Our Special Forces units at Fort Bragg have long been the premier resource for anti-terrorism training for a host of services and programs, but they are being stripped of that mission so that a demonstrably unprepared and unqualified military branch can (again) be assigned to reinvent the wheel. This will happen no later than this September.
The people from every service who have attended this training have clearly said that the training at Fort Bragg is far more than head and shoulders above any that is offered anywhere else… period.
The result will be greatly increased vulnerabilities and the inevitable casualties, to say nothing of the delays, inefficiencies as well as a new and cumbersome bureaucracy and the expense of building something we already have, that already works.
Here is some history and a few details.
Almost two decades ago anti-terrorism training was taken away from the Military Police branch at Fort Leonard Wood, MO and given to the Special Forces at Fort Bragg because the MPs lacked the abilities and facilities to conduct it effectively. So the JFK Center for Special Warfare at Fort Bragg took over the training mission and its Anti-Terrorism Training Detachment (ATD) has been conducting it with laudable success out at the range. ATD most recently shifted over to retired SF-qualified instructors brought back as contractors since our active duty SF people are now busy taking the fight to the terrorists.
The courses that are affected are the:
Anti-terrorism Instructor Qualification Course. It teaches officers and noncoms to become anti-terrorism instructors and threat/vulnerability assessment officers for their units. These are the people that keep their units up to date on basic anti-terrorism, but since Fort Bragg is the only base deemed as prepared there is obviously far more work yet to be done.
Individual Terrorism Awareness Course (INTAC). All the military branches and certain Department of Defense civilians are required to attend this course if they are being posted to high-risk diplomatic assignments. It teaches how terrorists conduct their operations, techniques for detecting terrorist surveillance, evasive driving and ramming techniques and the use of personal firearms for protection.
UNPKO is a special course taught to US military personnel that are being assigned to the United Nations Peace Keeping Operations. It is needed because these people are not allowed to carry weapons and are frequently targeted by terrorists. It teaches many of the same courses as in the INTAC, plus they are taught the medical, survival, escape and evasion skills that apply to their mission.
Fort Leonard Wood does not have the minimal facilities required for other than the classroom aspects. Given the norms for getting any military facilities constructed, those will be years and close to a half a billion away. Especially given the opportunity for engaging in the ever-popular bureaucratic empire building.
The ‘why’ of this most recent example is as commonplace as it is annoying and dangerous. MG Parker at Bragg’s JFK Center simply does not like training non-SF people and since he can’t personally get control over whom is being taught what, he wants to transfer them to somebody else, anybody else. So far he has already gotten his hands slapped for trying to keep the millions allotted to pay for these courses.
Not that the JFK center does not have a need… it does. MG Parker has bloated some class sizes to the point of ineffectiveness in order to “get the numbers up†in SF without spending what it takes to do it right.
This was the dysfunctional norm in our services during the Clinton years when senior officers played at making our ‘paper military’ seem strong when in fact it was unable to do anything useful in our national interest because it was being starved of the support needed to function. Programs and organizations have to work well, why else have them?
So what we have is a passed-over General at a dead-end posting who is playing a game of musical chairs with a number of programs that greatly impact our anti-terrorism efforts and prepare our people to go into harms way.
The question now becomes whether we can afford to have this kind of historic stupidity repeat itself.
Tom Marzullo is a physicist, educator and environmental specialist with hands on experience in Special Forces and submarine special operations. He has provided testimony before the US Senate on a variety of issues including Iraq. He has pioneered the first victory of Internet journalistic truth over manufactured stories concocted by conventional media in what has become known as the Tailwind scandal, developed the very early accurate strategic predictions/assessments of our current situations in Iraq and the use of beheadings by Islamic terrorists.
