This is a fascinating deal that came out while I was away. In October, Buzzfeed ran a story about Spear Operations Group LLC, a company based out of Delaware that was hired by the UAE to perform special operations services in Yemen. Specifically to go after 23 high value targets and kill them. This is definitely some offense industry and I have written about this type of thing in the past.
They were paid $25,000 a month and given a bonus per individual they killed. How much per individual I do not know. This kind of thing is not new to warfare and the Flying Tigers are an example of a company paying a bonus or bounty for every Japanese plane they shot down.
Below I have posted my Facebook thread about the article and I recommend reading that, and here is a link to the article itself. Another excellent deal to check out is SOFREP’s interview they did with one of the contractors of this company. On a side note, the contractor also discussed the Erik Prince Plan and his thoughts about it.
As to my personal input on the matter? This is the trend we are seeing in this industry. PMSC’s are being used more and more for the offense and not just for defense. Countries are using this industry as a tool to implement strategy or policy. Or they are using PMSC’s to provide a capability their military does not have. In this case, the UAE hired SOG LLC to perform a mission their Special Operations could not do. Based on the UAE’s history of outsourcing, I don’t think we will see the last of this kind of thing. –Matt
The men of Spear Operations Group LLC From Buzzfeed
Comments Off on Industry Talk: The UAE Hires Spear Operations Group For Work In Yemen
Man, for a first post coming back home, this one is a tough one to write about. My heart goes out to the friends and family of those that were killed, and this is a difficult time for the G4S family. This is the second attack on G4S folks (March of this year) and this kind of thing can definitely impact the morale of folks on the ground and especially during the holidays.
With that said, I wanted to write about this and give folks a chance to correct the record or add to the story. There is no AAR on this incident and everything I have on it is from open source or from folks on Facebook that have brought forth information. So with any of this stuff I have posted, please feel free to comment below to correct the record.
My other intent is for other security folks to use this for research and learn from it. The value of incidents like this is that other folks that are performing similar type duties elsewhere in the world, can learn from what happened in incidents like this.
The attack happened November 27, 2018 at 0630 PM. This is from Tolo. For timing and cause, the Taliban said it was in retaliation for an air strike that killed some civilians. It was also timed right after a conference in Geneva where President Ghani spoke of appointing a team to seek a peace deal which would take five years to implement. There have been numerous attacks recently, and in my view, they are a sign that the Taliban wants leverage in the ongoing peace talks.
The method of attack was pretty simple. The suicide bomber drove a water tanker packed with explosives to the gate, outside of the G4S compound in Pul-e-Charkhil, in Kabul’s Police District 9 area. They also call this the Anjuman base and it has other stuff nearby like the Green Village. Once the bomb was detonated and the front gate guards manning the entry control point were taken out, an assault force stormed the compound. The blast was big, and TOLO showed the damage in this video.
This assault force was apparently armed with ‘small arms and rockets‘, so I assume AK’s and RPG’s. No word if they had explosive vests and I have no better information than that.
They fought their way in, sent everyone running to bunkers, and were met by the responding quick reaction force. So all together, there were five attackers- one suicide truck driver that died in the blast, and four assaulters that entered the compound by foot.
For time frame, this attack lasted 10 hours from when the assault started. So this was an all night affair, and a pretty extensive clearing operation. One security guard told TOLO news that one of the attackers was alive until early Thursday morning. According to the local Afghan police chief in charge of the district there, this is the break down of casualties.
Col. Bismillah Taban, the police of chief of the district where the attack happened, said six Afghans and a British citizen were killed in the attack, and 27 others — 11 Nepalese, 11 Afghans, and 5 British — were wounded. Most of the casualties came from the initial blast, he said.
Col. Taban said the last of the four attackers were killed nearly 10 hours after the assault begun, just before dawn.
“The police were moving slow because there was a hostage situation inside, where the staff of the firm were stuck in bunkers,” he said. “We rescued 330 people from inside.”
G4S made a statement about the incident and listed casualty figures on their Facebook page. Feel free to go there to show your condolences or seek answers to any questions. They said five of their employees were killed, and 32 were injured.
One of the individuals that was killed in the counter attack was 33 year old Luke Griffin. He was a British citizen from the Rainhill, Merseyside area, and had worked for the company for 8 years. He had done time in Iraq and Afghanistan as a contractor and in the military. Luke had served in the 16th Regiment Royal Artillery in Afghanistan when he was in the military. Apparently he was with one of the PSD teams that G4S runs in Afghanistan, and responded to this incident as part of a quick reaction force. He is a father of one child, a son, and husband of Helen Morris.
Colleagues of Luke mentioned that there are many people alive today because of his actions. If anyone else would like to further fill in the details of what happened to Luke, or of the efforts of his quick reaction force, please fill free to contact me or write below in the comments section. This will be on Facebook as well. The other folks that were killed were his fellow Afghans, and I would like to hear about their actions as well. My intent is to make sure their story is heard and it is correct. Here is a quote from the Sun.
A suicide car bomber detonated a huge device at the gate of the Anjuman base near the city’s airport before heavily armed fighters swarmed inside.
But they were pushed back in brave defensive action spearheaded by British security teams.
Luke – a veteran infantryman who saw action in the Iraq and Afghan campaigns – is understood to have been cut down after grabbing his weapon and dashing into the firefight.
Five other British G4S staff were wounded in the battle – including one with blast injuries to his face and another with shrapnel wounds to his arm and hand.
Dad-of-one Luke, from Rainhill, Merseyside but originally from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, was a member of one of the four G4S “quick reaction teams” securing the sprawling base.
My other thought here was the loss of Nepalese and Afghans. The Nepalese lost a quite a few folks in a 2016 attack, and the Afghans as a whole have lost many at the service of private companies in this war. Their sacrifice, like any contractor in this war, must not be forgotten.
In the company statement, numerous groups came to help out with security and medical support. No mention of specific groups, other than police were involved with clearing operations. I have to think that the surviving security forces were involved with clearing operations, as well as partner NATO nations. Possibly special operations folks, that type of thing. There were apparently 230 to 330 hostages on the compound that required rescuing, according to various reports. They hid in safe rooms and/or bunkers, and probably stood by while the police and adjacent forces cleared. Like the security guard mentioned at TOLO, there was one last guy that was killed in the morning, so that means he could have been killing and wounding folks all through the night.
No word on aviation support, but I have to imagine something showed up to help out. If anyone has anything to add for that, please feel free to comment.
As for commentary, incidents like this highlight the difficulty of securing a compound near a main road. Typically you want stand off distance between your ECP and any kind of access. You want folks to be able to survive a blast like this, so that at least they can counter a ground assault. In this case, the entire ECP defense team was probably wiped out or wounded and the assaulters made entry. Which brings up the the next point–quick reaction forces.
These days, if you cannot move the compound to someplace where you have stand off distance, then focus needs to be on really building up the blast walls/defenses and ensuring the quick reaction force is actually a ‘quick’ reaction force. Can it react within seconds and minutes of an incident? Often times, jihadists and assaulters that the Taliban use, are armed with small arms and explosive vests. They are literally fighting their way into pockets of human concentration and quickly. Think Dining Facilities, bunkers, class rooms, etc. Anything that will give them a high concentration of humans, so that they could shoot them or detonate their vest and kill them. So it is imperative to have a means of stopping such a force before they reach these zones.
Drilling and training both the security force and those that you are protecting is essential. From what it looks like, folks ran to bunkers and designated safe zones. The goal is to get them into places that will give them cover and allow them to survive an assault like this until the clearing forces can do their job. But time is everything, and with these types of attacks, the assaulters have the advantage. They could kick off their attack with a big boom like this, and everyone is dazed and there is chaos everywhere–which assaulters will take advantage of. Or the attack is kicked off from the inside– like the typical green on blue attacks. It could be both, and the goal is violence of action to create the maximum amount of shock to the nervous systems of their targets and to inflict the most amount of damage and death. So response via a quick reaction team is critical to these types of deals and preparing the occupants and facility is equally critical.
Medical is another area to focus on. As police and security are trying to clear, it might be impossible for medical folks to get into a specific area to treat injured. So ensuring security/clients have some kind of medical training to handle injuries until forces get to them is very important. Tourniquet training, and other basics is advisable. We are talking about blast wounds and gunshot wounds.
Communications can be crap during a deal like this. Most basic coms that companies use, shut down when overloaded with a ton of traffic. Repeaters cannot handle everyone trying to talk on the same net, or folks overwhelm the channels. So a simple thing like a communications plan, that includes primary and secondary and tertiary means of communication needs to be worked out so that it can account for this type of scenario. I am sure folks were using WhatsApp or cellphones or whatever they had, in order to communicate during the incident. No word on what coms were like for this deal, but it is definitely something that is a factor.
Clearing operations is very dangerous and very difficult. Does G4S train their guys for that? I don’t know, nor will I speculate. The thing to be aware of is that one bullet can go through multiple pods or trailers that you see on sites like this. Whatever safe room or bunker you designate, you need to keep this in mind and make sure it is actually protective. That and coordinating with the responding and adjacent forces can be a nightmare. Training and drills are key to making sure everyone is aware of what is involved with this stuff. I do not know if anyone was harmed during the actual clearing operations. Remember, they didn’t get the last attacker until the following morning, and so that is a long night of slow and detailed clearing of the compound. Clearing forces get tired, or spooked, and the possibility of shooting an innocent person is there.
Finally, it is often incidents like this that really show the strengths and weaknesses of whatever plan the company had. I would highly recommend that G4S do an extensive after action report on what happened, and conclude with some lessons learned. That document could then be used in future training, and an effort should be made to bring in any of the survivors of the incident to talk to the class about it. It is much more impactful to have those that were there explain the who, what, where, when and why of the whole thing. It has value because it could save lives in future incidents. Unfortunately, most companies do not do this and they do not share that information with the outside world if they do. More than likely because of possible liability reasons or lack of leadership pushing the issue and making it a priority.
As a security contractor and student of my profession, I always like to promote the idea that we should all take the time to learn from these types of incidents. Read the available after action reviews, wikis, open source reports, blogs, forums, etc. to get a better picture of what happened. Know your enemy, and know yourself as they say. Reach out to those that were there and ask them about it if you can. It is amazing what little details come up in conversation that were not mentioned in reports. I also study video footage, because most jihadists love to post their work. Most importantly, apply Kaizen or continuous improvement to your defense. Todays enemies are constantly evolving and seeking new ways of attack. We need to be constantly staying one step ahead of them and operating within their decision making cycle to win that fight. –Matt
Edit: 12/22/2018 Tim Lynch of Free Range International fame is now writing over at a website called The Freq Media and his series is called the Afghanistan Weekly. He wrote an in-depth post about this attack and the history of security work in Kabul. Check it out here.
From right to left; Brandon R. Seabolt, William T. Nix, and Michael A. Dunne are applauded after each receiving the Medal of Valor during a ceremony in the Hall of Heroes in the Pentagon, Aug. 14, 2018. (U.S. DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Everett Allen/released)
A big hat tip to Adam who sent me this story. Two of the contractors were involved in a counter-attack against the Taliban as the enemy tried to breach Camp Integrity with a car bomb back in August of 2015. They basically plugged the gap with return fire, and stopped the suicide assaulters from getting in. Unfortunately, one Green Beret was killed in this incident, but the actions of these contractors saved the camp from even more carnage.
The other contractor was awarded the MoV for actions on another incident in Helmand, December of 2015. It sounded like quite the fight, and his team overcame.
All of these men are former special operations. The contract they were on was under the Defense Threat Reduction Agency as counter-IED specialists or “irregular warfare analysts”. The companies they were working for at the time were CACI-The Wexford Group International and General Dynamics.
The Medal of Valor award has only been awarded to 14 civilians since it’s creation. It is a reminder to the public that contractors have definitely contributed in this war. –Matt
Three retired soldiers were honored at the Pentagon yesterday for exceptional gallantry in action against an armed enemy while serving in Afghanistan as civilian contractors.
Retired Army Master Sgt. William Timothy Nix, retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Michael Anthony Dunne and retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Brandon Ray Seabolt received the Medal of Valor, the Defense Department’s highest civilian award for valor.
Nix was working as a civilian contractor at a coalition base in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 7, 2015, when he heard the massive boom of a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.
“I just grabbed a weapon and ran out,” Nix said.
Insurgents had breached the entrance at Camp Integrity, launching the deadly attack with a vehicle-borne IED and then using direct fire, hand grenades and suicide vests.
Nix and Dunne, a fellow contractor, rushed to the fight, teaming up with military personnel to defend the camp, suppress the enemy and evacuate the wounded.
“[The insurgents] blew the whole front of the camp. The gate came off. It collapsed the guard tower out there,” Dunne said, recalling that a suicide vest exploded 30 feet away from him. He thought he would die, he said, but he kept fighting.
Nix was serving as an irregular warfare analyst for the NATO Special Operations Component Command Afghanistan in support of the Resolute Support mission. Dunne was an operations intelligence integrator there.
Fighting was intense and the situation was chaotic, they recalled. Army 1st Sgt. Peter “Drew” McKenna Jr., who was leading the charge against the terrorists, was killed, as were eight Afghan contractors.
Their citations laud their heroism for exposing themselves to direct enemy fire, hand grenades, suicide vests, and other explosives to suppress insurgents who had breached the camp. Their actions undoubtedly saved countless lives at great risk to their own lives, their citations read.
Bravery During Attack in Helmand
Seabolt received the Medal of Valor for his actions in response to an attack near Helmand on Dec. 17, 2015. He had spent 22 years in the Army and was serving as a civilian contractor and counter-IED expert with the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Agency.
So here it is. I blogged about a hint of Erik Prince starting up a campaign to sell his plan for Afghanistan, and this is the start. For this go around, he set up three videos to sell the idea. One of them is in Dari and I will post a few of the videos below. Both of them have detailed some of the same things mentioned last time Erik rolled out his plan.
Of course for that last roll out, the Prince Plan was squashed because President Trump was surrounded by military folks. Specifically, Prince mentioned exactly who shot down the plan last time in this Independent interview.
Speaking of its strongest critic, the then national security advisor, Mr Prince said: “McMaster was a three star [general] who wanted to be a four star, and simply would not accept anything like this which was not conventional.
“I heard President Trump read about my plans in the Oval Office and told McMaster that he preferred it to his plans, so perhaps I got off on the wrong foot with McMaster.
“But McMaster was at the time proposing sending 70,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, so obviously he would not have liked what I was suggesting.”
I also found a piece that Erik wrote today over at Real Clear Politics. What I thought was unique was the mention of President Trump’s Wollman Ice Rink deal. If folks remember, that is where the President when he was a private citizen, took over a project that was taking way too long and cost way too much money in New York. In this example, Prince was appealing to that part of President Trump’s thought process about accomplishing tasks that government fails at.
This is a Wollman Ice Rink moment for the president, who rightly campaigned on a pledge to end America’s endless wars—especially its longest in history. An approach like this is the only way he can do so responsibly, legally and cost-effectively, while saving the lives of America’s service personnel and hundreds of billions of dollars.
I challenge the inevitable naysayers to offer a better solution.
This is a fascinating aspect of this whole deal. To sell a concept like this to a President whom has surrounded himself with the top military leaders of the country. Although it is not a new thing in the course of US history. I have been reading the book The Flying Tigers by Daniel Ford and it is fantastic. In that book, Ford details the effort of selling the idea of a private air force in China to President Roosevelt. Of course there was risk in that as well, but the President accepted that risk and gave the wink to the operation. The Flying Tigers were immensely successful and the rest is history. But that venture still needed the ‘ok’ by the President and Erik Prince is definitely writing this stuff to appeal to the Commander in Chief.
I would also say there is new leadership surrounding President Trump, that might be a little more receptive to what Erik is talking about. Which is probably why Erik is putting all of this together in the first place. We will see how it all goes and I am sure we will see more in the news about it. Especially as the Taliban continue to take more territory in Afghanistan and the strategy there gains more scrutiny. –Matt
Comments Off on Industry Talk: A Better Solution For Afghanistan, By Erik Prince
This is unique. I have not seen Eeben do a interview like this and typically I have only heard him do podcasts or write on his blog. He usually does not offer interviews to the media because of how poorly they have treated him and his companies in the past. With that said, this was a great little interview and they covered some interesting territory. Luckily RT posted a transcript.
Some things of note before I dig in. It was obvious to me that Sophie, or the host of the show, was getting her questions via a microphone in her ear. Which is standard, but it just didn’t seem like she was all that engaged into the whole process. More like she was just going through the list of questions and making follow ups based on what came in via the earpiece. I should also note that Sophie is the granddaughter of Edward Shevardnadze.
Now being that this is a Russian owned news group doing a interview like this, you would think that there would be some mention of PMC Wagner in the conversation? There was none. Matter of fact, I went on RT to look up PMC Wagner, and there is nothing on the group. When referencing the incident involving PMC Wagner back in February, RT made no mention of the company and only referred to Russian citizens that were in Syria. I get it, they don’t want to talk about their own PMSC’s. But they certainly wanted to hear about other companies, to include Eeben’s.
Which going back to the interview, this was filled with some good stuff. If anyone is familiar with what Eeben has written in his blog or at Facebook, you would be familiar with all the territory he covered in this interview. If you want to read what Eeben had to say about this interview, I would recommend going to his FB page.
My personal take on all of it is that Eeben just wrote and published a fantastic book called Composite Warfare, and these interviews and podcasts are a way to reach out to African governments or any other potential clients. I have a copy of CW and it is a handbook on waging war in Africa. But it is also a handbook that requires an advisor/mentor to best help apply the handbook to a country’s military reorganization and conflict resolution. The book is filled with references to either EO or STTEP and their successful operations throughout Africa, and those successes are absolutely leveraged in the message within this book.
The most recent example of what they were able to do was in Nigeria when STTEP worked with that country’s military to fight Boko Haram. The results were stunning for the short time that STTEP was there, and I certainly think it was a mistake for the Nigerians to not retain their services. But elections have consequences as they say, and with a new leader in Nigeria came new ideas on how to approach their problem.
Finally, I wanted to post from the transcript what I thought was fascinating stuff. What are Eeben’s thoughts on the future of PMSC’s and private warfare? Here is a clip.
SS:Why is there a search in private military companies now? I mean, isn’t cheaper for a government to just recruit more people into the regular army than pay mercenaries double or triple of what a soldier makes?
EB: Well, I think there’s been a search in the requirement for private military companies given the unstable international arena that we all live in. I think, as instability grows it becomes much easier to outsource certain services to private entities. I also look at the cost of maintaining a large standing army. And then, I look at Africa in particular, whereas the doctrines that are used by many African armies and the troops that are trained in those doctrines are really doctrines that are totally irrelevant to Africa. These are doctrines that were designed to fight the Germans during WWII, or, when it comes to Western type of doctrines, to fight the old Soviets in Europe. And those types of things are totally irrelevant as far as Africa is concerned. Then, of course, there is an ability of many African governments to buy their own equipment because they’re advised to do that. All of these things become money wasters. And they have a lot of equipment and manpower that are actually unable to function coherently and to defeat an armed threat against that government.
SS:So, do you see this trend of hiring private military companies continuing? Can warfare be eventually privatized and outsourced to PMCs?
EB: I don’t think that it will eventually be outsourced in total. I think national armies are still there to protect the integrity of the state and the territorial integrity of their countries. However, given the role that many proxy forces are currently playing in Africa, and the size of these proxy forces and the way in which they are equipped, I think, it’s a government’s prerogative to call on any help they can, if they feel they need that help to defeat these armed threats they are facing. But that’s it, I don’t think the national armies will ever cease to exist. And I think that the correct type of PMC staffed by the correct people, who understand the culture and the type of environment they are operating in can certainly add value to the operation efficiency of any African army.
As someone that not only works in this industry, but also writes about the trends, I am always curious about where things are going. I continue to see signs of private militaries being used more for the offense. Be it STTEP in Nigeria, PMC Wagner in Syria, or even the Prince Plan for Afghanistan if that goes through. I do not see governments getting rid of their national armies, but it is obvious to me that private warfare is slowly becoming a legitimate option or tool for waging war. –Matt
Comments Off on Industry Talk: Eeben Barlow Interview On RT
