WarSclerotic

US Military Concerned ISIS Fighters Returning to Caribbean Could Reach Border
MARCH 12, 2015 BY KEVIN BARON Via Defense One

(Looks like it’s time to order another 1,000 rounds for the AK47. – LS)

A top US commander warns Caribbean and South American countries are unable to track 100 foreign fighters that could return from Syria.

The war in Syria has attracted roughly 100 foreign fighters from the Caribbean who could easily make their way to the United States, said the top U.S. military commander for the southern hemisphere.

“They don’t have that ability to track these folks,” Kelly said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.

Kelly said he worries whomever is radicalized enough to leave for Syria would return with greater terrorism skills and motivations.

“I would suspect they’ll get good at, while they’re in Syria, get good at killing and pick up some real job skills in terms of explosives and beheadings and things like that. And everyone’s concerned, of course, if they come home. Because if they went over radicalized one would suspect they’ll come home at least that radicalized.”

There is no indication of any scheme to attack the United States he said, but Americans “take for granted” the nation’s functioning legal system, agencies like the FBI and the layers of uncorrupt law enforcement that can monitor and track potential terrorists like in the United States. “A lot of these countries just don’t have that.”

Kelly said that some of the fighters are recruited and radicalized off the Internet but that there are “a couple of pretty radical mosques” in the region, as well.

“A hundred certainly doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s not, but the countries they come from have [a] total inability to deal with it,” he said, naming Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Surinam and Venezuela, in particular.

With little military threats to the United States in his region, Kelly is a frequent advocate for helping law enforcement attack the network — and root causes — of illegal drug and human trafficking into the United States. People, he said, travel freely and “simply walk across borders” in some cases where there is little to stop them.

“It’s the old story of you gotta watch them,” he said. “The CIA, FBI and people like that do a really good job tracking the networks, but you know it only takes – look, there’s a lot of people coming and going, it only takes one to cause you problems.”

With those caveats, Kelly’s concern does not reflect ‘ISIS at the border’ alarmism, rather he casts a watchful eye on the potential trouble of South American, Central American and Caribbean states in tracking returning fighters for themselves. The solution to preventing ISIS from coming through the southern hemisphere will require law enforcement and intelligence partnering with every state in the region, he said.

“The network that comes up through the isthmus and Mexico that carries anything and everything on it … the amount of movement is what I think overwhelms our ability – and the sophistication of the network – overwhelms our ability to stop everything,” he said.

“I think if they get back to some of these countries that I’ve described, it’s pretty easy for them to move around,” he said.

Iran attacks replica US ship in military drill
By David Blair, and Robert Midgley, video source APTN 3:40PM GMT 25 Feb 2015 Via The Telegraph

(It’s fun to pretend, especially when no one actually shoots back. – LS)

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launches a large-scale naval and air defence drill near a strategic Gulf waterway, during which a replica of a US aircraft carrier is used as a target

(Replicas can be deadly….right? -LS)

Iran’s armed forces launched a speedboat attack on a giant model of a US aircraft carrier on Wednesday as the Revolutionary Guard staged military exercises in the Gulf.

(The Iranians used the element of surprise. – LS)

The aim of the drill was to practise how to sink an American carrier, at least two of which patrol the Gulf at any given time.

(Two for now, but more can and will be rerouted if necessary and I doubt they’ll be replicas. – LS)

Exercise “Great Prophet Nine” showed how the naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard would launch a “swarm” attack, seeking to overwhelm the carrier’s defences by dispatching numerous speedboats to converge on the vessel from all directions.

(Meanwhile, the carrier group would return fire in all directs, put assets in the air and destroy their home bases. – LS)

“American aircraft carriers are very big ammunition depots housing a lot of missiles, rockets, torpedoes and everything else,” said Admiral Ali Fadavi, the naval commander of the Revolutionary Guard. He told state television that hitting a carrier with just one missile could trigger a “large secondary explosion”.

(Yep, a large secondary explosion…in Iran. – LS)

The exercise was carried out near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway at the entrance to the Gulf. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in the nearby kingdom of Bahrain.
However, American forces believe they have little to fear from the Revolutionary Guard. The US deploys 10 nuclear-powered carriers, each one of which can embark about 80 aircraft with more striking power than the entire Iranian air force.

(We like to call it ‘overwhelming force’. – LS)

Commander Kevin Stephens, the spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, said the exercise had not disrupted maritime traffic. “We’re quite confident of our naval forces’ ability to defend themselves,” he told Associated Press news agency. “It seems they’ve attempted to destroy the equivalent of a Hollywood movie set.”

(Ha….attempted to destroy a Hollywood movie set. Now that’s funny. – LS)