ABC News' Brian Ross talks about a "20/20" investigative report on returning war veterans and drug addiction. Is the problem worse than the Army is willing to admit? Can drug addiction be rightly linked to wartime service? Should the Army do more to help these servicemembers recover beyond discharging or even jailing them?
Friday, November 30, 2007
BREAKING!!! F-15s Grounded Again
We just got this breaking news at Military.com in a few minutes ago and I wanted to get the word out to DT readers... An informed DT reader told me this afternoon the Air Force had re-grounded its fleet of F-15s after they were returned to flight last week. Military.com reporter Bryant Jordan got the details... Barely more than a week after returning the F-15 Eagle fleet to flight the Air Force is once again grounding most of the planes, Military.com has learned. F-15 models A through D -- a total of 442 planes -- were ordered grounded by Air Combat Command,Langley Air Force Base, Va., late on Nov. 27, ACC spokesman Maj. Thomas Crosson said in an interview. The latest problem is with cracks in the planes' metal support beams, called longerons, that run the length of the aircraft, and make up the sill on which the canopy sits, Crosson told Military.com. The entire F-15 fleet was ordered grounded in early November after the break up and crash of a Missouri Air National Guard Eagle. The Air Force began lifting the restrictions on the fleet Nov. 19 - starting with F-15E Strike Eagles - following aggressive inspections of the planes. ACC called for the new groundings after metallurgical analysis of the planes suggested there could be possible cracking problems with the longerons. Officials now are working at Warner Robins Air Force Base, Ga., to develop an inspection list that will be sent out to F-15 maintainers across the Air Force. Crosson said the list should be completed in a day or two, and will include a timeframe for how long the actual inspections should take. He could not say how long it would before the latest restrictions would be lifted from the entire fleet.
USAREUR Announces '08 Deployments
HEIDELBERG, Germany -- Some 8,000 Europe-based soldiers will be heading to Iraq and Afghanistan next year, according to an announcement Wednesday from U.S. Army Europe.
Officials announced the upcoming deployments of some 4,200 soldiers to be sent between March and November, for an expected 15-month tour. Those units come mostly from the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, headquartered in Kaiserslautern but with units based throughout Germany.
There are currently 13,500 Europe-based troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said.
The newly announced units are in addition to some 3,800 soldiers with the Baumholder-based 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, whose expected 2008 deployment was previously announced by the Department of Defense.
Additionally, a number of units scheduled for deployment next year originally were scheduled to deploy this year. Those units are marked with an asterisk (*).
All but one of the units deploying next year are based in Germany. The exception is the 1st Platoon (Postal), 111th Adjutant General Company, from Vicenza, Italy.
Numerous communities in Germany will be affected by the unit deployments, including Bamberg, Baumholder, Grafenwöhr, Hohenfels, Illesheim, Kaiserslautern, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Wiesbaden.
Larger NATO Force Needed in Afghanistan
NATO-led forces in Afghanistan do not have the means to secure the country in the face of a barrage of insurgent attacks, a senior French general with the force has warned.
"The 41,OOO soldiers in ISAF are largely insufficient to ensure security," said Brigadier General Vincent Lafontaine, the chief of planning for the International Security Assistance Force deployed here under a UN mandate.
"That does not mean we are going to lose this operation, but it is going to take a lot longer for us to finish the job," Lafontaine told visiting journalists this week at ISAF headquarters in the Afghan capital.
The officer -- one of the most senior in France's 1,070-strong contingent here -- also expressed concern about the chronic shortage of transport helicopters used to move soldiers and supplies around the war-ravaged country.
The United States provides most of the helicopters, but is due to start pulling them out in early 2008.
Lafontaine said as a result, top-level NATO officials were now mulling the possibility of outsourcing logistics tasks to private helicopter companies.
NATO has long called for the 38 nations involved in ISAF to contribute more to beat the intensifying conflict.
But the high cost of the operation here -- both financial and personal, with more than 210 international soldiers killed this year alone -- has made it unpopular in several countries.
Lafontaine insisted the NATO-led force had "scored some points and put pressure" on the Taliban-led insurgents, crippling their ability to stage mass attacks involving hundreds of fighters like they did a year ago.
The extremists now were forced to resort to suicide attacks, kidnappings and roadside bombs to target convoys of Afghan and international security forces.
The number of such attacks had multiplied in recent months in and around Kabul, which had largely been spared the near-daily violence seen in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
The militants have vowed to spread their campaign of violence to the north. Indeed, the country's worst-ever suicide attack took place in northern Baghlan province on November 6, killing nearly 80 people.
An ISAF spokesman, Portuguese Brigadier General Carlos Branco, said the increased number of suicide bombings were a sign of the Taliban's "weakness".
The Taliban "do not have any real success on the ground," Branco said of the group which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, and is now blamed for most of the 130 suicide attacks here this year.
The spokesman said the militants were "unable to take their insurgency to the next level" and so had resorted to "terrorism", the use of propaganda and outright lying about the results of their actions out of desperation.
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