they try to make their way across the globe.

Todenhofer spent 10 days reporting on the frontline alongside ISIS, and he is now releasing his findings in a new book entitled “Inside IS – Ten Days In The Islamic State,” via the Express.

Todenhofer was only allowed to join ISIS for this spell because of his previous writing that has opposed the U.S.’ policies in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But his writing made for grim reading, as he insisted that the West are going to struggle to tackle the ever-expanding military group, and that they’ve already severely underestimated them.

Todenhofer also pointed out that ISIS “plan on killing several hundred million people,” before adding, “The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS.”

Todenhofer continued, “My impressions? That they are much stronger than we here believe. They now control land greater in size than the United Kingdom and are supported by an almost ecstatic enthusiasm the likes of which I’ve never encountered before in a war zone. Every day hundreds of willing fighters from all over the world come.”

Todenhofer also went on to insist that ISIS is “the most brutal and dangerous enemy” he has ever seen in his life, while noting that he doesn’t believe that anyone actually has a “real chance to stop them”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama are currently embroiled in talks at the U.N. General Assembly to try and figure out a plan to deal with the problems in Syria. On Monday, via NBC News, Putin insisted that these discussions had been “very constructive and surprisingly open.”

Obama vs. China President Xi, Hacking

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A new unit of the People’s Liberation Army was identified last week by cyber security researchers as Unit 78020 based in Kunming, in Yunnan Province.
The unit’s operations have been tracked for five years and have included targeted attacks on states in the region that are challenging Beijing’s strategic program of seeking to control the sea through building up small islands and reefs and then deploying military forces on them.
“Unit 78020 conducts cyber espionage against Southeast Asian military, diplomatic, and economic targets,” according to a security report on the unit that included a satellite photo of the unit’s Kunming compound.
“The targets include government entities in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam as well as international bodies such as United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).” More details here.

Chinese president Xi Jinping is supposed to have dinner this evening with U.S. president Barack Obama. Wonder if the name Ge Xing will come up?Ge Xing is the subject of a joint report published this morning by ThreatConnect and Defense Group Inc., computer and national security service providers respectively. Ge is alleged to be a member of the People’s Liberation Army unit 78020, a state-sponsored hacking team whose mission is to collect intelligence from political and military sources to advance China’s interests in the South China Sea, a key strategic and economic region in Asia with plenty of ties to the U.S.

The report connects PLA 78020 to the Naikon advanced persistent threat group, a state-sponsored outfit that has followed the APT playbook to the letter to infiltrate and steal sensitive data and intellectual property from military, diplomatic and enterprise targets in a number of Asian countries, as well as the United Nations Development Programme and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Control over the South China Sea is a focal point for China; through this region flows trillions of dollars of commerce and China has not been shy about claiming its share of the territory. The report states that China uses its offensive hacking capabilities to gather intelligence on adversaries’ military and diplomatic intentions in the regions, and has leveraged the information to strengthen its position.“The South China Sea is seen as a key geopolitical area for China,” said Dan Alderman, deputy director of DGI. “With Naikon, we see their activity as a big element of a larger emphasis on the region and the Technical Reconnaissance Bureau fitting into a multisector effort to influence that region.”The report is just the latest chess piece hovering over Jinping’s U.S. visit this week, which began in earnest yesterday with a visit to Seattle and meetings with giant technology firms such as Microsoft, Apple and Google, among others.

Those companies want to tap into the growing Chinese technology market and the government there is using its leverage to get them to support stringent Internet controls imposed by the Chinese government. A letter sent to American technology companies this summer, a New York Times report last week, said that China would ask American firms to store Chinese user data in China. China also reportedly asked U.S.-built software and devices sold in China to be “secure and controllable,” which likely means the Chinese would want backdoor access to these products, or access to private encryption keys.Jinping, meanwhile, tried to distance himself from the fray when he said in a Wall Street Journal interview: “Cyber theft of commercial secrets and hacking attacks against government networks are both illegal; such acts are criminal offences and should be punished according to law and relevant international conventions.”Journal reporter Josh Chin connected with Ge Xing over the phone and Ge confirmed a number of the dots connected in the report before hanging up on the reporter and threatening to report him to the police.

While that never happened, the infrastructure connected to Ge and this slice of the Naikon APT group, was quickly shut down and taken offline. In May, researchers at Kaspersky Lab published a report on Naikon and documented five years of activity attributed to the APT group. It describes a high volume of geo-politically motivated attacks with a high rate of success infiltrating influential organizations in the region. The group uses advanced hacking tools, most of which were developed externally and include a full-featured backdoor and exploit builder.Like most APT groups, they craft tailored spear phishing messages to infiltrate organizations, in this case a Word or Office document carrying an exploit for CVE-2012-0158, a favorite target for APT groups. The vulnerability is a buffer overflow in the ActiveX controls of a Windows library, MSCOMCTL.OCX. The exploit installs a remote administration tool, or RAT, on the compromised machine that opens a backdoor through which stolen data is moved out and additional malware and instructions can be moved in.Chin’s article describes a similar attack initiated by Ge, who is portrayed not only as a soldier, but as an academic.

The researchers determined through a variety of avenues that Ge is an active member of the military, having published research as a member of the military, in addition to numerous postings to social media as an officer and via his access to secure locations believed to be headquarters to the PLA unit’s technical reconnaissance bureau.“Doing this kind of biopsy, if you will, of this threat through direct analysis of the technical and non-technical evidence allows us to paint a picture of the rest of this group’s activity,” said Rich Barger, CIO and cofounder of ThreatConnect. “We’ve had hundreds of hashes, hundreds of domains, and thousands of IPs [related to PLA unit 78020].

Only looking at this from a technical lens only gives you so much. When you bring in a regional, cultural and even language aspect to it, you can derive more context that gets folded over and over into the technical findings and continues to refine additional meaning that we can apply to the broader group itself.”The report also highlights a number of operational security mistakes Ge made to inadvertently give himself away, such as using the same handle within the group’s infrastructure, even embedding certain names in families of malware attributed to them. All of this combined with similar mistakes made across the command and control infrastructure and evidence pulled from posts on social media proved to be enough to tie Ge to the Naikon group and elite PLA unit that is making gains in the region.“If you look at where China is and how assertive they are in region, it might be a reflection of some of the gains and wins this group has made,” Barger said. “You don’t influence what they’re influencing in the region if you don’t have the intel support capabilities fueling that operational machine.”