Monthly Archives: March 2012

All About the (Private) Benjamins

by Jimmy Sky Posted on March 17, 2012

Lets get this out of the way upfront: there is no way to objectively calculate what military members “deserve.” Military life can be rough even in peacetime, and the risk and sacrifices expected of military members are even greater during war, or whatever we’re calling this thing now. But it’s misleading to say it’s all sacrifice.

Here is the bottom line on active duty military pay and benefits. They are much, much, much better than anyone realizes, and by “anyone” I really mean anyone. Pay and benefits are probably the best-kept secret in the military and over the last 12 years they have increased at a substantial rate. The Tenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation from February 2008 states that

…compensation for members of the uniformed services compares favorably to compensation in the civilian sector, and the differential is substantial when the comparison includes not only cash compensation but also elements of a generous benefits package. But this fact is not well understood by service members in general. While service members tend to understand that their cash compensation compares favorably to the cash earnings of comparable civilians, they do not appreciate the full extent to which their total compensation—including benefits—exceeds that of their civilian counterparts.

This widespread ignorance is problematic for a couple reasons. First, it contributes to military personnel making career decisions without fully understanding what life is like outside the military. Second, it feeds into the myth amongst the military, the general population, and Congress that every facet of military existence is perpetual sacrifice and that the least we can do is pay them more. On several occasions this has even led to Congress tagging an additional 0.5%* across the board pay increase beyond what the Pentagon requested (FTR, this happened under both Bush and Obama). This mentality also discourages us from facing the uncomfortable truth that money put into personnel compensation may be more advantageously spent elsewhere.

Complicating all of that is the convoluted nature of the military compensation system. Pretty much everyone who has studied this issue has stated, in varying degrees, that the compensation system is too complicated to allow for sound policy decisions: the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service, RAND (in at least two reports). Even the Department of Defense says as much in the most recent QRMC and the Defense Advisory Council on Military Compensation. (it should be noted that most of these documents explicitly avoid answering the question ‘How much should we pay the military?’)

So let’s try to break it down a bit. Every report on this topic utilizes a slightly different formula to calculate military compensation, but I’m primarily using the graphics from the 10th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, published in February of 2008. Yes, surprise! This is enough of an issue that there is a statute that every four years the President must establish a committee to study the topic and report back to him (incidentally, I’m also enough of a nerd to know that the 11th QRMC has been delayed - my guess is to assure that its findings align with the new fiscal realities within the department).

So, here is what military compensation currently looks like…

Why is this important? Because any time you hear someone talking about military “pay” (basically the right hand side of the pie chart) they are essentially ignoring over half of the monetary value that military members receive.

The term used to describe this 48% of the pay and benefits pie is RMC, meaning “Regular Military Compensation.” After controlling for education, the military is consistently higher than the 70th percentile of earned income. Relatively to this 70th percentile metric, officers have it slightly better than enlisted.

A couple of things to point out in these graphs; First off, for both officer and enlisted there is a steady, predictable increase in take home income. This, of course, will vary somewhat from individual to individual, but based on the fairly standard promotion timelines for service members (especially officers), the military provides an income that places them in the upper levels of their social cohort for the duration of their career. Keep in mind, all of this is before you include the Deferred and Noncash benefits.

You should also note that for the “typical” young enlisted member in the top chart (18-yo, without college) the military provides an additional $10,000 a year over what they could anticipate earning as a civilian for the first few years of their career.

All of this paints a picture of a fairly well compensated military force relative to the general population of the country. However, once you include the monetary value of the additional benefits (the left-hand side of the pie chart above) the picture changes considerably. The term used for the inclusion of the entire benefits and compensation package is MAC: “Military Annual Compensation.”

The income percentile for the military, both officer and enlisted (blue line), jumps up to between the 80th and 90th percentile for the majority of a 20 year career. At the start of an enlisted career, the service member is actually exceeding the 90th percentile income bracket for his cohort. For officers, the movement into the 90th percentile occurs both at the beginning of a career and again beyond the 18-year mark.

So, how well paid is the military? Even if you take out all the Noncash and Deferred benefits listed above and just focus on take-home pay, the military still has it pretty good. There is a longer discussion to be had over the “deferred benefits” (aka retirement), which I discussed at length here and here). But there is a natural tendency to focus on the “take-home” salary of military members – and by doing so, we are inadvertently contributing to a continued narrative of the military being underpaid.

So aside from demonstrating how much I hate America and setting myself up for a brutal comment section, what am I trying to accomplish here? I’m not advocating that we reduce the take-home pay of military members, but we do need to take steps to convey to military personnel, the public and Congress exactly how well compensated the military is relative to the rest of the population. This means taking some basic steps like simplifying the compensation system and updating servicemembers’ LESs so that the monetary costs of benefits is reflected.

In addition, we also need to assure that we are clear-eyed about the impact compensation packages have on the overall budget. Military compensation, like all government spending, should be limited to the minimum amount necessary to achieve goals; in this case the maintenance of a certain quality of life for the All Volunteer Force. The problem is that this has to simultaneously be balanced with the need to maintain adequate personnel numbers and sustain retirement benefits. Unfortunately, no one seems to really want to delve into what that actually means.

For example, in 1999 there was a push to address a “13% pay gap” between the military and their civilian counterparts. The problem is that this number seems to have been largely arbitrary and not the result of a serious analysis (if someone has a study reference for this, please point me to it). On the contrary, the 13% pay gap was actually refuted fairly convincingly at the time by the CBO. Regardless, this lead to a new law that authorized Congress to increase that annual military pay raises by an additional 0.05% beyond the Employment Cost Index every year for the next 6 years in an effort to close this (questionable) gap. [The Employment Cost Index is set by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is the baseline for annual raises for all federal employees including military]

However, when the six years was over, Congress continued to fund this additional 0.5%* for several more years, even though there was no longer any legal requirement for it and the Pentagon was no longer even requesting it. [In the interest of full disclosure, I personally benefited from several of these pay raises and never once complained]

There are a few indications that the attitude towards pay and benefits is starting to change. The Pentagon has made long overdue changes to the costs of Tricare for both Active Duty and working age retirees. They have also begun prorating ‘Imminent Danger Pay,’ which may have been the single most abused benefit in the history of the DoD. Basically, if you spent a single day out of the month in a hostile area, you were paid an additional $225/month. This meant that the entire military rushed to make it into theater before the end of the month and drug their feet in order to stay in theater until the 1st day of the next month. A finance officer relayed the story of one senior USAF official who made 6 trips into theater in one year, each trip approximately 60 days apart, but conveniently straddling the monthly transition. That means he made an extra $2700 ($225 x 12) that year for a spending a just few weeks in theater (also all tax free if I recall the rules correctly)

I sincerely don’t want to oversimplify this issue. There are myriad reasons why people join the military along with a largely different set of reasons for why they stay. An aspect of that decision is certainly financial. However, to act as if the only way to maintain the status of the all-volunteer force is by perpetually increasing the compensation and benefits for military service members is an indictment of our policy makers’ ability to make sound fiscal judgments and an insult to uniformed personnel. The compensation policies we have pursued over the last decade imply that we think service members are solely motivated by personal financial gains. Let me assure you, this is not true, but the question remains; how much is too much? Where do we draw the line? How much do you pay people when it’s impossible to objectively determine what they deserve?

Also, if you are one of those people who breathlessly criticize slowing active duty military compensation growth and reductions in retiree benefits and the drawdown of personnel, you need to come to grips with the fact that all of these items come from the same ‘pot’ of money. Since it’s now becoming clear that the DoD is going to face a truly flat budget over the next few years that means that this ‘pot’ can no longer grow at the unchecked rates it has over the last decade. That means that from here on out, every dollar that goes into active duty compensation or retiree benefits is a dollar that doesn’t go into maintaining the size of the active duty force. Secretary Panetta has announced the planned drawdown of 80,000 from the Army and 20,000 from the USMC. Ostensibly, this is because we no longer need to sustain forces at these levels, but you have to ask if it is possible that we might “need” these personnel a little more if we could afford to keep them.

UPDATE:

* Thanks to Justin T. Johnson (@justinjdc) for pointing out that my pay raise number should have been 0.5%, not 0.05%.

Posted in Big Money, Careerism, Military, War | 42 Comments

Build a House and Burn It Down

by Jonathan Rue Posted on March 14, 2012

In the last five years, ANSF members have killed more than 75 ISAF military advisers. In 2012, 1 out of every 4 ISAF casualties has been at the hands of a member of the ANSF. These deaths present a huge problem to the U.S. exit strategy, which is based on the expectation that the ANSF will be able to provide enough security for Afghanistan that will prevent the reemergence of the Taliban or use Al Qaeda’s unimpeded use of Afghan territory to plan attacks.

But only a very small percentage of Afghan National Army battalions are capable of conducting combat operations on their own, which means ISAF military advisers will be in Afghanistan for a long time. The need for trust is crucial – and may be gone for good. We can expect these advisers to be dispersed throughout the country on small combat outposts without major American support nearby. How will they simultaneously protect themselves from militants and the Afghans they are advising? How will policymakers ask troops to advise an army that might kill them at a moment’s notice?

Being an adviser can be an incredibly frustrating experience.* Regular military units typically don’t trust you because of your close association with local forces; meanwhile, advisers often see regular units as working at cross-purposes to the advisory mission. Advising local forces can be like herding cats; it requires patience, understanding, and tact—three traits not typically emphasized in American military training. An adviser must spend hours and hours each day with the men he is advising - even when he’s not advising or assisting with an issue at hand, he’s hanging out, building a relationship. While everyone else is at salsa night or playing Xbox, the adviser is having chai with his counterpart. Actually, a proper campaign plan doesn’t even give the adviser an option to attend salsa night on the FOB - he’s out on an indigenous base living with his counterparts.

Moreover, an adviser must enter his deployment knowing that he will not likely succeed. At the very least, he has to revise his standards for success. My team leader, who served on three different adviser teams, put it like this: “Advising is like pushing a huge boulder up a steep hill. You’re not going to push the boulder to the top; you just have to prevent it from rolling to the bottom.” Making lasting changes to another country’s military cannot be accomplished in a standard 7 or 12-month deployment; the best you can hope for is not to lose ground and hand the unit off to the next adviser team in as good a state as you found it.

An example: the Iraqi Army, which is generations more advanced than the Afghan army, has developed an organizational culture derived from Russian military doctrine and the personality of Saddam Hussein. In American military doctrine, the S-2 intelligence officer is always in communication with the S-3 operations officer. Intelligence drives operations. Operations result in new intelligence, which begins the cycle anew. The Iraqi Army, however, does not subscribe to this doctrine. The S-2 and S-3 officers often do not communicate at all. The S-2 officer runs his own operations based on his own intelligence. The S-3 officer has his own sources through family or tribal connections. S-2 officers are often more concerned with the insider threat. Altering a culture of separation that ingrained is challenging; advisers may have success at the individual unit level, but they’re not going to change those kinds of behaviors across the entire organization in 9 months. It would take an entire generation or longer. The adviser must learn to work within the organizational culture of the military he is advising, not necessarily try and force the advisees to conform to American military doctrine. And this is independent of the need for cultural understanding, which, suffice it to say, requires another dose of patience, understanding, and tact.

Traditionally, advising has been almost exclusively the purview of the Army’s Special Forces, the vaunted Green Berets. Historically, regular Army and Marine units do not train for this mission. That’s not to say that conventional forces haven’t done it, it’s just not something that the service chiefs like to do as it impedes on their traditional missions and budgets. Once policymakers recognized that the only way we were going to leave Iraq with any semblance of stability was by [training Iraqi soldiers to be good at their jobs], the advisory mission took on new importance. But the scope of the task was so big that Green Berets alone could not do the job, and the Army and the Marine Corps began organizing and training Military Transition Teams (MiTT).

The Marine Corps fashioned its MiTTs out of individual augments, which meant that a team was composed of Marines pulled from their regular units across a range of military occupational specialties. Officers and staff non-commissioned officers (SNCOs) would typically pair up with Iraqis who worked in the appropriate staff section, e.g. an infantry officer would work with the Iraqi S-3 to advise him on planning and conducting operations while an intelligence officer would pair up with the Iraqi S-2 to advise and assist him on intelligence matters. The MiTT team leader would advise the Iraqi battalion commander. This was repeated for the other staff sections as well — logistics, training, administration, etc. Marine MiTTs also had junior Marines to serve as drivers and gunners on MiTT tactical movements, but the Marines also used them as advisers to great effect. My team used their expertise to teach classes on weapons, tactics, maintenance, and communications to enlisted Iraqi soldiers.

My MiTT spent three full months working up together. Our training package emphasized language, culture, and negotiating. We also spent the requisite amount of time patrolling, running convoys, and practicing other team and individual military skills. We spent 3 weeks in Twentynine Palms for a final exercise that included native Iraqis as role players in a full, mock up Iraqi village. There were hundreds of us out there and many of the scenarios in the exercise repeated themselves in Iraq. It was intense.

And it wasn’t nearly enough. I could have used more training. A lot more. We all could.

As a part of our campaign plan in Afghanistan, the US is going to begin transitioning out of the lead for combat operations, just as we did in Iraq. As combat units rotate home, they will be replaced by what the Army is calling Security Force Assistance Teams (SFATs). The good news is that these SFATs will be composed primarily of officers and senior SNCOs pulled from the same brigade staff – they will not be individual augments pulled from disparate units – so there will be a level of familiarity with one another not found on teams like mine. The bad news is that the pre-deployment training is close to worthless. The SFATs will spend five weeks at their home station focusing primarily on individual military skills (land navigation, weapons usage, patrolling techniques, etc.). Afterwards, they will go to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk where they will receive - wait for it - three weeks of adviser specific training. Three weeks. We are taking soldiers and expecting them to absorb at least four months’ worth of training in three weeks.

I don’t know if the trust between American advisers and their ANSF counterparts is broken for good. But I do know that sending teams of “advisers” to Afghanistan with nothing more than three weeks of training is not likely to help get it back. If advising is the backbone of our exit strategy, and we’re not preparing ourselves properly for the challenges, we shouldn’t be surprised if this strategy fails.

*Based on my one-year deployment to Iraq as an adviser. This isn’t meant to be a sweeping proclamation of how the entire Iraqi army behaves, or how all advisers experience their deployments. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.

**If you served on an Army or Marine MiTT in Iraq or Afghanistan, I’d love your assessment and thoughts, especially if I missed anything. Please email me at [email protected].

Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Military, War | 18 Comments

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate…

by Jimmy Sky Posted on March 12, 2012

Gunpowder and Lead is privileged to occasionally host accomplished guest bloggers with expertise in realms far outside of our own. This post was written by the very talented, ‘Andrea’ aka @AgentAbleTango. Apart from having a Masters in International Relations and Bachelors in Russian, Andrea has a background in Intelligence, Information Assurance and Language Training. She also one of those people that speaks more languages than the rest of us can name. -Sky

A recent article in the Kabul Press by Matthew Nasuti highlighted an interesting, and inconvenient, fact about wartime spending in Afghanistan – the US pays “annual salaries of up to $237,000” (not including bonuses or cost of living expenses) to its contracted Pashto translators. The salary highlights the importance of a critical skill and also gives insight into a greater challenge that has plagued the US Department of Defense for decades. There are not enough capable linguists in the military with the necessary language abilities required to perform essential engagement in Afghanistan, so these tasks fall to contractors at great cost. More broadly, Americans struggle with a foreign language skills deficit when compared with other nations and this has hampered our abilities to successfully navigate conflict and forge peace. The lack of diverse and in-depth language and cultural knowledge threatens our long-term national security and places us at a disadvantage in global society.

The answer to the foreign language challenges that now face the DoD can be found at the source of their own military language program. The US instituted their first language school in San Francisco in order to train personnel to translate intercepted Japanese communications. Because the need was so great for the intelligence these communications could provide and since Japanese was not widely spoken in the US, the military turned to Nisei, or Second-Generation, Japanese Americans to assist in the undertaking. The Nisei served the US military both as translators and instructors for other troops. Although many among them had faced internment personally or had family who were interned during wartime, they served with honor and great distinction, providing pivotal skills and information that assisted in American success during the war. Additionally, there were other native speaking communities that proved vital to success in WWII - native Navajo speakers developed a code that was not based on traditional known encryption methods but rather on a language that was exclusively practiced and regionally known to those in the American Southwest - making it practically unbreakable to any foreign forces.

Not only is there historic precedent to the employment of native speakers in addition to traditionally trained linguists, but there are a number of present day examples of how native speakers contribute greatly to the mission. The USAF recently selected Senior Airman Michael Abrash as their Language Professional of the Year.

Although Abrash earned this linguistic honor, he joined the Air Force in a completely different role: a jet engine mechanic. Being a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000, Abrash was not aware that his proficiency in Russian could help his career.

Abrash self-identified his language skills to the Air Force, even though he was not using them on a daily basis at work. He continued to maintain his language capability at the required level and thus was available to fill an important Air Force personnel gap.

“There was a shortage of Russian enabled linguists seven months ago to fill a slot in Kyrgyzstan,” Abrash said. “So the Air Force sent a mechanic who happens to know Russian.”

The choice of SrA Abrash, a jet engine mechanic, not only highlights the value of language excellence in our service today but also underscores a shifting landscape in the armed forces - increasingly significant contributions in language skills come from those not formally serving as linguists. Need more evidence? Another example came courtesy of the US Navy who engaged in a recent daring at-sea rescue of Iranian sailors from pirates. These incredible stories highlight an essential population within the armed forces – foreign or US citizens who posses critical language skills.

Additionally, the cost and time it takes to train native speakers in missions associated with critical languages is compliant with a Department of Defense strategy aiming to achieving low-cost, rapid, adaptability to unpredictable global events. In recent years, the US has found itself forced to turn to contract linguists to fill the gaps. While contracting local citizens in areas like Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to success on the battlefield and helped ensure US forces security, safety, and vital insight into the conflict, it also placed those who assisted in this undertaking at risk. Iraqi interpreters who assisted US forces during OIF are still facing death threats, even after the troop withdrawal.

Cognizant of these and other challenges posed by the complexities of language planning in an increasingly mutable security environment, the DoD has adapted new programs and approaches. In implementing some of these changes, they have reiterated value of the native speakers, returned to their roots in recruiting among foreign born and first generation citizens, and they have underscored the importance of rapid development of language programs in partnership across the native and nonnative speaking spectrum.

In 2003, the Army launched a pilot program specifically to recruit personnel already fluent in one of several languages or regional dialects indigenous to the Middle East and Central Asia. The success of this program led to the creation of a unique MOS; Interpreter / Translator 09L. These linguists now fill a role much like the one previously filled by contract linguists who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given that this MOS now exists, it seems imperative that we openly engage those personnel who partnered with us in OIF and OEF and offer them priority enlistment in the program. Not only would their skills benefit the US Army interests, but they would also assist them and their families in the naturalization process. (Note: Service in the US military is not, and should not, be a requirement to provide to these personnel the protection and assistance that the US has pledged to them. This suggestion is simply a desire to expedite and streamline the processing of these personnel through a system that has become complicated and fraught with delays and red tape.) More info on this program is currently available on the US Iraqi Embassy’s website.

The development of the 09L MOS is significant, but it remains a specialty unique to the Army. The Marines, Navy, and Air Force have a depth of language talent outside the ranks of their respective linguist cadre but those skilled personnel generally must self identify as fluent or the military will never know of their capabilities. Looking back at the Air Force’s Language Professional of the Year we see that “Abrash was not aware that his proficiency in Russian could help his career”. It is possible that Chief Petty Officer Jagdeep Sidhu, the gas turbine electrician whose language skills were critical in the rescue of the Iranian fisherman, also did not consider how vital his fluency in Hindi, Urdu or Punjabi are in the execution of his duties. It is imperative that we do a better job in ensuring these personnel are aware of how critical foreign language fluency is and inform them of their possible eligibility for a Foreign Language Proficiency Bonus (FLPB).

Additionally, the military would do well to track and coordinate assignments for personnel who are proficient in one or more foreign languages. This would best serve the needs of the mission and the language community. Native speakers could cooperatively train and maintain language fluency with non-native trained linguists in their divisions, squadrons, or fleets. This broad overview of more than 70 years of defense policy with respect to language training and management does not pay homage to all of the achievements, or address many of the shortcomings in strategy but hopefully it will provide some perspective into the long and complex relationship that the military has had with regards to language and cultural development within its ranks.

Posted in Academia, Civil-Military Relations, Middle East, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Women on Top

by Diana Wueger Posted on March 8, 2012

A week ago, Micah Zenko asked me to contribute to a blog post that would address the question “Women are significantly underrepresented in foreign policy and national security positions in government, academia, and think tanks. Why do you think this is the case?”

Turns out, that’s not an easy question to answer – the scope is broad, and the problem isn’t confined to this field. Women are underrepresented at the top in a lot of fields – economics, journalism, medicine, business, etc – which suggests there’s a cultural component to this. And indeed, a friend of mine is working on a psych PhD on why women aren’t seen as effective leaders. I’ve been after her to write about this for G&L, but it boils down to the traits that Americans associate with being an effective leader are, broadly speaking, not the traits that we associate with women. If we don’t see women as effective leaders, why would we promote them to leadership roles?

But I think the problem for women starts much earlier, long before biases about women’s leadership potential kick in. I think the problem starts when women first enter the workforce (actually, it probably starts earlier than that, but I can’t solve the education system):

There’s a gap in the types of tasks women and men are assigned early in their careers. Intentionally or not, women tend to given more administrative or support work rather than policy or research work; path dependence takes over from there. I recall a prominent scholar regularly asking his female research assistant (RA) to pick up his dry cleaning and take his car to the shop—things he didn’t ask of male RAs.

So women writ large aren’t doing the right work to gain the knowledge, experiences, and networks necessary to move up. How to fix that? Employers, pay attention to what assignments you give your staff, both female and male. Your male interns need to learn to greet guests at events just as your female interns needs to learn to take meeting notes. Sure, the work needs to get done, but make sure you’re assigning work fairly. It should not be up to your female staff to decline assignments that aren’t appropriate.

Also at issue is mentorship and sponsorship:

Young women have trouble finding men willing to act in that capacity because there are few mechanisms to develop the rapport that underlies a good, productive mentoring relationship. Conversely, men may be concerned about how a mentoring relationship will be perceived and shy away as a result. But mentors are vital for opening doors and offering suggestions and feedback about career choices—efforts that are particularly valuable in the foreign policy world.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to find some fantastic men to act as mentors, among them my co-bloggers Daveed, Jon, and Sky. They help me navigate the terror of writing publicly, they offer suggestions for managing my career and educational choices, and they tell me when I’m being too hard on myself or when I’m not trying hard enough. Their honest feedback and support has been invaluable. Which is not to say we don’t also need female mentors – I don’t know where I’d be without Eve Sandberg, Stephanie Carvin, Erin Simpson, or Laura Seay – but in a field where the old boys’ network is still real, we need men too.

But where do young women find male mentors? That’s a problem I’m not sure how to solve, and I’d love to hear suggestions for how to overcome it, because I think this is a huge, huge deal. I found mine organically, through a year’s worth of inconsequential chatter and afternoons spent at happy hours that built into the rapport necessary for honest feedback. But I also initiated a lot of that contact, asking for help and insisting they pay attention to me, which is not something women generally feel comfortable doing, and which has the potential to aggravate wives and girlfriends (Amy, Bethany, and Julia - thank you for being awesome). So… let’s hear it. How do we bridge this gap?

All this is not to deny that women may also have some difficulty moving from the middle to the top of the national security and foreign policy world. There are real challenges to managing that transition as well, as Jolynn Shoemaker, Director of Women in International Security, highlights:

Work-Life Concerns: Inflexible schedules, unrelenting travel, and constant pressure to be in the office are common features of these jobs. Many women are looking for opportunities to contribute meaningfully but also have more control over their personal lives. They perceive that the foreign policy field is unaccommodating to flexible arrangements or detours from the traditional advancement track, and they feel pushed out.

Career Burn-Out: Mid-level women point out that the 24-7 schedules and constant pressures are leading to more women opting out of leadership opportunities. Whether they have families or not, younger women are re-examining the established definitions of success, and in some cases, concluding that the personal sacrifices are too high.

Lack of Sponsorship: Women recognize that they need “sponsors” –powerful advocates who will open doors for them – but that male colleagues are benefiting much more from this support. Women also point to an underlying sense of competition, ineffectual mentoring approaches, generational divides, and different views on work-life balance as obstacles to building these relationships with senior-level women.

So yeah. I highly recommend you read the entire post, then spend 10 minutes thinking about what you can do to help your female staff or friends or Twitterbuddies to advance in their careers. Then go do it. Invite somebody to lunch, or ask them to help with a research project, or whatever. Or stay home with your kids and let your wife go to her office happy hour. This is partly a numbers game, and the more women with the experience, knowledge , and networks necessary to get to the top, the better off we’ll all be.

***

Apropos of nothing except that this is a pink-but-not-sickly-sweet drink, here’s my new favorite cocktail (courtesy of Drinksnob). Happy International Women’s Day, everybody!

Blood and Sand

1 oz Scotch (I used Tomatin 12 – no call to go too high-end here)

1 oz blood orange juice

3/4 oz cherry brandy (I used bourbon that had had cherries soaking in it for a few months, but Cherry Heering is fine)

3/4 oz sweet vermouth

Turn off Twitter. Shake everything over ice. Strain into glass. Be happy.

Posted in Careerism, Cocktails, Gender | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Anti-Piracy Business - Warning Shots and the Rules of Engagement

by Diana Wueger Posted on March 2, 2012

I’ve had an interest in the private maritime security industry and the international regulations thereof ever since a friend’s ship was taken by pirates a couple years ago, so when friend of the blog Jay Fraser* approached us about doing an interview with his friend who runs a maritime security company, we jumped on it. I hope you find it as interesting as I do! - DW

Many of us grew up with pictures of swashbuckling pirates and images of Errol Flynn in movies like “Captain Blood” and “The Sea Hawk.” [ed: and some of us grew up with Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook...] In school, we learned about the Barbary Pirates attacking American and British shipping vessels off the Northwest Coast of Africa, near Tripoli and Algiers, and President Thomas Jefferson’s naval responses. More than two hundred years have passed, and while the locale has shifted to the northeast coast of Africa, the problem piracy remains. Today, piracy is focused primarily in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Pirates are live firing against merchant vessels, sometimes attempting to board the ships, and are using violence and ransom as a means to an end.

As noted in a recent update published by Stratfor, with the end of the monsoon season and the return to calmer water in the region, the piracy season is “back on.” One of the more recent trends is the emergence of companies hired by the shipping companies to place armed personnel on the commercial vessels in efforts to discourage and limit the success of these pirates.

I’m privileged to know and to call a friend a man who operates one of these private security companies, Jim Jorrie of Espada Logistics and Security Group (San Antonio, Texas). I interviewed Jim for an audio spot for ThreatsWatch about three years ago and he and I recently talked about doing an update. Thanks to my friends at Gunpowder & Lead, here is the interview we did just a few days ago.

Jay Fraser: Jim, when we spoke back in April 2009, it was right after some pirates in the Gulf of Aden had overrun the Maersk Alabama. The ship’s captain Richard Phillips was held captive after the rest of the crew was released. The incident ended when Navy sharpshooters were able to take the kill shots. But this incident brought to the attention of many Americans the problem of piracy on the high seas, and especially off of the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden. Today I would like to cover a lot of ground in a short time and have you explain how the piracy problem has evolved in the last three years.

Jim Jorrie: Thank you Jay for this chance to give an update from our last interview. Yes, the last three years have been very interesting and things have really changed out there.

JF: Since G&L is a new audience, can you give us a quick bio and then a capsule version of how you got into the pirate fighting business?

JJ: I started out in 1983 enlisting in the Navy and moved on to receive a commission in the Army with a focus on Defense support to Civil Authority missions. As a civilian I have worked in the intelligence community and held the post of Homeland Security Coordinator for San Antonio and the surrounding areas. I have also had the privilege of being involved in several National Response Plans such as the Pandemic Influenza response plan. Around 2004 I was asked to provide some security assessment work for private oil exploration in Colombia. This bloomed into multiple security projects and was really the genesis of ESPADA. About 3½ years ago we had an opportunity to assess the emerging piracy problem in the Gulf of Aden. Since one of our core competencies is providing logistics in austere locations, providing anti-piracy security services was a natural fit for our company.

JF: When we spoke earlier this week, you and I talked about the changing nature of the Somali pirates and specifically about their levels of aggression, the fact that they are better armed and that they now use tactics like kidnapping.

JJ: Three years ago the piracy was conducted by two major clans in Somalia. Since that time, organized crime syndicates have joined the enterprise increasing the technology, intelligence gathering and execution of piracy. Also, there emerged confederations from other countries that expanded the pirate network. For example, vessels that are overtaken in the lower Red Sea may now be taken by Eritrean or Yemeni criminal confederations that will in turn transfer the ship to the Somali clans that in turn negotiate for the ransom. The same is true on the east coast of Africa where you may have Kenyan and Mozambican confederate criminal organizations that cooperate with the Somali pirate clans.

We continue to see the use of RPGs and AKs in most attacks, but there have been a few attacks where the pirates have used crew-served weapons such as the PKM. Other than that, the major change in operating tactics has been the actual use of the hijacked vessels as mother-ships. They use cranes that are on the ships to lift the pirate skiffs onto the deck of the ship and then take the hijacked vessel far out at sea to launch their attacks.

JF: Some people aren’t really aware of the rules of engagement your company and others must operate under. Can you explain a bit of what has to be done in order for you to operate and perform your security functions (restrictions, still not permitted to fire on sight or have to wait and return fire?).

JJ: This continues to be an interesting source of debate. The International Law of the Sea that covers piracy is several hundred years old. And it is very clear on what rights a ship’s Captain has to defend his ship from a pirate attack. Of course in recent years lawyers have gotten further involved in crafting specific, eloquent language that restates rules from the Barbary pirate days. For example, if a pirate vessel fires on a ship the ship’s master may use any means at his disposal to safeguard his ship and crew. For a security team, this means we can fire warning shots to communicate to an approaching or menacing vessel that he is approaching an armed ship. However, if the security team fires on an approaching vessel without the command of the master in defending the ship, then the master/team/owner etc. are liable for the actions. Most engagements will begin and end at approximately 300 meters from the vessel. At this distance the pirates either begin firing at the ship or the warning shots communicate the potential danger of them proceeding. To many people, having to wait until a heavily armed pirate boat is within 300 yards of the vessel and - more importantly - until it has fired on the vessel before the vessel’s security team can respond is an uncomfortably short distance, but those are the rules of the game in antipiracy security.

JF: I think one of the more interesting things people need to hear is about the practical business issues of running a company like Espada. The other day you mentioned some points about the need for rapid deployment. Can you add to that?

JJ: Unlike a traditional contract, our services are hired ad-hoc. This presents some extreme logistics and personnel challenges for us. It is very expensive to fly people back and forth halfway around the world, so you have to have facilities in the Area of Operation in which to house them. A normal notification of a request for our services comes with about 48 hours advanced warning. Paying the security team members doesn’t stop, so scheduling them for follow on transit work and reducing their down time is of key concern. The cost of insurance for this sort of business is, as you can imagine, astronomical. And on top of these challenges is the fact that many of the countries know that the ship owners and security team can work out of their designated transfer points. So at times, just getting a bus ride from the airport to the boat with equipment can cost over $10K USD. With all of the deposits, insurance, working capital requirements, and emerging regulatory requirements I would hate to try to start a business like this now as it would be very hard.

JF: One of the comments you made struck me when you mentioned about weapons regulations.

JJ: While I am a firm believer in the accountability of firearms, US companies have been put into a competitive disadvantage to their British and European counterparts with regards to regulatory compliance and authorization in marine security. We spent a lot time early on asking different government departments the proper way to export weapons for the exclusive use of our security personnel. Unfortunately, not having the resources of some of the other large defense contractors, we made a few missteps in the handling of the reporting. The British and Europeans, in contrast, received active support from their governments, even to the extent where they were able to get letters of endorsement for their business from the government. Clearly this is something the US government does not do. I do think that the US regulatory agencies are starting to come up to speed with understanding the commercial requirements of the marine security industry. And is my hope that they will continue to work with legitimate maritime security organizations to help facilitate and not restrict their business. Bottom line, the more successful we are the more Americans we put to work.

JF: I guess one final question is about the “soldiers of fortune” that you encounter in theater and the problems they are creating for you and your company.

JJ: This turns out to be a classic example of one or two organizations that have no business being out there in the first place, screwing something up and the rest of us having to deal with the whiplash of new rules. Whatever happened to the old adage that if you stepped on the foot of your date, you weren’t invited back to the dance? Weapons authorizations, terrestrial logistics, and the other aspects of operating in a marine security business are serious and complex. This is not an arena that a group of hunting buddies needs to venture out into carelessly. Very few problems have come from the larger more established companies.

JF: Jim, is there anything else that you’d like to add before we wrap this interview?

JJ: I think I will leave you with two comments. One, there is a lot of good combat veterans out there that are unemployed. And I would put out there to you that this line of work is something they should consider, as we strongly prefer to hire veterans because of their training and professionalism. Lastly, in all my travels over the last 3 years setting up our maritime security operations I have gained a renewed appreciation for being an American. It is easy to get caught up in the political rhetoric and other problems in our communities. But when you spend time in other countries dealing with their politics, their regulations, their lack of a constitution and civil liberties, it gives you a new perspective that maybe this 300 year experiment that we call America isn’t that bad after all.

*Jay Fraser is a technology entrepreneur currently operating two ventures, one of which is involved in counterfeit detection and covert surveillance technologies. He serves as Principal Investigator for this company’s Department of Defense contracts, and has also coordinated sensitive international special projects. His responsibilities include strategic direction, operations, managing programs with federal agencies and National Labs, negotiating licensing and R&D agreements, and dealing with potential commercial partners & customers. The second company, newly formed, is involved in the information sharing environment with the ability to enable seamless exchange of information across and among a network of authorized users. Until recently he wrote about issues related to homeland security, policy implications, and technologies used in the Global War on Terror for ThreatsWatch.Org. Mr. Fraser is an experienced public speaker and often lectures on technology strategy and technology transfer.

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