Mixed Messages on Iran’s Role in Iraq
5
2,006
By Sandra Erwin and Stew Magnuson
American and British military commanders have hinted in recent months that Iraq’s insurgents have improved the sophistication of roadside bombs partly because of technical know-how and equipment coming from Iran. The Pentagon and the State Department, however, seem to be of two minds on this issue. President Bush in March said Tehran has been providing Shiite militias with bomb-making technology. One day later, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked if he had any proof that the Iranian government was directly supplying such technology. He answered flatly, “I do not.”
A State Department official who oversees the Iranian desk, meanwhile, says there is a link. “It’s either [the government of] Iran or its surrogates providing those, and it’s obviously a source of concern because they’re killing coalition troops,” Gordon Gray, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary at the bureau of Near Eastern affairs, told reporters.
Information Chief Warns of Future Cyber Threats
Securing research and development dollars to protect the Defense Department’s computer networks from hackers, cyber-terrorists and Internet viruses has been an uphill battle, according to the Pentagon’s deputy chief information officer, Linton Wells III.
The commercial sector has no incentive to develop the kind of infrastructure needed to protect a Defense-wide system such as the “global information grid,” Linton told an industry conference. Cyber-security has not benefited from the massive spending growth seen in other areas. Obtaining funds for long-term R&D to combat cyber-attacks “has been frankly much harder than I expected in the fiscal 2007 budget.” His office had to fight “tooth and nail” to get $800 million put into the R&D account. “The information operations threat against us is serious,” Wells said. “There’s nothing hypothetical about this.”
Navy Can Make Do With 10 Carriers
Only last year, the Navy trimmed its aircraft-carrier fleet from 12 to 11 ships. As early as 2012, it may have to do with just 10. The fleet would stay at 10 carriers only for about three years, after the USS Enterprise is decommissioned in 2012. There would be once again 11 carriers in 2015, when the construction of the newest flattop, the CVN-78, is scheduled to be completed. Navy officials are downplaying the potential consequences of a smaller carrier fleet. A shortage of one carrier “can be managed with the fleet,” said Rear Adm. David Architzel, program executive officer for Navy aircraft carriers.
Army Aviators Fly Archaic Simulators
The Army is drafting an “investment strategy” for how to modernize its aging flight simulators, says Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, director of Army aviation. “Some Defense Department simulators can’t compare to the commercial simulators,” he told defense contractors at a recent industry conference. Although not every Army simulator is outdated, the service needs to have a long-term plan “for how to take this into the next 15 to 20 years,” Mundt says. While the Army has launched a new aviation-training effort, known as Flight School XXI, it continues to operate aging hardware. “What I’d like to do is stop putting money into those, and start putting money in the future simulators.”