Defence`s Feeds

Portugal has approved the purchase of two additional Viana do Castelo-class offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) from West Sea, Estaleiros de Viana. Contractual negotiations will be carried out between the Ministry of National Defence procurement directorate (DGRDN) for a contract worth about EUR77

The Indian government has announced the scrapping of all preferential tax concessions to state-owned defence manufacturing entities: a move that aims to boost private sector participation in India's military sector. In its notification on 1 June, the Commerce and Industry Ministry declared the

The South China Sea dispute again dominated this year's Shangri-la Dialogue, the 14th annual Asia Security Summit, with the United States explicitly accusing China of militarising its presence in the Spratly Islands to assert its territorial claims. US defence secretary Ashton Carter took direct

Spain's main defence industry association has welcomed a new government initiative that highlights nine essential capabilities in the sector that it wants to prioritise and protect from possible foreign takeovers. The move will enable the industry to better compete with those in rival countries,

Taliban attacks in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan that started in mid-May have intensified in the past few days, according to both sides. Afghan channel TOLOnews reported on 29 May that according to Muhammad Hanif Hanafi, a senator from the province, 54 police outposts throughout Uruzgan

Vietnam and the United States have signed a defence agreement, with the intention of opening a new era of defence trade and joint defence production. The "joint vision statement on defence relations" was signed in Hanoi on 1 June by Vietnam's Defence Minister General Phung Quang Thanh and

British and Italian AW101 Anti-Submarine Warfare and Utility Helicopter

General Dynamics's (GD) wholly owned subsidiary Electric Boat has received a $46.4m contract from the US Navy for planning efforts in support of maintenance and modernisation work on the USS Montpelier.

Northrop Grumman has concluded the design, development, and limited deployment phase of the consolidated afloat networks and enterprise services (CANES) programme for the US Navy.

The UK Royal Navy flagship Albion-class assault ship HMS Bulwark has rescued around 370 more migrants from the Mediterranean Sea.

Russia dispatched its military aircraft to head off the US Navy's guided-missile destroyer USS Ross, which was reportedly moving along the edge of Russia's territorial waters.

Here’s the video of  a Russian Su-24 flying close to USS Ross in international waters in the Black Sea.

Few days ago, Russian media reported that Russian Navy Su-24 Fencer jets scrambled from an airbase in Crimea “forced” a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Black Sea to leave for neutral waters while approaching Russia’s territorial waters.

Russian outlets claimed that USS Ross turned around because it was scared by the sight of the Su-24, a type of aircraft involved in a similar incident with USS Donald Cook, an American destroyer allegedly “blinded” by a Fencer in the Black Sea in April 2014.

Although, Russian flybys performed by Su-30s and Su-24s aircraft from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet launched from Crimea, have been reported by NATO warships operating in the Black Sea previously, the whole story of USS Ross deviating from its planned operations because of a Fencer immediately appeared to be unlikely and quite hard to believe.

Then came the official statement by U.S. Navy.

According to the U.S. 6th Fleet: “USS Ross continued on her mission after observing the aircraft return to base. At no time did Ross act aggressively nor did she deviate from her planned operations. The conduct of her crew has been and continues to be professional. Ross’ Sailors observed that the SU 24 carried no weapons – wings were “clean.”

And here’s the video that proves this version.

 

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As one of the largest ship building programmes undertaken by the US Navy, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has a lot to live up to. There is no doubt that LCS represents a revolutionary approach to flexible concepts of operation; however, with the US N…

There has been a spate of stories about the end of the travel ban on the five Taleban detainees released from Guantanamo Bay a year ago and exchanged for the United States soldier Bowe Bergdahl. US politicians and media have been speculating on what impact the five might have on the insurgency if they came to Afghanistan; last-minute negotiations between Qatar and the US to extend a travel ban appear to have succeeded. However, as AAN’s Kate Clark reports, the four senior Taleban among the five were already under United Nations sanctions and banned from travel.

Four Taleban leaders were released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility a year ago: former governors of Herat and Balkh, Khairullah Khairi and Nurullah Nuri, former deputy intelligence chief Abdul Haq Wasiq, and former Chief of the Army staff Fazl Mazlum. They were joined by a minor Taleb, Muhammad Nabi Omari, whose release had been demanded, it seems, because of his ties to the Haqqani family who were holding the captured US soldier Bowe Berghdal. After the exchange, the five were taken to Qatar which agreed to ban them from travel for a year.

Some people in America have been getting frightened as the year’s deadline approached, as CNN among others has reported:

A pair of top Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee – Mac Thornberry of Texas and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri – said in a statement Friday that the swap for Bergdahl endangered U.S. troops. “On Sunday, the (Obama) Administration’s flimsy restrictions on these terrorists will expire. This will endanger our troops abroad and our families at home. Understanding why and how this came about is the responsibility of the Congress, one we intend to carry out,” they said.

According to Voice of America, Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denounced what he said were “flimsy” security assurances in the memorandum of understanding that formalised the prisoner swap. After Sunday, the Republican congressman said, “These assurances disappear and the Taliban leaders will be free to return to the battlefield, putting U.S. security interests and Americans at risk.” AP reported him saying “It’s impossible for me to see how they don’t re-join the fight in short order.”

Nothing is said about exactly what the five might do or how exactly they might augment the insurgency or, indeed, threaten American lives whether (the few) in Afghanistan or the United States.

The concerns about the Taleban Five now being able to travel are rather undermined by the fact that the four significant ones were already all under UN Security Council Sanctions which ban travel and freeze assets (see latest resolution here and listing here). Several newspapers have cited the Sanction’s Committee’s report from last year which said “some listed individuals have become increasingly adept at circumventing the sanctions measures, the travel ban in particular.” Neither the reporters or the UN give examples or mention who this phase might apply to. The original report also talks about measures the UN is taking to prevent such travel; responsibility for enforcing the sanctions lies with member states, in this case Qatar. AAN understands the five have been able to receive guests, at first only civilians or those in the Taleban with ‘civilian’ responsibilities, but more recently also commanders. However, there was never a ‘contact ban’. Today (1 June), it was reported that Qatar had extended its travel ban and monitoring of the five.

Poor reporting muddies the waters

When talk of the swap was first mooted, AAN published biographies of all five because of weird reporting coming from US media. Many newspapers and news agencies repeated assertions made in US government files on the detainees without checking information. The problem is that, in gathering information about the detainees, the US military and intelligence used hearsay, rumour and the accusations of other detainees, some of it detained under torture or duress. The files are littered with misunderstandings, mistranslations and basic historical inaccuracies. Not everything in the files is wrong, but facts are so mixed in with errors, one has to double check any allegation or assertion. The other problem, of course, is that the accusations have never been put to the test of being made in a court of law (for detailed analysis of the files, see here).

Once again, now, we see press stories repeating the same strange allegations, for example, that the UN (!) – no other details given – had accused former Balkh Governor Nurullah Nuri of “ordering the massacre of thousands of Shiites.” This matches neither the historical record nor UN statements. Or see this New York Times piece:

The five include a one-time Taliban spokesman, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa [his name is Khairullah Khairkhwa, not sure where ‘Said Wali’ came from], who was also a minister of internal affairs in the Taliban government, and was implicated in the massacre of Shiite civilians [not true]. Mullah Mohammad Fazl, a former deputy army chief of staff for the Taliban, was accused of carrying out massacres of Hazara civilians [why differentiate between Shias and Hazaras here? Fazl did have command and control responsibility for a number of massacres of Hazaras and Sayyeds; a stronger allegation, however, was that he was directly implicated as one of the field commanders in the killings of civilians and surrendered Northern Alliance fighters (largely Tajik), the forcible displacement of civilians and the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure – burning houses, vineyards, orchards and destroying irrigation systems, in Shomali in 1999], and was also described as one of the founders of the Taliban, along with Mullah Omar [not true, he joined later].

An American military interrogator said Mullah Fazl justified the killings as a wartime necessity, and also dismissed the killings of Iranian diplomats in Herat [the diplomats were killed in Mazar, and Fazl was not implicated] on the grounds that they were foreigners and supported the enemy. Mullah Norullah [sic] Noori was a former provincial governor accused of responsibility in the killing of thousands of Shiites during the Taliban rule (again, killing Shias – again not true). Abdul Haq Wasiq was the former deputy intelligence director under Mullah Omar (yes true, although as every Taleban official was ‘under Mullah Omar’, this is a strange detail to include). 

This repeated claim of Taleban “killing Shias” is particularly strange. The Taleban used collective punishment against civilians where armed groups of the same ethnicity as the civilians had re-taken territory: they carried out a number of massacres of civilians and ‘scorched’ earth to make areas uninhabitable. The main victims of this tactic were Hazaras and Seyyeds – who are Shia – but other ethnic groups who are Sunni were also targeted, including Uzbeks (in Khwaja Gah, in Takhar) and Tajiks (in Shomali). Only the Taleban’s 1998 massacre in Mazar-e Sharif was explicitly sectarian (for detailed reporting, see the UN ‘mapping report’). (It was also noticeable that rebellion by Pashtuns was always treated differently. In the case of tribes in Khost, for example, who were unhappy in 1999 at taxes and what they thought was a broken promise to bring King Zaher Shah back, the leadership sent a senior Taleb, the Information and Culture Minister Amir Khan Mutaqqi, to talk to tribal elders and distribute money).

To cast the Taleban’s massacres of civilians as sectarian, rather than ethnic, is simply not accurate. Moreover, from an Afghanistan perspective, it sounds like reporters and politicians have spent too much time in Iraq where Sunni-Shia violence is fundamental to the conflict. As to those implicated in these massacres, among these five, only Mullah Fazl had direct and command responsibility. Indeed, he is the only one of the five to face specific accusations of war crimes.

One of the problems early on with America’s detention policy was that the US was never interested in accountability for war crimes against Afghans (but only against Americans). Fazl could have been put on trial – there is plenty of court-worthy evidence gathered on him and, indeed, there were calls as early as November 2011 for such detainees to face justice. However, a problem would have arisen for the US; if it had put Taleban on trial, what questions would have been raised about some of its post-2001 allies (many of whom had earlier been Cold War-era allies) who have similar cases to answer and, indeed, the US itself, given that it had ‘thrown away’ the Geneva Conventions? (1)

It was frustrating then that men such as Fazl who were in detention were not required to face justice. It is equally disturbing that accusations (and false accusations) against the five former Taleban detainees are dragged up now and exploited for what look, again, to be domestic US political reasons – because, it seems, various politicians are still angry about President Obama swapping the five for Bergdahl a year ago.

 

(1) George Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions did not legally apply to ‘War on Terror’ detainees held in Guantanamo and elsewhere, although the conventions would be respected as a matter of policy. This included even Common Article 3 which prohibits the most basic abuses in wartime, including summary executions, torture and hostage taking, and applies to all conflicts, including civil wars. Bush was forced to reverse this policy in 2006 after the Supreme Court held that special military commissions he had set up for the detainees at Guantanamo violated US law and the Geneva Conventions.

The MOD has awarded a contract worth more than £1.5m to iOra for the supply licences for fixed and deployed nodes of the iOra Geo-replicator replication and compression solution.

The Iver 3 Affordable Work Class Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) has an extended oepration time.

Welcome to this week’s CCLKOW discussion piece. Former Supreme Court judge Marie Deschamps recently released a report condemning the extent of sexual harassment within the Canadian Armed Forces. This has prompted calls for change and the formation of a fact-finding mission to examine how cases of harassment and assault are handled in other countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom. This week, we reflect on the nature and extent of the problem in these countries and what can be done moving forward. Read the piece and join the discussion on Twitter at #CCLKOW.

Late last month, a report regarding sexual harassment in the Canadian Forces (CF) was released. Authored by former Supreme Court judge Marie Deschamps, the report is a damning indictment of how the armed forces address harassment.[i] Deschamps’ recommendations include changes to policy that would allow ‘victims to be able to either formally report incidents of sexual misconduct, or simply request support services without having to trigger a formal complaint.’[ii] In addition, she has called for the creation of an independent agency to investigate cases.[iii] The release of the Deschamps report has sparked significant controversy and further allegations in connection to cadets at the Royal Military College in Kingston.[iv] Major General Christine Whitecross has been tasked with spearheading the military’s efforts to address the report’s recommendations. Over the following months, Whitecross will travel to countries such as the United States and United Kingdom in order to assess how Canada’s allies have tackled the same problem.[v]

Throughout the past decade, the United States has made a number of key advancements in confronting reports of sexual harassment and assault. In 2005, Congress created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office or SAPRO to, ‘provide oversight, guidance and accountability of sexual assaults within the Department of Defense.’[vi] Furthermore, US military units include sexual assault officers, ‘who are responsible for implementing policies as well as receiving complaints.’[vii] Finally, complaints can, ‘either be restricted, meaning they don’t trigger an investigation, or unrestricted.’[viii] Despite these developments, formidable obstacles to change remain. Former Marine Greg Jacob of the Service Women’s Action Network has pointed out that SAPRO primarily gathers data and does not have the power to change policy. Moreover, he has underlined that unit commanders remain responsible for deciding whether to proceed with the prosecution of cases. Jacob and others have argued that an external authority should deal with these complaints.[ix] The release of relevant statistical data has also made it clear that harassment and assault remain a major problem. A recent US Department of Defense study concluded that in 2014, ‘at least 18,900 service members—10,400 men and 8,500 women—experienced unwanted sexual contact.’[x] However, only around 10% of reported cases led to courts martial.[xi] In addition, a RAND military workplace study indicated that around 55% of respondents experienced some form of bullying or retaliation after reporting an assault.[xii]

Across the Atlantic, the conviction of Sergeant Edwin Mee for, ‘16 sex attacks on nine female recruits,’ has served to draw attention to this issue in the British armed forces.[xiii] The 2014 Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey, commissioned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), noted that roughly 10% of personnel stated that, ‘they have been the subject of discrimination, harassment or bullying in a Service environment in the last 12 months.’[xiv] Figures secured by BBC reporter Sima Kotecha through a Freedom of Information request also revealed that, ‘75 allegations of rape and 150 of sexual assault were made to military police between 2011 and 2013.’[xv] Although there have been calls for change in the media, a spokesperson for the MoD has argued that there is no evidence to suggest that these problems are any more prevalent in the military than in wider British society.[xvi]

Sexual harassment and assault are often presented as issues that only concern servicewomen. This is not the case. These problems can seriously impact the lives and career paths of both female and male soldiers. The vast majority of service personnel in Canada, the US and UK serve honourably and represent values of both integrity and respect. Consequently, it is vitally important that allegations of harassment, assault, bullying or violence of any kind be dealt with swiftly. However, these problems cannot be solved through policy change alone. Brigadier Nicky Moffat of the British Army has argued that some officers rely too heavily on, ‘equality and diversity statements,’ to address the matter and believe the ‘job done.’[xvii] Instead, Moffat suggests that, ‘every leader needs to make clear that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable. It’s about speaking out and making sure your voice is heard and understood.’[xviii] The authors of a Human Rights Watch publication on the subject have also identified strong leadership as a central driver of change. The military can begin to encourage this process by recognising both senior and junior leaders who respond effectively to abuse.[xix] This will create a safer environment for all soldiers, both present and future.

The question for this week is:

 How can officers at all levels encourage lasting change?

[i] Paul Koring and Bill Curry, ‘Canadian Forces turn to US for advice on combating sexual harassment,’ Globe and Mail (1 May 2015), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-forces-turns-to-us-for-guidance-on-combating-sexual-harassment/article24229697/.

[ii] Lee Berthiaume, ‘Canadian military looks to US counterpart on dealing with sexual misconduct,’ Ottawa Citizen (14 May 2015), http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/canadian-military-looks-to-u-s-counterpart-on-dealing-with-sexual-misconduct

[iii] Bill Curry, ‘Canadian Forces to create independent agency to handle misconduct complaints,’ Globe and Mail (1 May 2015), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-forces-to-create-independent-agency-to-handle-misconduct-complaints/article24223640/

[iv] James Cudmore, ‘Royal Military College facing new cadet assault allegation,’ CBC News (27 May 2015), http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/royal-military-college-facing-new-cadet-assault-allegation-1.3089634

[v] Koring and Curry, ‘Canadian Forces turn to US,’ (1 May 2015).

[vi] Greg Jacob and Estefania Ponti, ‘Learning from our Allies: Reforming the US Military to Stop Sexual Violence,’ Service Women’s Action Network, http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Learning-From-Our-Allies_Final.pdf

[vii] Berthiaume, ‘Canadian military looks to US counterpart,’ (14 May 2015).

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] United States Department of Defense, Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military Fiscal Year 2014 (22 Apr 2015), RefID: D03CD9B6, http://sapr.mil/public/docs/reports/FY14_Annual/FY14_DoD_SAPRO_Annual_Report_on_Sexual_Assault.pdf

[xi] Koring and Curry, ‘Canadian Forces turn to US,’ (1 May 2015).

[xii] Andrew R Morral, Kristie L Gore, Terry L Schell, Barbara Bicksler, Coreen Farris, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Lisa H Jaycox, Dean Kilpatrick, Stephan Kistler, Amy Street, Terri Tanielian, and Kayla M Williams, Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the US Military: Highlights from the 2014 RAND Military Workplace Study, http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9841.html

[xiii] Sima Kotecha, ‘Army must “speak out” against harassment, says brigadier,’ BBC News (19 May 2015), http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32780009; ‘Army sergeant Edwin Mee guilty of more sex attacks,’ BBC News (6 May 2015), http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-32610403.

[xiv] Ministry of Defence, Statistical Series 6-Other Bulletin 6.03—Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey 2014 (21 May 2014).

[xv] Kotecha, ‘Army must “speak out” against harassment,’ (19 May 2015).

[xvi] ‘Male rape prevalent in UK army, Ministry of Defence figures reveal,’ IBTimes (20 Dec 2014), http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/male-rape-prevalent-uk-army-ministry-defence-figures-reveal-1480413

[xvii] Brigadier Nicky Moffat, as quoted in, Kotecha, ‘Army must “speak out” against harassment,’ (19 May 2015).

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Human Rights Watch, Embattled: Retaliation against Sexual Assault Survivors in the US Military (Washington DC: HRW, 2015), http://www.hrw.org/reports/2015/05/18/embattled-0

OceanServer Technology Inc has recently delivered an Iver autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for the MODUM project supported under the Nato Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme.

Rolls-Royce has received an order from General Dynamics European Land Systems for the delivery of 589 MTU Series 199 diesel engines for use in the new SCOUT Spec

The latest issue of Defence IQ 's Global Armoured Vehicles Market Report covers the most significant procurement programmes and requirements worldwide. View this section on Africa by clicking on the image below. The report includes data on where executives in the defence in