The Process for Fallen Troops’ Identities

Posted on August 8, 2018August 8, 2018 by Denise Simon

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii —

When her duty day is over, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jennifer Owen often wonders if she did enough to help identify fallen service members.

A lab worker examines personal effects that may have belonged to a fallen service member.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Jennifer Owen, a morgue noncommissioned officer for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, examines a personal effect that may have belonged to a fallen service member in a laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, March 12, 2018. Army photo by Sean Kimmons

As the noncommissioned officer in charge of the morgue at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is tasked to account for more than 82,000 Americans missing from past conflicts, she analyzes human remains and personal effects in hopes to close a cold case.

“At the end of the day, I have to be able to look in the mirror and say I’ve done my best,” she said. “And when I get up in the morning, I say I’m going to do better, because these families have been waiting years and years.”

Owens is one of about 100 service members and civilians who work at the agency’s laboratories here and at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Each year, the labs identify the remains of around 200 Americans that are then reunited with families.

On Aug. 1, more than 50 cases containing remains believed to be those of American service members were provided to DPAA by North Korea.

The remains are now undergoing further analysis and identification at the labs.

The painstaking work, which can take months to years to complete, is Owen’s passion. Whenever a positive identification comes in, she said, it is as if the service member’s name is given back.

‘These Are All Heroes’

“What drives me the most is that these are heroes,” she said, looking across a lab holding hundreds of unknown remains. “These are all heroes [who] have a name and a family.”

Each year, DPAA conducts up to 80 investigation and recovery team missions throughout the world to pinpoint last known locations of missing Americans and to attempt to excavate their remains.

“The work is complex, the work is difficult, and it takes that dedication, that passion … to be able to perform this solemn obligation that we make to the nation and to the families,” said Kelly McKeague, the agency’s director.

The joint agency, which employs many service members and veterans, has agreements with nearly 50 nations that assist in its missions, he added.

Most of the missing fell at World War II battle sites in the Pacific region. There are also almost 7,700 service members unaccounted for from the Korean War, with the majority believed to be in North Korea.

DPAA teams were allowed to conduct missions in North Korea from 1996 to 2005, but operations were halted as diplomatic relations deteriorated in the region. Agency officials hope these missions could soon start up again.

Before he became the agency’s lab director, John Byrd had the opportunity to help recover Americans who fought in North Korea at the Battle of Unsan. The 1950 battle pitted Chinese forces against American and South Korean troops.

When remains are identified by his staff it is always a testament to good field and lab work that solved the decades-old case, Byrd said.

“It’s extremely gratifying,” he said, “and it kind of keeps you grounded where you know why you’re here and why you’re doing this work.”

DNA Testing

A majority of DPAA cases involve some type of DNA testing. Samples are taken from the remains and sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab in Delaware.

To help this process, family members who have a missing loved one are encouraged to provide a DNA sample that will serve as a comparison.

If no reference samples are on file, a battalion of professional genealogists working for service casualty offices will try to locate family members.

Many times their starting point is the service member’s home address from the 1940s, if they served in World War II. This makes it extremely difficult to track down a living family member as the years pass on.

“It’s one of the greatest challenges of all. How do you find close family members of a missing serviceman from 1944?” Byrd asked. “It’s not easy. Some [cases] we run into dead-ends and we can’t find anybody.”

The Defense Department has kept dental records of troops dating back to World War I that can be used to help in the identification process.

In 2005, the agency also discovered another method that has proved successful. Many troops who served in early conflicts had to get chest X-rays as part of a tuberculosis screening when they first signed up.

Like the dental records, these radiographs were stored in a warehouse by the DoD. DPAA later obtained thousands of copies of them. Lab personnel use them as a comparison tool, since the shape of each person’s chest is different.

“The process of comparing this induction chest x-ray to an x-ray we take from the remains is analogous to doing fingerprint comparison,” Byrd said. “It’s a very similar kind of mindset that you take when you look at the two side-by-side; you’re looking for commonalities and differences.”

When a service member is identified, family members often come to the lab so they can participate in escorting the remains back home, he said. For those who work at the lab, those family member visits make the months or years of work seem worthwhile.

“When you have a family member come in and the staff who actually worked on the case get to meet them, they get to see the tangible results of their hard work,” Byrd said. “It’s definitely a boost to their morale.”

In the Field

Before that sort of closure can start for families, recovery teams spend weeks at a time doing the grunt work of excavating sites.

Army Capt. Brandon Lucas, who serves as a team leader, recalled his team digging nearly 20 feet into the ground in Laos in search of an F-4 Phantom fighter pilot who vanished during the Vietnam War.

A lab worker holds an item under a magnifying panel.

While no remains were found on that mission, they were still able to confidently close the site and shift efforts elsewhere.

Then there was another mission in Slovenia, where the tail gunner of a bomber aircraft from World War II went missing.

When his plane crashed, the gunner was the only one in his aircrew killed. Residents later buried him next to a church.

As Lucas’ team arrived at the site, the townspeople still knew about the crash and the gunner. Residents regularly visited his team, often bringing Lucas and the others food and drinks. An elderly woman even told him that for decades she would clean the grave site once a week.

When his team recovered the remains, a somber tone spread through the community.

“A lot of them actually shed tears when we found the remains,” Lucas said. “It was special to them and it was special to me.”

The poignant moment, along with others he has experienced during missions, galvanized the meaning of the mission for him.

“I’m potentially bringing back a fallen comrade,” Lucas said. “I would want to know that if it was me lost out there somebody is trying to recover me and give my family closure.”

Maritime Recovery

Recovery missions also extend out into the sea, where many service members have disappeared as a result of aircraft crashes or ships sunk.

While she served as commander of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, Army Maj. Gen. Susan A. Davidson was an advocate for her unit to support the solemn mission.

The unit regularly supplies DPAA with highly-trained Army divers from the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment, who often work on the sea floor with no visibility and use a suction hose to remove loose sediment from recovery sites.

On a barge, team members then sift through the sediment for the remains or personal effects of those missing.

When divers returned to Hawaii, she encouraged them to share their experiences and what they got out of the mission with others in the unit.

“They come back a different person and they have a different respect for our Army and for what we do,” Davidson said.

Back at the lab, Owen and others strive to identity those heroes who have been found.

“I feel that I am part of something so much bigger that I can contribute to,” she said.

Chinese/Russian Subs Prowling East Coast, Atlantic

Posted on August 7, 2018August 7, 2018 by Denise Simon

In a press gaggle today, a member of the media asked Secretary of Defense Mattis:

Q: Mr. Secretary, you stated you’re watching submarines in the North Atlantic and elsewhere. But are Russia and China putting more submarines out to look at the United States than they have since the Cold War?

SEC. MATTIS: Yes, we always keep an eye on the — on the submarines at sea. And I’d prefer not to say anymore than that. Thanks.

Humm, okay let’s go deeper.

The Navy reactivated a the fleet responsible for overseeing the East Coast and the North Atlantic. The 2nd Fleet was deactivated in 2011 and Secretary Mattis upped the defense strategy earlier this year.

We do know that the Russians are snooping around all undersea telecommunications cables used by NATO. The Russian submarines are equipped with anti-submarine missiles and little is published about the Chinese submarines. Meanwhile, the United States has deployed patrols using manned and unmanned surface ships, attack submarines and air surveillance by the P-8 Poseidon, a sub hunting warplane.

Crew | USS SOUTH DAKOTA SSN 790

The most advanced US advanced fast attack submarine named the USS South Dakota is equipped with the most advanced technology including advanced stealth features.

“China is improving the lethality and survivability of its attack submarines and building quieter, high-end diesel and nuclear-powered submarines,” he said.
Both China and Russia have also increased their presence in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, where Harris said 230 of the world’s 400 foreign submarines are operating.
Roughly 160 of those 230 submarines belong to China, North Korea, and Russia, according to Harris.
Forbes said the United States must also develop a strategy to counter Chinese and Russian activity in “gray zones” where they are incrementally expanding their presence by strategically “fighting and competing” through military posturing.
China’s claims in the South China Sea represent one glaring example as to how they’ve been able to successfully implement this type of strategy in a way that allows them to expand their military reach without engaging in direct confrontation, according to Forbes.

Meanwhile, a significant upgrade has taken place and that is to SOSUS.

Now, in what may be the biggest upgrade to the Navy’s fixed undersea surveillance system since the Cold War, General Dynamics has been recently awarded a contract by the Office of Naval Research to develop the Deep Reliable Acoustic Path Exploitation System (DRAPES). DRAPES appears to be part of a suite of upgrades to the Navy’s submarine detection capabilities to cope with expanding fleets of advanced submarines around the world.

When the Cold War ended, the U.S. Navy no longer faced a “peer threat” to its control of the seas and many capabilities and weapons necessary for defeating advanced adversary ships and submarines were decommissioned. Research for more advanced follow-on technology was also put on hold. After operating 30 undersea surveillance sites around the world during the Cold War, the Navy has only three operational today. But as Russia, and especially China, have developed larger and more advanced submarine fleets, the U.S. Navy has had to re-learn old Cold War anti-submarine warfare competencies while developing new capabilities to tackle more challenging modern submarine technology.

While the Navy says relatively little about the advanced sub-hunting capabilities of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), of which SOSUS is a part, some IUSS systems have received more public attention. The afloat Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) is a small fleet of civilian-crewed ships that carry sensitive towed listening (passive) arrays that can detect submarines from great distances. These ships grabbed headlines in 2009 when the SURTASS ship USNS Impeccable was harassed by Chinese Maritime Militia while operating in the vicinity of China’s South China Sea submarine bases on Hainan Island. The SURTASS ships have also received technical upgrades since the Cold War. The introduction of the Low Frequency Active (LFA) capability, an “active” system that transmits low frequency “pings” that bounce off of submarine hulls and are then picked up by the existing passive SURTASS arrays dramatically increases their ability to detect submarines at great distances.

By contrast, little is known publicly about the SOSUS networks after the Cold War. Defense Systems reports that DRAPES, like SOSUS, will be a fixed passive listening system with a new communications capability to transmit its data. Mobile systems like SURTASS have the advantage of being able to get closer to possible contacts and follow them, but can only be in one place at a time, and must eventually return to port. Fixed systems like SOSUS, and now DRAPES, have the advantage of providing permanent coverage over target areas and then “cueing” a mobile sensor capability, like a ship or aircraft, to zero in on a submarine it detects.

One reason there were 30 IUSS sites during the Cold War is that the SOSUS systems had to be connected to collection facilities by underwater cable, requiring sites to be relatively local to the target area. But DRAPES will apparently use a new underwater communications system to transmit the acoustic data it collects to the three remaining Navy Operational Processing Facilities (NOPFs). These facilities combine data from the static SOSUS networks and SURTASS ships to provide “detection, localization, and tracking of submarines.” DRAPES’ ability to provide wide coverage from a fixed location in the ocean, apparently without the need for additional NOPF facility footprints, would be a substantial improvement over the old SOSUS network.

As China and Russia have asserted themselves anew as “pacing competitors,” as described by Undersecretary of Defense Robert Work, the U.S. Navy has taken a renewed interest in its traditional Cold War antisubmarine warfare mission. Together, DRAPES and SURTASS promise to provide a persistent, long-range ability to detect adversary submarines around the globe. Using cueing data from those platforms, improved local anti-submarine assets like the P-8 Poseidon sub hunter aircraft (which replaces the 50 year-old P-3 Orion) and surface combatants with new, improved towed sonar arrays of their own, like the Multi-Function Towed Array, can then close on a target, and track or engage it as needed.

Russia Posturing to Own Space, then China?

Posted on August 6, 2018August 6, 2018 by Denise Simon

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Right now, miles above your head, there are fleets of robotic, weaponized satellites poised to do battle as the world’s superpowers await the opening salvo in a very real cosmic chess match.

When it comes to Russia, the real cause for concern surrounds a mysterious object known cryptically as 2014-28E. The object first appeared in space soon after the launch of three Russian military communication satellites. Initially, many believed 2014-28E was just another piece of debris left over from the launch. Not long afterward, however, this hunk of space junk began to swiftly change orbit, demonstrating an onboard propulsion system. What exactly 2014-28E is is still unknown, as the Russians have remained tight-lipped on the matter. Many experts fear that these actions signal that the Russians have revived their allegedly-defunct operation known as Istrebitel Sputnik (meaning “Satellite Fighter”), a covert Soviet-era ASAT program.

Russian and Chinese officials have continuously accused the United States of spying on the Chinese Space Station with a top-secret space toy known officially as X-37B. This craft is essentially an unmanned version of the Space Shuttle with a payload bay that’s roughly the size of a pickup truck bed. However, what exactly will be carried and what has been carried on its previous three missions is classified. So too is the entire X-37B budget. Many aeronautic experts dispute claims that the U.S. is using this craft to spy on the Chinese Space Station — but, the complete lack of transparency from U.S. officials hasn’t helped thaw frigid relations between the involved parties.

And the X-37B definitely isn’t the only trick the U.S. has up its proverbial sleeve. Some of America’s most sophisticated ASAT technology is in development as we speak. DARPA, the research and development wing of the U.S. Department of Defense, is now quickly moving along with its Phoenix initiative. The program is based around the concept of a series of robotic craft with the ability to repair damaged satellites from the scraps parts of other defunct satellites already in orbit. Again, from a foreign military perspective, if a satellite has the ability to build something, that satellite also has the intrinsic ability to dismantle something — say, an enemy satellite. More here from Digital Trends.

Russia Will Fight to Be World’s Top Space Power, Agency Chief Says

Russia is ready to do “serious battle” for the title of leading space power in the world, the head of the country’s state space agency has said.

Moscow’s Roscosmos has become the subject of some ridicule, following budget cuts and high-profile setbacks, including a recent botched launch that resulted in the loss of a multimillion dollar silo of satellites. The agency still regards itself as heir to Russia’s Soviet legacy of space exploration and Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly urged officials to recapture that status in the world, telling agency employees last month that Roscosmos needed “breakthrough successes” to do so.

Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin gave a defiant message on the agency’s ambitions.

“We are not looking to surrender leadership in space to anyone,” Rogozin said at the opening of a satellite equipment manufacturing plant in Yaroslavl region. The director, who served as Russia’s deputy prime minister until May, admitted that the agency had “fallen behind from the leading positions” in recent years.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (front left) gestures at Russian President Vladimir Putin (front center) and others as they visit a space exhibition in Moscow, on April 12. Maxim Shipenkov/AFP/Getty Images

Roscosmos unveiled a brand new spaceport in eastern Russia in 2016, although Putin reportedly reprimanded senior officials in private after the launching ceremony, which he had gone to watch, suffered a 24-hour delay. More here.

Just two years ago:

So why is there so much global interest in space at the moment, including in Australia, and what are countries around the world doing up there right now?

Space remains ‘hugely contested’ in 2018

Modern militaries rely on satellites that feed them vital intelligence.

As a result, “counterspace” weapons have become a rising area of interest, and earlier this year, US intelligence agencies warned that China and Russia were both working on “destructive counterspace weapons” for use in a future conflict.

The potential weapons US intelligence agencies were concerned about included both ground-launched missiles capable of taking out enemy satellites, as well as “directed-energy weapons” that could blind or damage the sensors on satellite instruments.

The US intelligence agencies said in their report that both China and Russia would probably have operational weapons within a few years.

China last month launched a communications satellite named Magpie Bridge that is currently sitting in a special orbit near the moon, giving it a view of both the Earth and the so-far-unexplored dark side of the Moon.

That feat was praised in official Chinese state media Xinhua as a “world first”.

The plan is for the satellite to beam continuous images of the dark side of the moon, with China looking set to become the first country to land a rover there later this year.

China is also planning on setting up a permanent robotic base on the lunar surface in the next 10 years, and is hoping for a manned mission in the 2030s.

U.S. is on the Offensive, Espionage and Cyber

Posted on August 2, 2018August 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

In the last few weeks, there was the Aspen Security Forum, a 3 day event. Then there was a DNI report. Then came 2 separate nationwide conference calls hosted by CERT, the cyber division of DHS.

A remarkable White House press briefing included the heads of intelligence agencies explaining the condition of cyber/espionage and the countermeasures against Russia.

Then there is the military side, a division frankly not well known, the Defense Security Services.

See the whole 2 page release here.

And there is more:

FBI Releases Article on Securing the Internet of Things

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released an article on the risks associated with internet-connected devices, commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). FBI warns that cyber threat actors can use unsecured IoT devices as proxies to anonymously pursue malicious cyber activities.

As our reliance on IoT becomes an important part of everyday life, being aware of the associated risks is a key part of keeping your information and devices secure. NCCIC encourages users and administrators to review the FBI article for more information and refer to the NCCIC Tip Securing the Internet of Things.

*** IOT?

The internet of things, at its simplest level, is a network of smart devices – from refrigerators that warn you when you’re out of milk to industrial sensors – that are connected to the internet so they can share data, but IoT is far from a simple challenge for IT departments.

Related reading: Five IoT Predictions For 2019

For many companies, it represents a vast influx of new devices, many of which are difficult to secure and manage. It’s comparable to the advent of BYOD, except the new gizmos are potentially more difficult to secure, aren’t all running one of three or four basic operating systems, and there are already more of them.

A lot more, in fact – IDC research says that there are around 13 billion connected devices in use worldwide already, and that that number could expand to 30 billion within the next three years. (There were less than 4 billion smartphone subscriptions active around the world in Ericsson’s most recent Mobility Report.)

With a huge number of companies “doing IoT” – most big-name tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Intel, and IBM have various types of IoT play – all working to bring as many users as possible into their respective ecosystems, motivation to make sure IoT systems and devices from different companies all work with each other is sometimes lacking.

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The problem, of course, is that nobody’s willing to give up on the idea of their own ecosystem becoming a widely accepted standard – think of the benefits to the company whose system wins out! – and so the biggest players in the space focus on their own systems and development of more open technologies lags behind. More here.

Night Wolves, Putin’s Hells Angels

Posted on August 2, 2018August 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

The Slovak foreign ministry says it is “disturbing” that the Night Wolves – a Russian nationalist biker gang close to President Vladimir Putin – now have a base in Slovakia.

The base has old military vehicles and lies in Dolna Krupa, a village 70km (44 miles) from the capital Bratislava.

The Russian government calls it the Night Wolves’ “European headquarters”.

The bikers are under US sanctions, accused of providing military help for the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.

story/photo

So close in fact, Putin rode with them and endorses the group.

Earlier this year, the Night Wolves did a 9 day tour. Bosnia? Yes. Members of the Night Wolves motorcycle gang visiting a monastery in Serbia. The gang’s tour, funded with a grant from the Kremlin, was billed as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region.CreditLaura Boushnak for The New York Times

Heck, the rode through the Balkins.

The Night Wolves billed their tour, funded with a $41,000 grant from the Kremlin, as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region, at least the bits of it inhabited by ethnic Serbs like Republika Srpska, which is legally part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

***

Performances organized by the Russian hyper-patriotic biker club Night Wolves stand as prime examples of the Kremlin’s new take on old propaganda efforts. Their spectacles tend to display the full gamut of the Kremlin’s imagery and messaging, from the evil of the United States and Ukrainians to the glorification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian military.

An analysis of Night Wolves spectacles reveals how the Kremlin’s agent provocateurs make use of the fuzzy lines between patriotism, pro-Putinism, Russian Orthodoxy, civic/national duty, and militarism. The purposes of these anti-American scripts are many, not least of which is to garner psychological and physical support for the motherland one way or the other, especially during the Euromaidan era, but also to create a sense of Russian identity, which has been vacuous since the early 1990s. The alarming aspect is that these types of fantastical attractions can transform patriotic attendees into actual networks of gun-toting Russian combatants, which may be part of the government’s objective. Read more here, chilling operation concocted by the Kremlin.

Rock videos supporting the Night Wolves? Yes, glad you asked.

Did they have some role in Crimea and Ukraine? Yup. In 2014:

As night fell on Friday , there were signs that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was slipping beyond Kiev’s reach. The parliament remained under siege by pro-Russian protesters, armed men of unknown allegiance were guarding the airports and the Night Wolves, a biker gang with close ties to the Kremlin, blockaded the roads.

Three hundred men in military uniforms with no identifying insignia had entered the Sevastopol airport compound on Thursday night, witnesses said, in what Ukraine’s new interior minister, Arsen Avakov, described as a “military invasion and occupation”.

***

In 2014, the U.S. Treasury added the Night Wolves to the sanctions list due to Crimea and in violation of the Minsk Agreement.

The Night Wolves biker group had its members serve in the Crimean self-defense forces as early as February 2014, which supported local Crimeans against the Government of Ukraine. In March 2014, the Night Wolves conducted intimidation and criminal activities within Ukraine and also abducted and subsequently assaulted a Ukrainian Border Guard official. This biker group also participated in the storming of the gas distribution station in Strikolkove and the storming of the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters in Sevastopol. In early-April 2014, the Night Wolves helped smuggle a former senior Ukrainian official out of Ukraine and also helped obtain Russian passports for another larger group of senior Ukrainian officials that they helped get into Russia. The Night Wolves have been closely connected to the Russian special services, have helped to recruit separatist fighters for Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine, and were deployed to the cities of Luhansk and Kharkiv. The Night Wolves group is being designated because it is an entity that is responsible for or complicit in, or has engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Aleksandr Zaldostanov, also known as “the Surgeon,” is the leader of the Night Wolves. Zaldostanov chairs the overall Night Wolves organization, and some of his responsibilities include the punishing of chapter groups and members for disloyalty to the Night Wolves organization. During the late-March storming of the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters in Sevastopol, he coordinated the confiscation of Ukrainian weapons with the Russian forces. Zaldostanov is being designated for being a leader of a group, the Night Wolves, that is engaging in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.