Feral Jundi

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Industry Talk: Pseudo Operations And The Relentless Pursuit Of Kony

But then she reminds herself of the numbers. In the past two years, L.R.A. violence has dropped by ninety-three per cent, from seven hundred and six killings in 2010 to only fifty-one in 2012. According to Resolve, a U.S.-based analysis and advocacy group, the L.R.A. had approximately four hundred fighters in 2010; by June, 2013, they were down to a hundred and eighty Ugandan fighters and fifty armed zande—abductees from Congo and the Central African Republic.
“It was only ninety-three per cent because of relentless pursuit,” Davis said. “If we pulled out, that would plummet. I know that is something to celebrate. And if Kony dies a natural death under a mango tree someday, I’m O.K. with that—I know he’ll see justice, as long as he is not hurting kids and women.”
“We don’t need accolades,” Davis told me. “We are not bleeding at the end of the spear, getting pursued by crocodiles and killer bees. The Ugandans are.” And they show no signs of letting up.

Thanks to Adam for sending this one, and a big congrats to Eeben Barlow and his team for all the work they did on this contract. Also, I have much respect for Shannon Sedgwick Davis and her crew for actually taking action and having the courage to contact Eeben and funding this contract. You did the right thing. A hat tip as well to the Ugandan forces who embraced this training and made it work for them out in the field.

What makes this story significant is the fact that pseudo operations was taught to the Ugandan military by a private company, and there are actual tangible results that we can point to after they received this training.  Although I wouldn’t mind seeing a more academic study applied to how much of  an impact pseudo operations really had, it would seem to me that these initial findings are encouraging.

The other really cool aspect of this story is that for those of you that follow the blog and read the discussions I had with Eeben Barlow a couple of years ago about the concept of pseudo operations here and here,  you will quickly realize that in fact, something positive did come about from those conversations. That someone reading those conversations and posts over at his blog, whom actually had the money to fund such a contract, came forth and embraced the idea for the relentless pursuit of Joseph Kony and the destruction of his LRA. Here is a quote referencing how this group came to Eeben via his blog.

Poole had been reading a military and security blog written by Eeben Barlow, who had been a commando and a covert agent for the South African apartheid regime’s most notorious squads. He was also a visionary and a dreamer. Back in 1997, he told me that his goal was to create the best and biggest military consultancy in the world. The private army he founded, Executive Outcomes, hired itself out, in the late nineties, to end civil wars in Sierra Leone and Angola in exchange for lots of cash and access to diamond and oil fields.
Davis went to meet Barlow in South Africa, and, after a family dinner with his wife and son, he told her he would take the job—and that he did not want a fee. He did not want to make money on this, he told her; she would just have to pay his trainers and underwrite his expenses. This was the kind of partner she was looking for.

 Pretty cool. Here is a quote about the pseudo operations training the Ugandan’s received.

The effects of the training were evident. Charles, a lieutenant from West Nile, told me that in the old days they would unleash a thousand bullets every time they encountered the L.R.A. Now, he said, they would wait and track in silence. The South Africans had taught them tactics for crossing rivers with logs and ponchos, how to swim and how to avoid crocodiles, which had killed one soldier and attacked another. “The South Africans taught us ‘pseudo,’ ” Charles said. “You behave like your enemy so you can approach him, or even infiltrate inside the camp. We pleated our hair like they do, put on civilian shirts, uniform pants. Sometimes we went barefoot. We used to travel forty or forty-five in a team; now we can go six.”

Here is the quote about the raid that missed Kony. It certainly hit intel pay dirt though!

In September, 2011, the first special-operations group trained by the South Africans crossed into South Sudan and caught Kony by surprise at a meeting with all his commanders. He escaped, but the Ugandans took back a haul of valuable intelligence: satellite phones, a computer, and diaries. Defectors later revealed that the L.R.A. fighters were baffled by the attack: Was this some new Ugandan army? After the raid, Kony lost contact with his entourage. He roamed the bush alone with one of his pregnant Sudanese wives, and helped deliver her baby—one of probably more than a hundred small Konys now in the world. When he reëmerged, he was so furious that he demoted all his commanders. According to defectors, he had moved to a new camp, in southern Darfur.

And this is what DoS thought about the whole thing.

By the end of 2011, Barlow and his trainers were gone. “Even folks at State and the Department of Defense acknowledged the training Bridgeway offered was very helpful in advancing the Ugandan Army’s capacity,” a Washington-based analyst told me. But they are not yet willing to say so publicly. When I asked a State Department official about the significance of Davis’s work, he refused to comment beyond noting that “the Bridgeway Foundation is an independent organization that does not have an official relationship with the U.S. government.”

So with that said, I think Eeben and his crew deserve a great deal of recognition and thanks for a job well done. He has proven once again that private industry can indeed produce amazing results through innovation, dedication and hard work. That pseudo operations or PO can be taught and it can be effective in some types of warfare. As Sun Tzu would say, ‘all warfare is based on deception’, and PO is an excellent deceptive tactic. –Matt

 

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Shannon Sedgwick Davis.

How a Texas Philanthropist Helped Fund the Hunt for Joseph Kony
October 21, 2013
Posted by Elizabeth Rubin

One night in July, 2010, Shannon Sedgwick Davis, a lawyer and activist from San Antonio, Texas, and the mother of two young boys, found herself seated across from the chief of the Ugandan Army, General Aronda Nyakairima, at his hilltop headquarters, in Kampala. “It was one of those out-of-body experiences,” Davis told me. Davis was on the verge of becoming deeply involved in the campaign to capture Joseph Kony. In the course of a quarter century, Kony abducted tens of thousands of people, mostly children, and conscripted them into the Lord’s Resistance Army (L.R.A.), which was conceived as a Ugandan rebel force but whose primary target has been civilians in several African nations. “I am a full-blown mom, sitting here with this Ugandan general,” Davis said. “And I can’t believe I have an audience with this man, and that he didn’t write me off as crazy.”
Davis had two questions for Aronda: Would military trainers and communications make it easier for the Ugandan Army to chase down Kony—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court—in the jungles of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, where he and his commanders have scattered, and, more important to her, rescue the women and children still in his clutches?
Yes and yes, said the general. His eyes looked so tired, Davis recalled, that she hadn’t been sure she had his attention. “You almost want to pry them open so you make sure he’s still listening. But he said they would welcome any assistance, and that it was their problem to solve.” It was late, and in that first meeting Aronda seemed unsure what to make of this passionate, small blond woman from Texas. But the meetings persisted. Together, they began to map out what the general wanted and the guarantees that Davis would require from the Ugandans before embarking on an unorthodox venture: the charitable organization she heads, the Bridgeway Foundation, would hire private military contractors to train an African army.

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Friday, May 28, 2010

Technology: Vaper Wake Detection Dogs For Explosives… And COIN?

   After reading this, I was wondering to myself if these dogs could be used to sniff out Taliban or Al Qaeda operatives in population centers?  This team of scientists have actually bred a dog to detect the scent plume of individuals, and the level of sensitivity and utility of these types of animals are only limited by the imagination of the handlers.

   Here is one way I could envision using these dogs.  Enemy combatants that think they can disappear into population centers, could technically be tracked into those population centers by teams using these dogs and tracker teams.  All teams would have to do is patrol extensively through the crowds or set up check points and use the dogs to find folks that have trace explosive scents on their body.  To be able to sniff out entire crowds, like dogs sniff cars now, would make the game of finding these guys a little easier.

   These vapor wake or VW dogs could also be used to track down the IED teams or ambush teams.  Tracker dogs could sniff the wires of the device or even the spent brass, locate the position of the team and further get a stronger scent. The tracking team would probably follow the tracks into a population center, and that is where the VW dogs come in.  Once in the population center, do a cordon of the area, and then send in the VW dog teams.  You could put them at check points, and send guys in to sniff the crowds. The basic idea is that the dogs could be used to sniff groupings of humans in order to seek out the combatant, thus taking away a prime hiding spot for today’s enemies. If the village doesn’t want to rat the guy out, the dog could also be used as leverage in the negotiations with the village leaders.

   Either way, all and any thoughts should be given to using such animals for separating the enemy from the population, as well as finding combatants with explosives on them. –Matt

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Owen

Could Owen, the Capitol Police’s Vapor Wake detection dog, be used for tracking operations in Afghanistan?

Vapor Wake Detection

The Vapor Wake Detection (VWD) Canine Team is a standard explosives detection canine team with the additional ability and training to detect carried or body-worn explosives.  The VWD canine samples the plume of air coming off a person and/or what they are carrying as the person passes through a choke point or within a crowd.  The canines can also detect an explosives vapor-wake after the person has transited an area and follow the vapor-wake to the explosive source.  The canines have been exceptionally successful in this form of detection in areas with a large congestion of pedestrian traffic without impeding traffic flow.

The canine is specifically bred and prepared its entire life to succeed at this type of work.  The puppy enters the Detector Dog Raising Program upon birth.  We engineer various environmental exposures and develop the puppy over the first 12 months of its life.  We use primarily Sporting Breeds for this activity due to the close proximity to people the canine must work.  Additionally, Sporting Breed can operate within a crowd causing less, if not any, disruption.  After the puppy, or now adult canine, completes the Detector Dog Raising Program it returns to Auburn University (AU) Canine Detection Training Center (CDTC).

The canine receives six weeks of vigorous training at the Canine Detection Training Center before a handler is assigned.  Upon the student/handler’s arrival they enter as a team into a 10-week basic explosives handler course.  Upon graduating the basic course the team receives a minimum of two additional weeks of training in their operational environment.  Continued training in the operational environment is critical to the team’s continued success.

Auburn’s College of Veterinary Medicine has several years of developing this program into what we feel is a strong and capable detection tool in the fight against terrorism.  Additionally, we’ve developed evaluation procedures/guidelines for certification which ensure the team is performing at an extremely high rate of proficiency.  Our Vapor-Wake work is copy write and patent pending.

Link to Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine here.

Vaper Wake Video here.

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A nose for explosives

By Jordy Yager

05/25/10

It seemed like a normal morning last Wednesday as hordes of Senate staffers made their way through the Lower Senate Park to get to work by 9 a.m. But Owen, one of the U.S. Capitol Police’s newest hires, was weaving through the crowds, conducting serious undercover work.

Owen has been rigorously trained in a cutting-edge explosive-sniffing technique known as vapor wake. Owen also has a tail that wags. He is a black Labrador.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Weapons Stuff: Rhodesian Cover Shooting or ‘Drake Shooting’

   This is a great read, and I highly recommend checking it out.  Ian has basically broken down the operations of his unit, and the use of this efficient and lethal shooting technique. –Matt

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Rhodesian Army

RHODESIAN COVER SHOOTING

By “Ian Rhodes”, 2 Commando, Rhodesian Light Infantry

Prelude

Also known as Drake Shooting, Rhodesian Cover Shooting may be defined as the shooting technique employed to quickly kill concealed insurgents through the various phases of close quarter combat in the African savanna and jesse bush. The method did not replace “fire and movement” procedures, but was rather the primary activity of them. Cover shooting has also been described as a “flushing” action, but this is not strictly accurate. While flushing terrorists from their concealment has obvious advantages, particularly when working with close helicopter support, the first objective of cover shooting was to kill the enemy without the need to see him or locate his exact position first. Likewise the method should not be confused with other foreign practises such as walking suppression fire directed “at the jungle.” Cover shooting was not a random spraying of bullets, but a deliberate and methodical routine designed to elicit maximum effect for the least expenditure of ammunition. After the declaration of U.D.I. in 1965, the Rhodesian war continued for another 15 years and tactics changed greatly as lessons were learned during that time. For this reason experiences may well disagree on opinion and detail. This discussion is also somewhat biased towards the practises of the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) and the combat patrols of the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit (PATU). As such, it cannot be held up as either definitive, or complete. In 1964 the Rhodesian Light Infantry changed roles to that of a Commando Battalion. Deployed in rapid reaction “Fire Force” operations designed to vertically envelop insurgent groups, the cover shooting technique played a significant part in the Battalions overall success. In it`s 19 years of existence, most of those fighting at the very forefront of a bush war, the Rhodesian Light Infantry never lost a battle.

PDF for Rhodesian Cover Shooting or Drake Shooting here.

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