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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Navy</title>
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		<title>A Radical Muslim in the Navy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joe-kaufman/a-radical-muslim-in-the-navy-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-radical-muslim-in-the-navy-1</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2014 05:04:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAIR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[radicalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246496</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The high military offices that CAIR's reach may extend to -- thanks to one individual. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/282005_198389416888171_294440_n.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246478" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/282005_198389416888171_294440_n-450x340.jpg" alt="282005_198389416888171_294440_n" width="352" height="266" /></a>Those who serve in the United States military and take an oath to protect our nation are lauded for their service, and rightfully so. Yet, it is highly immoral, if not outright evil and traitorous, for someone who has served in the U.S. military to exploit their military connections whilst taking leadership roles within groups associated with terror. It appears that that is what Muslim convert Wilfredo Amr Ruiz has done and is doing with his work for Islamist groups CAIR and AMANA, and his actions deserve scrutiny, reprimand and repudiation.</p>
<p>Wilfredo Ruiz has served in the U.S. Navy in two capacities, once as a lawyer under the Navy’s Judge Advocate General (JAG), from the years 1993 through 1997, and once as a chaplain under the Navy’s Chaplain Candidate Officer’s Program, which he took on after he had begun religious studies, in 2005, at a seminary in Hartford, Connecticut.</p>
<p>Sometime in 2003, during the time between his two Naval exercises, he made the decision to convert to Islam. He came to the States via Puerto Rico, where he grew up practicing Catholicism.</p>
<p>Not only did he embrace his new religion, but right away he embraced the extremist ideology that is a part of it, leading him to actively pursue a course that is causing death and destruction worldwide. According to corporate filings, in September 2003, Ruiz was the Director of the Puerto Rico office for AMANA.</p>
<p>AMANA is the brainchild of Palestinian activist Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout. Zakkout is the former Vice President of the now defunct Health Resource Center for Palestine (HRCP), a group associated with Hamas that operated out of Deerfield Beach, Florida.</p>
<p>This past July, as <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/13/Palestinian-Leader-in-Miami-Boasts-about-Conquering-American-Jews"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported in Breitbart</span></a>, Zakkout posted on his Facebook page the following in Arabic: “Praise be to God, each day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel. Your brother, Sofian”</p>
<p>While Zakkout is the main driving force behind AMANA, Ruiz is not a minor player. Ruiz plays a major role in promoting the group’s Islamist agenda.</p>
<p>Not only did he run the AMANA office in Puerto Rico, but he also opened another AMANA office in Hartford, Connecticut. In fact, the web address attached to the Hartford office was the same one used by the national office, al-amana.org.</p>
<p>In the time Ruiz has been involved with AMANA, the group’s website has included various material vilifying Jews, Christians and homosexuals; the website linked to al-Qaeda financing and recruitment sites; and the website prominently featured an anti-Semitic video of David Duke on it, which brought on a condemnation of AMANA by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).</p>
<p>In one article <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/ICBR_and_AMANA_Articles_About_Jews.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">previously found on Ruiz’s AMANA website</span></a>, it is stated, “Every believer [Muslim] should firmly believe that the Jews and Christians are kuffaar [infidels] and enemies of Allaah, His deen, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Believers… The efforts to gain the friendship of the Jews and Christians are useless, as they will never be pleased with the Muslims until the Muslims follow their religion.”</p>
<p>Ruiz additionally is the Executive Director of AMANA’s sister organization, American Muslims for Emergency and Relief (AMER). AMER uses the same Miami physical and mailing addresses as AMANA.</p>
<p>From 2005 till 2007, Ruiz attended the Hartford Seminary, where he worked on his Masters in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. The entire time Ruiz was there, the professor of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations was a fellow Islamist convert named Ingrid Mattson.</p>
<p>When Ruiz started at the seminary, Mattson was the Vice President of the largest Muslim Brotherhood-related group in the United States, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In the following year, 2006, she became President of ISNA.</p>
<p>Mattson founded the Islamic Chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary. As mentioned, after beginning his education at the seminary, Ruiz worked to become a chaplain for the Navy, specifically a Muslim Chaplain.</p>
<p>According to Ruiz’s bio, he worked as a chaplain at the Immigration Service Processing Centers in Puerto Rico and in Miami. Question: Did Wifredo Amr Ruiz go to seminary and take up chaplaincy specifically to better serve the radical Islamic goals of his bigoted group AMANA.</p>
<p>Today, Ruiz acts as AMANA’s legal advisor. However, he also does legal work for another Islamist organization, CAIR. He is CAIR-Florida’s legal counsel.</p>
<p>CAIR was established as being part of the American Palestine Committee, an umbrella organization acting as a terrorist enterprise run by then-global Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who was based in the U.S. at the time and who now operates out of Egypt as a spokesman for Hamas. In 2007 and 2008, amidst two federal trials, the U.S. government named CAIR a co-conspirator in the raising of millions of dollars for Hamas.</p>
<p>No doubt, having Ruiz represent both CAIR and AMANA serves to bring the two groups together, helping them to exert more influence. Indeed, in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the groups joined to co-sponsor rallies to speak out about violence in Syria, Egypt and Gaza. The latter event took place in Downtown Miami on July 20, 2014.</p>
<p>The rally was supposed to be in support of Gaza, but it quickly turned into one that was instead pro-Hamas. A smiling Sofian Zakkout is seen on video, as coordinated chants of “Let’s go Hamas” and “We are Hamas” are shouted from the crowd. A reporter was also assaulted by rally goers, targeted for being Jewish (“Zionist”).</p>
<p>CAIR issued a statement saying that it had nothing to do with the rally, but a flyer for the event clearly shows the CAIR-Florida logo next to its AMANA logo counterpart. AMANA’s Zakkout organized the rally, and numerous pictures of the flyer are <a href="http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee431/kaufmanforcongress/AMANA_CAIR_Hamas_Rally_July_2014.jpg"><span style="color: #0433ff;">still found on his Facebook site</span></a>. These flyers are not unlike the flyers that were made up for the other rallies involving CAIR and AMANA, containing CAIR and AMANA logos.</p>
<p>On November 15, Ruiz participated in the CAIR-South Florida annual banquet held at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale. He stood up on stage with the other CAIR-Florida leaders, including CAIR-South Florida Executive Director Nezar Hamze and CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Hassan Shibly, who has stated that he believes Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization.</p>
<p>Earlier in the day – the same day as the banquet – the government of United Arab Emirates (UAE) named CAIR a terrorist organization, along with violent groups such as al-Qaeda, Boco Haraam and ISIS.</p>
<p>Ruiz brought his family, including his wife and two underage kids, with him to the banquet. Given the radical Islamic nature of the groups sponsoring the event, one can argue that this was child abuse.</p>
<p>Outside the banquet was a peaceful protest, which this author attended and delivered a speech at. Ruiz came outside to intimidate and take photos of all the protesters.</p>
<p>Ruiz was <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/11/20/CAIR-Attorneys-Harass-Protesters"><span style="color: #0433ff;">caught on video having words with the protest organizer</span></a>. He asked the organizer if he had “ever served” [in the military]. He asked the organizer if he knew “who is a patriot,” and then stated emphatically “I’m a Naval officer, brother.”</p>
<p>Question: Can Ruiz operate under the guise of a patriot having served or currently serving in the U.S. military, while at the same time aiding and abetting organizations involved with Islamic terrorism?</p>
<p>In Ruiz’s case, the answer is clear. His involvement with CAIR and AMANA negates any pretense of patriotism, and instead open the door for questions about subversion.</p>
<p><i>Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>America in Retreat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/america-in-retreat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=america-in-retreat</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Dec 2014 05:51:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[air force]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[america in retreat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bret Stephens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global disorder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[new isolationism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246406</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Pulitzer-prize winning writer Bret Stephens unveils the new isolationism and the coming global disorder. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/jk.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-246407" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/jk-231x350.jpg" alt="jk" width="231" height="350" /></a>The 6 years of Barack Obama’s foreign policy have seen American influence and power decline across the globe. Traditional rivals like China and Russia are emboldened and on the march in the South China Sea and Ukraine. Iran, branded as the world’s deadliest state sponsor of terrorism, is arrogantly negotiating its way to a nuclear bomb. Bloody autocrats and jihadist gangs in the Middle East scorn our president’s threats and behead our citizens. Countries in which Americans have shed their blood in service to our interests and ideals are in the process of being abandoned to our enemies. And allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia are bullied or ignored. All over the world, a vacuum of power has been created by a foreign policy sacrificed to domestic partisan advantage, and characterized by criminal incompetence.</p>
<p>How we have arrived at this point, the dangers to our security and interests if we don’t change course, and what must be done to recover our international prestige and effectiveness are the themes of Bret Stephens’ <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/America-Retreat-Isolationism-Coming-Disorder/dp/1591846625">America in Retreat. The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.</a></em> Stephens is the Pulitzer-prize winning foreign affairs columnist for the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, and in his new book he analyzes our current retreat from global responsibility with the same stylistic clarity and analytic rigor that make his weekly columns indispensible reading.</p>
<p>A clear sign of American retreat is the precipitous decline in military spending. “In the name of budgetary savings,” Stephens writes, “the Army is returning to its June 1940 size,” and “the Navy put fewer ships at sea at any time since 1916.” The Air Force is scheduled to retire 25,000 airmen and mothball 550 planes. Our nuclear forces are being cut to meet the terms of the 2010 New Start Treaty with Russia, even as its nuclear arsenal has been increasing. Meanwhile Obama––whom Stephens likens to Canute, the Danish king who in legend attempts to stop the tide––issues empty threats, blustering diktats, and sheer lies that convince world leaders he is a “self-infatuated weakling.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, 52% of the American people agree that the U.S. “should mind its own business internationally,” and 65% want to “reduce overseas military commitments,” including a majority of Republicans. This broad consensus that America should retreat from global affairs reflects our age’s bipartisan isolationism, the centerpiece of Stephens’ analysis. This national mood is not a sign of decline, according to Stephens, who documents the enormous advantages America still enjoys globally, from its superiority in research and entrepreneurial vigor, to its healthy demographics and spirit of innovation. But it does bespeak a dangerous withdrawal from the policies that created the postwar Pax Americana––even though this global order policed by the U.S. defeated the murderous, nuclear-armed ideology of Soviet communism, and made possible the astonishing economic expansion that has lifted millions from poverty all over the world.</p>
<p>Stephens first traces the history and causes of America’s distrust of military engagement abroad. The left, of course, committed to a universalist ideology challenged by national sovereignty and self-interest, promoted isolationism once the threat of Nazism had been destroyed. Henry Wallace, FDR’s third-term vice president who was “willfully blind to the reality of Stalinist Russia,” vigorously opposed the Truman Doctrine, which saved Greece from a communist takeover in 1947, as a “disaster” and “reckless adventure.” Like progressives today, Wallace believed that America was a global “sinner,” as Stephens puts it. As such, the U.S. should meet aggression with appeasement, and consider those who protect our security to be a greater danger than foreign aggressors.</p>
<p>On the other end of the political spectrum, isolationists like Republican Senator Robert Taft feared the “enemy within,” the “’infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle in Washington,’” more than foreign aggressors. He believed that American foreign policy should be limited strictly to fending off obvious threats to the security of and interests of the American people, which Taft narrowly defined as a military attack on our soil. America’s success in waging and winning the Cold War proved both critics wrong.</p>
<p>For Stephens, isolationism has not been the only danger to American foreign policy success. What he calls “the overdose of ideals,” specifically the “freedom agenda” of the sort George W. Bush tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, has misdirected our efforts and squandered our resources in the pursuit of impossible goals. The success of the Cold War and the subsequent spread of democracy and free-market economies suggested that the world could be not just protected from an evil ideology, but “redeemed” by actively fostering liberal democracy even in countries and regions lacking the necessary network of social mores and political virtues upon which genuine liberal democracy rests. But in attempting to redeem the world, Stephens notes, policy makers “neglected a more prosaic responsibility: to police it.”</p>
<p>The failures to create stability, let alone true democracy, in Iraq and Afghanistan have enabled what Stephens calls the “retreat doctrine,” one to be found in both political parties. Barack Obama is the master of this species of foreign policy, incoherently combining idealistic democracy-promoting rhetoric with actions that further withdraw the U.S. from its responsibility to ensure global order. Under the guise of “nation-building at home,” and in service to traditional leftist doubt about America’s goodness, Obama has retreated in the face of aggression, and encouraged cuts in military spending in order to fund an ever-expanding entitlement state. Meanwhile, “Republicans are busy writing their own retreat doctrine in the name of small government, civil liberties, fiscal restraint, ‘realism,’ a creeping sense of Obama-induced national decline, and a deep pessimism about America’s ability to make itself, much less the rest of the world, better.”</p>
<p>The “retreat doctrine” is dangerous because global disorder is a constant contingency. The remainder of Stephens’ book approaches this topic first from the perspective of theory and history, and then from today’s practice. History teaches us that all the substitutes for a liberal dominant global power have failed to prevent the descent into conflict and mass violence. The ideas of a balance of power, collective security, or the presumed peaceful dividend and “harmony of interests” created by global trade did not prevent World War I or its even more devastating sequel. Nor are they any more useful in our own times.</p>
<p>As for today, Stephens identifies several challenges to a global order fragilely held together by the commitment to liberal democracy, open economies, and the free circulation of ideas and trade. The “revisionists” attack this model from various perspectives. Iran sees it as a fomenter of godlessness and hedonism, Russia is moved to oppose it by “revanchism and resentment,” and China believes that it “is a recipe for bankruptcy and laziness,” lacking a “sense of purpose, organization, and direction.” All three see evidence for their various critiques in the failure of the U.S. to exercise its massive power in the face of challenges, and in the willingness of American elites to revel in guilt and self-doubt. These perceptions of national decline invite rivals and enemies to behave as if the U.S. is in fact declining.</p>
<p>The other international players that could worsen disorder are “freelancers” and “free radicals.” The former include those countries like Israel or Japan who, convinced that America will not act in its own or its allies’ interests, will understandably take action that necessarily entails unforeseen disastrous consequences. Much more dangerous are the “free radicals,” the jihadist gangs rampaging across 3 continents, and the nuclear proliferators like Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, whose collaboration with each other and rogue regimes like Venezuela endangers the world through provoking even further proliferation on the part of rivals, or by handing off nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. And then there are “free radicals” like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who have undermined global order by publicizing the necessarily covert tools, practices, and institutions that undergird and protect it.</p>
<p>Finally, there are the structural weaknesses of the globalized economy and its continuing decline in growth, which may create “breaks” in national economic systems that “will be profoundly disruptive, potentially violent, and inherently unpredictable.” Add America’s retreat from world affairs and reductions in military spending, and in the “nearer term,” Stephens warns, “terrorists, insurgents, pirates, hackers, ‘whistleblowers,’ arms smugglers, and second-rate powers armed with weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles will be able to hold the United States inexpensively at risk,” provoking further American retreat from world affairs and the inevitable increased aggression by our enemies and rivals.</p>
<p>Stephens ends with an imagined “scenario” of how a serious global disruption could occur, one grounded in current trends and thus frighteningly believable. So what can be done? In his conclusion Stephens applies to foreign affairs the “broken windows” tactics of urban policing that caused rates of violent crimes to plummet over the last few decades. Thus “the immediate goal of U.S. foreign policy should be to arrest the continued slide into a broken-windows world of international disorder.”</p>
<p>This foreign policy would require increasing U.S. military spending to 5% of GDP, with a focus on increasing numbers of troops, planes, and ships rather than on overly sophisticated and expensive new weapons. It would mean stationing U.S. forces near global hotspots to serve as a deterrent and rapid-reaction force to snuff out incipient crises. It would require reciprocity from allies in military spending, who for too long have taken for granted the American defense umbrella. It would focus attention on regions and threats that really matter, particularly the borderlands of free states, in order to protect global good citizens from predators. It means acting quickly and decisively when conflict does arise, rather than wasting time in useless debates and diplomatic gabfests. Finally, it would require that Americans accept that their unprecedented global economic, cultural, and military power confers on us both vulnerability to those who envy and hate us, and responsibility for the global order on which our own security and interests depend.</p>
<p><em>America in Retreat</em> is a must-read for any citizen and politician worried by our current foreign policy failures and what they portend for our security and interests. No matter how understandable our traditional aversion to military and political entanglements abroad, history has made us the global policeman, one committed to human rights, accountability, and political freedom. If we abdicate that position, there is no country powerful, or worthy enough, to take our place.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Marine Preserve Cripples US Navy Defense Against China</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-marine-preserve-cripples-us-navy-defense-against-china/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-marine-preserve-cripples-us-navy-defense-against-china</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-marine-preserve-cripples-us-navy-defense-against-china/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 22 Jun 2014 15:44:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hawaii]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234564</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Pacific monument lies across the most direct paths from the East China Sea to the Central Pacific]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/capt.52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a-52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a-0.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-234565" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/capt.52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a-52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a-0.jpg" alt="capt.52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a-52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a-0" width="400" height="236" /></a></p>
<p>Last week<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/al-qaeda-hits-baghdad-obama-hits-the-beach/"> I wrote about how Obama</a> and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/john-kerry-discusses-whether-iraq-is-aware-of-global-warming/">Kerry&#8217;s ridiculous ocean obsession</a> was distracting from important national security issues such as Al Qaeda overrunning Iraq.</p>
<p>But as former Naval Intelligence officer and national security expert J.E. Dyer points out, <a href="http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/06/21/obamas-marine-protected-area-expansion-collision-course-national-security/">the 782,000 mile marine preserve can also undermine</a> national security.</p>
<blockquote><p>Environmentalist groups have been fighting the U.S. Navy for years over the use of low-frequency and mid-range sonars&#8230;</p>
<p>&#8230;The expanded monument area takes the sonar fight, which has been mostly contained in smaller areas near the coast, and writes it over a huge swath of ocean.</p>
<p>The expanded Pacific Islands monument is entirely a forward operational area.  It’s not a training area from which the Navy might perhaps relocate to satisfy other stakeholders.  It’s a very large part of the ocean which we would be deciding to close off to certain kinds of operations – if we followed the monument expansion to its predictable conclusion, and allowed the logic of environmental activism to override the needs of the Navy.</p>
<p>This brings us to the third dimension of the problem, which is that the expanded Pacific Islands monument is an especially bad place to limit or curtail our naval operations.  The reason is that it is the most obvious pathway for Chinese naval units, including submarines, into the Central and Eastern Pacific&#8230;</p>
<p>The gradual expansion of China’s naval operating areas, including expansion into the Pacific, has been a key trend in the Chinese fleet’s profile.  Coupled with it in recent years have been deployments by intelligence collection ships (AGIs) to patrols off of Guam and Hawaii.</p>
<p>These patrols are intended straightforwardly for collection against U.S. military activities, of course, but in light of China’s expanding naval profile, they are also a harbinger of future fleet operations in the Pacific.</p>
<p>Of particular significance, especially as it concerns the use of sonar, is the likelihood of Chinese submarine operations becoming routine in the Pacific&#8230;</p>
<p>The Pacific Islands monument area not only lies across the most direct paths from the East China Sea to the Central Pacific, but is one of the most seamount-infested parts of the entire Pacific Ocean floor – especially compared to the floor of the Eastern Pacific.  Seamounts are good reference points for underwater navigation, but they’re also excellent baffles for longer-range sonar acoustics.</p></blockquote>
<p>These are <a href="http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/06/21/obamas-marine-protected-area-expansion-collision-course-national-security/">excerpts of a much larger and heavily illustrated article</a> written from an expert standpoint which is worth reading, but what it amounts to is that while Obama has been talking about a pivot to Asia, he has managed to undermine the US Navy against the PRC even much closer to home.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Unraveling the History of the Israeli Navy, Part II</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-l-schwartzwald/unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-ii</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2014 04:20:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack L. Schwartzwald]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[missile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[six day war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[yom kippur war]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A world naval power is born. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/800px-Israeli_Sea_Corps_Soldiers.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226095 alignleft" alt="800px-Israeli_Sea_Corps_Soldiers" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/800px-Israeli_Sea_Corps_Soldiers-450x298.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a><strong>[Read Part I <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-l-schwartzwald/unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-i/">here]</a>. </strong></p>
<p>While Israel revamped its fleet, Egypt embarked on the so-called War of Attrition (1969-1970) with the intention of breaking Israeli morale by causing a steady stream of casualties through artillery actions along the Suez Canal.  Notwithstanding its new equipment, Israel’s navy fulfilled its role in this conflict not with missile boats but with old-fashioned <i>Palyam</i>-style raids and Navy-IDF combined amphibious operations.  Following its subpar performance in the Six Day War, <i>Flotilla 13</i> had undergone a complete overhaul under the leadership of its new commander, Ze’ev Almog—a converted infantryman who had joined the naval commandos in 1954.<sup>1</sup>  Later to obtain a Master’s Degree at the U.S. Naval War College (1972) and to serve as Israel’s naval Commander-in-Chief (1979-1985), Almog was famous at this juncture for accosting senior officers, map in hand, with an unsolicited plan for a raid.<sup>2</sup>  Under his tutelage naval commandos were trained for combined diving activity/ground raiding and outfitted with specialized webbing gear appropriate for action on land and in the water.  Thanks to Almog’s persistent lobbying, the new gear was finally put to use on June 21, 1969, when <i>Flotilla 13</i> commandos swam a third of a mile from rubber dinghies and stormed ashore at Adibiyah, destroying an Egyptian monitoring station and inflicting heavy casualties.  The attack, says Almog, “proved [<i>Flotilla 13’s</i>] ability to execute an infantry assault from the sea.”<sup>3</sup></p>
<p>In July 1969, <i>Flotilla 13</i> and the IDF’s special commando unit <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> undertook<i> </i>a combined operation against heavily garrisoned “Green Island” in the Gulf of Suez—a position so “unassailable” that its Egyptian defenders dubbed it the “Rock of Gibraltar.”<sup>4</sup>  The raid required twenty <i>Flotilla 13</i> commandos to arrive simultaneously at the landing site after a half-mile swim—something that had never been done.  To facilitate the task, the swimmers formed a “human centipede”—ten swimmers (swimming one behind the other) on one side of a central cord paired with ten swimmers on the other side.  Each pair of swimmers was attached to the central cord by a contact rope to avoid separation from the group.<sup>5</sup>  Once ashore the commandos successfully secured the assigned “grip area,” from which the <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> commandos were to press forward to subdue all resistance.  As the <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> force had not yet landed, however, the naval commandos pressed ahead with successful attacks on both flanks, with the unfortunate consequence that an Egyptian grenade felled two of their number.<sup>6</sup></p>
<p>Subsequent to this, the twenty <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> commandos stormed ashore from rubber dinghies, accompanied by Commander Almog who promptly established a command post atop the fortress roof.  In a battle lasting just under forty minutes, Green Island was “crushed to smithereens”<sup>7</sup> and <i>Flotilla 13</i> dispelled any and all doubt as to its status as an elite unit.  Even Egyptian sources regard the attack as a crucial turning point whereby Israel seized the initiative in the War of Attrition.<sup>8</sup>  But the 40% casualty rate (six killed and ten seriously wounded out of a 40-man combined force) made a deep impression on the IDF brass.<sup>9</sup>  Consequently, no further raids of this magnitude were attempted during the Attrition War.<sup>10</sup></p>
<p>This is not to say that <i>Flotilla 13 </i>remained inactive.  Just two months later, it achieved another coup with operations<i> Escort</i> and<i> Raviv</i> (September 1969).  In the first of these paired operations, naval commandos driving submerged SDVs mined two Egyptian torpedo boats at Ras Sadat.  They succeeded in destroying the boats, but a self-destruct mine aboard one of the two SDVs malfunctioned and exploded during the return voyage, killing three of its crewmembers.  (A rescue helicopter found the survivor six hours later, treading water and guarding the bodies of his fellows.<sup>11</sup>)  Despite this tragedy, the way was now open for <i>Operation Raviv</i> in which Israeli-manufactured<sup>12</sup> landing craft transported three Egyptian tanks (captured as war booty during the Six Day War) across the Gulf of Suez.  The tanks roamed the Egyptian coastline Trojan-horse style, destroying Egyptian military installations (which took them for friendly vehicles) before successfully rendezvousing with the landing craft for the trip back home.  There were no Israeli casualties in this ten-hour raid, during which 150 Egyptian soldiers were killed.<sup>13</sup></p>
<p>With the coming of the Yom Kippur War (October 1973), naval warfare entered a new era.  The Israeli Navy’s main concern at this time was the possible deployment of enemy missile boats off Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain.  To pre-empt such a strike, Israel deployed its own missile boats in a “forward defense” posture close to its enemies’ bases.  On October 6<sup>th</sup>, Yom Kippur, the first night of the war, the tactic paid high dividends.  The first ship-to-ship missile battle in naval history took place that night at Latakia on the Syrian coast.  Although the first <i>Gabriel</i> missile fired in wartime missed its mark, Israel finished the encounter, with the sinking of 5 Syrian ships—including three Syrian missile boats whose <i>Styx </i>missile proved utterly ineffectual despite their superior range.  Once launched, the <i>Styx </i>relied upon an on-board guidance system to locate its target.  Israel managed to dodge everything that was fired at them by using evasive maneuvers, launching chaff decoys<sup>14</sup> and jamming the <i>Styx’s</i> target acquisition electronically.  In contrast, Israel’s superiorly designed <i>Gabriel</i> could receive continued guidance input from the firing ship throughout its flight to the target, switching to on-board guidance only if the target was definitely locked.  The result was the destruction of a patrol boat, a minesweeper and three Syrian missile boats on October 6<sup>th</sup>, and the sinking of two more missile boats in a second raid five days later.<sup>15</sup></p>
<p>Similar engagements ensued on the Egyptian front.  At Port Said, an Egyptian flotilla reached the safety of its harbor solely because misconnected wiring on the pursuing <i>SA’ARs</i> prevented effective fire.<sup>16</sup>  At the Battle of Damietta, however, the Russian-made <i>Styx</i> again proved ineffectual against Israeli countermeasures—and this time the Egyptians could find no safe harbor.  Three of four Egyptian missile ships were overtaken and destroyed by <i>Gabriel</i> missiles while attempting flight.  The victories at Latakia and Damietta left Israel free to target and destroy naval stations, radar installations, oil refineries and ammunition stores along the Syrian and Egyptian coastlines.<sup>17</sup></p>
<p>In the southern theatre, naval Commander-in-Chief “Bini” Telem had devised an amphibious operation for the Gulf of Suez that would allow for the crossing of tanks, which could then attack Egyptian forces from behind.<sup>18</sup>  As a prerequisite, Israel had to destroy two Egyptian missile boats guarding this theatre.  As the Israeli Navy had no missile boats of its own south of the Canal, <i>Flotilla 13</i> commandos were tasked with the mission.  On the first attempt (October 11), they managed to sink one of the Egyptian missile boats in its harbor with underwater explosives.  An attempt to destroy the second one with a new generation explosive boat on October 19<sup>th</sup> failed when the boat’s rudder jammed after the pilot abandoned ship.  (The boat navigated chaotically in the darkness—menacing the Israeli commandos as much or more than the Egyptians—until it finally self-destructed within the harbor.<sup>19</sup>)  Two nights later, another attempt was carried out with anti-tank missiles fired from speedboats.  The first eight shots with these clumsy weapons missed, whereupon Ze’ev Almog, who had accompanied his commandos on the mission, threatened to fire the weapon himself.  His gunners pleaded for another chance, and with their last two rockets destroyed the target.<sup>20</sup></p>
<p>Nevertheless, there would be no amphibious tank foray across the Gulf of Suez:  Days earlier the IDF had affected its own crossing further north—over the Suez Canal—to threaten the Egyptian 3<sup>rd</sup> Army in Sinai with encirclement.  (Unit 707, the navy’s diving corps, assisted IDF engineers in laying the initial bridge for this otherwise IDF-conducted crossing.<sup>21</sup>)</p>
<p>In contrast to its gross underperformance in the Six Day War, the Israeli Navy’s success in 1973 constituted one of the few untarnished bright spots of the war.  The sole naval limitation to be exposed during the conflict was the navy’s inability to counter Egypt’s closure of the Bab el Mandeb Strait.  Unable to blockade Eilat by closing the Straits of Tiran as it had done prior to the Six Day War,<sup>22</sup> Egypt achieved the same purpose by halting traffic far to the south at Bab el-Mandeb where the Red Sea enters the Gulf of Aden.  Oil shipments from Iran were thus interdicted, although Israel was able to continue importing oil from the deposits it had discovered in the Sinai.<sup>23</sup>  Having foreseen the possibility of such a blockade prior to the war, Israel had augmented its fleet of missile boats with two state-of-the-art <i>SA’AR-4s</i> capable of operating at this distant strait.<sup>24</sup>  Unfortunately, both ships were in the Mediterranean at the outbreak of the war and were thus unavailable for their intended mission.  More ominous, however, was the fact that even properly positioned, they would not have been capable of prolonged intervention at Bab el Mandeb since air support—available to the enemy owing to its ties to local nations—would not have been feasible for Israel at this distance.  The Israeli ships might strike, but they would soon have to depart, leaving the enemy once again in control of the strait.  After the IDF surrounded the Egyptian 3<sup>rd</sup> Army in Sinai, Sadat capitalized on his control of Bab el Mandeb—offering to allow a modest number of ships to pass through to Eilat in return for Israel’s allowance of the passage of non-military necessities to the encircled Egyptians.<sup>25</sup></p>
<p>Hence, Israel’s possession of Sharm el-Sheikh at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula was shown to be insufficient to maintain open sea-lanes to Eilat, Israel’s southern port.  A definitive solution to this puzzle would only come with the signing of the 1979 Camp David Accords establishing peace with Egypt.<sup>26</sup>  The new treaty not only guaranteed navigation in Israel’s southern sea-lanes, but also greatly reduced the likelihood that Israel or her navy would be drawn into a full-scale conflict with her neighbors in the near term.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the 1970s had seen a new naval threat arise in the form of seaborne Palestinian terrorism.  Originating from Lebanon—to which the bulk of the PLO had fled after its ouster from Jordan in 1970—the attacks employed rubber dinghies—some proceeding directly along the coastline from Lebanon, others deployed from “merchant” boats further offshore.<sup>27</sup>  Two of the most infamous anti-Israel terrorist raids in history were carried out in this fashion—namely the 1975 Savoy Hotel attack and the 1978 “Coastal Road Massacre” (which remains the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel to date).  To combat this onslaught Israel relied on its “second line” (i.e., coastal) defense, comprised of patrols by <i>Dabur</i> patrol craft augmented by smaller, commando-driven <i>Snunit</i> (“Swallow”) speedboats.</p>
<p>The navy’s approach, however, was by no means purely defensive.  The missile boats used in the Yom Kippur War were now used to transport Naval and IDF commandos to the Lebanese coast for raids against terrorist facilities and munitions stores.<sup>28</sup>  At times, the disparity in equipment between the Israeli Navy and its terrorist adversaries led to a “theatre of the absurd” as when an Israeli missile boat fired nearly 1,000 shells of varying calibers at a lone terrorist on a small island before finally dispatching him.<sup>29</sup>  But with Ze’ev Almog now in command of the Israeli Navy (1979-1985) there would not be a single successful terrorist strike by sea from Lebanon.<sup>30</sup></p>
<p>During <i>Operation Peace for Galilee</i> (the First Lebanon War, 1982) the Israeli Navy was able to operate unopposed off the coast of Lebanon, supporting the coastal arm of Israel’s infantry advance with flanking fire from the sea.  More significantly, the navy carried out the first large-scale amphibious landings in its history—first at a sandy beach secured in advance by naval commandos just north of Sidon (where ultimately 2,400 troops and 400 tanks and APCs were unloaded),<sup>31</sup> and later at Junieh, north of Beirut.  In both cases, the amphibious forces were able to assist the infantry by approaching PLO positions from the rear.<sup>32</sup></p>
<p>Throughout this period and beyond, the Israeli Navy continued to modernize its arsenal.  After the Yom Kippur War, the <i>Gabriel-II</i> missile with a range of 36 km (comparable to the 40 km range of the Soviet <i>Styx</i>) replaced the 20 km range <i>Gabriel-I</i>.  Soon thereafter, the navy obtained <i>Harpoon</i> class missiles from the U.S. with a stunning 100 km range.  The extended strike capability created a new problem for the Israeli Navy because targets 100 km distant were “beyond the horizon” (i.e., beyond radar range).  Israel solved the quandary with ship-borne helicopters that could take off from the deck and fly forward to assist with targeting.  However, the helicopters proved a poor fit for the navy’s existing missile boats, and a larger version specifically designed to carry helicopters had to be developed.  Although it would not become operational until the late 1990s, the <i>SA’AR-5</i> missile boat would boast a mind-boggling arsenal, including the <i>Gabriel II</i> (for short and medium range targets), the <i>Harpoon</i> (for “beyond the horizon targets”), a helicopter to guide the latter, anti-submarine warfare torpedoes, a 20 mm, six-barrel <i>Phalanx</i> gun which could fire 3,000 rounds per minute to shoot down incoming anti-ship missiles at a range of 1.5 km, and the newly developed, vertically-launched <i>Barak</i> missile which could speed off at Mach 2 to destroy incoming anti-ship missiles up to 10 km away.<sup>33</sup>  As seaborne Palestinian terrorists were now utilizing racing boats which greatly outpaced the navy’s <i>Daburs</i>, Israel also updated its coastal-defense flotilla with new <i>Super Dvora</i>-class patrol boats capable of speeds up to 46 knots.<sup>34</sup></p>
<p>Also requisitioned during the 1990s were two <i>Dolphin</i>-class diesel-electric submarines.  Built by a German contractor, they had an operational range of 8,000 nautical miles making them suitable for deep-sea operations.  But dating to the 1950s, when it obtained its first submarine, the Israeli Navy had used the vessels to deliver underwater naval commandos to the vicinity of their targets.<sup>35</sup>  Hence, the new generation subs were also outfitted for coastal commando operations with large-diameter torpedo tubes capable of transporting swimmer delivery vehicles<sup>36</sup> and blue-green exterior paint for camouflaged near-surface activity.<sup>37</sup></p>
<p>While these various upgrades were taking place, the Israeli Navy maintained a near perfect record in interdicting seaborne terrorism.  Attempted raids from Lebanon using small boats or rubber dinghies were universally unsuccessful.  A more novel attempt came from further away.  In April 1985, a “cargo” vessel sailing towards Israel from Algiers was ordered to stop and identify itself.  Instead, the ship’s crew fired rocket-propelled grenades at an approaching Israeli missile boat.  The missile boat sank the vessel on the spot—learning afterwards from survivors that the ship was bound for Tel Aviv, where terrorists (who were to leave the ship and come ashore in rubber dinghies) intended to raid the Ministry of Defense in order to assassinate then Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.<sup>38</sup> With the Palestinian attacks originating from more distant sites, the Israeli Navy began retaliating against more distant targets (thus letting the involved terrorists know that they were not immune to retribution).  Hence, when PLO terrorist Abu Jihad orchestrated the “Bus of Mothers Massacre”—a deadly bus hijacking in Beersheba during the first <i>Intifada</i> (1987-1993)—the Israeli Navy sent naval and <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> commandos all the way to Tunis by missile boat to kill Abu Jihad in his own home.  The mission (which was aided by Mossad) was a complete success.<sup>39</sup>  A similar type of raid against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1997, however, ended in complete disaster.  Tipped off in advance, Hezbollah laid an ambush in which eleven Israeli commandos were killed.<sup>40</sup></p>
<p>On the High Seas, the Israeli Navy sought to intercept terrorist arms shipments.  In May 2001, during the second <i>Intifada</i> (2000-2005), it seized the <i>Santorini</i>, a cargo vessel loaded with weaponry bound for Gaza.  More celebrated was the January 2002 capture of the <i>Karine A</i> in the Red Sea.  In a lightning raid, naval commandos boarded the ship by ropes lowered from helicopters, while patrol boats raced alongside.<sup>41</sup>  The operation—which recovered a hold full of munitions bound for Gaza from Iran—came off without a hitch.</p>
<p>The Second Lebanon War (2006), launched in retaliation for a deadly cross-border raid by Hezbollah, found the Israeli Navy enforcing a tight blockade of the Lebanese coast.  The only vessels allowed in or out of Lebanese ports were ships participating in the evacuation of foreign nationals from Lebanon to Cyprus.  With Hezbollah lacking a naval arm, the Israeli Navy was able to operate close in to shore, launching commando raids, shelling Hezbollah positions and destroying coastal roads to cut off lines of retreat.  Unfortunately, these lopsided operations led to an act of negligence.  The <i>Hanit</i>, a state-of-the-art <i>SA’AR-5</i> missile ship, confident that it would not face fire from the shore, shut off its anti-missile electronic warning systems so that the signals would not interfere with Israeli jets flying overhead.  While operating in this condition, the ship was struck by a land-based C-802 anti-ship missile and suffered significant damage (although it was rapidly repaired).  Iran had transferred the missile to Hezbollah only one day prior to the attack.<sup>42</sup>  Henceforth, the <i>SA’AR-5s</i> maintained themselves on high alert.<sup>43</sup></p>
<p>Following the war, the Israeli Navy was barred from operating off the Lebanese coast, which was instead patrolled by a UN-mandated Maritime Task Force.  At the coastal border with Lebanon, the Israelis had already erected an underwater barrier with sensor-equipped netting capable of detecting contact with swimmers or boats.  A similar safeguard was now put in place at the coastal border with Gaza.<sup>44</sup>  But here, the Israeli Navy would soon require something more.  In 2007, Hamas illegally seized control of Gaza from the lawful Palestinian Authority.  An escalation in rocket attacks from Gaza followed, leading to the outbreak of an open conflict—<i>Operation Cast Lead</i>—that was fought over a three-week period between December 2008 and January 2009.  The navy supported the land campaign with seaborne artillery fire and amphibious naval commando raids.<sup>45</sup>  Additionally, it enforced a sea blockade as part of a comprehensive effort to halt the flow of rocket-making materials to Gaza.<sup>46</sup> But the most stunning naval exploit of <i>Operation Cast Lead</i> took place far from the main theatre of action—in distant Sudan—where Israeli naval commandos reportedly damaged an Iranian arms ship bound for Gaza while it lay docked at <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3699142,00.html">Port Sudan</a>.</p>
<p>After completion of <i>Operation Cast Lead</i>, persistent arms smuggling mandated continuation of the Gaza blockade.  In May 2010, this led to an international incident when a flotilla of ships from Turkey attempted to run the blockade, purportedly to deliver humanitarian aid.  Ignoring an Israeli offer to <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-aid-convoy-can-unload-cargo-in-ashdod-for-inspection-1.292560">offload</a> its cargo at Ashdod for inspection and overland transport to Gaza, the six-ship flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, which announced by loudspeaker that it would not be allowed to proceed.  When the flotilla pressed on nonetheless, the navy attempted to reprise the raid it had carried out eight years earlier against the <i>Karine A</i>.  Speedboats lowered by davit from a <i>SA’AR-5</i> came alongside the <i>Mavi Marmara</i> in an effort to board, but were forced to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6sAEYpHF24">break off the attempt</a> when sprayed with water hoses and pelted with chains, boxes of dishes and a stun grenade.  Similarly, Israeli naval commandos attempting to repel onto the deck from helicopters were immediately assaulted with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI">metal clubs</a>.  Not having anticipated this reception, the commandos had come aboard with riot control paint ball guns as their primary weapons.  They also carried holstered pistols, but were told not to employ them except in situations of life and death.  Sadly that was precisely the situation they found themselves in.  By the time order was restored, nine of the Turkish perpetrators had been killed and some 50 more wounded.  Nine Israeli commandos were also wounded, including one who sustained a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/31/israeli-attacks-gaza-flotilla-activists">skull fracture</a> after being thrown from an upper deck to a lower one.</p>
<p>At the present day, Israel faces new naval challenges.  The recent discovery of offshore gas fields has placed novel defense responsibilities on the Israeli Navy at a time when many of its original missile boats are nearing the end of their operational lifespan.  The navy is responding with a new generation of naval vessels and missile systems.  In a back-to-the-future move, it has placed an order in Germany for two <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174888#.U3Y_3_2CbwJ">naval destroyers</a> to patrol its pipeline routes.  Likewise, in October 2013, Israel Aerospace Industries was contracted to build three new <i>Super Dvora</i> patrol boats capable of 50-knot speeds to guard the <a href="http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2013/10/01/Israeli-navy-orders-three-new-warships-to-protect-gas-fields/UPI-61931380644317/">gas fields</a> against seaborne attack.  More impressive is a new stealth-technology-equipped <i>SA’AR-72</i> mini-corvette, which will become operational in 2015.  Capable of deploying two helicopters and a variety of unmanned vehicles, the ships can also transport twenty commandos and a flotilla of inflatable boats in addition to its fifty-man crew.  With a range of 3,000 U.S. nautical miles, the ship boasts an electronic warfare system and an arsenal of advanced weaponry including the vertically launched, 1500 mph <i>Barak-8</i> missile capable of striking aircraft and incoming missiles at a range of 70 kilometers.  The latest <i>Barak</i> arrives <a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/israel/2013/11/the-new-israeli-navy-preparing-for-future-terror-threats-2443698.html">just in time</a>, as it is capable of countering the new Russian <i>Yakhont</i> cruise missile reportedly acquired by Hezbollah in 2012 (which can be used to threaten Israel’s gas rigs).  On the submarine front, Israel has received the first of three “advanced” <i>Dolphin</i>-class subs from Germany featuring a hyper-quiet, air-independent propulsion system, which averts the need for surfacing for up to seven days.  Enlarged torpedo tubes can double as housing for swimmer delivery vehicles—the swimmers, themselves, deploying from a wet/dry compartment.  There is also much unconfirmed speculation that the subs can be modified to fire nuclear cruise missiles, thus giving Israel a submarine-based “<a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/israel-submarine-capabilities/">second strike</a>” capability as Iran threatens to go nuclear.</p>
<p>Israel’s tiny navy led the Western world into the naval missile age, and it hasn’t lost its capacity to innovate.  In time, its saga is sure to embrace more chapters, but as the future has yet to unfold we must end our survey just as we began it—with mere glimpses.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">_____________________</span></p>
<p><b>Notes</b></p>
<p><sup>1</sup> Samuel M. Katz, <i>The Night Raiders: Israel’s Naval Commandos at War</i>.  New York:  Pocket Books, 1997, 74.</p>
<p><sup>2</sup> Katz, 150.</p>
<p><sup>3</sup> Rear Admiral Ze’ev Almog, <i>Flotilla 13: Israeli Naval Commandos in the Red Sea, 1967-1973</i>.  Annapolis:  Naval Institute Press, 2010, 7-9, 19-22, 34 [quote].</p>
<p><sup>4</sup> Katz, 163-64.</p>
<p><sup>5</sup> Almog, 41-42.  The cord was invented by Italy’s elite frogman unit, “COMSUBIN.” (<i>Commando Subacquei ed Incursori</i>). Katz, 166.</p>
<p><sup>6 </sup>Almog, 66.</p>
<p><sup>7</sup> Commando Uri Matityahu, quoted in Almog, 95.</p>
<p><sup>8</sup> Almog, 90-91.</p>
<p><sup>9</sup> Ami Ayalon, still fighting despite wounds in the neck and both legs, received Israel’s rare Medal of Valor for his part in the raid.  Afterwards, he eloped from the hospital to rejoin <i>Flotilla 13</i> for its next big mission—<i>Operation Escort </i>(Katz, 186, 196-97).</p>
<p><sup>10</sup> Moshe Tzalel, <i>From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat: The Evolution of Israel’s Naval Strategy</i>.  Contributions in Military Studies, Number 192. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000, 102-03; Klaus Mommsen, <i>60 Years Israel Navy</i>.  Bonn:  Bernard and Graefe, 2011, 158.</p>
<p><sup>11</sup> Almog, 27-28.  The survivor, Aryeh Yitzchak, was partially shielded from the blast by the three who were killed—Oded Nir, Rafi Miloh and Shlomo Eshel (Almog, 121-25).</p>
<p><sup>12</sup> Mommsen, 87.</p>
<p><sup>13</sup> Mommsen, 159-60; Tzalel, 103-04.</p>
<p><sup>14</sup> Two Israeli Navy officers, Titzhak Shoshan and Herut Tsemach, purchased £20 British pounds worth of hand-held chaff dispensers abroad, and proved that the chaff decoys could create enough static to cloak to a torpedo boat (Rabinovich, 181-82).</p>
<p><sup>15</sup> Mommsen, 186-89; Rabinovich, 214-22, 263-66.</p>
<p><sup>16</sup> Rabinovich, 226-28, 252.</p>
<p><sup>17</sup> Mommsen, 191-94; Tzalel, 118-19.</p>
<p><sup>18</sup> Tzalel, 55.</p>
<p><sup>19</sup> Almog, 174-76; Mommsen, 198; Katz, 269; Rabinovich, 294.</p>
<p><sup>20</sup> Israel determined later that this had been the missile boat that sank the <i>Eilat</i> (Almog, 183-84; Mommsen, 199; Katz, 277-79; Rabinovich, 296-98).</p>
<p><sup>21</sup> Mommsen, 201.</p>
<p><sup>22</sup> Sharm el-Sheikh at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula was the critical position from which to implement such a blockade, but like the rest of Sinai, it had been in Israeli hands since Israel’s victory in the Six Day War.</p>
<p><sup>23</sup> Mommsen, 185-86; Rabinovich, 197.</p>
<p><sup>24</sup> Tzalel, 52.</p>
<p><sup>25</sup> Tzalel, 135.</p>
<p><sup>26</sup> Tzalel, 59-60.</p>
<p><sup>27</sup> Mommsen, 237.</p>
<p><sup>28</sup> For examples, see Mommsen, 136-37, 248 and Katz, 216 and 232-44.</p>
<p><sup>29</sup> Tzalel, 75-76.</p>
<p><sup>30</sup> Katz, 295-96.</p>
<p><sup>31</sup> Mommsen, 258.  See also Katz, 303-04.</p>
<p><sup>32</sup> Mommsen, 258-59.</p>
<p><sup>33</sup> Mommsen, 224-25, 229-30, 271-72.</p>
<p><sup>34</sup> Mommsen, 280.</p>
<p><sup>35</sup> Tzalel, 29.</p>
<p><sup>36</sup> Mommsen, 273-75.</p>
<p><sup>37</sup> The decision to purchase the <i>SA’AR-5</i> and the <i>Dolphin</i> from foreign contractors left Israel’s government-owned <i>Israel Shipyards</i> without any large-scale projects.  Consequently, in 1995, the government declared the concern bankrupt (Tzalel, 70).  Today, it thrives under private ownership as the eastern Mediterranean’s most innovative shipbuilding company.  See <a href="http://www.israel-shipyards.com">http://www.israel-shipyards.com</a>.</p>
<p><sup>38</sup> Mommsen, 288, Katz, 305-06.</p>
<p><sup>39</sup> Mommsen, 290; Katz, 309-10.</p>
<p><sup>40</sup> Mommsen, 297; Tzalel, 76.</p>
<p><sup>41</sup> Mommsen, 299-300.</p>
<p><sup>42</sup> Mommsen, 308-10.</p>
<p><sup>43</sup> Later, when Hezbollah proved its ability to reach Haifa with its land-based rocket arsenal, consideration was given to placing missile boats in Haifa harbor to see if their vertically launched <i>Barak</i> missiles could serve as a missile shield (Mommsen, 311).</p>
<p><sup>44</sup> Mommsen, 319.</p>
<p><sup>45</sup> Yanir Yagna, Eli Ashkenazi and Anshel Pfeffer, “Hamas launches first phosphorus rocket at Negev; no injuries reported,” <i>Haaretz.com</i>, 1/15/2009.  Accessed 1/8/2014.</p>
<p><sup>46 </sup>Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Chair.  <i>Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry on 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident</i>.  United Nations, September 2011, 39.</p>
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		<title>Unraveling the History of the Israeli Navy, Part I</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 22 May 2014 04:29:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack L. Schwartzwald]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the Israeli Navy transitioned from obscurity to a missile pioneer.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/US_Navy_080621-N-8273J-115_Capt._Bill_Moran_left_and_Israeli_Navy_Capt._Azarel_Ram_render_honors_during_an_honors_ceremony_for_Chief_of_Naval_Operations_CNO_Adm._Gary_Roughead.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225922" alt="080621-N-8273J-115" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/US_Navy_080621-N-8273J-115_Capt._Bill_Moran_left_and_Israeli_Navy_Capt._Azarel_Ram_render_honors_during_an_honors_ceremony_for_Chief_of_Naval_Operations_CNO_Adm._Gary_Roughead-450x301.jpg" width="315" height="211" /></a>In the beginning, when Britain ruled Palestine, mere glimpses emerge: of twenty-three Jewish frogmen and their British commander disappearing without a trace on a seaborne mission against Vichy Lebanon (1941);</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">1</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of Jewish soldiers learning naval skills at the British naval base in Haifa (1943); and of Jewish workers posing proudly next to two minesweepers they have constructed for the Royal Navy in Tel Aviv harbor (1944).</span></p>
<p>The historian, however, begins his labors where he will, and our story commences not in British Palestine but at Fleet Landing in distant Newport, Rhode Island.  It was here in April 1946 that a motorized liberty launch put in carrying crewmembers of the USS <i>Massey</i> and their guests—a group of Annapolis midshipmen who had come aboard for two weeks of drills.  On reaching land, some of the midshipmen and crewmembers bounded ashore only to be summoned back to the launch, where they received an informative lecture from Lieutenant Paul Shulman, the <i>Massey’s</i> engineering officer.  The topic was standard disembarkation from a naval vessel, and the take home message was this:  If the sailors wanted to do things according to regulations, then officers were to debark first, followed by midshipmen (since they were destined to be officers) and finally crewmembers.  While highly enlightening, the lecture seems not to have been appreciated by men anxious to begin their liberty—although they did do a commendable job of applying their new knowledge when Shulman finally let them leave the launch.<sup>2</sup></p>
<p>Gruffness was nothing new to Paul Shulman. His biographer, J. Wandres, relates that five years earlier, while an Annapolis midshipman himself, he had had a terse exchange with a revered houseguest at his parents’ home.  The visitor had remarked that he was delighted that Jewish boys like Shulman were studying to be naval officers since an independent Jewish state, once it came into being, would require men with such skills.  Shulman snapped back that he intended to be a career officer in the U.S. Navy and wished the houseguest luck with recruitment elsewhere.<sup>3</sup>  The houseguest, David Ben-Gurion, found Shulman’s sense of commitment impressive and did not forget him.</p>
<p>Career plans enunciated by 18-year-olds are apt to change.  And so it was in the case of young Shulman.  The Holocaust—and Britain’s subsequent refusal to allow the survivors of that catastrophe to immigrate to the Jewish National Home in Mandatory Palestine—made a deep impression on the maturing officer.  Obtaining his release from active naval duty in 1946, he helped front an organization that purchased decommissioned U.S. and Canadian naval vessels for use in smuggling European Jews to Palestine in the teeth of Britain’s draconian blockade.  (Unfortunately, the Royal Navy intercepted most of these vessels, sending the passengers back to Europe or to internment on Cyprus.)<sup>4</sup></p>
<p>In April 1948, the 25-year-old Shulman accepted an offer to serve as Chief-of-Staff for naval training in the nascent Israeli Navy.<sup>5</sup>  Weeks later—on May 15<sup>th</sup>—five Arab armies crossed the frontier of the newborn Jewish state intent on annihilating it.  Within the navy, at this time, there existed two competing operational philosophies.  The <i>Palyam</i>—a frogman-based commando unit—believed that commando operations could meet all of Israel’s naval requirements, including staging attacks, keeping sea-lanes open, blockading enemy ports and transporting marines.<sup>6</sup>  Shulman adhered to the rival view, outlined by former Royal Navy officer, Robert Stephenson Miller, that a traditional navy would better serve Israel’s needs.</p>
<p>In the event, both operational schools were vindicated.  At the outset of the war, four decommissioned naval vessels intercepted by Britain during the illegal immigration campaign were at anchor in Haifa harbor.  Just prior to declaring independence, Israel took possession of these vessels, carried out repairs and formed them into the so-called “Big Flotilla” in accordance with Miller’s conception.<sup>7</sup>  In the meantime, an Israeli agent had purchased six “explosive” speedboats.  Formerly belonging to the “Decima Mas” special operations unit of the Italian Navy,<sup>8</sup> these became the chief strike weapon of the <i>Palyam</i> (now know as the “Marine Sabotage Unit”<sup>9</sup> and soon to be renamed “<i>Flotilla 13</i>”—a name that finally stuck<sup>10</sup>).</p>
<p>The stage was now set for the most stunning naval feat of the war—a combined operation, involving both the Big Flotilla and the <i>Palyam</i>.  Because the explosive boats could not travel long distances on the open sea, they were being transported in the lifeboat position aboard one of the Big Flotilla ships when the latter, commanded by Shulman, cornered the Egyptian flagship, <i>Al Emir Farouq</i>, off the Gaza coastline on October 21, 1948.  A ceasefire had just gone into effect, but when an Egyptian shore battery opened fire on the Israeli flotilla, Shulman obtained permission to attack directly from Ben-Gurion.<sup>11</sup>  The explosive boats were lowered into the water and sped toward their quarry—each carrying 650 pounds of explosive in the prow.  At a distance of 100 yards, the <i>Palyam</i> pilots, commanded by Yochai Bin-Nun,<sup>12</sup> locked their rudders in position and jumped overboard.  On impact, the explosives separated from the boats, sunk and exploded below the water line.<sup>13</sup>  Struck twice, the Egyptian flagship broke in half, carrying 500 men to the bottom, while a third torpedo boat crippled an Egyptian minesweeper.<sup>14</sup>  Five days later, Ben-Gurion promoted Shulman to command of the Israeli Navy with the rank of <i>Aluf</i> (i.e., Admiral). According to J. Wandres, Shulman would muse afterwards that he must be the first U.S. Naval lieutenant to achieve the rank of admiral in just three years.<sup>15</sup></p>
<p>Notwithstanding the success of the <i>Al Emir Farouq</i> operation, Israel’s War of Independence was decided on land.  The navy had neither to clash with an enemy fleet nor to forestall an attempt at amphibious invasion, nor even to protect seaborne commerce.  (Marine insurance rates actually fell by half during the war.<sup>16</sup>)  Mere shore bombardment proved beyond the fleet’s means.  Because the U.S. and Canadian navies had removed the original artillery from the ships comprising the Big Flotilla, the Israeli Navy employed field guns (secured to the decks by rope) for such bombardment attempts with most unsatisfactory results.<sup>17</sup>  In sum, says one historian, the Israeli Navy emerged from the war as “a disorganized collection of unsuitable ships, operated by inadequately trained crews,” which was manifestly unable “to come up with a useful role for their service…”<sup>18</sup> To square the circle, Shlomo Shamir, a distinguished army officer with no naval experience, was chosen to succeed Shulman in command.<sup>19</sup></p>
<p>Although the equipment improved with the purchase of some bona fide naval destroyers in 1955, finding a useful mission remained problematic.  Given little guidance from the rest of the military, the navy began training for the purpose of protecting Israel’s sea lines of communication in the event of another war.  But the IDF (Israel Defense Force) did not intend to ask the navy to fulfill this purpose in wartime.  Because Israel relied heavily on citizen reserves, a prolonged conflict was deemed impracticable.  The widespread requisitioning of manpower, trucks, planes and ships at a moment’s notice upon the outbreak of war would bring the economy to a standstill—a condition that could not be long maintained.  Consequently, all planning was geared toward rapid blitz-style military actions—the outcome of which would be determined before open or closed sea lines could come into play.<sup>20</sup>  The main reason that the navy was able to requisition the aforementioned destroyers<sup>21</sup> at all seems to have been a belief on the part of the IDF brass that it would force Israel’s enemies to overspend on their own navies in order to keep up, thereby diverting the enemies’ resources from military equipment needed for the decisive battle on land.<sup>22</sup></p>
<p>The navy’s new equipment saw its first action during <i>Operation Kadesh</i> (i.e., the 1956 Sinai Campaign), wherein Israel joined Britain and France in a war against Egypt—the Israelis responding to Egyptian-sponsored terrorist raids and the blockade of Eilat (her southern port); the British and French retaliating for Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the British- and French-owned Suez Canal.  At the outset, Israel’s Anglo-French allies insisted that the Israeli Navy avoid the main area of operations so as not to become entangled with the large allied naval assault force.  Israeli landing craft (obtained during the early 1950s) did play a role in the Gulf of Aqaba by transporting four light tanks to southern Sinai for the IDF assault on Sharm-el-Sheikh, but it appeared that the destroyers would be consigned to the sidelines for the duration.  In the event, they were spared this disappointment by the Egyptian Navy, which dispatched the frigate, <i>Ibrahim El Awal</i>, to bombard Haifa.  As the ship withdrew, the destroyers gave chase supported by torpedo boats and IAF fighter-bombers.  Crippled in the water by Israeli fire, the <i>Ibrahim El Awal</i> was boarded by Israeli sailors and towed back to Haifa, where it was repaired and re-commissioned as an Israeli naval vessel.<sup>23</sup></p>
<p>This positive outcome did not negate the fact that the Israeli Navy had been taken by surprise at its own base of operations (Haifa) or that the Egyptian ship had fired off 160 shells and begun sailing for home before the Israelis were able to react.  It was a humbling reminder that the principal duty of a small state’s navy is to guard the coastline.<sup>24</sup>  This message was driven home with finality the following year when the Soviet Union sold a new weapon—the missile boat—to Syria and Egypt.  Capable of traveling at 38 knots and firing the ship-to-ship <i>Styx</i> missile at targets up to 40 kilometers distant, the new threat rendered Israel’s destroyer-based navy all but obsolete.  Although the missile boats could not detect specific land targets owing to the cacophony of shoreline radar echoes, were they to open fire on Israel’s target-rich coastal cities, there was nothing the lumbering destroyers could do about it.<sup>25</sup></p>
<p>While such weapons systems were in development in Western nations including the United States, they were not yet operational or available for sale.<sup>26</sup>  Hence, a new conception for Israel’s Navy was necessary—tilting the balance away from the “traditional navy” Miller plan and towards small ships for coastal defense.  Chosen to lead the drive was former <i>Palyam</i> commander, Yochai Bin-Nun, who served as Commander of the Israeli Navy from 1960 to 1966.  Under his leadership, the old <i>Palyam</i> commando concept became so preponderant that the effects still reverberate.  Says one historian, “Nearly every navy in the world has commando forces at its disposal.  But … in no other navy in the world do commando operations have such a predominant status.”<sup>27</sup></p>
<p>Directly countering the Syrian and Egyptian missile boat threat was a prime challenge for the new navy.  With no similar weapons systems existing in the West, Israel began work on its own—the <i>Gabriel</i> missile.<sup>28</sup>  Based on a blueprint developed by MIT-trained IDF Major General Amos Horev in 1953 and brought to fruition by the Drexel-trained engineer, Ori Even-Tov, in 1965, the new missile was smaller and of shorter range than the Soviet <i>Styx</i>, but had a more advanced guidance system and was virtually invisible to targeted vessels since it traveled just above the ocean plane.<sup>29</sup>  To carry the <i>Gabriel</i>, Israel chose German-designed patrol craft manufactured in France.<sup>30</sup></p>
<p>At the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War, these weapons were still in production.  Consequently, commando operations formed the crux of the navy’s contribution.  The results were discouraging.  The day of explosive boats had passed with the widespread adoption of radar.<sup>31</sup>  Israel’s naval commandos now based their operations on a lone operational submarine—the 1930s-vintage, former Royal Navy S-Class <i>Tanin</i>—and a flotilla of underwater, Bond-like “Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs),” whose prototypes—known by the very un-kosher term <i>maiale</i> or “pigs” (a name which stuck with them ever after despite protests from the IDF’s chief rabbi<sup>32</sup>)—had been developed in Mussolini’s Italy.  On the first night of the war, frogmen deployed by the <i>Tanin</i> attempted to raid Alexandria harbor only to find the base empty of military targets.  Worse still, on their return they missed the rendezvous and were later captured in an attempt to hide on land.  The <i>Tanin</i>, meanwhile, went 0 for 8 in torpedo shots against an Egyptian frigate and then got pinned down for three hours by depth charges launched in retaliation.<sup>33</sup></p>
<p>On the same night the SDVs attempted a raid on Port Said at the entryway to the Suez Canal.  They, too, found no targets in port, and only narrowly withdrew after shore batteries and patrol boats spotted them and opened fire.  Operations off the Syrian coast—one of them commanded by Yochai Bin-Nun, who had been summoned from retirement<sup>34</sup>—fared no better, and in the end, the navy’s lone success in the war came accidentally with the capture of Sharm-el-Sheikh on June 7.  The site, from which Egypt had blockaded the Straits of Tiran making war inevitable, was to have been taken by Israeli paratroopers with the navy in support.  Owing to catastrophic losses in the Sinai, however, the Egyptians had already fled.  Consequently, when Israeli naval forces arrived ahead of the paratroopers, they were able to come ashore unmolested to secure the vital position.<sup>35</sup></p>
<p>It remained for the navy to play a role in the one great blunder of the war:  In a dreadful mishap on June 8<sup>th</sup>, Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the American signals intelligence ship, <i>USS Liberty</i>, severely crippling the vessel and inflicting 205 casualties including 34 deaths.  The ship had been specifically identified as the <i>USS Liberty</i> earlier that morning after an Israeli <i>Noratlas</i> reconnaissance plane detected its hull number.<sup>36</sup>  But the vessel was then lost to follow up—in large measure because after the lapse of several hours, its position marker was taken off Naval Command’s situation map as being no longer accurate.  Worse still, word of the ship’s sighting was not passed on at the ensuing shift change.<sup>37</sup></p>
<p>In an unfortunate coincidence one hour later, a loud explosion at El Arish in Sinai (now held by Israeli forces) was mistaken for an Egyptian naval bombardment.  At the time, all other U.S. naval vessels had withdrawn from the coast, but the <i>Liberty</i> acting under separate orders from the National Security Agency and Joint Chiefs of Staff, had failed to receive its orders to do likewise.  Thus, it continued patrolling the coastal waters north of Sinai where Israeli torpedo boats, which had not been alerted to the possible presence of an American warship, now sighted it and mistook it for an Egyptian vessel.<sup>38</sup>  Acting in accordance with IDF Chief-of-Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s standing orders to sink all unidentified vessels in the war zone, the torpedo boats requested air force assistance.  After two initial flyovers failed to discern friendly markings,<sup>39</sup> the ship was attacked from the air.  Later, the Israeli torpedo boats arrived on the scene to inflict more damage.</p>
<p>The first clue that a tragic mistake had been made was the recovery, by one of the torpedo boats, of a life raft from the <i>Liberty </i>that possessed a U.S. Naval insignia.  Israel immediately offered apologies to the U.S. government and offered to pay compensation.  The episode has become the subject of conspiracy theories and cover-up charges, but ten subsequent U.S. government (and three Israeli) investigations have failed to expose any evidence or motive to support the notion that the attack was anything but a terrible and unintentional blunder.<sup>40</sup></p>
<p>Four months after the war, the navy suffered a humiliating setback.  During a routine patrol along the Sinai coastline on October 21<sup>st</sup>, the destroyer <i>Eilat</i>, Israel’s flagship, discerned a flash of light from Egypt’s Port Said at the outlet of the Suez Canal.  It was a Soviet-made <i>Styx</i> missile, and it found its mark in the <i>Eilat’s</i> stern.  Some 15 minutes later a second missile found its target.  The ship began to list.  For two hours, Israeli sailors attempted to salvage the destroyer, but when a third <i>Styx</i> struck the vessel’s magazine, her captain issued the order to abandon ship.  Within a quarter of an hour, the <i>Eilat</i> went to the bottom.  A fourth of the crew were killed and fully half wounded in this sea-to-sea missile strike—the first ever in naval history.<sup>41</sup></p>
<p>Three months later, disaster struck anew when the T-class submarine, <i>Dakar</i>, manned by a crew of 69, disappeared without a trace during its maiden voyage home after purchase in Great Britain.  Its fate remained a mystery for 30 years until its wreckage was discovered on the ocean bottom, 1.8 miles down, off the island of Crete in 1999.  The cause of the tragedy has never been determined.<sup>42</sup></p>
<p>Despite these devastating reverses, new vistas were opening for Israel’s navy.  Possession of the Sinai Peninsula with its extensive coastline promised a vast expansion in its scope of operations.  Hoping to capitalize on this fact, Israel’s new naval chief, Avraham “Cheetah” Botzer, sought to enhance the navy’s relevance by realigning its mission in accordance with the needs of the other branches.<sup>43</sup>  Henceforth, the navy was to regard itself not as a separate entity, but as an integral part of the IDF.  Reflective of the new outlook, it adopted IDF-style uniforms to replace its former navy attire and relocated “Naval Command” from Haifa to Tel Aviv where the rest of the IDF was headquartered.<sup>44</sup></p>
<p>In order to patrol Sinai’s Mediterranean and Red Sea coastlines effectively, the navy needed to press ahead with procurement of the French-built, German designed missile boats that were to carry the new <i>Gabriel</i> missile.  Known by the designation <i>SA’AR </i>(Hebrew for “Storm”<sup>45</sup>), the new boats were less than 1/10<sup>th</sup> the size of a destroyer.<sup>46</sup>  Hence, they were faster, more maneuverable and required far smaller crews (eliminating the risk of an <i>Eilat</i>-magnitude disaster should a single ship be lost).  At the same time, the compact new missile system allowed them to pack a stronger punch, all at a fraction of the cost of a new destroyer.<sup>47</sup></p>
<p>Unfortunately, there was a problem.  Just prior to the Six Day War, the French government had placed an embargo on military sales to Israel in order to appease Arab sentiment.  Two of the missile boats had already been delivered, and France allowed two more, which had been paid for while under construction, to sail for Israel after the war.  But when Israel used French-made helicopters in a raid on Beirut Airport in retaliation for Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli planes (1968), President de Gaulle ordered a halt to all further deliveries.  Alerted to the decision several days before the orders reached Cherbourg where the boats were under construction, Israel informed the port authorities that they would be running sea trials on two nearly complete boats on January 4, 1969.  Unaware of de Gaulle’s decision, the port approved.  Once out to sea, the boats simply kept going until they reached Haifa.<sup>48</sup></p>
<p>As these vessels, too, had been purchased in advance, the action didn’t exactly constitute theft, but de Gaulle angrily declared that five boats still being built at Cherbourg—for which contracts had been signed replete with a 30% down-payment<sup>49</sup>—were not to reach Israel.  Instead, they were resold to a Norwegian company involved in oil exploration off the coast of Alaska with Israel being reimbursed from the proceeds.  The boats set sail from Cherbourg on Christmas Eve 1969 in the teeth of 30-foot waves and 70-knot winds.  Two days later they were sighted off Gibraltar, where the British authorities effectively winked at them by signaling, “bon voyage” as they sailed past.<sup>50</sup>  On New Year’s Eve they arrived in Haifa.  Though headed by a well-known Norwegian shipping agent, the Norwegian “company,” was actually a front for Israeli buyers, and the crewmen were actually Israeli sailors participating in <i>Operation Noah</i> to recover Israel’s contractual property.<sup>51</sup></p>
<p>With the missile boats now on hand to fill the roles of attack and forward defense, the Israeli Navy rounded out its inventory upgrade by obtaining shallow-draught, U.S.-made <i>Dabur</i> (“hornet”) class patrol boats for coastal and rear defense and by incorporating landing craft (some of which were built domestically at Haifa’s “Israel Shipyards”) for amphibious operations carried out in cooperation with the IDF.<sup>52</sup> Equipped with its new arsenal, Israel’s Navy was poised to sail into a new era.</p>
<p>________________________</p>
<p><b>Notes</b></p>
<p><sup>1 </sup>This was <i>Operation Boatswain</i>—an attempt to sabotage the oil refineries in Tripoli (Samuel M. Katz, <i>The Night Raiders: Israel’s Naval Commandos at War</i>.  New York:  Pocket Books, 1997, 27-28).</p>
<p><sup>2 </sup>J. Wandres, .  <i>The Ablest Navigator: Lieutenant Paul N. Shulman, USN, Israel’s Volunteer Admiral</i>.  Annapolis:  Naval Institute Press, 2010, 28.</p>
<p><sup>3 </sup>Wandres, 14.</p>
<p><sup>4 </sup>Wandres, 39.</p>
<p><sup>5 </sup>The course was taught in English since Hebrew lacked naval terminology (Wandres, 58).</p>
<p><sup>6 </sup>Mommsen, 22-23.</p>
<p><sup>7 </sup>Mommsen, 28, 30.</p>
<p><sup>8</sup> A former Italian naval officer (and ex-Fascist), Fiorenzo Capriotti, trained the <i>Palyam</i> in the boats’ operation. (Katz, 60-61).</p>
<p><sup>9</sup> Moshe Tzalel, <i>From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat: The Evolution of Israel’s Naval Strategy</i>.  Contributions in Military Studies, Number 192. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000, 10.<br />
<sup>10</sup> The name derived from the unit’s tradition of toasting its membership on the 13<sup>th</sup> of each month (Katz, 72-73).</p>
<p><sup>11</sup> Mommsen, 40.</p>
<p><sup>12</sup> After targeting the minesweeper and locking his rudder, Bin-Nun had trouble ejecting with his flotation device—finally exiting the boat under fire with only 40 meters to spare.  He received the Medal of Valor for his role in the raid (Katz, 68-69; Abraham Rabinovich, <i>The Boasts of Cherbourg</i>.  New York:  Seaver Books, 1988, 24-25).</p>
<p><sup>13</sup> Mommsen, 29.</p>
<p><sup>14</sup> Wandres, 1-3; Mommsen, 40; Tzalel, 90.  The reason the <i>Al Emir Farouq</i> had 500 men aboard was because it was transporting troops to the Gaza front (Katz, 69).</p>
<p><sup>15</sup> Wandres, 3.</p>
<p><sup>16</sup> Tzalel, 11.</p>
<p><sup>17</sup> Tzalel, 10.</p>
<p><sup>18</sup> Tzalel, 14.</p>
<p><sup>19</sup> After serving one year as naval Aluf, Shamir was given command of the air force.</p>
<p><sup>20</sup> Tzalel, 16-18; Mommsen, 44-46.</p>
<p><sup>21 </sup>Also obtained was a small flotilla of torpedo boats, several WWII-surplus infantry landing craft and three small wooden Italian boats, which were carried overland across the Negev to Eilat to serve as the Israeli Navy in the Gulf of Aqaba (Mommsen, 52).</p>
<p><sup>22</sup> Mommsen, 46.</p>
<p><sup>23</sup> Mommsen, 67-68; Moshe Dayan, <i>Diary of the Sinai Campaign</i>, New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1965, 110-14.  On November 3, the IAF accidentally attacked a British frigate in the Gulf of Aqaba, mistaking it for an Egyptian ship that had been sunk by the British two days earlier.  The Israelis lost a plane in the attack.  (Mommsen, 69; Tzalel, 27)</p>
<p><sup>24</sup> Tzalel, 2, 93.</p>
<p><sup>25</sup> Mommsen, 77-78.</p>
<p><sup>26</sup> Mommsen, 81.</p>
<p><sup>27</sup> Mommsen, 79.</p>
<p><sup>28</sup> The name was suggested by a Canadian engineer, whose firm codenamed its war materiel after angels and Catholic saints (Rabinovich, 48).</p>
<p><sup>29</sup> Mommsen, 80; Rabinovich 37.</p>
<p><sup>30</sup> There was domestic opposition in Germany to the sale of weapons to Israel, so the German manufacturer subcontracted production to a French shipyard.</p>
<p><sup>31</sup> Mommsen, 52-53.</p>
<p><sup>32</sup> Katz, 93.</p>
<p><sup>33</sup> Mommsen, 85, 105-07; see also Tzalel, 101.</p>
<p><sup>34</sup> Mommsen, 113.</p>
<p><sup>35</sup> Mommsen, 107-111; Tzalel, 100.</p>
<p><sup>36 </sup>Mommsen, 116; Tzalel, 144-45.</p>
<p><sup>37</sup> Tzalel, 145; Michael B. Oren, “The <i>USS Liberty</i>:  Case Closed.”  Originally published in <i>Azure</i>, Spring 5760 / 2000, No. 9.  Accessed <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/liberty1.html">here</a> November 19, 2013.</p>
<p><sup>38</sup> Oren, <i>op cit.</i></p>
<p><sup>39</sup> Admiral Thomas Moorer of the U.S.N., would later express astonishment that Israeli pilots could not identify ships accurately, but in a prior exercise, this had been shown to be a distinct shortcoming of Israeli fighter pilots.  (Tzalel, 147-48)</p>
<p><sup>40</sup> Mitchell Bard, <i>Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict</i>.  Chevy Chase:  The American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), 2002, 62-64; Oren, <i>op cit</i>.</p>
<p><sup>41</sup> Rabinovich, 5-9; Mommsen, 127-28; Tzalel, 108.</p>
<p><sup>42</sup> No distress call was ever received.  Examination of the wreckage, which was discovered by Nauticos—the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/The-mystery-of-the-Dakar">same company</a> that located the wreckage of the <i>Titanic</i>— showed that the periscope was extended (indicating that the submarine was near the surface when the problem occurred).  The hull, broken into two pieces, had imploded—evidence that the submarine broke apart under pressure (Mommsen, 144).</p>
<p><sup>43</sup> Tzalel, 43-44.</p>
<p><sup>44</sup> Mommsen, 152; Tzalel, 46-47.  Naval Command did not relocate until 1972.</p>
<p><sup>45</sup> Rabinovich, 65.</p>
<p><sup>46 </sup>The boats displaced 250 tons compared with 3,500 tons for the average destroyer (Rabinovich, 28).</p>
<p><sup>47</sup> Rabinovich, 28, 67.</p>
<p><sup>48</sup> Rabinovich, 13-20.</p>
<p><sup>49</sup> Rabinovich, 88.</p>
<p><sup>50</sup> Rabinovich, 151-52.</p>
<p><sup>51</sup> Mommsen, 137-42.  France had considered bombing the vessels after they were sighted off Gibraltar, but as this technically would have been an act of war, they dropped the idea.</p>
<p><sup>52</sup> Mommsen, 145-46.</p>
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		<title>Obama Kills Tomahawk, Hellfire Missiles, Spends Millions on Green Energy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-kills-tomahawk-hellfire-missiles-spends-millions-on-green-energy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-kills-tomahawk-hellfire-missiles-spends-millions-on-green-energy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-kills-tomahawk-hellfire-missiles-spends-millions-on-green-energy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2014 18:22:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecoscam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221765</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The number of  Tomahawk missiles will drop to zero in 2016.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/images.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-221767" alt="images" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/images.jpg" width="345" height="286" /></a></p>
<p>The world is looking very peaceful these days. What are the odds<a href="http://freebeacon.com/obama-to-kill-tomahawk-hellfire-missile-programs/"> that we&#8217;ll need a Navy anyway</a>? Cruise missiles are outdated like bayonets and horses.</p>
<p>Advanced technology involves promising Putin to be super extra flexible when he invades Poland while blowing the military budget on Green Energy.</p>
<blockquote><p>Obama is seeking to abolish two highly successful missile programs that experts say has helped the U.S. Navy maintain military superiority for the past several decades.</p>
<p>The Tomahawk missile program—known as “the world’s most advanced cruise missile”—is set to be cut by $128 million under Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal and completely eliminated by fiscal year 2016, according to budget documents released by the Navy.</p>
<p>In addition to the monetary cuts to the program, the number of actual Tomahawk missiles acquired by the United States would drop significantly—from 196 last year to just 100 in 2015. The number will then drop to zero in 2016.</p>
<p>The Navy will also be forced to cancel its acquisition of the well-regarded and highly effective Hellfire missiles in 2015, according to Obama’s proposal.</p></blockquote>
<p>At which point peace on earth will break out.</p>
<blockquote><p>The U.S. Navy relied heavily on them during the 2011 military incursion into Libya, where some 220 Tomahawks were used during the fight.</p>
<p>Nearly 100 of these missiles are used each year on average, meaning that the sharp cuts will cause the Tomahawk stock to be completely depleted by around 2018. This is particularly concerning to defense experts because the Pentagon does not have a replacement missile ready to take the Tomahawk’s place.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t make sense,” said Seth Cropsey, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower. “This really moves the U.S. away from a position of influence and military dominance.”</p></blockquote>
<p>It makes sense if you assume that destroying American influence and military dominance is the goal of the ideology that Obama follows. Why should he risk having American military power fall into the hands of a Republican?</p>
<p>Obama refuses to waste money on cruise missiles for the Navy, because he thinks that there are other more important things <a href="http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/FMB/15pres/OMMC_Book.pdf">that the Navy ought to be doing</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Increase supports energy efficiency goals directed by the DoD Sustainability Plan to meet a 37.5% decrease in greenhouse gas emission by FY 2020. Initiatives reduce fossil fuel usage by improving energy efficiency and shifting to renewable energy such as biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind, and solar.</p></blockquote>
<p>What would the Navy be without solar panels and windmills?</p>
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		<title>A Scandal Bigger Than Benghazi?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/a-scandal-bigger-than-benghazi/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-scandal-bigger-than-benghazi</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:40:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[helicopter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Team Six]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The unanswered and troubling questions surrounding the deadly attack on SEAL Team 6.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Extortion-17.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-200221" alt="Extortion-17" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Extortion-17.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>In a story that has remained largely under the mainstream media radar, Congress <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/313039-congress-to-probe-lethal-seal-crash">announced</a> late last month that it would finally investigate the Aug. 6, 2011 helicopter crash in Afghanistan that resulted in 38 deaths, including 22 members of SEAL Team 6, made famous three months earlier when they killed Osama Bin Laden. Grieving family members insist that soldiers in the elite unit were placed in unnecessary danger by the recklessness of the Obama administration, whose actions they <a href="http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/05/30/what-happened-to-seal-team-six-the-most-serious-scandal-of-all/">characterized</a> as criminal. “We’re going to dive into this,&#8221; said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on National Security.</p>
<p>The families of the slain soldiers have every right to be furious. SEAL Team 6 is a covert unit whose operations are ostensibly classified. As a result, it has never been revealed which members of the team were involved in the killing of the terrorist mastermind, or how many of those same men were among those killed when the Chinook helicopter in which they were traveling was shot down by Taliban terrorists.</p>
<p>The focus of the families&#8217; fury and shock, along with that of SEAL Team 6 members themselves, was the administration&#8217;s desire to tout their success in killing Bin Laden &#8212; compromising the safety of the unit in the process. Only two days after the raid, Vice President Biden gave a speech at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Washington, D.C. “Let me briefly acknowledge tonight’s distinguished honorees: Adm. Jim Stavridis is a &#8212; is the real deal; he could tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALS and what they did last &#8212; last Sunday,” Mr. Biden revealed to audience members gathered for the 50th anniversary of the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank.</p>
<p>What followed was a testament to Biden’s disturbing ability to speak before thinking. “And what was even more extraordinary was &#8212; and I’m sure former administration officials will appreciate this more than anyone &#8212; there was such an absolute, overwhelming desire to accomplish this mission that although for over several months we were in the process of planning it, and there were as many as 16 members of Congress who were briefed on it, not a single, solitary thing leaked. I find that absolutely amazing,” Biden added, apparently oblivious to the reality that he had just perpetrated one of the more egregious leaks of national security information in recent history.</p>
<p>As a result, SEAL Team 6 members realized they had a target painted on their backs. That reality was <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/05/10/parents-navy-seal-aaron-vaughn-blast-biden-2011-helicopter-crash-killed-their-son">hammered home</a> in a May 10, 2013 Fox News interview with Karen and Billy Vaughn, whose son Aaron was killed in the chopper crash. Karen spoke first. “As soon as Joe Biden announced that it was a SEAL Team who took out Bin Laden, within 24 hours, my son called me and I rarely ever heard him sound afraid in his adult life….He said, ‘Mom, you need to wipe your social media clean…your life is in danger, our lives are in danger, so clean it up right now&#8217;,&#8221; she revealed.</p>
<p>Billy Vaughn took on Biden in no uncertain terms. “The media has let this man get away with saying ‘Uncle Joe’s gaffes, Uncle Joe&#8217;s gaffes,&#8221; he fumed. &#8220;This is not Uncle Joe and he’s not some senile old grandfather. He is the second in command of the most powerful country in the world and he needs to take responsibility for the comments he makes and quit being given a pass.”</p>
<p>Charles Strange, the father of slain SEAL Michael Strange, was also furious. During a family conference with reporters at the National Press Club in Washington a day earlier, Strange recounted his exchange with President Obama at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Aug. 9, 2011. Strange noted that, despite Obama saying he would look &#8220;very, very, very deep into this,” he never heard from the president again. In an <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/navy-seals-father-obama-sent-my-son-to-his-death/">exchange</a> with radio host Michael Savage last month, Strange took it one step further. He claimed his son told him, “Something’s going on with the team. Somebody’s leaking things out. Something’s going on.” Savage asked: “Your son knew he was being sent to his death?” Strange&#8217;s response was chilling. “They knew,” he answered. “They knew something was up. Every one of them.”</p>
<p>The military has provided more than 1,000 pages of documentation to the parents. Those documents contain the Defense Department&#8217;s assertion that they don&#8217;t believe the  SEALs were targeted following the Bin Laden operation. Moreover in a transcript, a Defense Department official disputes the families&#8217; assertion that the helicopter was brought down by an “established ambush,” contending it was &#8220;a lucky shot of a low-level fighter&#8221; who &#8220;happened to be in the right spot.&#8221;</p>
<p>The families aren&#8217;t buying that assessment, and they are extremely troubled by other questions surrounding the case as well. Of the 38 people killed in the crash, seven were members of the Afghan National Army. They were replaced at the last minute by other Afghan military officials who were not on the flight manifest, raising the possibility the replacements were Taliban infiltrators.</p>
<p>The military claimed that when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down, the bodies were badly burned and had to be cremated. Charles Strange believes the military is lying. “I saw Mike’s dead body,” he said in an interview. “It was clearly recognizable. He was clutching his gun. He wasn’t burned to a crisp. Why did they cremate my boy? They didn’t need to do that. Something’s not right.” Rep. Chaffetz, who said he saw a photo of a deceased SEAL, echoed that assertion. “The body I saw didn’t need to be cremated,” he said.</p>
<p>The military claims the helicopter&#8217;s black box was never recovered because it was washed away in a flash flood. Yet flash floods in that area of Afghanistan are extremely rare.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the families want to know why their sons were flown into a hot combat zone in a helicopter made in the 1960s. They want to know why such a large group of SEALS was put on a single aircraft and why no aerial backup was deployed, which is standard military procedure when special forces are involved. And they want to know why, during a funeral ceremony held at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, a Muslim cleric was allowed to recite a prayer condemning the American &#8220;infidels&#8221; to eternal damnation.</p>
<p>Yet perhaps the most damnable reality of all was revealed by Karen Vaughn at the aforementioned National Press Club meeting. &#8220;Why was there no pre-assault fire? We were told as families that pre-assault fire damages our effort to win the hearts and minds of our enemy,&#8221; she told reporters. &#8220;So in other words, the hearts and minds of our enemy are more valuable to this government than my son&#8217;s blood.&#8221;</p>
<p>This was not the first time the Vaughn family has challenged the so-called Rules of Engagement (ROE) that make a mockery of American soldiers&#8217; ability to conduct effective warfare. Three days after Benghazi, they were among several <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-01-03/gold-star-families-disconnect/52364100/1">Gold Star</a> families of servicemen lost in combat who held a press conference on the subject. It was there the Vaughns made it known that after their son&#8217;s helicopter went down, air support refused to fire on the enemy because there might have been &#8220;friendlies&#8221; in the building. The ROE required the military present at the operation to stand down as a result. Billy Vaughn was incensed. &#8220;Our military men go to war because they love what is behind them more than they hate what is in front of them,&#8221; he said at the time. &#8220;The least the government can do is give them the tools and the proper equipment and ROE that favor our warriors more than they favor our enemy.&#8221;</p>
<p>The least the government can do at the present time is conduct a thorough investigation into the the largest loss of life in a single day since the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan began. <a href="http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/">Freedom Watch</a> is assisting some of the families of the deceased. Founder Larry Klayman minced no words regarding what he thinks about this tragedy. “This is a scandal even greater than Benghazi,” he said. “There we lost four valued American lives; here we sacrificed 30 American soldiers. The big question is were these brave Americans sold out by the Afghani government as payment to the Taliban for the death of bin Laden?”</p>
<p>Perhaps a bigger question is why the Obama administration can get away with the monumental hypocrisy of being the administration that has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/politics/accidental-path-to-record-leak-cases-under-obama.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">prosecuted</a> more leakers than any other, while Joe Biden gets a pass. Republicans need to find answers to the many questions above. Our troops and their families deserve nothing less than a full accounting of this tragic incident.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>U.S. Navy Sails the Ocean Green</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/u-s-navy-sails-the-ocean-green/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=u-s-navy-sails-the-ocean-green</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:25:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=136753</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Massive cost increases thanks to Obama injecting environmentalism into the military. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/US_Navy_090928-N-7241L-232_The_littoral_combat_ship_USS_Freedom_LCS_1_conducts_flight_deck_certification_with_an_MH-60S_Sea_Hawk_helicopter_assigned_to_the_Sea_Knights_of_Helicopter_Sea_Combat_Squadron_HSC_22.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-136804" title="US_Navy_090928-N-7241L-232_The_littoral_combat_ship_USS_Freedom_(LCS_1)_conducts_flight_deck_certification_with_an_MH-60S_Sea_Hawk_helicopter_assigned_to_the_Sea_Knights_of_Helicopter_Sea_Combat_Squadron_(HSC)_22" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/US_Navy_090928-N-7241L-232_The_littoral_combat_ship_USS_Freedom_LCS_1_conducts_flight_deck_certification_with_an_MH-60S_Sea_Hawk_helicopter_assigned_to_the_Sea_Knights_of_Helicopter_Sea_Combat_Squadron_HSC_22.gif" alt="" width="375" height="248" /></a>On Friday June 29 a U.S. Navy carrier strike group set sail from Puget Sound to participate in “Rim of the Pacific” maneuvers. More than 20 nations are involved in the six-week maneuvers, which featured a key difference for the American fleet. The carriers had filled up on biofuel at a cost of nearly $27 a gallon, more than seven times as high as the usual $3.60 a gallon of conventional fuel. The massive cost increase is the result of President Obama linking the national security of the United States to his own environmental agenda.</p>
<p>As the politically correct line has it, conventional fuel is scarce, environmentally destructive, and has to be procured from dangerous areas of the world. Therefore, biofuels made domestically from seeds, algae, chicken fat and such will enhance the security of the military and the nation itself. A great deal more than security is in play here. Consider, for example, the source of the biofuels.</p>
<p>T.J. Glauthier, a board member of Solazyme Inc., was deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the Department of Energy from 1999-2001. Then he served on Barack Obama’s White House transition team, working specifically on energy provisions in the president’s stimulus package. Conveniently enough, Solazyme received a stimulus grant of $21.8 million to build a refinery for biofuels.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-usa-navy-greenfleet-idUSBRE86106X20120702">Reuters report</a>, in 2009 the Pentagon paid Solazyme $8.5 million for 20,055 gallons of algae-based biofuel, which works out to $424 a gallon. Last year the order was 450,000 gallons, the biggest-ever biofuel order from government, at a cost of $12 million, which works out to more than $26 a gallon. Blended with conventional fuels, the cost is supposed to be $15 a gallon but under no scenario is the cost of biofuels less than twice as much as conventional fuel. Even so, the plan is 50 percent biofuels for the Navy by 2016. But some analysts see a problem on the practical side.</p>
<p>James Bartis of the RAND Corporation says the amount of biofuels that can be produced is “a drop in the bucket” compared to the vast needs of the Pentagon, which uses 321,000 barrels of oil a day. Bartis estimates the maximum amount of fuel from chicken fat at 30,000 barrels a day, with up to 50,000 barrels a day from other sources such as seeds. That’s not nearly enough, so the plan makes no economic or practical sense. It did, however, serve up a revelation on the media side.</p>
<p>Many reporters are hawks on the military budget, delighting to decry the $600 toilet seat and other alleged wasted. But $26-a-gallon biofuel, purchased from an Obama crony who’s company got a stimulus grant from the Obama administration, did not create media outrage over profiteering or raise comparisons to Haliburton. The huge fuel cost increase comes during a recession and a time of high employment. But the burden of environmental orthodoxy on U.S. taxpayers did not get much play. Neither did security concerns, the real back story here.</p>
<p>The U.S. military is not a democracy and therefore an ideal place for a left-wing president to deploy a command economy and impose political correctness. The President of the United States is the commander in chief of the U.S. Military. All military personnel must do what he says, at risk of their jobs. President Truman, for example, fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a national hero. True to form, Secretary of the Navy Ray Babus is the biggest biofuels booster, otherwise he would likely be fired and replaced.</p>
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		<title>Sea Change for American Power</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/david-walsh/sea-change-for-american-power/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sea-change-for-american-power</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jun 2012 04:41:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Walsh]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=136167</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Will rising world powers outmatch U.S. naval might? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/0420-0905-0100-3204_u_s_navy_ships_m1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-136205" title="0420-0905-0100-3204_u_s_navy_ships_m" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/0420-0905-0100-3204_u_s_navy_ships_m1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a>Over the last 65 years, the United States has been able to maintain a liberal international order. This era has seen the spread of political and economic freedom across much of the globe. As it did for Great Britain, naval superiority has been central for the success of this system. It has allowed for freedom of the seas (and thus international trade to flourish), and has allowed the United States to project power to counter threats and maintain stability on a worldwide scale.</p>
<p>Today, however, this situation is changing. As with Britain&#8211;which was threatened by German naval expansion before World War I and by Japan&#8217;s before World War II&#8211;external threats have emerged to challenge America&#8217;s control of the seas. China is increasingly asserting its naval reach in the Western Pacific. In April 2010, and again in June 2011, large-scale exercises were held. The 2011 exercise saw 11 ships&#8211;including three missile destroyers and four frigates&#8211;transit within 110 km. of Okinawa, within Japan&#8217;s Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ). Submarines and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have also been reported. Additionally, China has procured a Russian-built aircraft carrier, which in 2011 made three deployments in the Yellow Sea, off the northeast coast. While reports vary, it is possible that Su-30 fighter-bombers&#8211;comparable to the F/A-18 Hornet&#8211;could be deployed (China has 24 in service), providing an effective tool for power projection. Most importantly, China has deployed the DF-21D ballistic missile, specifically designed for use against U.S. carrier strike groups, providing a serious challenge to American superiority in the Western Pacific.</p>
<p>Another challenger is Russia. For more than a decade after 1991, the Russian Navy was a decrepit shadow of its Soviet predecessor. Now, however, this is changing. Some $160 billion has been allotted to refit the fleet through 2020, while four French <em>Mistral</em>-class amphibious assault ships will be deployed in the next few years. These will give Russia a considerable boost in power-projection capabilities. Furthermore, new supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles like the Yakhont and advanced torpedoes like the Shkival are in service, which are a major enhancement to the fleet&#8217;s firepower.</p>
<p>Then there are the smaller fleets that, due to geopolitical and ideological factors, are most likely to be faced in a shooting war. Iran has developed a formidable naval capability in the confined waters of the Persian Gulf, which U.S. naval forces would have to enter to maintain the flow of oil from the region. It has some 5,000 mines of all types, including Russian-made rocket-propelled EM53&#8242;s, and 23 submarines, many of which carry torpedoes that can home in on a ship&#8217;s wake. Iran also has a large force of patrol craft and corvettes with advanced anti-ship missiles, capable of swarm attacks on U.S. ships. Iran&#8217;s ally Syria, while weak in sea-going forces, has acquired the Yakhont missile from Russia, extending its threat radius into the Mediterranean. North Korea likewise has a large force of missile-armed ships, and it&#8217;s submarine force includes 20 midget vessels, one of which sank the South Korean corvette <em>Cheonan</em> in 2010.</p>
<p>While threats from abroad have emerged, the priorities of the Obama Administration have also served to undermine America&#8217;s continued naval supremacy. As part of the plan to reduce defense spending by $487 billion over the next decade, Navy shipbuilding will be hard-hit. According to the administration&#8217;s budget plan, just 41 ships will be procured over the next five years. The Navy&#8217;s March 2012 shipbuilding plan is even more stark: no new ballistic missile submarines will be built until 2021, while just one more large-deck amphibious ship will be built in 2017. Not until 2018 will shipbuilding be funded above replacement levels. As John Lehman, Navy Secretary in the Reagan Administration, noted in a recent article in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, the total of ships in the U.S. Navy could decline from its current 286 to just 240-250 in the next half decade. Given that the U.S. Navy, in its 2006 plan, called for a 313-ship fleet in the 2030s, the current reductions make that prospect highly unlikely.</p>
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		<title>Reagan and the Hormuz Doctrine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/reagan-and-the-hormuz-doctrine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=reagan-and-the-hormuz-doctrine</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:23:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why we need to respond to Iranian provocations like Reagan did. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/507921452.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118167" title="507921452" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/507921452.gif" alt="" width="375" height="258" /></a></p>
<p>Tehran is making lots of noise about closing the Strait of Hormuz, boasting that it would be “easier than drinking a glass of water,” according to Iran’s naval chief, and warning U.S. aircraft carriers to steer clear of the vital waterway. The Iranians have punctuated their threats with missile tests, naval maneuvers and other provocative acts. What if the president responded by explaining that closure of the Strait of Hormuz “would constitute an illegal interference with navigation of the sea,” by making it unambiguously clear to Iran’s leaders that “we will protect our ships, and if they threaten us, they’ll pay a price,” and by deploying and even using military force to ensure that Tehran had “no illusions about the cost of irresponsible behavior”?</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, the president has already responded to Iranian provocations in this manner. Of course, the president who did so was Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>It happened in 1987-88, after Iran launched cruise missiles at ships in the Persian Gulf, attacked unarmed oil tankers, laid mines that destroyed cargo ships, harassed U.S. warships and aircraft deployed to ensure freedom of the seas, and deployed ship-killing missiles on its side of the Strait of Hormuz.</p>
<p>After an Iranian mine ripped through a U.S. warship, Reagan had enough and ordered a series of punishing military responses against Iranian naval assets all across the lower half of the Persian Gulf. While most Americans forget this war on the Gulf, Tehran doesn’t. On a single day in 1988, the U.S. crippled Iran’s navy: U.S. helicopters disabled and then captured an Iranian ship; U.S. warships set Iranian oil platforms ablaze; and the U.S. armada eliminated six Iranian warships, effectively turning Iran’s military into a land-only force. Even the New York Times called it “The right response to Khomeini.”</p>
<p>Today, Tehran is even more capable of wreaking havoc in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Security and International Studies has noted that “Iran has given modernization of its naval forces high priority,” acquiring sophisticated anti-ship missiles from China and Ukraine, submarines from Russia, high-speed attack boats from France and an arsenal of some 2,000 mines. In Cordesman’s view, Iran may have the “potential capability to close the Gulf until U.S. naval and air power could clear the mines and destroy the missile launchers and submarines.”</p>
<p>Although now may not be the time for Reaganesque military action against Iran’s navy, it’s certainly the time for Reaganesque words from this president. All we’ve heard so far in response to Iran’s threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a brief but blunt warning from the U.S. Fifth Fleet that disruptions of the vital transit route “will not be tolerated.”</p>
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		<title>Shall Not Perish</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/shall-not-perish/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=shall-not-perish</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 May 2010 06:18:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[My day on the USS Abraham Lincoln.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ship.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60358" title="ship" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ship.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="267" /></a></p>
<p>On May 12, I had the opportunity to spend 27 hours aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz Class, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and the ship that President Bush landed on after toppling Saddam Hussein. The carrier was about 130 miles out to sea and our group landed on its flight deck in a C-2A Greyhound or “COD,” which is a twin-engine prop plane the Navy uses to transport personnel and cargo from the shore. Like all fixed wing planes that land on carriers the COD was “trapped” by one of the four wires stretched across the deck, when its tailhook locked into place. This meant we decelerated from about 128 miles an hour to zero in two-and-a-half seconds. It was quite a jolt.</p>
<p>On board the Lincoln were 5,000 men and women, a large proportion of them 19 and 20 years old, and every one with a task integral to defending you and me against the many enemies a free and prosperous people face in a world driven by envy and resentment, ignorance and hate. The carrier is a floating base which frees us from dependence on uncertain allies and the need for air space rights and a land presence in areas of the world – the Middle East in particular &#8212; where the forces of jihad germinate and threaten us with modern weaponry. The USS Abraham Lincoln is part of a nine-ship strike force which includes an escort of guided-missile destroyers and frigates, and raises the total personnel involved in the coordinated mission to about 8,500.</p>
<p>During our visit, the weather was clear and the sun shining but the wind was brisk and the ocean white-capped. Nonetheless, if you didn’t look over the side, you would hardly be aware that we were at sea as we planed through the water at 20 knots, so smooth was our passage. This was not hard to explain since the ship is more than 1,000 feet in length and displaces 97,500 tons. Its anchor alone weighs 60,000 pounds and the anchor chain another 300,000. It’s not easy for the mind to encompass these magnitudes or for that matter others we encountered. For example the ship contains two nuclear power plants, is driven by four 75,000-shaft horse-power engines, and carries three and a half million gallons of jet fuel. It has four “evaporators” which can distill 400,000 gallons of drinking water a day, a capability put to humanitarian service in natural disaster zones during the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in the Pacific.</p>
<p>At the time of our arrival, the strike force was conducting training exercises in anticipation of a forthcoming deployment. The 60-wing air squadron, consisting of F-18 Hornets and Super Hornets, was flying 12-hour shifts and participating in war games in which pilots launched from Pt. Mugu and other shore bases assumed the role of enemy craft. We were privileged to observe three sessions of launch and “recovery” (which is how the Navy describes the landing process) from the ship’s flight deck and bridge. It was an awesome sight as the F-18s came in every two minutes in identical flight patterns at 160 miles per hour and hit the trap wires – mostly the designated third wire, and did so not by dragging the hook but by hitting the wire itself. Every landing is filmed and every pilot graded. When I had a chance to talk to one of them, a young officer named Kyle Hartman, I asked him if the planes were radar-guided on the approaches. He said that as part of the training they were not. It was all eye-balled which made these performances even more extraordinary. Hartman had been in combat missions over Afghanistan and Iraq. I asked him about his education prior to joining the Navy and was told he was an engineering student and micro-biology major at Purdue before dropping out to enlist and go to flight school. Everything he knew about flying the Navy had taught him.</p>
<p>I was told a similar story by the crew member who took us on a tour of the ship’s magazine, where they break down, maintain, assemble and modify the most complex and advanced technological weapons systems, including smart bombs and guided missiles. I wish I could remember the detailed description he provided of the technologies involved in even one of these systems which he rattled off rapid-fire as though he were running through an ordinary grocery list. I asked him how long he had been doing this, and he answered four years. I asked him what he did before joining the Navy and he said, “I was stocking shelves in a retail store.”</p>
<p>When you have occasion to worry about the state of our civilian educational system or our civilian institutions generally, keep in mind that of all America’s institutions the military has been the least damaged by the tides of political correctness which have eroded the values that made our country strong. These two young men were as impressive achievements as the weapons systems themselves. The commanding officer of the strike force, Rear Admiral Mark Guadagnini, a combat pilot himself, gave us a talk which emphasized that our strength as a nation was not just a matter of technologies but of our values and the ideals which motivate us. It was therefore gratifying but not particularly surprising when I was dining in the crew mess and some of the pilots came over to thank me for the Freedom Center’s work.</p>
<p>The ship’s community takes ideas seriously. There is an on-board Lincoln shrine with the Gettysburg address and other Lincoln memorabilia. The ship’s crew pray together twice a day. The ship’s motto and its mission are provided by Lincoln’s words: <em>Shall Not Perish</em> – as in government of by and for the people shall not perish from the earth.</p>
<p>We departed on the COD, which had brought us there, by catapult &#8212; the way all fixed wing planes are launched from the carrier’s flight deck, which does not provide enough space for a normal takeoff. The crew members who orchestrate the launch are called “Shooters” because that is a precise description of what takes place. Going from a standing position to 140 miles per hour in two-and-half seconds provided an even greater kick than the landing, and was a way for the passengers to remember the incredible job these young men and women and their commanding officers are doing to keep us free.</p>
<p><em>You can thank the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln and learn more about them on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sfrm#%21/USSLincoln?ref=ts">their Facebook page</a>.</em></p>
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