Armed Forces Appreciation Night
with the Tidewater Tides, Saturday, 16 May
with the Tidewater Tides, Saturday, 16 May
The Tidewater Tides Baseball Club hosted its annual salute to all the Armed Forces at Harbor Park Stadium on Saturday, 16 May, featuring officer and enlisted representatives from all the uniformed services as well as a Joint Service Color Guard and static and recruiting displays. Above, the Senior Marine Corps Representative, Col James Sorg, of G-4, receives his service’s acknowledgement prior to the game.
The Tidewater Tides Baseball Club hosted its annual salute to all the Armed Forces at Harbor Park Stadium on Saturday, 16 May, featuring officer and enlisted representatives from all the uniformed services as well as a Joint Service Color Guard and static and recruiting displays. Above, the Joint Services Color Guard on the field at Harbor Park. Visible under the Marine Corps colors is Sgt Takching Shek of MARFORCOM’s Headquarters Service Battalion (HQSVCBN), and at far right, the Marine Corps Rifle Bearer, Cpl Christopher Haseltine, also of MARFORCOM’s HQSVCBN.
The Tidewater Tides Baseball Club hosted its annual salute to all the Armed Forces at Harbor Park Stadium on Saturday, 16 May, featuring officer and enlisted representatives from all the uniformed services as well as a Joint Service Color Guard and static and recruiting displays. Above, third from left, LCpl Gerald Lane of MARFORCOM’s G-3/5/7, winds up to throw one of the first game balls of the evening. Lane, MARFORCOM’s Marine of the Quarter, represented the Marine Corps enlisted community.
Early Bird summary
Monday’s Early Bird leads with an interview between CBS’ Katie Couric and Defense Secretary Robert F. Gates. For a full transcript, follow this link.
Defense News reports that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who issued a gag order as the 2010 budget request was being prepared, is now inserting himself into a process designed by Congress to promote candid answers from military leaders, raising members’ fears that they are not receiving enough information on defense spending.
Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program, according to the New York Times.Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.“Yes,” he said quickly, adding nothing, clearly cognizant of Pakistan’s sensitivity to any discussion about the country’s nuclear strategy or security.The Associated Press reports that Pakistani security forces fought Taliban militants on the outskirts of Mingora, the main city in the northwest's Swat Valley, and entered two other Taliban-held towns there, the army said Sunday, signaling bloody urban battles.A top government official said the offensive near Afghanistan had killed more than 1,000 Taliban fighters, while a group of pro-government religious leaders endorsed the operation but condemned U.S. missile strikes in the northwest. In a statement Sunday afternoon, the army said 25 militants and a soldier had died in the previous 24 hours.
The Pakistani army says it is making progress against the Taliban in this district 70 miles from Islamabad, but the fighting has left devastation in its wake, the Wall Street Journal reports.Burned vehicles, spent artillery shells and broken electric poles lay strewn along the dusty main road in Ambela, the small mountain town that became the main battleground when Pakistani troops moved in to Buner to oust the Taliban.Pakistan's troops have pushed the militants from the town after fighting that began when the Taliban occupied the district in what the government said was a violation of a peace agreement in neighboring Swat Valley.Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief, said Sunday that more than 1,000 militants had been killed in the latest military offensive against the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan. There hasn't been any independent verification of the claim.
An NBC Nightly News report described the U.S. military’s battle against Afghanistan’s lucrative opium trade. For a full transcript, follow this link.
The Honolulu Advertiser reports that a cash-strapped Navy has halted 14,000 duty station moves, is reducing by one-third the sailing time of non-deployed ships and is cutting back on aviation flight hours and ship visits to U.S. cities to counter a $930 million ship repair and manpower budget shortfall, officials said.That funding backlog is being addressed by Congress; U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai'i, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on Thursday added $190 million to a defense supplemental bill.The mid-year funds are intended to pay for repairs to the Pearl Harbor-based cruiser Port Royal, which ran aground in February off Honolulu airport, as well as to fix the submarine Hartford and amphibious ship New Orleans following their collision in March in the Strait of Hormuz.Inouye also increased Navy personnel funding by $230 million to address a $350 million manpower-cost shortfall, officials said. The Navy expects to recoup about $89 million with the duty station freeze, Navy Times reported.Russia and the United States open fresh nuclear disarmament negotiations this week under pressure to strike a deal by year's end that experts say will have far-reaching consequences for world security, the Washington Times reports.The talks mark the resumption, after a generation of drift, of a process begun in 1969 at the height of the Cold War and are a central element of President Obama's stated desire to "reset" frayed ties with Russia.The initial two-day negotiating session was due to start Tuesday. Heads of the U.S. and Russian delegations held a technical meeting in Rome last month, but the Moscow talks will mark the formal start of the process, officials said.Disagreements between the two countries on the size, nature and purpose of their nuclear arsenals and strategic weapons systems abound, but both have indicated recently that the political will to overcome them now exists."There are good chances for bringing our positions closer and for working out agreements," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week after meeting Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington.
Media summary
1. Leading newspaper headlines: The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lead with President Obama's speech at Notre Dame University's graduation ceremony, at which he addressed the issue of abortion directly while several anti-abortion protesters attempted to disrupt the event. (Slate Magazine)
2. Marine Corps ready for review’s scrutiny: The Marine Corps is lean and built for a fight, including the scrutiny of the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, its commandant said during a military strategy forum here today. (Inside NoVa)
3. Retired Marine Corps General likely pick for NASA head: Former astronaut and retired Marine Corps General Charles F. Bolden, Jr., has risen to the top of President Obama's list of candidates to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (FederalNews Radio)
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lead with President Obama's speech at Notre Dame University's graduation ceremony, at which he addressed the issue of abortion directly while several anti-abortion protesters attempted to disrupt the event. The story also tops the Wall Street Journal's world-wide news box. The New York Times leads with U.S. officials' increasing concern that Pakistan is adding to its nuclear arsenal even as it struggles against an insurgency that threatens to topple the government. USA Today leads with news that local law enforcement agencies are cutting back services, merging or even shutting down altogether because of the recession.
Obama's speech was an attempt to bridge the gap between both sides of the abortion debate by calling on each side to respect the other with "open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words," as he said in a much-quoted part of his address. "Mr. Obama did not engage on the merits of the debate on abortion; he instead made an appeal to each side of the issue," the NYT wrote. Those on the anti-abortion side of the issue were not impressed: An anti-abortion mass was held in response to his presence, a small group protested outside (some were arrested, "nearly 40" according to the NYT), and some students registered their objection by skipping the ceremony. When he accepted the invitation to speak at Notre Dame, Obama originally planned to skirt the controversy around abortion, the NYT said. "But ultimately, he decided to devote most of his address to bridging the chasm over abortion and other moral issues," the paper wrote. The Post said he "relished" the task, and "appeared energized by the controversy." (You can read the whole address here.)
Pentagon officials recently have acknowledged that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is growing and experts say Pakistan is buying nuclear materials on the black market and building two new plutonium reactors. Members of Congress are concerned that the substantial amount of military aid that the country receives from Washington could be diverted into the nuclear program, but a Pakistani official quoted in the story said that conditioning U.S. military aid on the nuclear issue—as was done in the 1990s—"will not send a positive message to the people of Pakistan."
All the papers front the apparent end to the war in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers rebel group announced on its Web site that it was laying down arms. The Post—the only paper to have a Sri Lanka dateline—called the news a "stunning and unprecedented admission of defeat in Asia's longest-running war." The government announced that the bodies of four senior rebels had been found, but the group's reclusive leader was not accounted for. (Early morning reports, however, said that he, too was dead.) While the government planned to declare victory on Tuesday, a government military official quoted in the LAT said he didn't believe the Tigers were truly giving up.
Several of the papers, in particular the LAT, have post mortems of the Tigers. "The Tamil Tigers, which at one point had a small navy and air force, were among the most innovative rebel groups in the world. They pioneered the use of suicide vests and refined them so that if the wearer lifted his arms in surrender, the device would detonate. They aggressively recruited female fighters and suicide bombers, and developed innovative financing methods," the LAT wrote. The NYT says the Tigers were forced to give up because of strategic errors that weakened them, and also because of "war on terror"-related financing restrictions that made it more difficult to raise money abroad.
China's auto industry is growing and is quietly looking at picking up some of the pieces of the collapsing U.S. carmakers, reports the Post on the front page: "Chinese companies have tried to dampen speculation, issuing regulatory filings that deny bids to buy Ford's Volvo or General Motor's Saab. But there's little doubt among analysts that Chinese automakers are interested in the United States and that Detroit's automakers are interested in them."
Also in the papers: Islamist rebels in Somalia are on a 10-day offensive that has threatened Somalia's weak central government, the Post reports.
DoD photo by Marine Cpl. Erin A. Kirk
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway delivers the keynote address focusing on the Quadrennial Defense Review at the CSIS Military Strategy Forum in Washington D.C., on Friday. Conway said he expects the Marine Corps will withstand any scrutiny during QDR discussion.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway delivers the keynote address focusing on the Quadrennial Defense Review at the CSIS Military Strategy Forum in Washington D.C., on Friday. Conway said he expects the Marine Corps will withstand any scrutiny during QDR discussion.
By Samantha L. Quigley/American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2009 - The Marine Corps is lean and built for a fight, including the scrutiny of the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, its commandant said during a military strategy forum here today. “The Marine Corps pulls down about 6 percent of the department’s budget,“ Conway said. “For that 6 percent, you get about 15, 16 percent of the maneuver battalions; you get 15 percent of the attack aircraft [and] you get 19 percent of the attack helicopters. The average Marine costs the country about $20,000 less than the next closest service man in other services.“ The Corps also defines the kind of service Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is seeking: a balanced force oriented toward the hybrid, but able to counter surprises that sometimes develop around the globe, Conway said. “One hundred percent of our Marine Corps procurement can be used in both the hybrid kind of environment or in major combat,“ he said. “It’s a record we’re proud of and we think that’s certainly going to continue on downrange.“ The QDR most likely will bring up three issues involving the Marine Corps, the commandant said. The first is the lay down of forces as it relates to the Corps’ pending move to Guam. The second is the shortfall in the Corps’ attack aircraft procurement. It hasn’t purchased such a craft in 11 years, but with good reason, he said. “We chose not to buy the F-18 E and F when the Navy did, so that we could await the arrival of a fifth-generation fighter called the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35B,“ Conway said. “Interestingly, we are the first of all the services to get initial operation capacity out of that aircraft.“ That capacity won’t be a reality until 2012. Until then, the Marine Corps has taken steps to make sure its fleet of F-18 A through D fighter jets are viable resources, including extending the jets to 10,000 hours of flight time, Conway said. The third issue focuses on the need for amphibious capability and how much is necessary. “That is a major player as far as Marines are concerned, of course ... because it talks about that niche capability that we provide,“ Conway said. “I would rephrase the question a little bit and [ask], ‘How much does this maritime nation and world superpower need for purposes of security cooperation and theater engagement? If you ask that question of the combatant commanders, they will tell you almost uniformly that’s their number one requirement.“ Conway said he believes the chief of Naval Operations would say the amphibious ships are the best for that particular job. They provide a great range of capabilities including training, air, medical and dental. “We think that the value on a day-in and day-out basis is really the engagement that this nation has to be able to accomplish over time and [be able to do it] from the sea,“ Conway said. The military is seeing more nations request the aid the U.S. military has brought them, but they don’t necessarily want them creating a footprint ashore, he said.
Retired Marine Corps General likely pick for NASA head
May 15, 2009 - 12:06pm
By Julia ZieglerFederalNewsRadio
Former astronaut and retired Marine Corps General Charles F. Bolden, Jr., has risen to the top of President Obama's list of candidates to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Bolden is scheduled to meet with President Obama on Monday according to sources who spoke with NBC News.
The nomination could come the same day.
As an astronaut, Bolden logged over 680 hours in space and is a veteran of four space flights. He was also involved in the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.
If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first African American to hold the post.
(Copyright 2009 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)
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