Smaller Carbon Footprint Means Fewer Risks, Official Says

Filed under DoD News, Go Green! by on January 26, 2012 at 7:07 am {one comment}

By Cheryl Pellerin, American Forces Press Service
From www.defense.gov 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A hard push by the Defense Department and the military services to reduce dependence on fossil fuels will shrink risks on the battlefield along with the Pentagon’s carbon footprint, a DOD official said.

Oliver Fritz is deputy director for policy in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs.

He joined energy experts from each service in a panel discussion during the 12th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment about how DOD can drive clean energy innovation.

“Historically, energy has been a decisive factor in warfighting, … most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, where you see fuel not only being needed in increasing quantities, but being moved over a battlefield without front lines,” Fritz said. Many American lives have been lost on such convoys, he added, moving fuel or protecting it.

Substituting solar energy, biofuel and other technologies can pay off in warfighting capability, Fritz said.

“Those technologies are cleaner and do have a lower carbon footprint,” he said, “and in a way, that carbon footprint is a metaphor for some of the logistics risks that we’re trying to reduce.”

The Defense Department released its first operational energy strategy in June to improve energy efficiency and costs, and to support strategic goals and lower risks to warfighters.

Broad strategic changes that include the decline of front lines and the emergence of anti-access technologies like missiles and roadside bombs “designed to disrupt our ability to freely maneuver, whether that’s around Afghanistan or around the globe, are forcing us to rethink how we are going to project and sustain power if our logistics are under attack,” Fritz said.

The strategy urged more fight with less fuel, more options with less risk and more capability with less cost, he added, and clean technologies can help to make those things happen.

“The strategy was issued last year, and we’re in the process of implementing that. … But in addition to having meetings at the Pentagon, we’re actually trying to make a difference on the battlefield,” Fritz said.

In Afghanistan, this means a new suite of more efficient generators and centralized power.

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When Your Child Comes Back from War

Filed under DoD News, Family Focus Friday by on January 20, 2012 at 8:30 am {no comments}

By Jeff Horton
From www.blogs.va.gov

Jeff Horton

Last month, the last remnants of the U.S. military left Iraq. It appears that military activity in Afghanistan will see a similar decline in the next few years. That means there will be a new surge, that of young military personnel coming home to wind down their enlistments and landing at their parents’ doorsteps in what their parents surely hope will be a transitory stage to the next phase of their lives.  I’d like to offer my thoughts from a parent’s perspective and the emotional see-saw I experienced when my son deployed and returned home from a combat tour in some of the worst places on earth.

My son Alex deployed with Third Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Washington, in mid-2006, just before he turned 21. He would mark his 22nd birthday as well while on deployment.   When Alex left Kuwait City for Mosul, Iraq in July of 2006, things were pretty quiet and his early e-mailed dispatches reflected that.  I kind of looked at it as a bit of an adventure for him, as it seemed like they weren’t going to get into anything really hairy.

But almost right away, just before the Christmas of 2006, his unit was moved to Baghdad and that’s when I started getting jumpy. I had already bought every book that came out about the experience of soldiers and Marines on the ground in Iraq and a few on Afghanistan. I linked to numerous websites and had e-mail alerts set up with keywords “Mosul”, “Baghdad,” “Strykers,”, “5/20″, etc. I just couldn’t get enough information about what was going on.

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People Form Defense Strategy’s Centerpiece, Official Says

Filed under DoD News by on January 17, 2012 at 7:28 am {no comments}

By Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service
From www.defense.gov 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – People are the centerpiece of the new defense strategy guidance that President Barack Obama released last week, the deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy, plans and forces said here yesterday.

Kathleen Hicks told the Pentagon Channel that the new guidance calls for a military force sized to handle the operational environment in the world today, and that the force will not be like that of the past 10 years.

Rather, she said, the strategy guidance says the country is best served through having forward-deployed military forces present abroad.

While technology is an incredible enabler, “what we understand today is that nothing substitutes for the quality of our trained, equipped and ready force, and that’s our focus for the future,” she said.

The strategy guidance uses information gleaned from the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, Hicks said, but the situation in two short years has changed. “Now we have a changed fiscal environment, the Arab Awakening, the end of U.S. operations in Iraq, and [we are] looking forward transition in Afghanistan,” she said. Changes in Iranian behavior and other factors also were considered in the new guidance, she added.

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New Life

Filed under DoD News by on January 14, 2012 at 7:30 am {no comments}

By Tech. Sgt. Chris Powell, DMA
From www.airman.dodlive.mil 

When Senior Airman Mike Malarsie deployed to Afghanistan in December 2009, he was eager to fulfill one of his childhood dreams of being a member of one of the military’s elite special forces units.

“I always wanted to do something exciting, out there running around on the ground, being adventurous,” said Malarsie, who was deployed as a tactical air control party specialist.

What happened in the next few months cut that dream short, cost him his eyesight and nearly his life. On Jan. 3, 2010, Malarsie and his teammate, Senior Airman Brad Smith, were on a foot patrol with 11 Soldiers in a small village near Kandahar.

“We were going to a town against the base of a mountain, and it had a canal that ran in front of it with just one bridge that led into the town,” Malarsie said. “As we approached (the village), there was no one there, so we were a little suspicious.”

Malarsie said he and his squad waited for half an hour to see if they could observe any suspicious activity, but nothing happened.

“So the patrol leader said, ‘Okay, we’re going to send one squad across this bridge.’ We started across this bridge, and I was the third one in line,” he explained. “I remember looking over my left shoulder up the valley, and as I turned back, the person in the front of our squad stepped on an (improvised explosive device) buried in the road. It killed him, threw him forward and killed the guy behind him.”

Malarsie took the blast to his face and neck. It was so powerful, it knocked him off the bridge, and he landed face down in the canal water below.

“I was still completely disorientated. I couldn’t figure it out,” Malarsie said. “I’m not sure how long I was actually in the water, but after a certain length of time of having no success (to get out of the water), this realization hit me that I was probably going to drown. This was it.”

But then Malarsie felt someone pull him from the water. It was his squad’s medic, who dragged him to a nearby bank and began performing first aid. Malarsie suffered a shattered jaw, broken nose, fractured skull, perforated ear drum, moderate brain damage and shrapnel damage to his eyes, face and neck.

“I was in and out of consciousness the whole time, but I remember talking to him, and I could start to hear small-arms fire,” Malarsie said. “I tried to find my weapon. I asked him where it was, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to need it.’ I found out later that it was completely ripped off and blown away in the blast.”

As Malarsie lay on the bank, he said he felt a second concussion that rained debris and rubble onto his face. Another IED had detonated, killing Smith and another Soldier who were attempting to retrieve the body of one of the Soldiers who died in the first blast.

“I blacked out after that, and the last thing I remember is when they were strapping me on the (UH-60) Blackhawk,” he said. “I woke up about a week or so later in Walter Reed.”

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Transitioning Iraqi Air Power

Filed under DoD News by on January 1, 2012 at 7:17 am {no comments}

Video from the 321st Air Expeditionary Wing

December 31, 2011 marked the official completion of U.S. led operations in Iraq. The airmen of the Iraqi Training and Advisory Mission (Air) have spent the last few years preparing the Iraqi Army and Air Force to take over the mission following American troop withdrawal. See the full documentary here.



 

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