An U.S. psychological operations (PSYOP) leaflet disseminated in Iraq. It shows a caricature of al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi caught in a rat trap. The caption reads “This is your future, Zarqawi.” DoD leaflet

Born in October 1966 into a large Bedouin family in Jordan, Zarqawi grew up in the industrial city of Zarqa (from which he took his nom de guerre). He gained a reputation as a thug whose passions were drinking, drugs, and getting into trouble. In 1989 he traveled to Afghanistan to help the mujahedeen fight the Red Army. It was there that he became a radical militant and follower of the Salafi cleric Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Mazdisi.

In 1994, a year after he had returned to Jordan, Zarqawi was jailed for revolutionary activity. He was freed in 1999 as part of a general amnesty granted by King Abdullah II when he succeeded his father to the Jordanian throne. Zarqawi then left for Pakistan and later Afghanistan. In Kandahar he met al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Though reports would link Zarqawi and his followers with al Qaeda, the reality was that the connection was never strong. The two men didn’t like each other. More importantly, they had different agendas. Bin Laden’s primary enemy was the United States. Zarqawi’s enemies were the government of Jordan (which he wanted to overthrow) and Shiites (whom he wanted to eradicate). Though he used al Qaeda seed money to organize a militant organization and briefly fought with al Qaeda and the Taliban against American forces in 2001, Zarqawi refused for years to take an oath of allegiance to bin Laden, finally doing so in 2004, though apparently more for appearances sake than anything else. In December 2001, together with 300 fighters, Zarqawi left Afghanistan for Iran. Supported by the Iranian government, Zarqawi began building and expanding his network in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle.

In August 2003 Zarqawi literally exploded onto the world news. His operations began with a car-bomb attack of the Jordanian embassy on August 7. On August 19, the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was bombed, killing 22 people. Then on August 29, a car bomb exploded near the Shiite holy shrine in Najaf, killing the revered cleric Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim and over a hundred people, the deadliest terrorist attack in Iraq at the time. Zarqawi had just begun.

In 2002 he plotted the successful assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan and a failed 2004 plot to bomb the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence services and release a huge cloud of toxic chemicals that, had it succeeded, could have resulted in the death of an estimated 80,000 people. But it was in Iraq where Zarqawi had the most success, targeting and killing thousands of Shiites with the goal of turning Iraq into a failed state battleground of polarized sectarian violence between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority.

“Zarqawi wanted Iraq to be contested by extremists, not forged by moderates.”

— JSOC commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal

What set Zarqawi apart from the rest of the terrorists, and made him truly infamous, were his beheadings. Videotaped and initially aired on jihadist websites, a hostage, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit was recorded kneeling or sitting in front of a group of masked men. After a short speech, a long knife is drawn by one of the masked men who then decapitates the hostage. Zarqawi’s first victim was Nicholas Berg, killed on May 7, 2004. On Sept. 16, 2004, Eugene “Jack” Armstrong was beheaded.

On June 29, 2005, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal entered the White House Situation Room to meet President George Bush and his National Security Team. The purpose of the meeting was al-Zarqawi and what was being done to find him. After McChrystal finished his brief, the president asked, “Are you going to get him?”

McChrystal replied, “We will, Mr. President. There is no doubt in my mind.” But he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

Part Two: The End Game

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Many of the ideas in EO 13514 were not new; many were based on previous federal mandates and requirements, such as the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007 (PL110-140), and EO 13423 – “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management” – issued in January 2007, to name a few. Mandates and requirements such as these, as well as EO 13514, affect the work of federal agencies.

In October 2009, the idea of sustainability was not new to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE); in fact, it was a key component of the organization’s mission. In 2002, when USACE introduced its Environmental Operating Principles, the first of them read: “Strive to achieve environmental sustainability. An environment maintained in a healthy, diverse and sustainable condition is necessary to support life.” In 2006, USACE established the Center for the Advancement of Sustainability Innovations (CASI) to extend the expertise of its researchers and engineers to customers throughout the Department of Defense (DoD) and the nation. The “Campaign Plan” released by USACE in 2008 features sustainability as a guiding principle, and includes, as one of its goals: “Deliver innovative, resilient, sustainable solutions to the Armed Forces and the Nation.”

This carport at Fort Hood not only helps keep cars cool from the scorching Texas sun, it also generates solar power to keep the buildings cool on the inside and reduce the energy bills throughout the military facility. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Carlos J. Lazo

To organize these principles and activities in compliance with EO 13514, USACE has established a sustainability program under the leadership of Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works and USACE senior sustainability officer. She is assisted by the Strategic Sustainability Committee, which oversees the sustainability program, and the Energy Governance Council, which oversees all energy activities within USACE.

As John Coho, USACE senior adviser for environmental compliance, pointed out: “The sustainability program to some extent was launched in response to EO 13514 – although many of the activities currently rolled into that program had been going on long before the executive order came out.”

A Record of Sustainability

Within USACE, sustainability generally follows two lines of operation: internal processes that improve efficiencies in the facilities it owns and operates, and products and services that help support the sustainability goals and targets of its customers.

USACE uses the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) standards in military construction projects, requiring a minimum LEED rating of Silver – though a LEED rating of Gold has been achieved on several projects, including a recently completed DoD headquarters office complex in Alexandria, Va., that provides working space for 6,400 employees. Within USACE’s Sacramento District, nine park and dam operations offices have installed solar energy systems. The Louisville District is in the process of replacing its entire fleet of vehicles with hybrids, and USACE is working in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to convert USACE’s waterborne fleet to biodiesel.

The most prominent customer for USACE is the U.S. Army itself, which has its own particular reasons for wanting to reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels. The Army measures sustainability not only in terms of energy efficiency, energy cost reduction, reduced impact to the environment, and quality of life for its communities, but also in terms of increasing its mission capability through reduced reliance on fossil fuels, increasing installation security, reducing casualties in the transportation of fuel, and options for its future. To this end, the CASI has been conducting research into the creation of a virtual “forward operating base.” Also at the Army’s National Training Center on Fort Irwin, Calif., research is under way in the design of a hybrid wind/solar/battery/propane-powered Deployable-Renewable Energy Power Station (D-REPS) that will save fuel, decrease the logistical burden of fuel transportation, and reduce harmful emissions.

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Despite public pronouncements of common strategic purpose between America and Great Britain and within each nation’s military, the truth was different. In George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory 1943-1945, the third book of his four-volume biography of Marshall, Forrest C. Pogue wrote that regarding the conferences, “In actuality one finds the Americans against the British, the Army and Air Forces against the Navy, and the Navy against MacArthur, with Marshall attempting to find a solution somewhere between.”

Though Trident meetings of the Combined Chiefs became tense at times, they did not achieve the acrimonious levels of later gatherings. After a certain amount of horse-trading, consensus was reached on all the issues. Most importantly Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall got what he wanted – British agreement to a target date of May 1, 1944, for Overlord – and the British got what they wanted – American agreement for post-Sicily operations against Italy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the presidential limousine following Churchill’s arrival in Washington, D.C. for the Trident Conference, May 1943. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library photo

On May 21, the Combined Chiefs presented their results to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In his diary, Gen. Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, wrote, “We spent about 1½ hours listening to PM [prime minister – Churchill] and President [Roosevelt] holding forth on strategy and shivering lest either of them should suddenly put their fat foot right into it and reopen some of the differences which we had reconciled with such difficulty! … Thank heaven we got through it safely!” Brooke spoke too soon. Three days later, he wrote in despair that Churchill “wished to repudiate half” of the agreement “which would have crashed the whole” agreement. Fortunately, Roosevelt’s adviser, Harry Hopkins, was able to get the prime minister to withdraw his revisions and only do minor rewording of some text.

But Churchill wasn’t finished. Concerned over the vaguely worded section about invading Italy, on May 25 he announced that he planned to visit Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower at his Allied Force Headquarters in Algiers to discuss the subject. To allay well-founded American suspicions of browbeating, the prime minister suggested Roosevelt let Marshall accompany him, in effect, making him Eisenhower’s guardian angel. Roosevelt readily agreed.

“Your message has my approval as well as Churchill’s.”

—President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Gen. George C. Marshall, May 31, 1943

The decision threw Marshall’s plans of a short vacation and an overdue inspection trip of the Pacific theaters out the window. Secretary of War Henry Stimson saw Churchill’s suggestion for what it was. Writing in his diary, he accused Churchill of taking “Marshall along with him in order to work on him to yield on some of the points that Marshall has held out on in regard to the Prime Minister’s desired excursions in the eastern Mediterranean. …” Churchill wanted to invade the Dodecanese Islands off Turkey’s coast; Marshall said no. The battle lines were drawn – a fight Marshall was determined to avoid.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill at Shangri-La, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, during an interlude in the Trident Conference, mid-May 1943. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library photo

As Churchill, Marshall, and their entourage boarded the flying boat Bristol on May 26 for their two-day, 17-hour, transatlantic flight, only one item remained outstanding: sending a communiqué summarizing Trident to Soviet premier Josef Stalin. In an unusual case of writer’s block, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill was able to compose a document that satisfied them. Marshall saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: running down the clock while performing a useful service. Two hours into the first leg flight to Nova Scotia, he handed Churchill the results. Churchill was impressed.

In Hinge of Fate, part four of his six-volume account of World War II, Churchill wrote, “Hitherto I had thought of Marshall as a rugged soldier and a magnificent organizer and builder of armies – the American Carnot. But now I saw that he was a statesman with a penetrating and commanding view of the whole scene.” He endorsed it unchanged and forwarded the draft to Roosevelt. Roosevelt made a few minor changes and sent the communiqué to Stalin.

The following day, on the second leg flight from Nova Scotia to Gibraltar, after Churchill had finished his paperwork, the moment Marshall dreaded had come. Churchill wanted to talk strategy. Instead, Marshall sidetracked him by getting the prime minister to talk about historical events, starting with the trial of Warren Hastings, a governor-general of India. Pogue wrote, “Always a historian and lecturer at heart, Churchill rose to the bait.” Once that topic had been exhausted, Marshall asked him about Nazi leader Rudolf Hess’s flight to Scotland in May 1941. And, when that subject was exhausted, he queried Churchill about his role in King Edward VIII’s abdication.

Marshall had won yet again; Churchill never did get around to badgering the general about strategy.

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“It is our new ‘clean sheet’ design aircraft,” explained Chris Gehler, business development manager for future vertical lift at Bell Helicopter. “It doesn’t happen very often that the Department of Defense asks for a completely new aircraft design, so we are working with the Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate on this – our candidate for the Joint Multi Role Technology Demonstrator. And the V-280 is our offering for that effort.”

“Essentially what the Army was looking for as they sent out the [JMR TD] announcement was speed,” Gehler said. “Originally they had said 170 knots, which is really at the edge of conventional helicopters. I think as the Army looked at it more it determined that it would really ask industry to push technology boundaries a little bit as we look forward. So at the final release it was 230 knots ‘plus’ that they were asking for. So, because the Army has determined through their analysis that speed is going to be the biggest thing, that’s going to change how commanders think on the battlefield.”

The Bell V-280 Valor is Bell Helicopter’s new vertical lift platform, a tilt rotor that is designed to have a range that will enable a reduced deployed force structure. Bell Helicopter rendering

Gehler said that the V-280 name of the platforms comes from its vertical lift and 280 knot cruise speed, adding, “We can go over 300 knots but will cruise at 280. And ‘Valor’ is really a tribute to the people serving in our Armed Forces today.”

The V-280 fuselage element appears similar to the current UH-60 series Black Hawk with a V-tail. The design includes a large wing with rotating prop rotors and non-rotating engine. A driveshaft runs through the straight wing, allowing both prop rotors to be driven by a single engine in the event of engine loss.

“The Army doesn’t have any problem with the fuselage of the current medium lift aircraft,” Gehler asserted. “Instead they have said that they can’t continue to incrementally upgrade and improve aircraft ‘at the margins.’ So what they are really looking to do is turn to a clean sheet that will provide a leap ahead in capability. So the leap ahead in capability that they’re really looking for is in the areas of speed, as I mentioned, as well as range, and high/hot hover capability. And really that’s what we have designed this aircraft to do.”

“This aircraft is designed to be a very good ‘hover’ machine – 6K [altitude] / 95 [degrees F] high / hot hover performance with payload.” he added. “It’s also very nimble. We have spent a lot of time with the technology in things like the prop rotors plus fly-by-wire technology that lets you do things that you can’t do with mechanical linkages; really providing very good and responsive control power in the mountains. And then when you rotate the nacelles forward you’re on the way with the benefit of the speed that this aircraft provides.”

Additional design features include dual cargo hooks that allow the lift of an M777A2 howitzer at approximately 10,000 pounds.

“So it’s got the payload capability to do that and the range to actually take it somewhere,” Gehler said, acknowledging that a payload of that weight would reduce aircraft speed to something on the order of 150 knots.

The Bell V-280 Valor is designed to have large side doors so soldiers can get on and off rapidly, rotor height will mean they won’t have to worry about where the rotors are. Bell Helicopter rendering

Reiterating that “the engine does not move” in the current V-280 design, he noted that “in our previous versions the engine and transmission was all in one nacelle that would rotate. In the case of the V-22, the Army started it and the Marine Corps really took it over, so we had to redesign aspects to meet the Marine Corps mission. In the case of a ‘clean sheet’ design we can take all the good things we have on the V-22 and bring that over into the V-280, but keeping in mind exactly what the Army wants to do.”

He outlined many of the features designed to meet Army needs, including an assault platform with large side doors that allow soldiers to run off and on easily while providing door gunners with great visibility and large fields of fire.

“And with the fixed engines and the prop rotors on top it creates a very open space underneath the wings to do that,” he noted. “With a Black Hawk you’ve always got to worry about where the rotor is. But the V-280 wing is more than 7 feet high – that lets warfighters just run on and off the aircraft. They can do it at a sprint instead of getting off and ‘going to ground’ because of what the aircraft is about to do.”

“Our design is also without the side external fuel tanks, where soldiers just can’t get out of the airplane easily,” he continued. “With the V-280 most of the fuel is in the wing. There is a little ‘up in the top,’ but not much. And in a self-deployment configuration you can put in fuel bags that will allow Valor to go over 2,100 nautical miles – so it has the range for ‘trans oceanic’ types of things. We can self-deploy basically anywhere in the world with few gas stops. And with that speed you can do that in a couple of days to link up with the assault force coming in on C-17s.”

Although the initial design is based on a utility configuration, some concept work has already been done on an attack configuration of the V-280.

Bell Helicopter envisions the potential for armed variants of their V-280 Valor. Bell Helicopter rendering

Asked about partners and teaming arrangements on the V-280, Gehler responded, “We have not announced who our partners are yet. We are about to do that very soon. But once we announce who our partners are I think the Army will feel very comfortable with some of the largest names in the defense contracting business that we have teamed up with. It will probably be announced in June. We’ve been holding off on that a little bit as we continue to work some details on a few things. There are some ‘major teammates’ and then we have a lot of other teammates that are also onboard.”

Although Bell Helicopter is still teamed with Boeing on the V-22, Boeing and Sikorsky have teamed up on an “X2” –based rotorcraft design for JMR.

“Bell made a strategic decision to be the lead in tilt-rotor going forward,” Gehler said. “We are a 50/50 partnership on V-22 but we will be the prime going forward on this airplane, supported by some great teammates who will bring a lot to this aircraft as well.”

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Some of the supporting government documentation noted that recent study findings “concluded that the DoD rotary wing aviation fleet is aging and upgrades to current fleet aircraft will not provide the capabilities required for future operations. Additionally, because of the time in service for currently fielded helicopters, many of the decision points for the future fleet will occur within the next 10 years.”

Identifying exacerbating circumstances like a rotary wing operational tempo (OPTEMPO) in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom being “five times that of peacetime, and much higher than the design usage spectrum,” the documentation concluded that “The current fleet of DoD rotorcraft cannot continue to be incrementally improved to meet future operational requirements. Significant improvement in vertical lift, range, speed, payload, survivability, reliability, and reduced logistical footprint are all required to meet future needs and can only be achieved through the application of new technologies and designs. Operational costs must be reduced to a fraction of those for the current fleet.”

The JMR TD is one of at least several science and technology efforts addressing future rotorcraft needs. The initial phase of the TD effort will address “technical risk associated with achieving next-generation vertical take-off and landing flight performance, affordability and reliability that greatly surpasses the DoD’s currently fielded VTOL capability.”

Industry representatives have said that they expect to hear some word from the Army on the technology demonstration program “in the next couple of weeks” with the initial awards anticipated later this fiscal year using FY’13 funding. It is believed that the Army plans to issue three or four initial awards with a “down select” in the June 2014 timeframe to possibly two flying demonstrators.

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An U.S. Customs and Border Protection P-3 Orion aircraft sits on a flight line in South America during Operation Martillo May 9, 2012. Operation Martillo is a joint, interagency and multinational collaborative effort to deny transnational criminal organizations air and maritime access to the littoral regions of the Central American isthmus. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Earling Prioleau

The P-3 was patrolling as part of Operation Martillo, an international anti-trafficking initiative led from the Key West, Fla. headquarters of the multiservice, multiagency Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-S). Operation Martillo is designed to stop the flow of contraband along Central America’s Pacific and Caribbean coastlines. Since its launch in mid-January of last year, Operation Martillo has resulted in more than 400 arrests, the seizure or disruption of nearly 200 metric tons of cocaine, and the seizure or destruction of more than 140 vessels and aircraft.

CBP is a critical partner in Operation Martillo; it practically invented maritime surveillance in the Caribbean. In 1987, amidst what CBP’s Executive Director for National Air Security Operations, Lothar Eckardt, called the “Miami Vice days,” when drug smugglers were flying cocaine into the United States aboard small aircraft, the U.S. Customs Service established its aerial surveillance program in Corpus Christi, Texas, with a fleet of P-3 Orions outfitted with Airborne Early Warning (AEW) radar systems adapted from Navy aircraft.

“The P-3 was designed to go out and find those airplanes,” said Eckardt, “and then intercept them, follow them back into the country, and shut down that smuggling route. And we were extremely effective. In the early to mid-nineties, airborne cocaine stopped coming into the country.”

The P-3 program promptly built on this success: Another Air Operations Center was established in Jacksonville, Fla., and several aircraft were fitted with electro-optical infrared (EO/IR) sensors like those in the Coast Guard’s long-range surveillance and transport aircraft, the C-130.

An U.S. Customs and Border Protection P-3 Orion patrol aircraft, operating out of National Air Security Operations Center-Jacksonville, air drops a sealed capsule containing mission essential parts on the port side of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigate USS Underwood (FFG 36). U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Frank J. Pikul

Today, four of 14 P-3s flying out of Corpus Christi and Jacksonville are fitted with EO/IR long-range tracking sensors—but software upgrades have made the two surveillance systems interchangeable, said Eckardt. The AEW radar system, originally built for Navy aircraft to scan for larger threats to a carrier group, has been modified to look for smaller targets – aircraft and speedboats or pangas on the water. The CBP’s long-range tracking P-3s, also, have had the EO/IR sensors in their noses supplemented by maritime search radar in their bellies.

“These two airplanes used to work together in what’s called the Double Eagle package,” Eckardt explained, “where the AEW would hang out high and point out all the targets, and the long-range tracker would go low and visually identify all the targets. But now that we’ve invested in this maritime radar, we’ve been able to split the package, saving the taxpayer a lot of money. Now the airplanes don’t have to go out in pairs anymore – they can go out and operate over their own separate area of water. So it’s basically doubled the size of the area we can search with our current fleet, without having to buy extra airplanes.”

CBP’s maritime surveillance is the linchpin of Operation Martillo’s successes – Eckardt estimates that around 99 percent of the operation’s air surveillance is conducted by the agency’s P-3s. The program’s significance hasn’t changed—if anything, P-3 Orion surveillance has become even more important to the anti-trafficking effort – even as smugglers have altered their tactics. Though illegal air routes through the Transit Zone have been virtually shut down for years, smugglers continue to probe for weaknesses in the nation’s defenses, using the surface vessels – and, in recent years, hard-to-spot semi-submersible vessels – to bring drugs and other contraband up along the Central American coastline.

Coordination between U.S. Coast Guard, Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection, and crews from a U.S. Navy P-3C Orion and the frigate USS Dewert (FFG 45), resulted in the seizure of an estimated $352 million of cocaine during an interdicted and boarding operation on a self-propelled semi-submersible vessel in the Eastern Pacific on Aug 19, 2010. U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo

The first self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) to be interdicted in the Caribbean was spotted in July of 2012 off the coast of Honduras – and since then, Eckardt estimated, CBP’s P-3 crews have spotted about 90 percent of the SPSSs to be interdicted in the Western Caribbean.

As more semi-submersibles are interdicted by Operation Martillo, it’s hard to anticipate what drug smugglers will think of next – but whatever they decide to use, it’s likely that CBP’s air surveillance program will remain as important to stopping them as it has been for nearly 30 years.

“Drug smugglers are in a business,” Eckardt said. “They change their means, methods and conveyances often. And we’re a reactive force – as they change the way they do business, we react to it and change the way we do things. JIATF South updates its approach every year, to try to keep up.”

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The tornado was a two-mile wide twister that contained winds of up to 200 mph, and caused heavy damage to Moore. One of the more emotional scenes has been at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which suffered a direct hit that tore off the roof and collapsed walls. Volunteers joined with first responders and Guard members to search for survivors at the school. The death toll, which was reported as high as 51 in the immediate aftermath, has been revised downward to at least 24, with authorities cautioning that it could rise again. At least 120 people have been injured, with many missing.

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The Year in Special Operations is a publication totally dedicated to the “quiet professionals” – the airmen, Marines, sailors, and soldiers engaged in what the U.S. military terms “unconventional warfare.” The photos of U.S. and international special operators above are ones that didn’t make it into our publication due to space limitations, but still showcase some of the great content you will find when you pick up this issue. Within The Year in Special Operations 2013-2014 you will find:

• Interviews with Maj. Gen. Mark A. Clark, Rear Adm. Sean A. Pybus, and Command Sgt. Maj. Chris Faris

• The evolution of the Minigun; SOF ground vehicles

• Anniversaries: AFSOC; Task Force Ranger; Operation Urgent Fury; Operation Praying Mantis

And much more.

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