Lockheed photo.

Well, this is embarrassing.

The Yuma Sun newspaper published a column by Marine Corps public affairs officer Staci Reidinger after she toured the Texas factory producing Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. No mention of the JSF program’s years of delays and rising costs, its reliability and performance problems and the fact that the Marines’ slavish dedication to the flawed stealth fighter means the Corps risks losing its ability to fight in the air.

Instead, we get this:

I believe yet another advancement in aviation is about to grace [Marine Corps Air Station] Yuma’s presence that will make us wonder for many years to come how it came to be. …

As if I were watching a doctor perform surgery on a patient, the experts working on the F-35s showed the same amount of precision and quality assurance. And, many of their workspaces proudly adorned the American flag and pictures of their children serving in the military.

U.S. Navy SEAL commandos deployed to the Horn of Africa have refined hostage rescue to a lethal art. But their recent success in retrieving kidnapped Westerners comes at a cost. Every rescue forces Somali criminals and terrorists to change their own tactics. The result is an arms race of sorts as SEALs and kidnappers try to stay ahead of the other. Aid workers, journalists and ship’s crews — the usual targets of Somali ransom plots — are caught in the middle.

Sustained U.S. Special Forces operations in the Horn of Africa date to the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon established a multi-national counter-terrorism force at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti that, over time, expanded to also support operations against Somali pirates and criminal gangs.

In April 2009, pirates hijacked the U.S. merchant vessel Maersk Alabama and kidnapped captain Richard Phillips. Navy SEALs positioned on the deck of the destroyer USS Bainbridge shot and killed three pirates and captured a fourth, freeing Phillips from the lifeboat where he was being held. The rescue drew world attention to the growing capabilities of Navy commando forces in East Africa. The SEALs support, and are supported by, a powerful mix of Navy, Army and Air Force special operators, CIA agents, covert aircraft, armed drones and warships.

Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of the SEALs’ rescue skills occurred after the October kidnapping by Somali criminals of American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Thisted, employees of a Danish demining organization working in central Somalia. On Jan. 25, SEALs parachuted from a military cargo plane at night, silently descending on the compound where the deminers were being held. The SEALs killed nine guards and rescued Buchanan and Thisted. U.S. helicopters swooped in to spirit away the deminers and the SEALs.

But that had a chilling effect on another kidnapping case. In early January, German-American writer Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped in central Somalia while reporting on piracy and development. Moore was being held near the town of Hobyo when the SEALs came for the deminers. “The rescue changed the dynamics of Somali kidnapping,” Somalia Report magazine noted in its extensive coverage of the SEALs’ operations.

Moore’s captors moved him to a remote area, doubled the number of men guarding him and boosted his ransom from the usual $1 million to $20 million. In a video obtained by Somalia Report, the kidnappers said the high ransom was payment for the nine men — clansmen of Moore’s abductors — who were killed by the SEALs on Jan. 25.

The kidnappers also truncated their timetable for obtaining a ransom. In the past, Somali criminals have been willing to hold onto captives for many months or even years while negotiating for payment. But with the threat of killer SEALs descending from the sky, on May 18 Moore’s abductors demanded payment within three days or they would sell the writer to the Al Shabab terror group, they said.

Al Shabab is less likely to even want to ransom a captive when it could merely execute them for the terror value.  At the time of writing it was unclear whether the captors had made good on their threat.

In any event, the stakes are getting higher in Somalia’s decades-long crisis of terror, piracy and criminality. Navy SEALs are better than ever at rescuing heavily-guarded captives from remote locations. But as the desperate kidnappers counter with more guards, better defensive positions and tougher demands, will the SEALs be able to continue their impressive record of rescues?

Originally published in Warships International Fleet Review.

Animal New York art.

Just one reporter had the unconstrained ability to get a bird’s-eye view on police action during the height of the Occupy protests. Tim Pool, a 26-year-old independent video journalist, began sending a customized two-foot-wide robot–made by French company Parrot–whirring over the police’s and protestors’ heads. The camera-equipped ‘bot streamed live video to Pool’s smartphone, which relayed the footage to a public Internet stream.

If the police ever noticed the diminutive, all-seeing automaton–and there’s no evidence they did–they never did anything to stop it. Unlike CBS and NBC, the boyish Pool, forever recognizable in his signature black knit cap, understood the law. He knew his pioneering drone flights were legal–just barely.

Pool’s robot coup was a preview of the future, as rapid advances in cheap drone technology dovetail with a loosening legal regime that, combined, could allow pretty much anybody to deploy their own flying robot–and all within the next three years. The spread of do-it-yourself robotics could radically change the news, the police, business and politics. And it could spark a sort of drone arms race as competing robot users seek to balance out their rivals.

Read the rest at Animal New York.

So it appears that Neil Tolley, the general who accused me of fabricating quotes attributed to him, has either been fired or has voluntarily stepped down — though it’s also possible he was due to be replaced in any event.

Some commenters have said I should apologize to Tolley. They’re right. If Tolley has been fired, I am very very sorry. I never wanted him to suffer like that, even as he withheld his own apology to me. I’m sorry for what’s apparently happening to you, General.

If Tolley truly did speak hypothetically, as he and the Pentagon now claim, then I misunderstood him — and I regret that. If I had known more about the politics of the Koreas going into Tolley’s presentation, I probably would have been more skeptical. That’s my fault. Just because U.S. Special Operations Forces are present in 77 countries (according to SOCOM Adm. Bill McRaven) and just because the U.S. routinely violates the sovereignty of nations such as Pakistan and Iran, does not necessarily mean we do that same in North Korea.

It seems to me there was an elegant way to handle this controversy. After reading my report that many now insist is erroneous (though not fabricated), Tolley could have released a statement saying he had meant to speak hypothetically but was still quoted accurately — in essence, the same statement he eventually released only after accusing me of lying … and then being proved wrong.

Update: Steve Herman at VoA reports that Tolley’s replacement was long planned.

Five days after falsely accusing me of “making up” quotations I attributed to him, it appears Brig. Gen. Neil Tolley, commander of Special Operations Forces for U.S. Forces Korea, has either been fired or has voluntarily stepped down, or perhaps was slated for rotation in any event. Per a Pentagon press release dated today, his replacement is:

Brig. Gen. Eric P. Wendt, deputy commander, Regional Command North, International Security Assistance Force, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan, to commanding general, Special Operations Command Korea, U.S. Forces Korea, Republic of Korea.

To be clear, I never wanted Tolley fired — as though I had any say in the matter, which I obviously don’t. I made it clear in several media interviews that I didn’t want Tolley to suffer.

I did, however, want an apology from Tolley … and never got one.

Update #1: I’m told there are several feasible cover stories (that could in fact be true). Namely, the Pentagon could say Tolley, who had been in his former post since late 2010, was due for rotation. But the timing seems … suspect.

Update #2: Reportedly the Pentagon says Tolley’s replacement was planned long in advance. Timing still feels fishy to me.

Update #3: Steve Herman at VoA reports that Tolley’s replacement was long planned.

From the Pentagon:

Briefer: Capt. John Kirby, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Media Operations

Q: When we asked George the day before yesterday about the North Korea story, he was very dismissive of it, to say the least, and was critical of the reporter who wrote it. And now we find out that the general involved said in fact he did say all of those things, although he did not — the general himself takes responsibility and says he didn’t mean it to come out the way it did.

So why did the Pentagon not tell us the day before yesterday that the general was acknowledging that he had said any of this? Why were we not offered the complete information?

CAPT. KIRBY: Well, I think timing here is an issue. I don’t think the general’s statement had come out by the time that George did his briefing the other day.

But I think what George said was, and I agree with it, is that the general’s comments were taken out of context. And when something’s taken out of context, that’s not just — that’s not always just the fault of the journalist or the reporter, sometimes it’s the fault of the speaker. And the general acknowledged that he could have been a little bit more concise and a little bit more clear about what he was speaking to.

As I understand it, he was answering a hypothetical question about future potential outcomes, and it was just literally the words he used to answer the question which led to some confusion.

But look, I mean, the bottom line is that there are no U.S. troops on the ground in North Korea. We do take our alliance with our South Korean partners very, very seriously, as we do the security of the Korean Peninsula. And we continue to try to make that alliance stronger and better and more robust all the time.

Q: My question — I understand what you’re saying. However, he is — when you — the — when George spoke from the podium and — did you have the full information at that time to make the statements that you did, that the reporter was distorting the facts?

CAPT. KIRBY: We had — we had enough information to know that the general’s comments had been taken out of context, that they — that as — that he did — he did not mean it to come across the way it was reported. We did know that then. We didn’t have the general’s statement at that point, but we did know that they had been taken out of context.

Q: And let me just then, for the record, ask: You said there were no U.S. troops on the ground in North Korea. The question is of course have U.S. special forces ever parachuted into North Korea on a mission?

CAPT. KIRBY: Not to my knowledge, Barbara. …

Q: Going back to the North Korea story, the quote that George had was that it was contorted, distorted and misreported. Do you still think that’s a fair characterization?

CAPT. KIRBY: Yes, I do.

Q: What exactly is misreported, though, if it was a –

CAPT. KIRBY: Well, I think — again, it was — the reporting was that there were U.S. boots on the ground in North Korea.

There aren’t. There aren’t. And the general didn’t say that there were. He was talking hypothetically about a future scenario that he was asked about.

But look, I mean, this isn’t about bashing the journalist who wrote this blog, and it’s not about bashing the general, who admitted that he used some unfortunate rhetoric. These things happen. It’s unfortunate, but it happens. He didn’t choose his words as precisely as he would have liked, and he admitted that, and what resulted was a story that didn’t get it right in terms of what the situation really is in North Korea. And that’s really the larger — think we got to keep our mind on here, which is there aren’t troops in North Korea and that we remain committed to our alliance there. That’s really the important thing.

Finally! Lt. Col. Jim Gregory called. This is what he said:

The bottom line is there are no U.S. boots in North Korea.

There is no attack on David Axe. I don’t want you to feel that’s what [Pentagon spokesman George Little] is doing.

We are in agreement that the words you heard came out of his [Brig. Gen. Neil Tolley's] mouth. I don’t believe what you wrote is inaccurate. … I heard him say those words.

They [U.S. Forces Korea] are waking up. I believe they are going to re-look [at their statement.] I can’t get into defending what U.S. Forces Korea said.

I get where you’re coming from. I heard the same words you heard. I don’t want you to be without a job. Hopefully you can hang tough. Everyone here is doing the best they can in the absence of a transcript. It is a bit of a mind-stretch. … The general may have said that and, in his mind, he was thinking hypothetically.

Update: From NPR:

Brig. Gen. Neil Tolley says that he has reviewed his presentation at a Special Forces Industry Conference and has come to the conclusion that he was “accurately quoted” by a reporter from The Diplomat.

Three years ago a physically disabled Chinese man unwittingly broke the law when he shot video of a military airbase in eastern China and uploaded the footage to his website. Huang Moumou’s subsequent arrest and conviction for leaking state secrets is a surprising wrinkle in the tale of China’s “accidental spies.” Civilians with cameras are Beijing’s preferred method of revealing military developments to the world. But only, it seems, when the civilians stick to the government’s script.

In August 2009 Huang drove his handicap-access vehicle — presumably a truck with a wheelchair ramp — from his home in an outlying county to visit his son, a worker in Fuzhou. As he passed by the city’s main military airfield, Huang pointed his cameraphone out the window and shot around a minute of video depicting “signage, airport facilities and several military airplanes,” according to the press reports. A pedestrian reportedly warned Huang that filming was illegal, but he kept right on shooting.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

On Dec. 22, 2010, someone apparently pointed a cellphone out of the window of a car driving along a public road outside the perimeter of a military airfield in Chengdu, an industrial city in central China. The person holding the phone, whose name has never been revealed, snapped a photo of a black-painted jet fighter taxiing through fog blanketing the airfield.

With that simple act, the photographer appeared to outperform the $80-billion-a-year U.S. spy community, which has the advantage of a plethora of drones, satellites, hackers and old-fashioned human spies. The snapshot was the first hard evidence  of China’s very first “fifth-generation” stealth fighter, the J-20 — and it seemed to come as a surprise to some Pentagon analysts. “We have been pretty consistent in underestimating the delivery and initial operational capability of Chinese technology weapons systems,” Vice Adm. David Dorsett said.

In 2009, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had predicted that China would “have no fifth-generation aircraft by 2020.” Granted, Gates might have meant operational fifth-generation aircraft. All the same, the J-20′s appearance years ahead of schedule was a dramatic demonstration of China’s rapidly expanding aerospace prowess. And discovering it was also a signature achievement by a relatively unknown group of Chinese internet users whose military-technology fandom is having a profound effect on the most important strategic rivalry of the early 21st century.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

David Axe. Gamecock photo.

The Australian Institute of International Affairs published an interview with me that they labelled a “career snapshot.” I honestly don’t recall giving this interview, but let me tell you: I was in rare form. Asked what advice I would give to young reporters considering taking up war journalism, my response was classic Axe:

First, don’t. Seriously. …

But if you’re determined to do this kind of thing, here’s my advice: write lots, and don’t take no for an answer, especially from editors; get some high-limit credit cards; figure out how to link up with one army or another and squeeze all the stories out of them that you can; learn to take photos and video — they’re worth a lot of money; accept that this work will eventually kill you, if you do it long enough; know when to quit. Hint: you’ll want to quit right before the trip that ultimately kills you.

Marielle van Uitert is a conflict photographer who has worked in Afghanistan, Iraq and West Africa. She has made a book about her experiences in Afghanistan called Bye Bye Bullshit.